Women

You should make Sarah Palin your mentor

Is no one going to say that Sarah Palin rocked the vice presidential debate? Who is so arrogant to think that they could do better with just five weeks’ preparation?
She did a great job. She memorized speeches that she trotted out in good moments. And she had such nerve! Most of us would …

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I hope I get to travel on Sarah Palin’s plane

I wish I didn’t love watching Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican convention so much. I love her hair. I love her outfit. I love that she is a great speaker even without a lot of time to train for the convention. I love her sort-of-Wisconsin accent that I sort-of hear myself getting the longer …

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Palin’s children should take priority over being Vice President

Okay. Look. I wasn’t going to tell you what I think of Sarah Palin, but so many people are asking, so fine. Here it is. She is nuts. And the Republicans are nuts for putting her on a ticket. She has a five-month-old kid with Down’s Syndrome.
Why is no one writing about this? I have …

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Girl’s guide to getting the guy at work

We all know that the workplace is a minefield for sexual tension. Where else do you lock up people of the opposite sex for eight hours a day, and tell them to talk with each other but not touch? It is unnatural, and ever since men let women into the workplace, we have been adjusting.
It …

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Advice from the top: Marry a stay-at-home spouse or buy the equivalent.

I just hired someone to take care of my house for $50,000 a year: A house manager. This is in addition to the full-time nanny I have. And the cleaning service. And the assistant I have at work.
I know the first thing going through your mind is that I’m loaded and I’m lucky. But I’m …

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Thank You (Sort of) to the Guy Who Hacked My Blog

I was thinking about blogging about job hunts today. Or managing up. Or one of the hundred or so topics that are always safe to go to if you blog about careers. But I decided that I can't ignore the fact that someone hacked into my RSS feed and put a bazillion porn links at …

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Effective ways to wrestle your biological clock

Two days ago, I called my friend to cut a deal. I needed to make a partnership fast, and we have been doing business together for years. I knew she could push something through her company that would make me look good.
We ended up spending an hour on the phone, and she mentioned she was …

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The part of postpartum depression that no one talks about

In the past few years, postpartum depression has had a lot of press. Brooke Shields had it, Marie Osmond had it. Tom Cruise denied it exists. All good for raising awareness. Now we all know it exists, and maybe some of us know the warning signs. But no one talks about this: What if you …

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Barack Obama, the female vote, and why this matters at work

Did you see the rally for Obama in Los Angeles last Sunday? It rocked my world: Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and California First Lady Maria Shriver talking to a packed stadium at UCLA. (Watch the video here.)
For one thing, Michelle Obama is a great speaker in her own right and she is teaching us how …

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Quit work for a while to have kids. Your career will be just fine

It’s a myth that time away from the workforce will undermine your career. This myth is based on outdated ideas of the workplace. And it’s an important myth to bust, because in today’s post-feminist workplace, the majority of women say that given a choice, they would not choose full-time work when their kids are young.
Here …

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Obama's victory in Iowa sheds light on today’s workplace

My brother just started school at the University of Iowa, and this was his first caucus. He describes a room totally crammed full of young people: “It was basically all the students caucusing for Obama and the adults dispersing among the other candidates.”
In the end, in his Iowa City precinct, the students sat victorious at …

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Business schools shift to accommodate the biological clock

Harvard just announced that it will change the timeline of business school enrollment as a way to attract “a wider range of applicants” Read: Women. Right now women start businesses at two times the rate of men and women do better in school than men do, but women make up less than one-third of the …

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Interview with Sallie Krawcheck, CEO of Citigroup's Global Wealth Management

I loved listeing to this interview with Sallie Krawcheck so much. I have been following Sallie’s career for years, and I had no idea I was going to see her in person until I showed up for the Forbes Executive Women’s Forum for a speaking engagement, and there she was, speaking right before I did. …

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Try this: Don’t ask for what you want when you negotiate

When I founded my first company I didn’t have time to find someone to date, but I knew that I wanted to get married. So I followed all the advice I had read about how you should tell people what you want in order to get what you want. I started telling everyone that I …

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The new girls’ guide to workplace success

There’s been a lot of media focus on how the workplace has changed since Generation Y came on the scene. But what about Gen Y women?
From the moment baby boomers joined the workforce, women made it their mission to create a fair playing field for everyone. But after decades of feminists plowing down the boys’ …

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Three job hunt questions I get asked a lot

Is it okay to look for a new job while I’m at my current job?
Yes. You have to be able to look for a job while you have a job or it’s indentured servitude. Most people in their twenties change jobs every two years. At any given moment 70% of the workforce is job hunting, …

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New agenda for workplace activism: Keep marriages together

The topic of should women work or should they stay home is a baby boomer fetish topic, with Leslie Bennetts being the current poster girl.
Joan Walsh, writing at Salon, points out that we are generally sick of baby boomer women telling younger women what to do and what not to do. But we are also …

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Forget about the wage gap. What about the Web 2.0 gap?

There is a media feeding frenzy over the last study released from the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation about the wage gap: All hands on deck! Women don’t make as much as men do! There is a lot of hoop-la about this study, which says that the wage gap happens immediately upon entry …

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The secret life of salesgirls

Who makes the best salesperson? A cheerleader.
The drug industry is so systematic about recruiting cheerleaders that the New York Times writer Stephanie Saul wrote a feature about it, spotlighting women like Onya: “On Sundays she works the sidelines for the Washington Redskins. But weekdays find her urging gynecologists to prescribe a treatment for vaginal yeast …

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The difficult convergence: Work and family by age 30

Thirty is a magic number for the new generation — a time when people want their career path and their family life in place. This is a difficult convergence to pull off, but more and more people are aiming for it.
Jessica Marshall Forbes summarizes these feelings as she describes getting married: “We always knew we …

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