http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...ons-women-take-second-place-on-campus/2/

A comment:
"This is the exact same reason why I elected to attend a Seven Sisters school even though I'd been accepted to several Ivy Leagues. Despite the fact that they are now coed, there is still a large remnant of that "boys club" mentality among the males at the Ivy Leagues (especially those who are legacy students). It would have been too easy to sit back and let them take over. At Mount Holyoke we ran everything-- from the newspaper to the clubs to the sports teams--and gained valuable leadership experience in the process. Today I'm a college professor, and when I observe the interactions that take place between the male and female students on my campus, I thank my lucky stars that I went to a women's college."

This article (and all the associated articles) has left me stunned. I would love to hear from someone who has recently gone to one of these ivy league schools or has had a child enrolled at one.

Why is it "stunning" that fewer women than men at Princeton are in leadership positions? It matches the pattern in the outside world. Steven Goldberg wrote a book "Why Men Rule" that explains why.

That book is, as the sub-title states, a theory, and is neither objective, nor good science.

From http://academic.udayton.edu/PeggyDesAutels/Final_sex_diff.pdf
"Goldberg appeals to neuro-endocrinological evidence to argue that men are biologically destined to dominate while women are biologically destined to hold the more nurturing and less dominant roles in society...the purportedly scientific conclusions drawn in his book are used to bolster strong political agendas. These agendas promote "traditional" social and family structures in which men hold the positions of power and heterosexual men marry and dominate heterosexual women."

Bostonian - I was going to make the same point about the wider societal differences.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/national/20women.html?pagewanted=print

I don't think this is a problem that is specific to Princeton. It's still a male-dominated world in many arenas, and co-ed colleges are no exception. Not only are roles such as leadership positions different for men and women in college, but career ambitions for men and women differ. More women are expecting to leave their careers for child-rearing responsibilities. This trend was reported in the New York Times study in 2005.

I work in a male-dominated profession. I don't think that will change in my lifetime. Women in my profession make less money, on average, and don't achieve the prominent positions in the profession. I'm not surprised the eating clubs at Princeton don't have many women in power - neither do the presidents of academies in my profession, either.

Maybe the trends reported in these studies are a result of those of us now in the trenches, who thought we could achieve professional equality, and who have told our daughters to be a little less ambitious. I certainly have.

But--I would argue that this isn't purely determined by biology, but by society. Countries like Norway are ahead in terms of women in leadership roles because they have policies for family leave, child care, and work to change gender-based stereotypes which are a major barrier to women�s participation in decision-making. It is one thing for women to recognize that given current circumstances, it would be very difficult to be a CEO and a mother and to choose to be a little less ambitious. It is another thing to say it is determined by biology.

Yes.

And I say that as someone who was reasonably successful navigating in that male-dominated world because I understood the underpinnings and unwritten rules that govern it and realized early on that I could sail in those waters only if I learned to live by those rules, too.

That doesn't mean that those things are NOT real barriers to success for many women, either-- or that the correlation says ANYTHING about 'causation' in terms of gender-based biology.

Becoming a parent changed how my colleagues and students viewed me in ways that my DH wasn't subject to. He and I were both amazed at that transformation-- and not a little appalled, actually. He was annoyed beyond words that he wasn't ALLOWED to be 'nurturing' and 'attentive' in the way that I was expected to be.


He was a "professor" and always, ALWAYS "DOCTOR Howler."

Me? Often "Misses Howler" from the same students and even other faculty and administrators... and "Oh, you're a teacher" from the same neighbors/acquaintances that classified my DH as a professor.

I earned less than him-- which, incidentally, was eventually the cause of a massive class-action lawsuit, but anyway...

It was fairly surreal. I truly thought that that sort of pervasive gender bias and hostile work environment was a relic of my MOTHER's generation.

Little did I know...

Also-- we didn't adopt the current rather 'traditional' system of a single wage-earner because we WANTED to do things this way.

No.

We needed a parent home full time due to our child having special needs. Ergo, which of us should stay home?

The one with the inferior EARNING POWER.

My degree and expertise is every bit as marketable as DH's. But he makes about 15% more than I do, and the gap, of course, widens each year because of his additional industrial experience, which I lack.

My point is that our initial choice there was a result of the income disparity.

Bostonian, I swear, sometimes I want to reply "Don't feed the trolls" when you post. Please, try talking TO people here in shades of grey, instead of AT people in black and white. So for example, try summarizing the ideas in the book instead of assuming or implying that we're all ignorant idiots for not having read it, accepted our lots in life, and moved on to the next question.

Most problems involving human beings are multi-faceted. Yes, men are stronger and more aggressive and this explains a lot about why certain societal patterns have developed. But it doesn't explain why men deliberately exclude women during hiring or whenever. It also doesn't explain why countries like Norway, Iceland, and Canada have made a lot of progress toward gender equality. And there's no guarantee that just because Einstein was a man, the next big ideas in theoretical physics will come from a man, too.

I think it also helps to stand up for yourself and teach your kids to do the same. Many times in my life, I have managed to get what I wanted (be it getting elected to some small office in school or getting more money at work) by noting "How come no one is electing a GIRL?? or "Pay me more. I've earned it."

Val

Heheh...

Val's conclusion reminds me of a (female) colleague's undergraduate research poster at (bigname university's chemistry department, one of the top 20 in the US)...

She deliberately selected a VERY feminine, floral paper for her backing/framing paper on her panels, and a wildly frivolous, definitely "girly" PINK-PINK-PINK for her posterboard.

It was definitely a gender prod. She admitted that she did it to draw attention. As in; "I'm a girl and I'm a scientist. Deal with that and take me seriously, or admit you're a misogynist at heart. HA."

It worked, too; at least in terms of her sense of deep satisfaction. LOL.

The point of the article however was to identify that Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Dartmouth are still very much old boy networks. That the culture at those schools is much harder on women. That women leave those schools after 4 years feeling LESS confident than when they started. I was stunned that those women are spending huge amounts of money to be short changed in this way. I was stunned that these schools that are considered to be such beacons of higher education could be so incredibly misogynistic.

The leadership gap in college is not "a fact of life":


"A few years ago, Gutmann tells me, alarmed by what some peer institutions described as a �leadership gap� between male and female undergraduates�an absence of women in upper echelons of power, including academic distinctions such as Rhodes and Marshall scholarships�she took a look around Penn. She was impressed by what she saw. Women at Penn were taking over historically male organizations, at an impressive rate. Today, the Daily Pennsylvanian masthead is at least half female, and the last three executive editors have been women. Last year, women ran four of the six branches of Penn Student Government. Since 1984, roughly half of Penn�s Rhodes Scholars have been women. More importantly, she says, Penn women seem to feel empowered."

I attended one of those schools. I'm male but had no family connections to the school, and I did not feel disadvantaged by any "old boy network". I fail to see any actionable examples of discrimination in the original article. It starts as follows:

"When Catherine Ettman, class of '13, ran for vice-president of the undergraduate student government, her father advised her not to�because it might distract from her studies�and her mother worried about her safety knocking on doors. She won, defeating three boys."

If women want leadership positions, they should work for them, just like men do.

You conveniently ignore that Norway also has rigid gender quotas, for example requiring that 40% of corporate board members be women http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/world/europe/28iht-quota.html . Presumably a level playing field wasn't enough to get the politically desired results. Do you support such government coercion and sex discrimination?

I was going to reference the same article about MIT, because the presenceof women faculty and how they are treated do matter for students perceptions of what they can achieve. And I also have had the miss title while they are standing next to the sign that says dr., and you know what, I correct them! I went to 2 ivies awhile ago now at this point and I think is is very reflective of HYP and their reluctance to change attitudes from the old guard, I think the other top schools are much less preoccupied with the "natural" order of things. And the women in the article to me reflected students today, some conscious, some pretending things are different today and some totally unaware. I did agree with the one who said that this is what 27 year olds are worried about not them and you see that in med schools, which now have more women, but they are choosing specialties which are family and lifestyle friendly. It's an interesting counterpoint to the book I am reading, Cinderella ate my Daughter by Peggy Ornstein, about the pink v blue culture and it's affect on our girls. Interesting stuff about the princess cultubegin gining in 2001, marketed to 5-8 then so 10 years later, and here they are in college getting into Princeton but maybe there is a connection!

DeHe

This discussion reminded me of some things I'd read in Sylvia Rimm's books See Jane Win and How Jane Won. This is a good summary.
http://www.abcontario.ca/magazine/fall03.htm
P.S. and this
and this

I don't troll in the sense of saying things I don't believe just to rile people up. OTOH, I won't avoid saying something I think is true and relevant just because some people will disagree. Of course, people should not accept the books "Why Men Rule" or "The Bell Curve" as gospel on my say so. Googling "Why Men Rule" quickly leads to links that summarize the book better than I could in a few minutes.

Well...trolling or goading may not be the intention, but the tone of a message can come across that way when a very short post effectively says "Why are you "stunned??" Someone wrote a book about this!!"

When I'm trying to make a persuasive point, it's MY job to present the ideas I'm advocating for. It's not good enough to say "Someone wrote a book about this idea!" and leave it to the other guy to find the book and go read it. It's up to ME to present the ideas in the book coherently and persuasively.

If persuading people about an idea (such as "Gifted kids often need acceleration") was simply a matter of telling others to go read something, we could all just send a quick email to the schools saying, "It's all in A Nation Deceived! Just Google the name and you'll see!" And they would read it and say, "Oh yes of course; how about a skip plus 5th grade math?" and everything would be sunshine and light.

But things rarely work out this way. If they did, Nelson Mandela wouldn't have spent so much time locked up (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explains why!) and no one would get lashes under Islamic law (Voltaire wrote about the duties of a government to its citizens!).

My point is that if you want people to discuss ideas in books like Why Men Rule or The Bell Curve, YOU need to present the ideas and make your argument, not assume that everyone else should just go read the book and make your argument for you. The latter comes across (to me anyway) as being dismissive and deliberately goading.

I have my own theories on this one. After years of working in a technical field and finding myself having to modify my natural communications style, I finally realized a pattern. Having recognized this pattern, I then also noticed the majority of people in leadership positions seemed to fall near one point in this pattern.

It was not the people with the best language skills who seemed to be in leadship positions. In fact, it appeared to be those with somewhat limited, but not too limited language skills. Having thought about this, I figured the language skills were in some ways ideally suited to communicating with a wider audience. Those with limited skills would be able to understand them. Whereas those with greater language skills were also able to understand them as their advanced language skills give them the ability to deal with a wider variety of language styles.

Interesting to hear of a book name The Bell Curve. I wonder if it even comes close to my own bell curve. My own bell curve has an arbitrary scale of 0 to 10 (value is not an indication of better or worse). On this scale, society seems to most often choose people in the 2 to 4 range for leadership. In my opinion, people with the most flexibility to deal with language fall in the 6 to 8 range.

In my estimates of the gender differences, the centers of the gender bell curves are very slightly different. The male curve centers at 4.7 and the female curve centers at around 5.1. So overall, not much of a difference on average between males and females. However, at certain points on the curves, there can be significant gender statistical differences. So for example, at around the 3 point on my arbitrary scale, there are 4 men for every 1 female.

Most of this is nothing more than theory and a lot of estimation. Used some real statistics combined with a whole lot of estimates. Now, I realize I have indicated on average males have slightly poorer language skills. Then again, I am male, so does this make it ok. Either way, I feel it is important to try and understand how things work, whether the results are necessarily what we may want them to be.

I am not overly convinced by my own thoughts on this. Just a hypothesis at this point. I just thought it would be interesting to put it out there. The only reason I put out the rather poorly derived numbers, was to help clarify the idea. One was the fact, the positions of greatest skill in a given area is not necessarily at the end of the scale. Also, it indicates both males and females span the entire range, but in differing proportions. This is also an over simplification of what I have come up with.

Actually that's the second page of the article. The first page describes how the leadership gap has gotten worse in the last decade. It also has links to two other related articles that I found interesting.

Women cut back on their work more than men do after having children, which will cause fewer of them to attain leadership positions. I think mothers desire to spend more time with their children than fathers do. Even if paid family leave is mandated, studies have found that men are more likely to use the time off to advance their careers. The recent study below says having children costs high-skilled women about $230K in lifetime earnings but finds no effect for men.

http://www.nber.org/digest/apr11/w16582.html
How Childbearing Affects Women's Wages
Women [who score in the upper third on a standardized test] have a net 8 percent reduction in pay during the first five years after giving birth.

Having a child lowers a woman's lifetime earnings, but how much depends upon her skill level. In The Mommy Track Divides: The Impact of Childbearing on Wages of Women of Differing Skill Levels (NBER Working Paper No. 16582), co-authors Elizabeth Ty Wilde, Lily Batchelder, and David Ellwood estimate that having a child costs the average high skilled woman $230,000 in lost lifetime wages relative to similar women who never gave birth. By comparison, low skilled women experience a lifetime wage loss of only $49,000.

Using the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), Wilde et. al. divided women into high, medium, and low skill categories based on their Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) scores. The authors use these skill categories, combined with earnings, labor force participation, and family formation data, to chart the labor market progress of women before and after childbirth, from ages 14-to-21 in 1979 through 41-to-49 in 2006, this study's final sample year.

High scoring and low scoring women differed in a number of ways. While 70-75 percent of higher scoring women work full-time all year prior to their first birth, only 55-60 percent of low scoring women do. As they age, the high scoring women enjoy steeper wage growth than low scoring women; low scoring women's wages do not change much if they reenter the labor market after they have their first child. Five years after the first birth, about 35 percent of each group is working full-time. However, the high scoring women who are not working full-time are more likely to be working part-time than the low scoring women, who are more likely to leave the workforce entirely.

Controlling for actual labor market experience and hours worked, the authors show that low scoring women face a one-time permanent pay reduction of about 6 percent when they have a child. High scoring women experience a net 8 percent reduction in pay during the first five years after giving birth, a penalty that reaches 24 percent a decade after birth.

Men's earning profiles are relatively unaffected by having children although men who never have children earn less on average than those who do. High scoring women who have children late also tend to earn more than high scoring childless women. Their earnings advantage occurs before they have children and narrows substantially after they become mothers.

I often wonder about how intelligent society is. The people who care for our children, grow our food, supply us with water are amongst the lower earners. Yet some person who sits in an office requesting a bunch of often useless reports is paid so much.

Maybe we should take money out of the equation and go back to a trade based system. I wonder how well the report people will eat.

Bostonian, I'd still argue that such surveys and longitudinal studies are just not asking the right questions.

While it is certainly true that women are punished professionally for becoming parents (and really, for even possessing the potential, truth be told), they aren't the only ones that suffer from these cultural norms. Men who do choose to spend time with their children as caregivers are often punished MORE than if their female partners had done so.

It's an expectation for women-- but it's still virtually a taboo for men. That has distinct sequelae, all of which are evident in or at least consistent with every study I've ever seen regarding lifetime earning power, career advancement, gender disparity, and the rest:

a) women are paid less to begin with because they are seen as inherently UNRELIABLE/LESS PERMANENT than their male (and non-childbearing) colleagues,

b) when women are mothers, they are passed over for critical assignments because there is an assumption that they will not make such professional work a top priority (and the coincident assumption is that a male colleague WILL, which is equally invalid)

c) when women continue to make "male" choices even after becoming parents, they are often labeled fairly harshly by even professional colleagues, and this has a social cost that can spill over into judgements about professionalism, as well (she must be pretty heartless... might be capable of throwing ME under the bus, too, if she won't even stay home with a sick kid)

d) when MEN make "female" choices, they are branded (often permanently) as being uncompetitive or unprofessional. Not management material, maybe even not 'masculine' enough in a male-dominated field.



It's a very sad state of affairs, really.

The fact that this disproportionately impacts women at high level earning potential probably has to do with the fact that most high income women are in STEM occupations, which are male-dominated.

I'd venture to guess that the most severe impact to MEN is also in male-dominated professions-- which would include STEM, but also manual labor positions in the blue collar sector. Those are positions where masculinity is very important professionally.

Excellent way to put it, asking the wrong questions is the problem I see.

In a department consisting of 90 men and 10 women, where during the downsizing, they removed 1 man and 6 women, there just wasn't enough women left behind to find out what would have happened to the women in this case. There were no complaints from the woman as they were more than happy not to be in the environment.

I learned what it was like to be a single male parent. They allowed me to not be on call due to my situation. But it was more than clear they did not want me around after I was in this situation. I wish they would have included me in the downsizing list as at least I would have had a payout rather than leave on my own later.

The small minority of us who found the environment rather disturbing coined a name for the other group. One day my male manager said the ABCs are at it again. Found out is meant All Boys Club.

I am finding this thread very interesting! I'm trying not to say too much as it is closely related to my area of interest, but I'm reading avidly. I love your post, HowlerKarma, it is very true. All too often in this area, no-one is asking the right questions.

Unlike some other posters, I don't see women's lower earnings and slower career advancement after having children as being a problem to be solved by society but as a natural result of decisions they make. Virginia Postrel agrees in a Wall Street Journal essay published today:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704461304576216651515154140.html
'Mommy Track' Without Shame: A notorious article urging flexibility is proven right

Motherhood, it seems, is the Middle East of social controversy. Alliances may shift, new dogmas and leaders may arise, tactics may change, but the fundamental conflict resists resolution. Despite the efforts of would-be peacemakers, impassioned partisans continue battling to claim all the territory as their own. My way, they declare, is the one right way to be a good mother, a real woman, a fulfilled human being.

Fortunately, nobody dies in the mommy wars (a term popularized by Newsweek 21 years ago). And, despite the ongoing verbal assaults, American women have actually established a modus vivendi. Most continue to have and raise children and, in greater numbers than ever before, to combine motherhood not just with jobs but careers�vocations in which they make long-term investments and from which they derive not only income but personal satisfaction and identity.

Irony of ironies, they do so largely by following the advice of Felice Schwartz, who ignited the first great conflagration of the modern mommy wars with her 1989 Harvard Business Review article "Management Women and the New Facts of Life," or, as it was immediately and derisively labeled, "The Mommy Track."

Ms. Schwartz, who died in 1996, began with the idea that not all professional women are alike. Some focus primarily on careers, making "the same trade-offs traditionally made by the men who seek leadership positions." But most want children, and once they have kids, these "talented and creative" women, "are willing to trade some career growth and compensation for freedom from the constant pressure to work long hours and weekends."

<rest of article at link>

The original 1989 Mommy Track article is at http://hbr.org/1989/01/management-women-and-the-new-facts-of-life/ar/1 and a discussion of it at Slate, "The Mommy Track Turns 21: Why it no longer deserves a bad rap from feminists." is at http://www.slate.com/id/2249312/ .

Seems like a good time to reprise this.

If this is simply about "women's choices" then where does the REAL* income disparity come from?

* real as in comparisons of apples to apples here-- meaning same age/experience/job descriptions, or close to identical.

(And this was very real. My former employer settled with its female faculty members for MILLIONS in back pay as a result-- my DH was hired three years after I was, and yet he earned ~10% more than I did in base salary. He actually had LESS classroom experience than I did. So why?? A: he was male.) Our employer actually had a rule that we could not discuss our remuneration with our colleagues... Hard to enforce in a household with a single joint bank account, however-- so we knew. We had colleagues (also married couples) that knew, too. But it was hidden from most faculty just what that "gap" looked like. But it existed.

This is NOT about "women's choices" as often (IMO) as it is about those in power structures assuming what those choices WILL be.

In other words, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. IE-- if you hire someone and say, "I'm pretty sure that because you were unemployed, you're probably lazy, so I'm only going to pay you half of what I'm paying your co-workers," then guess what? You probably will get an employee who isn't too concerned about being an especially 'hard' worker.


In two income households, decisions about who takes responsibility for life's snags is often made on the basis of whose job pays better. That's not rocket science, it's a simple financial decision. You choose to inconvenience the employer of the person whose remuneration/position is most easily replaced or omitted.


The notion that this is about the choices of individual women is deeply flawed for a second reason, too. It does NOTHING to explain why wages flatten with respect to cost-of-living and wage increases across the employment market when the field becomes a female-dominated one.

It certainly doesn't explain why women who DO NOT take the "Mommy Track" are punished in some instances almost as if they had. (This is the 'well, we knew you would eventually' argument... which often DOES result in a women leaving the position/field out of sheer disgust or anger over unfairness.)

Interesting ideas to consider? Of course. But I don't think for a moment that these can be summed up in nice little sound bites, or that a return to some mythical 'traditional' system would fix it all.

I made this decision, but it was not any more natural than any other option. Like HowlerKarma, it was due to lower earning capacity. And even if the decision WAS natural - and I'm not saying it is - then that doesn't make it natural that people should be penalized for it.

The penalization is a function of our society, NOT a natural consequence of biology. Choosing to mother (or father) your children should not be penalized.

It is a function of the way our society is so segregated, how children are marginalized in so many ways. Women and men who choose (or a required to by virtue of their children's nature) to have primary care of their children are excluded from many areas of our society. We have all had the experience, I'm sure, of dirty looks when we bring our children to something remotely intellectual. Work can be extremely difficult.

The 'natural' argument also does not address the issues raised by HowlerKarma. (Good post btw)

We could argue if this segregation is good or bad, but I do not believe the argument that it is in anyway natural can hold water.

I agree totally.

Just because society is running the way it is now or how it once ran with women staying home and only the men working, does not mean either is a natural or even a good way for a society to run.

I worked in the corporate head office as a professional. Most of the people working extra hours were not the most productive people. I think it had more to do with putting on a show than anything else. The golf they often played probably was more about putting on a show than a real interest in golf IMHO.

I think it is natural for mothers to want to spend more time with their children than fathers, and a Pew study http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=869 confirms this:

"Fully two-thirds of women with children ages 17 or younger work either full time or part time. Most have full-time jobs outside of the home (74%), but just 37% of working mothers prefer this role. A strong majority of working moms (62%) would rather work part time; a job situation enjoyed by just 26% of working mothers. Over a decade ago, just 48% of working mothers said a part-time job would be ideal. Today's working mothers look little like their male counterparts. Fully 79% of working fathers prefer to work full time, while just 21% say part-time employment would be ideal."

Now to the second assertion on sex discrimination. Studies find that all or nearly all of the income disparity between men and women is not due to discrimination but their choices of careers and how much they work. Christina Hoff Sommers debunked the 77-cent myth in

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/22/opinion/22Sommers.html
Fair Pay Isn�t Always Equal Pay
New York Times
September 21, 2010

...

But the bill isn�t as commonsensical as it might seem. It overlooks mountains of research showing that discrimination plays little role in pay disparities between men and women, and it threatens to impose onerous requirements on employers to correct gaps over which they have little control.

The bill is based on the premise that the 1963 Equal Pay Act, which bans sex discrimination in the workplace, has failed; for proof, proponents point out that for every dollar men earn, women earn just 77 cents.

But that wage gap isn�t necessarily the result of discrimination. On the contrary, there are lots of other reasons men might earn more than women, including differences in education, experience and job tenure.

When these factors are taken into account the gap narrows considerably � in some studies, to the point of vanishing. A recent survey found that young, childless, single urban women earn 8 percent more than their male counterparts, mostly because more of them earn college degrees.

Moreover, a 2009 analysis of wage-gap studies commissioned by the Labor Department evaluated more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and concluded that the aggregate wage gap �may be almost entirely the result of the individual choices being made by both male and female workers.�

In addition to differences in education and training, the review found that women are more likely than men to leave the workforce to take care of children or older parents. They also tend to value family-friendly workplace policies more than men, and will often accept lower salaries in exchange for more benefits. In fact, there were so many differences in pay-related choices that the researchers were unable to specify a residual effect due to discrimination.

<end of excerpt>

A good book on the subject is "Why Men Earn More" by Warren Farrell . It is summarized at http://www.warrenfarrell.net/Summary/index.html .

Apart from empirical studies, Economics 101 says that in a free market, if some firms pay men substantially more than women for the same work, they will be outcompeted by firms that firms that do not discriminate.

Bostonian,

I think that it is true that American women today are more likely to prefer part-time work and to express more desire to spend time with children than their male counterparts are, but I would also point out that, far from this being a consequence of "nature", there is fairly strong social acceptance or even approval of women who express these preferences, and there are *very* strong social penalties for males who express the same desires.

In our family, around the time my son was born, my earning potential was significantly higher than my husband's, so we made the rational decision for him to be our son's primary caregiver and a SAHD (for what we thought would be the few years until my son was in school). The amount of flack that he (and I) caught (and still catch)for him being "Mr.Mom", the number of people who ask me why I "tolerate" him "sponging" off of me, the number of times groups on the playground and at the library and museum, and later, in homeschooling support groups, made it very clear that while Moms were supported, Dads who took care of kids were weird and not welcome, makes me highly suspicious that men's reluctance to sacrifice career development to take on greater family responsibilities has little to do with nature or natural roles (my husband loves being home with his boy), and quite a bit to do with the harsh social disapproval that they would encounter if they did so.

Yes, Bostonian, the studies might show women work less, but that is confusing cause with effect. Your saying it is something inherent in women, I am saying that working less is an effect, not a cause.

I also doubt working more should be necessarily seen as a good thing, but that's a whole 'nother issue.

Aculady, I have seen this in action too, it's very sad.

Rather than the misogyny at large claim, I think you could make a stronger case that the Ivy-League schools are out of touch with the world as compared to other state or smaller private schools. As a Brand, the IL colleges will not want to alter than Brand because demand is so much higher. In addition, the students who come in to the IL will be conformists, many from the NE.

I've posted a bit on here about my DW, who ran a BU of a NYSE firm, and she has a lot of stories about her climb to the top. In the end, it came down to performance. She got the job done and kept her superiors happy.

She has since moved on after executing a successful M&A.

She took a number of tests and interview for other firms' leadership positions.

One firm, where she used to be the Executive Assistant to the CEO when just out of HS, agreed that she blew away the interviews and all the tests, and agreed she has a stellar performance there, and has since been on the fast track, but could not get past her age or their memory of her as a "cute Texas High School Cheerleader answering the phones for the CEO."

LOL

She finds immature industries and growing firms much more accepting of her youth and appearance. Old school industries and many of the search firms associated with those industries immediately discounted her once they met her face to face.

I find it interesting that you type "LOL" in response to what is very probably an actionable employment decision. Not that your wife, if she is a typical female, would actually dare to file suit and make herself even less marketable as a result.

I have been specifically told that I was not given a job because I was a girl who would just start having kids in a few years and stop working anyway. I have worked in positions in which I was given more responsibility than my male counterparts for the privilege of less pay. I have also worked (briefly) in a position in which it was made clear that I would have to endure the sexual advances of a superior to stay in that position.

I would bet my eye teeth that a man can not be produced for presentation who was ever told that he was being denied a position because he'd just start having kids. Just saying.

The last place I worked (<15 employees) had an informal team-building policy involving foosball. I learned about it when we were hiring a software developer. I was told (by the VP of Eng) that they asked every candidate about foosball. I laughed, and he said (quite seriously) that foosball was an important for team-building and that not playing would make it hard to bond with "the team." He never, ever asked any of the women to play. The QA guys were invited, but not the women. The customer and sales guys were invited, but not the women. So the message there was that we didn't seem to be part of the team in this guy's eyes.

I'm vocal and did pretty well at that job, but that message was pretty clear. And given how important that game seemed to be for "team building," it seemed pretty rude to me.

Obviously, we could have said, "Hey, you should let us play too!" but the game wasn't the point. The attitude was, and it came from inside that VP. The other guys were all actually pretty cool to work with, but they weren't making the decisions.

Val,

I grew up in a family of six boys and one girl. My father grew up in a family of nine boys and one girl. I have two daughters. My consciousness was raised as a consequence of my being the father of daughters. If I had been the father of sons, I doubt I would have ever gotten a clue about misogyny.

Most males are stupid about females. But what breaks my heart most about misogyny is that girls and women often self-inflict it. For example, a smart woman once responded to me about this � http://supreme-court-gender-equality-pac.blogspot.com/ � by saying: "I'm against it, because we want to always put the best available person on the U.S. Supreme Court."

In sixteen months of trying, I have not succeeded at all in getting any women interested in my proposal. Major female-friendly websites have posted comments by me that have linked to the proposal, but no women have dared to support the idea to my knowledge. Even my sister (who is a very successful physician) has voiced her opposition.

Plainly, I too am stupid about females, even with a raised consciousness. However, I will defend my "stupidity" with this: misogyny will remain fully in place in American society until women share power equally with men. The only place at the top of the U.S. government where shared power can be required by law (meaning: not subject to public elections) is on the U.S. Supreme Court as I have proposed.

As the father of daughters, I think my proposal is fair and just, yet women seem to disagree. It dumbfounds me. A liberal male emeritus professor I know responded to my proposal by saying that women did not deserve the equality, but homosexuals did. So the line forms to the rear, and females are behind all males of color � whatever their color � and all male homosexuals. In other words, last. More than 50% of the population is last.

My advice is this: Do not wait for males to get a clue, because it will never happen unless it is made to happen. Start where you can make the biggest difference, and that is by guaranteeing Gender Equality on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Steven A. Sylwester

I have read numerous accounts of men saying they were denied jobs or promotions because their employers wanted to hire a woman to meet diversity requirements. In a country of 300 million people there will be examples of discrimination against women, but the studies I have cited do not find evidence of large-scale discrimination against women.

I agree with Bostonian in general, and think he makes good points. But then, I'm a guy, and I haven't experienced the sorts of sex discrimination that are related here. I think sex discrimination, to the extent it still exists today, is more likely to exist in small companies and to be a much reduced problem overall, not to be completely nonexistent.

I worked with a slew of MIT and Harvard grads once. Grouping by gender and whether a particular worker went to an Ivy League college, the women from Harvard (and one from Vassar) were the most assertive by far, in my opinion. I would be shocked to learn of widespread gender-based discrimination at schools in general, but I have no first-hand knowledge and don't discount the stories I've heard here. And I think there's reason for hope that discrimination today at upper-tier universities is heavily on the wane, when a Harvard president resigns under intense pressure after daring to suggest that innate gender-based differences might explain differences in performance.

How is that a misogynist view? You also should remember that the pool of potential Supreme Court justices is also narrowed by each candidate's perceived alignment with the beliefs of the nominating president.


By using "dared", do you mean to suggest that some women would support your idea on the internet, but are afraid to? I think that's doubtful.

I think some of this boils down to how we are defining and looking at discrimination. As an example, institutional discrimination against people of color is still very prevalent in our country. That is discrimination, even if it is not as in your face as it may have been.

There is still large-scale discrimination against women, but how we view what discrimination is, does impact how we see this.

[quote=lucounu]
But then, I'm a guy, and I haven't experienced the sorts of sex discrimination that are related here. I think sex discrimination, to the extent it still exists today, is more likely to exist in small companies and to be a much reduced problem overall, not to be completely nonexistent.
[\quote]

While it may be more likely, I can emphatically state it still exists. I find this especially the case in technical companies, even when it is not 'overt', it is there.

One summer internship, at a government facility, I was told by a security guard that I was being 'observed' and being commented on by the men that were supposed to be monitoring the equipment of the room I was in. The comments were sexually explicit. This was not a small company.

When I did graduate, I worked for a very large and well known tech company.

I put in years of service, and had phenomenal reviews. I was quite appalled at how things changed when I became pregnant. My husband had no issue changing his schedule. Trying to get my group to have a discussion with me about flex schedules, alternate Friday's off or really anything I put out there, was initially all thrown out of the realm of discussion. There was no project reason I couldn't have telecommuted for part of the week, but they wouldn't hear it.
In the end, they basically lost someone that had been there over 11 years with an outstanding record, because they were unwilling to have any sort of discussion with me about schedule. They simply wanted a body that could be there 60 hours a week, even if that body was untrained, and while I could have done the work easily in 40 hours.

A year after I left, I was called back in by HR. They were trying to contact all senior women that had left, because they were losing their senior women.
I told my story of my experience. I was told that my story was similar to what she had been told again and again by the women that had left. That management (the men), was unwilling to implement worklife balance sort of programs, despite that option being available via corporate guidelines.

Overall, my time there was good. I never had anyone overtly tell me I was incapable of doing something because I was a woman, and I feel my salary was probably comparable.

My biggest issue as a woman came as soon as I had children, and this was epidemic throughout the company based on my HR interview. This was NOT a small company.

The other issues I found as a woman, while I worked. There were not women in positions of management, or few and far between. (Glass ceiling). There was still vestiges of 'good ol' boy' networks. It was very interesting to see lunch, where group of men would go out, but women in the group were not necessarily included. I sat in a meeting where managers refused to acknowledge me and another woman were managers and put us on an organizational chart. The last, I don't think was discrimination, but was plain empire-building and fear their role would lessen to incorporate 'younger' managers.


I have heard that things have improved in the last 2 years, but there were definitely large scale issues at a large scale company involving women.
Tammy

I agree with quaz.

This mirrors the things that I have seen myself as a physical scientist.

It's a pervasive issue, and mostly a hidden one (except for those of us that it is happening to, that is) for several reasons:

a) nobody wants to be labeled as a "whiner" or even "not a team player," and few women will EVER live down such a label if they speak up,

b) much of the misogyny is just short of actionable, or

c) (carefully?) done so that no record of it exists or can be verified.

So it isn't necessarily that it isn't happening. It's just that it happens with few witnesses, it's a pattern of subtly hostile behavior (not a single, overtly discriminatory event), and there is often a clear subtext that if you want to be one of the guys, you'd better just shut up and take your hazing.

All in 'good fun,' of course.

My very least favorite line from male colleagues became "Oh, no offense intended, of course..." when they'd 'remember' that I was in the room with them while they shared an off-color joke, etc.

Also really liked, "But you're not like that..." after getting treated to some anecdote about how female colleagues were unreliable, thought they were entitled to special treatment, tried to establish a 'pack' of female faculty members... etc. etc.

The message was crystal clear. If I sought a female mentor, it was because I was weak and/or looking for a political ally. If I asked for anything-- even indicator prep help for my teaching labs during the first trimester of pregnancy-- it was a 'special favor' that they were granting me, and I should remember how "nice" that was.

Was this a particularly ugly work environment? Yes, it was. Was it uglier still for women in particular? Yes, again.

I think we have very similar issues here in Australia.

I grew up in a family where girls could do anything and really, until I fell pregnant I was never conscious of discrimination. Sexual harassment, yes, but my gender standing in the way of my career? No.

When I was pregnant I applied for an acting promotion. My female boss told me that while I was the most qualified for the job, I was not to be granted the position because I would be too tired. I took it straight to HR and acted in the position, without issue, until the scheduled end of the stint.

Before I went on maternity leave I was at the top of my game and various business units approached me about working in their areas on my return. I went back after a couple of months (much earlier in hindsight than I should have) and discovered no one was interested. I wanted to work part time and all the roles that had been discussed before I went on leave could have been done part time without issue (I am nothing if not efficient!) However even working 4 days a week with an offer to be on call on the 5th was not accepted. I wasn't prepared to work full-time and so Initially I did menial jobs at my former pay, which was a ridiculous waste of money on their behalf. Over time they remembered just how competent I was again, and loaded me up with higher level work - but would not promote me or pay me for the level of work it was, because I was part time (and as one person said to me, I should feel grateful I was being trusted with the work). This was an organisation with thousands of employees.

I stayed - and I suspect this is a trap for many women - because I could work flexible hours and I was never going to get the same pay part time elsewhere. In the end it was just too demoralising and I left. I have recently gone back to work but in a role with significantly less responsibility than I had, and much less security. We too made the decision for me to be the one who went part time because dh earned more, despite the fact that I have more skill and experience and work in a similar area.

I agree with Steven Sylvester's post too though, women do so little to support each other. I realise that that is a generalisation and there are some amazing women who do wonderful things for the 'sisterhood', but as a rule, I suspect we're all too busy protecting what little we have to feel that we can give much away to anyone else. I think also, in my experience, people in management positions (again, this is a generalisation) generally tend to be people who feel entitled to those role and go about their work in such a manner that others buy in to this (and sometimes, rightly so), rather than necessarily being the best people for the job. I think that sense of entitlement is much more ingrained for men than for women (for many reasons) and so women don't put their hand up as often as men do.

lucounu,

You ask: "How is that a misogynist view?"

At any given time, there are at least five or more men and five or more women who are all equally skilled and competent to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice. To say that just one of those ten or more candidates is "the best available person" is to make a subjective decision that cannot possibly be validated by any kind of consensus. Of course, the president is entitled by law to make the nomination, but I will contend to my dying day that it was misogynistic for George W. Bush to nominate Samuel A. Alito, Jr. to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court, and for the U.S. Senate to consent to that nomination. To add to my disgust over the matter is the fact that George W. Bush is the father of two daughters, and even so he was unable to do the right thing. I concluded then that there was no hope except to force a change in the U.S. Constitution, and so I wrote my proposed amendment.

lucounu, the very few comments I have received were from women who are feminist academics � make that "angry" feminist academics. Their plainly stated intent is to get even, and they will wait 100 years if necessary for that satisfaction. To "get even," they intend to achieve a majority position on the U.S. Supreme Court that will endure without a break for as long as women have been oppressed in American history, which is hundreds of years. They do not want shared equality, they want undeniable dominance for as long as it takes to right the wrongs. Why the anger? Because they see plainly the misogyny that almost all men are blind to, and they feel the abuse and the oppression of that misogyny very personally.

Quite frankly, I believe it is in the best interests of American men to do what is necessary to ratify my proposed amendment as soon as possible. I do not want to live in the nightmare that might occur if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade with a Court that looks like this: http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/members.aspx If a female majority decision overturns Roe v Wade at some future date, then so be it. But that overturning decision should never be made by a Court comprised of six males and three females.

lucounu, it is an odd thing to contemplate, but it seems to me that liberal feminism has overburdened itself by combining its efforts with the LGBT political agenda. Far Left thinking does not embrace biological distinction, as in: "she is a woman because of her body." Rather, they go with "she is a woman because of her mind" � and "if she wants to be a man tomorrow, that is fine, too." It is crazy, but it is heartfelt. According to the thinking, gender is a choice, though sexuality is not. If you go down that road too far, my proposed amendment guaranteeing Supreme Court Gender Equality makes no sense at all. So, very oddly, I think if support for my amendment ever materializes, it will come from conservative Far Right Republican women who are very traditional in their thinking.

My fight for change on the U.S. Supreme Court goes one step farther. Consider: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/dianne-feinstein-should-be-next-us.html
Yes! Yes! Break up the lawyer monopoly! If the law allows it � and it does � then it should be done. A U.S. Supreme Court justice should be just one thing: a wise person. Certainly, becoming wise does not prerequisite becoming a lawyer. Senator Dianne Feinstein would have busted up the lawyer monopoly magnificently, and it would have been for the good of America if she had.

lucounu, "dared" is a loaded word, but I stand by it. The three women in U.S. history that I admire the most are Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B. Anthony, because those three women dared to change the world. Their fight was monumental, and it was significantly against the fears of fellow women for many, many years � even decades.

The following was how I first introduced my proposed amendment:
http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/xxviii-amendment-to-united-states.html

Today is Memorial Day, May 25, 2009, a day on which all war dead are commemorated in the United States.

Today I commemorate Elizabeth Cady Stanton (November 12, 1815 � October 26, 1902) and Lucretia Mott (January 3, 1793 � November 11, 1880), who together in July of 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York, organized the first convention in the U.S. regarding women�s rights (the convention at which Stanton first read her Declaration of Sentiments calling for the right to vote for women), and Susan B. Anthony (February 15, 1820 � March 13, 1906), who joined the cause after first meeting Stanton in 1851 and who then fought tenaciously for the right to vote for women until the day she died 55 years later. Though the cause began in New York on July 19, 1848, New York did not pass a law giving women the right to vote until 1917. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson began to support the need for a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote, and the amendment was officially proposed on June 4, 1919. During the following two weeks, six states ratified, and the required 36th state ratified on August 18, 1920, which finally made the Nineteenth Amendment to The United States Constitution a constitutional law. Remarkably, the remaining twelve states that then formed the Union took over sixty years to add their ratifications to the amendment, the last state being Mississippi on March 22, 1984.

The Nineteenth Amendment (Amendment XIX) to The United States Constitution reads: �The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.�

* * *

I highly recommend this documentary: http://www.pbs.org/stantonanthony/

Steven A. Sylwester

This thread's been on my mind as I've been following the Wal-Mart class action lawsuit.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/29/walmart-lawsuit-idUSN2927534120110329?pageNumber=1

Based on what? Do you realize that your own criteria for such a determination are chosen by a non-expert on legal matters, and that your statement cannot be confirmed by any kind of valid consensus? Most people who actually work in the law would be of the opinion that there is no point at which one can say that one has achieved maximum growth in legal knowledge, understanding and skill. Ask some.

And most people, after failing to get the support even of women for your idea, would not conclude that all people everywhere, including all women everywhere, are misogynistic, but rather that it's time to go back to the drawing board.

A few statistics on women jurists are available here-- a comparison of the ratios may begin to enlighten you as to where the problem really lies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_United_States_judiciary

From your Wikipedia link:

In addition to other task forces, the Ninth Circuit�s report found that many women believe that a major hindrance to attaining a judicial position is the lack of women �power players� in the connected �old boys clubs� that often influence judicial appointments.

Women judges and women lawyers attribute male-domination of the judiciary in large part to the exclusion of women from the networks that influence judicial appointments. Women lawyers attribute the small number of women appointed to bench and bar committees to the exclusion of women from formal and informal selection processes. A large proportion of women lawyers believe that men have a better chance than women to be promoted to law firm partnerships and to equivalent positions in public law organizations. See Sandra Day O�Connor, The Effects of Gender in the Federal Courts: The Final Report of the Ninth Circuit Gender Bias Task Force: The Quality of Justice, 67 S. Cal. L. Rev. 745, 786-87 (1994).

A recent panel discussion held at Columbia Law School which included Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and other women judges, elicited this response from a former Bush (41) administration employee that echoes the task forces findings:

My experience working on federal judicial appointments during the last administration, and this really surprised me with respect to gender, was that, still in this day and age, there was often a conflict between a male candidate, generally a white male candidate, who, although sometimes quite well-qualified, sometimes not in conventional terms, had much stronger political, and sort of patronage, political connections--you know he had been a party chair, state party chair, or contributed in a significant way to the political decision-maker at the state-level--versus a woman with spectacular educational and experiential qualifications. So that was often a real tension in a particular choice, and invariably the patronage politics would win out over the straight qualification. So I guess it led to my conclusion that, absent the sort of political force of identity politics that is first woman, wanting to put a first woman in a district or a circuit that has never had one, or wanting to just have more women or more African-Americans on the bench that women would be even further behind in terms of their representation on the federal bench, even in this day and age.

In a way, this remains a chicken and egg question; until there are a significant number of women in high positions in government and commerce, the connections needed to attain government appointments and judgeships remains in the hands of the entrenched male establishment. The recommendation put forward to remedy the problem is most succinctly put forward by Justice Ginsburg:

�Women hold up half the sky and they will do so in our courts. They need no favors. They need only equal respect for their talent (and equal sharing by men of the job of bringing up the next generation).�

* * *

lucounu,

You ask: "Based on what?"

The entirety of all of the qualifications required for "Judges of the supreme Court" is found in Article II, Section 2, paragraph 2 of the Constitution of The United States, where it states: "... ; and he (the President) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: ..."

In other words, there are no qualifications � none whatsoever, except somehow being able to impress the President. Any person is as qualified as any other person according to the qualifications stated in the U.S. Constitution, and no other qualifications exist anywhere else.

Have you ever heard of William O. Douglas? See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_O._Douglas
Quote: "Douglas was sworn into office on April 17, 1939. At the age of forty, Douglas was one of the youngest justices to be confirmed to the Supreme Court."

Selection criteria does not concern itself with whether "one has achieved maximum growth in legal knowledge, understanding and skill," nor should it. What matters is wisdom, and nothing else. All of the "legal knowledge, understanding and skill" in the world is worthless if it does not come coupled with surpassing wisdom. Given a choice between a legal scholar and a wise person, I would pick a wise person to become one of the "Judges of the supreme Court" every time.

lucounu, my contention is this: female wisdom is significantly different than male wisdom, because its perspective is significantly different. As it is, the U.S. Supreme Court is deficient in female wisdom, and the entire nation suffers as a result of that deficiency. The only way to permanently cure the national sickness caused by the deficiency is to ratify my proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Steven A. Sylwester

Steven, sorry, that's a bunch of nonsense. What about hermaphrodite or asexual or transgender wisdom-- don't we need a dash of that every once in a while, based of course on the prevalence within the populace at large? We should be able to find a wise transgendered person somewhere, perhaps working as a baker or truck driver, who would be glad to be plucked from obscurity and plopped on the highest bench in the country.

Steven, you've provided no support for your idea that fitness for a Supreme Court post tops out at a certain level, nor any valid criteria for evaluating wisdom Sylwester-style, nor any sources for your five-of-each-gender number that you pulled out of thin air. Steven, nor have you explained, Steven, how it is misogynist to want to pick the most qualified person for a job.

* * *

Steven, you can now compare one more number, and if you are not yet enlightened I can do nothing for you:
http://www.americanbar.org/content/..._glance_statistics_2011.authcheckdam.pdf

Steven, now you claim that legal knowledge and ability have nothing to do with fitness for the bench. I am glad that you will not be making or approving Supreme Court nominations any time soon, Steven... Steven Steven, there is a reason, Steven Steven Steven, why you can't get any traction for your ideas, and it's because they are dangerously unfounded, fringe notions even in the eyes of feminists. Steven.

Iucounu

Well, obviously, it's not wrong to pick the most qualified candidate. The problem is how to define "most qualified." Is it the person who's got the best connections (and will therefore be more likely to fit in best with the other people who are already there), or the one who might be smarter and more experienced? Or is it someone else who's relatively new but who mmay have new ideas on how to improve the system?

I'd also be grateful if you'd clarify the points you're trying to make instead of linking to a long article. What I pick out as most relevant may not be what you were referring to.

I don't think that connections make one more likely to fit in well with a Court, although they certainly might influence a particular nomination. Most nominations have a lot to do with whether the candidate will (hopefully) advance the goals of the current president or his party. Experience is certainly an important qualification. See Harriet Miers.


I thought it was pretty obvious by referring to a comparison of ratios, and later on to "one more number", but I aim to please. The current Supreme Court composition has a larger proportion of women than either jurists or lawyers do. If one believes that qualifications are important, that there can be someone who is more qualified for the job, and that women of equal experience and talent are no more or less qualified to be justices than men, the problem would seem to be too few women in the legal system, not too few women on the Court. The solution is not to force a nomination for a woman at a particular time to the most important position in the legal/judicial system, but to improve the power and presence of women in the system as a whole.

lucounu,

I am sure you never bothered to read my proposed amendment before criticizing it, so I will help you:

http://supreme-court-gender-equality-pac.blogspot.com/

XXVIII Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Supreme Court Gender Equality

Gender equality shall be guaranteed on the Supreme Court and on the Court of Appeals according to the following:

1. The Congress shall determine an odd number of Justices no fewer than nine who shall together compose the Supreme Court. The total number of Justices shall include one Chief Justice of the United States and the remaining even number of Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom all shall be citizens of the United States.

Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation.

When vacancies occur, the President shall nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who are then appointed by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. The Chief Justice shall be appointed for nine years, and shall not be reappointed Chief Justice thereafter. Associate Justices shall be appointed to hold their offices during good behavior. Successive Chief Justices shall alternate between male and female without exception.

The President shall nominate the Chief Justice according to gender from among the Associate Justices, except no person shall be eligible for nomination who would be more than 69 years old at the time of appointment. If no Associate Justice is qualified by age to be appointed the Chief Justice, the President shall appoint any other qualified person.

If an Associate Justice is nominated to be the Chief Justice by the President but fails to be appointed by the Senate, that Associate Justice shall retain the position of Associate Justice. If an Associate Justice becomes the Chief Justice, that Justice shall retire from the Supreme Court when the nine-year appointment as Chief Justice expires.

2. All Court of Appeals en banc courts shall be composed of an even number of Circuit Judges, of whom half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation. Only if the Circuit Chief Judge presides shall an entire en banc court be composed of an odd number of Judges.

3. Upon ratification, the amendment shall be enacted straightforwardly in due time.

All new Associate Justices shall be female until an equal number of male and female Associate Justices are seated on the Supreme Court. Thereafter, all Associate Justice seats will be identified as being either male or female, and will be filled as the need arises according to strict gender distinction without exception.

The current Chief Justice shall complete a nine-year term from the date he was sworn in as Chief Justice, and shall then immediately retire from the Supreme Court and shall be replaced by the first female Chief Justice of the United States. If the current Chief Justice leaves his position for any reason before his term expires, his appointed successor shall be female.

On a district basis, all Court of Appeals appointments shall be female until gender equality is achieved among active Circuit Judges. Thereafter, new appointments shall be made in a manner that maintains gender equality among all active Judges.

* * *

The key sentence regarding your concern is this one: "Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation."

Transgendered people and homosexuals are not excluded in any way.

lucounu, if you are unable to find one woman whom you would deem to be qualified to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice, then you are a misogynist. I could easily find ten qualified women in less than one week � probably in less than 48 hours � probably in a long afternoon. And every one of those ten women I would find would be at least as qualified as any ten men you might be able to find.

The best woman out there at the last opportunity was U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and she was not even selected. Consider: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/dianne-feinstein-should-be-next-us.html

Excerpt:

Dianne Feinstein is 76 years old, so her career as a justice would probably last less than ten years. Feinstein was born in San Francisco, California, and graduated from Stanford University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. In the late 1950s, she worked in the San Francisco District Attorney�s office. She first entered politics in 1961 when she worked to end housing discrimination in San Francisco.

Feinstein was first elected to public office in 1969 when she began her nine-year tenure on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. She was President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors when San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated on November 27, 1978, so by law she succeeded to the mayoralty on December 4. 1978. She was elected mayor of San Francisco in her own right in 1979 and was reelected in 1983, serving until January 8, 1988. In 1987, City and State magazine named Feinstein the nation�s �Most Effective Mayor.�

In 1990, Feinstein made an unsuccessful bid for Governor of California, losing in the general election to then U.S. Senator Pete Wilson. On November 3, 1992, she won a California special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated in 1991 by Pete Wilson. She then won reelection to the U.S. Senate in 1994, 2000, and 2006.

Throughout her almost seventeen years as a U.S. senator, Feinstein has continuously served on four U.S. Senate committees: Rules, Judiciary, Appropriations, and Intelligence. During the 110th Congress (2007�2009), she was chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration. During the current 111th Congress (2009�2011), she is chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Additionally, she is chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Interior and Related Agencies of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, and is chairwoman of the Senate�s International Narcotics Control Caucus.

In her service on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Feinstein currently serves on five different subcommittees: 1) Administration Oversight and the Courts; 2) Constitution; 3) Crime and Drugs; 4) Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship; and 5) Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security.

Though U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein has not earned a law degree from an accredited law school, she is certainly more knowledgeable and more steeped in the law than almost anyone else in the United States, including law school professors, practicing attorneys, and sitting judges � even perhaps including some sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices! Though her education in the law was not �formal,� it was no less complete than if it had been formal; in fact, her law education was both firsthand and thorough, and it was ingrained through and through like only front-lines political battles can � and do � ingrain things.

While other U.S. Supreme Court justices would consider and ponder the law before making a ruling in a case, Feinstein as a justice would relate to and experience the law instead � and there is a HUGE difference in those distinctions. While the other justices have an inherited ownership of the law that is mostly academic and intellectual, Feinstein would bring to the Court something new: a battlefield-scarred sensibility that would sometimes rightly claim �I helped build it� ownership, which is an ownership that knows exactly what is buried inside the constructs of the agreed upon language that was signed into law.

The language of the law can be messy, especially if it is what remains after contentious political battling and is the stuff of uneasy and unwanted compromise. As is, the U.S. Supreme Court sits distant and removed from the legislative fray, and consequently functions out of a mixture of deep learning and active imagination instead of firsthand knowledge. The U.S. Constitution allows for the Court to be �distant and removed;� such a thing is not forbidden, but neither is it required. It is the folly of our times that we have failed to cross-pollinate the Court with influences from outside of our nation�s judicial system, even though the law fully allows that cross-pollination to occur.

The United States has three branches of government in its Constitution that together in their interplay make and define the whole: The Legislative Branch, The Executive Branch, and The Judicial Branch. Fifteen of the 44 men who have served as president of the United States also served as a U.S. senator. At the same time, only six of the 111 men and women who have served as justices of the U.S. Supreme Court also served as a U.S. senator � again, the last serving justice of the six was Hugo L. Black, who left the U.S. Senate more than 71 years ago in 1937. What an enormous waste of talent!

During her career in politics, Dianne Feinstein has spent more than nine years as a government executive being mayor of San Francisco and more than sixteen years as a legislator being a U.S. senator. No one currently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court comes even remotely close to that level of experience; in fact, no one currently sitting on the U.S. Supreme Court has ever served outside of the judicial branch of our government. Though Feinstein is a consummate team player, it is easy to imagine that she might give new definition to the term �upbraid� someday along the way if she were made a justice on the Court, especially in her dealings with Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito. Certainly, Feinstein would be a quick study, and would also be a fierce and clever opponent in the forging of a majority.

Does Feinstein have faults? Yes, absolutely! Does Feinstein have political enemies? Yes, absolutely! Has Feinstein made mistakes along the way? Yes, absolutely! All of those �Yes� answers are the inevitable consequence of a long and successful political career in both local and national politics. In a December 2007 SurveyUSA News Poll in California, 51% approved of the job Diane Feinstein was doing as a U.S. senator while 39% disapproved. A 51% vote wins political elections, and Feinstein knows how to win political elections.

If all politics is local, then final considerations are things personal. Dianne Feinstein�s only child is San Francisco Superior Court Judge Katherine Feinstein. Dianne Feinstein is the daughter of a surgeon, and is the widow of a neurosurgeon, who was her second husband. She divorced her first husband, who was an attorney who later became a judge. Her current husband is a wealthy international businessman. But the deeper truth is this: Feinstein�s ethnic heritage is Jewish, though her maternal grandparents were of the Russian Orthodox faith after converting from Judaism to Christianity. Feinstein attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart High School and received a Catholic religious education while also going to Hebrew school and synagogue while growing up in San Francisco. Her stated religion is Judaism. On a U.S Supreme Court that currently has six Roman Catholics serving as justices, throwing Dianne Feinstein into the mix could create quite a show.

* * *

lucounu, there is not one man on the whole planet who is more qualified than Dianne Feinstein is to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice, and Feinstein is not even a lawyer. I do not agree with Feinstein on several issues that are very important to me, but I would stand up and cheer her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court if it ever happened.

Steven A. Sylwester

---

This thread was interesting to read.

Maybe you're lost, Steven A. Sylwester

Wiki-this-
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/usconstitution/a/constamend.htm

"to propose amendments

Two-thirds of both houses of Congress vote to propose an amendment, or
Two-thirds of the state legislatures ask Congress to call a national convention to propose amendments. (This method has never been used.)"

This is a gifted issues discussion forum. Government of the people, by the people, for the people IS, indeed, everybody's issue. So I guess we can discuss your idea as well. I just have one favor to ask, sir. While most everybody here is, by definition -Gifted (some aren't, only related by marriage , now raising kids ), if you read the forum often you'll notice a lot of members are 2e, gifted plus learning disabled. This includes dyslexia, ADD, plus OAAD, BIS.. If you'll stop to notice it will appear that many of the posts here appear polished, condensed, and to the point. You may think that's because gifted people naturally are quite eloquent, but really, we edit for clarity before posting. Well, at least I do. Shush y'all, yep that great grammar of mine actually is often my polished second draft.

"stream of consciousness posts are difficult to read and digest"
-unknown moderator's advice elsewhere

. Use bullets
. But you still need to consolidate and condense more
. Edit ruthlessly

It's okay to use a couple of paragraphs per thought and to have several thoughts per post, many of us do. If after editing you have separated, catorigized (sic), and clarified your thoughts if it still appears lengthy make two or three consecutive posts, it's easier on the eyes.

I didn't make this up, someone told me something similar. There's nothing unusual about being a prolific writer and having many thoughts on a subject and great inspired tangents, it's just a different format of writing. I still worry if I'm doing it right even though I've seen the formula and it's not rocket science.

You know, I might support an amendment if it required not just male and female but also transgendered justices. And what about women who have a Y chromosome? I think they must have a totally unique perspective as well.

Seriously, what a terrible idea. As much as it pains me to see so few women in the top legal positions in our country, requiring that any particular judge or justice be of any particular gender (or race, or religion, etc.) is simply outrageous. Why not promote gender equality in other ways, such as by mandating more family-friendly labor policies?

I think I have finally hit upon the reasons why this proposal irritates me so much.

First, there is an underlying assumption that women, who have been voting citizens in the US for less than 100 years, and who have made staggering progress on their own during that time, and who comprise the majority of the population, won't be able to rise to the point of rough parity on the Court by virtue of their own work without it being constitutionally mandated.

Second, there is an assumption that there is something called "the feminine perspective" that will be brought to the court by this device, as if what women think about the law and how they would rule is somehow determined by their gender. Just as the individual within-gender IQ differences are far larger than those between the genders as a whole, so the experiences and views of individual women are more different from each other than the experiences and views of women as a group are from men as a group - and we don't appoint groups to the courts, but individuals. Many women I know would suggest that Phyllis Schlafly, for example, wouldn't have done as good a job representing their perspective as Thurgood Marshal did.

I am personally far more concerned with what is above the Justices' robes than what is under them. Their legal philosophy, intelligence, and political independence concern me more, and frankly, have far more relevance to the outlook for women's rights, than their gender does.

Third, I have spent my entire life struggling to seen for who I am as an individual, and to be recognized for what I can do on my own merits, and not as some talking dog, as someone who is worthy of recognition because she can speak well and reason well, not because she can speak and reason at all, and this proposal would really institutionalize the idea that there are separate standards by which men and women should be evaluated at the highest levels of performance.

I hope this clarifies for you why so many women have shown absolutely no interest in what you see as a beneficial proposal.

Getting back to the original theme of this thread, I just read an interesting piece about a fraternity at Yale. As a hazing stunt, a bunch of pledges stood outside a women's dorm shouting "No means yes! Yes means anal!" It went downhill a bit after that. Here's a video describing it.

Even though this stunt has been criticized heavily, some people have excused it (see the YouTube comments).

The thing though, is that it even happened at all and what that says about the attitudes that allow people to dream up ideas like that and then send younger people out to carry out the idea. Women and girls have to put up with this kind of garbage for most of our lives.

Some people at Yale (and elsewhere based on the YouTube comments) thought this stunt was funny or a good idea. It isn't funny. It's disrespectful, it sends a message (well, more than one), and what's worse is that some of the men who dreamed up this idea will go out into the world and work with women and eventually make hiring decisions. I have a hard time believing that people who reach 21 or so and still be so disrespectful will start seeing women as peers and equals when they get jobs in a year or two.

It's easy for some people who aren't affected by this problem to ignore it or claim that it it isn't a problem anymore, so I'll try to put it in perspective. People whose kids aren't gifted can easily ignore the problems experienced by gifted kids. They're doing fine, right? They shouldn't complain.

Discrimination is going to be hidden much of the time when it is present, and I agree that such reports are troubling. When I get some spare time I am going to hunt down the reports Bostonian referenced and see how convincing they are. All I can say is that I take all the reports in this thread at face value, and that I may have been lucky to never have been in a corporate environment (except possibly one) where I felt any sort of gender-based discrimination was even a potential problem, and I've never seen explicit sex discrimination on the job. I've also worked in environments that were quite pro-women.

I hope that at least some of the hazees were inwardly ashamed, and that that shame makes them stronger, better people in the long run. I don't know which is worse, the prejudice or the people that go along with it out of ambition or fear.

I suppose that both are equally bad and they're integral parts of each other. Leaders need followers and followers need leaders.

Dang it. �I just made a post and lost it looking up a song I used to like. �Something about someone is paying for that boy to go to college to GET an Education!, not to make a fool of himself.! �It is college so u got the whole "you got the freedom of speech, not the freedom to not be offended" thing. �But you make a darn good point, Val, that this kid is about to be engaged in business, and quite likely in a position of authority over employees, where there are laws restricting offensive free speech- but not the underlying predjuidice... just the visible display thereof.
Don't worry. �Time is on your side. �

You know, I think it might have a greater effect on men who choose "female" professions. �Somewhere or other I have read that, as a field goes from male-dominated to female-dominated, that the pay and prestige drop. �The drop in pay affects not only the women in the field, but also the men. � [/quote]

The blogosphere concurs, in addition to "rubbing it in" that with modern technology eradicating the need for much labor outside the service industry men are just going to have to adjust. �STEM girls researching and politicking humanitarian women's, somebody got too much time on their hands now we don't have to chase down and club a dinosaur or beat our laundry on a rock.

Yeah that song went, "if I offended you, I'm sorry. But maybe you needed to be offended, �and here's my apology, and one more thing....." lol, Ah. �Memory Lane

The following tech article is one where the comments following it are rather immature and offensive. Now if I had not worked in a corporate office in a technical field, I would have thought the commenters were 12 year old boys. My experience tells me they may very well be from highly educated men in higher management positions.

http://www.dailytech.com/New+BreastOnAChip+Model+Created+for+Breast+Cancer+Research/article20740.htm

The only difference I see in the corporate environment is the men hide this when the females are not around. Sitting in a meeting with a bunch of men making or giggling at such ridiculously immature comments is just plain scary. It is not the offensiveness which bothers me as much as the immaturity of the comments. If this is any indication of who runs the world, a lot of what is happening in the world makes sense.

I'm still trying to decide which is worse:

a) hiding it when there are women around, or

b) NOT hiding it because the only women around are "just one of the boys" and won't (shouldn't?) care.


I've been treated to some of that by being "one of the guys." I was never sure if it was just that they truly WERE more open around me... or if it was a subtle form of hazing to make SURE that I was actually one of the boys. Since, you know, if it offended me, they'd know I needed kicking out of the super-secret clubhouse or something.


Hmm. Never have figured that out. My DH maintains that it is just that guys are inherently kind of not that deep, and that I'm overthinking it, which would tilt things toward the former explanation. Being female, I don't have a lot of insight into the male psyche, sophomoric or otherwise.

The resignation of Dr Summers was a travesty. He cited the data to support his claim. And Harvard embarrassed itself. This is just another reason to question if Harvard is really open to intellectual inquiry and debate or is an "Old Boys network" - it certainly reacted like one.


DW pretty much agrees with all of this. "Its still an old boys network." She reminded me of this book and the times she outperformed her male colleagues yet was ignored.

http://www.amazon.com/Tough-Choices-Memoir-Carly-Fiorina/dp/159184133X



Outside of the military, virtually no other organizations have an objective process to train and advance people. Its left up to whim and vanity most of the time.

My alma mater often disgusts me. Have you heard of the case of Harvard Law student Stephanie Grace, forced to apologize by the shool for broaching the topic of racial differences in IQ
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=113659595336161 ?

Good grief.

1. Larry Summers resigned because the faculty was tired of him micromanaging them. He was not popular. As an example, he overturned tenure decisions for humanities professors that made their way up to him because the research did not pass what an economist considers good research. The whole what he said about women at the NBER was irrelevant to his resignation (except to the extent that at least one of the tenures he overturned was that of a woman). The controversy about the Allston campus, for example, was a much bigger deal. He just didn't play politics well and thought his decisions were always right.

2. He DIDN'T cite research. He was completely and totally unaware of any of the work done by psychologists on the subject. If you read the transcript, all he did was offer a suggestion that this whole nature vs. nurture thing should be looked into. Eventually people brought out Steven Pinker's work but that work is by no means uncontroversial. There is an enormous line of literature on the "nurture" side that you can read about in a book by Virginia Valian if you are so inclined.

3. I can't believe this garbage is resurfacing on the internet after all these years. And does Bostonian think about ANYTHING other than proving how men are superior to women biologically? Seriously, every single post is about a boy genius, testosterone being superior, boys not needing to show their work, affirmative action destroying the world, etc. etc. etc. It makes for an unwelcoming environment.

Yes, this.

I think Summers' comments on gender and science played an important role in his demise as president. If you look at the BBC story http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4738030.stm on his resignation, they cite the furor around his comments as a reason.
So does James Watson (of the double helix) in his book "Avoid Boring People".

A transcript of Summers' speech is at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june05/summersremarks_2-22.html , and an article from the Harvard Crimson about it is at http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/1/14/summers-comments-on-women-and-science/ . Here is an excerpt showing that he did cite research about the higher variance in achievement test scores in males than females. There have been similar findings for IQ scores.

'But Lee Professor of Economics Claudia Goldin, whose own research has examined the progress of women in academia and professional life, said she �was pretty flummoxed� by the negative response to Summers� speech, which�in her view�displayed �utter brilliance.�

Summers spoke from a set of notes�not a prepared text�so a transcript is not available. But in an interview with The Crimson this evening, Summers said that his speech was a �purely academic exploration of hypotheses.�

Summers� speech came against the backdrop of widespread faculty criticism this fall following reports that only four of 32 tenure offers made in Harvard�s Faculty of Arts and Sciences last year went to women.

Early in his speech, Summers noted that women remain underrepresented in the upper echelons of academic and professional life�in part, he said, because many women with young children are unwilling or unable to put in the 80-hour work-weeks needed to succeed in those fields.

�I said that raised a whole set of questions about how job expectations were defined and how family responsibilities were defined,� according to Summers. �But I said it didn�t explain the differences [in the representation of females] between the sciences and mathematics and other fields.�

Goldin, who herself prepared a memo Summers cited in his speech Friday, said the president �had mountains of research� on the subject, although he spoke extemporaneously.

Summers referred repeatedly to the work of University of Michigan sociologist Yu Xie and his University of California-Davis colleague Kimberlee A. Shauman, who have found that women make up 35 percent of faculty at universities across the country, but only 20 percent of professors in science and engineering.

Their analysis of achievement test results shows a higher degree of variance in scores among men than among women. According to Ascherman Professor of Economics Richard Freeman, an organizer of the conference, the research found that �there are more men who are at the top and more men who are utter failures.�

Summers suggested that behavioral genetics could partially explain this phenomenon.

Freeman and Goldin both said that after Summers� mentioned the �innate differences� hypothesis, he explicitly told the audience: �I�d like to be proven wrong on this one.�

By that point Hopkins, a renowned cancer researcher who last year was inducted into the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, had left the conference room. She said she was concerned that it would be �rude� to get up midway through Summers� speech, but �it was just too upsetting� for her to stay.'

<end of excerpt>

Finally, you are imagining things if you think my post about a boy genius was made for political reasons. Someone else posted about the same boy, just because they thought it was an interesting story. Maybe you are the person obsessed with gender issues, although I will admit to being interested in them.

Gently putting my toe in the pool, I happened to be following the thread relating to showing work in math. Here's what the post said:

"but some people (perhaps more boys than girls) with better math than verbal skills can solve certain math problems but not necessarily explain how they solved them."

Maybe the "perhaps more boys than girls" parenthetical should have appeared at the end of the sentence, so as not to distract the reader.

I read this to mean that, in the larger universe, there exists a population of people who are comparatively more skilled in mathematics than in the verbalishness. I further understood that this disparity (lower relative verbal skills) might hinder the ability of these people to explain their work -- regardless of chromosomal makeup. Lastly, and parenthetically, I recognized as a suggestion that within this population there might (perhaps) be more boys than girls. That is to say (I suppose) that more boys find themselves with a verbal skill deficit...

Does Bostonian not actually say, then, that the boys are, in general, more stupider?

I think it a mighty brash leap from "boys are more stupider" to "boys don't have to show their work."

As for Bostonian's comments on boy geniuses, testosterone, and affirmative action, I don't know what he contributed. Although... after seeing how he disparaged boys in math v. verbal skills, I'm quite curious to read what he's got to offer on the other topics.

I was once sitting around the regulars table at the bar discussing education. On this particular night, half of the people at the table were scientists, which was not unusual given where I lived. The topic was on how schools often only test whether people can perform the skill, but not whether they understand what they are doing. As an example, multiplication was brought up.

Well, the one scientist with a masters degree suddenly asked "What do you mean in regards to the multiplication example?". At first we thought he was not being serious. After explaining multiplication, he was happy to now know what it was and had not realized his entire life he did not know this.

(I can't stop laughing at "verbalishness".) I'm not saying that the resignation of Summers was or was not proper, or that he should or shouldn't have been able to say what he did without repercussions-- although from what I recall, he was simply voicing honest concerns that he considered to be in support of advancement of women in academia. I was merely noting that when such a stink arises, creating obvious pressure under which someone resigns (not necessarily in the absence of other factors), it's some evidence that women are wielding a lot more power.

I guess that the women here who have experienced discrimination have one honestly held viewpoint, and a man who hasn't seen it for himself can have an opposing viewpoint, especially when some studies back him up. I am positive that discrimination against women exists, that it is a lot less prevalent than a century ago, and will lessen much more with each passing generation. That's about all I'm sure of. There can be compelling anecdotes about horrible instances of discrimination, but they don't translate into knowledge about its impact on women as a whole.

I wonder whether gifted / highly capable women experience more or less discrimination than women in general.

An essay "Why Can't a Princeton Woman Be More Like a Princeton Man?" by John Rosenberg at the site Minding the Campus
http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2011/03/why_cant_a_princeton_woman_be_.html

explains why Princeton does not have a problem:

...

'[T]his report spends much of its 89 pages describing the ways in which Princeton women are different from Princeton men, and the remainder of its pages recommending measures to combat the �stale old-fashioned stereotypes� that women are different.
Evan Thomas describes these recommendations as an effort �to bolster women's confidence and prod them to seek prominent positions.� And prodding does indeed describe what Tilghman, Keohane, et al. believe their female undergraduates need. Despite their strained attempt to celebrate all the hard work that female undergraduates do behind the scenes, I think a fair reading of this report indicates that its authors want Princeton women to act more like Princeton men.

President Tilghman and Professor Keohane, meet Professor Henry Higgins: �Why Can�t a Woman Be More Like a Man?�'

Part of the LOL was because she has contacts in the firm with the other executive assistants and other worker bees who keep her informed.

At first she was told she "Needed a degree." and then "Needed real world experience." and then "Need to show proof of ability." which she has in all areas.

But this firm cannot get past her sex appeal and their first view of her as being fresh out of High School - among other things.

Senior management has this view of the world that does not really represent the real world. They think a man with fake credentials is worthy while proven performers are not.

But this is no different from other places that also lack an objective strategy for managing, promoting, and mentoring people.

In the case I write about above, all the objective standards say "HIRE NOW!" yet they do not follow them.

Which is what the OT is about.

I see the same process at other firms as well as the one I am at now. People are thrown into new situations and when they screw up, rather than mentoring them and helping them learn, they get blamed. Or past goofiness sticks to people even though they have grown and matured.

The Dean's comments :


This is a very interesting quote. It gives me the creeps.

Structurally and culturally, the Dean's comments are no different than that from any other Old Boy's Club.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/25_percent_of_lawyer_moms_leave_the_workplace_study_finds

A study finds that in comparison to medicine, where only 6% of mothers leave the work force, 25% eventually do so in law. The need for family-friendly work policies is cited.

Who needs more lawyers?

Professions with an "up-our-out" career ladder demanding total commitment to make partner (or get tenure) will have more women dropping out, because they want to spend time with their children and in general, "have a life". Men do too, but a higher fraction of them are willing to sacrifice everything for their careers.

At many law firms and consulting firms, you need to make partner or leave. Doctors are not pushed out of medical practices in the same way, and this can make medicine a more appealing profession for women.

Over 50% of medical school classes in the US are currently are female. BUT, women are still overwhelmingly clustered in poorly valued medical professions like pediatrics or internal medicine. And, women physicians are paid on average something like only 80% of what a male physician makes, EVEN when you account for women working part-time, etc. It is a little depressing.
In my field of interventional cardiology, only about 10% of such physicians nationally are female.

We need more women lawyers to achieve equality, though the field is definitely choked right now overall. There's no reason that further advances can't be made in offering family-friendly policies, as is already occurring in greater measure all the time. We're not talking about Navy SEALs here, and some of the best lawyers I know work from home a fair amount of the time anyway.

Behind a lot of men who "sacrifice everything" are women who stay at home, taking care of the household and enabling the man to go out and earn. In an era when alimony awards occur less and less, it continues to be a major justification in many awards for stay-at-home mothers today that they contributed to their husbands' professional careers. There may be more bachelor workaholics out there than bachelorettes, but I wouldn't know and think it is bound to be a secondary phenomenon.

An NYT op-ed says the productivity of female doctors does not match that of men because the women want more work-life balance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/opinion/12sibert.html
Don�t Quit This Day Job
By KAREN S. SIBERT
June 11, 2011

...

But the productivity of the doctors currently practicing is also an important factor. About 30 percent of doctors in the United States are female, and women received 48 percent of the medical degrees awarded in 2010. But their productivity doesn�t match that of men. In a 2006 survey by the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges, even full-time female doctors reported working on average 4.5 fewer hours each week and seeing fewer patients than their male colleagues. The American Academy of Pediatrics estimates that 71 percent of female pediatricians take extended leave at some point � five times higher than the percentage for male pediatricians.

This gap is especially problematic because women are more likely to go into primary care fields � where the doctor shortage is most pronounced � than men are. Today 53 percent of family practice residents, 63 percent of pediatric residents and nearly 80 percent of obstetrics and gynecology residents are female. In the low-income areas that lack primary and prenatal care, there are more emergency room visits, more preventable hospitalizations and more patients who die of treatable conditions. Foreign doctors emigrate to the United States to help fill these positions, but this drains their native countries of desperately needed medical care.

...

Yes, but studies show that when you account for number of hours worked, etc., women still earn only 80% of what the male physicians earn. This finding is fairly true of most professions in the USA- in corporate law, science, etc., women earn less then men.

When I selected my first pediatrician for my first born, I used a female pediatrician in sole practice. The city had an after hours pediatric clinic (associated with the medical school) that was for weekday evenings, Saturday evenings and all day Sunday.

My ped hired another female ped to cover all day Wednesday so she could have that day off (only sick visits, well check visits weren't scheduled on Wednesdays) and once a month on Saturday mornings my ped had office hours (those hours were for 4 practices' patients and only if it couldn't wait until Monday).

Both women were extremely happy with the arrangement. The practice owner didn't have to work her one Saturday a month and didn't have to work Wednesdays. The part timer worked 5 or 6 days a month while her children were very small. I think the plans were when her children were older for her to become a partner in the practice and they would hire another part timer when the practice grew big enough to handle it.

I don't see that as under productivity. The practice was well run, successful, and met the needs of both the women and the patients.

Many male physicians are also working part-time, esp. younger doctors. Men want to participate in their families too!
The arrangement you are describing is why female physicians (or female scientists, etc.) can fall into the "mommy track" at many universities. It becomes very hard to get promoted to tenure for these women.

My definition of productivity doesn't match the article's definition, and I would argue that society and the individual patient might in fact be better served by less "productive" drs.

Yes, anesthesioogy is definitely a "lifestyle" type of choice for doctors. (Obviously, there are anesthesiologists who work long hours). It's also oversubscribed among graduating female physicians.
One reason why my field, Cardiology, has so few women is the radiation exposure. We get tons of radiation during procedures and we wear lead aprons to protect us. However, as I went through my two pregnancies wearing 20 pounds of lead, that is when it dawned on me why many female med students don't go into a field like that.

This article describes social life at Princeton and Duke:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/fashion/after-class-skimpy-equality-motherlode.html
After Class, Skimpy Equality
By LISA BELKIN
New York Times
August 26, 2011

It's not a pretty picture. I mostly agree with the analysis at

http://www.nationalreview.com/phi-beta-cons/275978/human-nature-no-surprise-carol-iannone
Human Nature No Surprise
National Review
September 1, 2011
By Carol Iannone .

I know that in my firm, women and men in the same jobs make the same amount. And I know we pay the same rate for contractors regardless of their sex - and I know from personal discussions with them that they all get paid the same amount.

Despite several lucrative offer$$$$, DW has decided not to run any more companies until the kids are in school due to the 70+ hour weeks it requires. Relative to her peers in the same leadership ranks, she is falling behind, but that is her choice.

I know I have cut back my hours as well for family reasons.

http://reason.com/archives/2007/04/30/the-truth-about-the-pay-gap


So I not so sure that the "pay gap" exists within each field.

I used to run past frat/sorority row. I saw parties like this. But none of the women in my classes did anything like this. We'd get together for study group then go listen to live music. The first story is more gossipy than anything.

In BigLaw, you have significantly more male partners than women partners. This creates a defacto pay gap in the legal profession. The money goes to the top of the pyramid.

Here's an example from a former BigLaw attorney now SAHM:

She talks about how few women partners there were.

BigLaw Blog

Great read. DW will like it. Law Firms compensation is more like a pyramid scheme than your typical firm, though.

DW sees the same thing in senior management at a lot of firms. They lack an objective means of promoting people and lack an overall strategy for developing their people. But that is most firms these days. IMHO we'd see a huge increase in performance if firms did a better job of choosing people and mentoring them.


She did not mention the mental stress. This is the hardest part.

DW has made the same choice, for now. She was offered the CFO position and turned it down so they brought her on in another role where she has no operational responsibilities. Otherwise, it would be 70 hour weeks.

A lot of men make the same choice, too.

In law, your compensation is dependent on how many clients you "own" and how much money they bring in each year.

A few years ago, $2,000,000 in annual fees was the going rate for partnership with some of BigLaw, so a lot of it is sales and marketing.

You have to be both technically proficient and bring in enough business or the firms have no interest in retaining you. Only rainmakers matter.

No ability to bring in business? No future.

Understood, but how do people become rainmakers?

I have absolutely no idea. Some people can do it and some people can't. I was only an associate in a corporate firm for about 5 years and I never got to the point where partnership was an issue. Having friends and family in corporate positions helps. Connections are definitely a plus. General sales and marketing training?

One of my friends is in this particular horrible situation. If he misses his hours, he's going to be tossed to the curb. He's been there 12 years now.

I'm at a firm that uses TV and Internet ads for retail work from the general public, so it's a non-issue here. I have too much potential work.