Sylvia Acevedo on Freakonomics podcast

[walk in the woods]

Not Dubnar's best interview.  Some discussion of the GSUSA/BSA law suit.  Oh, and talk about cookies.

http://freakonomics.com/podcast/girl-scouts/

[qwazse]

I really like what she had to say about the economics of cookie sales.

I think here is were we begin to shake our heads ...

Quote

ACEVEDO: Sure. They made a change in their policy and decided to accept girls. But we are the owners, intellectual-property owners, trademark owners of Girl Scouts. The phrase “Girl Scouts.” So you cannot call people in that organization, females in that organization, “girl scouts.” We are the Girl Scouts.

Newsflash: the young women who join Scouts BSA don't want to be called Girl Scouts either. They want to be scouts who happen to be girls.

Quote

But I realized that not a lot of women had that courage and confidence to ask for the additional stock options, to ask, “Is this the best salary?” Asking all those questions to make sure I was getting treated fairly and getting adequately compensated — a lot of women aren’t raised that way, don’t think that way. Or there are practices and policies that don’t reinforce that.

But at Girl Scouts, one of the things we’re working on is thinking about how do we work to use the power of our purse to help out on that gender pay gap. And making sure we’re working with partners who are committed to same job, same pay. And committed to having at least 30 percent female leadership.

I believe in some ways GS/USA is a victim or its own success.

Girls amass that "courage and confidence" and ask, "I want to qualify to hike and camp independently with my mates. Can I join the troop who does that?"

The execs say "No, that's full!"

Girls demand to be "fairly and adequately compensated" with camping nights.

BSA eventually says, "Yes, but safely ..."

And here we all are, trying to figure what the "but safely" entails. Hopefully our friends from around the world will give us good advice. But one piece that I think they all will agree on: "Stop making lawyers rich over things that won't make you better."