New Girls' Network

Earlier this week, I was in a meeting with a professor when the issue of women’s advancement in the professional world came up. I was in the process of making some vague, general statement when she suddenly asked: “Have things gotten worse?” It turned out that she had recently spoken with a student who was worried […]

Last week, one of my professors asked us to sign up to take notes to share with the class. As my friend put her name on the list, she counted the men who had volunteered. There were two of them. For twenty-six classes. In an 80-person class that’s equal parts men and women. This seems […]

On the first day of my Constitutional Law class, the professor asked a lecture hall full of sixty-something first-year law students how many of us knew about the Glorious Revolution. About a dozen people raised their hands. Every one of them was a man. Here’s what I know about the Glorious Revolution: It happened in […]

When people say things like there is no glass ceiling, or that the wage gap is a myth, it’s a little mystifying. The ceiling may be higher than it has been in the past – or it may be a labyrinth – but the numbers speak for themselves.

Welcome to the New Girls’ Network. We’re a group of women committed to helping other women advance, inside and outside the office. Our goal is to educate women (and men) about the ways lingering gender bias infiltrates our everyday lives, and to provide strategies to overcome its effects. Over the next several months, this will […]

An article in this weekend’s New York Times shed some more light on Silicon Valley’s worst-kept secret: it has a woman problem. Its look at female founders of tech start-ups who also have children shows a remarkable lack of self-consciousness about Maternal Wall bias, the strongest and most open form of gender bias today. According to the article, women make […]

Silicon Valley was hit hard last week when venture capitalist Ellen Pao’s lawsuit against former employer Kleiner Perkins was made public. Among other things, Pao alleged that she had been sexually harassed by more than one male co-worker, and retaliated against when she complained. She also claimed that women at the firm were discriminated against “by failing […]

I almost don’t want to write this post, because it brings attention to something I’d much rather be ignored. In the frenetic lead-up to the March 23 opening of The Hunger Games, there are articles about the movie’s restrictive costumes, about its “futuristic Appalchian” soundtrack, about its similarities with a Japanese film called Battle Royale. But few of them focus on one key […]

When The Atlantic’s article The End of Men came out over a year ago, I, like many women, was irritated. But it took me a long time to understand why I found the article so grating. It makes good points. It’s true that many jobs that were long dominated by men are on the decline. The statistics author Hanna Rosin […]

As we discussed in our last post, a recent study by the non-profit Catalyst found that the best strategy to get a raise is to make your achievements known around the office. Seems simple enough, right? Let your co-workers know about a deal that went your way. Be sure to get credit for ideas you originate. Mention […]