– Joan Wasser Gish is a consultant in the Boston area. A former senior policy adviser to Senator John Kerry, she recently testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship. The views expressed are her own. –

When the toys are put away and the last youngster is picked up for the day, early childhood education providers like all other entrepreneurs sit down to assess their revenues, account for expenses and make difficult business decisions. And though their services are rife with hugs and games and songs, their work has serious implications for the economy. The child-care sector is a critical driver of economic growth and workforce development. That is why financial leaders and policymakers should do more to support providers as both educators and small-business entrepreneurs.

There are more than 400,000 licensed child-care facilities across the country. They span the economic sectors, with the majority run as sole proprietorship home-based businesses, and the rest split between for-profit and non-profit centers offering early education and care. Most are run by women, and a significant proportion are owned and operated by members of minority groups. Because of the early education and care services they provide, they contribute to both short- and long-term economic growth.

Quality early childhood education is associated with improved worker availability and productivity. Early childhood education enables parents to participate in the labor force. Studies have shown that availability of good early childhood education can reduce employee turnover by 37 to 60 percent.

Conversely, breakdowns in child-care availability are associated with absenteeism, tardiness, and reduced concentration at work. One study estimates that unstable care arrangements leading to absences cost American businesses $3 billion annually.

Early childhood education establishments also contribute to the economy as employers and catalysts of community development. The Oakland-based Insight Center for Community Economic Development estimates that the child-care industry generates more than $50.6 billion in annual gross receipts and 1.85 million full-time equivalent jobs nationwide. When centers locate in low-income urban and rural communities, which many non-profits and some for-profits do, they hire from the local community, enable low- and moderate-income families to participate in the labor force, and purchase and renovate facilities.

But the greatest economic impact of high-quality early childhood education is its beneficial effect on enrolled children. Nobel Laureate economist James Heckman argues that high-quality early education provides “the advantage of an early start to their skill development improving their chances of successfully participating in the job market in later years.”

Longitudinal studies have demonstrated that children who attend first-class early education and care programs are 40 percent less likely to repeat a grade, 30 percent more likely to graduate from high school, and more than twice as likely to go to college. It is estimated that universal access to voluntary, quality early education would add 3 million jobs and almost $1 trillion annually to U.S. GDP over the long term.

In short, investing in high-quality early childhood education is an efficient way to build human capital and strengthen the overall economy.

Few of these economic benefits, however, are achieved by warehousing children in sub-standard programs so that parents can work. The key is quality. To realize the positive economic impacts of early childhood education providers must offer first-rate services, and that means that they have to succeed as both educators and small-business operators.

Legislation pending in Congress and supported by the Obama administration would incentivize states with eligibility for grant funds if they improve educational standards, raise teacher qualifications, and develop a rating system that would provide parents a tool for selecting quality early childhood education programs. These policies would build upon existing state-level initiatives designed to strengthen the educational quality of early learning programs, and present important changes and promising investments.

Economists at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve estimate that there is a 16 percent return on every public dollar invested in high quality early childhood education.

Yet scant attention is being paid by state and federal policymakers to strengthening early childhood education through the existing network of entrepreneurial supports. The U.S. Small Business Administration works with lenders to provide $28 billion in loan guarantees to small businesses, has a robust network of technical assistance and business development supports, and is dedicated to fostering women and minority entrepreneurship. Relatively few early education providers, however, are aware of these small business supports. The SBA should do more to reach early childhood education providers with these resources.

Today, solitary initiatives to forge connections between the vast network of small-business resources and child-care providers are sprouting up from California to Massachusetts and many places in between.

Congress is beginning to address the capital needs of early childhood education providers with proposed legislation from my old boss, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, and a separate bill from Senator Robert Casey of Pennsylvania and Representative Carolyn McCarthy of New York. These initiatives are designed to help early childhood programs purchase and renovate facilities, an important contributor to program safety and quality.

But if this is all policymakers do, the nation is missing an opportunity.

Coordinated outreach to early education providers by those with entrepreneurial expertise would have compound benefits to the economy and prove to be an efficient use of public funds. For example, Small Business Development Centers could collaborate with Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies and Family Child Care Systems to reach providers with technical assistance.

The federal government spends billions of dollars each year to both improve access to high-quality early childhood education and to support small businesses as engines of economic development.

Private-sector early childhood education providers are positioned to help our nation realize these goals simultaneously. If these providers are properly supported, the positive effects of early childhood education would grow, benefiting both our kids and our economy.

– Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-

Although women moved into the workforce in great numbers in the 1980s, they still have to catch up to men in terms of leadership positions in corporate America. The New York human resources firm Catalyst found that women hold 16.9 percent of officer positions in American corporations, and only 11 percent of senior leadership line roles.

The question is, why are there so few women corporate board members? Those who have a proclivity to assume sex discrimination might fear the worst. Others might simply assume that relatively few qualified women were available for board slots, or that boards with women performed poorly in the marketplace.

Earlier this month the London School of Economics released a new study showing that publicly-traded companies with more women on the boards of directors do better in terms of firm management but worse in terms of economic performance. The study, entitled Women in the Boardroom and Their Impact on Governance and Performance, was just published in the Journal of Financial Economics.

The authors, economists Renee Adams of the University of Queensland, Australia, and Daniel Ferreira, of the London School of Economics, conclude that additional women improve the governance of the firm. Female board members were more likely to be assigned to audit, nominating, and corporate governance committees and they had higher attendance at board meetings. Chief executive officers of companies with female directors are held to a higher standard of accountability.

Surprisingly, the authors claim to have statistical results that reveal precisely this politically incorrect result: firms with women on board have lower return on assets than firms without women board members. The firms are less profitable and have lower financial performance.

If that result seems counter-intuitive, you may be correct. The statistical results presented by the authors are not robust to changes in specification, and many of the key estimated parameters are not significantly different from zero. Even more troubling, some of the statistical techniques employed appear to be poorly chosen.

The authors used data from 1996 to 2003 collected by the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a group that funds research on corporate governance, and ExecuComp, a database that tracks compensation of the top five directors in S&P 500, S&P 400 MidCap and S&P SmallCap 600 indexes. The sample contained data on 1,939 firms and, within these, 86,714 directorships.

On average, these firms had slightly more than 9 board members each, but 39 percent of the annual observations are firms with no women. Moreover, 40 percent of observations were firms with only one woman on the board. Thus, fully 79 percent of the observations are firms with boards with either one or no women on the board. On average, fewer than 10 percent of all directors are women.

Professor Ferreira explained his results this way in a press release issued by LSE, ”Our research shows that women directors are doing their jobs very well. But a tough board, with more monitoring, may not always be a good thing. Indeed we see that increased monitoring can be counter-productive in well-governed companies.”

He continued, “When you meddle in boards there may be unintended consequences. This is particularly important to bear in mind in the current context when companies are under increasing pressure to change the composition of their boards.”

As the global economy struggles to recover from the recession, this conclusion is worth bearing in mind. Women will only be harmed if it is perceived that they have gained their directorships through a system of quotas. Rather, they need to make sure that they put in the hours of work and go for the tough negotiating strategy so that they move to the top on their own and gain board seats on their own merit.

— Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-

One of the concerns of working women is the “pay gap” – the alleged payment to women of 78 cents for every dollar earned by a man.  But there are more behind these numbers than first meets the eye, because women work different hours, major in different subjects, and choose different careers.

The 78 percent figure comes from comparing the 2007 full-time median annual earnings of women with men, the latest year available from the Census Bureau.  The 2007 Department of Labor data show that women’s full-time median weekly earnings are 80 percent of men’s.

Just comparing men and women who work 40 hours weekly, without accounting for differences in jobs, training, or time in the labor force, yields a ratio of 87.2 percent, with a smaller pay gap.

These wage ratios are calculated from government data and do not take into account differences in education, job title and responsibility, regional labor markets, work experience, occupation, and time in the workforce.  When economic studies include these major determinants of income, rather than simple averages of all men and women’s salaries, the pay gap shrinks even more.

A report by Jody Feder and Linda Levine of the Congressional Research Service entitled “Pay Equity Legislation in the 110th Congress,” declared that “Although these disparities between seemingly comparable men and women sometimes are taken as proof of sex-based wage inequities, the data have not been adjusted to reflect gender differences in all characteristics that can legitimately affect relative wages (e.g. college major or uninterrupted years of employment).”

Many academic studies of gender discrimination focus on the measurement of the wage gap.  Dozens of studies have been published in academic journals over the past two decades.  These studies attempt to measure the contributing effects of all the factors that could plausibly explain the wage gap.  The remaining portion of the wage gap that cannot be explained by measurable variables is frequently termed “discrimination.”

Generally, the more information about women that is included in the analysis, the more of the wage gap that can be explained, and the less is the residual portion attributable to “discrimination.”  An analysis that omits relevant information finds a greater unexplained residual, and concludes that there is more discrimination.

Simple wage ratios do not take into account other determinants of income.  A female nurse might earn less than a male orthopedic surgeon.  But this would not be termed “unfair” or “discrimination” because the profession of surgeon requires more years of education, the surgeon might work different hours from the nurse, and the nurse might have fewer continuous years of work experience due to family considerations.

Baruch College economics professor June O’Neill, in an article published in 2003, shows that when data on demographics, education, scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, work experience, child-related factors, and percent female in the occupation are analyzed, the wage ratio becomes 97.5 percent, an insignificant difference.

In another study, Professors Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Kevin Hallock of Cornell University found almost no difference in the pay of male and female top corporate executives when accounting for size of firm, position in the company, age, seniority, and experience.

Lower pay can reflect decisions—by men and women–about field of study, occupation, and time in the workforce.  Those who don’t finish high school earn less.  College graduates who major in humanities rather than the sciences have lower incomes.  More women than men choose humanities majors.

Employers pay workers who have taken time out of the work force less than those with more experience on the job, and many women work fewer hours for family reasons.  When women choose jobs that allow more flexibility and less travel in order to accommodate family, they find that they end up earning less.

Yet a choice of more time out of the workforce with less money rather than more time in the workforce with more income is not a social problem.  A society that gives men and women these choices, as does ours, is something to applaud.

Although documented cases of discrimination exist, and are rightly settled in the courts, when all the factors behind the pay numbers are calculated, men and women earn about the same.

– Nancy Duff Campbell is a founder and co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, one of the nation’s pre-eminent women’s rights organizations. A recognized expert on women’s law and public policy issues, for over thirty-five years Ms. Campbell has participated in the development and implementation of key legislative initiatives and litigation protecting women’s rights, with a particular emphasis on issues affecting low income women and their families. The views expressed are her own. —

Insurance companies and others who profit from our broken health care system are mobilizing to defeat comprehensive reform by using misinformation and scare tactics. A prime example is the allegation that healthcare legislation – specifically the plan being considered by the House of Representatives – will hurt small businesses.

The fact is that small business owners, especially women, are already hurting under our current healthcare system. Leah Daniels, 29, is the owner of Hill’s Kitchen – a gourmet kitchenware store that opened last May not far from the U.S. Capitol. Daniels can’t afford to offer health insurance to her three employees. She purchased her own bare-bones plan on the individual market for protection “in case I get hit by a car,” but not much else. It costs her just under $200 a month and doesn’t cover such services as routine doctor’s visits or maternity care. Daniels, who often works 7 days a week, says that she is constantly worried about getting sick.

Daniels’ problems are, unfortunately, all too typical. A new report by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) found that small businesses pay up to 18 percent more than large firms for the same health insurance policy. These higher costs mean that small businesses are considerably less likely than larger businesses to provide health insurance to their employees, and those that do tend to have less comprehensive plans. And Census data show that women-owned businesses are generally smaller than male-owned businesses.

Small business owners and employees who don’t get coverage at work or through a spouse’s plan may shop for insurance individually. But if they are women – and small businesses that don’t offer health coverage tend to have large proportions of female workers – they are likely to face discrimination in the individual health insurance market. A study by the National Women’s Law Center found that insurance companies routinely charge women higher rates than men for individual policies and offer policies that exclude health needs specific to women, such as maternity care.

Women who own a small business know that the current health care system is failing them. At a meeting of women small business owners in May, Daniels says, “We went around the room and everyone either had health insurance through their spouse or didn’t have coverage at all. Women talked about being afraid to go to the doctor because they didn’t want to find out that they might be sick. It was really striking.”

The healthcare reform plans that have begun moving through Congress would help make it possible for small business owners to offer comprehensive, affordable health insurance. The House plan would make insurance more affordable by prohibiting insurance companies from discriminating on the basis of health status or gender and by allowing small businesses to purchase coverage through a new Health Insurance Exchange. The Exchange would reduce administrative costs and offer a choice of plans meeting minimum benefit standards. New tax credits would be available to help some small businesses pay for employee health coverage; the credit would be worth 50 percent of the cost of qualified health coverage expenses for businesses with 10 or fewer employees and average wages of $20,000 or less. It would gradually be reduced until firms reached 25 or more employees or average wages of $40,000 or more.

If some employers still can’t provide coverage, their employees could purchase insurance directly from the Exchange. Sliding scale subsidies would help make it affordable, and they couldn’t be turned down because of pre-existing conditions or charged more because of their gender or health history. Larger employers who fail to offer health care coverage would be required to pay an additional payroll tax, but under the plan being developed by the House, businesses below a certain size would be exempt. One version would exempt businesses with payrolls of $500,000 or less. Another would set the exemption at $250,000 – but even at this level, 76 percent of all firms would be exempt.

Opponents of healthcare reform have claimed that small businesses would be hurt by another provision: a graduated surcharge on the very wealthy to help finance health care reform. But the surcharge would only apply to households with adjusted gross income above $350,000 ($280,000 for an individual). As a result, only the wealthiest 1.2 percent of taxpayers – and only 4 to 5 percent of all tax payers with business income – would be subject to the surcharge. Women-owned businesses are especially unlikely to be affected by the surcharge. According to the latest Census data, 96.3 percent of women-owned businesses, compared to 88.9 percent of male-owned businesses, had total receipts below $500,000 – meaning that profits would be well below that level.

Those who claim that healthcare reform will hurt small businesses should re-examine their facts – and the rest of us should examine who they’re really speaking for. We can’t afford to wait any longer for meaningful reform that will bring a guarantee of quality, affordable comprehensive health care for us all.

It’s not surprising that men and women handle their personal finances differently. Yet, data collected by the employee benefits company Financial Finesse shows that men trump women when it comes to managing their wallets.

Out of the 3,500 U.S. workers polled, 90 percent of men said they pay their bills on time each month compared to only 74 percent of women. Also, 71 percent of men said they have a handle on their cash flow so they spend less than they earn each month, while only 53 percent of women could claim the same.

Manisha Thakor, a Houston-based finance expert for women, explains that women tend to be less educated in personal finance.

“Men talk socially about money and business,” said Thakor. “Women are talking about nurturing subjects.”

Also, women are paid less than men, making such things as paying bills and credit card balances harder, she said.

Who handles finances better in your household?

–- Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. The views expressed are her own. –-

The Obama administration is considering a proposal to use federal regulations to expand women’s participation beyond college athletics to the selection of courses, especially in mathematics, science and engineering.

The proposal to apply so-called Title IX gender-equality to selection of courses and majors was discussed at a White House conference on June 23, and endorsed by Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser and assistant to the president, and Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary of education for civil rights.

Title IX, passed in 1972 as an amendment to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, has been interpreted to mean that universities which accept federal funds cannot have more male athletes than female, even though more men than women generally want to play sports. Hence, many collegiate men have not been able to participate in intercollegiate athletics, and men’s sports teams have been terminated all over the country.

Title IX was intended to protect against sex discrimination, but not to allow the use of quotas. Indeed, it specifically prohibited arbitrary leveling of student numbers by gender. Yet the courts have required universities to adopt a proportionality standard for college sports if they wished to avoid lawsuits. If 52 percent of the students are female, then 52 percent of sports slots have to go to women.

In a telephone conversation yesterday Ali told me that although the administration will extend Title IX to math and science, it does not intend to argue for proportionality. Instead, the administration will make sure that secondary schools and universities do not discriminate against girls and women when it comes to selection of courses and majors, citing anecdotal evidence that some girls and women are counseled against taking courses in math and science.

Since Title IX is already law, congressional approval is unnecessary. The new initiative will not require new formal regulations, just a change in enforcement.

Ali explained that college athletics were a special case because male and female programs were segregated, whereas math and science classes are open to all, so gender parity—the same number of women as men in a physics class, for example—is not the goal “at this point.”

The question is, of course, at what point, if ever, the administration will decide that gender parity is the goal. Is the administration’s initiative the first step down a slippery slope that will eventually lead to men being shut out of physics classes the way that they are shut out of swimming and diving at the University of California at Los Angeles? Or will the administration be content to monitor discrimination without resorting to quotas?

Measuring discrimination is tough, because differences in outcomes are not necessarily evidence of discrimination. In 2006 women earned 20 percent of all bachelor’s degrees in engineering and 27 percent in math and computer science. But there’s no evidence that women who wanted to major in science were turned away—or are now.

The Education Department’s prospective focus on counseling sidesteps the issue of what constitutes constructive advice. Is it permissible for a girl who gets Cs in math and science to be counseled not to major in these subjects in college? Or is that evidence of discrimination? What if schools and colleges never counsel females to stay away from science—and women fail courses, then taking longer to get degrees? How is the Department of Education going to measure discriminatory counseling, and how are schools and colleges going to defend themselves against lawsuits?

Students from around the world go to great lengths to come to American universities to study. Let’s hope that universities will not be discouraged from accepting male scientists, because it distorts the gender balance. Would Albert Einstein have been able to come to America under Title IX?

American universities have long hailed academic freedom for both students and faculty as the hallmarks not only of education but of American society. Applying Title IX to students’ majors and courses could be the beginning of the end.

- Donald Steinberg, Deputy President for Policy of International Crisis Group, is a board member of the Women’s Refugee Commission and served on the UNIFEM executive director’s advisory council. The opinions expressed are his own. -

Preparations are now starting for the 10th anniversary of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. This groundbreaking resolution was passed unanimously in October 2000 to address abuses against women during armed conflict, including sexual violence and displacement, and to bring women more fully into conflict prevention and peacemaking.

Resolution 1325 was properly hailed as a road map to promote, among other steps, women’s full engagement in peace negotiations, gender balance in post-conflict governments, properly trained peacekeepers and local security forces, protection for displaced women and accountability for sexual violence. It urged the Secretary-General to bring a gender perspective to all peacekeeping operations and other UN programs, and called for greater funding for measures to protect women during armed conflict and rebuild institutions that matter to women.

The key problem with the celebration plans is that there really is not that much to celebrate. The promise of Resolution 1325 is so far largely a dream deferred. Women continue to be raped and trafficked in conflict situations with impunity, both by rebel forces and by government militaries charged with protecting them. Women peace builders still face severe legal and cultural discrimination; coupled with sexual violence and threats against them, this imposes a victimization and danger that makes even the most courageous women think twice before stepping forward.

In recent peace negotiations in Indonesia, Nepal, Somalia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Philippines and Central African Republic, not a single woman served as a negotiator, mediator, signatory or witness. Men leading peace conferences still exclude women or shunt them off to ante-rooms while “real” negotiations take place, thus producing agreements that are disconnected from ground-truth and less likely to be successful and enjoy popular support.

The absence of women’s participation still silences their voices on issues of internal displacement, trafficking in women and girls, sexual violence, abuses by security forces, maternal health care and girls’ education. Such concerns are typically given short shrift in peace processes and reconstruction efforts, and provided inadequate funding. The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimates that less than 6 percent of funds committed in donors conferences after peace accords are targeted in any way towards women.

The UN has failed to lead by example. The UN’s gender architecture on armed conflict is a hodgepodge, with no lead agency and no clear division of responsibilities between UNIFEM, the Special Adviser for Gender Issues, the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UNDP’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (BCPR) and others.

All are filled with dedicated people doing their best – the recent BCPR decision to deploy 10 new senior gender advisers is a welcome example – but they are under-funded, under-supported by senior officials and poorly coordinated. Their work is further complicated by the absence of time-bound goals backed by monitoring, accountability and enforcement mechanisms.

Some believe that these issues will be addressed in the on-going debate over restructuring how the UN deals with gender issues in general. But the ideal solution – a single agency with at least $1 billion in dedicated funding, a so-called “UNICEF for Women” – seems beyond reach. Even piece-meal reforms, including the oddly named “Composite Entity”, are locked up in the same issues that killed the helpful proposals made by then Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006. For women now being raped in eastern Congo, the single-minded focus on an institutional and architectural solution risks becoming more of a distraction than an ally. The answer lies more in specific actions than in big-bang structural changes.

It is not too late to ensure a 10th anniversary of Resolution 1325 that is worth celebrating. As a first step, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Deputy Secretary-General Asha Rose Migiro should appoint an advisory panel on 1325 of prominent international figures from developing and developed countries with past engagement on gender and armed conflict and knowledge of the UN system. More than a shop-talk or report-writing exercise, the advisory panel would propose and be empowered to help implement specific reforms and practical steps in the UN system, member states and the broader international community to better protect women in conflict situations and ensure their participation in building peace.

The panel should develop and help implement accountability mechanisms by identifying time-bound goals, proposing measurement criteria, determining responsibility for implementation, and defining rewards and sanctions to ensure compliance by individuals and agencies within the UN system. It would seek to reverse the shameful situation in which women fill only two of the Secretary-General’s 40 posts for country-specific special representatives. Among additional steps could be:

• Charging a single entity with overseeing the 1325 agenda, working in tandem with a permanent Security Council working group;
• Establishing a watchlist of countries and non-state actors of concern to be named and shamed into improving their records;
• Ensuring periodic reports by the Secretary-General to the Security Council on the status of 1325 implementation; and
• Enshrining the principle that sanctions will be adopted on governments and non-state actors that fail to meet international standards of protection.

If these items seem a stretch, it is important to remember that each of these measures now applies to the protection of children in armed conflict under UNSC Resolution 1612.

The panel’s success would not be measured by the reports it issues or the publicity it generates. It would come in changing the lives of women on the ground, securing seats for women in peace negotiations and post-conflict governance, preventing armed thugs from abusing women, holding government security forces and warlords alike accountable for sexual violence against women, preventing traffickers from turning women and girls into commodities, building strong civil society networks for women and ending the stigma of victimization that bedevils women leaders.

Now that would be an accomplishment worth celebrating.

– Daniela Drake, M.D., attended Wellesley College and received an MBA from Stanford University. She, along with Elizabeth Ford, authored the book “Smart Girls Marry Money.” A former McKinsey consultant, she is now a full-time primary care physician. Drake married (for love) and has reaped the consequences. The views expressed are her own. –

I had to pause when I came across a blog out of South Africa that read, “I think a way forward, or backwards some of you might say, is to encourage our smart, savvy and capable daughters to marry for money.” Since I co-authored a book with a similar premise, this sassy assertion definitely grabbed my attention.

The blog’s author Jackie May, an editor for The Times world pages in South Africa, penned these seemingly heretical comments after learning of alarming research by Dr. Caroline Gatrell at Lancaster University in England. Dr. Gatrell found, “women who explicitly choose career over kids are often vilified at work.”

Huh?

Conventional wisdom says just the opposite: Sacrificing baby-making is often necessary in the calculus of getting ahead at work. Many mid-career women have forsaken motherhood to obtain career goals. Indeed, economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett made news a few years ago when she presented the statistic that 49% of mid-career women who made $100,000 a year or more were childless, compared to only 10% of men.

Yet, despite the sacrifices many women make in order to climb the corporate ladder, women are still woefully under represented in top executive ranks. Eight of the CEO’s on the Fortune 500 were women a couple of years ago. Now, two years later, we’ve got 12. At this rate it will take a little over 100 years for us to represent half of the CEO’s in the Fortune 500, in the year 2128.

Although the number of CEO’s is a lofty benchmark, in general even at the lower reaches, workplace parity is coming at a glacial pace. The reasons are complicated, and it isn’t just sexism. Many have suggested that it has to do with the choices women make to fulfill personal life ambitions.

Even today, many young women don’t foresee that these choices will affect their career success. Hewlett’s more recent national survey found that the typical young woman graduate plans to have a high paying job, take two to three years off to have children and benefit from career flexibility that lets her pop back in to the workplace when the mood strikes.

While Hewlett found the women’s optimism charming, she also noted that this generation follows hot on the high-heels of a generation of women who had similar ideas. By following non-linear career paths, that generation “lost 18…to 37% of their earning power,” and suffered a complete “downsizing of their ambitions.”

But the new graduates aren’t heeding the warning signs of the slightly more senior women’s failures.

These young women are counting on their talents to grant them repeated entrée into a marketplace they were brought up to believe is a meritocracy. The bad old days are behind us, as one co-ed commented to Hewlett, “Back then—when there were dinosaurs—people just did bad stuff to women.”

But is this true, or are people still doing bad stuff to women? If Dr. Caroline Gatrell’s study is right, women who have sacrificed important personal goals are penalized at work. As Gatrell’s study indicates: Childless women are viewed as lacking an “essential humanity” and viewed as unfit to manage others.

Yet at the same time Gatrell assures us that mothers don’t fare much better. Gatrell avers, “Women with children are blamed for combining motherhood with paid work and women with no children are sidelined and discounted because they are not mothers.”

The problem of women in the workplace is so complicated that the answers themselves sound like Orwellian double-speak. Or, have we at long last entered an age when double-speak simply means that both things can be true, that workplace discrimination can take on many forms and that there are no easy answers? But one thing is certain: achieving success in the workplace is like winning a competition. If half the entering team shows up thinking it’s something less than that, then men will still have the home field advantage—and achieving parity may take more than the 100 years estimated by my back-of-the-envelope calculation.

So what will I say if my daughter asks me, “How can I make sure my life is financially secure?”

I would have to pause before I answer. I would have to consider that in all likelihood she won’t live to see true workplace equality. But her life matters now. So I will have my own Orwellian answer for her and offer it with a hefty dose of irony, “Apply yourself at school and at work. And to cover all your bases, marry a man with money.”

- Shelley Ross is secretary general of the Medical Women's International Association, a non-governmental organisation representing women doctors from all continents. The opinions expressed are her own. -

The Medical Women's International Association was created in 1919, not long after the first International Women's Day in 1911. MWIA's founder was an American by the name of Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, who served as its first president. She was an obstetrician by training but an activist and humanitarian by action. Not only did she establish MWIA but she also founded the American Women's Hospital Service during the First World War.

The motto of the Medical Women's International Association, Matris Animo Curant, comes from Latin and translates to read, "She Heals with the Spirit of a Mother."

From the time of Hygeia in ancient Greece to present day, women have had a significance influence on the practice of medicine.

To name three of its objectives, MWIA (1) works to overcome gender-related differences in health and healthcare between women and men throughout the world, (2) works to overcome gender related inequalities in the medical profession and (3) works to promote health for all through the world with particular interest in women, health and development.

International Women's Day on March 8, gives us an opportunity to reflect on how we are doing with accomplishing these objectives.

Regarding gender-related differences in health and healthcare, a past Director-General of the World Health Organization Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, once said that no country treats their women the same as they treat their men. This is often more readily apparent in the developing countries, where family resources dictate that boys will receive medical care and girls will not. Reproductive health is another example of gender related differences in health care.

In 2009, women are still being denied skilled care during pregnancy, labour and delivery because they cannot access appropriate medical care. In sub-Saharan Africa, the cause is often lack of transportation to the medical facility whereas in the U.S., it is the lack of medical insurance.

Regarding gender-related inequalities in the medical profession, the biggest change has been in the number of women in medical school. In the developed world, female medical students equal if not surpass the number of male medical students. This has already changed the way medicine is practiced, as women have demanded a better work-life balance.

With this improvement in working conditions comes the danger of the profession becoming a Pink Collar profession, where the female predominance equates to lack of influence. One of MWIA's jobs is to ensure that there are enough women in leadership roles to ensure that medicine continues to have the ability to influence policy makers and advocate for those in need of health care.

The number of women in medical school does not equate with the number of women in higher academic positions, such as deans of medical schools or heads of departments. For those women who wish to climb the academic ladder, there are many obstacles along the way, including the lack of female mentors. On the other hand, many women doctors feel that there is no discrimination, as they are busy balancing home and work and are quite happy to keep their head above water with their required day to day activities.

MWIA has had some successes when it comes to promoting health for all. MWIA has written a manual on how to make sure health care has a gender perspective and a manual on adolescent sexuality. MWIA was very involved in promoting immunization against Human Papillomavirus (HPV), which is the leading cause of cancer of the cervix. Thanks to MWIA's work, there are many programs in schools that are immunizing girls and in some countries, boys, against this infection.

MWIA has spoken out for years against female genital mutilation (FGM). Dr. Koso Thomas of Sierra Leone wrote a book thirty years ago to help eradicate FGM, and recently starred in a Danish film, called "The Secret Pain," that looks at FGM in her home country. MWIA has recently spoken out about osteoporosis, to help improve women's awareness of the condition that predisposes them to major life changes. It is well known that once you have a hip fracture, your chance of leading an independent life ever again is less than 50 percent. MWIA holds international conferences that allow discussion on topics of timely interest. The next congress will be in Munster, Germany, in 2010. Visit the MWIA website at www.mwia.net for more information.

So, on International Women's Day, the question is whether things are as good as they are going to get for women and the answer is no. MWIA will continue to work to improve the lot of both women in medicine and the health of all women.

- Glenda Stone is chief executive and founder of Aurora, a recruitment advertising and market intelligence company, and co-chairs the UK Women's Enterprise Taskforce established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The opinions expressed are her own. -

Most venture capital and angel investment tend to go to a specific breed of entrepreneur - innovative, well networked, intelligent, confident ... male. Is this the result of deep-rooted discrimination or is this simply an issue of supply and demand? Women-owned businesses are largely under-capitalised and this leads to inhibited growth.

Access to finance is cited by numerous sources as the greatest barrier to the growth of women's enterprise but "access" is only the consequence and "education" is the cause. More women need to participate in business education addressing business growth, technology, revenue models, and securing correct types of finance.

Globally women-led businesses receive less than 5 percent of venture capital. Women business owners also seek less bank loans and overdraft facilities. Regardless of country, women are more frugal - they do more with less, for less. Is this a flattering positive or is this a naive flaw that perpetuates women's relegation to micro enterprise?

I co-chair a taskforce established by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. We advise on strategy relative to increasing the quantity and scalability of women's enterprise. If women started and grew businesses at the same rate as their male counterparts, the economy would experience greater wealth and job creation and, needless to say, generate further substantial tax revenues for government.

The private sector is keen to encourage emerging markets of women entrepreneurs because this can result in an expanded customer base and vertical cross-selling opportunities. One of the biggest challenges facing the Taskforce is the disproportionate interest in micro versus fast-growth businesses, not so much from the private sector or senior experts in central government, but from business support providers and the actual women themselves. Perhaps the fast-growth female led businesses are simply busy doing business and do not view gender-based networks as relevant.
In addition to government programmes and private sector support typically from finance and technology corporations, thousands of businesswomen's networking groups also exist around the world to encourage and support the rise of female entrepreneurs. Serving an important need, many of these networks provide various training programmes and events but the networks themselves usually lack revenue models and so each month many new networks launch while others simply disappear.

Although recent years have seen an emergence of women's funding networks predominantly in the US, Canada and the UK, most networks tend to focus on micro-enterprise and social networking rather than on formal business education. In addition, media coverage tends to focus on small women-owned businesses in retail that have a good story for high audience appeal rather than on the more scalable and complex business-to-business enterprises that may be of less interest to mainstream media audiences.

Media coverage of women starting their business from the kitchen table in an area they have always enjoyed as a consumer, all while working flexibly caring for children, certainly predominate both online and offline media. Such stereotypes, while important for their inspiration, simply reinforce a narrow concept of women's enterprise. "Women's enterprise" is often acknowledged as one homogenous group with little market segmentation. Is this ignorance or because it is a market not considered to be worth pursuing?

International Women's Day on March 8, celebrated annually since 1911, provides an excellent opportunity for reinforcing the importance of women's equality through economic advancement - and creating wealth through enterprise is key to this. With around 15 per cent increase in the level of International Women's Day activity year on year around the world, there is certainly considerable energy for positive change.