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Business Entrepreneurship Generation Y Leadership Women

Women are the new men

This post was also published at Damsels in Success.

I know a lot of awesome Gen X and Gen Y women. In fact, the city of Madison, WI ranks in the top ten of both female creative class, and female super-creative class percentages in the nation (Charlottesville, VA and Bakersville, CA, rank first).Generation Y women, Hannah Seligson argues, are “making one of the fastest and unprecedented career ladder ascents in history.” Here are some observations about one of the most powerful groups of women in history:

Women are more business-minded than men… Springboard Enterprises reports that “women in the United States have an ownership stake of 50 percent or more in nearly half of all privately held businesses.” In fact, women are starting businesses at a rate of twice that of men, attracted to the flexible lifestyle of being your own boss.

And we’re successful at it. The gross sales of women-led companies grew 39 percent compared to 34 percent for all firms. Barron’s predicts that by 2010 a woman has a one in seven chance of having a powerful job post. In Australia, studies show that “women-led companies on average outperform those where there is no female leadership at the top,” while “law firms with more female partners have a higher per partner income than those with fewer.”

… but women don’t always want a man, or children. While men in leadership positions often have a family to support them, Gen X and Gen Y women put careers ahead of settling down. While this can be a lonely proposition, many Gen X and Gen Y women are not in a huge rush to find a man, get married and start popping out children.

In relationships, the men increasingly stay at home or hold a less stressful position. If we’re even in a relationship. Many of us are doing just fine without a man as a result of our highly independent lifestyle.

A lot of us aren’t even sure we want to have kids. And if we do, we want to adopt (anything to avoid having a foreign object pop out of our fitness-club bodies). The vast majority of women that do plan on having kids also plan on staying in the workforce.

Women are natural leaders. The millennial woman brand of leadership is more about changing the world than our own egos. Moreover, we’re change makers willing to defy the traditional structures of “command and control” leadership for a more collaborative and inclusive model.

Anna Quindlen writes, “by its very nature women’s leadership is about redefinition, while men’s leadership has been about maintaining the status quo… You’re less wedded to the shape of the table if you haven’t been permitted to sit at it.”

I’m not surprised to learn that women and men are switching roles. I see examples all around me of women embracing the power of now to lead the next generation. The more young women that get others to not only look past their age, but also any perceived inequities, the better off our world will be.

One last note. Over in the UK, academics have dubbed young women leaders as “’the Monstrous Army on the March’, women who cannot, will not be stopped.”

Well then. March on ladies.

These boots are made for leading.

By Rebecca Healy

My goal is to help you find meaningful work, enjoy the heck out of it, and earn more money.

13 replies on “Women are the new men”

Rebecca,

I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way, but why should this be newsworthy? Sure the media needs something to write about but weren’t the ultimate goals of the women’s rights movement equality and easily interchanging rolls?

I think the real question should be why are men so much more likely to fall at the ends of work/success spectrum (either uber successful leaders or unsuccessful and under-educated) while women are more likely to dominate the middle to upper-middle levels (i.e. typical corporate jobs, vp, family breadwinner, nine-to-fiver). Is it a matter of psychology, expected social norms, school structure, genetic predisposition, or what?

-Brad

Brad,

Thank you for your comments, I appreciate a differing perspective. I think this post is absolutely newsworthy- we need to celebrate the successes of moving forward.

Is it your experience that men fall at either ends of the success continuum? I think that is true to some extent. But I looked for some information briefly and don’t know why that is.. My initial guess would be it’s a matter of how boys have been raised compared to girls. If you find anything, I’d be happy to post it.

Others? What do you think?

The servant knows the master better than the master knows the servant. The servant listens to what the master says and sees what the master does; hypocrisy is the revealer of our weaknesses. Today’s TV and your examples are an expression of women’s egos as it inflates like a balloon. As more men learn to listen to what women say and watch what women do, they are gaining power. A power they had lost to they own egos many years ago. Yes, women are the new men; god help them!

I do believe women are going to have to step up and take charge of their relationships, families and lives weather they want to or not. The notion that a woman can rely on a man to support her and her family needs to be eliminated. The fact is women are forced more than ever to take charge of their families because their husband walks out on them or he lacks the education, job skills, or ambition that you have, to support your family. The number of single mother households is the highest it’s ever been, and this is forcing women to rely on themselves more than ever. With women better educated than most men, I believe women will in a way be forced to take over, weather they really want to or not.

I see this becoming very real in the future in what may at first appear to be the end game with women taking control in many areas. I feel what society is missing here is that men as a collective body have not been pushed sufficiently to take a collective stance.

I know hnow how differential treatment left over from the nineteenth century belief boys should be strong and girls should be protected has led to much protection, support, and much fkind stabilizing mental/emotional/social knowledge, skills, and interaction from an early age. Also Females are given love, honor, respect simply for being girls. I know boys are still being raised to be tough that includes more aggression from an early age; much less kind, more harsh, intimidating words, instructions, for fear of coddling Males; and granting love, honor, respect only on condition of achievement.

It is this differential treatment that is creating a surge of mentally strong women and much fewer mentally strong men. Society has a choice now. It can begin providing the same good treatment for Male children as is provided Female children or society can continue to treat the two groups differently. If society continues to treat the two groups differently, Males will reach a point where from men to boys there will be much group reaction to reclaim power in much more vicious, harmful ways to women and girls. I am afraid as slow as it is taking men to realize their plight, it will require as least as long for men and boys to stop releasing their anger as a collective body when it begins at some critical point. Remember, society is not as strong and continuous in values as it appears. Society is really like a sand castle that can be easily destroyed when one group feels it is in their interest to do so. As Males begin to fall behind more collectively, they will begin to lose more collective feelings of selfworth (as mentioned women receive love, honor, respect – essentials of self worth without qualification whereas men must generate these essentials). This will eventually lead a group retaliation and I feel even modeled retaliation by boys at younger ages. We must begin helping everyone have essentials of self worth or risk losing that sand castle we call society.

“men so much more likely to fall at the ends of work/success

Brad, I haven’t found that to be true at all. Women have consistently shown to be highly successful at the end of the spectrum…usually though, her achievements/genius have been erased from history or credit given to the copying man.

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