Episodes
Thursday Sep 24, 2015
Thursday Sep 24, 2015
What is the impact of gender biases on promotion and advancement in the scientific community? Dr. Corinne Moss-Racusin shares her latest research exploring the impact of gender biases on meritocracy, diversity, and the pursuit of knowledge throughout academic science. She discusses educational strategies designed to increase awareness and reduce bias, and provides examples of effective scientific diversity interventions. SPEAKER: Corinne Moss-Racusin, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Skidmore College
Thursday Sep 17, 2015
Thursday Sep 17, 2015
Paternity leave, men's role in childcare, and their work-life balance have become more commonly discussed topics by policymakers and business leaders. What kinds of policies succeed in getting fathers involved in their children's lives from the beginning? What are the long-term consequences for families, in terms of fathers' and mothers' careers, incomes, and the division of household labor at home? In this seminar, Ankita Patnaik discusses how parental leave schemes can be designed to induce fathers to participate and whether small changes in the initial parenting experience can have lasting effects on both parents' behavior. She presents findings from a study that shows that even a few weeks of paternity leave can have a large and persistent impact on sex specialization in the long-term by encouraging a more equal distribution of household responsibilities. Speaker: Ankita Patnaik, Researcher, Mathematica Policy Research
Thursday Sep 10, 2015
What Works: Gender Equality, By Design
Thursday Sep 10, 2015
Thursday Sep 10, 2015
With gender equality increasingly a business imperative, in addition to being a human right, many leaders across the sectors wonder how we can get there. In the first WAPPP Seminar of 2015-16, Professor Bohnet discusses her forthcoming book "What Works: Gender Equality, By Design" (Harvard University Press 2016). Reviewing the impact of what we have been doing to date, including diversity and leadership trainings, networking, and mentorship/sponsorship programs, Bohnet proposes a new approach to leveling the playing field. Building on insights from Behavioral Economics, she argues that to overcome gender bias in organizations and society, we should focus on de-biasing systems—how we evaluate performance, hire, promote, structure tests, form groups—rather than on trying to de-bias people. Speaker: Iris Bohnet, Professor of Public Policy; Director, Women and Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School
Thursday Apr 09, 2015
Thursday Apr 09, 2015
How does exposure during childhood to non-traditional gender role models—working mothers and female parliamentarians—shape men’s and women’s outcomes at work and at home? Across 25 countries, women, but not men, exposed to non-traditional gender role models during childhood are more likely to be employed, more likely to hold supervisory responsibility if employed, and earn higher wages than women whose mothers were home full time. At home, exposure to non-traditional models increases the time men contribute to housework and caring for family members and decreases the time women spend on housework. This research exposes the power of non-traditional gender role models within families and countries as critical factors for reducing gender inequality in labor markets and households around the globe. SPEAKER: Kathleen L. McGinn, Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration; Chair, Doctoral Program, Harvard Business School
Friday Feb 20, 2015
Friday Feb 20, 2015
Debate abounds about why women continue to be underrepresented in top management positions and in male-dominated domains. This presentation reviews research on an often subtle, but powerful and pervasive, organizational force that discourages men and women from engaging in non-stereotypical roles and behavior: The harassment and mistreatment of gender incongruent employees. The author’s research on this topic is reviewed, from “not man enough” harassment, to the sexual harassment of “uppity” women, to the general mistreatment of non-traditional parents. The presentation concludes with recent studies that distinguish mistreatment from advancement and shed light on the “double bind” for women and the systematic scope of gender regulation in the workplace. SPEAKER: Jennifer L. Berdahl, Montalbano Professor of Leadership Studies: Gender and Diversity, University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business
Friday Feb 13, 2015
Friday Feb 13, 2015
The constraints facing women and girls worldwide range from epidemic levels of gender-based violence to biased laws and norms that prevent them from owning property, working, and making decisions about their own lives. The World Bank’s new book, “Voice and Agency: Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity,” documents major gender gaps and reviews promising policies and interventions. Underlining that women's agency–their ability to make decisions and act on them independently–has concrete as well as intrinsic value, WAPPP Fellow Jeni Klugman highlights new interventions from around the world that are used to empower women and girls, in conjunction with United Nations post-2015 global development agenda.
Friday Oct 31, 2014
Friday Oct 31, 2014
How can we foster and integrate feminist ideas into development conversations that take place in large international organizations? WAPPP fellow Elisabeth Prügl finds that feminist ideas have triumphed and been tamed at the same time within the World Bank. Prügl analyzes a variety of documents and interviews with gender experts to identify how these contradictory effects have taken place. Speaker: Elisabeth M Prügl, WAPPP Fellow, 2014-2015; Professor of International Relations; Director, Program for Gender and Global Change, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva
Friday Oct 24, 2014
Friday Oct 24, 2014
How can we work toward greater gender equality and women’s empowerment in OECD countries and emerging economies around the world? The OECD’s answer is focusing on the 3 “E”s: education, employment and entrepreneurship. Recent public policy initiatives such as the OECD Gender Recommendation and gender work by the G20 forum emphasize the importance of increasing female labor force participation to achieve strong and balanced growth. OECD’s Head of Social Policy Division, Monika Queisser reviews these recommendations and other initiatives in the OECD countries, and disseminates new findings that aim to achieve better representation of women in public sector leadership. Speaker: Monika Queisser, Head of Social Policy Division, Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs, OECD
Friday Oct 03, 2014
Friday Oct 03, 2014
Men and women throughout the world want to provide for their families and ensure their children have a good start in life. Often, the chance to start a business or get a job is the surest way to accomplish this goal. But how can we be sure that women have the same opportunities as men to fulfill their economic potential? The World Bank Group's Women, Business and the Law project presents a unique dataset examining how the law can help or impede women from working and earning an income and what can be done to improve women's economic rights.
Monday Sep 15, 2014
Monday Sep 15, 2014
Why has women’s professional advancement stalled? A widely accepted explanation is that women’s family obligations conflict with long hours of jobs, hampering their advancement into senior organizational positions. The commonly championed solution has been policies offering flexible work arrangements designed to mitigate such conflict. Yet research shows that men, too, experience work-family conflict. Moreover, work-family policies do little to help women or men’s workplace advancement, and in fact, often hurt them. In this presentation, Ely draws from her in depth case study of a global professional service firm to ask why the belief that work-family conflict lies at the heart of women’s stalled advancement persists. She explores how this popular narrative self-perpetuates despite evidence to the contrary, and how organizations use this narrative as an explanation for women's blocked mobility partly because it diverts attention from the broader problem of a long-hours work culture among professionals. Speaker: Robin Ely, Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean, Harvard Business School