Investing in Women Pays Off

Stacie Nevadomski Berdan and Liesl Riddle

Ah, the "mommy wars." The kerfuffle between Hilary Rosen and Ann Romney this past week has once again side-tracked national attention into the ongoing debate over women's choices. Does working for pay hurt or help us as moms, hurt or help our kids? Really? We're still debating this as a nation? This in the same week that President Obama's White House Forum on Women and the Economy heralded the crucial impact women make on family, economics, growth and competitiveness in America via full participation in the economy and society.

President Obama's comments apply to women around the world -- not just in the United States. This topic was addressed at "Why Organizations Need to Invest in Women," a panel discussion with international women recently held at George Washington University and sponsored by the university's Center for International Business Education and Research (GW-CIBER), an event we organized and moderated. We discussed that while investing in women certainly yields positive outcomes in terms of human rights, education, and family planning, there is an even more compelling reason to invest in women. It makes good business sense.

For example, 40 percent of the world's workforce is female. Women in the boardroom have proven to provide a competitive advantage for businesses' bottom lines. The input of diverse decision-makers is a boon for organizations in all sectors of the economy: public, private, and NGO.

Women also manage money well. A recent study by Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research found that the conservative approach that most women take in investing generates greater long-run financial payoff. That is because women are more likely to buy and hold, rather than make higher-risk investment choices and frequently trade. In recognition of both the financial and social benefits of lending to women, most micro-lending institutions aim the vast majority, if not all, of their lending portfolio toward the female borrower.

The International Finance Corporation has noted that the financial power of women is expanding at a more rapid rate than ever before in human history. They estimate that global consumer spending by women will increase to $28 trillion in 2014, up from $20 trillion in 2009. This is particularly noteworthy given the fact that women already control 65% of global spending today.

Women have a multiplier effect as consumers, building markets as they make the majority of purchase decisions in households. Women tend to focus on purchases that increase family welfare, strengthening the consumer base. Yet surveys consistently find women feel underserved and patronized by many of the companies trying to sell to them. Women's power as global producers and consumers has been compared to that of China and India because, over the next decade, the impact of women the world over will be at least as significant as that of those two growing global powerhouses.

Who better to understand and meet the needs of these 1 billion women around the world than women? Women understand women.

It is time organizations began recognizing the immense payoff that women offer not only in the United States and in the industrialized nations around the world but also in emerging and developing economies.

In the next 50 years, the majority of worldwide economic growth will take place outside the industrialized nations. Organizations that are able to understand and navigate the dramatic and rapid changes taking place in these economies will be best positioned to recognize and seize opportunities.

Women employed in these markets can help their organizations keep up with the rapidly changing and expanding role of women in these societies, identifying new opportunities to market to female consumers and to mentor and nurture women leaders in these contexts. In other words, investing in women leads to greater global returns as women tend to invest in other women.

It is time more organizations invested in women internationalists so that more women can fully participate in next-generation global leadership. It is time more internationalist women started leading the teams trying to understand what women around the world want so that they can better serve the women who continue to be their most important sales market.

President Obama's focus on women is right on target and has implications for the world economy. Investing in women has a multiplier effect for economic growth. Since we know investing in women pays off, now it is time to put our money where our knowledge shows it will be most effective -- in women.

Has Science Proven Men Less Moral Than Women?

By Donald Pennington

COMMENTARY | According to The Telegraph, a four-year study conducted by professor Roger Steare was conducted through a quiz titled Moral DNA and involved approximately 60,000 volunteers from 200 countries.

The questions focused on home life and work, and results were used to determine the moral characterof not only the sexes but also for different age groups. Perhaps most interesting is the determination of older people having a higher moral character -- peaking at about 60 years for most people. Although that number is still a tiny leap away for me, I believe it. Anyone over 30 can surely remember when we thought time was on our side and all that mattered was what we wanted.

Perhaps the most interesting attribute of Steare's study is how participants are categorized as philosopher, judge, angel, teacher, enforcer or guardian. (Surprisingly, I came up as an "angel," or a possible "teacher." I didn't see that one coming, either.) With a participant's results, each category is broken down to the category's description, strengths and weaknesses. During the test, participants are reminded to answer each question honestly.

Can these results be relied on? While this study is interesting -- as are the results -- perhaps the study's greatest weakness is the possibility of exaggerated answers or a limited understanding of how others honestly see us. Probably anyone can name at least one person they know who behaves as if everyone loves them while the truth is quite the opposite.

Regardless of how honest the answers given, or even any individual's ability to accurately perceive their relationships with others, the main point to remember with studies like these is that we're only talking in general terms. No matter how great the percentage of men or women rate as immoral or moral, we all still deserve to be treated as individuals.

Steare is probably conducting the study with the best of intentions -- after all he has consulted for a variety of big names in times past -- but the wisdom of conducting a study which might lead to any entire group of people being written off as "immoral" must be questioned. My verdict: Every single human alive can be good and everyone of us can just as easily be bad.

http://amansworldbook.com/

The truth About Sexual Smell, Pheromones

The truth about sexual smell, pheromones and women’s attraction to men. Part 1

Dawn Michael

Continue reading on Examiner.com The truth about sexual smell, pheromones and women’s attraction to men. 

A woman can smell her mate at an unconscious level.  If that natural sexual smell of a man is not masked by too much baby powder or cologne it is strong enough to cause a woman's body to react to him sexually. 

A woman's vagina will begin to produce wetness as blood rushes to her nipples, cheeks, ears, and lips, if her attraction to a mans natural pheromones is a biological match for her to breed healthy offspring’s with.  Her body will begin to release hormones that make it possible for her to mate.  The human female body understands that this man will produce healthy children. The attraction to the smell of this man is purely on a animal instinctual level, not a conscious level.  

The science behind sexual smell and pheromones has been studied time and time again. It has been proven that a women’s keen sense of smell to attract the right biological mate for her is one of the most powerful senses she has in producing a gene match to insure healthy children.  

Continue reading on Examiner.com The truth about sexual smell, pheromones and women’s attraction to men. Part 1 - Los Angeles Love and marriage | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/love-and-marriage-in-los-angeles/the-truth-about-sexual-smell-pheromones-and-women-s-attraction-to-men-part-1#ixzz1roJRVTXg

http://www.markmillion.net/apps/blog/

Women End Up Less Happy Than Men

Less able to achieve their life goals, women end up unhappier than men later in life – even though they start out happier, reveals new research by Anke Plagnol of the University of Cambridge, and University of Southern California economist Richard Easterlin.

Plagnol and Easterlin's study, forthcoming in the Journal of Happiness Studies, is the first to use nationally representative data spanning several decades to examine the role of unfulfilled desires in a person's sense of well-being.

As the researchers explain, expectations of success may vary among those raised in different generations (i.e., an economic depression). Data sets from a range of time periods may also have different demographic compositions.

In their analysis, the researchers control for birth cohort and demographic characteristics such as race and education. They find that women are, on average, happier than men in early adulthood – but the glow wears off with time. Specifically, after the age of 48, men's overall happiness exceeds women's happiness.

These gender patterns of overall happiness correlate to patterns in two significant aspects of life satisfaction: family and finances.

As Plagnol explains: In later life it is "men [who] come closer to fulfilling their aspirations, are more satisfied with their family lives and financial situations, and are the happier of the two."

Women and men have fairly similar life goals when it comes to love, the study reveals. Nine out of 10 people of both genders reach adult life wanting a happy marriage.

"Differences between men and women in aspirations for marriage and children are fairly small," says Plagnol, who received her Ph.D. from USC in 2007. "Gender differences in satisfaction depend largely on attainment."

The saddest period of the average man's life – his 20s – is also the period when he is most likely to be single.

Young men are also more dissatisfied than young women with their financial situations, not because they are worse off, but because they want more and therefore experience a greater "shortfall," the researchers explain.

But age alters many things, including men's money woes and lackluster love lives.

After 34, men are more likely to be married than women, and the gap only widens with age, mirroring men's growing satisfaction with family life.

Men also become more satisfied with their financial situations over time, as reflected in their increased spending power. The researchers found that men tend to covet big-ticket items that might not be within reach until later in life, such as a car or vacation home.

(A notable exception: women want more "nice clothes" than men, the researchers found.)

These findings are consistent with an earlier study by Easterlin showing that recent generations are less satisfied than previous generations, despite having more.