Are Men the New Women? Only if Hyperbole is the New Logic

by Sima Matthes (New York City)

An article entitled “Depressed, repressed, objectified: are men the new women?” in last Sunday’s UK Observer arrived my inbox and I thought, “What, are you kidding me?”

Where to start? The whole idea that the three best ways to describe women would be “depressed, repressed and objectified” is infuriating, as is the idea that these are the best ways to describe men. The truth of these claims is yet another issue.

It’s offensive that in order for women to be “equal” (emphasis mine), men have to be made smaller, weaker, and more “feminine” (again, mine).

The truth of the war between the sexes has been, and remains, that the war is a fiction, perpetuated needlessly by men and women, in our endless desire to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator. If men=”good” then women, logically, must be “bad” and, of course, the opposite tautology is also true. So we get misguided attempts to make things “better” by reversing the equation, rather than balancing it and putting both genders on even footing.

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12 — Oops, 11 — Women at the Top of the Global 500

by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

Last week, Fortune named its Global 500 companies. This year, women lead 12 of those companies, an increase of 2 women over the prior year’s list.

Less than a week later, however, it was announced that Patricia Russo, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent and architect of the merger, will be stepping down by year’s end. Since the merger of Alcatel and Lucent in 2006, Russo has implemented a restructuring plan, which called for the firing of 12,500 workers. According to TheStreet.com, investors had been calling for Russo’s ouster since the merger, upset with the company’s performance and her pay package.

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American Bar Association Presents Women Lawyers Achievement Awards

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by Erin Abrams (New York City)

The American Bar Association Commission on Women in the Profession is hosting its annual meeting this upcoming week, which should be packed full of action items about women in the law. For those attorneys who are interested in a historic view of women’s struggle for equality in the legal profession or a present opportunity to network with other up and coming female attorneys, this committee meeting represents a great opportunity.

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Networking: More Than Drinks and a Spring Roll

by Jane Lucken (London)

Many of my female colleagues have said they hate networking. What is it about networking that provokes such a visceral reaction? What exactly do we mean by networking? The image that springs to mind is awkward conversations with a glass of white wine in one hand and miniature spring roll in the other.

But love it or hate it, networking is a critical driver for career success and gains importance as you make your way up the corporate ladder.

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WSTA’s “Data Trends, Challenges and Solutions”

This WSTA seminar is designed for both business and technical stakeholders in data storage, information lifecycle, data transformations and decision support.

Keynote Speaker: James Dow, CTO, CS Technology

Keynote Presentation: “Command and Control in the Integrated ITIL Data Center Environment” James Dow, CTO, CS Technology.
In this presentation, the audience will be presented with a structured approach for developing an effective and efficient data center command and control environment, learn some best practices, and become aware of common pitfalls experienced by their peers within the industry. Attendees should expect to leave this presentation with an understanding of how to structure a program to deliver command and control, how to present command and control to senior management, and understand the provider capabilities in the space today.

Presentations by:
Forsythe Technology/EMC
Business-Driven Capacity Management
Tim J. Arland, Principal Consultant, Storage Solutions, Forsythe Solutions Group.
Business driven capacity management enables an organization to effectively manage the acquisition, distribution, and cost structure of IT resources, specifically server and storage infrastructure.

For more information and to register

*The WSTA welcomes members of the Press to attend its seminars as guests. Registration will require that you provide the publication(s) for whom you write. The WSTA reserves the right to limit the Press Pass to one individual from the publication. Based on the information provided the WSTA may, at its sole discretion, request additional information or reject a press registration. You will be contacted via email if additional information is needed to complete your registration.

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Ask-A-Recruiter: Managing Your Interviews

Contributed by Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart

Many interviews I have don’t include questions that I think are relevant to the job. I get questions about unrelated topics, personal questions, or sometimes I get questions about things on my resume that I don’t want to emphasize. How do I prepare for interviews with people that don’t know how to interview?

You can and should prepare for interviews, but the fact remains that you are interacting with another human being. You cannot control their behavior and therefore cannot fully control the outcome of your interview. However, you still have control over yourself, so you can and should manage interviews to your advantage:

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Everybody’s Workin’ on the Weekends

by Sima Matthes (New York City)

In one of my colleague’s cubicles, there a cartoon by the brilliant and irreverent Scott Adams hanging over the desk. The cartoon has his protagonist, Dilbert, remarking to the company’s blood drive sponsor “You’ve already taken everything I have…” and the sponsor saying “There’s a six pint minimum,” or something like that.

Undoubtedly, we’ve all felt that we’ve given everything to our company, our co-workers, and our bosses at one time or another — but at least we had the weekends to look forward to. In Tammy Erickson’s recent article on the Harvard Business Publications web page, she asked the audacious and provocative question of whether we even need weekends. Her point is that in this age of telecommuting and what she calls “asynchronous” work, where we can work anywhere, at anytime, weekends as they currently are defined may not be as necessary as once thought. “I’d like to see companies re-think the idea of a pre-set “week day” and a “weekend” and look instead at which jobs actually need synchronous activity with what frequency. If the job doesn’t require it, why not let the worker decide his or her own schedule?”

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Work-Life Balance is a Sticky Floor

by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)

In Rebecca Shambaugh’s book, It’s Not A Glass Ceiling, It’s a Sticky Floor, she identifies seven key areas where women get “stuck”. Chief among them—and no surprise—is striking the balance between our work and personal lives.

She says if our lives are out of control, and checking to make sure that we’re working for a purpose or just for the sake of working. “Living a balanced life,” she says, “fosters the resilience we need to be successful leaders,” yet “83 percent of women with jobs [agree] that they have a hard time balancing work and family.”

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Women on Top = Women Throughout

by Sima Matthes (New York City)

A recent study by Catalyst provides evidence that gender diversity at the top of major corporations leads to increased financial performance. Additionally, the report states that the more women a company has had on their board of directors in the past, the more female corporate officers it will have in the future.

The Catalyst study, Advancing Women Leaders: The Connection Between Women Board Directors and Women Corporate Officers, was released in July, and validates what many of us have suspected: that there is a clear and positive correlation between the percentage of women board directors in the past and the percentage of women corporate officers in the future. This report applies a mathematical formula to predict the proportion of women in staff roles based on the number of women in leadership.

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Voices of Experience: Christine Bazanowski Scaffidi, First Vice President of Commercial Lending Services at Commerzbank

by Jessica Titlebaum (Chicago)

The Glass Hammer recently spoke with Christine Bazanowski Scaffidi, First Vice President of Commercial Lending Services at Commerzbank, who, refreshingly, cites her parents as her most important professional role models. From her corner office overlooking the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, she recalled dinner conversations from when she was growing up during which her father discussed the staff he managed and the challenges they faced. She also remembered her mother reminding her to “bloom where you are planted” when Christine voiced frustration at being limited to an administrative role when she started with Commerzbank 20 years ago.

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