Accepting HKS Class Day Award nominations

Do you have great classmates organizing students around gender issues? Or a tireless advocate for women in the HKS community? How about an outstanding PAE or SYPA focusing on a gendered topic? Nominate your colleagues now!

The Women and Public Policy Program offers three awards on HKS Class Day. All nominations are due Friday May 10, 2013 by 5 pm, submitted via email to Megan Farwell at megan_farwell@hks.harvard.edu and recipients will presented their award on Class Day.

Keynote address by Rep. Barbara
Jordan, Democratic National Convention
July 12, 1976 (Library of Congress)

"The imperative is to define what is right and do it."
- Barbara Jordan

Barbara Jordan Award for Women’s Leadership

This award honors one graduating student at Harvard Kennedy School for her/his commitment to building community and for serving as a role model for women aspiring to be leaders.

 

Holly Taylor Sargent Prize for Women’s Advancement

This prize will be awarded to a member of the Harvard Kennedy School community (faculty, staff or student) who has done the most to advance the opportunities, situation and status of women within the HKS community.

 

Jane Mansbridge Research Award

This award recognizes an outstanding research paper (PAE, SYPA, etc.) whose analysis of an organization or topic is focused on women or gender.

Hannah Riley Bowles on Katie Couric's "Lean In" panel discussion

Beyond the Glass Ceiling

Today my friend sent me a link to Boys Clubs Tumblr – a visual collection of “the corners of the world where women have yet to tread.” It is mind-boggling how much progress we still have to make in closing gender gaps.

At WAPPP Seminars this year we discussed some of these “corners of the world.” There are the overwhelmingly male corporate boards, the merely 18 female CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, and the female stock brokers earning less than their male peers. But we also heard about female leaders helping their countries address inter-group conflict, female professors inspiring young women to pursue STEM careers, and the women mobilizing their communities for land rights. 

In the final seminar of the academic year, Professor Matt Huffman, of the UC Irvine Sociology Department and the Paul Merage School of Business, brought research to bear on another question – do women managers change the workplace itself?

There is some evidence that female managers do close gender gaps among their employees. One study found that wage gaps were smaller inlocal U.S. industries with many high-status females. Two other studies explored gender segregation and found that female managers increased female hiring and gender integration in the California savings and loan industry and in California’s state agencies.

Huffman set out to study these phenomena on a much larger scale, using Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s data. EEO-1 reports, which are filed by all “medium and large” firms under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, amount to a set of longitudinal workplace data spanning decades. Each report breaks out the managerial and non-managerial occupations at a specific work site and reports on the number of women and racial minorities in each category. Because the work sites are identified by name and address, the individual files are confidential and only available to a handful of researchers. For Huffman, this presents a goldmine for empirical analysis, complete with information on industry types, organization sizes, and other potential control variables.

Since the data did not include wages, instead of focusing on wage gaps, Huffman decided to study organizational segregation – a measure of how evenly men and women were distributed across the non-managerial categories in the organization. Using regression analysis on 1975, 1986, 1995 and 2005 data, he demonstrated that organizations with a higher percentage of women in management positions were less gender-segregated in the non-managerial ranks.

Though the most recent work places were generally far less gender-segregated than the older cohorts, even without female managers, the pattern across all four points in time was similar – higher percentage of female managers meant more integrated subordinates. In other words, breaking up the boys' club at the top, helped break the barriers among departments and functional areas below. 

Huffman ran a series of other analyses to pinpoint aspects of the workplace context that amplified or diminished the gender-integrating effect of female managers on their organizations. He found that managerial formalization and company growth were both conducive to the gender integrating effect of female managers. Perhaps it is because formal structures can give women more access to power than a loose work environment might. It may also be because a female manager in a growing organization has more opportunities to hire people, altering the gender balance of her workforce.

Why does gender diversity and gender integration matter? First, women bring unique lived experiences to the workplace, and given that women are also half of the consumers, it is prudent to include their perspectives in developing and selling products and services. (Maybe if the Apple Inc. team added some women, someone would have thought that iPad could be a bit of an awkward name...). Second, companies with more female leaders make more money and women executives make venture-backed companies more successful, despite the fact that the venture capital world is still decidedly a boys club. 

Finally, gender equality is the just and the smart thing to do, which is why WAPPP's work closing gender gaps in economic opportunity, political participation, health and education is so important.

Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Role Models as "Social Vaccines"

Do you have everyday role models? Successful people in your field who look like you and aren’t superhuman?


Though I have become comfortable at male-dominated tables, I always look for fellow women in politics. I don’t just mean Hillary Clinton. She certainly inspires me, but she is a super star! It’s the regular women – the chiefs of staff, the policy advisors, and some Members of Congress – that I can look to and think “yeah, that could be me in a few years.”

Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta, Professor of Psychology at UMass Amherst, demonstrates that exposure to such role models can act like a “social vaccine” against negative stereotypes. This kind of vaccination by inspiration is especially important for minority groups in high-achievement fields – think women in politics, business, or science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.


Professor Dasgupta and her team tested the Social Inoculation Model with numerous quasi-experimental studies in the real world. They focused on women in the STEM field, which is increasingly going to drive the economy. In STEM careers, women are both a numeric minority and a group facing negative stereotypes (perceptions that women are bad with numbers, etc).

In one study, unsuspecting college students signed up for a calculus class – a required gateway course for all STEM majors. There were 7 female and 8 male professors teaching 15 sections. The professors were also unaware of the experiment’s hypotheses. They had similar experience levels and teaching styles. The syllabi and tests were the same and the grading was done blindly by all professors across the sections.

Twice during the semester the researchers measured students’ attitudes toward math, their self-confidence with math (what grade they thought they would get), and their personal identification with the professor. They found that the female students taught by male professors were less likely to self-identify with math than did their female peers in the sections taught by female professors. Female students were also found to have negative attitudes toward math in sections taught by men, but not by women.

Women in male-taught sections were less self-confident about their mathematical ability – they estimated a lower final grade than did women in the sections taught by women. It is striking that with their final grades the female students in this study significantly outperformed men, regardless of their professor’s gender.

These women obviously had the aptitude for math, but they doubted their own competence...unless their professor was female.


Professor Dasgupta conducted a number of other studies to test various aspects of her theory, trying to understand the mechanisms by which the “social vaccine” worked. She also looked at effects of peers, exposure to experts through media and the effects of the teacher’s gender on students of younger ages.

Drawing on her experiments and the body of related literature, Professor Dasgupta makes a compelling case that for underrepresented groups in high-achievement fields ability alone is not sufficient to succeed. Exposure to relatable role models can mean the difference between staying in and dropping out.

That is why being able to look around and think “sure, I can do what she does” is so important for me and other professional women outnumbered in their fields. And it is even more important for the young girls considering a career in STEM, politics or business.


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Agents of Change: Black Women Mobilizing for Land Rights in Brazil

When I say “social movement leader” who comes to mind? I immediately think of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi and Cesar Chavez. When even your feminist blogger comes up with three men, there’s definitely an awareness problem. Keisha-Khan Y. Perry, Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Brown University, spotlights poor black Brazilian women, who are indeed unsung social movement leaders.

Professor Keisha-Khan Y. Perry

The public image of these women in Brazil is that they lack the knowledge and political sophistication needed to organize social movements. In an extensive ethnographic study, Professor Perry documented and examined women’s participation and leadership in neighborhood associations. She demonstrates that the women are far from “passive undereducated servants.” On the contrary, they are savvy organizers and advocates plugged into the needs of their communities.  

In her forthcoming book, Black Women Against the Land Grab: The Fight for Racial Justice in Brazil, Professor Perry brings to light not only the level of political sophistication that these women possess, but also the role they play in their communities as “political theorists.” Perry argues that women are the main agents of interpreting the racial, gender, and class dynamics of urban development. These women intentionally organize as blacks, as women, and as the poor, which provides key insights on precisely how intersectionality is mobilized for social change. 

Gamboa de Baixo, Salvador, Brazil (photo by Helio Queiroz, Panoramio)

As poor all-Black neighborhoods in Brazilian cities come under threat of demolition and thousands of people face eviction – including for events like the World Cup and the Olympics – the women are leading the charge in empowering and radicalizing local communities.

So when you think of social movement leaders, think of women like Ana Cristina da Silva Caminha, who has led the grassroots movement against land expulsion in her community of Gamboa de Baixo in Salvador, Brazil. She fights not only for access to housing and clean water, but also for the preservation of her community’s soul – its bay-side location, its Afro-Brazilian spiritual practices, and its network of relationships. 


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

Social Norms and Stereotypes: What Happens When Everyone's a Little Bit Sexist?

Upon seeing one of those “reuse your towel” cards in a hotel, have you ever wondered how many people were actually reusing their towels? An experimental study found that when the message was supplemented with information that “nearly 75 percent of hotel guests reuse their towels,” the guests receiving the message became more likely to reuse their towel than the guests who got the standard note. This is an example of the power of social norms – when the desired action is perceived as the norm, compliance increases. The same mechanism is at work in reverse for an undesirable behavior – people are less likely to litter when they perceive that only a few “anti-social types” litter.

Social norms are often more powerful than explicit messages. The signs in the Petrified Forest National Park used to read something like this: “Don’t take petrified wood, 14 tons a year are being stolen in small pieces.” That last part essentially signaled to the visitor: “everybody is doing it.” When that part was removed, compliance improved.

Now, let’s connect this information to racial and gender stereotyping and bias – generally, people view bias as undesirable and actively work against it. However, the 2000’s saw a growing body of research on unconscious biases. The notion that most people have unconscious stereotypes and biases captivated the popular press. The cover of the Washington Post Magazine on January 23, 2005 read: “Many Americans believe they are not prejudiced. Now a new test provides powerful evidence that a majority of us really are.” So, it’s like the song from Broadway musical Avenue Q, “Everyone's a Little Bit Racist.”
 
But what does that mean for social norms? Does knowing that everyone has unconscious biases make it seem permissible to let our own biases slide?

Those are the questions Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, set out to answer with her colleague Michelle Duguid, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Washington University in St. Louis Olin Business School. Thomas-Hunt and Duguid designed a series of creative experiments to test how messages of high and low prevalence of stereotyping affect behavior.
 
In one of the experiments, pairs of women and men were negotiating a car sale. All of the men were told to avoid thinking of others in a stereotypical manner. Some of the men were primed with a “high prevalence of stereotyping” message – they were not told what gender biases might be, just that an influential body of research finds that the majority of people do stereotype. Other men were primed with a “low prevalence” message – that very few people hold stereotypical misconceptions. Yet another set of men received a “high prevalence of counter stereotyping” message – that most people actively try to overcome biased misconceptions.

After the negotiation, the women, who did not know anything about these messages, were asked to rank their opponents' assertiveness. The researchers also compared negotiated price outcomes. The men who were told that most people stereotype, despite being cautioned not to do so themselves, consistently claimed more value in the negotiation and were ranked as more assertive by their female counterparts than were the men in both other groups. The division of value was more equitable in the pairs where men received “few people stereotype” and “most people work to avoid stereotyping.” The men were also perceived to be less assertive by their female counterparts. In other words, the men who perceived the social norm to be in line with stereotypes of women as weak negotiators were more likely to treat them as such, while the men who thought the social norm was to counter stereotypes treated their negotiating partners more equitably.

Thomas-Hunt’s and Duguid’s experiments point to the conclusion that it’s not enough to be aware that we have conscious and unconscious biases. We need social norms to counter these biases. We need a culture in which most people work hard not to stereotype. In companies, this could be a consistent internal message from the highest ranks, but in society it will take all of us holding each other accountable and working not to be even a little bit sexist.

Melissa Thomas-Hunt presented at a WAPPP Seminar titled, "Condoning Stereotyping: How Awareness of Stereotyping Prevalence Impacts Stereotype Expression in Negotiations and Beyond," on April 4, 2013.


Anya Malkov is an MPP candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, a WAPPP Cultural Bridge Fellow, and an alumna of From Harvard Square to the Oval Office.

The Politics of Work - Family Policies in France, Germany, and Japan

The issue of women, mothers, and work has received a lot of attention in recent headlines: which women have the choice to "lean in," try to "have it all," or find some balance that best fits their lives? Just how far can a mother (or father!) lean in when holding a small child without toppling over, and what kind of work policies permit more choice in these matters?

Patricia Boling, Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University, dove into these questions as she researched fertility rates, parental leave policies, and child-care options in three different countries. Fertility rates - more easily understood as the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime - are an important driver in adjustments to national work-family policies.  France, Germany, and Japan have all faced low fertility rates. This is not necessarily a state concern about women choosing fewer children; rather, the concern here is usually about the economics of supporting an aging population with a decreasing working-age population.

France tackled the issue of declining fertility rates at the turn of the last century, and its pronatalist policies and outcomes may offer some guidance to nations looking to impact their declining populations. The long-standing French policies that support child rearing include a 3-year long gender neutral paid leave, free public school for toddlers, and tax incentives for additional children. Germany followed suit in 2007 by offering a year of paid leave and an increase in state child-care spaces for 1-year-olds. Japan has been adjusting family policies, known as "Angel Plans," since the 1990s, increasing dual-partner leave time, compensation, and supporting child-care programs.

These all sound great, but just how successful have they been? As Professor Boling points out, national work-family policies matter, but no country is a blank slate. Many factors influence a woman's choice to have children: their culture, the political economy of the labor force, gender wage gaps, and the practical impact parental leave has on career choices. The success of work-family policies is often constrained by these factors as well. Institutional capacities, the tradition of administrative political action, the relationship between national policies and local implementation, and the traditions of businesses as political actors and their relationship with training and expectations from employees also impact how these policies play out.

France has experienced some successes with its policies, though challenges remain with the gender balance of parental leave. The long parental leave offers low pay for the parent who chooses to take it, and there are only 11 days of specified paid paternity leave. As a result, women often take repeated leaves and stay in low-skilled jobs with little chance for advancement. While fathers could conceivably take the longer leave, the incentive structure and labor force economy are such that the "gender neutral" leave is in-name-only.  Germany's adoption of child-care policies has a strong correlation with geography and history: the former East Germany has high rates of toddlers attending child-care, while the West and South have lower rates and a cultural aversion to mothers who do not stay home with their young children. Japan is more challenged by a number of institutional factors. It has the largest "mommy penalty" in the world: the gendered wage gap between women, men, and mothers. Businesses expect loyalty from employees and are hesitant to invest training in women of childbearing age. These same businesses play a major role in political processes, and may limit the success of attempts to adjust practices.

The lessons to be learned about work-family policies are still developing, as nations around the world continue to shape their responses to declining fertility rates. Professor Boling's discussion was a brief insight into a book currently underway. As our own national conversation continues about leaning in, stepping out, having what we can or want, it is worthwhile to keep our eyes open to other nations and their approaches to women, work, and family.


Valerie Kane is an MPP Candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School.