Something is very wrong in Republican politics at the moment.

But it is what GOD had commanded!

Religious nutcases need to be put into rubber rooms so they can not harm others with their claptrap.

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Something is very wrong in Republican politics at the moment. People might ask me why I should give crap about what happens in America. Well, I'm 30 mins away from the border and I don't want to see the region destabilised by fundamentalist Taliban style nutjobs. If they get away with this bullsh*t in the US how long before it spreads up here?

Tina Fey on some of the sheer ignorance touted by Republican politicians

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Reality Internet Personality

you will find the female CEO's answering to a predominantly male Board, almost without exception.

To even think it is fair getting there, is naive at best.

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Janice

Here's the report you were looking for, The Third Billion

As growing numbers of women enter the economic mainstream, they will have a profound effect on global business.

A huge and fast-growing group of people are poised to take their place in the economic mainstream over the next decade, as employees, employers, producers, and entrepreneurs. This group’s impact on the global economy will be at least as significant as that of the billion-plus populations in both China and India. But its members have not yet attracted the attention they deserve. China and India each represent 1 billion emerging participants in the global marketplace, and this group of the same size, this “third billion,” is made up of women, in both developing and industrialized nations.

The old boy's networks are still unfortunately alive and well. Hopefully this will help redress the balance. Perhaps when* we have equal amounts of men and women in the top executive jobs we won't need things like this.

*I'm an optimist.

And there are no such things as "Old Girls" networks ???

Can someone please explain why in corporations that are run by a female CEO (e.g. The Westpac bank and Gina Rinehart's Giga dollar mining company), most of the senior executives are men ?

Why don't powerful women support other women ?

T.A.

These are very good questions. I think it has something to do with the type of woman who ends up in those senior roles. To get through that glass ceiling as a woman I suspect you have to be more ruthless than a man with the same abilities. There can also be a certain degree of proving that you are strong enough to be there so in a sense being more "manly" than a man.

I am pretty sure that there are woman at the top who would like to see more woman at the top, but the barriers to that are actually pretty complicated.

For example a lot of successful business men don't need to chose between having a career and a family. Why not? Because they have a wife to take care of the family so that they can take care of the business side of things. It's quite difficult for a woman to find a wife to support them, although more men are quite happy to step into this role there is still a long way to go. So for a woman to be super successful she generally has to make a choice between children and work.

So to get more woman into those top positions we need to change the way work is done. There is no reason that there can't be a successful balance between home and work life, it has just never been set up that way. Any woman getting that far ahead is going to meet resistance to change until there are more woman there.

So a successful woman might want to have more women working with her, but they aren't offering themselves up as they have given up long before they get to that point.

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Reality Internet Personality

The old boy's networks are still unfortunately alive and well. Hopefully this will help redress the balance. Perhaps when* we have equal amounts of men and women in the top executive jobs we won't need things like this.

*I'm an optimist.

And there are no such things as "Old Girls" networks ???

Can someone please explain why in corporations that are run by a female CEO (e.g. The Westpac bank and Gina Rinehart's Giga dollar mining company), most of the senior executives are men ?

Why don't powerful women support other women ?

T.A.

oooh, that's gonna hurt! After all the hassles of the late 19th & early 20th Centuries over the issue of Men Only clubs, the tables are turned......

No Men Allowed!

BFD. There have been "Women Only" clubs around for a long time. The difference is they have received no publicity because men have no interest in joining them, either for personal or political reasons.

T.A.

I have no problems at all with private Ladies Clubs, I think it's about time. We have the Soroptimists in the UK which are very popular, most Rotary Clubs now admit Lady members, and there are many women only Freemason Lodges. I might add that we also have a lot of female ministers in the Coalition Government who do a damned good job, and there are thousands of female Councillors up and down the country.

And quite right too.

oooh, that's gonna hurt! After all the hassles of the late 19th & early 20th Centuries over the issue of Men Only clubs, the tables are turned......

No Men Allowed!

The old boy's networks are still unfortunately alive and well. Hopefully this will help redress the balance. Perhaps when* we have equal amounts of men and women in the top executive jobs we won't need things like this.

*I'm an optimist.

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Reality Internet Personality

oooh, that's gonna hurt! After all the hassles of the late 19th & early 20th Centuries over the issue of Men Only clubs, the tables are turned......

No Men Allowed!

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Reality Internet Personality

Don't know if anyone here saw the video of Julia Gillard (the Australian PM) lay into her opponent for his chauvinism, but it's worth a watch.

Julia Gillard: Australia's PM comes out fighting

Definitely worth a watch. Nice one Julia, good sense, common sense. Care to switch countries? We could do with you over here!

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Don't know if anyone here saw the video of Julia Gillard (the Australian PM) lay into her opponent for his chauvinism, but it's worth a watch.

Julia Gillard: Australia's PM comes out fighting

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Reality Internet Personality

Women at work: 'Forget the balance. This is the merge'

Interesting article on why women are having trouble breaking the glass ceiling along with some disheartening research on gender bias in the workplace. Of course most of us are aware that this happens, but it is sad to see it confirmed.

"...

Babcock's research helped spawn an industry of advice books intended to toughen women up: Nice Girls Don't Get The Corner Office; Play Like A Man, Win Like A Woman; Stop Sabotaging Your Career. But the academic research was taking a curious turn. Study after study found that women who did not conform to female stereotypes – who bluntly asked for a raise, self-promoted or demanded credit for work they'd done – paid a high price in the workplace. People judged them as harsh or unpleasant, and didn't want to work with them.

Researchers tested different workplace scenarios, always with the same result: women who speak aggressively get lower marks than women who speak tentatively. Women who self-promote are judged to lack social skills. Ditto for women who express any kind of anger in the workplace. In one scenario, some colleagues were about to go to an office party when another showed up in a last-minute panic over a broken photocopier. He needed help manually stapling 500 sets of the pages he had copied. The women who said no and went off to the party were marked down. Men who did the same were not judged at all. For men, behaving in a friendly, communal way was optional. For women, it was mandatory.

Perhaps the most dispiriting experiment was conducted in 2004 by Madeline Heilman, a psychologist at New York University. Heilman handed out a packet giving background information about a certain employee who was an assistant vice-president in an aircraft company. In some cases, the employee was described as not yet having received a performance review. In other cases, the employee had gone through the review and been deemed a "stellar performer" or a "rising star". The only other difference was that in some cases, the employee described in the packets was "Andrea" and in others "James". Among those who believed the employee had not yet received a review, Andrea and James were judged equally. But among those to whom the employee had been described as a "rising star", there were vast differences in response. People judged rising star Andrea as far less likable and far more hostile than James; in fact, the Andreas were judged to be "downright uncivil", Heilman says, even though there was no information provided to support that view. Subjects merely assumed that "Andrea" must have done some nasty things along the way in order to break through in such a male-dominated field.

..."

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Reality Internet Personality

Not exactly true, the student was deferred if they were in a field of study deemed to be useful to the war effort , such as medical students, I don't believe English majors had the deferment. I know my father was premed and upon graduation he was commission a 2nd lt. and then offered the chance to resign the commission, be drafted and stationed as a private at medical school. Not a bad deal, the army paid tuition, books, room and board and paid him a private's salary. The worst part was he had to wear a uniform to class.

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Well, considering that I originally trained to teach at the secondary level (12-18 year olds), I never heard of men returning from WWII to become teachers in large numbers here.

There might be reasons for that. In UK and a lot of the British Empire conscription started at 17.5 years and in UK generally took precedence over college/unversity entrance, the immediate need was higher.

In the US WW2 started over 2 years later, and conscription, over 18 years old, could be deferred if in college or with proof of college acceptance until the end of the 4 year degree program. So most even if conscripted would not have served overseas.

Thanks, WK.

National Service or conscription lasted in the UK until 1960, and the rules were similar in that if you were on an indentured apprenticeship, you service could be deferred. I started my Toolmaking apprenticeship in 1961 and we had one chap there in his final apprenticeship year that only finished the 5 years in 1962. So he had to go and do National Service.

I missed it by 18 months and I am profoundly glad too, but I'd probably been in the REME. If some foul mouthed Sergeant had ordered me to blanco a pile of coal just because he said so, and I couldn't see any logical reason for it, I'd have been in the Colchester glasshouse. Discipline is fine, not sheer bloodymindedness.

Well, considering that I originally trained to teach at the secondary level (12-18 year olds), I never heard of men returning from WWII to become teachers in large numbers here.

There might be reasons for that. In UK and a lot of the British Empire conscription started at 17.5 years and in UK generally took precedence over college/unversity entrance, the immediate need was higher.

In the US WW2 started over 2 years later, and conscription, over 18 years old, could be deferred if in college or with proof of college acceptance until the end of the 4 year degree program. So most even if conscripted would not have served overseas.

There were at best 2 or 3 male teachers in my decent size elementary school. This was the mid-to-late 70s. I do not think your reason applies.

Oh yes it does. There were several boys in my daughter's high school class who were considering becoming teachers. They changed their minds when one of the incidents mentioned above happened.

T.A.

Though we are all (those of us posting in here) in countries in the UK or fomerly part of it, we do share some common culture.
However, you perhaps are forgetting that in the US (my country), throughout the 1800s, we were spreading from one coast to the other, and you can bet that the simple version of women were left to teach while men did other things is still fairly accurate.

Check Australian history, The timelines are very similar.

Maybe here in Oz, more returning WW2 servicemen chose to become teachers than in the US. Most of my male teachers were about the right vintage for that. I can only quote from my experience.

Over the years the situation has changed and now most teachers here are female, and one of the reasons is that men are not going into teaching because of the fear of harassment charges.

T.A.

Well, considering that I originally trained to teach at the secondary level (12-18 year olds), I never heard of men returning from WWII to become teachers in large numbers here.