At Female BreadWinners we concentrate on two areas:

  1. Helping professional women develop political savvy, heightened visibility, stronger sense of career direction and increased overall confidence.
  2. Helping organisations to develop and retain the female employees who will lead them into a rapidly evolving marketplace.

Female Breadwinners.com is for women who earn a significant if not majority amount of the household earnings.  And the Big Secret? This is actually a large group of women and growing all the time! More women than men are graduating university,  women make up to 80% of all consumer decisions and companies now realise women in senior leadership positions bring better profitability and corporate governance as well as reflect their consumer base.

These changes will affect how professional women manage their careers,  the dynamics of their personal relationships and how the workplace retains and develops this growing number of female talent. It is our job at Female Breadwinners to help both women and employers negotiate these fast-paced changes for everyone’s benefit.

At DMCD we concentrate on just two things:

  1. helping professional women develop political savvy, heightened visibility, stronger sense of career direction and increased overall confidence.
  2. helping organisations to develop and retain the female employees who will lead them into a rapidly-evolving marketplace.

Women Receive Up to 80% Less in Bonus Schemes

Money in hand New research into the finance sector from the Equality and Human Rights Commission indicated that women in leading financial companies are facing as much as an 80 per cent gender pay gap when it comes to annual bonuses. And its not just in the bonus schemes that women lose out, nearly all women taking up the latest City jobs can expect to start work on less than their male equivalents. Overall, a basic pay gender gap of 39 per cent was revealed through the research, while women received far less in terms of performance-related pay. Trevor Phillips, chair of the commission said: "For business to thrive in the new economy it simply can't afford to recruit and reward in the way it has done in the past. By bringing down arbitrary barriers, and changing practices that, intentionally or not, inhibit women's success, financial firms have the chance to boost morale, bring on new talent, and maximise the potential of their existing employees." It would seem that the suspicions of many of my female coaching clients, that their male colleagues enjoy much larger bonuses, is right on the money – to pardon the pun! 

Beyond the Boys’ Club at EPWN on November 12

Sunrise in the city On this coming Thursday night, November 12 I am speaking at an event hosted by the European Professional Women's Network and Deloitte. I will be speaking about my book "Beyond the Boys' Club" and a panel session with senior successful women from Deloitte, two of whom I interviewed for the book, will then take questions about their own paths to success. The event is open to the public and I would love to see you there. For more information, please visit www.epwn.net/london to book your place! 

Female Managers More Likely than Office Juniors to be Sexually Harassed

Discrimination sign I found this new research about women in leadership positions from the National Institute for Mental Health in Washington  DC, which was quite surprising. It seems I had not been alone in thinking that the most low-ranking women within an organisation would be most vulnerable to sexual harassment. Well, it seems that quite the opposite is true – it is women with supervisory responsibilities who are up to 137% more likely to be harassed than junior women. As explained in by the main researcher, Heather McLauglin in the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: " When sexual harassment was first exposed as a workplace issue in the 1970s, the assumption was that women in lower positions, who were more economically vulnerable and had fewer options for walking away, were most at risk of being harassed…." Instead it would seem "Men are using harassment as a workplace equalizer, to strip women in these positions of their power, prestige in the workplace. Harassment isn't about sexual desire or wanting to establish a romantic relationship, but more about control and domination."

Are Women Better Bosses?

Mentoring-women-small I am often asked about this question in panel discussions on professional women in managment, and while I believe you can have a great boss who is either female or male, it is interesting how we love to see the debate hashed out with one gender being deemed as the inherently the "best managers". It also hugely depends on your version of what "best" is. I was leading a mixed group at the University of Cambridge on the topic of gender difference in teams, and some of the male participants said their preferred style was to "be left alone" receiving no feedback unless their was a problem – virtually the opposite of any of the women in attendance, or indeed that I know. I recently saw the New York Times article which pits some of the most credible experts from both academic and the corporate sector to weigh in on the big question. For their opinions, read "Do Women Make Better Bosses?"