Turkey Season for Women… Still?

Yeah, in Turkey – a NATO member and purportedly a secular nation – sexist President Recep Erdogan recently iterated his rather archaic, fundamentalist Sunni perspective on women in contemporary society, oddly at a women’s conference. “‘You cannot put women and men on an equal footing,’ he told a meeting in Istanbul. ‘It is against nature.’ He also said feminists did not grasp the importance of motherhood in Islam… ‘In the workplace, you cannot treat a man and a pregnant woman in the same way,’ Mr Erdogan said, according to the Anadolu news agency.

“Women cannot do all the work done by men, he added, because it was against their ‘delicate nature’… ‘Our religion regards motherhood very highly,’ he said. ‘Feminists don't understand that, they reject motherhood.’… He said women needed equal respect rather than equality.” BBC.com, November 24^th. Sound right or like the rantings of leader of an out-of-touch primitive belief system, one that is shared not just by fundamentalist Muslims but religions and cultures the world over? Er… perhaps even here in the good old USA.

In the Western world, you’d think that between Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Germany’s Angela Merkel, perhaps adding the general notion that former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is acknowledged as one of the frontrunners expected in the 2016 presidential, we have made a pretty clear statement about our values. But while John McCain’s age was fairly downplayed in his presidential run, the comments from the GOP right – the same folks who supported McCain – believe that Ms. Clinton’s age (younger than McCain when he ran) is too important to ignore. After all, they must believe, women wear age less gracefully than men? Getting steamed yet or comfortable with these notions?

Yet as the GOP sees former female corporate CEO’s vying for major office – Meg Whitman (eBay and HP) in her failed attempt to win the California governorship and former HP CEO Carly Fiorina’s announced “exploration” of a bid for the GOP presidential nod in 2016 – there still seems to be a hesitancy to accept leadership at the top from our conservative constituency. “American women hold 12 percent of governor’s seats and make up 17 percent of Congress. If these numbers sound low, that’s because they are: The United States ranks a stunning 85th in the world in women’s parliamentary representation.” Center for Women. OK, the recent elections have added a few more women to the mix, but the skew is still seriously out-of-whack. 

The issue of equal pay for equal pay still makes the business headlines, and despite all the rhetoric, the matter is anything but resolved. Male executives argue that pregnancy leave and family priorities encumber women by choice, and that the skew of pay advantage comes from these social realities. Woman cry “BS!” and note that the glass ceiling and pay discrepancies apply regardless of marital status, having children or any other social “explanation” other than simple discrimination.

So let’s look at the top of the food chain… at over-educated women from the best schools or who have elected to compete with more-than-comparable resumes in male-dominated bastions. Where brain-power is the value proposition, not brawn.

“Another day, it seems, another study about the gender gap in careers. [In mid-November], Gallup told us women are more pessimistic about the job market. New Bloomberg Businessweek data showed us that female MBAs reported an average of nearly $15,000 less in expected annual pay than men did. And research by a Canadian duo tells us the pay gap might have something to do with women working disproportionately for older men.

“Harvard Business School professor Robin Ely, Hunter College professor Pamela Stone and Colleen Ammerman, assistant director of the Gender Initiative at HBS, set out to examine what more than 25,000 male and female HBS graduates had to say about work, careers and family. In doing so, they found sharply different levels of career satisfaction for men and women, they found professional and familial expectations that were at odds with each other, and they found data that could help debunk some conventional myths about why the gender gap persists.

“To start, the study unearthed a statistically significant difference in how many men versus women were happy in their careers. For instance, 59 percent of the men said they found their work meaningful, compared with just 49 percent of women. Exactly half of the men in the study said they were in jobs with opportunities for career advancement, compared with just 41 percent of women…

“Sixty-one percent of the men, for example, said that when they graduated from HBS, they expected their careers to take precedence over their partner's — yet that turned out to be true for 70 percent of them instead. Meanwhile, just 25 percent of women said they expected to be in a traditional arrangement where their spouse's career came first. Thirty-nine percent, however, found that to be the reality… 78 percent of the men believed their spouse would be the primary caregiver in their marriage, and that actually turned out to be the case for 86 percent. For women, visions of equal parenting responsibilities quickly vanished, and even more women than expected became the one shouldering child care responsibilities.

“The study also was able to poke holes in some of the common theories about why the gender gap persists — such as the ideas that too many women "opt out" of the workforce after having families, or take breaks in their careers that cause them to fall behind. Neither issue turned out to be much of a factor for these ambitious, well-positioned women. Only 11 percent of the HBS alumnae surveyed were out of the workforce and caring for children full-time. (For women of color, the figure was even lower, at just 7 percent.)” Washington Post, November 19^th.

The situation in the tech world, particularly the Silly-Con Valley, is notably worse: “Many tech companies readily admit that their workforces aren't as diverse as they could be — and that they're trying hard to fix the imbalance. To date, company demographics that skew heavily toward whites and men have received most of the attention. But as I've written before, there also exists a substantial gap in gender pay in Silicon Valley.

“The wage gap largely mirrors the national average; according to the American Association of University Women, female workers in the computer science field make 77 percent what their male peers do one year out of college. By comparison, Census data suggest that women make 78 percent of what men do, generally.

“But we're starting to get a better idea of specific differences between men and women's salaries at different tech companies. A recent survey of median salaries by Glassdoor suggests that at many Silicon Valley firms, men make thousands of dollars more than women every year. At Google, for instance, a male senior software engineer makes 19 percent more than his female counterpart.” Washington Post, November 26^th.

There are variable that justify some but hardly all of the discrepancies: “The numbers are heavily conditional on experience and the number of reports from either sex. There are big discrepancies between men and women in terms of years worked, even within the same job. The male senior software engineer at Google has, on average, nearly a decade of experience compared to just 7.6 years for women with the same title. Experience is likely one factor that helps drive up male wages relative to women.

“At the same time, however, where women demonstrate more experience than men, the wage gap doesn't substantially shift in favor of women like you might expect. For instance, female software engineers at Cisco largely have more work experience than their male counterparts — yet that isn't reflected in their salaries. A mid-level female engineer at the company with nearly a year and a half more experience makes just $162 more per year, according to Glassdoor's data.” The Post.

We see that statistics all the time. But since we’re not going to cut pay for male counterparts, and massive pay increases for women across the board probably isn’t economically viable, what is the solution? First, there really does need to be an immediate adjustment where women workers are either equally or better qualified, and if the dollars aren’t there, how about balancing the inequality with a few more stock options. Further, over time, as pay increases are implemented in future years, adding an equalizing bump until parity is achieved would seem to be a necessary evil. If the EEOC and other relevant governmental agencies can create statistical profiles on our biggest employers, failures to pursue equalizing compensation policies should become actionable without forcing women to alienate their bosses by filing actions. It just time to end this ancient anomaly and recognize brain and work power for what it really is.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s time to look at people… as, well, people without gender biases.