Today, seven people have asked me if I’ve voted. One was the very nice woman behind the counter in a coffee shop. One was a personal trainer at the gym. Two were business contacts with whom I had a conference call. Three were people I’d call friends. I’ve never really thought about it before but it struck me today: Is “Did you vote?” a personal question?

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I keep promising no more Sarah Palin posts but you know what, I am going to stop. Promising, not posting. We (too) rarely have women running for VP and seeing an unknown political figure catapult to the national stage is intriguing, whatever party you support. There is a lot to write about.

In this case, it’s about Sarah Palin blowing a kiss to the audience before VP debate last week. Read the rest of this entry »

When I was starting out in my career I spent several years slaving away — quite literally, I am talking 20 hours days and I mean 20 hours, not 16 hours that seemed like 20 — at a well-known consulting firm. On one of my first projects there my manager was a woman. She was ridiculously impressive, you know, the works: Multiple graduate degrees, ultra sharp, creative, a great speaker. We got to know each other pretty well — working our 20 hour days and all — and at the end of our project went out for a late-night drink. And that’s when she dropped the bomb…

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Last week all of these happened to me so yes, this is a vent. I hope you’ll join me in the comments.

So here goes, in no particular order…

1. Canceling a meeting 10 minutes before the scheduled time. In my case, by email, which I was lucky to check before getting out of my car to go to the meeting. Read the rest of this entry »

One of my favorite things about reading blogs is reading the comments; I often find them more interesting than the post itself. So as I was attempting to re-enter the real world from my mini-vacation (more on this later, because I know you’re dying to find out if I actually took a vacation on my vacation, yes you do!) and reading through the many blog posts about the selection Sara Palin as the VP on the Republican ticket I naturally jumped to the comments.

She is a controversial choice so the comments were colorful. I should have expected it but one theme caught me off guard: People questioning Sarah Pailin’s family values because she is a mother of five who is not spending more time taking care of her children. Read the rest of this entry »

One day when I have a bit of extra cash lying around I am going to commission a study about all the things women are doing right at work. For now, we have yet another bit of research to suggest that we’re sometimes our own enemies when it comes to breaking the glass ceiling.

The study, which has now been published in a book called The Psychology of Sales Reluctance, was conducted by Shannon Goodson, a behavioral scientist who compared 11,000 professional women with 16,000 professional men from 34 countries. Goodson found that women are significantly less likely than men to tout their achievements and contributions at work and believe that self-promotion is “socially unacceptable”, “unlady-like” and “morally suspect”. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago I had a lunch meeting with a business contact, a guy. (Yes, I think his gender is relevant.) We talked about a few issues I needed his help with and when our lunch arrived he said something that startled me:

“You know, you talk like a guy. If I didn’t know you were a woman, I’d think I was working with a man.”

I think he saw the puzzled look in my eyes after he said this because he went on to clarify that in his experience, few women are as direct as I was in our interactions. He told me that he works in an office with many women and he is not used to dealing with someone like me.

I honestly don’t know if I should have been offended, flattered, or something entirely different. Read the rest of this entry »

A friend of mine recently got a pathetically low raise at work after having a spectacular year there. Sure, the economy is in bad shape, but her company did great and she contributed to the performance. She’s been there a few years and she knows for a fact that two of her colleagues — both men — received higher raises for similar performance. When she told me, I immediately said that she has to talk to her boss and negotiate for a better package. “Be confident in your work and your abilities, and go in there knowing that what you’re asking for is right,” I said, in my most convincing voice.

I stand behind my advice, but I’d be lying if I pretended that I’ve always followed it in my career. In truth, when I read articles about things women do at work that make it more difficult for them to earn more money or attain leadership roles, I nod not only because I’ve seen this type of behavior but also because I’ve been guilty of it. And I thought this would be as good a time as any to come clean about (at least) three stereotypes about women at work that I helped prove right: Read the rest of this entry »

At one of my past jobs I worked for someone I consider a truly toxic person. He would go out of his way to make people feel bad, embarrassed, insecure, and he would often talk about doing this intentionally. “I like to put people off-balance and see how they react,” he would say.

Once I’d made a mistake in a document we had to send out. I’d emailed him the document to review and instead of emailing me back to let me know about the mistake, he forwarded the document to our client, with the mistake in it, saying that I’d’ authored it and if they had any comments, to get back to us. When the client responded, they pointed out the mistake and my boss came into my office to tell me that he knew it was in there, but he didn’t correct it because he wanted to me to learn from the embarrassment of my mistake. (I don’t cry at the office, as a rule, but I came close that day.) Read the rest of this entry »

I spoke to a reporter this morning who is doing an article about women entrepreneurs. (Luckily she is not doing an article about mompreneurs because, well, you know how I feel about that.) One of the issues we touched on was how women are perceived in the business world. I told her my stories–which you can read here and here. But then I said to this very nice woman that I’ve developed some strong opinion about this and I’d like to lay it out:

• Women who are strong and confident are often perceived as aggressive and bitchy
• Women who are nice and collaborative are often perceived as weak
• Once we have kids, many assume that our mom identity IS the entirety of who we are
• Women are too often each other’s worst enemies (we don’t network as well, we don’t help each other well, we are often catty)

This is all true, in my experience and according to some experts. But second to waving a magic wand and changing these ingrained perceptions and biases in the workplace, the only solution I can come up with is to try to not care and push ahead. Read the rest of this entry »