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Stressed women of STEM. People who ask why there are still so few women in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) miss the greater point, a neuroscience professor and woman of color argues in Nature. A minority woman employed in STEM must endure not just unequal pay and lack of advancement but also chronic stress from facing gender and racial bias. Organizations must ease this burden by ensuring equal pay, cultivating inclusive workplaces, and hiring women into staff and leadership roles. [Nature]
The cost of motherhood. Whether returning to work months or years after giving birth (or not returning to work at all), gaps in employment can limit women’s career opportunities and earning potential, the Economist notes. A new study that includes 134 countries finds that nearly everywhere in the world, the “motherhood penalty” damages women’s careers. On average, nearly one in four women exit the workforce within one year of becoming a mother, and 15% are still missing from the labor force a decade later. [Economist]
Women’s ambitions. Are women becoming less ambitious? Au contraire, McKinsey senior partners Alexis Krivkovich and Lareina Yee share on an episode of The McKinsey Podcast. Women’s career ambitions increased throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, McKinsey and LeanIn.Org’s 2023 Women in the Workplace report found. Roughly 80% of women in corporate America and Canada want to be promoted, an increase of about ten percentage points from 2019. Nearly every single woman—96%—says their career is important to them.
The ‘broken rung.’ It’s not the glass ceiling that holds women back from advancing their careers; it’s the broken rung, Krivkovich explains. Fewer women than men are promoted into their very first step up into a manager position. For every 100 men who advance to the manager level, only 87 women do. For women of color, it’s 73 who are promoted, and for Black women, it’s only 54. That sets women up to progress more slowly and with greater difficulty. Explore four big myths about women at work.
— Edited by Belinda Yu, editor, Atlanta
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