Do Women Still Have to Work Harder Than Men?

I laughed out loud at a joke posted on Twitter recently. It said:

Question -What do you call a woman that works as hard as a man?
Answer: Lazy…

But it set me wondering. Is that still true for the younger women of today? Does a young woman setting out on a career today still have to work harder than her male counterparts for the same rewards?

Inevitably all the statistics refer to the past; we know there are currently far fewer senior women than men and that surveys reveal that women still take on the majority of childcare, other family caring, and housekeeping duties. But presumably those statistics relate to women who have come through the system in the last 20 years or so; we know discrimination was very evident then.

Surely things have changed for the better?

What do you think? If you are a young woman pursuing a career, or an older woman in an organisation, I’d really love to hear your views and experiences to date:

• If you work alongside younger women what have you observed about how young women are treated in your organisation?
• What is the ethos in your organisation? Lip service or meaningful engagment with the issues?
• If you are considering a family what impact do you think that will have on your career?
• Does it feel  possible to combine the two?
• If you are planning a family, have you factored that into your career planning? Discussed it with your partner?
• Do you feel that you must prove yourself more than your male counterparts?
• Do you feel there is still an issue around women and empowerment?

I’d really love to hear back from you. You can send me an email if you don’t want to go public, or use the comments section below. And please do forward onto friends who may have an opinion to share too. Thank you!

Photo Credit: Thomas Hamlyn-Harris

Men Only Use Half Their Brains?

You know we really shouldn’t believe everything we read, women especially as we have different sized brains. Oh and men only listen with half of their brain so obviously they don’t take everything in….or maybe they only need to use half a brain as their brains are bigger…

There is such a lot of rot out there about gender differences. It’s hard to know what to believe isn’t it? How research gets funded and then reported is not much different from how anything else gets out there, unfortunately. Someone, or a board of someones, either decided to fund it, or publish it, or not. And that decision is governed by what is popular, what sells, what their readers like, what funding is currently available, who is providing the funding and so on.

And the sad fact is, that research that shows there are big brain differences ‘twixt men and women gets lots of publicity and (relatively) lots more funding.

And studies that show there aren’t really any significant differences between genders gets less attention and less funding.

Research tends to reflect societal norms and expectations. And, interestingly, it seems so does how we answer research questions. (Ie women tell researchers they have talked too much or talked the most in a meeting; men tell researchers women did most of the talking in the same meeting, researchers have independently observed that men did most of the talking! We have a societal norm or expectation or bias that women talk a lot (too much?) and that’s is reflected in our answers .

Men and Brains

Back to men only listening with half of their brains…

In 2000, men and women were asked to lie down in a room and listen to a John Grisham story being read. The men showed more activity on their left brain sides while the women showed activity right across their brains. The media went to town with the men don’t listen theme.

What most reporting failed to mention was that this study used only 10 men and 10 women and no other tests (as far as I am aware) have replicated this experiment. In 2004 when four neuro-scientists carried out  a meta-analysis of 14 studies which had data on 377 women and 442 men they couldn’t find any significant difference; men and women showed similar brain activity when using language in listening and talking.

Brain Research

Our body of knowledge about how the brain works is growing all the time. As society ages there is more and more research on keeping the brain active and research seems to be suggesting that what we do can affect how the brain grows and develops. It seems the brain is like a muscle which grows or atrophies according to how it is used. It is not, it appears, a rigid pattern laid down at birth. Which could mean that the impact of how we live, our experiences and learning, affects how the brain looks and how we behave. Which means that because we expect boys and girls do behave differently, give them different opportunities and experiences, their brains may develop differently too.

It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Always look beyond the headline!

Photo credit: Joanie

Three Reasons Why Women Don’t Progress???

Well, if all the research and statistics are to be believed we women are a feeble bunch and hugely lacking in confidence! And that lack of confidence in our own abilities is a significant reason in our not applying for the top jobs!

Hmm, yes, confidence is an issue for many women in all areas of life, not least when it comes to grabbing those higher income and high status posts. That’s what the research tells us and that’s what we tell the researchers, apparently.

But I believe it cuts much deeper than that. I think we shy away (are kept away) from some of those top jobs because:

Three Reasons Women Are Not At The Top

1) We physically have children and society has still not organised itself in such a way that child care is valued (think how much child carers, usually women, get paid). It’s a rare organisation where women are not penalised in the career stakes if they reproduce. And that’s not to mention the other pressures coming to bear on women once they become mothers. I just did a quick mental trawl of the senior women I have worked with and I can think of only one who has children.

2) By and large the decisions as to who to promote are still made by men, de facto, as there aren’t many women in those top positions.There is a well researched bias that we tend to gravitate towards people like us. And appoint them…

3) The world of work has been designed by men and suits men well but it doesn’t really suit women. There is a strong gender bias operating. We are continually adapting, whether we realise it or not, and that leads to a feeling of dissonance, which in turn can erode our confidence in the workplace. Often we react by opting out (I know I did!) or setting up our own businesses. Maybe we are misinterpreting that feeling ‘at odds’ with the system as a lack of confidence in our own abilities?

Your Views

What do you think?

Are you in a senior position?

How did you get there and how does it feel?

Have you held back from applying for a senior post and why?

What would help redress the balance do you think?

Please do share your views! Agree/disagree/don’t know/new insights!. I really look forward to hearing from you!

Women on TV

A new report commissioned by Channel 4 to celebrate International Women’s day, shows that there is still a distinct gender bias when it comes to women on TV.

Femageism

If we needed any evidence that femageism is rife in the world of broadcasting this report provides it. On TV only one in 4 in every 10 women are aged over 40. And for every ten men on TV 6 will be aged 40 and over.

‘Soft’ Topics

The study, carried out by Dr Guy Cumberbatch of the Communications Research Group, also found that although women do appear to be well represented on TV across the spectrum, the way they are used is markedly different from the way men appear.

In light entertainment, comedy and drama women make up 4 in every ten participants. In the field of serious broadcasting, Dr Cumberbatch’s team found that women made up only a third in factual programmes. And when it comes to the news, we have only a 31% share!

However, when topics such as health, culture and cookery are covered on the news women feature 69% of the time. Men were much more likely to be discussing the topics of politics, science, international affairs and the economy. And women aren’t even asked to give their views! When it comes to general vox pops, women are asked for their opinions only a third as often as men.

Diversity

Oona King is Channel 4′s Head of Diversity (once again I ask the question-bearing in mind women actually make up slightly more than half the population -  should we still need to be included under the ‘diversity’ tag?) said:

” This pilot research measures the gap between what we see in the real world, and what we see on TV, and is the first step in developing a comprehensive measurement of how well TV represents and portrays different groups on screen. Fundamentally, this is about how we view our world and which groups are hidden from view or significantly under-represented. The gender gap here is quite startling.”

Sadly I am not startled at all. Maybe art is merely imitating life………….

Nature or Nurture?

I am the mother of two children, one girl and one boy. I don’t think I parented them differently (my daughter had a train set and my son a doll!) but  intellectually I know I must have done.

All the research indicates that we respond differently to a child depending on its gender – and that’s got to have an effect on how we behave in later life!

Pink or Blue?

In the sixties an interesting experiment took place which wouldn’t happen now! A baby was left outside a shop in a pram (imagine doing that now!). When the baby was dressed in pink passersby cooed, oohed and ahhed into the pram, speaking in gentle, soft tones.

When the same baby was dressed in blue passersby spoke in harder tones, along the lines of, ‘what a big strong boy you are’ and were less gentle.

Research study after study has shown that we tend to reinforce tough aggressive behaviour from boys and downplay it in girl children. Children are rewarded by family and society at large for behaving stereotypically and maintaining traditional gender roles.

Martians? Pah!

Popular books about gender differences are best sellers but normally don’t stand up to any academic scrutiny. They perpetuate the stereotyping and usually cast women in submissive roles (Women stayed at home looking after kids and gathering berries so learned to multi-task. Men went out hunting so learned only to do one thing at a time’. Give me strength!)

Honestly, most of it is tosh. For every piece of pseudo research reinforcing the stereotypes you can find a genuine piece which will counteract it. And vice versa

Differences

Nature, nurture, who knows? As with most things good communication is key. Men and women do communicate and behave differently, for whatever reason, and the best advice I can give is try and make sure you understand what the other person is saying, what they actually mean. Challenge stereotyping in the workplace and try to be as gender neutral at work as you can.

And my two, (pictured above)? Well, totally unbiasedly, I have to say they are just perfect as they are!