Barriers & Opportunities

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

In Marriott’s personal life, marriage is something reserved for a man and a woman. But he has long been reluctant to impose that view on the company his father founded. Not only could that crimp the company’s $12 billion in sales, it might demoralize employees working in more than 3,700 Marriott properties worldwide. With Mitt Romney’s presidential run and same-sex marriage in the headlines, we spoke about his stance as Mormon leaders were being held up for scrutiny again.

“This church helped me raise a family and has brought great joy and happiness to my life,” he told me. But that didn’t mean gay employees had any less status at Marriott. “We have to take care of our people, regardless of their sexual orientation or anything else,” he said. “We are an American Church. We have all the American values: the values of hard work, the values of integrity, the values of fairness and respect.” Marriott has both a deep faith and a deep understanding of his responsibility as a leader. Many of his shareholders, customers, and employees don’t belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their values matter, too.

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From The National Law Journal:

We probed that question by compiling partnership data as part of The National Law Journal's NLJ 250 survey, which ranks the largest firms in the United States by headcount. Data collected from 221 firms show that women represent 15.1 percent of equity partners. Among all partners — equity and nonequity — the figure is 18.8 percent.

That's progress since 2003, when NLJ affiliate The American Lawyer compiled similar data, though the pace of change has been slow and tenuous. The overall percentage of women in equity and nonequity partner positions then was 16 percent. As for equity partners, the National Association of Women Lawyers said in a 2011 report that women have been "fixed" at 15 percent of the equity slots for the past 20 years.

At just five firms surveyed, women make up more than 25 percent of equity partners. These firms are Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy (42 percent female equity partners); Jackson Kelly (28.4 percent); Ice Miller (26.9 percent); Best Best & Krieger (26.7 percent); and Ford & Harrison (26.1 percent).

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From The New York Times:

The ascent of Ms. Mayer and women like Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard, Virginia Rometty at I.B.M. and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook contrasts sharply with the continuing misfortunes of many women on Wall Street.

In the spring, when JPMorgan Chase disclosed a $3 billion trading loss (which has since climbed to an estimated $5.8 billion), Ina R. Drew, the head of the bank’s chief investment office, became the first casualty. Ms. Drew resigned immediately and is now expected to lose the equivalent of two years’ compensation, an estimated $30 million, for her involvement in the fiasco.

Her departure followed unceremonious exits last year by female executives on Wall Street, where the scarcity of women in top positions has become a bitter symbol of the low status women hold in U.S. corporate life. JPMorgan Chase lost Heidi Miller, the former head of the bank’s international operations, and at Bank of America, Sallie Krawcheck, who ran the company’s wealth management division, also left. Zoe Cruz, another high-profile Wall Street executive and former co-head of Morgan Stanley, was ousted in 2007.

The figures tell an alarming story. Women make up more than half of the work force in the financial industry but are chief executives at fewer than 3 percent of U.S. financial companies, according to Catalyst, a New York-based global research and consulting nonprofit focused on women’s career advancement.

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From NPR:

From U.S. News and World Report/the AP:

Japan's world champion women's football team took exception to flying economy while their male counterparts sat in business class on a flight to Europe for the Olympics. The Japan Football Association said the men flew in business because they are professionals.

The women's team was assigned seats in premium economy for the 13-hour flight to Paris while the nation's under-23 men's team was up front on the same flight.

"It should have been the other way around," 2011 FIFA women's world player of the year Homare Sawa told Japanese media after arriving in the French capital. "Even just in terms of age we are senior."

Basketball Australia says it will review its travel policy for national teams after complaints that the men flew business class to the Olympics while most of the women sat in premium economy.

The women's team is by far the most successful of the two, having won silver medals at the last three Olympics. The men, who will be led in London by San Antonio Spurs point guard Patty Mills, have never won an Olympic medal.

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From CBS News:

A new study in the journal Organization Science finds that when managers have to explain their pay-raise decisions to employees, they give more money to men than they do to women -- even if the workers' performance is equal. 

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In the study, originally done for Emory University, 184 managers were given a set amount of money that they needed to distribute among employees with identical skills and responsibilities. Half of the managers were told they would need to justify their decisions to their employees, and half were told there would be no discussion afterwards.

Unfortunately, women can't overcome an initially low raise by negotiating because the corporate budget has already been spent. In many companies, each manager receives a budget for raises that is then divided among employees. All workers are notified at the same time (or over a very short time period) of their increases. Because every penny has already been allotted, there is no money left to give to someone who questions a small raise. Managers won't typically go to an employee with a higher raise and say, "Oops! Jane needs a few more bucks, so we're taking a percent off your raise and giving it to her!"

The only way a raise can go through at this point is for an exception to be granted. And that requires a lot of hard work on the part of the manager and (most likely) the manager's manager. HR and senior management must be convinced that this additional raise, outside of the spent budget, is worth the money. And managers, who are cognizant of their own reputation, will try to do this without stating that they made a mistake in allocating raise money.