Treat others the way you want to be treated. It’s an old adage with staying power for good reason. But in today’s workforce, what that really means is: treat everyone like men.
To close the gender gap in both representation in STEM fields and in pay, it’s critical to treat everyone as though they’re a high-performing man, finds new research from Sharon Sassler, a sociology professor and the director of undergraduate studies at Cornell University’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy. If women received the same relative compensation as men at each life stage, the gender wage gap would narrow by 6.3%, she found. And if women received the same marriage premium—8.2 cents per hour—that men receive, the gap would likewise narrow by nearly 5%.
