With the world changing, there needs to be a new template for behavior for both men, and women. Everyone’s interests would be served if we tried to develop a new conception of what a successful life should look like, for men and women. One of the promising ideas is the “four thirds” position. Both parents can try to work four thirds of the week, and the remaining third of their time look after their children (and other home responsibilities)
If this were accepted as a new social norm, the consequences could be revolutionary.
High –achieving men and women can form stable marriages because neither would have to sacrifice anything for he other. And children – the group the most discriminated against – would regain their parents.
Women will rule the world – new life concept suggested by some modern psychologists.
New studies find that female managers outshine their male counterparts in almost every measure Rarely a month goes by when there is not news of women reaching the pinnacle of business and government life. Moreover, the studies show that women executives, when rated by their peers and bosses, score higher than their male counterparts on a wide variety of measures--from producing high-quality work to goal-setting to mentoring employees.
Women are more collaborative, and seek less personal glory. Instead of being motivated by self-interest, women are more driven by ''what they can do for the company,''. They get high ratings on exactly those skills needed to succeed in the global Information Age, where teamwork and partnering are so important.
Employing women in management
But if women are so great, why aren't more of them running the big companies? In the USA, for instance, only two of the nation's 500 biggest companies have female CEOs: Hewlett-Packard Co.'s Carly Fiorina and Avon Products' Andrea Jung. And of the 1,000 largest corporations, only six are run by women.
For one thing, most women get stuck in jobs that involve human resources or public relations--posts that rarely lead to the top. At the same time, female managers' strengths have long been undervalued, and their contributions in the workplace have gone largely unnoticed and unrewarded. Companies are now saying they want the skills women typically bring to the job, but such rhetoric doesn't always translate into reality. Some businesses view women only as workhorses, well-suited for demanding careers in middle management but not for prime jobs. Many start their own companies, while others seek a different work/family balance than many corporations offer. There are now more than 9 million women-owned businesses in the U.S., double the number 12 years ago.
Then, the cost of employing women in management itself is greater than the cost of employing men. This is a jarring statement, partly because it is true, but mostly because it is something people are reluctant to talk about. A large producer of consumer goods reports that one half of the women who take maternity leave return to their jobs late or not at all. And we know that women also have a greater tendency to plateau or to interrupt their careers in ways that limit their growth and development.
Career interruptions, plateauing, and turnover are expensive. The money corporations invest in recruitment, training, and development is less likely to produce top executives among women than among men, and the invaluable company experience that developing executives acquire at every level as they move up through management ranks is more often lost.
It is terribly important that employers draw the right conclusions from the studies now being done. The studies will be useless—or worse, harmful—if all they teach us is that women are expensive to employ. What we need to learn is how to reduce that expense, how to stop throwing away the investments we make in talented women, how to become more responsive to the needs of the women that corporations must employ if they are to have the best and the brightest of all those now entering the work force.
In fact, Kabacoff has just finished a new study showing how CEOs and corporate boards view upper management, and he found a clear double standard. Male CEOs and senior vice-presidents got high marks from their bosses when they were forceful and assertive and lower scores if they were cooperative and empathic. The opposite was true for women: Female CEOs got downgraded for being assertive and got better scores when they were cooperative. Kabacoff's conclusion? ''At the highest levels, bosses are still evaluating people in the most stereotypical ways.'' That means that even though women have proven their readiness to lead companies into the future, they're not likely to get a shot until their bosses are ready to stop living in the past.
