Fast Company-- "Where Are The Women?"

[Nords]

The post about why women live longer than men sparked a memory from a Fast Company article I read a while back. It turns out that women are smarter, too...

http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/79/women.html

http://pf.fastcompany.com/magazine/79/womenfeedback.html

I wonder, after adjusting for workplace gender percentages, if women ER more frequently than men?

And as a side issue, it appears that Echo Boomers of both genders are more interested in having a life than in having the corner office.

 

[Martha]

I have no idea as to the trustworthiness of these statistics (where is TH when we need him) , but the Bureau of Labor Statistics gives the median ages for retirement projected for years 2000-2005 at 61.7 for men and 61.2 for women: http://www.ebri.org/facts/0701fact.htm

While poking around looking at this stuff, I found an interesting page on median ages for different life events at: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/retirement/agetimeline.html

Interesting reading.

 

[Nords]

Interesting trends in those numbers...

... If I was General Motors, I'd ask Harley Davidson to design their next Cadillac.

 

[bow-tie]

Nords, thanks for the Fast Company article, I thought it was great.

For me, it's a powerful commentary on our working lives. I'm not a gal, but I share many of the struggles the article described women facing, ie, not willing to bust my ass for 12 hrs a day for 'face time', etc. I guess I'm a not an alpha male then... whatever.

I think it's too damn bad organizations are willing to lose great employees due to ridiculous 'rules'. But I guess it's an effective way to find out the willing bodies who want to move up the ladder. As far as I'm concerned, the labor market is close to commoditized. And when you are playing in that type of market, the power resides with the buyer (employer), not seller (employee). We could, in theory, all agree that we are going to work less to give us more balance, but there will always be someone(s) who will cheat a little, put in a little more work, and look better than their peers and get that promotion because of the perceived value.

It's gonna take a tremendous cultural change/mentality shift to make it better.

 

[fln]

Re: Fast Company-- "Where Are The Women?"For insta

And as a side issue, it appears that Echo Boomers of both genders are more interested in having a life than in having the corner office.

Interesting article from "CBS 60 minutes" on Echo Boomers
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/01/60minutes/main646890.shtml

Excerpt:
"For instance, when a young person shows up for work at his or her first job, what do they expect and what are they finding?

"They expect to be immediate heroes and heroines. They expect a lot of feedback on a daily basis. They expect grade inflation, they expect to be told what a wonderful job they're doing," says Levine.

"[They expect] that they're gonna be allowed to rise to the top quickly. That they're gonna get all the credit they need for everything they do. And boy, are they naive. Totally naive, in terms of what's really gonna happen."

Levine says that is not the only part of their cultural conditioning that's going to require an adjustment in the workplace.

"I talked to the CEO of a major corporation recently and I said, 'What characterizes your youngest employees nowadays?'" says Levine. "And he said, 'There's one major thing.' He said, 'They can't think long-range. Everything has to be immediate, like a video game. And they have a lot of trouble sort of doing things in a stepwise fashion, delaying gratification. Really reflecting as they go along.' I think that's new."

Levine calls the phenomenon visual motor ecstasy, where any cultural accoutrement that doesn't produce instant satisfaction is boring. As echo boomers grow up, they'll have to learn that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels."
End of excerpt

From personal observations in the workplace, the view above is perhaps abit harsh. Certainly, the population I know play hard, spend hard but also work hard; however, they do expect to have both a life and the corner office. Time will tell as to whether this generation can make their expectations a reality.

 

[brewer12345]

Re: Fast Company-- "Where Are The Women?"For insta

Interesting article from "CBS 60 minutes" on Echo Boomers
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/10/01/60minutes/main646890.shtml

Excerpt:
"For instance, when a young person shows up for work at his or her first job, what do they expect and what are they finding?

"They expect to be immediate heroes and heroines. They expect a lot of feedback on a daily basis. They expect grade inflation, they expect to be told what a wonderful job they're doing," says Levine.

"[They expect] that they're gonna be allowed to rise to the top quickly. That they're gonna get all the credit they need for everything they do. And boy, are they naive. Totally naive, in terms of what's really gonna happen."

Levine says that is not the only part of their cultural conditioning that's going to require an adjustment in the workplace.

"I talked to the CEO of a major corporation recently and I said, 'What characterizes your youngest employees nowadays?'" says Levine. "And he said, 'There's one major thing.' He said, 'They can't think long-range. Everything has to be immediate, like a video game. And they have a lot of trouble sort of doing things in a stepwise fashion, delaying gratification. Really reflecting as they go along.' I think that's new."

Levine calls the phenomenon visual motor ecstasy, where any cultural accoutrement that doesn't produce instant satisfaction is boring. As echo boomers grow up, they'll have to learn that life is not just a series of headlines and highlight reels."
End of excerpt

From personal observations in the workplace, the view above is perhaps abit harsh.  Certainly, the population I know play hard, spend hard but also work hard; however, they do expect to have both a life and the corner office.  Time will tell as to whether this generation can make their expectations a reality.

What a bunch of crap! You know why younger workers aren't willing to say "thank you for the hat" when management repeatedly sh!ts on their heads? Because anyone alive under the age of, say, 35 has never known a labor market where mass layoffs at any time for any reason were not the order of the day. Because pensions are a thing of a past for the vast majority of the under 35 crowd, and even the pensions that are promised to older workers very well may not be there when the time comes for payout. Because it is very obvious that workers are viewed as "headcount", a commodity, rather than a core resource.

If you can't draw a direct, immediate line between what the younger worker does/adds and what they get for it, you can forget about retaining the good ones and getting their best efforts. The incentive to stick around for presumed long term rewards is way overwhelmed by the risks involved.

 

[cute fuzzy bunny]

I have no idea as to the trustworthiness of these statistics (where is TH when we need him)

Right where you'd expect me to be, taking a day off and sitting around...

It sounds to me like women have their priorities straighter than men. When faced with prioritizing their work vs their loved ones or other important aspects of their lives they make better choices.

I think its well known that men can have rather singular focuses while women are better and smarter multitaskers.

As far as the stats, they may in fact be true. The big problem these sorts of 'hourly' or 'task' stats have is that they're usually reliant on the individual logging the information themselves. With the exception of lawyers and others who bill based on time (and you'll find differences in non-billed time accounting even there), these stats are often gathered by someone guestimating their hours and time spent on various tasks at the end of the week. Further, what one person calls work, another might call play. For example: you go out after work for an hour for a couple of cocktails and talk about some project. One might call that work, one might not.

This is why I always cautioned business leadership from using these stats to make any business decisions. You're working from faulty data that is probably pre-spun to tell a story that isnt accurate. Hence you will make a bad business decision on the shoulders of bad data.

Theres also the bragging rights of number of hours worked, which is largely an american phenomenon. I'm not aware of any studies that isolated the claimed vs actual hours worked, let alone determining whether its primarily a male phenomena.

I can however positively answer the question regarding which sex is smarter. Many women have gotten me to do enormously dumb things, therefore women are smarter.

As far as the oft stated 'lazier' generation, be it genx, geny, echo boomers or whatever...bullpuckey. I've employed hundreds of people in their 20's to their 60's. Every decade worth had hard workers, lazy bums, the entitled, the victim, etc. I find no correlation between age and willingness to work, need for attention, etc.

I liked younger workers for their enthusiasm and drive to learn. Plus you can mold their mind set rather than deal with their prior managers mistakes. I liked older workers for their experience and "coach on the field" abilities. And where I was hiring and it came down to a man or a woman with virtually identical abilities and experience, I usually hired the woman. I know the average woman works uphill every day and has to put up with a lot of crap to get to a specific level of knowledge and expertise.

By the way I believe the answer to "why do women live longer than men" is "because they want to". Make your own joke.

 

[Martha]

We have gone around on this topic before. http://early-retirement.org/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=young;action=display;num=1096996766;start=15

I think both the Boomers and the next generations have some valid points to make.

 

[fln]

Re: Fast Company-- "Where Are The Women?"For insta

Certainly did not mean to stir up an old controversy. On the original topic, the women in the article were the cream of the crop so to speak so I do wonder whether they would make the same decisions if they were offered the 'next move up' or was the glass ceiling factored into the life/work balancing decision. In addition, mom giving up her career for family is not only accepted but also admired in recent and perhaps current culture vs. the prevalent reaction to Mr. Mom. Also note that Mom did not entirely give up her career and there were no documented statistics on how much time her company board or entrepreneur activities actually consumed her post-corporate lifestyle. Put me down for a cynic but the bottom line is that I believe that men and women want the same thing: happiness in personal and work lives. Women may have an easier time stumbling on to it because of prevailing culture values kicking her onto the path of ESR.

If you can't draw a direct, immediate line between what the younger worker does/adds and what they get for it, you can forget about retaining the good ones and getting their best efforts. The incentive to stick around for presumed long term rewards is way overwhelmed by the risks involved.

OT regarding the Echo Boomers/GENX work ethics and expectations, I don't disagree that every single type of workers exists across all generations; however, there are unique events that affect and shape the values of a generation. The tech boom/burst and the outsourcing trends resulted in a me-loyalty vs. company loyalty workforce. WTC 911 resulted in a live-for-today mentality (connection to the debt ridden/consumptive state of the economy?). That said, from company management's standpoint, they are on the same page as you are these days. You're being paid for what you produce today and are committed to deliver a week from now. Retention plans are reserved for only critical high level executives and even those are either phased out or are very few in existence these days.