That's the question Huffington Post asks.  Bloomberg observes the same.  This though 58% of Facebook's users are women and its COO, Sheryl Sandberg, has commented on gender equity issues before (as Christine observed).

Just today I sat in on a discussion about the dearth of women on boards.  Some thought maybe the issue was passe, already solved.  We've come a ways, after all: according to Catalyst 15.7%. of board seats were held by women in 2010. 

OK, that doesn't really sound so good, does it? 

But by my calculations, 15.7% of 7 (the number of Facebook directors) is 1.099, and that's 1.099 more women directors than Facebook has.

Really?  The blockbuster IPO of 2012 doesn't see fit to put anyone but 7 white guys on its board? Really? 

I realize may sound angry, but I really don't mean to.  I'm more incredulous.  This is a the social media company, whose professed mission is "to make the world more open and connected."  Mark Zuckerberg is already serving as both Chairman and CEO and using dual class common to keep control, both of which are corporate governance best practices no-nos.   Basically they translate into 1) letting you as CEO head up the entity that's supposed to monitor you and 2) selling your company to the public without risking that your could ever be bought out, even if the market thinks you're doing a lousy job.  I would have thought Zuckerberg would at least make a gesture towards boardroom diversity, so that Facebook's vision of the world has some semblance of input from the outside.

Nope.

 

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This week's New Yorker magazine has an article about Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook.  The article focuses on her remarks and attitudes toward the fact that so few woman are in powerful corporate and political positions.  I had previously pointed readers toward an excerpt of a graduation speech Sandberg had made, and that speech may have been modeled after Sandberg's very popular TED speech on the same topic.

In the speech, Sandberg acknowledges that her (my) generation is very lucky compared with earlier generations in that there are no legal or structural barriers to women in the workplace.  She then, and this is the controversial part, says very nicely but very emphatically that women hold themselves back.  Women do this by underestimating themselves and shying away from challenges.  She has three points to make to women beginning their career:

1.    Sit at the table.  Don't shy away; don't hesitate; don't doubt yourself.

2.    Make your partner your real partner.  Marriages where household responsibilities are shared are stronger as well as necessary for women's career success.

3.    Don't leave before you leave.  Don't put yourself on a mommy track years before you become a mommy.  Be at the top of your game when you have your first child, then you will have a reason to come back.

Now, some commentators aren't happy with Sandberg's message because she doesn't address sexism, overt or nuanced, old boy networks or glass ceilings.  Sandberg hasn't demanded to be on the all-male Facebook board and wasn't on the Google board.  Others say she is out of touch with the problems that most women face because she was lucky to have a "sponsor" that was Larry Summers.  Perhaps, but many watchers seem to be empowered by the vision of owning their choices instead of spotting hindrances.

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In last Sunday's NYT (June 12, 2011), I read two articles that seemed to beg to be blogged together.  The first article, Words of Wisdom, excerpted various commencement speeches, including one given by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg:

Women almost never make one decision to leave the work force. It doesn't happen that way. They make small little decisions along the way that eventually lead them there. Maybe it's the last year of med school when they say, ''I'll take a slightly less interesting specialty because I'm going to want more balance one day.'' Maybe it's the fifth year in a law firm when they say, ''I'm not even sure I should go for partner, because I know I'm going to want kids eventually.'' These women don't even have relationships, and already they're finding balance, balance for responsibilities they don't yet have. And from that moment, they start quietly leaning back. So, my heartfelt message to all of you is, and start thinking about this now, do not leave before you leave. Do not lean back; lean in. Put your foot on that gas pedal and keep it there until the day you have to make a decision, and then make a decision. That's the only way, when that day comes, you'll even have a decision to make.

I totally agree with this. This is the same advice that I give my students. Negotiating a great reduced load is a lot easier after several years when you have become indispensable. I have a great friend who worked full-tilt for the first ten years we practiced. Now, she is one of a handful of attorneys in the country who does what she does, so she only does it about 20 hours a week. For loads of money. But that deal wasn't offered to her when she entered the law profession. I was a "lifer" until I wasn't an employee any more. However, I don't think I agree with this piece by Dr. Karen Sibert, entitled Don't Quit This Day Job, in the same issue:

Today, however, increasing numbers of doctors — mostly women — decide to work part time or leave the profession. Since 2005 the part-time physician workforce has expanded by 62 percent, according to recent survey data from the American Medical Group Association, with nearly 4 in 10 female doctors between the ages of 35 and 44 reporting in 2010 that they worked part time. This may seem like a personal decision, but it has serious consequences for patients and the public.  Medical education is supported by federal and state tax money both at the university level — student tuition doesn’t come close to covering the schools’ costs — and at the teaching hospitals where residents are trained. So if doctors aren’t making full use of their training, taxpayers are losing their investment. With a growing shortage of doctors in America, we can no longer afford to continue training doctors who don’t spend their careers in the full-time practice of medicine. It isn’t fashionable (and certainly isn’t politically correct) to criticize “work-life balance” or part-time employment options. How can anyone deny people the right to change their minds about a career path and choose to spend more time with their families? I have great respect for stay-at-home parents, and I think it’s fine if journalists or chefs or lawyers choose to work part time or quit their jobs altogether. But it’s different for doctors. Someone needs to take care of the patients.

Wow. Those are tough words. Should they be dismissed as "pulling up the ladder" talk from a woman of an earlier generation who made very tough choices and hates to see others have a wider array of choices than she had?  (Dr. Sibert begins her piece by telling us she had four chidlren and always worked full-time, and ends by saying that she never made cupcakes for homeroom.)  There is definitely a phenomenon that's not hard to spot among both working moms and stay-at-home moms of convincing oneself over the years that one's choice not only was best for that mom, but is the best for all moms. If not, then one may experience regret over one's choice, which is particularly unsavory.  Dr. Sibert has contributed a chapter in a book exploring these choices, Torn:  True Stories of Kids, Career & the Conflict of Modern Motherhood.  Dr. Sibert, however, packages her annoyance with "kids these days" by alleging that doctors who go part-time cheat the taxpayers.

I would probably want a little more information before deciding if part-time doctoring cheats taxpayers.  Dr. Sibert never follows up her allegation that state tax dollars subsidize medical education.  I suppose she means state-run universities, in which case we will just note that states are subsidizing less and less these days, and move on.  However, she does specify that Madicare pays for $9 billion of resident salaries and teaching.  I've always thought that the resident program was a win-win for everyone.  Teaching hospitals get really cheap labor, and residents get really great training.  Dr. Sibert seems to think that residents get more out of these programs than the hospitals and the public.  I have no other information.

However, even if the new doctor owes something to the public, how much?  Forty years of 50 hour weeks?  Thirty years?  Dr. Sibert doesn't seem to have the same ire for her male counterparts who retire early or step down from the more unpredictable parts of practice (delivering babies, surgeries, etc.).  Dr. Sibert is even upset with full-time female doctors who practice a few hours less a week than male counterparts or see a few less patients a week. 

I also have a hard time linking owing something to the U.S. taxpayer with being a private physician.  Am I giving back to the public at large merely by being a physician that private individuals have access to for a fee?  I went to law school at a time in which my degree was heavily subsidized by the people of the great state of Texas.  I'm not sure if they felt paid back by my years of service at the private law firm, at the prevailing billing rate.

Dr. Silbert seems to be saying that if you take up a spot in a U.S. medical school class and a residency program, then you have to practice as hard and as long as the person who did not get that spot.  And I think she means as hard and as long as the person who did not get that spot in 1983.

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Friend and Glom reader Maggie Sachs sends along her quick take on this intriguing new book by a corporate law colleague, which is inspiring me to read more:

I have just finished reading a recent book by Douglas Branson that is likely to be of interest to many readers of this blog. Entitled The Last Male Bastion: Gender and the CEO Suite in America’s Public Companies, the book offers fascinating insights into the challenges that women face in becoming (and surviving as) CEOs. The purpose of the book is to shed light on a perplexing and under-publicized phenomenon: the astonishing fact that as of 2010, a mere three percent of Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs.

In the first part of the book, Branson, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, profiles twenty-one women CEOs. These women run the gamut in terms of personality, family background, and financial literacy. A few have been great successes as CEOs, while others have been abject failures. Paradoxically, sometimes the very traits that open the door of the CEO suite prove counterproductive once a woman is inside the door.

In the second and third parts of the book, Branson dissects the data he has assembled. There is a wealth of intriguing analysis here, which I will illustrate by sharing a few of my personal favorites. First, there is a tendency for women to be hired by companies that spot trouble on the horizon. With the deck stacked against women CEOs in this fashion, how surprised should we be if they don’t succeed? Moreover, women CEOs who fail at their jobs seem to fall off the professional checkerboard, whereas their male counterparts often land on their feet in new and visible positions. In addition, women are more likely to be hired when the length of time allotted for interviews is longer, allowing greater opportunity either for initially hesitant interviewees to convey their accomplishments or for initially prejudiced interviewers to overcome their biases (or both).

In short, Branson’s book is as sobering as it is provocative. It will resonate with everyone who cares about the problems that confront women professionals in general, as well as those of us with an interest in women CEOs in particular.

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Disputes about the substance of marriage have obscured questions about the statutes governing marriage procedure.  The states license marriages under statutes that assumed fairly standard forms during the twentieth century.  

Banns developed in England to prevent clandestine marriages which undercut parents' and communities' ability to stop objectionable marriages.  Licensing emerged in the U.S. as an improvised replacement, given the lack of a state church to supervise a regime of banns.  Couples have, nonetheless, for generations defeated efforts to stop them from using state law to formalize their relationship. 

In his memoir of growing up in Wharton, Texas, the late playwright Horton Foote recounts the story of his parents' marriage against firm parental disapproval by his mother’s parents.  Albert Horton Foote and Harriet Gautier Brooks sneaked over to a nearby Texas town called El Campo, got a license, and came back to Wharton, where a minister married them in a house six blocks from Harriet’s parents' house.  They set up housekeeping in Wharton and were snubbed by her parents until the day her mother called and said, "I thought I'd come over to see you this afternoon if you're going to be home."  Her mother had yielded to the hardy practice of couple autonomy.

Horton Foote's parents were tame compared with the couples who went to "Gretna Greens," or to Las Vegas, to marry despite reasons (often, the age of a girl) for someone to intervene and stop them.  The record of marriage is clear about one point.  Marriage licensing simply does not support goals of marriage regulation and preservation of tradition.  It never has, not in Las Vegas in the 1960s, not in Horton Foote's Texas, and not today. 

What does licensing do?  Very little.  It asserts no control over the decision-making by couples. It generally does not impose health checks on the parties.  It doesn't force disclosure by one person to the other.  Waiting periods are almost all gone.  Historically, licensing has served as a means to support anti-miscegenation laws and forms of religious discrimination.  It's hard to view marriage licensing as useful, except insofar as it serves the purpose of formality, open consent to marriage, ceremonial affirmations celebrated by a community, and clear records.  

At its best, licensing is about the state's serving as a facilitator of the creation and recognition of a legal status.  In that way, the state is doing something similar to what it does when it facilitates the formation of other legal relationships, such as the corporation or binding agreements, all subject to autonomous party choices for their creation.  Indeed, the Massachusetts marriage statute avoids the term, "license."  Massachusetts’s statutory usage recognizes the parties’ control over the marriage and the role of the state as a facilitator, recorder, and source of publicity.

Despite the similarity of the state role in marriage formation to its role in facilitating other legal relations, the states have been timid and unimaginative about creating innovations in marriage procedure.  Marriage statutes contain odd rigidities, little regulatory clout, and a continuing insistence that couples use the marriage license within the state that issues it.  Licensing sounds like something that protects a tradition, even as its main use has been to exclude some pairings, create needless complications for couples who are physically separated, and defeat couples' occasional preferences about ceremonial details. 

Adam Candeub and I have posted a paper exploring the possibility of bringing a new energy to the states' facilitative role in marriage solemnization.  For shorthand, we've labeled the idea e-marriage.  We suggest that, with careful study and deliberation, states could enhance their facilitative and record-keeping role by modernizing the statutes governing marriage ceremonies.  For marriages of same-sex couples, states that authorize the marriages could take the next step in the logic of federalism by allowing couples in distant states to use their marriage-authorization laws. 

For controversial marriages, states that do not recognize them would still be able to refuse recognition. But the couples could engage in an expressive activity, with legal meaning in many jurisdictions, in their own community.   Couples already travel to marry in places like Massachusetts, returning to reside in states that refuse their marriage recognition, so such couples clearly value an official legal blessing provided by another jurisdiction.

We have tentatively planned a conference on November 12, 2010, in East Lansing, to explore the many ramifications of our idea.  We will have legal scholars, legislators, economists, and English professors gather for a stimulating discussion of the possibilities for innovation in the regime governing marriage formation.  We'd welcome suggestions for types of relevant commentary and for specific names of persons from business schools with expertise in evaluating proposed business models, experts in e-government and government record-keeping and statistics generation, and any other source of insight about the notion of improving current marriage formation procedure.

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A Slate essay this week marks the 21st anniversary of the term "mommy track."  Apparently, when the author, Angie Kim, and I were both seniors in college, getting ready to go to law school, an article in the Harvard Business Review, without using the term, suggested having separate career paths so that those who sought work-life family balance could contribute to the enterprise in a meaningful way but also attain other life goals.  Here's that article (full article is gated).  The author, Felice N. Schwartz, noted that studies were showing that professional women were much more expensive to hire than professional men because of turnover rates, etc.  So, she proposed a new way of thinking and structuring career paths: 

The studies will be useless—or worse, harmful—if all they teach us is that women are expensive to employ. What we need to learn is how to reduce that expense, how to stop throwing away the investments we make in talented women, how to become more responsive to the needs of the women that corporations must employ if they are to have the best and the brightest of all those now entering the work force.

Well, that doesn't sound like a rallying cry now, but apparently it was not well-received. Feminist commentators pooh-poohed this suggestion as proposing a "Mommy Track."  I don't specifically remember this public discourse, but I know that if, at 20, you had thrown this idea out for me, I would have balked.  Really balked.  When I was in law school (1990-'93, like the author), we never talked about work/life family balance.  We never talked about lifestyle.  I don't even remember having a conversation with anyone, male or female, about babies or motherhood.  I did have conversations about employers pushing us onto the Mommy Track without our permission.  (As an aside, my law school friends and I debated the 1991 Johnson Controls case, in which Johnson Controls barred fertile women from lead-exposing jobs and was successfully sued for discrimination.)

But I remember soon after that fielding questions from summer associates about maternity leave and part-time programs.  What?  I remember being both impressed at the foresight but also a little disappointed by the lack of ambition.  Then I fell in love and wanted to have ten babies.  At thirty, I had my first child (the author had hers at thirty-two).  By then, I had understood the wisdom of asking questions.

So now we are in a world where asking such questions is the norm.  Where firms compete at being family-friendly.  It's not a Utopia, of course, but definitely a sea-change.  Alternative career paths are seen as pro-feminist, not anti-feminist.  The Mommy Track has not, in  the words of Betty Friedan, became the "Mommy Trap."  And it's not just for Mommies.  I think the Mommy Track has grown up. 

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Kim Krawiec (Duke) has a new paper on SSRN, “A Woman’s Worth”, in which she disputes some of the traditional arguments for legal regulation of prostitution, oocyte donation, and surrogate pregnancy. Here is the abstract:

This Article examines three traditionally “taboo trades”: (1) the sale of sex, (2) compensated egg donation, and (3) commercial surrogacy. The article purposely invokes examples in which the compensated provision of goods or services (primarily or exclusively by women) is legal, but in which commodification is only partially achieved or is constrained in some way. I argue that incomplete commodification disadvantages female providers in these instances, by constraining their agency, earning power, and status. Moreover, anticommodification and coercion rhetoric is sometimes invoked in these settings by interest groups who, at best, have little interest in female empowerment and, at worst, have economic or political interests at odds with it.

Krawiec’s focus is on whether regulation of these markets reflect an inherent bias against women. For example, she questions why regulations of egg donation are so stringent (and appear to push women to “donate” for altruistic motives) while men face little comparable restrictions in sperm donation. This contributes to the shocking statistic cited by Krawiec that egg and sperm donors receive roughly the same hourly compensation for their services.

I see these regulations less as a means to regulate women differently and more as a way to protect the marriage contract as a social institution or tool of social control. There are some interesting connections between Krawiec’s work on these “taboo trades” and her research on financial derivatives. Whereas financial derivatives are often used as ways to unbundle the various economic rights associated with financial assets such as debt and equity, these taboo trades – prostitution, egg donation, and surrogacy – represent the unbundling (or decoupling) of the marriage contract. Religious and legal strictures traditionally bound sex, conception, and childbearing all within the confines of the marriage contract. As with derivatives, new technology and markets combined to allow these services to be unbundled. Regulation of trades of these unbundled services may be aimed at protecting the marriage contract (or at least minimizing its damage) and not just at regulating women per se.

In fact, these regulations also serve to control men – albeit indirectly. Regulating the availability of prostitution pushes men to seek sex in a relationship (like marriage). Raising the cost of surrogacy impacts men – including gay men -- who want fatherhood outside of heterosexual marriage. What explains then why women are the dominant targets of these regulations and not men? Perhaps it is gender bias. But law & economics may offer an alternative explanation. Women may be the cheapest cost avoiders. For example, it may be far cheaper to regulate the relatively fewer number of prostitutes compared to the larger number of johns. It may be easier to regulate egg donation and surrogacy – which often require more invasive technology than sperm donation.

Krawiec’s article opens up a number of interesting questions for future research – particularly how the unbundling of the marriage contract have different effects across class lines. This has long been an interesting area of inquiry in economics – see for example George Akerlof and Janet Yellen’s work on “reproductive technology shocks.” One hypothesis would be that both the markets and the restrictions Krawiec describes have widely differing impacts along two axis -- higher income and lower income women on the one hand and women seeking to be part of a long-term opposite sex relationship or not on the other. Disaggregating the analysis based on class might yield some very provocative conclusions. Might higher-income women favor price controls (including indirect price controls that operate through moral suasion) on surrogacy and oocyte donation because it keeps the cost of having a baby artificially low?

Happy Commercialized Romance Day!

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The Financial Times recently published what it called its “definitive ranking of the world’s 50 most powerful and successful female chief executives.” The list, created in collaboration with recruitment group Egon Zehnder Indernational, profiles executives managing the controlling company in a group—as opposed to those that oversee units, even if such units are sometimes larger than some individual companies. Since the list is global, but limited to CEOs, the list is distinct from Fortune's annual ranking of the 50 most powerful women in the U.S. However, there is some overlap. For example, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi held the top spot on both lists, while Avon’s Andrea Jung and Kraft Food’s Irene Rosenfeld were in the top 10 of both lists.

The Financial Times’ list highlights some interesting statistics about women in business. Hence, the article notes that just 3% of Fortune 500 chief executives are women, while across Europe only 10% of board directors of the biggest companies are female. According to Catalyst, women hold about 15% of Fortune 500 board seats, while one Wall Street Journal article notes that 12% of companies have no women directors at all. Indeed, while women have made progress in these areas, such progress has been relatively slow. Thus, in the last decade, the percentage of women Fortune 500 CEOs has gone from .4% to 3%, while the percentage of women on Fortune 500 boards has gone from 11.1% to 15.2%.

To be sure, there are lots of interesting studies and theories not just about the relative pace of that progress, but also about why it matters, from a business perspective. Indeed, the Financial Times article begins by asking a question that always appears to crop up during a financial or governance crisis: “would we be better off if more women were in charge?” On this question, the article responds in at least two ways. First, it notes evidence from studies such as those by Catalyst and McKinsey suggesting that “a better gender balance has a positive impact on performance.” Second, it notes studies indicating that boards with a better gender balance “were more assiduous at monitoring,” suggesting that diversity may help prevent “groupthink” and thereby improve corporate governance. Of course, these studies are not without their critics and skeptics.

Interestingly, the article concludes with the following: “The financial crisis has, at least, made the business and moral case for change more apparent than ever.” However, similar statements were made during the 2002 accounting and governance scandals. And yet, the percentage of women board members and CEOs has been relatively unchanged since that time.

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About a million years ago, Dana Carvey played "the grumpy old man" on SNL, "and we liked it!"  This WSJ article makes me wonder if Jack Welch was doing a grumpy old man impression at a human resources convention or whether he's just trying to wake people up.  Apparently, Welch (a University of Illinois alumni) was pretty blunt:  "There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences."  He gave as examples the female CEOs of ADM and DuPont who had "pretty straight careers" without taking time off for family.

Wow.  That's some cocktail party conversation.  Lots of scattered thoughts here.

1.    There are 100 CEOs of Fortune 100 firms.  Now, for the other 6 billion of us.  There are different ways to "have it all," and having a rich family life and being one of the top dogs at a huge conglomerate that's been around for a hundred years and probably has a strong corporate culture is one way.  But there are others.  I can imagine women creating their own path at a lot of other firms with different norms.  I like to read Mommy CEO blog sometimes, by a female CEO of a software company.  At our little corner of legal academia, we wonder a lot about women attorneys making partner, or even managing partner.  These are accomplishments that may constitute what Mr. Welch refers to as a "nice career," but maybe not what he thinks of as "the top."

2.    Of course, we know he's right, and that's the worst part.  In a lot of jobs, in a lot of places, individuals wanting to get to the top of whatever type of career ladder have to make difficult choices.  The toughest part of this next phase of career equality is realizing that yes, we can all now be anything we want to be, but maybe not everything we want to be.  As Mr. Welch points out, sometimes opportunity comes when you have suited up and shown up, and if you have taken time off, you just aren't there.

3.    This all brings me back to my old saw about "opt-in" programs, not "opt-out" programs.  Mr. Welch seems to be talking about women who are "taking time off for family;" presumably through extended leaves or maybe a part-time or reduced hours arrangement.  So, yes, the benefits we keep asking for aren't going to help -- but benefits that allow us to opt in (telecommuting technology, on-site daycare, ability to travel with family), these will.  In today's world, corporate actors are there "in the clutches" via Blackberry and iPhone from airports and far-flung cities anyway.  I can be "in the clutches" from Little League, no problem.

4,    Other thoughts?

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Today's Chronicle of Higher Education had two stories that caught my "academic mom" attention.  First, "Is Having More than 2 Children an Unspoken Taboo?"  Yikes!  If it is, then no one told me.  Of course, on our faculty, we have several professors with 3, 4 or 5 kids, so maybe I just found the right school!  So, I was suprised to see statements like the following:

1.    (from an associate dean for academic affairs) "If anyone told me they wanted three kids, I would be thinking, What, are you nuts?"

2.    "Julianna Baggott knows full well that the third child is often considered the third rail of academe."

3.    "Georgia Frank, an associate professor of religion at Colgate University, says she senses an attitude from some in academe that anyone who has more than two children has surpassed an invisible quota."

No one interviewed me -- maybe co-blogger Lisa got a call?

At the end of this article was a series of tips for having large families in academia -- all reasonable, all known to me, many having to do with childcare, and all with opting in.  None of the suggestions had to do with negotiating for time off or reduced workloads -- just how to maximize the time you have to excel in both the domestic and career spheres.  (I have blogged before about how I love "opt in" policies, not "opt out" policies.)  So, on the heels of this article is another one entitled "Rice U. Minds the Kids so Employees Can Mind Their Jobs."

Having spent much of my adult life in Houston, I live Rice University and Rice people.  I think the only good part of moving away from Houston was that my kids may now want to go to Rice.  If only Rice had a law school!  Anyway, I digress. . . .

So, Rice has implemented various policies to allow its faculty with children to "opt in."  For example, emergency in-home childcare at $4/hour, so when you wake up and your child has a fever, you don't have to cancel your 10:30 class.  Also, a Montessori preschool, subsidized (almost free) daycare, and summer camp!  (I think I've mentioned the crazy quilt of summer camps before!)  So, believe me, when a Rice professor says

"One of the most stressful things about work-life balance is what to do when something goes a little bit wrong, and so a service like this just makes you realize it will be fine. I can't overemphasize how great that benefit is. Rice makes it very, very hard to even think about going anywhere else."

I believe her. And administrators interested in faculty retention should take note!

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Here at the Glom, we often post on topics such as women in the legal profession and working parents.  As a group, we are fairly qualified:  together we have 12 children, dual-career couples, including academic couples, spouses (both wives and husbands) that have stayed at home, maternity leaves and non-maternity leaves, daycare issues, nanny issues, you name it.

In April, I had the great opportunity to attend a Roundtable on Promissory Obligations sponsored by the University of Illinois Program in Law and Philosophy in Galena, Illinois, which is 4-5 hours away from Champaign.  The substance of the roundtable was fascinating and very thought-provoking.  However, the fact that I was even there was even more incredible.  The roundtable organizer, Heidi Hurd, my colleague and former dean, had done something amazing -- she had provided childcare for the conference attendees.  This allowed both my (law professor) husband and I to attend, as well as two other academic couples.  So, while we were debating aspects of the theories of promising, two childcare workers were taking seven children to the playground, pool, lunch, etc.  We were able to participate in conference dinners, and on the last night, the children put on a talent show.  Most importantly, I was able to meet very interesting people from both law schools and philosophy departments and gather ideas for my own research, without bearing the expense of finding an individual to watch our children at home or prevailing upon a relative to come to our home, both of which we have done in the past.

So this got me thinking about "family-friendly" workplace policies.  Most of the time, the policies that are proposed allow parents to "opt-out" of certain work obligations, temporarily or permanently:  maternity/paternity leave, part-time options, telecommuting.  However, I don't want to opt out.  I want to opt in and participate in my chosen career to the fullest.  Yes, you may be saying, you can do that -- by not having children and devoting yourself to your career.  But I am selfish -- I want the best of both worlds!  That's why I love opportunities to integrate my two worlds fully, without leaving one behind.  I suppose that on-site daycare is the obvious "opt-in" policy, but there are smaller steps also.

When I had my third baby in the Fall of 2007, I realized that I traveled to do workshops and attend conferences more than I had realized.  I did not want, however, to be excused from continuing to do this.  I didn't want people in my field to say, "Oh, right.  We haven't seen Christine much this year because she had a baby," even if they thought this was a perfectly valid reason to stay closer to home.  I wanted to participate -- to opt in.  So, I brought my baby and my mom to conferences.  I know of one rock star female law professor who really wanted to take part in a high-profile colloquium, but couldn't leave her young, still nursing baby.  So, the organizer threw in a plane ticket for the husband and baby to come, too.  A $300 fix to what seemed like an insurmountable problem.  I hope that we continue the search for great family friendly policies, but that we are aware unlike the possible isolating tendencies of "opt-out" polices, "opt-in" policies may be better for everyone involved.

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The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School publishes a monthly journal, Negotiation.  The June issue had a disturbing article about new research on women and negotiation.  According to a new book by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Ask for It:  How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want,

men initiate negotiations to advance their interests about four times more often than women do. . . .Over the course of a woman’s career, the costs of overlooking opportunities to negotiate for her own interests can be staggering.  As an example, Babcock and her colleagues found that only 12.5% of women graduating with master’s degrees from the Heinz School [of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University] in 2002 had negotiated their starting salaries, as compared with 51.5% of male graduates.  Babcock calculated that students who did not negotiate their starting salaries would forfeit at least $1 million in income over their lifetimes.

Salary aside, Babcock says that men are more likely than women to negotiate for resources, training, and other factors that boost job satisfaction and success.  It stands to reason that men who seek out career opportunities will advance more quickly in their organizations than equally qualified women who do not.  In reaction to such inequities, women may grow frustrated and decide to quit.  Given that turnover costs American companies billions of dollars each year, Babcock and Laschever argue that organizations suffer significantly from the fact that women ask for what they need less often than men do.

In a sad Catch-22, research also shows that women who did ask for more money were disliked and penalized.  The article suggests that a woman’s reluctance to negotiate may be reasonable in such instances.  It also notes the following:

Although overt gender discrimination. . . is largely a thing of the past, a more subtle form of inequity persists. . . Rather than intentional acts of bias, second-generation gender biases reflect the continuing dominance of traditionally masculine values in the workplace [emphasis in the original]. 

Although this research might lead one to conclude that women are less good overall as negotiators, researchers have found that when women negotiate on behalf of others they achieved better outcomes than men when bargaining on behalf of someone else.

So, what are the implications of this research for the academy?  Is this something that we should be teaching about in our negotiation courses?  If so, what is the best way to do it?  Or, are these issues best handled in another forum – one more informal? 

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Scientific American reports on a study attempting to explain the biological basis for why girls seem to have superior language skills compared to boys.  As a father of two sons experiencing some of the trials and tribulations of pre-school, I notice these stories.  Apparently, girls completing linguistics tasks show more brain activity in areas specialized for language encoding, while boys show activity in areas relating to visual and auditory functions.  What does this all mean?

[I]t implies that boys need to be taught language both visually (with a textbook) and orally (through a lecture) to get a full grasp of the subject, whereas a girl may be able to pick up the concepts by either method.

Subjects ranged from 9 to 15 years of age.  The next question is whether these differences persist with age.

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Dan's post regarding gender diversity on boards makes some very significant points, particularly about the importance of critical mass.  Many scholars worry that without critical mass, women will be marginalized, less willing to voice their opinions, and in some cases, experience pressure to conform.  But Dan's point about critical mass also reminded me about the relative lack of critical mass in American corporations. 

The latest Catalyst study reveals that women not only hold a small percentage of corporate board seats and other leadership positions at major companies, but also that the growth in such positons was stagnant from 2006 to 2007.  According to the study, the percentage of women board members, corporate officers, and top corporate earners was virtually unchanged from 2006 to 2007 at 14.8%, 15.4%, and 6.7%, respectively.  Moreover, the percentage of women in line positions--which analysts believe represents important gateways for promotion into top leadership positions--fell by 1.8% from 29% to 27.2%.  To be sure, the story is not all about decline or stagnation.  The number of women CEOs at Fortune 500 companies rose from 10-12.  Also, according to the Catalyst study, the number of women holding board committee chairs increased over the past year.  However, the relative stagnant growth in numbers for women business leaders suggests that women may be at an impasse, a concern raised by some scholars who worry about company executives who no longer feel inclinded to promote women once a few have been elevated to leadership positions.

Of course, many have recognized that the number of women in these positions is relatively low.  Indeed, Douglas Bronson's book No Seat at the Table is a good example of this recognition.  However, there is considerable debate about the impact of women on boards and as executive officers (economic or otherwise).  As Dan suggests, with such a small US sample size, it is difficult to get real insight into that debate.  But while we wait for the US sample size to improve, it will be nice to have some comparable data from other countries.

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Yesterday I noticed this article from Law.com that reports that the number of women both applying to law school (larger decreases than the male applicant pool, which has decline also) and enrolling (46.9%, down from 49% five years ago) in is in decline.  The article attempts to explain these numbers with several theories, the most intiguing one that women are turning their backs on the legal profession because of recent reports on the lack of family-friendly policies in law firms.  Because of the high billable hour requirements and low probability of making partner, the theory goes, women are choosing not to begin a legal career and choosing other professions.

Although this hypothesis may be true for some would-be applicants, the example the story uses is not compelling for that explanation.  The article focuses on the choice by a recent college graduate to forego law school to become an analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York.  That does not seem like a lifestyle choice to me!  The job appears to be in the 2-year analyst, investment banker grooming vein.  (These young professionals were the subject of a NYT article a few weeks ago because they are no longer going to business school after their 2 year stint, but staying in the workforce and going directly into higher-level finance positions.)  The decision of the young woman depicted in the article seemed to be based on opportunity cost more than a choice to lead a more family-friendly lifestyle.

I do think that a hybrid theory that factors in both opportunity cost and work/life balance could be plausible, though.  Say a savvy female college graduate were weighing the decision to go into law or finance.  The graduate has read all the media reports that few women make partner at law firms and also rise to the top ranks of investment banking, particularly women that have children.  The graduate contemplates having a child sometime in her 30s (10 to 15 years down the road) and wants to maximize her earning potential during that 10-15 year span in the event that she exits the workforce at that time.  Going into finance, where she will start collecting a salary immediately and be eligible for bonuses, etc. without incurring any more educational expenses/debt, may be the wise choice.  All of this assumes that she will enjoy both careers equally and that her opportunities to re-enter the workforce at some time are the same.  All of this is speculation, of course, but I think the decision model is more complicated than the article describes.

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