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Tony Haberkorn October 8, 2013 Eng 1010 CRN 81677 Professor Brand WP3 Word Count:1177 Is the Business World Providing Equal Opportunities? The Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity The New York by Jodi Kantor talks about how the Harvard class of 2013 had undergone an experiment to equalize the genders between males and females. During this two year time span Jodis article tells of how males discriminated against the females in certain ways. One way talks about how the males and females were divided into sections and took all their classes together. In these classes the males would haze the female students having discussions such as whom they would kill, sleep with or marry (Kantor, Par 11). However in 2010 Harvard was appointed with a new dean, Drew Gilpin Faust, she was Harvards first female president. Under her reign the school had become a markedly better place for the female students. Faust had brought a new dean in as well to help further the gender equality at HBS. During their experiment they had come up with several discoveries one of them being that females were judged on their appearance while men were judged on their vehicles. Towards the end of Fausts experiment she had helped the women participate in class more, and also win academic awards with a much improved environment.

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The article The Gender Earnings gap and its Economic Consequences StandardExaminer by Viiay K. Mathur was talking about the earnings gap between the men and women workforce in the United States. It starts off by saying the earnings gap between men and women are narrowing over time. Then goes on to explain that the only reason people believe men earn more than women is because they concentrate in low-paid occupations. Some of the highlights they bring up are 1.) The womens share of total workers is more than 50 percent in nine out of 22 occupational groups and their share is more than 50 percent in six out of the top 10 highest paid occupations. 2.) In 22 occupational groups weekly earnings of women as a percent of mens weekly earnings range from 54 percent in legal occupations to 94 percent in community and social service occupations. It describes that the gender gaps earnings is dropping due to the women going into higher paid occupations. 7 Shocking Discoveries from Harvard Business Schools Attempt to Improve Gender Equality Harvard Business School was written by Jenna Goudreau. This article goes on to tell about Harvards gender gap between men and women. At the top were men who worked in finance, drove luxury cars, and advertised lavish weekend getaways on Instagram (Goudreau par. 9) than at the bottom were the females who were only judged on their looks. It began to say that women at Harvard struggled to find their voices and suffered for it. Women would not participate in class at all and they suffered from it. The women felt as if they needed to go husband-hunting and chose their social or academic life. The article states that the business world is skewed towards male leadership so Harvards staff was made up of just 19 women to teach HBS. Thanks to Frances Frei, an administrator, she provided the women teachers feedback. This caused their teaching scores to go way up leading female students to assert

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themselves more. Due to the laissez-faire approach the experiment had worked and helped female teachers perform better and female students to participate more. In the article by Viiay K. Mathur the notion of the gender gap is flawed and more equal opportunities exist today than ever before. The article by Viiay states that the median weekly earnings of females to men increased from 82 percent in 2011 to 85 percent in 2012. There are more women earning the same wages as men if not more in the workforce today than there has been in the past ten years. Businesses have more to gain if they have a diversified sex mix to generate new ideas and innovations. Not only does Viiays article describe the gender gap diminishing, but firsthand experience shows it as well. Stephanie Pierce had worked for Price Waterhouse Cooper as their internal audit in the year 2011. As time progressed she slowly worked her way up through the workforce. She is now the C.E.O. of Ferro Corporation leading their business to success, she is a woman. Heather Phillips is the Human Resource director of Blockbusters enterprise, also a woman. As time progresses the male role is slowly diminishing as the females tend to be more independent for themselves. Most people do not understand the business world. If businesses did not have women in their workforce they would be missing out. Confirming this idea is a report on a study by Catalyst, The Economist. This report, according to Mathur finds that Fortune 500 companies with the most women in top management positions also had higher returns on equity than those with the lowest representation (par. 8). This quote confirms that businesses need women in order to obtain highest success!

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The gender equality already exists in the work force today. Not only are women provided with the same job opportunities as men, but more women are graduating from college with more broad degrees as stated in Jodi Kantors Gender Equality article. The gender earnings gap is not in existent for the sole fact that there are too many different jobs for Americans. We are all provided the same opportunity in what we want; it is a test of true effort and determination on who is willing to strive for that opportunity.

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Works Cited Goudreau, Jenna. 7 Shocking Discoveries from Harvard Business Schools Attempt To Improve Gender Equality Harvard Business School. 08 Sept. 2013. Web. 21 Oct. 2013 Kantor, Jodi. Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equality The New York Times. 12 Sept. 2013. Web. 21 Oct. 2013 Mathur K. Viiay. The gender earnings gap and its economic consequences StandardExaminer. 09 Sept. 2013. Web. 21 Oct. 2013

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Tony Haberkorn Eng 1010 CRT 81677 Professor Brand October 22, 2013 Word Count: 160 Revision Summery My paper lacked strong body paragraphs to support my thesis paragraph after my summaries. I also did not have enough paragraphs to support my thesis. I first talked about women that I knew of in the workforce that surpassed men on the earnings spectrum. I had then included another paragraph to support my idea that businesses need women in order to be at the top. I also needed to fix the way I summarized the three articles, my beginning sentences were wrong. We were given another opportunity to fix our papers and I had noticed I had small mistakes. Those consisted of italicizing the publication of my source, also putting quotations around the articles title. I also changed up my conclusion by taking out the word overall. It helped not point out the obvious and insult the readers intelligence. The last thing I had fixed was my works cited; I had cited them wrong and did not have reverse indentation.