Tag Archives: gender

Gender Stereotypes- Not Just A Woman’s Issue

Not enough women in senior leadership roles is often blamed on gender stereotyping. Gender stereotypes are widely shared views on what is considered appropriate and effective behavior for men and women. To “fit in” and be socially accepted, men are told explicitly and implicitly to be: Primary breadwinners Emotionally and physically tough Competitive Decisive Assertive Men know they need to avoid all things [...]
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Men Who Get It

Since Unwritten Rules was published earlier this year I have been speaking at conferences, corporations and on panels. All of these events have had one thing in common – the audience has been almost exclusively women. Given the book provides pragmatic professional development for women leaders, this isn’t surprising. But to achieve gender balanced leadership in [...]
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Rethink Networking

Why you should view networking as an essential leadership competency Many of my coaching clients either say they don’t like networking, or they simply don’t have the time for it. They say things like: “People who network contact me only when they want something.” “Networking events are awful. They are full of people thrusting business cards into [...]
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50-50. Do we need quotas to guarantee balanced leadership?

Are legislated quotas the only way, within our lifetime, to see a balance of women and men leading governments and organizations? There are two sides to this hotly debated issue. First, the naysayers point out that quotas are a form of reverse discrimination – the group now discriminated against (men) are previously the ones that [...]
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Worlds Biggest Employers Still Losing Out On Female Talent.

The World Economic Forum has just published its 2010 Corporate Gender Gap Report. It surveys 600 leading companies across 16 industries in 20 countries and explores women’s participation in business and companies’ adherence to gender equality policies. The survey also asked respondents to identify the biggest barriers to women’s leadership and their opinion on the probable [...]
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If Women Ruled The World

There have been several recent articles extolling the virtues of women and fantasizing about how great the world would be if only we replaced male leaders with women. In a scathing piece entitled A Nope for Pope, acid-tongued New York Times op-ed columnist Maureen Dowd suggests replacing the Pope with a nun, thus producing a “Nope.” [...]
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The Myth of the Level Playing Field

Why we still don’t have a woman in the White House or Chairing the Board During a recent speaking engagement at a well-known business school I was proudly informed by a university executive that he had recruited mainly women to his team. He clearly expected a pat on the back. I asked him how many women [...]
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The Confidence Factor

The feminization of the work force gives us an opportunity to create work environments that value a balance between what men and women bring to the table. But it does require women to step up to the plate, be courageous and take some risks. Former secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Annan, a wise man [...]
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