It’s been twenty-five years since the women’s movement made its debut. Women in business and women-owned businesses have reaped the benefits of all the programs, organizations and memberships that have been established to set traditional social and cultural orientations into a tail-spin.
Institutions such as World Bank have begun to recognize that the best way to improve the world’s economy is to pour the monies, assistance and mentoring into women based projects. We are learning that an educated woman, a woman with resources, whether financial or a combination of whit, savoir-faire, encouragement and resources, will overcome all roadblocks to provide improvements in the health of their children as well as in household income and general living standards. Those beneficial effects are less evident when the money goes directly to men.
I find it uncanny that we separate men and women, teaching them two different social ideations and then require companionship, marriage and business relationships on equal terms. It is a constant to point out the differences; men are from Mars and women are from Venus. The statistics continue to whiz across my screen like bright bands of failure and boggle the very core of my reason to be a woman. The following compendium of analyses adds to the fetor and degradation of every successful woman:
‘Women comprise between 10 and 15 percent of the online population.’ More women could be online if they processed the cultural and social orientations they have been raised to believe. Women wear their submissive attitude like an ill fitted suit. This attitude seran-wraps the bulges of progressive thinking. The stagnation this promulgates is akin to the cesspool created when women feel the need to fit ‘usefulness’ into their vestibule of honor-and-obey submissiveness. I’m prompted to remember that age old colloquialism that a woman's worth is equal to her usefulness!
The stigma regarding the cultural and social orientations related to female inferiority is slowly spiraling to its death. Yet, here are a few more hurdles to be overcome:
*On average, women's salaries are 40% lower than men's, leaving women with less disposable income for computers, modems, software, on-line services and any additional phone charges. Female programmers earn about 70% of their male counterparts' wages, compared to women in other occupations, who earn about 62% as much as their male counterparts do. However, women in highly-paid and specialized computing jobs (including management) earn less relative to men than those in lower-paid positions.
*According to the *GVU's 7th WWW User Survey women are less likely to know what effect the Internet has had than men (31.00% females vs. 24.66% males).
*Additional deterrents to on-line participation may be attributed to women's roles in society. While more women are in the workplace, they often are still primary caretakers for their children, and in a majority of households, women bear the brunt of household chores. Women may find they have less free time to learn to navigate on-line systems.
*A study showed that both men and women who were shown a document rated it higher when
the author's name was male then when the author's name was female, even when the same paper was used in both instances. According to an IEEE publication, in the professional world, such assumptions based on gender translate to pay gaps that only continue to increase at higher levels of experience.
*In technical fields, both men -- and women themselves-- often assume that women do not perform as well as men. Women are then less likely to take on projects which may either prove their ability or provide additional expertise, because they don't feel qualified.
All these statistics perpetuate that women are more needy in the workplace, at home, or out of their shells. Continually applying your energies toward bonding over shared successful experiences, making useful contacts, (male and female), and swapping business strategies is the key to better attitudes toward women in business!
For nearly a decade now, the number of women-owned businesses has risen dramatically. In the US in recent years, women earned about half of all associate degrees in computer science, more than one-third of the bachelor’s degrees, 27% of master’s degrees and 13% of PhD’s. It’s a shame that only 7% of computer science and engineering faculty and only 3% of the tenured professors in these fields are female. Neither gender is to blame. Successful women in corporations, women owned businesses and computer technologies are rising fast!
Women in computer related businesses have increased their participation as software and system interface designers. Many women owned businesses are small businesses operated from the home; some are extremely large, with annual sales of up to nearly $2 billion. The National Foundation of Women Business Owners stated that women-owned businesses show a greater tendency than all businesses to be stable. Forming your own business provides greater work satisfaction, increased responsibility, and more freedom.
According to the National Association for Women Business Owners, the 7.95 million women business owners in the United States now employ more people than the US Fortune 500 companies do worldwide.
Commanding your own ship take pride in the right direction. Consider surfing up some of these sites. You’ve got everything to gain!
Women on the Grow (http://www.concentric.net/~2empower)
Their mission is to empower women to awaken to the limitless choices created by their own consciousness and to act on taking personal responsibility to enhance the quality of their lives.
Advice on Child-Rearing (http://home.earthlink.net/~harmonyunltd)
Parents are offered a means by which they can enhance their parenting-skills through the advice of a child-care expert. Specific questions are answered related to childraising problems, issues, or approaches.
Women Your own Web (http://womenfolk.com/websites)
Information and encouragement for women who would like to create their own web site.Free fabric tile backgrounds.
The Sacramento Bee. (http://www.nando.net/sacbee/women/)
Has published a groundbreaking three-day series on women and computing that is now available on the Worldwide Web.
Women@Work (http://www.nafe.com)
Is published online by the National Association of Female Executives, (NAFE). NAFE is an organization dedicated specifically to the advancement of women in business.
Pilgrim New Media (http://www.PLGRM.com/)
Develops and publishes multimedia titles on topics of particular interest to women.
Women in Computer Science. (http://www.cs.yale.edu/HTML/YALE/CS/HyPlans/tap/tap.html)
Women in Information Technology. (http://lucien.berkeley.edu/women_in_it.html)
Women's Studies. (http://www.wesleyan.edu/course/CC/WMST/htglist.html)
The WITI Campus (http://www.witi.com)
WITI is an organization dedicated to increasing the number of women hired and promoted to management and executive level positions, helping women become more financially independent and technologically literate, and encouraging young women to choose careers in science and technology.
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