LA Times (August 28)
The U.S. is undergoing de-masculinization. “Our gender turfs were once distinct—women never grabbed a grease gun, nor men a flour sifter. But they become more intermingled with each passing year.” There are now more female drivers than male drivers. Stay-at-home dads, rather than moms, are now present in over 2 million homes. And “women are now the majority of top-performing college students headed toward jobs in middle and upper management.”
Tags: De-masculinization, Drivers, Gender, Jobs, Management, Men, Stay-at-home, U.S., Women
New York Times (April 14)
“Progress in closing the gender pay gap has basically stalled over the past decade.” In the U.S., women make roughly 80% of what males receive, up from 59% in 1963 when the Equal Pay Act was signed. “The longer the gap persists, the less it can be explained away by factors other than discrimination.”
Tags: Discrimination, Equal Pay Act, Gender, Pay gap, Progress, U.S., Women
Financial Times (April 9)
Japan’s corporate culture “had a certain rationale in the catch-up era” of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, however, “it makes no sense at all.” Today, Japan needs “a multidisciplinary workforce capable of switching mid-career, not only between different companies but also between entirely different fields. It needs to bring more women into the workforce, not to make up the numbers but to usher in new thinking.”
Tags: Corporate culture, Japan, Mid-career, Multidisciplinary, New thinking, Rationale, Women, Workforce
The Telegraph (October 16)
“Instead of changing a structure of employment that clearly does not work for women, Apple and Facebook are offering employees the chance to freeze their eggs and have children later.” Egg freezing and storage is the latest Silicon Valley perk designed “to attract more female employees” and “tackle the Gender Pay Gap.” But to some, this sounds surreal. “Women freeze the source of life itself? That’s not a perk, it’s an outrage.”
Tags: Apple, Children, Eggs, Employment, Facebook, Freezing, Gender, Outrage, Pay gap, Perk, Silicon Valley, Women
New York Times (July 29)
“Japanese women are not staying away from work because they can’t get ahead; only one in 10 working women say they want to be promoted to management because it would be hard to juggle housework with the long working hours associated with management.” This makes Prime Minister Abe’s task more challenging. First, he needs to convince women “that work, in and of itself, is a good thing.”
Institutional Investor (July 3)
“Japan is not without ambitious women who have been able to get ahead, as well as corporate leaders who are making an effort to promote more women…. But barriers persist.” Kathy Matsui, who coined the term womenomics, recently estimated that “Japan’s GDP could rise by nearly 13 percent if the employment rate of women rose to match that of men.”
Tags: Ambitious, Barriers, Corporate leaders, Employment rate, GDP, Japan, Kathy Matsui, Women, Womenomics
Washington Post (April 4)
Prime Minister Abe is not the only one worried about empowering women. Companies should be just as worried. Equal Pay Day falls on Tuesday, April 8, symbolizing how far into 2014 women must work to earn what men earned in 2013. “Lip service isn’t enough. Corporate policy matters, too. As long as firms are resistant to changes that will help attract and retain female talent—like more flexible work arrangements, which can actually boost worker productivity—they will be limiting their own potential as well as that of female workers.
Tags: Abe, Attract, Change, Companies, Corporate policy, Equal Pay Day, Flexible work arrangements, Lip service, Potential, Retain, Talent, Women, Worker productivity
The Economist (March 29)
“Women’s lowly status in the Japanese workplace has barely improved in decades, and the country suffers as a result.” Though difficult to quantify, the cost of this lost potential is enormous. “Japan educates its women to a higher level than nearly anywhere else in the world…. But when they leave university their potential is often squandered, as far as the economy is concerned.” If Prime Minister Abe and “the country’s policymakers can find the right ways to help them, those women could boost the economy and reform corporate culture.”
Tags: Abe, Corporate culture, Economy, Japan, Lost potential, Policymakers, Status, University, Women, Workplace
The Economist (January 12)
“In the rich world, men are closing the longevity gap with women.” The major factor has been the reduction in smoking among males. The results have been staggering. “In England and Wales, the biggest peacetime difference between the life expectancies at birth of the two sexes was 6.3 years. That was in 1967. It is now 4.1 years, and falling.”
“In the rich world, men are closing the longevity gap with women.” The major factor has been the reduction in smoking among males. The results have been staggering. “In England and Wales, the biggest peacetime difference between the life expectancies at birth of the two sexes was 6.3 years. That was in 1967. It is now 4.1 years, and falling.”
Time (January 7)
The gang rape of a female student on December 16 has kept India on edge. Protests have been held demanding social change and “swift justice” for the woman who died on December 29. “The upheaval of the past three weeks has exposed other deep fractures, raising difficult questions not only about the status of women in India but also about increasing violence, widening class divides and the delivery of justice in the world’s largest democracy.”
