Strategies to Help Women Succeed in Business

The work of women was pivotal to the success of America in the war, “ Women in uniform took office and clerical jobs in the armed forces in order to free men to fight. They also drove trucks, repaired airplanes, worked as laboratory technicians, rigged parachutes, served as radio operators, analyzed photographs, flew military aircraft across the country, test-flew newly repaired planes, and even trained anti-aircraft artillery gunners by acting as flying targets. Some women served near the front lines in the Army Nurse Corps, where 16 were killed as a result of direct enemy fire. Sixty-eight American service women were captured as POWs in the Philippines. More than 1,600 nurses were decorated for bravery under fire and meritorious service, and 565 WACs in the Pacific Theater won combat decorations. Nurses were in Normandy on D-plus-four” (NationalWW2Museum.org). Despite their outstanding work, women were forced to return home to care for their families, and relinquish their jobs ...

The importance of professional support within the workplace is paramount for success, particularly for women, as I have mentioned. However, the need for support when it comes to other aspects of life that impact a woman’s work are just as important. Women are often expected to do everything, have a job, care for their families, keep a perfect house, and make an America’s Top Chef worthy dinner for their Mother-in-Law should she decide to come for dinner. This is an archaic gender stereotype. The expectation that women are to manage all domestic responsibilities and work full time is enough to instill panic in any aspiring female professional. According to Lean In, “In the last thirty years women have made more progress in the workforce than in the home. According to the most recent analysis, when a husband and wife both are employed full-time, the mother does 40% more housework than the father. A 2009 survey found that only 9% of people in dual-earner marriages said they shared house...

Women have to overcome the barriers of parenthood, often with minimal support from their employers; men tend to be applauded for holding down a career and managing their fatherly duties. At a basic level, there is a lack of support for families, working parents face many struggles, and if companies are to empower women they need to begin supporting working parents across the board, “ As in an Olympic relay race, working parenthood depends on the ability to successfully navigate transition points — the hand-offs, the turns. Coming back from leave, welcoming a second or third child, or accepting a change in role or schedule are just a few of the transition points that can derail or strain the most competent working parent employee. That’s why concentrating benefits and programming on these critical points can yield significant return on investment.  Johnson & Johnson permits mothers and fathers to use their parental leave on a phase-back basis, ensuring ...

Women often remain unheard within the workplace, particularly in business settings which are dominated by men. Often times women will remain silent, because they assume their ideas or opinions will be overlooked, or a male colleague will attempt to take credit for their proposal. According to Entrepreneur.com, women working within the Obama administration started using a method called amplification,  “ When a woman proposed an insight or solution, the other women would repeat it in agreement to amplify the point. This helped everyone, both men and women, recognize the contribution coming from the woman who first proposed the idea” (Lee, 2017).  We  often see a competitive atmosphere in business among women, because they feel they need to be harder and less empathetic in order to advance at the same pace that their male coworkers can. The only way that women can create an atmosphere that will create opportunities for the advancement and promotion of women within the bu...

          As a woman going through my academic studies, I always hungered to learn more. My hand has always been the first to go up, then one day I sat back and left my hand down and looked around me…I was the only woman raising their hand. It appeared that even in courses where the male professors were inclusive of women, and teaching content related to diversity and feminism, women were apprehensive to lean in and share their thoughts. I wondered why this was, and when embarking upon this project decided to look deeper into the issue of gender-bias and female success. According to a study conducted by the Columbia University Teaching Center, “while women now constitute 57 percent of U.S. college students, gender inequalities still persist in the classroom. Instructors were found to call on male students more frequently than female students and were less likely to elaborate upon points made by female students…The Columbia study also found that ma...

     As a little girl, I was constantly told I was too loud, too bossy, too smart, and too opinionated. When I reached the 5 th grade, I wrote a report on Epilepsy, having struggled with it for most of my life up to that point. The report was written in a scientific nature, I had done research for weeks, talking to my doctors and searching AskJeeves.com which was the popular search engine when the millennium began. I proudly presented the paper to my teacher to be judged at the science fair, she took me aside and called my Mother and said, “Your daughter did not, could not have written this paper.” She insisted my Mom and Dad wrote the paper, and created the diagram of the nervous system for me, I was heartbroken. Again, I was too smart for my own good, and it was unfathomable that an 11-year-old girl could possess such writing ability. I later submitted the same paper to Children’s Hospital, and they handed it out to families whose children were newly diagnose...

While it would be unfair to say women are inherently organized and emotional, and men are naturally cold and sloppy, there is truth in the statement that women can communicate in a way that allows them to connect in an authentic and genuine way with others. The communication styles of men and women are vastly different, given that each group communicates for different purposes. According to a study on Gender Differences in Communication Styles, Influence Tactics, and Leadership Styles done at Claremont McKenna College, “The biggest difference between men and women and their style of communication boils down to the fact that men and women view the purpose of conversations differently. Academic research on psychological gender differences has shown that while women use communication as a tool to enhance social connections and create relationships, men use language to exert dominance and achieve tangible outcomes. Women are, overall, more expressive, tentative, and polite in conversation,...

     According to Sheryl Sandberg in her groundbreaking book Lean In, “Women became 50 percent of the college graduates in the United States in the 1980s. Since then, women have slowly and steadily advanced, earning more and more of the college degrees, taking more of the entry-level jobs, and entering more fields previously dominated by men. Despite these gains, the percentage of women at the top of corporate America has barely budged over the past decade. A meager 21 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women” (Sandberg, pg. 5). I talked to a few women who work within the business realm, and they acknowledge the need for women within the workplace. Laura works as an Assistant Branch Manager for Citizens Bank, and she states, “Women in the field I feel are a doubled edged sword. We are perceived as less knowledgeable, especially around business accounts versus personal accounts. Banking is traditionally seen as a man’s role where the teller side is more traditionally ...

Currently, there is a massive gap between the number of women and men who are actively successful within the workforce. According to The Rockefeller Foundation, “Across geographies and income levels, disparities between men and women persist in the form of pay gaps, uneven opportunities for advancement, and unbalanced representation in important decision-making.” Women offer unique perspectives regarding community building, company advancement, and mentorship within the workplace that men often fall short to achieve due to their communication styles. Despite outperforming their male counterparts academically, women continue to be under-represented in the workforce.