Make the Path Easier for Next Gen

So 40% of all businesses in America are owned by women, but only 20% of the women owned businesses make more than $1M. Of those that are making the big money 80% of them say they belong to a formal business organization or network. Making those connections, networking and getting mentoring truly make a difference. If you have an opportunity to provide a helping hand to women owned businesses do - it makes a difference. Rivea Lesonsky, in a Bizjournals post, points to the need to pass on experience and assistance and don't make those that follow in your footsteps have to learn all the mistakes themselves because there was no one to teach you. How true that is. I am committed to working the change of empowering women to be who they are and achieve what they desire, and know it will take more than a lifetime to succeed. I do it to make a path a little less challenging for my daughters.

Strong correlation between female senior executives and strong financial performance

A piece of research by McKinsey suggests that there is a strong correlation between having high numbers of women senior executives and stronger financial performance. Companies with this make-up also have a stronger opportunity to draw from a larger talent pool as talent is in short supply.

Unfortunately I don't have access to the research at the moment, but I will be on the look out for additional quotes from this particular study. It's not the first time there have been positive correlations between financial performance and having women senior executives in the company. However the more data we have to support this situation the better and the more diverse the types of company the better. The previous research I saw was based primarily on the financial industry.

Traditional views of women's roles by men have implications for women's careers

As this research is out there I feel I need to comment on it, though I have a lot of questions about the sample of the population studied and details of the study. Research from the University of Florida reports that men with more traditional views of women will get higher pay than men with more gender equality views.

I would be interested to delve into their political beliefs and also the type of homes they grew up in and the roles their parents played (both working or not, single). I would also like to see information on salaries that compare women with stay-at-home husbands compared to women with working husbands. I have been surprised by how many senior women I've met whose husband are at home.

The participants in the study are between 39 and 47 years old. They had to rate statements on gender roles. The difference in salary was$8500 between men with a traditional view, and those with less traditional views.

In a less generous mood I might wonder how many women did these men step on to move on up the ladder, and how many are they blind to potential to grow after them. This does have implications for impacting women's careers but I need to see the complete study to know what we're truly discussing here.

Wait a Minute - Where are the Women Going?

After growing in number for a few years the number of female CEOs in the Bay Area is declining. Why is this?

Fewer women received venture capital funding in 2007, and there are fewer women in CEO positions, only 13 in the bay areas largest 400 companies/Fortune 500 companies. The article published in the San Francisco Business Times, by Lindsay Riddell. They quote Wendy Beecham as saying more women are opting out than there were 10 years ago. They also quote that percentage of female CEOs receiving venture capitalist funding was at 3% for 2007. Why don't more women receive funding?

Two issues come up - first, when asking venture capitalists who do they lend money too - they say people they know - because women have smaller networks that automatically reduces the number of women who are going to get an opportunity to get funding. A second issue is also how big a game you talk. Women are more likely to be conservative with their success estimates, thus putting them in a less strong position when negotiating and trying to win funding.

So the numbers for 2007 map to a story we have heard before: we need to get out and network with all that will be useful to us, not just women, AND next time up our success capability.

Through the Glass Ceiling and You May Face a Glass Cliff

An article in Business Week refreshes the notion that women in top positions sometimes find themselves facing glass cliffs, a term coined by a paper from 2005. They explain that there is more attention on women that fail, but critics sometimes fail to acknowledge that the situation the woman entered was already a tough situation where a company was in decline. When women are struggling to 'right the ship' it is difficult. Women are often isolated in their position of leadership with less mentors and a smaller network to leverage to weather the storm.

So the next time you hear about a senior woman being dismissed or relegated remember to ask yourself what the situation was like before they entered the position. Remember to give them a second chance. A significant portion of women in science, engineering and technology feel that when they fail they rarely get a second chance.

What a Day in Politics!

I was interested to find this video from the Blogher site where Erin Kotecki Vest has been attending the Democratic National Convention. She attended a panel entitled, Cracks in the Glass Ceiling. After the panel Erin interviewed the panelists, which included Marie Wilson from the White House Project. I happen to be a huge fan of Marie's book, 'Closing the Leadership Gap'. I completely agree that it is critical to get more women into politics because that is were some fundamental decisions get made that influence everything that follows. However I was a little disappointed to hear that the panelists were so keen to push for a percentage of women in government. This is a tough debate, I am still of the opinion that pushing for a quota if qualified candidates aren't available won't help the real cause.

There was an interesting turn of events later in the morning when John McCain announced his running mate to be Sarah Palen - this is a calculated vote generating move - how it plays out will come with time.

Why Are Lists of Powerful People Important?

Today Forbes posted a list they believe to be the most powerful 100 women in the world. The SFGates wrote an article highlighting that 5 women on the list come from the Bay area. It was interesting to read the comments left under the article. The posts mostly commented on the purpose of the list, or who should be higher on the list. However a numbered list of people is an easy article to write, and numbers in headlines apparently sell publications - I'm always interested in reviewing lists of people - this list brought to my attention some people I had not previously heard of like, Safra Catz President of Oracle, and Susan Decker, President of Yahoo! from the Bay area. Whenever I read about women who have made it to the top ranks it always instills a feeling of support, and thanks to them for pushing forward. Only 3% of corporations are run by women, so the article says. Many on the list are in politics, and the number one person on the list for the third year is Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor.

So why are lists of powerful women important - maybe it isn't scientific but it does get attention on women forging the way for others. Lots of work to do to even make that a double digit number. I wonder if there are any predictions on when that might happen?

Most Powerful Women - Take a Break and Be Inspired

I am inspired by Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit. These are the top women in business. There was panel with lots of high flyers - Andrea Jung (CEO Avon), Anne Moore (CEO Time Inc), and Ursula Burns (President, Xerox). Here are links to three video clips from the conference.

Mentors to Most Powerful Women

Clips also on that page: Mentoring the next women CEOs (5 min) & Breaking the CEO Glass Ceiling (apologies - i wanted to link to these clips but was shortcut-hyperlinked challenged on the Fortune site).

The next summit is in October, however with a price tag of close to $4K dollars for 3 days, I'm doubtful many of us will attend, but staying tuned to hear the quality sound bytes will be worthwhile.

Now sometimes the tricky thing about keeping a blog, is that as you're about to publish a post you come across another slew of interesting information. Here's the best link I've found so far with links to video and content from previous 'Most Powerful Women' events. I haven't had a chance to check it out, but it certainly looks like empowering content. May be I shouldn't be going on vacation tomorrow, there's so much to do, and so many lessons to learn from these amazing women. But... sound body and mind is also a key foundational block for any future leader!

Don't Worry Be Happy - But We Do

The MIT AgeLab has recently completed a large scale survey to investigate concerns about retirement. They have found large differences between men and women. The area where men are more worried than women is potential for being bored during retirement - there us women don't have many worries, but virtually on every other front we are more worried, and as the article says - probably with good reason.

The 3 primary areas where worries occur are: Inflation, Health, and Longevity. The researchers say it isn't unfounded worries given women tend to outlive their spouses, and a large number of women will end up living on significantly smaller incomes than men in retirement. Health, it suggests that women have to do a better job of taking care of themselves, much of their health energy is applied to looking after aging parents and their spouse. It's important to remember to take care of yourself. The final concern is about insuring they have enough assets to last them through their final days.

Increasing women's knowledge of investment funds, retirement funds, and working with financial planners is something that needs to happen. Yes, women do manage much of the money in the home and large financial decisions I haven't read of women's knowledge in long term planning happening. Potentially an area for growth.

Thank You for People Like Dorcas Muthoni

I love technology and the ability that global connections are easier to make today. The article here, in the Business Daily Africa announces the Anita Borg Change Agent Award going to Dorcas Muthoni, who is the general manager of OpenWorld. She receives the award because of her 3 year investment getting more girls and young women interested in Information Communication Technology (ICT). They talk of the challenges that girls face when they don't know the breadth of what ICT includes before they reject it as a career path. To solve this problem doesn't just involve reaching out to the individuals but also the career counsellors (often teachers) to provide the right encouragement based on the right knowledge, instead of steering women away to more typical careers.

Another woman talks about her motivation to be involved in outreach programs to pull more women into ICT - she had experienced too many times being in a room of men at events and the assumption being she was the event organizer.

The article contrasts the outcome of not participating in outreach programs with the world that could exist if the right mentoring is provided at the right times. On days I'm exhausted, I read articles like this and it makes me find extra breathe to keep going and making it better for the next generation.

How Can We Make Science More Appealing?

Reading this article comes on an interesting day as it's about women in science, and this week my daughters (6 and 8 years) are in science camp. The first day my daughters came home from camp they were excited to used a motor on hand-made bases with wheels - little cars - as my kids described them, and a paper airplane. At the end of day two, they had been excited to take apart a VCR, TV, and keyboard, but then also mentioned that they'd made planes, planes, and more planes. Today they were happy with dismantling another keyboard, but then said it was boats, boats, boats most of the day. There are only 2 girls and 4 boys in the camp. My husband and I are trying to inject people into the discussion of what they're making and how different boats and planes could be designed for different needs to humanize what they're doing. I don't remember when they started to associate these objects with boys, but they are looking for the girl angle or project in the science camp.

Now I read about the challenges in the field of chemistry for female accademics. How a small amount of positive reinforcement and encouragement can go along way to keep people on course. I hadn't read about the research before related to the review of resumes for tenure positions. The article mentions that the same resume was sent out to 200 psychologists who hard a strong leaning to hiring if the name on the resume was male. A difference occured for the resume for tenure as the gender didn't make a difference, however the notes on the resume suggested more follow up for details, research papers, etc. on the female resumes. The article doesn't mention whether there was a difference in whether the reviewer was male or female, but continues to say women often have the same biases as men.


We spend so much of our time working without feedback, encouragement, or reinforcement that we're on path - did you also know that managers are less likely to give direct feedback to women than men? This puts us at a disadvantage, unless we figure out how to get feedback.


A take away from the article on the Chemistry field is to create supportive networks. They do mention this in the article.

Remembering the Nearness of the Past

I wanted to make a quick entry today to remember how recent it is that women had the vote in the UK. July 2nd, 2008, marked the 80th anniversary of women having the vote. I am always confused between the celebration of how far we've come, and then how far we have to go. For example women are still struggling to get fair pay in technology in the UK.

I sincerely hope at the 100th anniversary my daughters will be celebrating equality.

Double Standards? Perception or Myth We Have to Deal with it

Who holds whom to a different standard? There was an article published yesterday about the removal of Chief Financial Officer, Erin Callan from Lehman Brothers from her position after the lose of $2.8B in a quarter. The male COO/President was also removed from his position. The article raises questions as to whether women are dealt with differently and need to achieve higher results or judged more harshly when they fail, however the article doesn't say that Erin was treated inappropriately, but with so few women in high positions, when one is removed from responsibilities it does rapidly reduce the percentage of women in top positions.

I read in 'Why Women Mean Business' recently and was disheartened to learn that women aren't willing to apply for a job until their skills fit almost 100% with the job descriptioni, whereas a man will apply when he has 60% of the skills (NOTE: I need to confirm the numbers, but my memory has them pegged around that order of magnitude). If that wasn't bad enough hiring managers (didn't say whether malel or female) are interested in women's resumes when they have most of the skills in the job requirement but will show interest in men's resumes when they have a lot fewer of the skills for the job requirement.

So where does that leave us?

• Have courage to apply for jobs we might not think we're suitable for.


• Be confident in our applications.


• And work our networks to get the best opportunity for filling the roles we want.

We could choose to wait for the world to become a fair place but that doesn't happen in our time frame.

I also recommend visiting http://careerwomaninc.com/ where Lisa Quast does an honest job of explaining how she has built her career to become Executive Vice President of Strategy for Royal Philips Electonics.

The Ultimate Glass Ceiling Remains in Place

I can't have this site talk about getting more women into positions of power and decision making and not comment on Hilary Clinton not being the democratic choice for this fall election. Today in her concession speech she commented that not having been able to break the ultimate glass ceiling. Even though as Hilary said, "...we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it has about 18 million cracks in it", polls suggest that female democrats are very keen she should be on the ticket as VP. However while that may seem the next best title, does it carry as much decision making as a different leadership position in the senate?

I became a citizen just prior to the last election so I could vote. While my life is busy with work, family, and 'just stuff happening' (while also looking for a few quick-moments) I have to participate when I can in politics - if we don't participate we can't complain when change doesn't happen. Sometimes it's exhausting to participate but you do feel better when decisions are made that you did whatever you could to make a difference. Today Hilary is an example of someone who tried extremely hard to make change and she has made it happen in terms of making it a real possibility that a woman can be President of the United States.

Asian-Pacific Women Increasing their Control of Spend

At the Global Summit of Women (GSW) this week it was reported in China View that by 2014 women will control $516B. They are making their way to fill the openings in the job market and are well educated and living the single life style. The report was from Mastercard Worldwide.

In Hanoi, at the summit, the number of women starting small businesses was given. In the US the number is 40%, Europe a third, and China 25%, and Japan 20%. I always feel a wave of empowerment when I read about such events, the tide is turning and attention is being given to women in business. Alas as I move through the agenda I also read about "... and breaking the cycle of trafficking women and children." These are remain challenging times and there are many benefits to seeing women make their way forward and upward in business to make change happen.

Gender Brain Differences: What does it mean?

Here's a neat article from Forbes about gender differences and how they appear at work. Michael Gurian and Barbara Annis have studied this area for over 20 years and have published a book, Leadership and the sexes: Using Gender Science to Create Success in Business. It's a fascinating look at all that biological, behavioral, and physiological research and reframed in how it manifests itself at work and in business situations. While I would love to believe that both men and women are eating this type of research up to understand how to appreciate diversity in the workplace at the current time it's more beneficial for us women to read it and assume this is how our behaviors are interpreted. For example, women may run from one topic to the next before returning to the task at hand as we're born to multi-task, whereas men might appear to shut down in a meeting as their brains are more apt to enter a rest state. So the key is for women when in a business meeting full of men is to stay on topic and not link several topics together without keeping the audience present.

The article also emphasizes that neither gender approach is the ultimate successful approach, and that leaders and success can come from both genders. Again for us now as women the tricky part is understanding the rules of the game today, to increase our opportunity to succeed so we can create a more diverse and appreciative diverse work environment in the future.

There's a fun little slide show as well on the site that hightlights some of the top differences.

Inspiration with Geek Girl Dinners

Now I don't really consider myself a geek girl, as I'm not a geek in terms of coding but I like to embrace technology to aid me in enjoying my life, and I'm neither a girl as I passed that girlie stage in life a while ago - but Geek Girl Dinners sounds like it will be worth checking out, and there's one in Seattle in June (finally an event that not only do I know about it before it happens, but it's also in my home town).

Geek Girl Dinners was originally set up in London to foster a community of women to have fun and network. Their idea has traveled the globe and now there are dinners hosted in several countries around the world.

In the meantime, I watched a terrific video of the Geek Girl Dinner in the bay area from earlier in the year - awesome panel (starts 10 minutes in on the video). What an inspiring set of women of all ages and experiences. If only our lives could have that level of connectedness and advice on a regular basis I know the working world would be a different place.

Not A Rosie Picture for All

While I like to be upbeat and optimistic about the increase in wealth of women, I do need a reality check on for which segments of the female population is this the case. Increases in wealth is not for all women. An article in the SignonSanDiego.com highlights the challenges women are facing with the current tightening of the economy. A Rockerfeller Foundation study produced these following results:

• One in five women had a medical prescription she couldn't afford to fill in the past year, compared with one out of eight men.
• One in eight women reported that she couldn't afford to take a child to the doctor during the past year, compared with one out of 16 men.
• One in 14 American women went hungry at some time last year because of lack of money, compared with one out of 25 men.
• More American women – 56 percent – are worried about cutbacks to Social Security than men, at 41 percent. One reason for this disparity is that half of retired women count on Social Security as a major source of income, compared with 38 percent of retired men. And one reason for that is that more men have employment-provided retirement savings plans, at 61 percent, than women, at 51 percent.

Keeping gender successes in perspective is important, and with success we've got to remember how to give back and create benefits for all, to strengthen overall society.

It's All in a Name

So what should you name yourself at work? Ambiguously, seems to be the advice of a woman called Josephine who calls herself Finn at work. Once she changed her alias at work she started to receive a different type of email that contained different insights into how the business worked, and gain insight into the back channel where the real insights get discussed on the future of the company or who's who. This is one of the insights from an article by Sylvia Ann Hewlett.

Now one problem with this strategy is with the advent of social technologies that reveal more about us. I love the feature we have at work that allows me to view the photos of people on an email thread or invited to a meeting. At a quick glance I can see who is who, or use to recall who said what in a meeting. Some people love the tool to disambiguate names so they know the gender of whom they're engaging with - why do they do that? sometimes curiosity, and sometimes to refer to that person as he or she in mail. It's complicated.

The question is long term will social technologies aid the gender gap or keep repositioning the gap. I like using facebook and linkedin as it formalizes relationships as people grow their lists of friends, but to me now I have a set of people to reach out to who invited me to their networks. I've been invited by all types of people whom I wouldn't have thought would have considered me a friend.

So while the focus group research offers the advantages of a gender neutral name, it's going to be harder to leverage that strategy in the future.

Women Superstars Are Portable, Men Less So

This is a point in my blog where I wonder if I'm deviating from the theme of my blog or actually iterating to fine tune the theme. I am personally motivated to encourage change in how technology can provide women with an improved quality of life whether it's for pleasure, work, balancing life, family, etc. I have been trying to focus on the pleasure and fun because there are many other sites that comment on how best to balance work/family etc. However to encourage technology companies to consider an audience so unlike the gender makeup of most technology companies requires a shift itself to be more attractive to women to want to join it. So this then leads me in the direction of wanting to include in my blog articles and commentary on why it makes business sense to improve the gender make-up in companies.
In Harvard Business Review this month there's an article on the portability of superstars in the work force by Boris Groysberg, it's a second article pulled from a large data set. The first article had findings that showed it was extremely hard for a superstar in one company to transfer to a new company and still perform at the same outstanding level. However the new article has looked at gender differences and determines that women can move successfully between organizations. There were two primary reasons, first, women have stronger external networks, which they've developed because internal networks can be harder for them to develop. This means when they switch companies they weren't as dependent upon that internal network for their success compared to their male counterparts. The second reason is that women are more likely to way up the environmental factors of moving to a new company: culture that is open to female talent, openness to individual style, and impartial performance measures, this contrasts to a man moving to a new company for financial rewards.

Take aways:
Developing an external network is important, for people who are starting their careers it's developing it outside their group, division, or organization if a small company.
A woman who is second guessing her intuition on whether to force herself to make a move based on compensation if she feels it's not a good fit should probably go with intuition.
A company hiring talent needs to consider how it operates to considered an environment where individual styles can florish. I say operates because I can imagine how a company could try to convey that individual styles are supported, but without the reality to back it up the high flyers recruited in will not continue to rise.

It's bizzare to read the short summary on the HBR site because it's so rare that I've read an article where it's highlighting what women do that men can learn from to be successful in business!