Why women aren’t getting promotions 🫥

Plus: Research on gender gap wins Nobel Peace Prize

October 17, 2023

Hey there! Inspired by the boy math trend, here’s our STS spin: ✨ Company math. ✨ What is company math, you ask? Our go-to example is when a company shares a salary range to seem “transparent,” but…there’s over a $100K difference and it doesn’t actually help anyone.

Have you seen company math in action lately? Hit reply and let us know! We’ll feature the best ones in next week’s newsletter. 🗞

 1   Claudia Goldin wins The Nobel Peace Prize 🏆

Carlin Stiehl/Getty Images

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize in Economic Sciences goes to Claudia Goldin. 🙌 Goldin is a Harvard economist known for her findings on the gender wage gap in the US (her body of work spans decades!). She’s the third woman in history to win the Nobel Prize.

When it comes to the gender wage gap, a popularly cited statistic is that women earn 82 cents on the dollar compared to men. But Goldin’s research went deeper—uncovering how that number differs for women of different educational levels, fields, motherhood status, and ages. This research is the first comprehensive account of women’s earnings and labor market participation through the centuries.

Her top findings:

1️⃣ The decade 1963 to 1973 saw a ton of progress. 45% of the 155 critical moments in women’s rights history happened during these years. This includes the passage of the Equal Pay Act, the Roe v. Wade decision, the admission of women into Ivy League schools, and the availability of birth control.

2️⃣ The gap widens at a certain age. The gender pay gap is relatively small when first entering the workforce (regardless of occupation). But once women enter their 20s and 30s and start having children, the pay gap widens. In fact, the wage gap for women with kids is twice as large as women without kids.

3️⃣ ”Greedy work” is partially to blame. American workplaces value long, inflexible hours—so much so that doubling your working hours disproportionately results in much more than double your earnings. Anyone who scales back their time is at a disadvantage; AKA women, who carry the burden of childcare duties.

Where do we go from here? If there’s one thing Goldin’s research tells us, it’s that flexible hours are key to closing the gap. By allowing women to plan around childcare and household responsibilities (e.g., bringing kids to school, grocery shopping, and after-school activities) they can work hours that are most convenient for them instead of having to quit altogether. Yet another reason why we are WFH stans. 💚

 2   Women are asking for promotions, but men keep getting them 🫥

“Ask, and you shall receive” isn’t flying in the workplace. For every 100 men promoted to a manager role in 2022, only 87 women got the same boost, per a McKinsey and Sheryl Sandberg report. For women of color, the numbers are even worse—their promotion rates compared to men have hit a five-year low.

One reason this might be happening: “We promote men based on potential and women have to have already proven it to you,” hypothesized Sandberg. In other words, women find themselves trapped in a cycle of “How am I going to get experience if no one is hiring me without said experience?!” 🔁

The solutions? The report suggests companies follow three steps:

  1. Track who is put up for promotions and who receives them by race and gender.

  2. De-bias promotion reviews, asking reviewers to explain their rationale.

  3. Invest in career advancement for women of color with formal mentorship and sponsorship programs.

 3   California is making sure its teens know their labor rights 🎒

Courtney Perry/Washington Post

There’s a lot you don’t learn in high school: How to write a check, change a tire, or what the hell a “mortgage” actually is. But for Californian teens, labor laws will be on the curriculum.

California is rolling out “Workplace Readiness Week,” where students will learn about worker safety, unionization, the difference between employees and contractors, wage and hour protections, and more.

And there’s certainly a need for it: Labor violations involving children are soaring—283% from 2015 to 2022, to be exact.

Sponsored by Capital One

Ready to Get Paid What You’re Worth?

Do you know how much you should be making? That’s what you’ll find out in our upcoming workshop: Find Your Market Rate! Join us this Thursday (10/19) at 12 PM ET (it’s free!).

ICYMI: The US House of Representatives is in limbo as Republicans scramble to find a new House speaker. With the US government on our minds, what better time than to throw it back to our interviews outside the White House? 🇺🇸

Meet the UPS driver earning $110K a year, the supermom with a priceless job, and a water bottle vendor netting $3K–$4K a week. You’ll also find out how much the president makes a year (do you know the answer?). 👀 

Thanks for reading! Before we part ways, we’ve noticed a new trend: People using LinkedIn as a dating platform. 🤨

While that’s certainly one way to meet people, we’d strongly recommend against this (you don’t need us to explain why 😅).

See you next week!

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