Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Women in the Workplace, the Gender Confidence Gap and #YesAllWomen

Last week, four important studies brought conclusions relating to women in the workplace. These were not about editors Jill Abramson unceremoniously fired from the NYTimes nor Natalie Nougayrède forced out of her position at Le Monde, although they provide a perfect backdrop. Two of the studies demonstrate how, at either end of the corporate ladder, women are subjected to gender-based inequalities and punishments, these then intersect with a prevalent and detrimental gender confidence gap, and, finally, come to rest in the US government's medical research agency's (NIH) decision to erase sex bias from their biomedical studies.


The first study, from the University of Victoria and the Canadian Intern Association shows that the majority of interns in Canada are young women, who are unpaid or are making less than the minimum wage. Around 300 000 young Canadians work unpaid, and the vast majority are women - 49% in the private sector and 25/26% between the public and not for profit sector. While the Conservative government has provided funding towards "high-demand" internships in the fields of sciences, maths and computers, it has given nothing to more 'traditionally female' fields of nutritional sciences, teaching or social work.