Member Center Webinar Series

The NCRW Announces the Launch of the Member Center Webinar Series with "A Conversation with Anne-Marie Slaughter on Women, Work and Family"

Monday, October 22, 2012

3 pm ET

In this webinar, Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter discussed the important balance of women, work and family. Anne-Marie Slaughter's recent article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," sparked a national conversation on evolving notions of feminism, barriers to women's advancement, and the meaning of equal opportunity at work and at home. Dr. Slaughter focused on the specific recommendations outlined in the article, including changing the culture of "face time," valuing parenting, and enlisting men as partners in creating a more inclusive workplace. Susan J. Lambert from the University of Chicago and Ana Duarte McCarthy of Citi offered responses following Dr. Slaughter's presentation.

To read Anne-Marie Slaughter's bio, click here.

To read Susan J. Lambert's bio, click here.

To read Ana Duarte McCarthy's bio, click here.

To view the entire webinar on YouTube, click here [1]

01:30 Description of NCRW Initiative on advancing women of color in the corporate sector [2]

01:50 Description of NCRW Economic Security Initiative [3]

04:18-14:33 Anne-Marie Slaughter discusses responses to her Atlantic article [4]

14:35 Audience poll on flexible work arrangements [5]

15:45 Anne-Marie Slaughter discusses recommendations from her article [6]

16:00 Anne-Marie Slaughter discusses the “culture of face time” [7]

18:53 Anne-Marie Slaughter discusses family values [8]

27.38 Susan J. Lambert’s response on low-wage and hourly workers [9]

28:35 Audience poll on hourly vs. salaried workers [10]

36:46: Audience poll on if salaried workers should receive overtime pay [11]

37:18: Audience poll on whether hourly workers should have guaranteed hours [12]

37:47 Ana Duarte McCarthy begins response from corporate perspective [13]

39:10 Ana Duarte McCarthy discusses Citi survey on “Having it All” [14]

44:20 Ana Duarte McCarthy discusses Citi’s flexible work program [15]

52:10 Questions from the audience [16]

57:20 Anne-Marie Slaughter discusses Yahoo’s Melissa Mayer [17]

1:01:42 Question from NCRW Board Chair on younger generation, career ambitions and family life [18]

Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter is the Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. From 2009–2011 she served as Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State, the first woman to hold that position. Upon leaving the State Department she received the Secretary's Distinguished Service Award for her work leading the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, as well as a Meritorious Honor Award from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and a Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award from the Supreme Allied Commander for Europe. Prior to her government service, Dr. Slaughter was the Dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs from 2002–2009, where she rebuilt the School's international relations faculty and created a number of new centers and programs.
Dr. Slaughter is a frequent contributor to both mainstream and new media, publishing op-eds in major newspapers, magazines and blogs around the world and curating foreign policy news for over 40,000 followers on Twitter. She appears regularly on CNN, the BBC, NPR, and PBS, lectures widely.

Her recent article, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," [19] sparked a national conversation on evolving notions of feminism, barriers to women's advancement, and the meaning of equal opportunity at work and at home. In this webinar, she discusses the responses she has received from her article, including gratitude from women for shifting the conversation about women's achievement from the faults of individual women to larger structural and cultural issues, to criticism for undercutting the feminist movement and discouraging younger women. She has also received responses from fathers who think about issues of work-life balance and women differently now that they have adult daughters, and men who say they too cannot "have it all" because making time for family goes against traditional masculine roles. Dr. Slaughter focuses on the specific recommendations outlined in the article, including changing the culture of "face time," valuing parenting, and enlisting men as partners in creating a more inclusive workplace.

Susan J. Lambert is Associate Professor in the School of Social Service Administration. Her fields of special interest include lower-skilled jobs and low-wage workers, work-life issues, and organizational theory and management. At SSA, Professor Lambert teaches courses on the labor market and lower-skilled jobs, organizational theory and development, and doctoral-level research methods. Currently, Lambert is co-Principal Investigator (with Julia Henly) of a cluster-randomized field experiment that will assess the worker- and store-level effects of a workplace intervention intended to improve scheduling practices in entry-level retail jobs. She recently completed a study of 88 lower-skilled jobs in 22 workplaces in 4 industries (retail, hospitability, transportation, and financial services). Her research is supported by grants from the Ford Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.

During the webinar, she discusses how issues of flexibility, work and family specifically relate to low-income and hourly workers. Work hours are unstable and unpredictable, which make it hard to establish family routines and leads to fluctuating earnings. There is over-employment at the top because with fixed costs, the incentive is for employers to take full advantage of their employees. Under-employment is fostered at the bottom because there are few fixed costs for hourly workers, which incentivizes employers to minimize a worker's hours. Solutions to fix this imbalance include applying incentives to employers at both the top and the bottom: at the top--require employers to pay salaried workers overtime, and at the bottom--require a minimum number of working hours a week for hourly employees.

Ana Duarte McCarthy, Managing Director and Chief Diversity Officer at Citi, is responsible for the development and integration of Citi’s global workforce diversity strategy for hiring and developing diverse talent, fostering an inclusive work environment and ensuring management accountability. Since assuming the role, Ana has established a framework of policy and practices that have advanced Citi’s recognition as a top company for diversity. Among her accomplishments, Ana led a global team that designed and launched Citi’s flexible work strategies, was instrumental in the adoption of leadership development initiatives for women and fostered Citi’s employee network program, now spanning more than seventy networks.

During the webinar, she discusses the results of a Citi administered survey which aimed to capture attitudes about work-life balance among its employees. There were differences in responses about what "having it all" meant for different generations, and also between men and women. She also explains how a "flex" schedule came to be associated with lower levels of ambition, and how Citi has successfully reinvigorated their flexible working program to remove the negative association. Ana cautioned that there must be a commitment to flexible work schedules at both the institutional and direct supervisor level.