Womenomics

Why Put a Ring on It?

In America, women are waiting longer to wed than ever, and many are choosing not to do so at all. The freedom to pursue high-powered careers and sexually diverse lives without fear of pregnancy or stigma has turned marriage into a choice, not destiny. By 2009 nearly half of all American adults younger than 34 had never married, a rise of 12 percentage points in less than a decade. Unmarried women outnumber married ones for the first time ever.

Single women are reshaping politics. As women tend to worry more about reproductive rights and fair pay, they have favoured Democrats for president since 1988. But the overall women’s vote hides a divide: in 2012 Mitt Romney narrowly carried married women, while the unmarried rushed to Barack Obama in their millions, giving him a 36-point margin. Single women cast almost a quarter of the votes, nearly guaranteeing his re-election.

Delaying marriage is also having economic effects: women aged 25 to 34 are the first generation to start their careers near parity with men, earning 93% of men’s wages. Single women now buy homes at greater rates than single men, a big step in independent wealth-building.

These trends have some conservatives fretting about the decline of the family. The divorce rate rocketed in the 1970s and 1980s, as women who had rushed into unhappy marriages discovered they could make their own way. The boom in divorce encouraged many in the next generation to abstain from marriage rather than enter a flawed one. Now that marriage is simply one option among many, fewer women are exchanging vows, but those that do tend to be in happier, more co-operative relationships.

The divorce rate, now falling, has plunged fastest among those who stay single longest. Despite the stereotype that high-achieving women are doomed to spinsterhood, the truth is that these women are now the most likely to tie the knot, and can afford to hold out for the right match.

Not all women are celebrating. For some, singlehood is less a choice than bad luck. Outside big cities, women who are unmarried into their late 30's are often pitied. For those who hope to become mothers, biology imposes harsh deadlines – though breakthroughs in fertility treatments have raised the number of women giving birth after age 35 by 64% between 1990 and 2008.

In particular, poor single women face a different landscape. Not all are unmarried by choice: America’s high incarceration rate has shrunk their pool of men. Single parenthood is strongly correlated with poverty. Conservatives duly push marriage as the antidote: the federal government has spent almost a billion dollars on pro-marriage programmes, to little avail.

Source: economist.com

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Womenomics

The Human Rights Commission has just released a "Census of Women's Participation." The findings of that report clearly delineates inequality across sectors such as the police, legal and justice systems and at company director level:

• 41.6% of lawyers are women but only 19.34% are partners in law firms.
• 3 of the top 50 police officers are women.
• 54 women sit on boards of publicly listed companies, 8.65% of board membership.
• 23% of public service CEO's are female but women are 59% of state sector employees.

It is now more than 30 years since sex discrimination legislation came into force but our progress towards gender equality seems minimal.

It amazes me given that we mouth the mantra of social responsibility, and the value of diversity, that women are so excluded from the top jobs.

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Musings and Amusings

Our brains lust after money with the same neurons that crave sex. And these are the same neurons which give us the high from cocaine. The pleasure of orgasm, the high from cocaine, the rush from buying, are governed by the same neural network.

Furthermore, these primal pleasure circuits can, and often do, override the functioning of the brains’ frontal cortex which governs rationality (read more about this in Money, Money, Money, Ain’t it Funny). In other words folks, money can drive you crazy.

I think I’ll go and buy a handbag, I need a rush!

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Why can we make disastrous decisions in love?

This is your brain on love - more neuroscience!

Her front brain is telling her he's trouble. Look at the facts, it says. He's never made a commitment, he drinks too much, he can't hold down a job.

But her middle brain won't listen. Man, it swoons, he looks great in those jeans, his black hair curls onto his forehead so adorably, and when he drags on a cigarette, he's so bad he's good.

His front brain is lecturing, too: She's flirting with every guy in the place, and she can drink even you under the table, it says. His mid-brain is unresponsive, distracted by her legs, her blouse and her come-hither stare.

Alas, when it comes to choosing mates, smart neurons can make dumb choices. Sure, if the brain's owner is in her 40s and has been around the block a few times, she might grab her bag and scram. If the guy has reached seasoned middle age, he might think twice about that cleavage-baring temptress. Wisdom - at least a little - does come with experience.

But if the objects of desire are in their 20s, all bets are off.

It's a dance that holds many mysteries, to psychologists as well as to the willing participants. Science is just beginning to parse the inner workings of the brain in love, examining the blissful or ruinous fall from a medley of perspectives: neural systems, chemical messengers and the biology of reward.

It was only in 2000 that two London scientists selected 70 people, all in the early sizzle of love, and rolled them into the giant cylinder of a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, or FMRI. The images they got are thought to be science's first pictures of the brain in love.

The pictures were a revelation, and others have followed, showing that romantic love is a lot like addiction to alcohol or drugs. The brain is playing a trick, necessary for evolution, by associating something that just happened with pleasure and attributing the feeling to that magnificent specimen right before your eyes.

Somehow, it all comes together, for better or for worse, the sum total of what's found in the mating dance of the ancient reptilian brain, the passion of the limbic brain and the logic of the neocortex; and, if you want to know how this translates into your money behaviour read 'Money, Money, Money Ain't it Funny.'

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Womenomics

A recent McKinsey survey asked men and women executives to define the event that has had the most significant impact on their careers. Both men & women report that work factors have more influence than those from home. Women were more likely to say they had role models and mentors.

The top three career changing moments were:

• Realisation you were not leading the life you wanted.
• Difficulties balancing work and private life.
• Change in marital status.
• Women ranked the first in two more highly than change in marital status which rather surprised me.

Another notable difference was that 27% of the women surveyed but just 7% of men say they have experienced discrimination and are also somewhat more likely than men to say they have difficulty balancing work and private life.

Overall, when both sexes were asked who, inside or outside the workplace provided substantial help they offer very similar answers.

The top three were; spouse, friends then colleagues or friends at work.

It’s good to see similarities between the male and female experiences in the workplace – with, of course, the exception of discrimination!

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Who's counting?

The myth, the math and the sex.

I was intrigued to see that Kiwi women have more casual sex than any other nationality-and more casual sex than men. This fascinated me as I thought the maths was wrong.

The general consensus seems to be that it is men who are promiscuous by nature-spreading their genes far and wide while women are genetically programmed for monogamy.

One recent US survey concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners; women four. A British survey said that men had 12.7 and women 6.5. But, bear with me here is the problem. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners than heterosexual women. Their survey results cannot be correct. What is going on and what is to be believed?

I have toyed with various scenarios to explain this discrepancy. Firstly, the data is self reported, do men exaggerate and women minimise? Are men having a lot of sex with prostitutes when they travel to other countries?

I guess when we have Big Brother checking our sex lives this conundrum will be resolved-until then the surveys are self fulfilling prophecies-except in New Zealand!

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