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Women in Business
By: DeAna D'monte

     Women In Business Today.

The floodgates are open. There are more women than ever in high-paid positions. Yet still most working women, even those in management, are clustered into predominately female roles and careers. These women are often still on lower pay- for working in the same positions as their male counterparts. Often the reasons for this are easy to see. Women will often cite that the sacrifice is too great to get to the top, they feel they lack the ambition, they feel they are not as qualified as the high flying men. However things are changing rapidly.

An interesting study in 1977 showed there to be an imbalance in this train of thought. In 1977, Betty Harragan (Games mother Never Taught You, Warner Books, Inc.) quoted a study in which women and men were asked how many of the job skills and criteria they thought they would need to fulfill in order to even apply for a top level job. The response was interesting, men were happy to apply if they thought they had at least 40% of the required skills, women wouldn't dream of it unless they had 100% of the skills and felt they matched the same level for all the position's criteria!

Men and women surveyed were found to be equally as dedicated to their careers in the view of the judging committee, and women were judged to be making just as many sacrifices as the men to reach a high level career-wise, even though their sacrifices were perceived to be in different forms. The main differences that showed up were that women were far more likely to be lacking in confidence, more likely to feel powerless to bring about change in the workplace and often felt paralyzed when it comes to decision making and negotiations.

The committee then looked into the reality of the same womens competency, as judged by the women employers working in traditionally male roles, only to find there was virtually no difference. Women were and are performing just as well as men. You may feel this in an over generalization but at that time the researchers felt the facts seemed to stack up.

Fortunately in 2008 things are improving, women have learned to be more confident in their abilities, are less hard on them elves, and are assuming authority in many of their chosen career's. Women are also realizing their worth as far as salaries and benefits are concerned. None of us are born confident, it is a learned behavior and many savvy women have realized this and taken control.

More women than ever before are also 'going it alone' and becoming self employed, and successfully so. They have learned not only their true worth, but have recognized their own organizational abilities, their own unique approach to negotiations and realize that they have the stamina and motivation to do so successfully.

Women is business are recognized to be, now more than ever, a growing force to reckoned with.