Leah Eichler is the founder of Femme-O-Nomics.
As a card-holding member of Generation X, I adopted an early disdain for temporary work, often equating it in my mind with the McJobs popularized in Douglas Coupland quintessential book. But with the changing economic climate – one that waves goodbye to the notion of long-term job security and loyalty – temporary work has gradually become normalized.
Although creating a community atmosphere costs in terms of effort and planning, it remains an important tool to stem attrition rates. Salary alone isn’t always the deciding factor when employees contemplate jumping ship.
Who earns the money in your household? It’s a question we need to start asking more often since buried in this conversation about women’s advancement in the workplace, where we fanatically count the number of women on boards, lives this trend of women increasingly out earning and out educating men.
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In five to 10 years, I want to look back and cite this week as the turning point in the discussion of women and careers, when pregnancy no longer constituted a liability. This vision of the future comes in light of the news that Yahoo’s board of directors appointed Marissa Mayer — a 37-year old Google veteran who happens to be six-months pregnant — the company’s new CEO.
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The subtleties of language can easily escape us as we try to digest thousands of words every day, both audibly and on a screen. Yet they unconsciously impact our image, which can help or hinder advancement. In a business environment specifically, there exists a language of leadership that remains more masculine in nature and the expectation persists that women must learn to assume those characteristics in order to get ahead.
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The one thing I notice about many of my contemporaries is that we don’t lie about our age. Perhaps that habit still persists in some circles but for the most part, I draw personal pride in my accomplishment-to-age ratio as do many of my friends and business acquaintances. Yet I do worry that age expectations may still rear its ugly head and perhaps I’ve been fortunate to escape it so far.
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One line in Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter’s landmark piece in the Atlantic really caught my attention: “Make school schedules match work schedules.” She explained that a career in academia, although demanding, afforded her the opportunity to set her own schedule. When she moved to her dream job as director of policy planning for the U.S. State Department, she experienced what many of us already know: being at the mercy of someone else’s work schedule as a parent raises many complications. The overall tone of the article suggests that society needs to change to accommodate women’s advancement but to what degree does that include our school system?
I applaud the media focus on this changing dynamic of families and how that impacts the professional lives of women, we need to ensure that this transition appears in a positive light. To gain equal status at work, we desperately need it at home and that won’t happen unless we stop treating dads who raise children as a curiosity that requires our pity.
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It’s time to put an end to the “queen bee” myth. Not only do women support each other at higher rates than men, they earn more money doing so.
In many demanding roles, it can easily become routine to focus your attention on achieving specific business objectives. The more you focus on equipping yourself to advance, the more indispensable you become to your company. It’s a win-win situation.
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