by Hanna Rosin
about half of all law and medical degrees: Women earned 47.2 percent of JDs in 2009-2010, according to the American Bar Association, and earned 48.4 percent of MD degrees from US medical schools in 2011, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
about 44 percent of all business degrees: See Nathan E. Bell, “Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 2000–2010,” Council of Graduate Schools and Graduate Record Examinations Board, September 2011. http://www.cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/R_ED2010.pdf.
In twenty-seven of those countries: OECD, Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, (OECD Publishing, 2011). http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/2/48631582.pdf.
The same is true: Philip G. Altbach, Liz Reisberg, and Laura E. Rumbley, “Trends in Global Higher Education: Tracking an Academic Revolution,” Report Prepared for the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education, 2009. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001831/183168e.pdf.
women in Saudi Arabia: See “Higher Education: The Path to Progress for Saudi Women,” World Policy Institute blog, October 18, 2011. http://www.worldpolicy.org/blog/2011/10/18/higher-education-path-progress-saudi-women.
In Brazil, 80 percent of college-educated women: See Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid, “The Battle for Female Talent in Brazil,” Center for Work-Life Policy, December 15, 2011. http://www.worklife-policy.org/documents/CWLP_BattleForFemaleTalentInBrazil_copyright2.pdf.
as the economists: Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz, and Ilyana Kuziemko, “The Homecoming of American College Women: The Reversal of the College Gender Gap,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 20, no. 4 (2006): 133–156.
As Adlai Stevenson told a Smith graduating class: Adlai Stevenson, “A Purpose for Modern Woman,” Smith College Commencement Speech, 1955.
In 1957 the average boy: See Goldin, “Homecoming.”
Between 1968 and the late 1970s: See Goldin, “Homecoming.”
By 1973, only 17 percent of female college freshmen: See Goldin, “Homecoming.”
Now, according to the Census Bureau: Data for the population twenty-five and over with a bachelor’s degree or higher, from the 2011 Current Population Survey.
In 2005, a study: Sandy Baum and Eban Goodstein, “Gender Imbalance in College Applications: Does it Lead to a Preference for Men in the Admissions Process?” Economics of Education Review 24, no. 6 (2005): 665–675.
Jennifer Delahunty Britz, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Kenyon College: Jennifer Delahunty Britz, “To All the Girls I’ve Rejected,” The New York Times, March 23, 2006.
In a 2006 paper: Claudia Buchmann and Thomas DiPrete, “The Growing Female Advantage in College Completion: The Role of Family Background and Academic Achievement,” American Sociological Review 71, no. 4 (2006): 515–554.
Christina Hoff Sommers caused a storm: Christina Hoff Sommers, “The War Against Boys,” The Atlantic, May 2000.
Boys, writes Michael Gurian: See Kelley King, Michael Gurian, and Kathy Stevens, “Gender-Friendly Schools,” Educational Leadership 68, no. 3 (2010): 38–42.
In a Newsweek story: Peg Tyre, “The Trouble with Boys,” Newsweek, January 29, 2006. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2006/01/29/the-trouble-with-boys.html.
But as neuroscientist: Lise Eliot, “Stop Pseudoscience of Gender Differences in Learning,” ASCD Community Blog, November 3, 2010.http://ascd.typepad.com/blog/2010/11/myth-of-pink-blue-brains.html.
In the latest assessment: “The Nation’s Report Card: Reading 2011,” NCES 2012-457, National Center for Education Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2012457.
nearly one in four white sons: Richard Whitmire, Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind (AMACOM, 2010), p. 25.
In math, scores of both boys and girls: National Assessment of Educational Progress 1990, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009 and 2011 Mathematics Assessments, National Center for Education Statistics.
“The world has gotten more verbal”: Whitmire, Why Boys Fail, p. 28.
ninth-grade bulge: Whitmire, Why Boys Fail, p. 21.
They are more likely than boys: See tables 157 and 159 in “Digest of Education Statistics: 2010,” National Center for Education Statistics. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/.
University of Michigan study: Jerald G. Bachman, Lloyd D. Johnston, and Patrick M. O’Malley, “Monitoring the Future: Questionnaire Responses from the Nation’s High School Seniors, 2010,” University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, 2011.
“What for?” George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (Harper & Brothers, 1860), p. 32.
“Monitoring the Future”: Jerald G. Bachman et al., “Monitoring the Future.”
up from 19 percent: Lloyd D. Johnston and Jerald G. Bachman, “Monitoring the Future: Questionnaire Responses from the Nation’s High School Seniors, 1975,” University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, 1980.
A lawmaker in China recently proposed: Gao Changxin and Wang Hongyi, “Bars Should Be Lowered for Boys in Exams, Lawmaker Says,” China Daily, March 9, 2012.
A MORE PERFECT POISON
THE NEW WAVE OF FEMALE VIOLENCE
an “attempt to assert power”: Joyce Carol Oates, “The Witchcraft of Shirley Jackson,” The New York Review of Books, October 8, 2009.
After poisoning the sugar bowl: Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle (New York: Viking/Penguin, 1962), p. 161.
“My impression was that Mrs. Schuster”: Chris Collins, “Psychiatrist Says Schuster Had Battered Spouse Syndrome,” The Fresno Bee, November 15, 2007.
Brett Steenbarger, who gives advice: Brett Steenbarger, “Four Overlooked Qualities of Successful Traders,” blog entry on TraderFeed, January 11, 2007. http://traderfeed.blogspot.com/2007/01/four-overlooked-qualities-of.html.
The bravest and most skilled fighter: Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: Male and Female Brains and the Truth about Autism (New York: Basic Books, 2003), p. 124.
Such evolutionary origins “have important ramifications”: Kingsley Browne, Divided Labours: An Evolutionary View of Women at Work (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1998), p. 3.
global homicide statistics show that men:”2011 Global Study on Homicide,” United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2011, p.70. http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/statistics/Homicide/Globa_study_on_homicide_2011_web.pdf.
Neuroscientist Lise Eliot explains: Lise Eliot, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps—and What We Can Do About It (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), p. 260.
attributes the historical decrease in violence : Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (New York: Viking, 2011).
Jesse Prinz points out in his recent influential article: Jesse Prinz, “Why Are Men So Violent?” Psychology Today, February 3, 2012.
As best-selling crime writer Patricia Cornwell: Sam Tanenhaus, “Violence That Art Didn’t See Coming,” The New York Times, February 24, 2010.
The share of women arrested for violent crimes: “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being,” White House Council on Women and Girls, March 2011, p. 54. http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/Women_in_America.pdf.
arrests of girls for assault climbed: FBI data analyzed by Meda Chesney-Lind, “Girls and Violence: Is the Gender Gap Closing?” National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, 2011. http://www.vawnet.org/applied-research-papers/print-document.php?doc_id=383.
juvenile male arrest rate for simple assault: “Juvenile Arrest Rates for Simple Assault by Sex, 1980–2009,” Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Statistical Briefing Book, October 2011. http://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/JAR_Display.asp?ID=qa05241.
In that age group, arrests for violent crimes : Data taken from FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
But in the latest cohort, that trend: In 2009, there were 144,007 estimated drug- a
nd violence-related arrests for women under eighteen, and 928,500 for women eighteen and over, according to “Arrest in the United States, 1980–2009,” Bureau of Justice Statistics, September 2011. http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/aus8009.pdf.
From 1985 to 2002, girls’ juvenile court cases: Elizabeth Cauffman, “Understanding the Female Offender,” Juvenile Justice 18, no. 2 (2008): 119–142.
During about the same period, the detention: Meda Chesney-Lind, Merry Morash, and Tia Stevens, “Girls’ Troubles, Girls’ Delinquency, and Gender Responsive Programming: A Review,” The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 41, no. 1 (2008): 162–189.
what some criminologists call “vengeful equity”: Meda Chesney-Lind, “Women in Prison: From Partial Justice to Vengeful Equity,” Corrections Today 60, no. 7 (1998): 66–73.
“The uncomfortable fact is that for all”: Tanenhaus, “Violence.”
TMZ posted a video of her punching: “‘Teen Mom’ Star in Brutal Catfight—On Tape,” TMZ, March 25, 2011. http://www.tmz.com/2011/03/25/teen-mom-2-jenelle-evans-catfight-video-footage-britany-truett-fist-brawl.
If there is any relevant ethnography to apply: Cindy D. Ness, Why Girls Fight: Female Youth Violence in the Inner City (New York: New York University Press, 2010).
A 2010 White House report on women and girls: “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being,” p. 53.
A recent British study showed: Marianne Hester, “Who Does What to Whom? Gender and Domestic Violence Perpetrators,” University of Bristol in association with the Northern Rock Foundation, June 2009. http://www.nr-foundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Who-Does-What-to-Whom.pdf.
One British study found: John Mays, “Domestic Violence: The Male Perspective,” Parity, July 2010. http://www.parity-uk.org/RSMDVConfPresentation-version3A.pdf.
One of the bombers was “emotionally distressed”: Andrew E. Kramer, “Russia’s Fear of Female Bombers Is Revived,” The New York Times, March 29, 2010.
: “Women, we are told, become suicide bombers”: Lindsey A. O’Rourke, “Behind the Woman Behind the Bomb,” The New York Times, August 2, 2008.
In her dissertation, O’Rourke discovered: Lindsey A. O’Rourke, “What’s Special about Female Suicide Terrorism?” Security Studies 18, no. 4 (2009): 681–718.
sociologists at Princeton conducted an experiment: Jenifer R. Lightdale and Deborah A. Prentice, “Rethinking Sex Differences in Aggression: Aggressive Behavior in the Absence of Social Roles,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20, no. 1 (1994): 34–44.
the “hot sauce” study: Holly A. McGregor et. al, “Terror Management and Aggression: Evidence that Mortality Salience Motivates Aggression against Worldview-Threatening Others,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74, no. 3 (1998): 590–605.
women “increasingly reported masculine-stereotyped personality traits”: Jean M. Twenge, “Changes in Masculine and Feminine Traits Over Time: A Meta-Analysis,” Sex Roles 36, no. 5/6 (1997): 305–325.
In 2001, Twenge analyzed personality tests: Jean M. Twenge, “Changes in Women’s Assertiveness in Response to Status and Roles: A Cross-Temporal Meta-Analysis, 1931–1993,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 1 (2001): 133–145.
A 1999 analysis of 150 studies on risk-taking behaviors: James P. Byrnes, David C. Miller, and William D. Schafer, “Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis,” Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 3 (1999): 367–383.
To measure rates of competitiveness: Uri Gneezy, Kenneth L. Leonard, and John A. List, “Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society,” Econometrica 77, no. 5 (2009): 1637–1664.
a phase of “new, more conscious acceptance:” Maud Lavin, Push Comes to Shove: New Images of Aggressive Women (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), p. 16.
In her essay “Throwing Like a Girl”: Iris Marion Young, “Throwing Like a Girl: A Phenomenology of Feminine Body Comportment, Motility, and Spatiality,” in On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 27.
THE TOP
NICE-ISH GIRLS GET THE CORNER OFFICE
the “career cost of family” in various elite workplaces: Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, “The Career Cost of Family,” Sloan Conference Focus on Flexibility, November 30, 2010. http://workplaceflexibility.org/images/uploads/program_papers/goldin_-_the_career_cost_of_family.pdf.
a “complete waste of time”: Ken Auletta, “A Woman’s Place,” The New Yorker, July 11, 2011.
“I’m sick of hearing how far we’ve come”: Barbara Kellerman, “The Abiding Tyranny of the Male Leadership Model—A Manifesto,” Harvard Business Review, April 27, 2010.
Nationwide, about one in eighteen women: Carol Morello and Dan Keating, “More U.S. Women Pull Down Big Bucks,” The Washington Post, October 7, 2010.
“Women are knocking on the door of leadership”: David Gergen, foreword to Enlightened Power: How Women Are Transforming the Practice of Leadership, ed. Linda Coughlin, Ellen Wingard, and Keith Hollihan (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005), p. xxi.
“post-heroic” or “transformational”: James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper & Row, 1978).
calls the new style “meta-leadership”: Rebecca Blumenstein, “Tales from the Front Lines,” The Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2011.
A 2008 study attempted to quantify the effect: Cristian L. Deszö and David Gaddis Ross, “‘Girl Power’: Does Female Representation in Top Management Improve Firm Performance?” Robert H. Smith School Research Paper No. RHS 06-104, August 2008.
as the Internet boom was deflating: Brad M. Barber and Terrance Odean, “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence, and Common Stock Investment,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 116, No. 1 (February 2001): 261–292.
: “One of the distinctive traits about Iceland’s disaster”: Michael Lewis, Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), p. 37.
a “strong feeling in [her] stomach”: Halla Tomasdottir, “A Feminine Response to Iceland’s Financial Crash,” TEDWomen Talk, December 2010. http://www.ted.com/talks/halla_tomasdottir.html.
The New York Times came up with a novel and very relatable explanation: Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Nelson G. Schwartz, “Discord at Key JPMorgan Unit is Faulted in Loss,” The New York Times, May 19, 2012.
: follows a thousand star analysts: Boris Groysberg, Chasing Stars: The Myth of Talent and the Portability of Performance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012).
Fortune used her as the lead in a 2002 story: David Rynecki, “In Search of the Last Honest Analyst,” Fortune, June 10, 2002.
Krawcheck once joked in an interview: Rynecki, “In Search.”
The Wall Street Journal reported: Carol Hymowitz, “Crossing the Boss,” The Wall Street Journal, May 20, 2008.
Economist Linda Babcock hit upon a fairly simple explanation: Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
Babcock’s research helped spawn an industry: Lois P. Frankel, Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office: 101 Unconscious Mistakes Women Make That Sabotage Their Careers (New York: Warner Business Books, 2004); Gail Evans, Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman: What Men Know about Success That Women Need to Learn (New York: Broadway Books, 2000); and Lois P. Frankel, Stop Sabotaging Your Career: 8 Proven Strategies to Succeed—In Spite of Yourself (New York: Warner Business Books, 2007).
Babcock and Sara Laschever wrote their own version: Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Ask For It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want (New York: Bantam Dell, 2008).
In one scenario, some colleagues: Madeline E. Heilman and Julie J. Chen, “Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions to Men’s and Women’s Altruistic Citizenship Behavior,” Journal of Applied Psychology 90, no. 3 (2005): 431–441.
Perhaps the most dispiriting experiment was conducted: Madeline E. Heilman, Aaron S. Wallen, Daniella Fuchs, and Melinda M. Tamkins, “Penalties for Success: Reactions to Women Who Succeed at Male Gender-Typed Tasks,” Journal of Applied Psychology 89, no. 3 (2004): 416–427.
A few years later, Heilman came up with one: Madeline E. Heilman and Tyler G. Okimoto, “Why Are Women Penalized for Success at Male Tasks?” Journal of Applied Psychology 92, no. 1 (2007): 81–92.
In 2011, researcher Hannah Riley Bowles: Hannah Riley Bowles and Linda Babcock, “Relational Accounts: A Strategy for Women Negotiating for Higher Compensation,” invited resubmission to Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, 2011.
describes her own inept attempts at asking: Mika Brzezinski, Knowing Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth (New York: Weinstein Books, 2011).
We know, from a long-term study of Chicago: Marianne Bertrand, Claudia Goldin, and Lawrence F. Katz, “Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2, no. 3 (2010): 228–255.
Do women lack ambition?: Anna Fels, “Do Women Lack Ambition?” Harvard Business Review 9, no. 4 (2004): 50–60.
perfectly articulated in a column by Michael Lewis: Michael Lewis, “How to Put Your Wife Out of Business,” Los Angeles Times, March 6, 2005.
This is an economy where single childless women: Analysis of Census Bureau American Community Survey data by Reach Advisors’ James Chung and Sally Johnstone, “A Glimpse into the Postcrash Environment,” Urban Land, March/April 2010: “When analyzing the incomes of single women in their 20s compared to single men in their 20s, women earn 105 percent of what their male counterparts earn in the average metropolitan market.”
I wrote a story in The Atlantic: Hanna Rosin, “The Case Against Breast-Feeding,” The Atlantic, April 2009.
since 1995, women have almost doubled the amount of time: Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey, “The Rug Rat Race,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2010.