If women want to fail in business, think negative! Read all the statistics you can to proliferate the kind of social conditioning that contributes to the limited numbers of women on-line. Gather in groups to dispel any questions concerning whether the good ol’ boys are actually grabbing all of cyberspace! A woman owned business is bound to fail with that kind of thinking!
I would rather redirect my energy toward more positive thinking and action. I want my business to be successful! I look for statistics that substantiate a positive attitude. One that bellows
"Go Girl! Go!"
I find it uncanny that we separate men and women, teaching them two different 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. Poppycock! If I listened to all the defeatists, I would never get anywhere. Five years ago, my first ISP insisted that I not use a female login name. I refused to augment that vicious annulus. I constantly hear that men have taken over cyberspace. My thinking, "Look out boys!" And, I don’t use math any more than I normally do!
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 compendium of analyses adds to the stench 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 to let the men think they are always right!
If you dredge the bottom of the cesspool, you’ll find the fascia of another anecdote regarding how poorly women are at math. The reality is that the brains of men and women are the same. Women were not given an equal opportunity to develop that section. The other misconception is that computers are math related. NO WAY! There may be some specifics involved regarding the correlation of mathematical data with a particular software, code or configuration. But the same holds true for recipes, sewing or organizing a household. The acumen is there!
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. Give me half a chance to venture out of the shallow end of the gene pool. I won’t change my login name to that of a dog or something that is reminiscent of roadkill. I’m applying my energies toward bonding over shared successful experiences, making useful contacts, (male and female), and swapping business strategies.
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! That glass ceiling is about to crash on both heads!!
I’m rooting for that 30% that are the Visionary thinkers and dreamers! I am exuberantly honest with true integrity! I crunch numbers as a confident risk-taker! I am a respectful communicator, life long learner and assessor of my ever progressive business attitude!
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.
Pillars of Cyberspace! Venus is only the shallow end of the pool!
*** Anne Palumbo is a consultant for business web designs. She is noted for her articles on marketing, design, and developer tricks and tips.
** As a web author, she designs original graphics, site layout configurations, provides database and script integration, and writes company content.
* You can find some of her work at: A.Palumbo Consultants
* You can also drop Anne a note - she’d be pleased to hear from you.
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