Are women professionals less ambitious?

Hannah Clark, Forbes March 23, 2006

Even before The Wall Street Journal coined the term "glass ceiling" 20 years ago, researchers debated why women seldom reach the highest ranks in business.

Do women choose less stressful jobs so they can enjoy life more? Are they shut out of golf games and other informal networks that help men make crucial professional contacts?

A new study adds fuel to the fire. About 70% of women and 57% of men believe an invisible barrier--a glass ceiling--prevents women from getting ahead in business, according to a study of 1,200 executives in eight countries, including the U.S., Australia, Austria and the Philippines. Consulting firm Accenture released the study on March 8 in conjunction with International Women's Day.

But if women are unhappy about making 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man, it's not reflected in Accenture's statistics. Globally, the same percentage of men and women--58%--felt they were fairly compensated. In the U.S., 67% of men were happy with their salaries, compared with 60% of women. But American women were almost as satisfied as men with the professional levels they had achieved.

Women aren't as worried about the pay gap as they were five years ago, says Carol Gallagher, president of the Executive Women's Alliance and author of Going To The Top: A Road Map for
Success from America's Leading Women Executives. Gallagher, who is also an executive coach, says Gen Xers and Yers don't think any barriers prevent them from getting to the top.

And baby boomers are now looking toward retirement, not obsessing about pay. When Gallagher published her book in 2000, there was a huge demand for information about the gender gap. At the time, almost all her executive coaching clients were women seeking the secrets of corporate success. Now 70% of her clients are men. "There [isn't] a need for as much of the women's group stuff," Gallagher says.

To some extent, there's a disconnect between American women and their counterparts abroad.

In a study of American executives by Catalyst, a research and advocacy firm, women were just as likely as men to say they aspired to senior management positions.


"Women want the responsibilities and rewards that come with top positions," says Sheila Wellington, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, who was president of Catalyst when the survey was conducted.

But a global study, also conducted by Catalyst, found that men worldwide desire the top jobs more often than women.

Even in the U.S., some experts say the glass ceiling doesn't affect job satisfaction. Women make sacrifices at work in exchange for greater happiness in their lives as a whole, says Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More.

His book offers 25 reasons for the pay gap: Women work fewer hours, for example, and they don't stay at jobs as long as men do. Whether it's nature or socialization driving their decisions, women tend to choose lives that allow them to spend more time with their families, Farrell contends.

Even ambitious women don't measure success in high salaries and fancy job titles. Relationships with colleagues and giving back to the community are more important to women than salary, according to 'The Hidden Brain Drain: Off-Ramps and On-Ramps in Women's Careers,' a study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, which was published in the Harvard Business Review last year.

"They want to feel satisfied and good about their work, but also want to feel satisfied about other things in their life," says Melinda Wolfe, head of global leadership and diversity at Goldman Sachs Group.

Even if most women don't want to break the glass ceiling, Wolfe says, the few that do shouldn't be ignored. Sometimes their ambitions have been tempered by a corporate culture that stifles their success. Sometimes they choose circuitous career paths, taking some time to care for children, prepare for a career change or work in the nonprofit sector.

There's another reason why the pay gap has barely budged in the last five years: Women don't ask for more money. "They don't think they deserve it," says Lois Frankel, president of Corporate Coaching International and author of Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. She adds, "We don't have the [negotiating] skills. We see it as something smarmy."

But Susan Solovic, CEO of SBTV, a Web site that creates video programming aimed at small-business owners, offers another reason why women aren't complaining about the pay gap: They've decided to work for themselves.

The number of women-owned firms grew 17% between 1997 and 2004, according to the Center for Women's Business Research, while the total number of firms rose only 9%. Says Solovic: "There is really no glass ceiling when it comes to owning your own business."

Male activists want say in unplanned pregnancy

NEW YORK (AP) -- Contending that women have more options than they do in the event of an unintended pregnancy, men's rights activists are mounting a long shot legal campaign aimed at giving them the chance to opt out of financial responsibility for raising a child.

The National Center for Men has prepared a lawsuit -- nicknamed Roe v. Wade for Men -- to be filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Michigan on behalf of a 25-year-old computer programmer ordered to pay child support for his ex-girlfriend's daughter.

The suit addresses the issue of male reproductive rights, contending that lack of such rights violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.

The gist of the argument: If a pregnant woman can choose among abortion, adoption or raising a child, a man involved in an unintended pregnancy should have the choice of declining the financial responsibilities of fatherhood. The activists involved hope to spark discussion even if they lose.

"There's such a spectrum of choice that women have -- it's her body, her pregnancy and she has the ultimate right to make decisions," said Mel Feit, director of the men's center. "I'm trying to find a way for a man also to have some say over decisions that affect his life profoundly."

Feit's organization has been trying since the early 1990s to pursue such a lawsuit, and finally found a suitable plaintiff in Matt Dubay of Saginaw, Michigan.

Dubay says he has been ordered to pay $500 a month in child support for a girl born last year to his ex-girlfriend. He contends that the woman knew he didn't want to have a child with her and assured him repeatedly that -- because of a physical condition -- she could not get pregnant.

Dubay is braced for the lawsuit to fail.

"What I expect to hear [from the court] is that the way things are is not really fair, but that's the way it is," he said in a telephone interview. "Just to create awareness would be enough, to at least get a debate started."
State courts have ruled in the past that any inequity experienced by men like Dubay is outweighed by society's interest in ensuring that children get financial support from two parents. Melanie Jacobs, a Michigan State University law professor, said the federal court might rule similarly in Dubay's case.
"The courts are trying to say it may not be so fair that this gentleman has to support a child he didn't want, but it's less fair to say society has to pay the support," she said.

Feit, however, says a fatherhood opt-out wouldn't necessarily impose higher costs on society or the mother. A woman who balked at abortion but felt she couldn't afford to raise a child could put the baby up for adoption, he said.

'This is so politically incorrect'
Jennifer Brown of the women's rights advocacy group Legal Momentum objected to the men's center comparing Dubay's lawsuit to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling establishing a woman's right to have an abortion.
"Roe is based on an extreme intrusion by the government -- literally to force a woman to continue a pregnancy she doesn't want," Brown said. "There's nothing equivalent for men. They have the same ability as women to use contraception, to get sterilized."

Feit counters that the suit's reference to abortion rights is apt.

"Roe says a woman can choose to have intimacy and still have control over subsequent consequences," he said. "No one has ever asked a federal court if that means men should have some similar say."

"The problem is this is so politically incorrect," Feit added. "The public is still dealing with the pre-Roe ethic when it comes to men, that if a man fathers a child, he should accept responsibility."

Feit doesn't advocate an unlimited fatherhood opt-out; he proposes a brief period in which a man, after learning of an unintended pregnancy, could decline parental responsibilities if the relationship was one in which neither partner had desired a child.

"If the woman changes her mind and wants the child, she should be responsible," Feit said. "If she can't take care of the child, adoption is a good alternative."

The president of the National Organization for Women, Kim Gandy, acknowledged that disputes over unintended pregnancies can be complex and bitter.

"None of these are easy questions," said Gandy, a former prosecutor. "But most courts say it's not about what he did or didn't do or what she did or didn't do. It's about the rights of the child."

A dissection of the new Indo US relationship

President George W. Bush's visit to India has brought relations between the United States and India to an unprecedented level of cooperation and interdependence.

It is strange that this relationship should have taken so long to develop. Both countries are democracies. English is India's working language, and the educated classes speak it with rhetorical flourish. The Indian bureaucracy is well trained and competent, albeit slow-moving.

Yet until very recent years, relations between the two great democracies have been wary. It is important to understand the reasons if the new relationship is to realize the opportunity before it.

India straddled the Cold War crises in the name of a nonalignment that proclaimed the moral equivalence of the two sides; on most concrete issues it either tilted toward the Soviet side or remained aloof.

America's attitude toward India was similarly beset by ambivalence - between respect for the moral quality of Indian leaders and irritation with Indian day-to-day tactics. The democratic institutions that the two countries shared did not determine political choices.

If the emerging partnership is to flourish, each side needs to understand what has brought them together beyond their domestic institutions.

Americans think of their country as "the shining city on the hill"; its political institutions are perceived to be both unique and relevant to the rest of the world as guarantees of universal peace. Crusades on behalf of democracy have been implicit in American political thinking and explicit in American policy periodically since Woodrow Wilson - and especially pronounced in the George W. Bush administration.

That is not the way Indians view their international role. Hindu society does indeed also consider itself unique but, in a manner, dramatically at variance from America's. Democracy is not conceived as an expression of Indian culture but as a practical adaptation, the most effective means to reconcile the polyglot components of the state emerging from the colonial past.

The defining aspect of Indian culture has been the awesome feat of maintaining Indian identity through centuries of foreign rule without, until very recently, the benefit of a unified, specifically Indian, state.

Huns, Mongols, Greeks, Persians, Afghans, Portuguese and, in the end, Britons, conquered Indian territories, established empires, and then vanished, leaving behind multitudes clinging to the impermeable Hindu culture. The Hindu religion accepts no converts; one is born into it or forever denied its stringencies and its comforts.

India, striving neither to spread its culture nor its institutions, is thus not a comfortable partner for global ideological missions. What it analyzes with great precision is its national security requirements. And these owe more to traditional notions of equilibrium and national interest - partly a legacy of British rule - than to ideological debates.

India seeks a margin of security within which its culture can thrive and its polyglot nationalities work together for practical goals. This has produced various levels of Indian involvement in international affairs:

With respect to its immediate neighbors and smaller states like Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh, Indian policy has been comparable to America's Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere - an attempt to maintain Indian hegemony, if necessary, by the use of force.

In the north, India faces the Chinese giant across the intractable barrier of the Himalayas and the Tibetan massif. Here India has pursued the traditional remedy of a great power confronted by a comparable rival - a security belt against military pressure.

Neither China nor India has so far engaged in a diplomatic or security contest over pre-eminence in the heartland of Asia. For the foreseeable future, both countries, while protecting their interests, have too much to lose from a general confrontation.

Too often America's India policy is justified - occasionally with a wink - as way to contain China. But the reality has been that so far both India and America have found it in their interest to maintain a constructive relationship with China.

To be sure, America's global strategy benefits from Indian participation in building a new world order. But India will not serve as America's foil with China and will resent any attempts to use it in that role.

In the region between Calcutta and Singapore, India seeks a role commensurate with its economic, political and strategic significance.

India is well aware that the future of Southeast Asia will be determined by economic and political relationships in which China, America, Japan and India will be the principal actors. A developing Association of Southeast Asian Nations is, or should be, in their common interest. Attempts at hegemony are likely to lead to countervailing pressures. Here American and Indian interests are - or could be made to be - quite congruent.

In the region between Bombay and Yemen, Indian and American interests in defeating radical Islam are nearly parallel. Until 9/11, governance in the Islamic world was largely in the hands of autocrats. Indian leaders used nonalignment to placate their Muslim minority by cooperating with the Muslim autocrats.

That condition no longer prevails. Indian leaders know that fundamentalist jihad seeks to radicalize Muslim minorities by undermining secular societies through acts of terrorism.

Contemporary Indian leaders have understood that if this demonstration of global restlessness spreads India will sooner or later suffer comparable attacks. In that sense, even if India had preferred some other battlefields, the outcome of the American struggle against terrorism involves Indian long-term security fundamentally.

America is fighting some of India's battles, and the two countries have parallel objectives even where their tactics differ.