economy

Was Wall Street’s crash due, in part, to an overload of testosterone?

More and more, people are saying YES.  And on Tuesday, The Financial Times connected the dots and called for 30% women on all corporate boards.  Says the FT, “If there is ever a time for women to make a decisive breakthrough in corporate boardrooms, it is surely now. Many boards, especially in financial services, are in flux after the testosterone-fueled excesses that led to financial disaster. There is a desperate need to rebuild trust, more easily achieved if boards better reflect customers and the public.”

On June 24 over at Bloomberg here in NYC, the National Council for Research on Women will be launching a new piece of research looking at reasons and solutions for why there are so few women managing money.  The report (which I’ve seen, and believe me, it’s GOOD) puts the issue in a broader context to look at on the lack of women in positions of leadership and power at financial services firms more generally.  (Read more about the forthcoming paper–which Purse Pundit is at the center of–here.)

Testosterone may have been just one cause among many for the massive failures wrought by the financial industry.  But is sure is nice to see this issue getting some serious play.

Is the recession upping the ante on birth control and/or abortion?  Two writers in my authors group ask the question this week.  Check out Lauren Sandler over at The Big Money: No Way Baby – Are Market Forces the Ultimate Contraception? And Annie Murphy Paul over at Double X: Is the Recession Causing More Abortions?

And then, there are those, like (ahem) me, going entirely the other direction…

I wrote about being preggers with twins!

This month is a double hitter for me: I’ve got bits in the current issues of Ms. and Psychology Today.

The Spring 2009 issue of Ms.— just about to hit the newsstands if not already there– features an article I wrote on the history and funding of women’s studies programs for the special Ms. “2009 Guide to Women’s Studies.”  The first in a planned annual series, the guide—done in collaboration with the National Women’s Studies Association—provides details on 196 undergraduate and 47 post-graduate women’s studies programs, with data on additional undergraduate programs here and here.  Very cool tool for promoting women’s studies as a college major.  And the best part was that I had another reason to call up Mariam Chamberlain, founding president of the National Council for Research on Women, who was at the Ford Foundation when women’s studies began. Mariam–who just celebrated her 91st birthday, in great style–was responsible for funding women’s studies research from the get go, and for many reasons, I owe her a ton.

The June 2009 issue of Psychology Today has a bit not by me, but, well, about me.  Or rather, about Marco and me.  Seems we’re fast becoming the postercouple for laidoff men and breadwinning wives.  Ok, I know, I started it by writing about it at Recessionwire.  But we just said “no” to a very nice invitation to appear on one of the national morning shows, because we’re feeling a little reticent.  I mean, I’m all for going on tv to speak as “the expert,” but we’re starting to feel like a human interest story, and well, that’s just not in our interest, if you know what I mean.  (But thanks for the interest, morning show!  And I’m still happy to come on as an expert on gender and recession over there!)

The funniest part of it all, however, was that I had forgotten I’d done this interview and photoshoot for Psychology Today (magazine lead time is generally 3 months, so it took place in the winter).  I was reminded on the airplane, while sitting next to Courtney Martin on our way down to Atlanta last week.

I was reading (this is embarrassing) Star, and Courtney was reading Psychology Today.  I was just saying how fed up I was getting with Star (I’m a glutton for punishment) when Courtney shouted something like “Hey, it’s you!”  And there I was, photographed with Marco in a full page spread with a little blurb about our situation.

I think I shouted “Get! Out!” just as everyone got quiet for takeoff.  Ah well.

I am SO late to posting this today, but here goes.  Today is (still!) Equal Pay Day.  And this morning, the National Women’s Law Center released some new state-by-state data on the wage gap.  Seems we’re doing a little better here in New York (where women make 82% of what men do) than in my homestate of Illinois (where women make 73%).  But it’s all really quite pathetic.  I mean, this is 2009, for christsake!  Didn’t we all think we’d be a little further along by now?  I mean, seriously, if you want to talk about ways to stimulate the economy, how bout investing in women by paying us what we’re worth!  Jeesh.

For more blogging, raging, ranting, and informative discourse on the subject, go here. For some particularly great posts, check out the one at The REAL Deal, by Kyla Bender-Baird and the one over at Gloria Feldt’s blog.

If you’re like me, after getting all fired up about this issue, you’re gonna want to take action.  You can write to your Senators in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act, by clicking here.

(And thanks to the National Women’s Law Center — and in particular Robin Reed — for spearheading Blog for Equal Pay Day!)

Huh?  Recession and sex, in the same sentence?  Check out my latest at Recessionwire, a personal (well, not that personal) riff on a Forbes article that asks whether recession is good for sex.  And I forgot to link to last week’s post, about Marco coming back home…

Travels and graduations behind us, we’re back! This month foremost on our minds is the issue of budget cuts. How many times will history have to repeat itself before we get it right?

Question: What do cuts in services for disabled and vulnerable people, shoddy food regulation practices that are making people in some states very sick, the recent rise in crime and simultaneous reductions in police resources, and even Nebraska’s inability to provide adequate services for troubled children and their families have in common?

Answer: These recent phenomena can be traced in some part to the reduction in social services that is common in national, state, and local budgets when trying to prevent the onset of a deep fiscal crisis. While these phenomena are all deeply troubling, even more troubling is the fact that there is historic evidence that such cuts do not work and, in many cases, actually have the opposite effect. That is, when the state no longer pays for things like health care, education, and even local security, there are extremely negative consequences for everyday people, especially for vulnerable groups such as the elderly, the disabled, and children, who depend on such services for daily survival.

In the 1980s, the world saw the effect of these policies writ large in the international arena, with so-called “Structural Adjustment Plans”, or plans put in place by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which laid out various conditions that had to be met by countries in order to get a loan from both establishments. Most of these conditions involved the opening of markets, “free” trade conditions, and extreme reductions in state provisions of social services like health care and education; it was argued that such services should instead be privatized. In short, the prevailing sentiment was this: let the markets take over and we’ll see what happens.

What happened was that structural adjustment plans had disastrous effects, particularly in many parts of Latin America (where the period of heavy structural adjustment has led many to refer to the 1980s as the “lost decade”) and Africa (where 34 countries implemented some form of a structural adjustment plan in the 1980s). Further, women were the ones to bear the brunt of many of the negative effects of these policies. According to Dzodzi Tsikata of the Third World Network, this is because such policies “assume the unlimited availability of women’s unpaid labour and time and… have tended to see women as a resource to be tapped to promote the efficiency of free market policies and to deal with the short-fall in access to social services.” In many instances, this leads to an increase in women’s working burdens and social responsibilities. In other words, women are expected to shoulder the majority of the burden of reductions in state provided services. And this phenomenon is not limited to developing countries (and surely not when the developing countries in question are following the economic prescriptions of their Western donors and lenders) – critics in the US have also argued that domestic budget cuts have a disproportionate effect on women and children.

The USA’s neighbor up north hasn’t done much better. Kathleen Lahley, a Law professor at Queen’s University in Canada outlined in her gender analysis of the 2009 budget, key ways in which the Canadian government has missed the mark. Not only does her analysis make for good reading, it also demonstrates how women in Canada will not directly benefit as much as men will from the $64 billion in spending and tax cuts. Gender equity requirements have not been included in the spending programs – the result is a gender-skewed stimulus.

With so much evidence on the negative effects of cuts to social services, one wonders why this model is still pursued in such a fashion and, further, whether there are any movements (policy or otherwise) to reverse the ongoing trend, particularly as global leaders consider changes to international economic frameworks in light of the recent crisis.

As we can see, leaders in North America don’t seem to be the fastest learners, but what about the rest of the world? The World Bank and the IMF? In 2007 Elaine Zuckerman, a former World Bank economist, challenged the Bretton Woods institutions to improve their track record of short-changing women. For all intents and purposes, it seems that World Bank President, Robert Zoellick, is trying to rise to the challenge. At last month’s G20 meeting in London, he spoke of the Bank’s plan to develop a Vulnerability Framework. The fund would provide support infrastructure, agriculture, small- to medium- size businesses and micro-finance. Past lessons may just be paving the way to a more gender-balanced future for the World Bank. This plan would benefit not only men through infrastructure jobs, but also women who are heavily involved in agriculture, are the majority of small business owners, and represent 85% of the poorest 93 million clients of Microfinance Institutions. This effort would require a contribution of 0.7% of more “developed” countries’ stimulus packages. Maybe this is their way of making up for the gaping holes left at home through budget cuts…nice but gender equality should happen at home too.

Who would have thought that the G20 would bring us even more good news?! We were a bit skeptical at first; the official documents that come out of these meetings rarely mention gender equality. Oh, we of little faith! The G20 countries pledged to support the World Bank’s Vulnerability Framework AND addressed the human dimension to the crisis and the pledge to “build a fair and family-friendly labour market for both women and men.” Steps in the right direction. Let’s hope this will manifest itself in thoughtful gender-conscious budget cuts across the board. The entire Official Communique can be seen here.

Finally, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner called for a “new starting point” in hemispheric relations at the recent Fifth Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago (the country that gave you Blogger TAB 🙂 ). While much attention has been given to Presidents Obama, Castro and Chavez, we recommend you take a look at President Fernandez’s speech, which was in our opinion one of the, if not the, best (though we haven’t been able to find any links to it). Further, the Summit’s Declaration of Commitment’s preamble Point 6 is calypso music to our ears: “We recognize the importance of considering the differentiated needs of women and men in promoting and ensuring the integration of the gender perspective as a cross cutting issue in national and hemispheric policies, plans and programmes to be implemented in the political, economic labour, social and cultural spheres…’’

At the very least, countries globally have demonstrated a rhetorical commitment to gender-balanced recovery and development. It remains to be seen how these plans will be put into action. Judging from past experiences, the best way to ensure that these rhetorical commitments are implemented in practice is through the work of gender researchers, advocates and practitioners, who must hold governments and international organizations accountable for the commitments that they make in these international forums. So, please, join us in reminding local, state, and national leaders to stick to their commitments to build a more gender-inclusive world. Let the fiscal crisis be used as an opportunity to strengthen gender equitable programs – not an excuse to cut much-needed services for women, men, and children.

Image Credit

Josh Coleman steps up to the mike and frames the conference by starting with how the women’s movement has made life better not only for women but for men.  Yet at the same time, and especially in this moment of recession, where men are being laid off in droves, women’s increased power is in some way a challenge to men’s identity.  The traditional markers of male identity–protector, provider–have been eroded.  As Michael Kimmel says, men are left with all of the empowerment and none of the power.  [??!!]  So there’s a crisis in masculinity out there.  (Ok, yes, reality check: women earn 80% what men do, etc etc.)

Questions the conference will ask:

How will recession affect relationships between men and women?

Will men express their masculinity by doing even less?

Is the gender revolution dead, or still evolving?

What’s going on with gender convergence in families and intimate relationships?

What’s going on with gender in the next generation?

Is our culture of individualism make marriages today more happy and resilient or more fragile?

What kind of work/family policies make families more resilient and what makes them more stressed?

What does the recent election tell about gender today?

Stay tuned….

A dear friend and colleague of mine–and fellow blogger!–Shari Cohen is leading a fabulous workshop here in NYC for anyone currently looking to jumpstart their career.  Looking to make a move from an unsatisfying position to something more meaningful?  Or between jobs and searching for what’s next?  Then you seriously might want to check this out.

Shari’s Career Action Group is a 4-week career transition workshop starting on May 5. She’s doing it in partnership with Next Step Partners, a firm that is launching similar groups across the country, including in Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area.  Why is this workshop different from all other career workshops?  Shari has an intense background in leadership development work, and she’s awesome at helping people figure out ways to contribute their talent and creativity in new directions.  I should know.  I’ve worked with her myself.

Here’s the formal bio:

Shari Cohen, Ph.D., a senior consultant with Next Step Partners, focuses on leadership development.  She has been working for over ten years to help leaders in international development, health, philanthropy, advocacy, market research, technology and publishing, to access their potential, build their confidence and expand their creativity.  She has consulted for the World Bank, Carnegie Corporation, Bain, Demos and Doctors without Borders.  Previous experience includes senior management positions at two non-profits where she built leadership programs.  She also served as a professor of international relations at Wellesley College.  Shari holds a Ph.D. in political sociology from University of California, Berkeley, and a BA from Cornell University.  She has a certificate in organizational and executive coaching from NYU.

For more info about the Career Action Group, go here.  But whether you’re career-shifting or not, definitely check out Shari’s blog, Unstuck Future, where she’s been writing lately about thinking about your career from the inside out, and her own career transition, as well.  Like me, and like many GWP readers I know, Shari is a postacademic, so her insights really resonate, if you know what I mean.

For a great summary of last week’s panel, Women’s Economic Equality: The Next Frontier in Women’s Rights, hosted by Legal Momentum (and starring Heather Boushey, Linda Hirshman, Mimi Abramowitz, and Irasema Garza), check out Kyla Bender-Baird over at The REAL Deal.