Catalyst announces 2007 awards

A release by Catalyst.org has announced the winners of the organization's 2007 award "recognizing corporate initiatives that advance women and business".

The year's winners Goldman Sachs, PepsiCo, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Scotiabank will make presentations at a ceremony at the Grand Hyatt in New York City on March 21, 2007.

"PCAST" Study: Worry about Kids a Drag on Productivity

A recent study by Catalyst, released Dec. 6, 2006, has put focus on what many working parents already intuitive know: "Millions of working fathers and mothers are less productive at work due to concerns about what their children are doing in the after-school hours."

The study, "After-School Worries: Tough on Parents, Bad for Business," was conducted in cooperation with the Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis University.

In reporting the findings, the researchers have devised a handy little acronym,
“PCAST,” standing for Parental Concern about After-School Time, to sum up those little minutes of distraction and commiseration with co-workers and worried phone calls that add up to hours of anxiety and afternoon-killers on the job.

"With over 52 million working parents in the United States," the study projects, "PCAST contributes to worker stress that costs businesses between $50 billion and $300 billion annually in lost job productivity."

Among the remedies this productivity-killer, the study suggests, is building real flexibility into the workplace: "Developing “The Agile Workplace,” placing emphasis on more job control enabling employees to “work smart” and perform better, focusing on goals and results, and granting all employees access to flexible work programs, including flex-time, telecommuting, and flex-space."

For more, see the release at Catalyst -- it's in Adobe PDF, so you need to install the free Adobe Reader software first.

Calling all "Geek Girls"

The latest in what's become an increasingly fretful series of articles about the lack of women entering the nation's (quickly depleting) pool of engineers suggests is examining models of university recruitment programs targeting women students.

A standout, it seems, has been the effort by MIT, where "targeted programs have yielded 36 percent female enrollment in undergraduate engineering," according to the article by the AP's Dorie Turner.

This still seems the exception rather than the rule, however. The articles focuses on other unversities' initiatives that have not reaped the same benefits. Women are still not entering the field in the needed numbers, in large part because of social and cultural obstacles -- such as stereotypes of the nerdy engineer, or the perception that engineering isn't a field "that allows you to help people" -- rather than industry or workplace obstacles.

Clearly, the path to success in the field is a tough one for women, and perhaps moreso for minority women in particular, as recounted in the profile, "How I Got Where I Am: An Engineering Manager," by College Journal's Adelle Waldman on the Village.

However, as a range of engineering-related industries are growing ever more hysterical over a looming labor crisis, a combination of university and industry intiatives designed to walk women engineers through the many stages of their career development seems to be reaping some results. As the Waldman profile shows, there were many times that Tonya Love, a young Black woman who worked her way into a gratifying position as a project leader at Xerox, doubted that the field was or could be a good one for her. Support in grad school, good advice, and a series of strong internships were crucial stepping stones that kept her going.

In another piece, young Sophie Theis, writing for YO! Youth Outlook Multimedia, sees a subtle cultural change going on, however, that might be good news for engineering schools. In Who Asked Us -- The New (Female) Nerd and the 'Gender Gap,' Theis argues that "the new gender gap is all about attitude":

The new nerd is a hard-working girl, while boys try hard to not try too
hard. That's why so many girls are achieving more than boys in high school and
college.

The development of a "geek-chic for girls" could bode well for companies looking to keep up their supply of skilled engineers, such as our many, many clients of who are specifically looking to fire engineers of all types and levels at IMDiversity.com. The editors are interested in keeping up with stories on this theme in the future, and would also be interested in hearing from some proud "geeks" out there to hear your views on what led to your interests in engineering, computing and similar fields. If you have a story to share with us, please drop us a line.

Happy New Year from the Women's Village!

After some time off for family and travel, the editors wish everyone a happy, healthy and productive new year.

We hope you had a chance to stop by over the holidays for some the features in our Women's Village Headline News section, which supplemented the usual news with some engaging and thought-provoking special series readings from the Associated Press about the stressors that come with holiday seasons, especially on working women.

For this week, we'll be running a new profile of business consultant Anna Duran, founder of the successful Duran Group. A Latina entrepreneur, Duran describes her life's path from her rough upbringing in East Oakland to New York and Wall Street, and her work on the way as a psychotherapist, a teacher at Columbia University, an author and business researcher, and a business diversity advocate. The feature is co-posted with our sister site, Hispanic American Village.

With the ascendancy of Nancy Pelosi, we'll probably also be following up with additional news from the Beltway this week, and we will definitely be updating our featured jobs again, so we hope you'll stop back again soon.

Waging War on the Wage Gap

I found an article I thought both informative and supportive of women concerned with wage parity. We’ve got a long way to go before women are paid equal pay for equal work, and, as Debra Katz and Christine F. Andronici in Ms. Magazine by way of AlterNet show, we’re both blamed for the disparity and punished for speaking up. Their article, The Wage Gap for Women, shows how women, once hired at a salary lower than their male counterparts, have a hard time addressing the discrepancy because employers, supported by the courts, front a “she-didn’t-ask” defense.

The authors suggest pushing their case in the courts the better way to right the imbalance, because there are protective statutes on the books, most notably in the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act. This way, too, employers who just don’t get it yet will be digging their own graves by hiring women at lower salaries while women won’t have to risk not getting the job for speaking up.
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Affirmative Action for Boys???
And now I learn that young women applicants for the university shouldn't be upset when they're passed over by a boy with the justification that the gender balance has tipped demonstrably in their favor. Even erstwhile all boys creme de la creme, Harvard, icon of boy brain power, is girl-dominant now. See here.

IWMF: Good Group Grants Good Women Awards

The International Women’s Media Foundation has granted three women its
yearly award for Courage in Journalism. Amongst them is Jill Carroll,
the Christian Science Monitor reporter captured and held for 82 days in
Iraq. Also awarded were May Chidiac of Lebanon and Gao Yu of China.

The organization gave a Lifetime Achievement award to Elena
Poniatowska, Mexican journalist, writer and social icon. Poniatowska
was born in Paris into Polish nobility (her full name at birth was
Princess Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amelie Paula Dolores Poniatowska
Amor), moving to Mexico during World War II with her family. Educated
in the States, Poniatowska returned to Mexico and eschewed her
privileged background. She has devoted her life to social justice
issues.

For most of her journalistic career, Poniatowska has written for Mexico
City’s prominent daily, La Jornada.

Perhaps of greatest import has been her book, La Noche de Tlatelolco
(Massacre in Mexico), which recounts the indiscriminate gunning down of
student protesters, their supporters and innocent onlookers and
passersby, during a march in the Tlatelolco district of the Mexican
capital. Estimates of civilians killed during the army massacre of the
afternoon and night of Oct. 2, 1968 range anywhere from 300 to several
thousand.

The International Women’s Media Foundation is a super group of women
journalists supporting women’s efforts for full participation in media.
They provide training and seminars to enhance women’s skills and
opportunities; liaise with and support women in perilous assignments
worldwide; and do research, issuing reports on the role of women in the
media.

The IWMF was especially helpful to me, providing invaluable contacts
while I worked on my article, Women on War, for the Women’s Village.

So, “Hats (or whatever) off” to all the worthy women of the group and
their awardees.

Pelosi Steps Up as Democrats Shift Balance of Power in DC

With U.S. Democrats taking control of the House of Representatives for the first time since 1994, Nancy Pelosi is now in line to become the first woman Speaker of the House.

While there remain before her some tricky negotiations within her Party, which in many ways turned toward a more moderate position last night, Pelosi looks forward to a powerful role that can significantly control the country’s legislative agenda. The Speaker of the House is also second in the line of presidential succession, behind only the Vice President.