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For women in business, the squeaky wheel doesn’t get the grease
Our recent Catalyst report, The Myth of the Ideal Worker , reveals that women do ask for raises and promotions. They just don’t get as much in return.
The research focused on career paths of high-potential men and women, drawing on thousands of MBA graduates from top schools around the world. Catalyst found that, among those who had moved on from their first post-MBA job, there was no significant difference in the proportion of women and men who asked for increased compensation or a higher position.
Yet the rewards were different.
Women who initiated such conversations and changed jobs post MBA experienced slower compensation growth than the women who stayed put. For men, on the other hand, it paid off to change jobs and negotiate for higher salaries—they earned more than men who stayed did. And we saw that as both men’s and women’s careers progress, the gender gap in level and pay gets even wider.
Our findings run counter to media coverage of the so-called phenomenon that “women don’t ask.” Instead the problem may be, as some other research has shown, that people routinely take a tougher stance against women in negotiations than they take against men—for example quoting higher starting prices when trying to sell women cars or making less generous offers when dividing a sum of money. Catalyst research has shown a number of ways that talent-management systems can also be vulnerable to unintentional gender biases and stereotypes.
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MotherJones weighs in on requiring Drug Tests for the Unemployed
Jesse Rothstein, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley who has studied unemployment insurance, says there’s little evidence that lack of education or drug addiction is the main problem for most unemployed people. “Most of the problem right now is that there aren’t enough jobs,” he says. The most recent data from the Bureau on Labor Statistics backs him up, showing 6.9 million people receiving unemployment insurance (out of a total 14 million without work) versus 3.4 million job openings in September. The BLS data “implies that measures aimed at getting people to look harder for jobs aren’t likely to be very useful,” Rothstein adds.
Emsellem thinks the GOP bill sets the wrong tone. “This is about as punitive as you can get,” he says. “It’s almost like they threw every dastardly idea they could come up with and threw it on the wall to see what would stick.”
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H.R. 3601
To amend title III of the Social Security act to require a substance abuse risk assessment and targeted drug testing as a condition for the receipt of unemployment benefits, and for other purposes.
This was introduced by Jack Kingston, a Republican (obvi) from Georgia. There are a myriad of problems with this bill. One, we’ve already seen (thanks to Florida) that drug testing welfare recipients doesn’t work.
So why are we still so intent on treating the poor and the down-and-out like criminals? Kingston himself has made claims that companies want to hire people but “half” their options are on drugs. But that seems highly unlikely.
And why would we opt for a system that looses money on drug testing people, instead of using this money to help people get back to work?
The other thing that worries me about this bill is the wording that would allow it to randomly test people who are more “at risk” for drug use. And who would that be? People with prior drug charges? It doesn’t seem to specify, and so I feel like it wouldn’t be too bold of me to say this would likely effect minorities and people with a lower income. Right?
I know it’s actually a popular public sentiment to test recipients of government resources. But we need to think about what this would actually accomplish and how problematic this is. But those ideas are based off stereotypes and ignorance. People receiving unemployment generally already have guidelines they are following - applying for a certain number of jobs a week, etc.
Feel free to inbox me any comments/ideas, and I would encourage writing to your representative to oppose this bill.
