Diversity & Inclusion

Recruiting and retaining a work force that is diverse in gender, race and other markers of difference provides businesses and organizations with innovative ideas and a competitive edge. Diversity provides a significant advantage in competing for clients, customers and suppliers in today’s global marketplace. NCRW is supporting diversity efforts by recommending best practices for recruiting, retaining and advancing the careers of women, particularly women of color. This research extends to examining the benefits of diversity in leadership and how women’s participation improves decision-making. NCRW is helping companies to assess their workplace environments and identify barriers to inclusion: from practices, to policies, to the informal culture of organizations. NCRW’s Corporate Circle supports companies in their efforts to strengthen and advance policies that boost diversity and inclusion.

For women in the workplace, it's still about looks not deeds

Teaser:

MSNBC reports on public reactions to women like Hillary Clinton and Rebekah Brooks appearing in public without make-up.

Editorial:

From MSNBC:

It goes to show that no matter how high up in business or politics a woman gets — or how hard she falls — in the end the focus is often about how she looks and not what she does.

“We’re still held to a double standard,” said Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who produced the 2011 documentary “Miss Representation” about the underrepresentation of women in powerful positions.

“It’s tragic,” she said. “We have an obsession with women’s looks. Unfortunately our culture has bought into this whole double standard that a women’s value is her beauty not her capacity to lead.”

Women certainly feel the pressure to look good. Nearly half of women don’t feel good about themselves unless they’re wearing makeup, according to a study released this year by the Renfrew Center Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on eating disorder research and treatment.

[...]

Source:

MSNBC

URL:

http://lifeinc.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/15/11698778-for-women-in-the-workplace-its-still-about-looks-not-deeds

Date:

May 15, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

The Real Reason Women Are More Likely to Fly Solo When It Comes to Work

Teaser:

Barbara & Shannon Kelley look at women who opt out of the mommy track and instead work for themselves.

Editorial:

From the Huffington Post:

I came across an interesting study the other day that found that when it comes to independent work -- freelancing, consulting, you name it -- those indie workers are more likely to be women. According toMBO Partners' Independent Workforce Index, some 8.5 million women are choosing to fly solo when it comes to work, making up 53 percent of all independent workers.

It's all about work life balance and career satisfaction, the study found, adding that many of the women they surveyed are finding their choice to go it alone more rewarding than traditional work.

Sounds quite dreamy, doesn't it?

But when you look beyond the numbers, you realize there's more involved here than the entrepreneurial spirit or the freedom to go to work in your jammies -- which, when you come right down to it, really isn't all that dreamy. One reason for the growing number of women saying "oh, phooey" to the land of nine-to-five may speak to something beyond career satisfaction, and that's the workplace itself, which still skews a little Mad Men, where, for every Don behind the desk, there's a Betty at home to take care of business. (Okay, Betty's been replaced, but you get my point.)

This is especially true for women with kids. Back when we were doing research and reporting for ourbook, we came across a relevant study by Joan Williams, who's a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and director of the Hastings Center for WorkLife Law. Her report, The Three Faces of Work-Family Conflict, authored with the Center for American Progress, found that women with families were often marginalized or even pushed out when their jobs demanded 24/7 availability or when "full time" meant fifty hours a week or more.

[...]

Source:

Huffington Post

URL:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shannon-kelley/women-and-work_b_1480152.html

Date:

May 8, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Women At Work: Jealousy And Envy Impact Women Differently Than Men

Teaser:

The Huffington Post reports on a study, published in the journal Revista de Psicologia Social, that examined the way that feelings of jealousy (defined as "a threat or loss of success in a relationship due to interference from a rival") and envy (defined as "a response to another person who has success, skills or qualities that [you] desire") impact workplace dynamics.

Editorial:

From the Huffington Post:

Have you ever been jealous of someone that you work with? According to a new study, a whole lot of people are -- and those feelings of jealousy impact women differently than they do men.

The study, published in the most recent issue of the journal Revista de Psicologia Social, examined the way that feelings of jealousy (defined as "a threat or loss of success in a relationship due to interference from a rival") and envy (defined as "a response to another person who has success, skills or qualities that [you] desire") impact workplace dynamics. The researchers were especially interested in the way that these feelings impact "intrasexual competition"-- competition between people of the same gender spurred on by the desire to get and keep "access" to the opposite sex.

What they found after studying men and women in the Netherlands, Spain and Argentina was that women's feelings of jealousy and envy can be predicted by intrasexual competition, whereas men's can't. "Women with a high level of intrasexual competition are more jealous if the rival is more attractive, and more envious if the rival is more powerful and dominating," Rosario Zurriaga, one of the study's authors, told the Spanish Foundation for Research and Technology. However, when it came to social skills, both men and women showed signs of jealousy and envy toward individuals who seemed to have an easier time socially at the office.

[...]

Source:

Huffington Post

URL:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emma-gray/women-at-work-jealousy-envy-men_b_1480030.html

Date:

May 7, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Pay Matters: The Positive Economic Impacts of Paid Family Leave for Families, Businesses and the Public

Submitted by asklar on Mon, 05/07/2012 - 10:22am

With a growing need for family-friendly workplace policies, a new study commissioned by the National Partnership for Women & Families, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, concludes that providing paid family leave to workers leads to positive economic outcomes for working families, businesses and the public.

The research, conducted by the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, finds that women who use paid leave are far more likely to be working nine to 12 months after a child’s birth than those who do not take any leave.

URL:

http://smlr.rutgers.edu/paymatters-cwwreport-january2012

Member Organization:

Center for Women and Work

IPOs Are Still A Man’s Game, Study Of MBA Students Says

Teaser:

The Wall Street Journal reports on an experiment conducted recently at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business that reveals that "those firms led by women…were expected to have less share-price appreciation, and when asked to invest, respondents would choose to invest less,”

Editorial:

From The Wall Street Journal:

More and more women over the last decade have climbed the corporate ladder into top management, but if they’re leading a company that’s trying to go public, they’re more likely to run into trouble than men.

Female chief executives are perceived as less capable than males, according to an experiment conducted recently at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, and the companies that women lead are seen as less attractive investments.

“The big result of this study is that those firms led by women…were expected to have less share-price appreciation, and when asked to invest, respondents would choose to invest less,” said Assistant Professor Lyda Bigelow.

The negative feelings did not extend to companies with women in high levels of management, she added—just to the ones where women were chief executives.

[..]

A copy of the study, which has been accepted for publication by the Journal of Management, is here.

Source:

The Wall Street Journal

URL:

http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2012/05/03/ipos-are-still-a-man%E2%80%99s-game-study-says/?mod=google_news_blog

Date:

May 4, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

More Women Are Primed to Land CEO Roles

Teaser:

The Wall Street Journal reports that the pipeline of female managers and executives are positioned to be the next generation of chief executives.

Editorial:

From The Wall Street Journal:

The ranks of female chief executives remain thin, with women in the top spot at just 35 Fortune 1000 companies. But the pipeline is promising, says Maggie Wilderotter, CEO of Frontier Communications Corp., adding that she has noticed a number of "women in waiting" at Xerox Corp. and Procter & Gamble Co., where she is a board member.

She adds that she wouldn't be surprised if the number of major-company female CEOs doubled by 2017. At her own employer, a diversified telecom firm, half of Ms. Wilderotter's six direct reports are women.

"If you want a CEO role, you have to prepare for it with a vengeance," says Denise Morrison, chief of Campbell Soup Co. CPB and Ms. Wilderotter's sister.

[...]

Source:

The Wall Street Journal

URL:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303990604577368344256435440.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond

Date:

May 2, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Obesity affects job prospects for women, study finds

Teaser:

An Australian study finds that obese women are more likely to be discriminated against when applying for jobs and receive lower starting salaries than their non-overweight colleagues,

Editorial:

From EurekAlert:

The study, led by The University of Manchester and Monash University, Melbourne, and published in the International Journal of Obesity, examined whether a recently developed measure of anti-fat prejudice, the universal measure of bias (UMB), predicted actual obesity job discrimination. The researchers also assessed whether people's insecurity with their own bodies (body image) and conservative personalities such as, authoritarianism, and social dominance orientation were related to obesity discrimination, as they are related to homophobia and racism.

Psychologist and lead researcher Dr Kerry O'Brien said the nature of the study was initially concealed from the participants to avoid biased results, and simply advertised as a study on whether some people are better at personnel selection than others.

[...]

Source:

EurekAlert

URL:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-04/uom-oaj043012.php

Date:

May 1, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Don’t Call Women the Richer Sex!

Teaser:

Examines the perception that women are outpacing men in the workforce.

Editorial:

From The Daily Beast:

Are women really on track to become “the richer sex” and replace men as primary breadwinners in American families, as recent headlines suggest? Not quite. The notion that women are outpacing men on the job has become a popular media narrative over the past few years. But the data on which it’s based don’t hold up.

Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed that, in fact, we’re in the middle of a “mancovery”—while women are slipping backwards. Between June 2009 and June 2011, women lost close to 300,000 jobs, while men gained more than 800,000. “We've never seen a recovery like this,” the National Women's Law Center's Joan Entmacher told NPR, “where two years into the recovery women are doing so much worse than men and are actually losing ground.”

Still, the popular perception is that women are soaring. Much is made of the “fact” that more than 40 percent of American women are their family’s breadwinner. In her recentTime magazine cover piece (adapted fromher new book, The Richer Sex), for example, journalist Liza Mundy cites 2009 Bureau of Labor Statistics data saying that one in four women outearn their spouses. This claim was picked up by scores of media outlets.

But look a bit more closely at the numbers, and the picture doesn’t seem so rosy for women. Which women are advancing? Andwhich men are backsliding? The answers are important if you are going to talk about who’s getting “rich.”

[...]

Source:

The Daily Beast

URL:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/28/don-t-call-women-the-richer-sex.html

Date:

April 30, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

Protest Outside Facebook HQ Challenges Pale, Male And Stale Board

Teaser:

The women's rights group UltraViolet organized a demonstration outside of Facebook's New York office to protest the social media company's appointment of an all-white, all-male board ahead of its IPO.

Editorial:

From Forbes:

There was a demonstration outside of Facebook’s New York office on Wednesday, organized by the women’s rights group UltraViolet, to protest the social media giant’s decision to appoint an all-white, all-male board ahead of its IPO. The group attempted to deliver a petition, signed by over 53,000 people, demanding that women be added to the board.

“Facebook is going to launch one of the largest IPO’s in history this summer, a success built largely on the participation of women – 58% of their users are women and the vast majority of sharing on the site is done by women – and yet zero people on the board are women.” said UltraViolet co-founder Shaunna Thomas.

Protesters argued that the decision to appoint an all-male board, was bad for the company and for users. Marie Wilson of the White House Project, an non-profit working to advance women in business, stressed the positive effects of women on boards, “We know the difference women make on boards in terms of long-term thinking that’s needed for the future and the value they bring in terms of what they want when they get on boards.” With the involvement of women, the board would better understand and serve its mostly female users, she argued.

[...]

Source:

Forbes

URL:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/evapereira/2012/04/26/protest-outside-facebook-hq-challenges-pale-male-and-stale-board-video/

Date:

April 27, 2012

Affiliate:

Associated Issues & Expertise:

The Next Generation: A Handbook for Mentoring Future Union Leaders

Submitted by asklar on Fri, 04/27/2012 - 10:23am

This handbook provides an overview of how to mentor union members or staff. It draws on literature on mentoring in unions and other settings as well as interviews with ten individuals who have mentored or been mentored in unions. The handbook is intended primarily for union leaders and for those who want to develop union members and staff to keep unions strong. Much of the information the handbook contains, however, is applicable to any not-for-profit organization.

by Institute for Women's Policy Research, The Berger-Marks Foundation (April 2012)

URL:

http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/the-next-generation-a-handbook-for-mentoring-future-union-leaders

Member Organization:

Institute for Women’s Policy Research

GET INVOLVED

What We Do

NCRW is a network of leading university and community based research, policy, and advocacy centers with a growing global reach dedicated to advancing rights and opportunities for women and girls. We also have a Corporate Circle comprised of senior diversity professionals from leading U.S. and global member companies and a Presidents Circle of college and university leaders who share our commitment. NCRW harnesses the collective power of its network to provide knowledge, analysis, and thought leadership on issues ranging from reducing women’s poverty to building a critical mass of women’s leadership across sectors.

Diversity & Inclusion

Search NCRW