Can Women Juggle Family Life And Careers

Can women juggle family life and careers? The answer to this question is, of course, yes. But the real question seems to be: How do women juggle family life and careers? For this question, there are a myriad of answers all tailored to the individual, her career, and her family. But overall, there are some basic tips and techniques that can help you to balance a thriving career with a healthy home life.

Most women who work full time jobs still contribute more to the running of the home than the man of the house. But even in homes where this is not the case, both mother and father struggle to maintain a balance between work life and home life. If you feel that after a long day at the office, you are torn between meetings, business trips, and the duties of home and family, you are not alone.

It is important to budget your time wisely. But what does this mean? At the office, this means using your time productively, getting the job done during regular business hours and not using your work time to surf the Internet or catch up on social interactions. If you can leave work on time, this will greatly reduce the stress you feel in trying to address your family's needs in the evenings.

In addition, you need to schedule some time for yourself. Mark your work calendar with times that you intend to spend either by yourself, alone with your spouse, or with the kids. This kind of commitment scheduling can have a real impact on whether or not you keep the commitment to spend time together. Also, it will help you to schedule your other work duties and meetings around that important family time.

While at work, keep your distractions to a minimum. This means that you will need a block of time that is uninterrupted during which you can get your tasks done. Keep a few hours free from meetings or phone calls to catch up each day.

You can apply the same principle at home. Set aside some time each evening during which the phone and television are turned off and the family gets uninterrupted attention from you. This time together is vital and builds the impression in your children that they are a priority to you.

Another way to enhance your family time is to explore the option of flexi time where you work. Many offices offer their workers the ability to change their schedule to fit their family life. You might want to come in early a few days a week so that you can be there when your kids get out of school. Or you may want to come in later so that you can help run the carpool to school. Check out you options with your boss.

Finally, make your weekend time off really count. Use this time for activities that are important to you, like time with friends, vacations to nearby spots with your spouse, or trips to the museum or zoo with your kids. Schedule your time off just as you do your work week by filling in a few slots with set activities to be sure you don't waste the whole weekend with television or naps.

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Corporate Career Tips for Women

Finding one's way around a new town has found a solution, the GPS. Finding one's way into a satisfying and successful career also now has a GPS in the form of a new book.

Because it is still a dog eat dog world out there, deciding a career path remains difficult and staying on that path continues to offer challenges, especially for women.

The New Corporate Woman

Bell starts out by telling readers that the second and third generations of working women are:

• Well educated
• Well traveled
• Quick thinkers
• Technically astute

In addition to their own individual talents, today’s corporate women have parents with a broad range of business experience they can draw from.

Career Development Tips

Bell covers all of the bases for career development, starting with knowing one’s self and always acting and behaving in a way that is true to one’s character.

The book covers all of the facets of finding the right job, reaching new heights of success, and finding happiness. Bell breaks her strategy into workable components and dedicates individual chapters on:

• Choosing the right career path
• Job searching in the 21st century
• Building relationships
• Job performance
• Advancing up the corporate ladder
• Becoming a global professional
• Leadership
• Combining work, life, and health

Getting a New Job

One of the most interesting chapters discusses the first ninety days of a new job. Bell recommends that when getting a new job, making a good impression and a big difference in the first ninety days of a job is critical to long-term success.

Bell wrote, “Make your mark right away-in the first ninety days. It’s okay to make mistakes once they get to know a manager, but at the outset, in the first ninety days, there’s no room for error. So do everything as close to target as possible.”

Developing Relationships

The chapter on developing and maintaining professional relationships is enlightening even to those who have been working in corporate America for many years. Bell defines the multiple levels of working relationships as:

• Mentors – offers information and advice
• Sponsors – uses their own capital to help advance someone else’s career
• Allies – collection of people who help each other
• The network – made up of all levels of work associates

Author’s Humble Beginnings

While the author does a good job of advising readers on how to navigate the corporate waters, the best parts of the book are those where Bell discusses her own background. Currently, she is a professor at Tuck School of Business in Dartmouth.

She tells readers that her work life is a far throw from where she began. Bell was adopted by a working-class family in South Bronx. While her mother and father never made it into high school, Bell’s teachers recognized her good grades and she ended up attending a private college, got her Ph.D. and quickly became “short-listed for a job at Yale’s business school.”

She decided to write the book because so many of her female students, even with all of today’s privileges, gifts, and opportunities, are still not prepared to enter the corporate life.

Using a GPS to Guide a Successful Career

It is so easy to make a wrong turn anytime in one’s life but it is especially easy to make a wrong decision when making career choices. The invention of the GPS for automobiles has served travelers well over the past few years. This book can provide the same type of direction for those women entering the corporate world to prevent them from turning down dead-end streets.

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Men and Women at Work: Can We All Get Along?

by : Teena Rose

It may be true that men are from Mars and women from Venus. That doesn’t mean the two sexes can’t effectively work together here on Earth.

John Gray’s New York Times bestseller “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” was a lighthearted look at differences between the sexes. It seems silly that it took a book to figure this out. As if it wasn’t obvious enough. But Gray’s work helped men and women develop better communication skills by pointing out that they have varying emotional needs. And there’s no more important place to understand this reality than at the office.

Once the political correctness is pushed aside, it’s plain to see that women and men simply approach work differently. And it has nothing to do with qualifications. After more than 30 years of the women’s movement, the workplace has been filled with highly skilled and accomplished women, whose educations and backgrounds have been on par with their male counterparts. However, the overwhelming majority of senior and CEO jobs in corporate America still remain in the hands of men. While gender bias, mostly in a covert fashion, continues to play a role, some researchers feel that the difference can be attributed to how women and men approach work.

That key difference? Competitiveness. There are, of course, women who can be just as, if not more, competitive than men. But as a whole, workplace studies have found that men put in longer hours, endure more hardships, are apt to relocate, and are willing to sacrifice family obligations more than women. If those are indeed the conclusions, it seems that women have a much smarter and healthier approach to work, even if they don’t occupy as many corner offices.

The workplace hasn’t become an all-out, battle royal of the sexes. In most professions men and women have gotten used to working together. But it stands to reason that the contrasting styles can lead to a breakdown in communication, a vital component in any successful business. But not to fear, men and women are more alike than different. Some may find that hard to believe, but it’s actually possible to improve cross-gender communication and smooth out the rough edges.

If you’re a woman who has frequent interactions with a men at work, you will be overwhelming successful if you recognize one simple rule: men think differently. And with that knowledge comes power.

One of the first places to start is recognizing that men typically talk to get information. While women do the same, there’s the added component of personal interaction in their conversations. An easily recognizable example of this in everyday life is the phone conversation. Guys call other guys get relay information or set up meetings. It’s rare that a man will call another “just to chat.”

Another striking difference is that women tend to ask more questions than men. Women typically want more details and a deeper understanding of an issue. Men sometimes see excessive questioning as a weakness and want to give the impression that they already have the information they need and can carry out the task.

An obvious distinction is that men tend to have a looser tongue than women. Offhand comments that can be offensive filter out of men’s mouths more than women. Most of the time it’s not an effort to harass a female employee, but a lack of judgment in telling a sexual or offensive joke. If a woman faces this situation, it’s wise to evaluate it on its merits and intention before reacting.

Everyone knows that men hate asking for directions, and that can go way beyond the map. It’s on commercials, television shows and movies constantly. You have a lost couple, a woman imploring the man to ask for directions, and the man outright refusing. What’s that guy’s problem? It’s a sign of weakness and men just hate that. Women can’t understand this phenomenon because they’re more intuitive than men and have no problem asking for help. To deal with this touchy subject at work, women can approach this in an easy-going manner and offer a man help “if he feels he needs it.”

When men and woman want to convey trust either at work or in a relationship, they, not surprisingly, do it differently. A woman who shares her feelings with a male co-worker is displaying trust, while men look more toward consistency and reliability as a marker. Because it’s so important to create bonds at work, a woman can win points with a male co-worker just by simple things like showing up on time, following through on a project or troubleshooting a problem.

While getting along with a man at work may feel like tip-toeing through a minefield sometimes, the bottom line is to maintain a professional relationship. Understanding why the opposite sex acts and reacts the way it does will go a long way in bridging the cultural gap in the workplace.

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10 Powerful Career Strategies for Women (part 2)

by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

5. Network
Who are the more successful networkers, men or women? You might guess women because women seem like the natural talkers, while we tend to think of men as holding back. The facts indicate that men use networking more effectively than women, however. The results of a 1997 study conducted by EnterChange, an outplacement and career management consulting firm, and reported by Valerie Frazee in Workforce magazine, show, for example, that women are more likely than men to find their next job through an ad in the classifieds, while networking is a more effective strategy for men than women. Does that mean that women should start scouring the classifieds? No, it just means that men and women should use their different styles to greatest advantage. Consider the following:

• Women's networks tend to be more egalitarian and inclusive than men's, according to writer Kathy Harvey, who describes a career consulting company's experience with asking women to list people who might form part of their network. Women were more likely to mention people at lower levels than themselves, as well as those at the higher echelons, while men tend to focus on people with power and influence. Men may benefit from network contacts with greater clout, but women can take advantage of wider and more diverse circles of contacts. Some experts also say women are better at sharing than men, so both men and women may be able to expect more career-based generosity from female members of their networks than either gender can from men.
• Women have traditionally been expected to devote more time to family and domestic responsibilities, thus lacking as much time as men to build networks. We're starting to see more women networking out there on the golf course, for instance, but that's a fairly new phenomenon. To be truly competitive in the networking arena, women may have to put more time into making contacts -- and may have to ask their male partners to take on a bigger share in juggling family life and work.
• The number of all-women networking groups is increasing enormously, in part to create the same kind of networks that are already entrenched for men. An all-woman networking group can be enormously beneficial to women seeking mentors and contacts who've already succeeded in breaking through the glass ceiling. These groups also can be an efficient way to deal with the time crunch that curtails women's networking. Increasingly, women are organizing networks within their own companies, often with corporate support. Two books by Catalyst, the nonprofit research and advisory organization that works to advance women in business and the professions, provide detailed information about creating women's internal networks.

6. Find a mentor
If you do no other kind of networking, at least find yourself a mentor -- or let one find you. "While mentoring relationships are important for all organizational members, they are essential for women," writes Dorothy Perrin Moore in "Mentors can both protect women from discrimination and help them learn what men supposedly learn from the 'old boy's network' about how to navigate their way past obstacles to their career success." Echoes Caitlin Williams, "The majority of women who have succeeded in their careers and reached position of influence credit their participation in some sort of mentoring effort for getting them where they are today."

A mentor is that one person who can guide you, help you, take you under his or her wing, and nurture your career quest. A Yoda to your Luke Skywalker. A Glinda the Good Witch to your Dorothy Gale. What separates a mentor from the average network contact is long-term commitment and a deep-seated investment in your future. Where a typical network contact might be associated with quick introductions, exchanges of business cards, and phone calls, your relationship with a mentor likely involves long lunches and time spent in the mentor's office. A mentor is often in a position you'd like to be in and has the clout and connections to guide you to a similar position. He or she is someone you probably have unusually good chemistry with who will share stories with you of his or her own climb to success. An effective mentor isn't afraid to criticize constructively.

To find a mentor, identify someone you admire, and test the waters by asking advice. Be sure to reveal as much of yourself as possible. Mentors are most likely to invest themselves in those in whom they see a little of themselves, which is why you should never approach a prospective mentor in state of desperation or helplessness. The mentor wants to work with someone he or she can respect. He or she may even desire to mold the protégé in his or her own image, which is fine as long as the mentor is not too obsessive about it, and you are comfortable with the image into which you're being molded. You should have a good feel after a few meetings as to whether the rapport is right for a mentoring relationship. At that point, you can either come right out and ask the person to be your mentor, if that feels appropriate, or you can simply tell him or her how much you've benefited from the advice you've received so far and that you hope he or she will continue to share it with you. Although the mentor will tend to give a lot more than you do to the relationship, be sure to express regularly that you value and appreciate the mentor's guidance. The feeling of being needed and making a difference in a protégé's life will often be a rewarding payoff for the mentor.

7. Cultivate and project confidence
Women often suffer from a crisis of confidence in the workplace, especially when the environment is hostile or chilly to them. Caitlin Williams, informally surveys women to whom she presents workshops, asking them "what one quality do you believe is the most important for your career success?" Confidence wins the top spot every time, Williams reports. The author, whose book provides numerous inventories and exercises for assessing and building confidence, suggests remembering past successes, believing in your ability (education and training play a big role here), knowing yourself, and seeking career encouragement (a mentor can help).

Williams also suggests creating a career portfolio as a great way to reinforce your sense of confidence.

8. Self-promote
Once you've shored up your confidence, you need to make sure others know how terrific you are. "In today's workplace," Caitlin Williams writes," one of your keys to success is your ability to let others know who you are, what you have to offer, and how you can make a difference in their organization."

Self-promotion is not easy for women. "Many women are uncomfortable with self-promotion because it flies in the face of society's message that a woman is the support person who is supposed to put other needs ahead of her own," write Binnie Shusman Kafrissen and Fran Shusman in their book, But women need to toot their own horns because they can't depend on others to do it for them.

Make sure people within and outside your workplace know about your accomplishments. Submit news of accomplishments to your company newsletter and local newspaper. Let your boss know what you're up to. One professional we know sends out a monthly email to his boss and his boss's boss to keep them updated on his progress on various projects -- and to share any accomplishments and accolades from the previous month. Promote yourself as an expert on one or more topics and volunteer to speak to local organizations.

9. Incubate your talents
If you have big dreams of career or entrepreneurial success, seek to spend some time working in organizations that will help you incubate your talents. This incubator concept is a centerpiece of Dorothy Perrin Moore's book, Moore suggests that corporate incubators can help you gain exposure to customers, suppliers, and competitors; foster specific managerial, technical and planning skills; and learn how to do things better by working in less-than-optimal environments for sub-optimal managers. By spending a few years in a corporate environment specifically cultivating skills and making contacts, you can more easily propel yourself either to greater success in your next career move or to a position where you can start your own business.

10. Become a free agent
In a 1998 joint study by Catalyst and the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, women business owners cited four major reasons for leaving the private sector: lack of flexibility (51 percent); glass ceiling (29 percent); unhappiness with work environment (28 percent), and feeling unchallenged in their jobs (22 percent).

Other studies have shown different reasons for the bailout by women. "Bucking conventional wisdom, professional growth, power, and money were the big drivers in influencing women to leave corporate jobs in the past five years -- not the glass ceiling, balance, or personal life," according to Caroline Nahas, managing director at Korn/Ferry International, which in 2001 conducted a study, "What Women Want in Business," with the Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School and the Duran Group.

No matter what women's reasons, corporate America's loss is apparently women's gain since women-owned businesses are being created at twice the rate of all businesses.

"Companies cannot afford to lose a generation of women leaders" Nahas says. "In today's world, talent is the primary source of competitive advantage. Even with the current wave of layoffs, the generation shift from Baby Boomers to the much smaller 35- to 44-year-old age group will leave us with a drought of seasoned talent," Nahas says.

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10 Powerful Career Strategies for Women (part 1)

by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D.

Have you come a long way, baby? The general impression is that women are becoming incrementally more successful in the workforce -- and some of the news is good. Women are represented in the workforce in greater numbers than ever and holding a higher percentage of managerial and executive jobs than in the past. Women-owned businesses have doubled in the last dozen or so years. But some news is not so good.

The Government Accounting Office, for example, recently reported that in 1995 and 2000, full-time female managers earned less than full-time male managers in 10 industries, after controlling for education, age, marital status and race. Female managers in the communications industry made 86 cents for every dollar earned by males managers in 1995, but by 2000, the figure had dropped to 73 cents on the male-earned dollar. Similar drops were reported in entertainment and recreation services; finances, insurance, and real estate; business and repair services; retail trade; and other professional services.

Lack of pay equity and the ever-present glass ceiling continue to be obstacles to women's career success. But women have secret weapons, opportunities to deploy their special strengths, and the ability to adapt talents typically thought to be men's domain. If our 10 strategies seem to suggest male-bashing or a war between the sexes, that's not the intent. It's just about leveling the playing field in a work world that has been inequitable for women for far too long.

Here are 10 strategies women should consider for advancing their careers:

1. Get as much education and training as you can
Education is, by far, women's most powerful secret weapon, and we have been preparing for a sneak attack for at least the last decade. In 1975 a majority of the college degrees awarded went to men. This was true at the associate, bachelor's, master's, first professional, and doctorate levels. By 2000, a majority of the associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees were awarded to women, according to the Postsecondary Education Opportunity Research Letter. The Research Letter also reports that at the first professional and doctorate degree levels, the wide gap seen in 1975 has mostly closed, and within a decade a majority of these degrees also will be awarded to women.

"The story told by the data describe an extraordinarily broad and long-term shift in the proportion of higher education earned degrees from men to women," the Research Letter notes. "In a world increasingly dependent on the education and training provided by colleges and universities," the publication continues, "women are preparing for that world and men are not. We are heading into a world where the interests and values of women will gradually come to displace the interests and values of men. It will be a different kind of world as a result."

There you have it. The workplace may not have quite caught up, but women are making serious inroads in the "knowledge is power" equation, and our best hope to crash through that glass ceiling is to keep doing what we're doing.

Get the highest degree you can possibly manage. The old obstacles of lack of money and time need not deter women anymore because many new options for financial aid and distance learning are available.

Consider informal ways of educating yourself through, for example, joining professional organizations, attending conferences, and keeping up with trade publications in your field.

To the extent possible when seeking a job, look for companies that offer training programs and professional development opportunities. Make a point of asking in job interviews what kind of training is available. Your goal should be to develop a set of portable skills that are transferable and applicable to various career fields. An excellent resource for learning how to leverage your education and training is Caitlin Williams' book,particularly Chapter 4.

2. Be a surfer "girl"
Women are in the majority, not only in most realms of higher education, but also in Internet use, comprising at least 52 percent of Internet users, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings. Women are also more efficient in their Internet use; they spend less time surfing because they know what they're looking for.

Women are already harnessing the vast amount of information that the Internet puts at their fingertips. In an age where the amount of information available to us by 2010 is expected to be 10,000 times what it is today, it's hard to avoid the notion that knowledge is power, and women are well positioned for the power afforded by their efficient use of the information superhighway.

And women's command of the 'Net ties closely with their quest to overtake men in education. A recent report by the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Educational Foundation found that distance- or online-learning is on the rise, and women make up the majority of students. Sixty percent of nontraditional online learners are over 25 and female.

The bottom line here is that women can stay on the cutting edge through continued dominance on the Internet and by taking advantage of online learning opportunities.

3. Leverage communication and interpersonal skills
Numerous recent studies have noted differences in the way men and women communicate and relate interpersonally. Women's way of communicating is not necessarily better than men's, but it may be better suited to newer styles of management. So-called "feminine attributes," such as the ability to build relationships with customers, strike up joint ventures, and partner with suppliers are increasingly important, says Janice Gjertsen, manager of business development for AOL's Digital City.

Caitlin Williams lists these changes in the workforce: more team-based work, increased customer contact, multiple demands, greater workforce diversity, higher expectations, and tighter timelines. "While successfully dealing with all these changes may call for different knowledge and technical expertise in each instance, the need to interact well with others is a constant across every single change we make...interpersonal competence is moving front and center as a requirement for organizational success today."

Generally speaking, more women than men are likely to earn the comment "plays well with others" on their workplace report cards. Women should deploy their strong interpersonal and communication skills at every opportunity and tout their accomplishments in this realm.

4. Plan your career
Career planning is important for everyone, but especially for women because they generally have more twists and turns to negotiate along the road to career success than do men. If you have a road map, you'll be less likely to become derailed if you should, for example, decide to relocate to be with a significant other, have a baby, or suddenly need to care for an elderly parent.

Decide where you want to be five, 10, and 15 years from now. Build flexibility into your career plans to allow for changing circumstances. Your plan may need to change to accommodate those life changes, but your core plan with better equip you when that happens.

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Casual Work Clothes for Women

2 years ago, I worked for a telecommunication company as a call center officer. Since it was not a face-to-face customer service, I was so grateful that I thought I would wear a Casual Work Clothes.

My boss was a typical perfectionist personality that she wanted her subordinates to wear perfect casual work clothes although we served all the customer's needs by phone.

She argued that what we were wearing will influence and affect our daily attitude. She figured it by the way she get dressed. She gave a special attention to Women Fashion Trends as her references to her well-clothing-style.

Then, we, her subordinates, always tried to mix and match our clothes to be stylish at work. It was far easier and profitable since we only have to buy women suits in different basic colors. Then all we have to do was to combine the suits with blazer and other accessories.

Our favorite time was when we surfed for online stores which provide casual work clothes for women.

So many women blazers, women suits, skirts, trousers and other work accessories were available in the store. Since we only had limited shopping time, buying online was just fulfill our need. Yet we discover, a perfect outfit was totally stimulate us to an outstanding performance. It arouse our confidence and automatically made us work properly.

www.bloggaul.com

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