Women and Public Policy Program Seminar Series

Workshop: Strategic Negotiating Moves that Work at Work with Deborah Kolb

We negotiate all the time at work even when we do not recognize we are doing so. We negotiate for the resources we need to do our jobs, for roles and opportunities we aspire to, and for schedules that work with our lives. Negotiation outcomes depend on how well we position ourselves and use what leverage we have to get reluctant negotiators to the table. It requires that we take the lead to ‘anchor’ around creative solutions that acknowledge our individual constraints. In addition, we need to be prepared to deal with resistance to our ideas that might challenge the status quo. In this seminar, Deborah Kolb uses case studies and your individual experiences to help you make negotiation work at work. Her book, Negotiating at Work, was named by Time.com as a best negotiation book of 2015.

Deborah Kolb, Professor Emeritus, School of Management, Simmons College

The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations with Francine Blau

Using data from the 1980-2010 time period, Francine Blau provides new empirical evidence on the extent of and trends in the gender wage gap, which declined considerably over this period.  By 2010, conventional human capital variables taken together explained little of the gender wage gap, while gender differences in occupations and industries continued to be important. Moreover, the gender pay gap declined much more slowly at the top of the wage distribution that at the middle or the bottom and, by 2010, was noticeably higher at the top. Francine also uses the literature to identify what has been learned about the explanations for the gap, considering the role of human capital and gender roles, gender differences in occupations and industries, gender differences in psychological attributes, and labor market discrimination against women.

Francine Blau, Frances Perkins Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, ILR School, Cornell University

Can Financial Incentives Reduce the Baby Gap? Evidence from a Reform in Maternity Leave Benefits with Anna Raute

Over the past five decades, women's educational attainment and labor market participation have increased tremendously. At the same time, many developed countries have faced decreasing birth rates and below replacement fertility levels. All OECD countries, except the US, now provide paid parental leave in order to facilitate family and career compatibility and lower the cost of childbearing. Drawing on insights from a major reform of parental leave benefits in Germany, this seminar explores whether earnings dependent parental leave benefits have a positive impact on fertility, and whether they are successful at narrowing the baby gap between high educated (high earning) and low educated (low earning) women.

Anna Raute, WAPPP Fellow; Assistant Professor in Economics, University of Mannheim

 

Estimating Income Inequality from Binned Incomes with Paul von Hippel

Researchers studying the gender wage gap often analyze data that puts income into bins, such as $0-10,000, $10,000-20,000, and $200,000+. Many methods have been used to analyze binned incomes, but few have been evaluated for accuracy. In this seminar, Paul von Hippel compares and evaluates three methods: the multi-model generalized beta estimator (MGBE), the robust Pareto midpoint estimator (RPME), and the spline CDF estimator. He finds that the MGBE and RPME produces comparable results, while the spline CDF estimator is much more accurate. Paul has implemented all three methods in software for Stata and R.

Paul von Hippel, Associate Professor of Public Affairs, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin

 

On Her Account: Can Strengthening Women’s Financial Control Boost Female Labor Supply? With Simone Schaner

Across the world, the increasing use of digital payments for government to person transactions for social programs has provided an entry point for the world’s poor into the formal financial sector. This phenomenon begs the question: how can governments best leverage this opportunity to enable economic empowerment for women? This seminar explores research that uses a randomized controlled trial to assess how financial inclusion coupled with targeted benefit payments impact women's labor force participation and economic welfare in India.

Simone Schaner, Assistant Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Dartmouth College

 

The History of the 'Mommy Track' with Elizabeth Singer

As women began to fill the ranks of management in the 1980s, the impact of motherhood on an individual’s career trajectory and the corporate balance sheet became a source of debate among feminists and business leaders. In this seminar, Elizabeth Singer More examines the “mommy track” argument that some feminists, most prominently Felice Schwartz of Catalyst, claimed would save businesses money by working to retain white-collar women. Schwartz hoped this argument would persuade businesses to provide benefits, such as flex-time and paid maternity leave, which they had resisted providing for years. But there were two significant costs to the “mommy track” argument. The first was the possibility that mothers who did not want to be on a decelerated career track would be involuntarily sidelined. The second was that by basing a claim for treating mothers as valued employees on the company’s profit interest alone, feminists risked losing the standing to demand rights and benefits that did not directly benefit the bottom line.

Elizabeth Singer More, WAPPP Fellow; Lecturer on History and Literature; Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University

Two Decades of Gender-Role Attitude Change in Europe with Mary Brinton

This seminar explores the assumption of many cross-national studies that gender-role attitudes fall along a single continuum between traditional and egalitarian. Brinton analyzes over-time data from 18 European countries and identifies trajectories of attitudinal change. Brinton demonstrates that while traditional gender-role attitudes have precipitously and uniformly declined, European nations are not converging towards one dominant egalitarian model but instead are diverging across three distinct varieties of egalitarianism.
Speaker: Mary C. Brinton, Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology, Harvard University

Women's Career Negotiations with Hannah Riley Bowles

Hannah Riley Bowles will review some of the latest research on how gender influences career-related negotiations and discuss practical implications. Participants will receive a workbook with questions to help them prepare for career-related negotiations.