This veers a little further into the world of politics than it does business— nonetheless, it’s still some really interesting food for thought. What do you think?
On a certain level, gender parity in government is an issue of democratic legitimacy: Women are a majority of the American electorate, and yet we have less female representation in government than most of the planet. (In a recent United Nations study of proportional gender representation in government, the U.S. ranked 78th, tied with Turkmenistan.)But according to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand — who has campaigned heavily for other female candidates in this election cycle and is likely to win reelection against a female opponent — the lack of skirts in the Senate is more than a symbolic concern. “My own experience in Congress is when women are on committees and at hearings, the nature of the discussion is different, and the outcomes are better — we reach better solutions, better decisions are made,” she said a year ago. But in this election, with only eighteen women competing for seats, there’s hardly going to be a longer line at the Senate gallery’s ladies room; the House raceis more optimistic, with 163 women on the ticket.
Landing A Job: 10 Things To Do In College That Will Make You More Hirable
This past weekend I had the privilege to attendHarvard University’s Women in Business Intercollegiate Business Convention 2012and the Brown University/Rhode Island School of Design-sponsoredA Better World by Design Conference 2012. Between both of these conferences, I met people from Facebook, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Arnold Worldwide, Digitas, Novartis, Mullen, Teach for America, NBC, Credit Suisse, Oliver Wyman, Google, McKinsey, Bain, NYU Stern School of Business, Tuck, HBS, Maternova, Cleverhood, and Creative Placement.
These people now have a person in mind when they read my resume, and I also have their direct contact information. The first thing I did after attending panels and breakout sessions was to whip out my blackberry and connect with the speakers on LinkedIn. They accepted the connections immediately, and now I have several message threads being exchanged back and forth from the companies that I want to work for.
Plus, you usually get a lot of awesome swag at these conferences, and you probably won’t have to go to Staples for at least two years.
Thanks, Campus Companion, for the awesome plug! We’re so glad you enjoyed the conference and hope many girls will have the chance to do the same in the future.
Note: This post was excerpted from an article written by Luisita Lopez Torregrosa for the New York Times. Click here to access the full article. Photo courtesy of Wellsphere.com.
Why is Wall Street so slow to promote women? Is that a reflection of U.S. society in general or is there a peculiarity to the Wall Street experience?
“The Wall Street culture is characterized by what you might call really macho kinds of behavior,” said Ilene H. Lang, Catalyst’s president and chief executive. “So what’s looked up to on Wall Street are people who swagger, people who will do the deal at any cost, people who will work day and night, hour and hour, for lots and lots of money and they don’t care about anything else.”
“Those are characteristics that you think about when asked to talk about what the Wall Street culture is,” she said in an interview. “That’s a very masculine, macho culture, again a stereotype, and, in general, it’s very hard for women or men to picture women being that way because that conflicts with the stereotypic norms of what women should be like.”
Ms. Lang, a trailblazer in the high-tech and Internet industries who has headed Catalyst for nine years and holds an M.B.A. from Harvard, continued, “Women who behave in those macho ways are then perceived as being very masculine, and that’s considered very unattractive. While men are aggressive, women are labeled with the ‘B word.’ It is behavior that’s admired in men but despised in women.”
Note: This post was excerpted from an article written by Marlo Thomas for the Huffington Post. Click here to read the full article.
This Friday night, July 27th, the eyes of the world will turn to London as the 2012 Olympic Games begin. For some of the athletes, their dreams will be realized, as they triumph in a sport they’ve been training for their entire lives. For others, their hopes will slip from their grasp, sometimes by a mere fraction of a second. But for all of us watching, it will be another galvanizing display of talent, inspiration and endurance.
But what makes it even more exciting this year is that the Games haven’t even begun, and Team U.S.A. has already scored a giant win for women. This year, for the first time ever, the U.S. Olympic team will include more women than men. What a fitting tribute that is to the 40-year anniversary of Title IX, the landmark law that assured greater and fairer opportunities in athletics for millions of females across the United States.
What makes this amazing landmark even sweeter is that women weren’t even allowed to compete in the modern Olympics until 1900 in Paris. That year, women’s events in lawn tennis, croquet and golf were introduced; and at the 1928 Games in Amsterdam, women’s athletics and gymnastics were added. Over the course of the next 84 years, women not only began to participate in the men’s events, but dominate in many of them, as well. With the introduction of women’s boxing this year, there is no Olympic event left that is exclusively for men. And with Saudi Arabia sending two women to the London Games, for the first time in history, all participating nations will have female Olympians competing.
Google’s Marissa Mayer Becomes Yahoo’s CEO
Note: This post is excerpted from an article written by Andrew Ross Sorkin and Evelyn M. Rusli for the New York Times.
Marissa Mayer, one of the top executives at Google, will be the next chief executive of Yahoo, making her one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley and corporate America.
The appointment of Ms. Mayer, who was employee No. 20 at Google and was one of the few public faces of the company, is considered a surprising coup for Yahoo, which has struggled in recent years to attract top flight talent in its battle with competitors like Google and Facebook.
Click here to read the full article.
