Career Women Coaching

Women Choose Their Work Environment

In their book “Megatrends of Women,” Patricia Aburdene & John Naisbitt point out that, “The traits of the manager of the future uncannily match those of female leadership. Consultants have tried to teach male managers to relinquish the command-and-control mode.  For women it was different: it just came naturally.” 

Tom Peters, author of “In Search of Excellence,” tells men “who wish to stay employed to study women’s ways of leadership.”  What these authors are saying, is that many of the behaviors that women have been socialized to possess, can be translated into valuable job skills.  Both the working world and the political arena need the talents women bring. 

For a growing number of women, their career is an important part of who they are.  They have come to understand the need for balancing their caring, collaborative and teaching side with a balanced perspective of discipline, productivity and objectivity.

Choosing to take the appropriate measures to advance our careers is a significant decision. Ultimately, the right decision for one woman may be entirely wrong for another. The choice belongs to each of us.  Of course, industry asks and expects a lot.  But the demands will only change when women push through changes so no one will be expected to sacrifice family for success in business.

After spending time in the corporate world, many women choose to open their own businesses so they have more control over their time.

Sources:   John G. Agno: Women and Time  

    Barbara McEwen: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge

 

 

 

 

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition  Paperback at: $14.99

"When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.  Order the PDF ebook - Workbook Edition for only $12.99 (to view full-size on your computer screen or decide to printout locally):  Add to Cart

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader and iPad edition at Barnes & Noble  for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition -for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

More information at: http://www.whendoingitallwontdo.com/ 

Older Women and Social Security

More than one in four older women relies on Social Security for nearly all their family income.  In 2010 alone, Social Security kept roughly 38 percent of women age 65 and older out of poverty. 

Social Security is especially important to women today because: 

Women typically earn less on average than men do, are more likely than men to work part time, and are more likely to have gaps in their employment which results in lower lifetime earnings for women.

Since women tend to live longer than men do, they are more likely to outlive their savings.

Women are less likely than men to have additional sources of retirement income, such as pension or savings.

More than one-third of widowed women age 65 and over relies on Social Security for 90 percent or more of their family income.

Among divorced women that age, just under one-third depend on Social Security for almost all of their family income  

For more on ways Social Security can be adapted to better serve women, visit AARP.org at:

http://www.aarp.org/work/social-security/info-03-2012/social-security-helps-prevent-poverty-for-women.html

The Sexual Revolution at 50 Years Old

As many pundits had occasion to observe in 2010, the 50th anniversary of the pill, it is hard to think of anything else that has changed life so quickly and dramatically for so many.

In severing sex from procreation, humankind set into motion forces that have by now shaped and reshaped almost every aspect of life in the Western world. Families are smaller, birthrates have dropped, divorce and out-of-wedlock births have soared.  Demography has now even started to work against the modern welfare state, which has become harder to sustain as fewer children have been produced to replace aging parents.

The sexual revolution has transformed economics, culture and law.   But has the sexual revolution made women happier?

Granted, happiness is a personal, imponderable thing. But if the sexual revolution has really made women as happy as feminists say, a few elementary questions beg to be answered.

Why do the pages of our tonier magazines brim with mournful titles like "The Case for Settling" and "The End of Men"?   Why do websites run by and for women focus so much on men who won't grow up, and ooze such despair about relations between the sexes?

Why do so many accomplished women simply give up these days and decide to have children on their own, sometimes using anonymous sperm donors, thus creating the world's first purposely fatherless children?   What of the fact that 26% of American women are on some kind of mental-health medication for anxiety and depression and related problems?

Or how about what is known in sociology as "the paradox of declining female happiness"?   

Using 35 years of data from the General Social Survey, two Wharton School economists, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, made the case in 2009 that women's happiness appeared to be declining over time despite their advances in the work force and education.

The authors noted that women (and men) showed declining happiness during the years studied. Though they were careful not to draw conclusions from their data, is it not reasonable to think that at least some of that discontent comes from the feeling that the grass is greener elsewhere—a feeling made plausible by the sexual revolution?

If the sexual revolution offends you, stay away from it.  If, say, you don't approve of birth control, then choose not use it.   The sexual revolution, which rode into town on the backs of those pink plastic cases of birth-control pills, was, after all, not so much a matter of sleeping around as it was of having the ability to decide when you were going to have a child, and then deciding how many children you wanted to have.   It meant the freedom to choose not having children at all.  It was a quiet use of a revolution, but a completely appropriate one.

Reproduction is the very purpose of life on earth. No matter which aspects of the act and its consequences are debated, mandated, outlawed or rolled back, sex will keep on keeping on.   Let's make a country into which any baby would be proud to be born.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2012

 John G. Agno: Women and Time  

    Barbara McEwen: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge

 

 

 

 

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition  Paperback at: $14.99

"When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.  Order the PDF ebook - Workbook Edition for only $12.99 (to view full-size on your computer screen or decide to printout locally):  Add to Cart

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader and iPad edition at Barnes & Noble  for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition -for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

Gender Equality at Work

According to data published by the Pew Research Center in 2010, the wife now earns more than the husband in 22 percent of married couples, compared with only 4 percent in 1970.  And the salary differences can be substantial: The 2010 U.S. Census reports that over 4 percent of wives make at least $30,000 more than their spouses.  Once you add to the “wife outearns” group the 25 percent of couples whose incomes are pretty much equal, it’s clear that the guy is now just barely in the majority.  

Even a Match.com survey of men ages 26 to 36 found that 87 percent thought it would be “sexy” to date a woman who earned more money than they did.  Experts note there’s a new breed of men who not only aren’t threatened by a woman’s larger paycheck but are grateful for it.  An increasing number of men are happy being outearned, he says—not only because gender roles are changing but also because of our sluggish economy: Three quarters of those who lost their jobs in 2008 and 2009 were men. “This is not your grandfather’s Depression, because men aren’t the sole providers,” notes Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, whose specialty is the study of masculinity.  “So men’s losing their jobs hasn’t been the calamity for the family that it was in 1931.”

Experts see this as a period of transition. “The general data indicate that gender norms are changing but that there’s also still some ambivalence,” observes D’Vera Cohn, senior writer at the Pew Research Center, which recently released several reports on gender and money. For example, she says, 67 percent of men and women polled in a 2010 national survey said a man needed to be prepared to support a family before he married—but only 33 percent felt that women had the same responsibility.  And yet the change in attitudes has been huge.  In the late 1970s, Cohn says, 48 percent of American men and women believed that the most satisfying marriage was one in which both partners worked and shared chores and parenting; by 2010 that figure had jumped to 62 percent.

 

Even if the economy rallies, the new gender economics is likely to continue because we’ve reached a cultural tipping point.  “Gen X and Gen Y men assume their wives are going to work—and work hard,” Kimmel says.   And women can now choose a husband not because he’s a good provider but because he’s a good guy. 

 

Source: www.More.com, March 2012

 

For self-coaching guides to career women success:

 John G. Agno: Women and Time   

 John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.

  Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition

"When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.  Order the PDF ebook - Workbook Edition (ISBN-10: 0983586527) for only $12.99 (to view full-size on your computer screen or decide to printout locally) today:  Add to Cart

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader and iPad tablets at Barnes & Noble   for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition - for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the pdf Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

More information at: http://www.whendoingitallwontdo.com  

Dependent Upon the Ambition of Women

We live in a society that has become remarkably dependent on the unfettered ambition of women.

 As the Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy writes in a new book, “The Richer Sex,” forty percent of working wives now earn more than their husbands, and, by 2030, that number will probably rise to fifty per cent.

Women already make up more than half of college and university students.  By 2019, if current trends continue, they will make up fifty-nine per cent of total undergraduate enrollment, and sixty-one per cent of those enrolled in graduate programs. 

Birth control is an economic and educational order predicated on the freedom of women, married and unmarried, to protect their own health and to decide when they’re going to have children.

Ninety-nine percent of all American women, who have had sex, have used contraception at some point in their lives.  For Catholic women, the percentage is almost the same--ninety-eight percent, according to an analysis released last Spring by the Guttmacher Institute.

Source: The New Yorker, March 19, 2012    Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2012/03/19/120319taco_talk_talbot#ixzz1pPKjst5b

 Liza Mundy: The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love and Family

Other books for career women that can help you achieve better work/life integration:

 John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge. 

  John G. Agno: Women and Time

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition

"When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.  Order the PDF ebook - Workbook Edition (ISBN-10: 0983586527) for only $12.99 (to view full-size on your computer screen or decide to printout locally) today:  Add to Cart

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader and iPad tablets at Barnes & Noble   for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition - for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the pdf Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

More information at: http://www.whendoingitallwontdo.com  

Work/Life Balance--Dealing with Stress

By Guest Author David Newth

We are living in an era of extreme financial restraint and uncertainty, while the associated pressure for employers and employees is at an all-time high.  Formal stress management training has not escaped the cuts, so the need to take self-responsibility in learning about stress has never been greater.

However, have no fear: these are many tried and tested techniques for keeping stress at bay there is no ‘one cap fits all’ solution. Dealing with stress requires individual choice to suit differing personalities and individual circumstances. Nevertheless, there are many common tips and techniques for dealing with stress. We hope this little collection of anti-stress tips might help you find your own way of dealing with stress.

Self recognition and honesty

Given the premise that we have choice in the extent to which we allow everyday frustrations and setbacks to affect our mood, it follows that our perceptions of such matters are vital and of course these can vary alarmingly from day to day, influenced by what else has been going on at work, home, or even the journey between the two. A challenging situation today may give us a buzz, whereas the identical situation tomorrow might be a burden. The dual recognition that (a) we have choice of perception and (b) that we can often be our own worst enemy are not easy to remember when we are having a bad day. If we are too absorbed by the negatives, we become blinkered and find it hard to see the wood from the trees. Self-flagellation!

Tyranny of a ‘to do’ list

Of course it is essential to have in some form or other an ongoing to do list. Without it we would be rudderless, not to mention denying ourselves the quiet satisfaction of crossing items off from time to time. The trouble is that most to do lists are unachievable in the time scale we give them because we are unrealistic optimists, and then we go home at the end of the day feeling we’ve failed – again!

Instead, try thinking more in terms of a really short I absolutely-must-do-these-today list and start to zap it as soon as you arrive. Have another quite short it-would-be-a-bonus-if-I-manage-to-make-a-start-on-some-of-these list. Invariably you will go home having achieved at least as much as if your list had been the usual endless one. Your self-esteem will benefit too.

Be assertive with yourself

‘I’m in charge of me!’ The starting point for being assertive with other people is to be assertive with yourself. Decide what you want for yourself and how you will go about getting it. This mindset involves forming a blueprint in your head of the attitudes and behaviour you will always aspire to convey in any given situation. Once instilled, they become part of your way of thinking and instead of hesitating or rushing into a situation when you might be wondering what to do or say, your instinctive blueprint comes into play, you feel in control of your emotions and actions and you come across as confident and decisive. Of course it is not as easy or as automatic as I’ve made it sound, but even getting halfway there and progressing further in small increments can be rewarding.

Work/life balance

You may enjoy being a workaholic and perhaps it doesn’t impact on your loved ones or friends, in which case: no harm, no foul…or is there?  If you are inclined to be obsessed with your work, the chances are that you are missing opportunities for a more rounded outlook.  But what if you have family or friends who deserve your time and attention?  You may be physically with them, but the part of you that really matters might still be drifting off to work most of the time. Don’t allow yourself to be shackled by your work.

‘Me’ time

Do you ever put yourself first, even if it risks seeming selfish? There is a particular issue here for women if the home is a typical family household. Even if you are managing to juggle your domestic life with a management job and career, you will naturally feel an instinctive wish to see that you are there for your children when they need you and that you are fulfilling the traditional expectations of motherhood in all its many facets, including later on the role of chauffeur to your teenagers! Unless you are blessed with the ready availability and support of a ‘househusband’, then life can seem like an endless rush to keep all the plates spinning.  At times your loyalty to your employer and your family will be at odds.

This may seem cock-eyed but the solution is to recognise that it can be selfish not to risk being perceived as selfish at times! Call a family conference, be assertive, tell them there are going to be some changes as you’re not prepared to be a slave any longer and that to protect your health and stay fit (for their sakes) there is going to be more team participation around the house. Go further and let them know that at certain times you simply won’t be available because you will be indulging in some ‘me time’. It may be luxuriating in a bath with the door locked, going on a walk on your own, having a nap, getting lost in a book. The important thing is to be definite and precise about it so that everyone knows where they stand and what is expected of them. You’ll get some initial mumbles of protest, but imagine the satisfaction when you overhear them admitting that you’re right and they’ve always taken you for granted. Let them help you in drawing up the details of the new arrangements. It invariably works and you end up feeling less pressured and being more, not less, appreciated. Win-win!

There are many other ways to deal with stress and everybody has to find her or his own way to cope with it. But you should always keep on trying to lead a richer and healthier life.

If you are keen to learn more about stress in general, you can take a look at the book “Stress and Work/Life Balance” published by the eBook publisher bookboon.com.  This article is based on this free downloadable book written by David Newth.  

Other books for career women that can help you achieve work/life integration:

 John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge. 

  John G. Agno: Women and Time

 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition

"When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno.  Order the PDF ebook - Workbook Edition (ISBN-10: 0983586527) for only $12.99 (to view full-size on your computer screen or decide to printout locally) today:  Add to Cart

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader and iPad tablets at Barnes & Noble   for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition - for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the pdf Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

More information at: http://www.whendoingitallwontdo.com  

Free ebooks on March 8th for International Women's Day

March 8th is the 101st celebration of International Women's Day (http://www.internationalwomensday.com/).  Each year, thousands of events occur around the world to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women.
 
For working women who have been employees in the workforce or who have been performing valuable, non-paid work -- this special day is for you.  In appreciation for all you do, we are offering three self-help ebooks for free on March 8th only at Amazon.com:

 

  Barbara McEwen: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge

 
  John G. Agno: Women and Time 
  John Agno: Decoding the Executive Woman's Dress Code

 

Career women struggle with countless expectations, too much to do in too little time, and the fact that they receive little of the support or recognition they want and deserve.  In an effort to squeeze even more into their nightmarish schedules, these women continue to make choices that actually undermine their health, family life, careers and important relationships.

 

Women are dancing to a frenzied beat, believing just because they can, they should.  They have been taught, if they are capable of doing something, it shouldn't be necessary to look for help.   This has led women to become frustrated by experiencing long days and frantic schedules.  Many working women are exhausted.  Isn't it time that career women reclaimed their time and life?

 

Please let the working women in your life know about these free self-help ebook offers on March 8th only.