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The Best News Is The Ball Is In The Women’s Court!
 
 
We need a little visual imagery here, so I want you to picture a glass being slowly filled for you. At first, you’re thinking, “It’s almost empty! This isn’t fair! Oh come on, look at this sad situation.” At some point, the glass is half-full and chances are you, me, and others are still in the complaining mode. We haven’t realized it’s reached the Tipping Point—changing from half-empty to half-full.
 
Well, guess what? We’re at the Tipping Point for women in business today. Since graduating from Berkeley at the height of the women’s movement protests, I’ve been monitoring our slow, slow, progress. Always looking forward to the day when women are treated as well as men. Of course, there’s always something that ‘s not quite equal—and we can focus on this—and see ourselves as victims . . . still.
 
There’s a wonderful word “epiphany” that I recently went through when I realized we’ve passed the half-empty marker, men—young men— are no longer the enemy—they’re eager to be our allies. We women are smart and we’re used to working hard, we can multitask easily, we can use our feminine secret tool, intuition, to our advantage. Talent-wise, we’re as good as men in business. But, there’s one thing we haven’t yet grasped—and it’s a doozey:  We are our own worst enemy!
 
I’m not happy with this either, don’t get defensive, stay with me here. First, let me tell you how women are not helping other women. And then, let me tell you how you can make a small change each week to help yourself and to help other women. Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, did a good job of shining a spotlight on how ideas can be grasped by groups of people where each person links to several others and, suddenly, so much faster than you’d ever imagine possible, you’ve reached the Tipping Point—and a massive social change has taken place.
 
Well, we’ve reached the Tipping Point for Women! We’re teetering there and now I’ll tell you how you, yes YOU, can do just 2 little things and we’ll be looking at a full glass sooner than you thought possible!
 
Obstacle Avoidance
Here are the 2 things. Most businesses were set up by men—thank-you guys. All of us are used to seeing the winning team—the men—perform in a particular way—and it’s not the way we women would have designed it. This alone sets up conditions for obstacles—everyday obstacles—that trip up only the second team—the women’s team.
 
I maintain that we women are smart. We can learn to handle, and even avoid, these obstacles. In fact, after 20 to 30 years of working, you’d discover a number of these on your own. But patience is not a virtue—don’t buy into that platitude—it’s a waste of time for you and for other women. I vow to do my best to help you by alerting you to a business obstacle every week and giving you a strategy to short-circuit it! They’re simple, and because they’ll make sense to you, you’ll remember them. These have been tested by our audience on the WomensMedia website where we get more than 1,000 emails a day detailing what’s worked for these hard-working businesswomen.
 
Treat Women Equal To Men
So this obstacle avoidance is the first of the 2 things you must do to quickly bring the glass full up. Now, the other thing requires that you listen with an open mind. At first, you won’t like what you hear. I was kicking and screaming when I first read the research results—but it’s true:  Today, women are holding women back—it’s no longer the men! If you’re like me and require proof of the research, I refer you to the Max Planck Institute’s expansive study. Fake resumes for jobs were shown to men and women. The names on the resumes were changed back and forth between male and female names. More women than men held the female applicants back while recommending more men for positions, especially positions of authority. This is where I screamed, “Why are we doing this?”  Well, here’s what’s going on. Some of us hold the stereotype in our heads that men are managers and women are support staff. It’s hard to avoid stereotypes in the first few seconds, but we can unlearn them—and we will unlearn them! Some of us expect women to work twice as hard as men, because that’s what we had to do—so what, we can get over it!  We can get over it because we don’t want this situation to be around for our daughters and our granddaughters!
 
Tip:  So let’s get this Tipping Point ripping along. The Good News is the ball is in our court, and we’re smart. Let’s start avoiding obstacles and begin helping other women. Very soon we’ll be able to tell our daughters that men and women are truly equal in business. Let’s make this happen! 
 
Further Reading:
 
The Times, Britain, Queen Bees Holding Women Back
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Tags: business, women, businesswomen

Study Shows Women are Harming Women!
 
 
Do you work for a female manager who is biased against other women? Take Diane Danielson’s advice on Women’s Dish, “It’s time to buzz off!”
 
We’ve all encountered a Queen Bee. We know of that woman who wants to be the only female working with men. That’s one rationale. The other one I suspect is that she’s thinking, “I had to work twice as hard as a man to get here . . . so I’m making sure you don’t get it any easier!” If you’re working for a Queen Bee, that’s tough, really tough. She’s a gatekeeper to the glass ceiling—she demands a higher performance from a woman than from a man.
 
The term “queen bee” was coined by psychologists Staines, Tavris, and Jayaratne in 1974 based on their study of twenty thousand people. It’s a travesty that their analysis is still true today. They wrote, “The Queen Bee who is successful in a male-dominated field feels little animosity toward the system that that permitted her to reach the top, and little animosity toward the men who praise her for being so unique. She identifies with the specific male colleagues who are her reference group, rather than with the diffuse concept of women as a class… The Queen Bee thereby disassociates herself from the fundamental issues of equality for women, while reassuring her male colleagues that she is not of that militant ilk.”
 
Yes, we still see this today. Some Queen Bees may be unaware of their prejudice against women. Some may be aware, but think it’s not obvious to others. Some may think there are no repercussions, but they should be made aware of recent lawsuit awards to victims in both the U.S. and the U.K.
 
Next week, I’ll talk to you about another aspect of women holding women back. It comes from a new study out of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin showing that female and older participants showed more prejudice against the idea of a female leader than did male and younger participants. It’s something that’s even more prevalent than Q.B.’s.
 
Tip:  I maintain that you have a little leverage here if your boss is a Q.B. because I bet she wouldn’t want others referring to her with that label. So, anonymously drop a copy of this article on her desk. Or, if you prefer, drop off copies of the recent lawsuits!

Visit our website, www.WomensMedia.com, for Expert Advice for Working Women. 

 
 
Further Reading:
 
WomensMedia Recommended Books, In the Company of Women: Turning Workplace Conflict into Powerful Alliances. by Pat Heim, Susan Murphy, Susan K. Golant (Contributor)
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