I love to shop. Online, offline, it doesn’t really matter.
I’m not an indiscriminate shopper, though. The thrill of the hunt for the deal adds to the joy of the experience. And lately I’ve become a smarter shopper, frequently doing research before I buy.
Companies are more likely to hire women for senior executive positions when their boards are populated with women directors, according to a new study by Catalyst, a New York nonprofit that focuses on women-in-business issues.
The reported noted that companies with at least 30 percent women board members in 2001 averaged 45 percent more women corporate officers by 2006, compared to companies with no women board members at the beginning of the study period.
On Monday I blogged about how we now know that the claim that, for the past several years, working moms were leaving the workforce to stay home with their kids was a myth. And now, as you can see by the blog below, an article in Tuesday’s New York Times explains just what happened to these women.
As the Clinton campaign (Bill’s) famously said 16 years ago—”It’s the economy, stupid.” After years of striving, we women have apparently achieved parity, only it’s not the kind we’ve been dreaming about. Information just released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows, for the first time since we women stormed the business world about 40 years ago, the number of women in their prime-earning years (ages 25-54) in the labor force has actually declined.
The main factor causing this decline is the same that affects males in the workforce as well, the reeling economy. This economic downturn and the ensuing layoffs, wage freezes and outsourcing of American jobs has had a negative affect on both men and women. And no one is expecting things to get better anytime soon.
For the first time since the women’s movement began, the number of women in the work force has fallen, despite the lengthy economic recovery following the tech crash of 2000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
As outlined in a story today in The New York Times, the number of women in the work force during their peak earning years of ages 25 to 54 reached 74.9 percent in early 2000 but retreated to 72.7 percent in June, according to the BLS. It’s the first time during the seven economic recoveries since 1960 that fewer women are working as a recovery ends, the story notes.
And what was once thought to be the result of more women becoming stay-at-home moms is now seen by economists in a different light.
“Conversations with Women Leaders” a quarterly women’s leadership development group, is the brainchild of Jane Lowenstein and Barbara Taylor of JanBara & Associates. The partners specialize in executive coaching and leadership advancement for women.
I knew it, I just knew it. For the last several years, we’ve been subjected to articles, books and so-called experts all proclaiming that youngish moms (Gen X and younger baby boomers) were dropping out of the labor force in droves.
I would look around, at my friends, my sisters and the many young moms who used to work for me and exclaim, “That can’t possibly be true. How many women can afford to be stay-at-home moms these days?”
Brenda Mahr has a simple slogan: “Fighting crime with employment is my ‘claim to fame.’”
Mahr, 62, has been doing so for 30 years at the nonprofit Employment Connection in St. Louis, which started out helping former inmates find work and has expanded to help adults with limited opportunities find jobs, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.
Her motivation: the $11,000 it costs to incarcerate one person for one year and the fact that 52 percent of released offenders who don’t find work find their way back to prison.
Most of us read John Donne’s poem “No Man is an Island” (which actually was first written as prose as Meditation 17, part of Devotions upon Emergent Occasions) back in high school. Whether you’re an aspiring or existing business owners this expression is particularly apt.
For our purposes though, allow me to paraphrase and say no successful entrepreneur can be an island. You cannot succeed on your own. All entrepreneurs need help.
So if you’re isolating yourself for whatever reason (and believe me, I’ve heard them all), you need to stop. I’ve advised you before about how your friends can be a big part of helping you succeed. But you need to go beyond the familiar. Join a group or association.
I can hear some of you now. “I don’t have time.” “I’m too shy.” “Why should I?” Why? Because it will help you succeed.
One solution to the high price of gasoline — last week in Southern California, I paid $4.65 a gallon for regular — is to drive less. But you still have to get where you need to go and if you don’t live in a city with ample public transportation, it’s hard to cut back.
Another option: scooters. According to MediaPost’s Marketing Daily scooter sales are booming. Sales of heavier motorcycles are not doing as well, but Harley-Davidson is trying to fix that by targeting women, as bizwomen first noted in March.
In 1988 when Kimberlee Hastings joined CJ & Associates, an office supply dealership and interior design firm owned by her parents, she wasn’t sure she’d stick around.
But 20 years “flew by,” Hastings said, and she was appointed president of CJ & Associates in 2004, making it one of the largest woman-owned companies in the state of Wisconsin, according to the Milwaukee Business Journal.
In 2005, Hastings established a government sales division to meet government contract furniture needs. And a year later, she established an interior construction and remodeling division. The two divisions have allowed CJ & Associates to diversify its offerings.
