Newswise — Work hard. Work smart. Get ahead. This formula for success has always been the venerable gold standard for the business world.
Except on Wall Street, where the rules have often tended to work much more in your favor if you happen to be a man, according to Louise Marie Roth, an assistant professor of sociology at The University of Arizona.
In her new book, "Selling Women Short" (Princeton University Press), Roth delves into why and how Wall Street institutions continue to foster gender inequities. Roth says even though the strip club atmosphere is gone from these companies, the attitudes about women remain, as evidenced by several high-profile, multi-million dollar lawsuits in the 1990s.
The obvious question Roth pursues is why, in an arena so closely tied to the marketplace, are women paid substantially less than men for similar performance.
"By resolving these cases out of court while denying the allegations, Wall Street firms have avoided public scrutiny of their corporate culture and how gender inequality persists within it," Roth says in the introduction to her book.
"And although the firms denied any wrongdoing - standard in such agreements, and therefore somewhat meaningless - the settlements serve as an indication that discrimination on Wall Street has shifted from blatant, socially unacceptable behavior to an endemic firm and industry-wide discrimination against women and minorities."
Roth compared men and women from elite MBA programs who entered and worked in the hugely profitable bull market of the 1990s. Their case histories show how long-standing systems for pay and bonuses worked against women. Their experiences also lay the foundation for reforming the "structural disadvantages" that women face in the securities industry.
"This first-rate work is poised to join a small circle of influential books tackling the question of how gender inequality persists amid the avowedly merit-based segments of the American economy," said Kathleen Gerson, coauthor of "The Time Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality."
"'Selling Women Short' is the only book I have seen that compares 'successful' and 'derailed' women and men, thus making it possible to disentangle the influence of gender from other, more 'gender neutral' factors that shape the career trajectories of workers in high-powered jobs," Gerson says.
Princeton University Press has more information on "Selling Women Short," including a review chapter at http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/8246.html.
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