readers. >> this weekend on booktv, i students getting value in their college education? we take a look at how and why texas is a red state. .. >> tonight we're really delighted o

welcome deborah rhode, author of "what women want." when this book first crossed our desks several months ago, it really granded our attention, and it has a great title, timely subject. we were intrigued and reached out to her to ask her if she would come and share her work at kepler's, and we're so pleased she said, yes. she's written a very important book on a very important subject. personally having come of page post-title ix, i'm both astonished and dismayed at the lack of progress for women in america. by every possible measure, women continue to lag behind their male counterparts. in "what women want," rhodes into topics that effect the lives of women. please welcome the direct director of the stanford center on legal profession, deborah rhode. [applause] >> i'm enormously pleased to be

here and even more pleased that you're here. woodley allen said -- woody allen said that 90% of life was showing up, and, of course, it matters what you show up for. so glad -- >> [inaudible] >> no. i'm. i'm sorry. do you need me to start over? no? good enough? so let me begin, as does the book, with a new york err car toon in which a woman frostily informs her obviously-skeptical husband, yes, harold, i do speak for all women. this is not a claim that any contemporary feminists will readily make. women don't speak with one voice on women's issues. but to build a powerful political movement, we have to be prepared to generalize about the interests of women as a group. what would most women want if they were fully informed and free to choose and the goal was equality between sexes?

"what women want" seeks to jump-start a conversation about that agenda by surveying leaders of women's organizations and bringing together a broad array of research about what holds women back. the book begins with a brief autobiographical account of how i came to write the book, and i won't dwell on that now, although i'm happy to answer questions. i'll just say a few words about what it was like to be a woman law student and a faculty member in the not-so-good ole days. i never had a law school course taught by or about women. there were no women's organizations, and gender was notable for its absence in the curriculum. things could have been, however, worse. at other law schools, including harvard, there were ladies' days in which professors didn't call on women except for those particular days when the summit matter was -- when the subject

matter was specially adapted for their benefit; rape cases or hypothetical problems involving knitting and cooking. what's striking to me now is how little of this was striking to me then. it was just how law and life were. sex discrimination was everywhere except in the curricula. i entered law teaching at stanford when it was 1979, and i was for many years only one of two women on a faculty of 36 men. initially, i indicated that gender in law was a subject i'd like to teach, and the dean would -- was horrified. it would, as he put it, type me as a woman. well, i responded with what i hoped was saint irony, it probably wouldn't come as a shock to most of my colleagues and what, after all, were my alternatives? but, of course, i'd missed his point. the point was academic

credibility and to establish that i needed a real subject. he suggested negotiable instruments. we compromised on contracts, a field where i languished for seven years until the law school got a new dean, and i got ten you. -- tenure. it was a lonely life, although my colleagues were well meaning and unfailingly polite, they were essentially clueless about what it was like to feel the pressure and isolation of being one of two women on the faculty. some couldn't even manage to keep the two of our names straight. even though there was no physical resemblance between us. i was short and blond, the other female was tall and brunette, and i was never sure whether to correct the colleagues who occasionally called me barbara. these experiences might not have been so hurtful if i'd known at the time that they were typical by-products of tokenism. even the most prominent women can experience the problem. before the supreme court in the

late 1990s, many lawyers mixed up the names of justice sandra day o'conner and ruth bader begins wurg. -- ginsburg. in fact, so often that the women's judges association once presented them with t-shirts reading "i'm ruth, not sandra" and "i'm sandra, not ruth." the alumni threw a party at the local country club and hired a stripper to come and simulate her routine. none of the women present, including myself, could quite believe it was happening. but the dean appreciated the thought behind the invitation and, well fortified by boar bound, he -- bourbon, he embraced the invited guests. it was at that moment that i decided to hell with contracts, the law school needed a course on gender. now, some three decades later, the legal landscape has been transformed. women are moving up, barriers are coming down, about half of

law students and 30% of full professors are female and examples of blatant discrimination are rare. i teach a course on gender that raises no administrative eyebrows. yet at the same time, this progress has created its own difficulties. an essential problem in securing gender equality is what i call the no-problem problem. the lack of consensus that there is a serious problem or one that any individual women have capacity or responsibility to address. yet on virtually every measure of social status, financial well being and physical safety, women still fare worse than men. sexual violence remains common, and reproductive rights are by no means secure. women assume disproportionate burdens in the home and pay a price in the world outside it. but these issues are not cultural priorities. what accounts for that fact?

well, part of the problem is the image of the feminist movement as strident and man-hating which keeps many women from identifying as feminists or actively supporting the feminist agenda. although when dictionary definitions of feminists are given as someone who supports political, economic and social equality for women, between two-thirds to four-fifths of women consider themselves feminists. but when you give no definition, the figure gives to a quarter to a half. researchers find that identification as a feminist is significant because it correlates with activism. the disconnect between the substance and the image of feminism has been a longstanding barrier to mobilizing americans around gender issues. these negative associations are partly a function of how the media framed early activism. past caricatures often

perpetuated the image of the problem they claimed only to describe. if, as "time" magazine once claimed hairy legs haunt the feminist movement as do images of being try department, one reason -- try department, one image for that is that the mainstream publications continually featured those descriptions. another reason for the no-problem problem and the lack of identification as feminists is that many women don't feel worse off than men, so they lack the urgency that would fuel political activism or financial contributions to women's organizations. does this mean the movement is stalled? it's one of the main questions i ask leaders of women's organizations. and i got a mixed response. some felt we were totally stuck and getting pushed back, said terry o'neill, who was president of n.o.w.. they pointed to absence of women in leadership positions, the lack of progress on the pay gap,

fights on reproductive issues and the lack of an organized response. the president for the center of reproductive rights noted that compared to what we had in the 1970s we seem to be, as she put it, hibernating. by contrast, others took the long view. women's issues were at least front and center in political campaigns, and the fact that we're here talking about this book is some measure of change. but the fact that we need to be here is a measure of the distance yet to travel. so what are the issues that should motivate women to seek change? let me throw open, before throw opening the questions to you, a few areas where i think we're ripe for progress. certainly employment comes first to mind. the labor force remains gender segregated and gender stratified with women still overrepresented at the bottom and underrepresented at the top. as we approach the 50th

anniversary of equal pay legislation, we remain a considerable distance from accomplishing its promise. full-time female workers' annual earnings are 77% of men's, a figure that hasn't substantially changed since 2001. and at current rates of change, it would take another half century to achieve equal pay rates for full-time workers. one reason for the gender gap is that women are clustered in lower-earning occupations and lower-paying sectors within those occupations. for example, in law there are 86% of paralegals but only 33% of lawyers and 16% of partners in large firms. in academia women account for a majority of college graduates but only about a quarter of full professors and university presidents. in management women are a third of mba students but less than 4%

of fortune 1,000 ceos. at current rates of change, it would take over two and a half centuries to achieve parody in the executive suite. similarly-situated women also earn less than men. even after controlling for a broad range of factors such as education, experience, training and family characteristics, most research finds that a gender gap in earnings persists. typically on the order of around 10%. at every educational level and in every occupational field, women have lower earnings. even feel dishwashers earn significantly less than males. so what accounts for the gap? well, to begin, despite recent progress women -- marley racial and earth -- particularly racial and ethnic minorities -- often lack the presumption of confidence that's enjoyed by white men. they need to work harder to

achieve the same results. a telling case study in the extent of unconscious bias involved orchestra auditions. when screens were introduced so that the sex of musicians was no longer visible, women's representation in symphony orchestras dramatically increased. part of the problem may also reflect the mismatch between qualities associated with leadership and qualities associated with women. most of the traits that women attribute to leaders are masculine; dominance, authority, assertiveness. and to many individuals, these don't seem attractive traits in women. women are subject to double standards and double binds. what's assertive in a man is abrasive in a woman. female employees risk seeming too feminine or not femme nip enough. east not tough enough to make -- either not tough enough to make the tough calls or -- jill

abramson of "the new york times" is a textbook case. part of the problem may also be internally driven. as sheryl sandberg has famously put it, women do not lean in. but the problem may also reflect the qualities associated with leadership and the qualities associated with women. people rate men higher on leadership ability and more readily accept men as leaders. in studies were people see a man seated at the head of a table for a meeting, they typically assume he's the leader, and they don't make the same assumption when a woman is seated at the head. a telling columbia business school experiment illustrated the problem. it gave participants a case study about a leading venture capitalist with outstanding networking skills. half the participants were told that the individual was howard -- the other half were

told she was heidi. the participants found howard much more likable, genuine and kind and heidi more aggressive, self-promoting and power hungry. yet women often don't realize that they're the victims of discrimination. anne hopkins, an accountant who successfully sued price waterhouse, had no specific proof that sexist comments had been made about her or any other woman at the firm at the time she filed her lawsuit. yet the record ultimately revealed ample evidence of gender stereotypes. female accountants were faulted for being curt, brusque or women's libbers or for acting like one of the boys. hopkins herself was characterized as someone who overcompensated for being a woman by acting macho and overbearing and as someone who needed a course at charm school. but several male accountants who achieved partnership had been

similarly described as abrasive, overbearing and cocky. no one suggested charm school for them. even individuals with convincing ed of bias are often -- evidence of bias are often reluctant to challenge it. one national study of a thousand workers found that a third of those who reported experiencing unfair treatment did nothing. only 3% took legal action. many individuals are deterred by the high financial and psychological costs of legal action, and the low probability of winning any stamm judgment. any substantial judgment. plaintiffs, after all, are putting their professional lives on trial, and the profiles that emerge are seldom entirely flattering. a gay associate who sued a leading wall street firm was described in the "new york" magazine as a smarmy, paranoid kid with a persecution complex. and nancy ease old's case, a wolf block senior partner told american lawyer magazine that she was like the proverbial ugly

girl. everybody says she has a great personality, only it turns out nancy didn't even have a good personality. redepressive government and corporate policies also hold women back. the united states has the least family-friend hi policies in the -- friendly policies in the developed world. it stands alone with only seven other countries in not guaranteeing paid ma thenty leaves -- ma alternativety leaves -- maternity leaves. studies find that in some professions, law for example, only a bith of -- fifth of the people are satisfied. as one young attorney responded to a bar survey about her quality of life, this is not a life. another noted that her sweatshop schedule makes it difficult to have a cat, much less a family. for working class and lower class employees, the problems arise from mandatory overtime, rigid and shifting schedules,

lack of proportional pay and absence of paid personal or sick leave time or other basic protections. two-thirds of low income workers aren't entitled to flexible schedules, and those who take time off suffer even greater financial and promotion costs than female colleagues do. american strategies concerning childcare, part-time work and flexible schedules are far less progressive than europe's. 60% of children under 5 are in nonpresental care, and -- parental care, and many of these arrangements are lacking in quality, affordability and flexibility. neither regulatory structures, nor market conditions encourage well trained service providers. this nation requires licensing to be a manicurist, but only a dozen states require any training to care for chirp. for children. so, too, men's family patterns have not kept pace with women's workplace obligations.

although fathers' share of domestic obligations has increased dramatically over the last century, mothers continue to shoulder disproportionate burdens in the home and to pay a price in the world outside it. the disparities are especially pronounced among those who opt out of the labor force. about a quarter of married women with children under 15 are stay-at-home mothers. fewer than 1% of married men with children under 15 are stay-at-home fathers. women also spend over twice as much time on care of children and over three times as much time on household it is a bs as men. tasks as men. but as gloria steinem has noted, women will never be equal outside the home until men are equal inside it. the solutions are obvious but elusive. women need legislation and workplace initiatives to secure equal pay for comparable work, paid parental leave, flexible

workplace structures and affordable, quality childcare. and they need to challenge cultural norms that penalize leadership behavior in women and equal caretaking in men. women also need greater protection of reproductive rights. about a quarter of family planning clinics report incidents of severe violence annually against providers of aworse services -- abortion services. operation house call organizes activists to target doctors' homes for harassment and other groups use media campaigns that run slogans like some doctors deliver babies, some doctors kill babies. george tiller, the nation's leading provider of late-term abortions, was gunned down while he was attemptingture -- attending church. over 85% of counties have no abortion providers, and a third to a fifth of poor women cannot obtain the abortions they desire. anti-abortion activists have

also succeeded in passing a broad array of restrictive statutes designed to make abortion more costly and less accessible. more than half of states have trap laws, targeted regulation of abortion providers. these statutes seek to force clinic closures by imposing expensive requirements such as demanding that women receive counseling and establishing a tomb period between which they obtain the procedure sometimes as long as 72 hours of waiting. these waiting periods increase the expense and difficulty for women who don't live close to an abortion provider. many states also have informed concept procedures that -- consent procedures regarding issues like fetal pain and the medical risks of abortion. one government survey found that almost 90% of centers gave out false information concerning the link between abortion, breast

cancer, ip infer tilt and -- infertility and depression. bans on funding create another obstacle to choice. as many as one-fifth to a third of poor women can't obtain abortions because of lack of resources. although women certainly differ on the morality of abortion, most can unite around the goal of making them safe and unnecessary. nearly a third of women will have an abortion and between 65-70% believe that courts should not overturn roe v. wade which guaranteed access to abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. those who share that commitment need to mobilize and insure that safe choices are available. more resources need to be targeted at insuring women, particularly poor and adolescent women, have adequate access to family planning information and assistance. more resources also need to go into supporting the one in seven

women who are poor. only about a quarter of women living in poverty receive welfare benefits now, and those benefits are only 50% of the poverty line. the human costs are substantial. millions of families suffer from are shortages in food and housing, and our inadequate safety net keeps many women trapped in violent relationships. raising the minimum wage and indexing it to inflation would help. especially since women are are two-thirds of minimum wage workers. expanded education and employment options are still more critical. ronaldronald reagan once famousy quipped that we fought a war on poverty, and poverty won. the battle lines are still drawn, and women can't afford to settle for defeat. domestic violence also calls for more effective enforcement strategies. an estimated 25% of women have

experienced such violence. the united states has the highest rate of spousal homicide in the developed world. a common response to guest -- domestic abuse is, well, why doesn't she just leave? but the answer too often is she has nowhere safe to go. the time when women are most likely to suffer injuries in intimate relationships is when they're trying to end it. and shelters for victims come nowhere close to meeting the need. some turn away as many as 5,000 women a year. those who are refused assistance often have nowhere safe to go. one domestic violence advocate in oregon reported being asked if she knew a safe bridge that women could sleep under. the recent scandal involving ray rice in which the nfl commissioner initially banned him from playing only two games despite his violent assault on his fiancee speaks volumes about

the cultural attitudes that need to change. an estimated 75-95% of those who are subject to domestic violation report related problems at work. those problems include assaults and stalking. yet, a common response is to penalize the woman or terminate her employment which compounds her economic problems and reinforces dependence on abusers. a recent case involved a san diego teacher who was fired from a religious school because her ex-husband could put staff and students at danger. school officials did, however, promise to continue to pray for the woman and her family. about half of victims report losing a job after experiencing domestic violence, yet only a small number of states have laws protecting them from job discrimination. we urgently need better

strategies for prevention and victim support. and the same is true of rape. almost one in five women has experienced an attempted or completed rape, and the figures are even higher in the military and on campuses. the united states has the second highest reported rate of rape in the world. over the last quarter century, metropolitan half a million -- more than half a million uniformed women have experienced rape or attempted rape, and reports of the assaults continue to rise sharply despite the military assurances that it has no tolerance or zero tolerance for sexual assaults. yet as representative jane harman noted, women serving in the u.s. military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. only about a third of attempted rapes and rapes are reported. other research indicates that fewer than 10% of sexual assaults will result in conviction.

part of the reason is lingering rape myths. a toronto police officer told a group of college women that if they wanted to avoid sexual assaults, they should avoid dressing like sluts. despite recent reform efforts, it's the victim's conduct as well as the assailant's that's on trial in rape proceedings. juror perceptions of the moral character of the complainant has traditionally been the most important factor affecting whether there's a conviction. a textbook illustration figured in a recent, highly-publicized amherst student's account of her campus rape in which a sexual assault counselor told her that pressing charges would be useless, he's about to graduate. there's not much we can do, she said. are you sure it was rape? it might have been just a bad hook-up. you should forgive and forget. in a similar case at occidental, an administrator reportedly told

the complainant not to worry about safety, because she'd met the rapist, and he didn't seem like the type of person who would do something like that. what we need is more coverage of those stories. the adverse publicity following the amherst student's expose of her rape case prompted a comprehensive review and reform of campus sexual assault policy. "the invisible war," about sexual assault in the military, has led to new rules for handling such abuse. as well as the introduction of federal legislation. we need in the military an independent prosecutor to handle sex abuse cases, and we need recent -- we need increased emphasis on violence prevention and education. at very early ages, children begin absorbing traditional assumptions about the legitimacy of male sexual aggression and the trivialization of its

consequences. we need to alter those assumptions and encourage victims to come forward with a different message. and finally, let me say a brief word about appearance bias. this is not among the most critical issues facing women, but it's the one on which the women's movement has really made the least progress over the last half century. and in some respects such as the rise of eating disorders and cosmetic surgery, the problem has grown worse. almost half of american women are dissatisfied with their bodies, which is higher than a quarter century ago. and after money, women's appearance is their greatest source of dissatisfaction. beauty may be only skin deep, but the costs of its pursuit go much deeper. we all know that looks matter, but few of us recognize how much. seldom do we realize the price we pay in time, money and psychological well being and the extent to which beauty biases

compromise merit accuratic principles. although the significance of attractiveness comes as no surprise, the extent of its advantages is less obvious. less attractive individuals are less likely to be viewed as smart, happy, interesting, likable, successful or well adjusted. appearance also skews judgment about competence. resumés get less favorable -- less attract arive teachers get less favorable course evaluations from students. less attractive students receive lower ratings in intelligence from teachers. less attractive individuals are less likely to be hired and promoted, and they earn lower calllies. pen -- salaries. penalties are obvious in even fields like law and higher education where appearance bears no gone central relevance --

demonstrable relevance to job performance. about 60% of overweight women report experiences of employment discrimination. almost 90% of women consider how they look to be very important or somewhat important to their self-image. a third rank it as the most important factor above job performance and intelligence. over half of young women report that they would rather or be hit by a truck than be fat, and two-thirds would rather be mean or stupid. the cause of this cultural preoccupation with appearance, our global investment in grooming totals over $100 billion annually, and americans alone spend over $40 billion a year just on diets. this preoccupation with female appearance reinforces gender stereotypes and encourages evaluations of women in terms of attractiveness rather than character, competence, hard work or achievement. it speaks volumes about our

national preoccupation with female attractiveness that sarah palin's campaign paid more for her makeup specialist than her foreign policy adviser. prevailing beauty standards also place women in a double bind. they're expected to conform, yet condemned as vain and narcissistic for attempts to do so. neither should they let themselves go, nor look as if they were trying too hard not to. yet whatever their position on these issues, women can unite around certain shared values. in the world that women want, appearance would be a source of pleasure, not of shame, and employers would not be entitled to discriminate on the basis of looks. one way to move ourselves forward on all of these issues is to get more women into leadership positions. today in elective office, although women are over half of the voters, they account for just 18% of congress, a quarter

of state legislators, 10% of governors and 12% of mayors of major cities. almost half of states have yet to elect a woman to the senate. given current rates of change, it would take close to 100 years to equalize men and women's representation in congress. from a global perspective, the united states ranks 78th in women's representation in political office, below taj stand, slovakia, bangladesh and saudi arabia. the problem is not performance. research consistently finds that when women run for office, they're just as electable in terms of fundraising and success in campaigns. the main difficulty is that women are less likely to run for office, and that's a problem because women are also more likely than their male colleagues to address women's issues and to rank these issues as priorities.

but, of course, it matters who women are who are in politics. as examples like sarah palin remind us, putting women in positions of power is not the same as empowering women. we also need to support men who support women. one of my favorite new yorker cartoons features a boardroom filled with about a dozen men seated around a table and one woman. the chair of the meeting looks out at her and says, now, that's a great point, ms. teague. let's just wait until one of the men makes it. well, we need men to make that point. we also need to change the dynamic of women in politics. more women have to target their votes and dollars at political candidates, both male and female, who are willing to advance women's issues. we also need a strong women's movement that can help create public support for political initiatives.

cross-national research finds the presence of a women's movement is a better predicter of women's rights policies than women's representation in legislatures. over a century ago, william allen white, the editor of a newspaper, advised women to raise more hell and fewer dahlias. it remains good advice. thank you. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> just curious as someone who's been in the field for a long time, who do you gain your inspiration from? who are your role models in the field? >> well, i think my initial

model in the field was simone debove ware who wrote if the the second -- who wrote "the second sex." i can still remember the moment at which i read that book. wiz probably about your age -- i was probably about your age, and i started seeing the world differently. i think in contemporary figures the one who stands out for me is gloria steinem. she's really been a feminist in practice as well as principle. she's been out there on all of these issues. and at a very early point, she was extremely conscious of need to make the women's movement inclusive and to reach out to women of color and to women of lower income groups. i still recall she came to yale to the speak when i was a student, and she brought a woman of color to stand with her and

speak at the podium and had halftime reserved for flo kennedy who probably no one in that auditorium had heard of. flo kennedy was just wonderful, and i still recall there was a hostile question from one of the members of the audience who asked if the two of them were lesbians, and flo kennedy looked out at the person who'd answered the question, and she said, are you my alternative? [laughter] gloria steinem has the same sense of humor, and i think she's been a wonderful role model and has broken a lot of barriers and stereotypes around views of women as unattractive, strident, humorless man-haters. >> i appreciate what you've

lived through tremendously. do you see that there's a bit of a two or three-speed female economy occurring within the corporate world or business world or entrepreneurial world? >> a two or three-speed -- >> so i find this is a big concept to discuss briefly. even within this suburb, there are people who are proudly a member of the building over here, the -- [inaudible] youth league or women's league or whatever it is that's essentially about housekeeping leadership. and they go to people's houses whereas then there's a watermark or silicon valley women executive and entrepreneurs' organization, and then there's someone like me who's a part of the global economy, and i have a very different experience. so i view it as there are three

speeds occurring of a woman's experience. >> yes. well, i started off by citing the new yorker cartoon that none of us can speak for all women, and certainly there's a great deal of heterogeneity within the women's community. but i think on some of the policy issues that i've talked about -- employment, sexual violence, work/family issues, reproductive rights -- you can get a consensus around certain basic values and needs, and that's really the point this book hopes to drive home. it's not that we should all think or march to the beat of a single drummer, and people make different choices in their own lives, and i'd be the last to say that i've got a lock on what one works the best for women. but i do think that we know from public polling and we know from experience in other countries

what policies really serve to advance the interests of most women. and those are the ones that i think deserve greater representation in our -- >> [inaudible] >> yes. well, and as hillary clinton famously said, human rights are women's rights, and women's rights are human rights. so we need to drive home that message. and certainly, if we were talking about the policy agenda around the globe, it would be far broader than the one i've just sketched out briefly here tonight. >> [inaudible] >> so i'm going to try to articulate my question, and probably not going to come out right. with that caveat, i still feel like i need to hear your response for this.

the well known and well documented differences between men and women boy logically, they're not the same. -- biologically. men are from mars, women are from venus. women have higher empathy, a more relational way of looking at the world. it's not about better or worse, men and women are, to some extent, biologically wired differently. given that difference, i'm still struggling with the very provocative question that the title of your book raises which is what do women want. because it seems to me that parity or equality is almost an artificial goal because they are different. so what do women really want? and i'm really genuinely trying to understand, and i want to hear your answer to this. >> well, let me start birdies agreeing with your assumption that all these differences that we see in terms of empathy or relational values are biologically hard wired.

you know, there's a cottage industry of research that tries to tease out how much is nature and how much is nurture, and experts are very much divided over how much of the difference we see in observed behavior as biologically rooted. certainly, there's enormous variation over time and culture in the roles that men and women have performed. and if it were all biolodge chi hard wired -- biologically hard wired, you wouldn't see that. also as anyone knows who's taken a stroll down the shopping lanes at a children's toy store, we start socializing boys and girls very differently at very early ages. so the girls' aisle is filled with bar byes and -- barbies and fairy princesses, and the boys' aisle is filled with trucks and tanks. it's very hard to know how much of that response to biological differences and how much to

cultural patterns. even having said that, i think we can acknowledge that there are certain differences wherever they come from between men and women, but that those ought not to have the same differences in outcomes that i mentioned at the beginning, differences in economic security, in physical security, in basic rights and entitlements to equal pay, to equal opportunities. so i think it's those issues that the book is trying to get women to unite around, and it doesn't require us to take a position on how much of the difference that we see in men's and women's preferences is biologically given and how much of it is socially determined. but what with it does require us to look -- what it does require us to look at is the results of those differences and to try to equalize them to insure that women have a fair chance and a level playing field.

>> [inaudible] some of those biological differences actually lead to different outcomes. so as an example, you know, i used to work for a large consulting firm. consulting firms are structured like partnerships just like law firms are. and for years after years we were kind of grappling with how to get more women into partnership positions. and what we found was women on average were taking two, four, six, eight, ten years out to go raise families, and that was really costing them in terms of the chance to become a partner, because at the same time, you know, we would hire, you know, a man and a woman at the same level, you know, very qualified, you know, great, you know, business schools, and then trajectory would be common for the first three, four, five years, and then when the woman goes off to have a family, the trajectory would diverge and go off at a different point. so unless women just stop having children and stop taking time to

go raise children, we just couldn't figure out how to bring those trajectories back together because of this time that was being taken out. so how, how would you say from a policy standpoint, from a legal standpoint or just from -- [inaudible] how do you deal with that? >> well, i think there are a number of ways that you deal with it. one is by encouraging men to do their fair share in that house and not penalizing men who are primary caretakers as we now do. and most of the studies show that even as we punish women who take time off or reduce schedules for, to accommodate family obligations, we're even more punitive towards men who do that. and until we change that fact, it's going to be women who end up paying the predominant price and will have different burdens of responsibilities. we also need to make it a lot

easier for women to reenter the workplace after they've taken those leaves. we make the exit ramps really simple. we make the reentry points really difficult. and a lot of companies are now coming to realize that's not a very cost effective use of the talent pool. and what we really need to do is figure out ways to retool and retrain women who want to reenter the work force and give them the capacity to do so. we know that four-fifths of women who take substantial time off want to return to full-time work eventually, and yet two-thirds are unable to do that. and that's a failure of our policy choices and our organizational priorities that really needs to be addressed. >> [inaudible] because i had four years off and returned to management consulting. was up for partnership at 35 and

declined, and that was two years after my four years off having two children. i earned the highest amount of men and am now doing postgraduate studies after being a venture capitalist. i'm 43. >> yeah. well, that's a good textbook case. thank you for sharing that. >> [inaudible] >> whoop, one more. >> [inaudible] >> will -- the women's movement is at least 100 years old now if you go back to the suffragists, and it's like the civil rights movement for african-americans which is older, 150 years or so. different, different movements of this sort come along staggered at different times.

i'm thinking about do you have any comments on gender as it relates to people of cross-gender people or people of e more nows gender? -- amorphous gender? that's a movement that is now maybe 50 years old at most, and it seems that it's related to the women's movement in the same his to historical way that -- >> yes. i think we're just discovering the extent to which gender roles are more fluid than we once thought they were. and discrimination against transgender individuals, there's a significant problem. there's a lot of division about how to deal with it, whether to include them in this proposed legislation dealing with discrimination. there have been issues concerning the admission of transgender males into all-female institutions.

i think we're really at a turning point there. mills college recently had a controversy over that very issue. i think we're really at a point of discovering, as we did the belated by with respect to the gay and lesbian movement, how much discrimination really there is on the basis of sexual orientation. and starting to think about some of the policies that need to address it. i think one more question? >> so this is great stuff, and i have a quick question. if you and i were talking, say, 25 years ago, in the late '80s, and i asked you what you would imagine, where you imagine we would be now some quarter century later, would you have predicted a landscape, a terrain

of the sort that we see now that you just described, or would you have imagined that we would have been in a very different world than what we're now seeing? >> you know, i don't have a lot of confidence in my own capacities for prediction. i think i would have thought there'd be peaks and valleys. as somewhat of a student of social movements even 25 years ago you see some ebbing and flowing. i think over the long term i'm very optimistic, and i still am optimistic despite now having written three books on what the problems are and what the policy agenda should be. because, you know, the demographics are with us. women are half the talent pool, and we can't afford not to pulley equal -- fully equalize their contributions in the world. and i think most organizations are waking up to that fact. some more quickly than others.

i think women are, despite some of the setbacks in terms of, oh, debates about contraception and reproductive rights programs, doing a better job at putting their issues on the agenda. and certainly, the fact that we're having this conversation is testament to the fact that we do see some ongoing problems for women. and the real challenge for us, i think, is not just to recognize the problem, but to make the solutions a greater social priority. and i think in the long term we're going to be able to do that. so thank you all very much for coming. [applause] >> [inaudible] >> thank you. >> booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want