Cut from a different mold by Alexandra Zendrian

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Italian Women Out of Work

According to a recent article by the BBC(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7337145.stm), Italy has one of the lowest rates of female employment in the European Union, with only 46 percent of women holding jobs. 

That amounts to about six million women who do not have a job or are not looking for employment. And only five percent of managerial positions in the country are held by women. 

"In any country, if you had six million men out of the job market, it would be an emergency," Italy's Minister for European Affairs, Emma Bonino told the BBC. "In Italy, you have six million women and, apparently, it is thought to be normal." 

The Cause  

According to Italian economist Fiorella Kostoris, women are having great difficulty getting jobs because they are not seen as good job candidates due to the importance that the Italian culture places on having children and taking care of families, women are often absent from the workforce. In fact, a recent survey reveals that Italian women spend an average of 5 hours on household tasks per day, as opposed to men who spend only one hour on the same.  

"In Italy, family and domestic responsibility fall almost completely on women's shoulders," Mariella Zezza of RAI news said in a statement to the BBC.  

Therefore many women, even those who do not have children, stay at home to care for their family members. 

The Solution 

The solution that the article highlights focuses not on creating new jobs for women, but rather on addressing segregation to open up existing jobs to women. Bonino is pushing for companies to put more women on boards as currently only 5% of senior managerial  positions are held by women.  

Zezza identifies the importance of offering tax incetives to women, and getting the state more in tune with the needs of working mothers by building nurseries for instance. Shealso encourages women to not accept their current status and to try to further their own situations. 

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The Role of Mentoring and Networking for the Advancement of Women in Technology

Technology companies have made strides to create more diverse work environments and women have less barriers to advancement than they did a decade a ago, according to a survey conducted earlier this month by Catalyst, a New York-based nonprofit research company.  Despite those advances though, according to the study women in technology-related fields still have some difficulty advancing because of a lack of mentors and access to certain at-work networks.  Dr. Heather Foust-Cummings, a research director at Catalyst and author of the study, explains that while tech companies have made some good progress in recent decades, women in high tech companies lagged behind their peers (technical men and non-technical women) on every measure of the study related to mentors and networking.  Women do not perceive decision-making processes as fair because their voice is often not heard. Women also report a lack of access to mentors.   "One of the things that we found in the data that was given by women, is that there is a real need for in person supervisory training," says Foust-Cummings. "Within tech companies, there is sort of an inside joke that supervisors may ascend through the technical ranks [without having managerial skills]. But if they are not given the tools that they need to be able to manage people well and involve others in decision making process, then they have to rely on what they've seen in their careers."  Manager Stephanie Chiras,  who has worked at IBM for six and a half years, emphasizes the importance of mentors for advancing in the field. She states that the mentoring opportunities at her company are more than adequate -- IBM offers classes about mentoring and work-life balance as well as other networking opportunities.  "Mentors know you personally," says Chiras, who has her own mentor and also acts as a mentor for someone else. "All their advice and guidance is personalized for me. The most important thing about mentoring is knowing goals, strengths for each person."  She emphasizes that more technology companies need to realize that they must develop more hospitable atmospheres for women.   "In years past, companies have looked at [providing mentoring and networking opportunities] as a nice thing to do to help women to succeed in the technology field," Chiras says. "I think now more than ever, it's not a choice anymore [to be more inclusive toward women]; it's a need to pull in the best and brightest. Pull them in and have them feel included… This is a call to action to companies to provide the tools, resources and development to recruit the best and the brightest, and that includes women."

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Leadership, as defined by Generation Y women

Though many more women are taking leadership positions on Wall Street and Congress, and an increasing number of women are starting their own businesses, many Generation Y women do not want to take on the traditional idea of leadership.

Generation Y workers seem much more fixated with trying to make the world a better place than previous generations. Increasingly, students fresh out of college and MBA graduates want to work for socially responsible companies. A survey released last September by New Impact, a San Francisco, Calif.- based international nonprofit focused on corporate social responsibility, surveyed 2,113 MBA students, with about 80 percent saying that they would seek socially responsible employment at some point in their careers, and 59 percent adding that they would do so immediately upon graduating.

Up until recently, people who wanted to help save the environment were stereotyped as "hippie tree huggers" and largely written off. So recently that Megan DiScullo  a 2006 Georgetown graduate with a bachelor's in international business and marketing heard those stereotypes back when she was in college just a few years ago. But no longer.

"Investment banking used to be really big," DiScullo said, "but now this is the next big thing."

A business can be defined as socially responsible when  it has ethical and environmentally beneficial business practices. This concept  resonates with newcomers to the workforce, so much so that it actually even drew DiScullo away from another company and toward her current place of employment, Edelman, a New York-based communications firm, specifically because of its CSR program.

"I wanted to work for a company that not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. We actually work on these programs ourselves," DiScullo said.

As an account executive at Edelman, DiScullo is not only able to work as a part of the CSR program and with other non-government organizations and private companies but she is also able to work with other companies' CSR programs herself, offering suggestions and helping them create plans to implement in their own offices.

This idea of social responsibility is even starting to trickle down to young girls. A study conducted by the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A. of 2,475 girls and 1,514 boys ages 8 to 17 found that many girls are not interested in the traditional concept of leadership -- that of a power-wielding dictator. Instead, many of these girls are more interested in giving back to society.            

The national survey found that 30 percent of girls want to be leaders, with that leadership desire higher among African-American, Hispanic and Asian-American girls at 53 percent, 50 percent and 59 percent respectively. Only 34 percent of Caucasian girls want to be leaders, with the majority of them citing their hesitation about being seen as bossy and their fear of public speaking.           

Within the Girl Scout study, qualitative research showed that a mother's own ambitions, outlook and leadership have a close connection with her daughter's leadership aspirations. Generally speaking, the study shows that mothers want their daughters to have a positive impact on those around them and that through sharing instructive stories about their lives, mothers are able to offer their daughters a chance to learn from their experiences.           

The study concludes that girls can be encouraged to become leaders through fostering self-confidence and providing a supportive environment to do so. Emotional safety is also key, giving these girls a safe place to test out their newly acquired leadership skills.                       

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Have women broken the glass ceiling?

A recent survey entitled Workplace Insights, showed that while almost all American workers believe that women have made important strides in business over the past ten years, 86 percent surveyed still felt the glass ceiling was very much present. 

The survey, conducted by Adecca USA, a Melville, New York-based staffing company, polled 2,521 adults, 1,407 of which were employed on a full-time or part-time basis. The survey featured a spectrum of pay and workplace statuses.  

Adecco USA's Diversity & Inclusion Director, Lois Cooper, says this about the study's findings: "While we continue to see women breaking barriers and taking on more leadership roles in today's workplace, findings from our most recent Workplace Insights survey show that there are still opportunities for progress to be made in the area of gender equality." 

Linda Stewart, CEO and founder of Epoch, LLC in Boston, agrees: "The glass ceiling is not broken," she says, "it's just becoming much more pliable. Women are slipping through the cracks but [their opportunities] are certainly not equal to men." 

The Workplace Insights survey shows that 59 percent of workers surveyed think women are treated differently to men in the workplace, with 42 percent thinking that women are treated worse.  Stewart could not understand the emphasis on equal treatment.

"How big of a problem is that really?" she asks after hearing those survey results. "Men and women are different – in the way that they approach their work and manage… I think sometimes we're afraid to admit that we're different." 

Stewart, previously a senior executive at Fidelity Investments, National Charitable Services and Boston Coach, who some might say has shattered the ceiling herself, noted its effect on her own career: "At Fidelity, I reached a point where I wasn't going to progress any farther," she explains. "That was when I decided to open my own company." 

Epoch LLC is a project-based staffing firm that allows potential employees interested in consulting to name their own salary and working terms. Stewart feels that through this new hiring model, coupled with the latest personnel statistics, (which show that 77 million workers are approaching retirement and only about 40 million coming in to fill those positions) women could stand to further crack the glass ceiling. 

"People will have more of a say in what they get paid, but companies have to be okay with that," Stewart says. "For the first time, the control and power are shifting back to the people… What's happening demographically will accelerate the change." 

The Adecco USA survey, in this same vein, cites that equal treatment at the workplace is getting better for Generation Y. The study found that only 30 percent of Generation Y workers think women are treated worse than men. 

Stewart also sees the currently  male dominated workplace changing in the coming years. She felt the good news is that this pattern will change dramatically because women drive most of the purchasing power and are good at social networking - two necessary skills needed for this change to occur. 

While thinking positively, Stewart says that she thinks pay disparity will be closed soon.

"The gap is closing, although it's not moving as fast as most of us would like," she says.

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Constructing women

 The construction business was once hostile at best to women in the field. Many women suffered sexual harassment and pressures from their male counterparts to leave the job. Around 1980, the government began cracking down on the industry, encouraging companies and apprenticeship programs to open their doors to more women, though the field was still one that had undertones of discrimination.   

Lenore Janis, president of the Professional Women in Construction group and member of the construction workforce since 1972, recalls those early days when she was headed to college and told not even to bother applying to Lehigh or MIT. She was told that if she wanted to be in the business that was going to be run by her brothers anyway, she could hold onto those architectural and design books for her brothers, who could go to design school, unlike her.

 Janis also had a very difficult time getting a loan to start her own construction business in 1980. "The bank wouldn't lend me money," she says. "Discrimination was all over the place. It was in the banks that played ball with the men who then wouldn't lend, and the suppliers who did the same thing."  

At the time, there were a variety of business practices that made it difficult for women to own and operate a construction business. Janis explains that if a man were to leave his construction business to his wife upon his death, that the bank would put a stop on the loan and suppliers would systematically stop providing the company with necessary goods.

"You very rarely saw women entering into construction business as a business," Janis says. "Or even if they did, women graduating with engineering and architectural degrees entering the business would get unequal pay." 

But Janis fought that discrimination through hard work and determination. She went after a lot of state contracts and became government certified, helping her get to where she wanted to go. Now, she believes, the business has changed.

"They've got it a little easier than we had it in the early 80s," she says of the women currently entering and working in the field. "There is still some discrimination but it's not as open as it was." 

Last December, the Small Business Administration announced legislation that five percent of government contracts would go to female-owned businesses. Janis knows that this is the way for women to pull themselves up. 

"Women are able to get in and sustain themselves because of government goals," Janis says. "Women then become highly competitive after they get contracts." 

Janis sees this legislation as a fairly sizable step in the right direction, though other groups are receiving a larger percent of the pie.

"Is it unfair? Yes. But five percent is a goodly number. And it doesn’t have to end with five percent," she says.  

Her organization, Professional Women in Construction, has 100 members, both men and women, who network together and the group advocates for state government to increase their goals.  Despite all of the perhaps unnecessary hard work that Janis has gone through in this business, she still loves the field.

"Construction is one of the most exciting industries. There's never an opening night like there is in the theater but there is something called topping out, which is equally exciting. There is good money to be made. And people will never get tired of rebuilding and expanding," Janis says. 

Lina Gottesman, founder and CEO of Altus Metal and Marble Maintenance in St. James, New York, had a fairly similar experience to Janis when she first started her own construction business nearly two decades ago. After being bullied into bringing her husband to financial meetings at the bank, Gottesman simply called the banker out on what he was doing and stuck to her guns. 

Gottesman appreciates the legislation that is helping her business and other women and minority-owned construction businesses to receive more work. She intends to walk through any door that is open to her and realizes that only good service will keep that door open.

"If you're not going to do good work, you're not going to get the job again," Gottesman explains. "You have to be a qualified company as well. You can't just be a woman; you can't just be a minority." 

To other women who want to get into the construction field, Gottesman suggests making sure that you have a good accountant, because, she says, if you don't have your finances in order, it's basically all over. She also suggests that women support each other more in professional circuits.

"I work with men all the time and they are much more supportive of each other than we are," she says. 

Having started her business about 19 years ago, Gottesman has seen the face of the business change, but there she says there is still room for improvement. 

"It's very important for women and men to make sure that their daughters know the opportunity that they have because in construction they can come out of college and have higher pay and better opportunities than many other jobs offer," she says. "There are whole careers that women have been shut out of for so many years, and financial opportunities that women haven't been able to utilize like men have, so it's time that young women realize that they can be a metal and marble installer." 

Gottesman is hoping that the next crop of construction workers will include more women. She is trying to tip that scale by speaking at local high schools and junior high schools, through the Girls Trendsetters Program, talking about the opportunities that Gottesman says many parents neglect to mention to their daughters. "You'd be surprised; it's amazing how receptive these young girls are," she says.

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Women in Sales

The sales industry is an intricate profession where people must focus on how they should sell themselves and their products or services.  Women can have a particularly difficult time with this, as Stephanie Szklarski, a sales manager at Sandler Training in Southern New Jersey, says, because women have a way of psyching themselves out when it comes to sales. 

"A lot of women feel that it's tough getting into the all boys club," she says. "I think, granted, that there are still some prejudices against women, but I think a lot of it's in our own heads. If we could overcome this and use it to our advantage…" 

Szklarski points out the vast advantages that women innately have, which can be great for sales. As a teacher for Sandler Training/Rhine Associates, who has just started teaching a class geared toward women in sales, Szklarksi has noticed that women's naturally affinity toward being nurturing, which is helpful in a sales position.

 A lot of sales is related to psychology and one theory says a sale replicates a transaction between a nurturing parent and a child, the child being the recipient of the sale. Again, Szklarski noted that who would be more inclined toward nurturing than a woman. 

"Women just need to get out of their own way," Szklarski says, adding that once women embrace their natural talents they will become better at sales. Diane Darling, the owner and CEO of Boston-based sales firm Effective Networking, Inc., offered a few suggestions for how women could present themselves more effectively when they are making sales pitches. 

"Women's voices go up, sounding like they're asking permission," Darling says, "but then men don't know whether they should pay attention to the tone or the pitch." 

Darling suggests that women should speak in a more neutral tone and focus on their stance as well. Women tend to cross their legs while men stand more firmly and plant their feet. Taking more of a stance gives the impression that the man is more sure of himself and therefore makes his pitch more effective.  Women also tend to be more indirect and hint at what they want or are looking for, which Darling said can also hurt someone's sales pitch.  

There are also a few suggestions for pitching to a crowd of both men and women.

 "When pitching to mixed company, immediately establish your credentials," Darling says. "Get there early, engage women in conversation because they don't want to feel sidelined. They want to feel like they're getting equal treatment."  

Single women or women without children also sometimes have difficulties pitching to married women with children. Szklarski, who is both single and has no children, explains that she tries to get herself in the mindset of the married mother before she begins her presentation.

"You have to try to put yourself in their shoes," Szklarski says. "The best way to do that is to get them to trust you and ask the right questions. Then they feel as if you understand them." 

And making the person listening to your sales pitch believe that you understand their wants, needs and concerns is vital to being successful in the sales industry, Szklarski explains. She believes that the most important thing in sales is to get the prospect to be honest with you. Szklarski maintains that if women embrace who they are and work with what they already have, they have a naturally affinity toward greatness in sales.

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It's About Time

The Georgia Association for Women Lawyers recently released a new survey entitled IT'S ABOUT TIME II: Examining Flexible Work Arrangements from the Attorney's and the Firm's Perspective - A Study of Part-time Policies in Georgia Law Firms, which studies the challenges facing women lawyers who must juggle work and other responsibilities. 

The report concluded that flexible work arrangements are crucial to gaining and retaining female lawyers. It also found that women make up half of the law school graduates, but only 17 percent of partners in law firms.  

Of the approximately 400 lawyers surveyed across 84 Georgia law firms, more than 60 percent of the female attorneys leaving law firms cite needing a different schedule or, more generally speaking, professional dissatisfaction. Almost all of the respondents look favorably on firms allowing for part-time and/or flexible work schedules. 

New York attorney Susan Dempsey, who has practiced full-time at Monfort, Healy, McGuire and Salley in the Garden City for about 20 years, noted that managing her family and job takes a understanding or partnership and being a little creative. 

"You have a little bit of flexibility with billable hours," Dempsey explains. "If you work around your conferences and [deposition] you can include the important things with your kids." 

One of those things for Dempsey, when her son William was younger, was doing lunch duty once every three weeks. While some people in the office would jokingly ask her if she brought back any macaroni and cheese, she says that she never had to specifically tell people where she was going or have her schedule reviewed. 

"It takes a partnership with the firm," she adds. "You have to make sure you keep up your end." 

But Dempsey says that once she established a level of trust with her firm, she could handle serving macaroni and arguing her cases. She was able to, as she put it, "keep multiple balls in the air."  

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Helping working moms work it out

It seems that workplaces and women have been talking about how to manage a family and a career for years now, and yet there still seems to be no one clear cut answer. That perhaps is because there likely is no magical answer like daycare + lucrative career = happy and complete woman taking care of her family.

For Nan Mooney, author of "I Can't Believe She Did That" and Inc. columnist, who is a mother of a two-month-old, transitioning back to her career from taking time off promises to be interesting.

"I am just kind of getting segued back into work," says Mooney. "I'm trying to figure this out. I've been able to ease back into it, but I have to wrap this up in the next few weeks," she adds, noting that soon she will be working more hours.

Mooney has gone into this situation though with a plan. After getting pregnant, she moved back to Seattle to be near her mother who will be helping with childcare. "It didn't seem like it has to be a choice about whether you work or have a child," Mooney says. She's been operating under the principle since.

One thing that Mooney believes would be helpful in the workplace for mothers transitioning back into work, or for women taking care of a sick relative, is for other people to pitch in and help out wherever needed.

"This is the key to balancing work and family and this is how women in the workplace can help each other," she says. "People are really worried about how they’re going to balance career and family and that they’re making the wrong choice… We should try to facilitate as many different options as we can for women with families. But you have to have realistic expectations of how people can work and handle a family. This is the most important issue that women struggle with in the workplace."

Mooney's view is that everyone in the workplace should lend a helping hand to a person who needs more time with her family. While she recognizes some may be unwilling to do so, she encourages everyone to put themselves in the other person's shoes and realize that they too would want help in a similar situation.

She maintains that this concept of being the pinch hitter sometimes falls upon deaf, or at least hesitant, ears with younger, single women at the office who do not have children. To them, it can seem like they are being punished for not having children while they have to work later hours.

"There is a lot of guilt involved in that," Mooney says, referring to women asking other women for help so that they can take care of their families. "You don’t want to be taken advantage of but you might want to be supportive… Be as generous as possible. Take the other person’s situation to heart."

While it might be difficult for a single woman or woman with no children to ruin her Friday night to stay at work, some are trying to accommodate their coworkers.

Having to shoulder more than one's share of responsibility is a charge that can typically fall on more junior players in an organization. "Most of the working moms are in higher positions," says Amanda Carlock, an account executive at Edelman who doesn't have any children. "Since it costs less for the junior staff to stay at work, obviously they will have to work more."

However it's not always an uphill road, as some moms do work with women who try to accommodate their needs. Says Carlock: "Work is work and life is life. I would rather be with my kids too."

So if you're a working mom and you are looking for a good place to work, it sounds like using part of your interview to assess the other people working in the office could be a smart move.

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Women downplaying femininity in the workplace

Today's blogpost is inspired by Today's Big Idea. "Women shouldn't downplay femininity in the office; they should use it as an asset." This quote was taken from “What Southern Women Know (That Every Woman Should): Timeless Secrets to Get Everything You Want in Life, Love and Work.” 

That quote really struck me as something that even I end up doing sometimes. I can remember being an editor for the college newspaper, the only female on the editorial board, and trying to talk the way the guys were talking or act the way that the guys were acting. For me at least, it was only after I stopped pretending that I was a 21-year-old man that I became a better person, editor and general staff member of the newspaper because I could think more clearly and was not entirely devoting my life to trying to be one of the boys.

What’s worse sometimes than trying to be one of the boys though is simply trying to hurt one of the girls. As Gail Evans, former CNN executive vice president and author of “Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman”, noted, for some reason women seems to only compete with other women in the workplace rather than realizing that if you are going to be competitive, you might want to compete with everyone else.

Evans suggestion: “If we care about each other, we need to tell each other what we need to know. And rather than assuming someone will hate us because we told them the truth, start assuming that people will care that they’re a success… We need to find the space to say that these are how these guys act and know how the boss works. Instead of watching her make the mistake 20 times and say, well I couldn’t tell her because it might upset her, we have to reach the point where we push them and care about their success.”

What do you think, do women tend to compete with each other more than with men? Is that a good idea? What do you think of this workplace culture?

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Breaking the mold

In starting this blog, I wanted to make sure that I offered coverage of women in business that was not being offered elsewhere. One suggestion about this coverage came from Gail Evans, former executive vice president of CNN and author of "Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman"; she said that most articles about women in business have fairly run of the mill questions with the same cookie cutter answer. So I hope to break the mold with this blog, offering a variety of opinions and authorities as well as covering a wide range of topics.

In that same vein, when I talked to Evans she noted that most women feel that they have to live up to a certain set of expectations, meanwhile everyone should realize that they are capable and long to do different things. And Evans wants women to know, that's ok.

"I feel as though women have been taught that we should all want the same thing, which isn’t true," Evans said. "We have to give ourselves permission to stop thinking about 'this is what I should do, this is what is right.'"

Evans also explained that it is usually the people who completely plan out their business and professional lives who end up missing the other, sometimes better opportunities along the way.

I guess the old John Lennon quote holds - "Life is what happens when you're busy making plans."