Women have entered the labor market in unprecedented numbers. Yet these critically needed workers still earn less than men and have fewer opportunities for advancement. This study traces the evolution of the female labor force in America, addressing the issue of gender distinction in the workplace and refuting the notion that women's employment advances were a response to social revolution rather than long-run economic progress. Employing innovative quantitative history methods and new data series on employment, earnings, work experience, discrimination, and hours of work, this study establishes that the present economic status of women evolved gradually over the last two centuries and that past conceptions of women workers persist.
Why do Japanese women enjoy a high sense of well-being in a context of high inequality? Beyond the Gender Gap in Japan brings together researchers from across the social sciences to investigate this question. The authors analyze women’s values and the lived experiences at home, in the family, at work, in their leisure time, as volunteers, and in politics and policy-making. Their research shows that the state and firms have blurred “the public” and “the private” in postwar Japan, constraining individuals’ lives, and reveals the uneven pace of change in women’s representation in politics. Yet, despite these constraints, the increasing diversification in how people live and how they manage their lives demonstrates that some people are crafting a variety of individual solutions to structural problems. Covering a significant breadth of material, the book presents comprehensive findings that use a variety of research methods—public opinion surveys, in-depth interviews, a life history, and participant observation—and, in doing so, look beyond Japan’s perennially low rankings in gender equality indices to demonstrate the diversity underneath, questioning some of the stereotypical assumptions about women in Japan.
While powerful gender inequalities remain in American society, women have made substantial gains and now largely surpass men in one crucial arena: education. Women now outperform men academically at all levels of school, and are more likely to obtain college degrees and enroll in graduate school. What accounts for this enormous reversal in the gender education gap? In The Rise of Women: The Growing Gender Gap in Education and What It Means for American Schools, Thomas DiPrete and Claudia Buchmann provide a detailed and accessible account of women’s educational advantage and suggest new strategies to improve schooling outcomes for both boys and girls. The Rise of Women opens with a masterful overview of the broader societal changes that accompanied the change in gender trends in higher education. The rise of egalitarian gender norms and a growing demand for college-educated workers allowed more women to enroll in colleges and universities nationwide. As this shift occurred, women quickly reversed the historical male advantage in education. By 2010, young women in their mid-twenties surpassed their male counterparts in earning college degrees by more than eight percentage points. The authors, however, reveal an important exception: While women have achieved parity in fields such as medicine and the law, they lag far behind men in engineering and physical science degrees. To explain these trends, The Rise of Women charts the performance of boys and girls over the course of their schooling. At each stage in the education process, they consider the gender-specific impact of factors such as families, schools, peers, race and class. Important differences emerge as early as kindergarten, where girls show higher levels of essential learning skills such as persistence and self-control. Girls also derive more intrinsic gratification from performing well on a day-to-day basis, a crucial advantage in the learning process. By contrast, boys must often navigate a conflict between their emerging masculine identity and a strong attachment to school. Families and peers play a crucial role at this juncture. The authors show the gender gap in educational attainment between children in the same families tends to be lower when the father is present and more highly educated. A strong academic climate, both among friends and at home, also tends to erode stereotypes that disconnect academic prowess and a healthy, masculine identity. Similarly, high schools with strong science curricula reduce the power of gender stereotypes concerning science and technology and encourage girls to major in scientific fields. As the value of a highly skilled workforce continues to grow, The Rise of Women argues that understanding the source and extent of the gender gap in higher education is essential to improving our schools and the economy. With its rigorous data and clear recommendations, this volume illuminates new ground for future education policies and research.
Praise for The Gender Gap in College "Linda Sax has produced an encyclopedic volume comparing women's and men's development during the undergraduate years. We believe it is destined to become a classic in the higher education literature." —From the Foreword by Alexander W. Astin and Helen S. Astin "Using findings from an important national data set, Linda Sax has skillfully crafted a definitive work about the gender gap in college. It is a major scholarly achievement that will be influential for many years to come." —Ernest Pascarella, Petersen Professor of Higher Education, University of Iowa "Linda Sax has produced a meticulously researched, carefully documented analysis that identifies many ways that college impacts men and women differently. This book will be an invaluable resource to researchers and practitioners seeking to better understand and serve traditional-age students at four-year colleges and universities." —Jacqueline E. King, assistant vice president, Center for Policy Analysis, American Council on Education
This fascinating compilation of the recent data on gender differences in education presents a wealth of data, analysed from a multitude of angles in a clear and lively way.
Closing the gender pay gap begins with awareness and understanding of the state of the gap. This hybrid book that serves as a resource for both the academic and corporate communities, builds the reader’s awareness of the gender pay gap, its magnitude and ramifications, and provides action plans to address the challenge. Much of the existing literature on the gender pay gap provides an excellent foundation in stating facts and inferences; yet, the reader is often left wondering "now what?" This book tells the story of the state of the gap by the numbers and then offers specific actions that can be taken to achieve equity. The authors combine backgrounds in statistics and management/HR to provide a unique perspective in painting a broader overview of the issue, examining the history of the gender pay gap, its global impact, and how nations are addressing the issue. The book shines a light on the wide-ranging effects of the gap, including women’s poverty rates, student loans, economic growth, childhood poverty, and corporate profits, and offers insights to help close it with best practices of select organizations. Upper-level undergraduate, postgraduate, and executive education students will appreciate the clarity and conciseness of this guide to understanding and solving an important human resources issue. The inclusion of a brief instructor’s manual and PowerPoint slides for each chapter differentiates this book and adds to the ease of adoption in both the academic and corporate setting.
The groundbreaking classic that explores how women can and should negotiate for parity in their workplaces, homes, and beyond When Linda Babcock wanted to know why male graduate students were teaching their own courses while female students were always assigned as assistants, her dean said: "More men ask. The women just don't ask." Drawing on psychology, sociology, economics, and organizational behavior as well as dozens of interviews with men and women in different fields and at all stages in their careers, Women Don't Ask explores how our institutions, child-rearing practices, and implicit assumptions discourage women from asking for the opportunities and resources that they have earned and deserve—perpetuating inequalities that are fundamentally unfair and economically unsound. Women Don't Ask tells women how to ask, and why they should.
The World Bank Group’s Women, Business and the Law examines laws and regulations affecting women’s prospects as entrepreneurs and employees across 190 economies. Its goal is to inform policy discussions on how to remove legal restrictions on women and promote research on how to improve women’s economic inclusion.
Women now represent over half of medical school matriculants, almost half of residents and fellows, and over a third of practicing physicians nationally. Despite considerable representation among the physician workforce, women are paid 75 cents on the dollar compared with their male counterparts after accounting for specialty, geography, time in practice, and average hours per week worked. This pay gap is significantly greater than the one reported for US women workers as a whole and has shown little improvement over time. While much has been written about the problem, a robust discussion about how to rectify the situation has been missing from the conversation. Closing the Gender Pay Gap in Medicine is the first comprehensive assessment of how cultural expectations and compensation methodologies in medicine work together to perpetuate salary disparities between men and women physicians. Since the gender gap reflects a convergence of forces within our healthcare enterprises, achieving pay equity can be an overwhelming undertaking for institutions and their leaders. However, compensation is foremost a business endeavor. Therefore, a roadmap for operationalizing equity within the finance, human resources, and compliance structures of our organizations is critical to eliminating disparities. The roadmap described in this book breaks down the component parts of compensation methodology to reveal their unintentional impact on salary equity and lays out processes and procedures that support new approaches to generate fair and equitable outcomes. Additionally, the roadmap is anchored in change management principles that address institutional culture and provide momentum toward salary equity. The book begins with a review of the evidence on the gender pay gap in medicine. The following chapter discusses how gender-based differences in performance assessments, specialty choice, domestic responsibilities, negotiation, professional resources, sponsorship, and clinical productivity accumulate across women’s careers in medicine and impact evaluation, promotion, and therefore compensation in the healthcare workplace. The next two chapters focus, respectively, on how compensation is determined - highlighting potential pitfalls for pay equity - and regulatory and legal considerations. Chapters 5 and 6 explore organizational infrastructure, salary data collection and analysis, and culture change strategies necessary to rectify compensation inequities. Chapter 7 offers a detailed account of one medical institution’s successful journey to achieve salary equity. The book’s final chapter emphasizes that closing the gender pay gap is at its essence a business endeavor and recommends that organizations assess progress and cost with the same attention, rigor, and regularity as afforded other operating expenses. Closing the Gender Pay Gap in Medicine offers a detailed roadmap for healthcare organizations seeking to close the gender pay gap among their physician workforce. This first-of-its-kind book will assist institutions plan courses of action and identify potential pitfalls so they can be understood and mitigated. It will also prove a valuable resource for transformational leadership and systems-based change critical to attaining compensation equity.
