Happy Wednesday!
We have our tenth Anniversary Celebrations coming up in August and September. Please keep an eye out for the event postings as the Board Members and I will be attending the events and would like to meet as many of you as possible. It has been a pleasure to watch this organization grow and follow the successful career trajectory of our members over the last decade. We have some new initiatives planned and are excited for the next decade!
Please note that we are transitioning to a new membership system this month. Please bear with us as we make this transition. All the member data has been loaded and we are in the process of posting our first events to the system, so you will soon be experiencing a whole new login and event registration system that we hope will be more user-friendly. Please do have patience with us as we make this transition! As always, you can reach us on info@txwsw.com if you need help!
The topic of women out-earning their partner has been in the news of late with 2 recent articles, and it seems social attitudes have still not caught up with reality to the point where women who earn more than their husbands tend to lie about it. The full article can be found here. The question than becomes does this lying perpetuate a myth that women have a choice about working? If they are the primary breadwinner, that is more often than not the case. The next article delves into how this income imbalance can effect a relationship and can be found here.
On the subject of blurring gender roles, more companies are offering paid paternity leave to their male employees. In Scandinavia, where the role of working and raising a family are more equitably distributed, studies have shown that having BOTH parents take family leave meant women paid less of a career penalty for having children. The full article can be foundhere.
And why does all this matter really? Just look at the population growth statistics. Recent studies have shown that women today are having fewer babies than prior generations because children are just too expensive. We only need to look to Japan to see how this demographic story plays out. In Jerome Powell’s testimony yesterday, he noted the educational divide as a reason for the growing income inequality and economic opportunity divide in our country – the US started out first in the race back in the 1950’s and we have been losing ground ever since in an environment where skilled labor is more important than ever. The full article can be found here. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we should be appalled that our lack of basic social support for parents deters women from having children. We talk about how much we value children, but the state of our educational system and childcare arrangements tell a very different story.
Finally, Ruth Ben-Ghait, a professor at New York University wrote on the subject of the sexual harassment that we don’t talk about – gender harassment. She coined the term to cover the previously ill-defined and demeaning behaviors defined as “behaviors that belittle women and make them feel they don’t belong.” While employers are developing tools to deal with cases of physical assault, this behavior is more insidious, just as destructive and devastating to a woman’s career. The full article can be found here.
We have some terrific events lined up for you in 2018 including our ten-year anniversary celebrations in August! We look forward to seeing you all at an event in 2018! To learn more about our 2018 events, please visit www.txwsw.com.
To help us celebrate our ten-year anniversary, I would ask each of you to consider corporate sponsorship of TXWSW. Benefits include attendance at our flagship events and recognition for your firm. To learn more, you may find our sponsor information here. Additionally, we would be happy to create a custom sponsorship for you. Please contact Bianca King atdevelopmentdirector@txwsw.com.
Kind regards
Christine