Why should the Congressional Super Committee be 50% women? Let me count the ways.

1. women are 50% of the electorate (talk about taxation, cuts or spending without representation)
2. it’s not “affirmative action” to include half the population in the country’s decision making process
3. it only takes three women on any Board of Directors to significantly and immediately favorably impact the bottom line (no, we’re not better, we just destroy group-think)
4. it’s God’s plan – one man, one woman, right anti-gay activists?
5. more women, fewer testosterone-fueled ultimatums (I didn’t say none, I just said fewer)

To make your voice heard, click here. Read Deloitte’s The Gender Dividend to learn more about the need for women at the table. While you're at it, read Leslie Bradshaw's recent ForbesWoman post Why Women Having a Seat at the Table is Not Enough.

After the jump is the Women’s Media Center press release that gave rise to this post.

>>continue here>>

Why South Carolina? 

Because for the past 19 years the same group of women has been hosting an "I Believe Anita Hill Party." 

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings which legitimized women's complaints of sexual harassment in the workplace. This is a particularly timely year in women's professional history to revisit the Hill-Thomas hearings in light of the DSK, Schwarzgenegger and Weiner scandals. 

Professor Hill will be the keynote speaker at the South Carolina Women Lawyers' Leadership Summit the day after the Anita Hill "party." Professor Hill will kick off the morning of the Summit on October 21 with the keynote speech.

That same afternoon, I will be leading a panel discussing the intersection of sexual harassment and implicit gender bias with Gloria Steinem (founder of Ms. Magazine and the Martin Luther King, Jr. of the second wave women's movement); Gloria Feldt, feminist activist and author of No Excuses, Nine Ways Women Can Change the Way We Think About Power; Shelby Knox, "star" of the Sundance documentary "The Education of Shelby Knox," now working for change.org, and, Jamia Wilson, Vice-President of Programs at the Women's Media Center in New York City, which trains and promotes women in media, an organization co-founded by Steinem and Jane Fonda.

This panel of two of the most noted leaders of the Second Wave Women's Movement and two Gen-Y feminist activists will talk about solutions to a problem to which no one yet has an answer.

My small start-up company, She Negotiates Consulting and Training, is working to promote women to positions of leadership through their own efforts within a supportive community of women in business and the professions.

She Negotiates is a Diamond Patron Sponsor of the South Carolina Women Lawyers' Conference and we invite you to sponsor this historic event too.

As a former attorney (and current mediator and AAA arbitrator) I am all too familiar with BigLaw's failure to retain and promote their women. We at She Negotiates believe that only by encouraging women to support other women will we finally close the wage, income and leadership gap that seems so intractable. 

The next firm to become a Diamond Sponsor can introduce the Feldt-Steinem, et al. panel and receive four tickets to the event. Here's the Sponsor Form. Please donate today. No donation is too small!

Assuming (without admitting) that we need to expend $680 billion annually on military hardware and personnel to defend ourselves against invaders from foreign shores, the only meaningful reductions in spending will have to come from delayed or diminished social security and medicare/medicaid benefits.

We’re not talking about funding for the arts (parsley); Planned Parenthood (capers); or, education (tiny corncobs). We’re talking about monies devoted to the most needy among us. And most of the most needy among us are women.

continue »

According to the brainiacs who study these things, women who are able to read the emotional state of others and satisfy their behavioral expectations are more effective team leaders and better negotiators than either their empathy-deficient female or empathy-enabled male colleagues.

As the Harvard post notes, studies by B-School professors Francis Flynn and Daniel Ames, have demonstrated that women who were best able to read their work team’s emotions and alter their own behavior to please them, were rated as being more persuasive, better leaders and more efficient conflict resolvers than their stiff-necked peers.

In a second study, Flynn and Ames found that female people-pleasers not only “outperformed women who didn’t see themselves as especially adaptive” to other’s expectations, but also outperformed people-pleasing men.

Continue reading here.

Let’s start with a statement about which there can be no controversy. The healthiest law firm is one that uses its human resources most efficiently.

By now, anyone following women in business has read or heard about the 2007 Catalyst Report, The Bottom Line: Corporate Performance and Women’s Representation on Boards, demonstrating that the prime markers of business success – return on equity, return on sales, and return on invested capital — show marked improvement in Fortune 500 companies when there are at least three women on the Board of Directors.

This phenomenon does not occur because women are better managers. Improved corporate performance occurs as a result of diversity alone. As Harvard Business School professors Lakshmi Ramarajan and David Thomas explained in their 2010 working paper A Positive Approach to Studying Diversity in Organizations, the notion that minority board members bring unique information to the table that leads to improved performance, though beneficial, does not account for better results.

Rather, “mere membership in a diverse group is sufficient to motivate enhanced information sharing and processing and thereby improve group performance.”

Diversity Immediately Hits the Bottom Line.

You’d think that law firm managing partners and its business leadership would leap on this information and transform their diversity initiatives from the tepid initiatives they remain, with little funding beyond the maintenance of a web page - see how committed to diversity we are! - and the occasional public exhortation to hire, promote and retain women and minorities.

Yes, I’m talking to you AmLaw 100! with your miserable record in promoting and retaining women and minorities. We know that in your heart of hearts you’ve all but given up that which you’ve never sufficiently funded. But I’m being negative again . . .

Read on at ForbesWoman here.

Companies are finding that women’s management styles are not only different, but good for business. It’s now pretty clear that Mars and Venus have muscled their way into the boardroom, too. When it comes to business styles, women are more open and inclusive than men. We tend to encourage broader participation in meetings and like to foster consensus. We nurture subordinates more effectively and prefer conciliation over confrontation, empathy over ego. We are also more cautious, more risk averse. We take a longer term view of decision making than men.

I don’t want to get all gender wars about this. Listen, whether you spell the name of the creator as Natural Selection or God, the order of things is half women and half men. Who are we to disagree? If women are seeking consensus, perhaps men are asserting power. If women are nurturing subordinates, maybe men are firing people who cannot be encouraged to perform.

continue »

From Mastering the Art of the Ask:Key Tips to Realizing Your Professional Value presented by the Women in the Profession Committee of the ABA Young Lawyers Division.

Despite the strides women have made in law, female attorneys continue to face challenges and struggle to advance in their careers on the way to the top. Studies have shown young female attorneys are typically hesitant to ask for 1) professional opportunities, 2) compensation advancement, and 3) business from potential clients. These failures have contributed to the stalling female advancement in the legal industry, as shown by the continual low percentages of female partners in firms, compensation disparities, and struggling female retention within the legal industry.

Instead of waiting for institutional changes, many young female attorneys are taking matters into their own hands. They are arming themselves with information, advice, mentors, and skills to help them take initiative and advance their careers. This Program will offer valuable advice and discuss the following:

Professional Opportunities

1. Getting placed on high profile/top cases

2. Requesting challenging and high reward assignments

3. Taking credit/recognition of work

4. How to take on leadership roles

Compensation Negotiation

1. Determining what you are worth (Self-Valuation)

2. Preparation for Reviews/Compensation Discussions

3. Negotiation Approach

4. Offering counter-offer/proposals

Business Development/Networking

1. Approaching potential clients at networking events

2. Maximizing referrals as a potential source of business

3. Developing relationships

4. Making the ask of a potential client/Closing the deal

FACULTY

Moderator:

Kim R. Jessum, Esq., Of Counsel, Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young, LLP

Panelists:

Lauren Rikleen, Esq., Founder, Rikleen Institute for Strategic Leadership; Executive-in-Residence, Boston College Center for Work and Family

Victoria Pynchon, Esq., Founder, She Negotiates Negotiation Training and Consulting; Mediator, Author, Blogger, Forbes.com

Dorian Denberg, Esq., General Counsel, AT&T; President, National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL)

Complimentary Live Teleconference for the FIRST 100 ABA YLD Members

Complimentary Program Download Available to all ABA Members

May 17, 2011 9 am PT / 10 am MT / 11 am CT / 12 pm ET

Duration: 60 minutes

REGISTER HERE!!

As the New York Times‘ Adam Liptak reported today, the Supreme Court will decide on Tuesday whether 1.5 million women will be permitted to proceed with their gender discrimination class action against Wal-Mart.

The high court is being asked to decide what role it believes social science research should play in determining whether implicit bias is responsible for women’s underpay and under-representation in Wal-Mart’s management ranks. At the center of the Supreme Court case is the testimony of Sociology Professor William T. Bielby, at University of Illinois at Chicago.

Briefs and articles for the serious student of Constitutional Law below.

Ninth Circuit Opinion in Dukes v. Wal-Mart

Opening Brief

Opposition Brief

Reply Brief

Thanks to Rex Stevens for passing these links along to me.

Jane, like her male counterparts, has a big truck with her company logo plastered on the doors, lots of specialized tools and ladders, a crew of talented helpers, 20 years in the business and several pairs of Carhartt jeans and Timberland boots (NYSE:TBL).

When she shows up to meet potential clients, she dresses like a woman and makes sure there’s no dirt under her fingernails. It’s a “presentation” thing she says. According to Jane, if she clomps into prospective clients’ gardens wearing muck boots, it’s as much of a turn-off to her prospective clients as it is being gay.

Double binds and deep and abiding biases cause many women to make extreme choices.

continue »

What is the SAT’s ‘Jersey Shore’ Essay Question Really Asking? posted by KATIE PHILLIPS

Last Saturday, the College Board served up a mega-curveball for high school students across America: it asked them to write an essay about reality television. The question, one out of three possible essay topics distributed at random, described reality television as programs “which feature real people engaged in real activities rather than professional actors performing scripted scenes” and then asked whether “people benefit from forms of entertainment that show so-called reality, or are such forms of entertainment harmful?”

Definitely not what kids who have spent countless hours brushing up on their Shakespeare, Chaucer, and Dickens had expected.

These are the kids that are too busy studying, playing soccer, or taking piano lessons in the hopes of receiving an acceptance letter to a great college — they don’t have the time to watch or interest in the comings-and-goings of Jersey Shore’s Snooki and The Situation. These are, not surprisingly, the same kids who are complaining of the question’s ‘unfairness’ – many of whom have lamented on online forums such as College Confidential that they don’t watch any television, let alone reality shows.

The College Board, in response, has defended its prompt; saying that it was an attempt to “engage students”, and that “everything a student needs to write a successful essay is included in the prompt itself.” Meaning, they’re not grading students on how well they can opine about the Kardashians, but rather how well they can structure an essay.

continue »

Money, Power, and Self-Determination Make Women Unhappy posted by VICTORIA PYNCHON

That’s what author Suzanne Venker’s saying in her new book The Flipside of Feminism.

Forty years have passed since the so-called women’s movement claimed to liberate women from preconceived notions of what it means to be female – and the results are in. The latest statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research show that “as women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy.”

Over at Washington Whispers, Paul Bedard has pulled from Venker’s book, Five Ways That Feminism Has Ruined America

It hurt marriage. Women want to wait so that they can keep their identities longer and men are finding easy sex, taking away a big reason for marriage.

Emasculates men. It’s better to be a wuss than speak up or mouth off and face charges of harassment or chauvinism.

continue »

The Internet, Freedom of Speech and the Anti-Gay App posted by VICTORIA PYNCHON

Pressure is mounting on Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) to rid its store of an Anti-Gay App. Over at the Huffington Post, Wayne Bessen writes that Exodus International, the largest Christian organization offering a “cure” for homosexuality, is bragging that Apple gave it a 4+ rating, signifying the absence of “offensive content.”

I downloaded the Exodus App today to see whether it contained something akin to hate speech which has been variously defined as any communication which disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race or sexual orientation; or attacks or disparages a person or group of people based on their social or ethnic group.

At the risk of putting myself at the center of a firestorm of disapproval, I have to say that what I viewed and read on the Exodus app was not hate speech but simply the expression of religious beliefs with which I, and many other people, disagree.

Exodus International appears to be a non-denominational religious organization that believes homosexuality is a sin. It also promotes the idea that this sin can be relieved by establishing a spiritual relationship with Jesus.

continue »

Learning to be a great negotiator is a skill that will serve you in a variety of situations. Whether you're buying a car, setting a salary, or in an international business deal, negotiation skills are essential to getting what you want. These blog posts share tips, strategies, and more for becoming a better negotiator.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your settlement engines. Your clients will repay you with more work than you can handle!

Women lawyers - this is a great networking opportunity.

Meet your future in Orlando.

From The Japanese Quake, Pearl Harbor, Karmic Payback and Cognitive Biases.

Pearl Harbor is unfortunately a trending Twitter topic because millions of little microphones have been given to people unable to think things through.

People who say the Japanese “deserve” it, like those who believe that AIDS is God’s punishment for immorality, are suffering from a cognitive bias called Fundamental Attribution Error. Here at She Negotiates, we’re deeply concerned with cognitive biases because they cause otherwise kind and rational people to believe that their neighbors are mean-spririted, ill-willed or downright evil.

And that prevents us from being compassionate, helping out in times of crisis or negotiating the resolution of disputes.

Instead of becoming mired in the debate between the  Japan-deserved-it tweeters and those who call the tweeters stupid jerks, let’s use the trending Pearl Harbor-Japanese earthquake topic as a teaching moment.

From Excuse Me for Having to be Rescued: Negotiating Order in Japan.

Today, the newspaper of record for Los Angeles, its own readership jumpy and restless, tells us that the Japanese are maintaining order by exhibiting behavior (“impeccable manners”) that most Westerners would consider overly deferential and needlessly self-sacrificing.

From Please Don't Buy Me Retail - Negotiating with Professionals

The Women Don't Ask author quoted her keynote fee as $10,000, which is an eminently fair price. A man of similar provenance would have asked for at least twenty grand. If you’re skeptical about that, check out the fees at BigSpeak which lists a couple of male Harvard Business Professors at $40,000 + (Clayton M. Christensen) and $20,001 to $40,000 (John A. Davis) while quoting a couple of women at the top of the corporate ladder at $7,500 to $10,000 (former Accenture managing partner and author Susan Bulter) and $10,001 to $20,000 (Kate White, Editor-in-Chief of Cosmopolitan and New York Times Best-Selling Author).

[Last week] I learned that Women Lawyers, Law Students Aren’t Speaking Up in several places including The Lawyerist in its post Women Lawyers: Silence Isn’t Always Golden by Staci Zaretsky.

WTF??????????

The most competitive and ambitious women in the land are stifling themselves?

Looks like it.

• women law students are less likely than their male classmates to participate in classroom discussions
• women law students are less likely to seek advice from their professors
• women law students are more likely to be motivated by fear (that’s ok, of course, so long as you do what the river guides tell you to do – paddle through your fear!)

Still, we graduate from law school and often do so with high honors or we wouldn’t represent such a large proportion of the new associate ranks in the best firms in the land. All first year associates are frightened. They don’t know a thing, really. Certainly not how to practice law.

It Takes Courage!

It’s a very adult task to speak up for a major American corporation likeFord Motor Company (NYSE:F) in court; to make an objection to the question asked by the deep-voiced man of advanced years sitting across the conference table from you harassing your client in a deposition. It takes courage to tell a jury of twelve strangers that your client was innocent even though five by-standers identified him as the guy who robbed the Circle K (CLKSF:OTCUS).

So we “woman up” when we get that first job and speak up, right?

According to a recent study, apparently not.

We argue only 15% of all cases heard by the Supreme Court. One of those 15% tells Stephanie Rabiner that “women don’t like verbal jousting” and are “horrified” by the controversy it might cause to take a case to the highest court in the land.

Really? Really??

There’s Work to Be Done

O.K. You don’t care that much about money. And you’d really rather have a balanced lifestyle, which you’re hoping will allow you to just go to work, put in your hours, come home and tend to the children who, you hope, you’ll be able to comfortably accommodate into your work-life. You ski. You travel to exotic places. You want to buy a home – an acquisition thatChris Buckley says gives you the right to use the Yuppie Nuremberg Defense - I have a mortgage to pay.

That life you’re imagining rests on the shoulders of the women who broke this path for you. But that’s ok. We didn’t want to create a generation of women who were grateful. We wanted to create a generation of women who would stick up for themselves and for their sisters.

As Gloria Steinem once said, “it’s ok if young women don’t remember whoI am. It’s only important that they remember who they are.”

But listen up ladies, women, sisters, fellow barristers and advocates. There’s work to be done in the world. You have  the education and the training necessary to make a difference at the highest levels of power. And if you choose not to use that power  . . . well . . . at least have the decency to feel just a little bit guilty about it.

Here’s What You Have the Power to Change according to Nicholas Kristof’s Half the Sky.

• more than 107 million women are missing from the globe today
• more girls have been killed in the last fifty years because of their gender than men were killed in all the wars of the 20th century
• more girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth century
• every year another 2 million girls worldwide disappear because of gender discrimination
• of the 600,000 to 800,000 people who are trafficked across international borders every year, 80% are women and girls, who are imprisoned , beaten and raped many times every day of the week to serve the world’s sex trade
• the global sex trade is larger in absolute terms than the entire Atlantic slave trade was in the 18th and 19th centuries

Feel like speaking up in class yet?

How about that bill pending in an American state legislature that wouldmake the murder of a physician providing abortion services to your sisters, your daughters and your mothers justifiable homocide?

You’re a lawyer. Doesn’t that seem wrong to you?

No well-behaved woman ever made history. Nor did she end the international slave trade in little girls.

Ready to misbehave yet?

Edwin turned around two highly professional videos in less than a week after he conducted them. His company is in start-up mode and he's actively seeking both capital partners and clients. I highly recommend his work, and not just because he gave me two free videos. We'll be hiring his company to provide us with publicity before the month is over . . . we just have to negotiate the terms!

Without further ado, Edwin and She Negotiates.

Go to npr here.

Wait no longer. We will customize our training for you! Just click on the image at the left to receive our Custom Training 2-sheet.

We promise, you'll be glad you did.

Where we've trained or appeared

In-house legal

Qwest Communications 

Warner Brothers 

AmLaw 100 law firms, including Mayer Brown, Katten Muchin, O'Melveny & Myers, Squire Sanders and more than a dozen more.

Law Schools:  USC and Pepperdine University

Business Schools: UCLA Anderson School of Management

Organizations:

Southern California Mediation Association

X2N Executive Healthcare Network

ABA Dispute Resolution Conferences

LACBA Solo and Small Firm Conference

Long Island Professional and Business Women's Organization

Federal Bar Association, SDNY Chapter

Pincus Professional Education

and a dozen more . . . 

Don't forget to follow us at Forbeswoman here!

The Davos World Economic Forum

The paucity of women at the Davos Economic Forum despite how rich the ones who attended are as described in this post by Forbes staff writer Louisa Kroll, The Richest Women at Davos.

Women's Davos Wardrobe Dilemmas covered by Moira Forbes as an unfortunate but still critical factor for the display of power necessary to be a player at the World Economic Forum.

A photo gallery of the executive conferences women CEOs love best.

The Continued Assault on the Glass Ceiling

Aman Singh's post on Why So Many Top Women Don't Make it to Executive Leadership.

Jenna Goudreau's Jobs Outlook:Careers Headed for the Trash Pile

Five Reasons Your Boss Wants to Give You a Raise This Year (Gender Neutral)

Negotiating with Mattie Ross of True Grit (Gender Neutral)

Sponsorship, Not Mentorship, Can Greatly Narrow the Wage Gap

Kucinich and the Olive Pit in a World of Injustice (gender neutral)

First You Wake Up, Then You Negotiate (gender neutral)

Jealousy's Underhanded Contribution to the Wage Gap by our Gen-Y blogger Katie Phillips.

Provocative Posts and Articles

Bad Career Advice:Nice Guys (and Girls) Finish Last by Christine Scivicque

Study says Dads Should be Less Involved in Parenting by Forbes Staff Writer Meghan Casserly as well as her terrific article on Sexy News Anchors' Distracting Effect on Viewers who can't seem to recall the news disseminated by these attractive women!

There's lots more over at ForbesWoman but those are the articles and blog posts that caught my own attention this week. Put ForbesWoman on your newsreader whether you're male or female, because it's pretty clear that women's economic power is growing and attention must be paid. 

My ForbesWoman blog post on Rep. Kucinich's instantaneously infamous lawsuit Kucinich vs. The Olive Pit in a World of Injustice here.

You deserve a raise this year because you are working harder, longer and faster than you were before the recession. And as msnbc reported in 2009, you are doing so for less, not more, money.

 That means you are not only doing your own job, you’re also doing the jobs your laid off colleagues were doing. You’ll be difficult to replace because of that. Not only because John and Mary’s jobs are not in your historic employment description, but because fewer people will want to take on the work you’re doing now for the salary you’re now being paid.

 Your employer may need to hire two people to replace you. He or she will also have to incur the expense of hiring one or more new employees.

 You are more valuable than you believe yourself to be. You therefore have more bargaining strength than you believe yourself to have.

How to ask for a raise over at She Negotiates tomorrow.