Women leaders Help Boost the Bottom Line

A recent study showing that Fortune 500 companies with the highest proportion of female directors are more profitable and efficient, on average, than those with the lowest: an 83% higher average return on equity, 73% higher return on sales, and 112% higher return on invested capital.

Note that these correlations do not necessarily mean senior women cause superior financial performance. Rather they points to the fact that a "gender balanced" environment is more conductive to better business performance.

Ovulating strippers make more money

In a revealing study, University of New Mexico researchers recruited 18 subjects (professional lap dancers working in gentlemen's clubs) to log their work shifts, earnings and menstrual cycles on a Web site for two months, or about 5,300 lap dances. The naked truth: participants scored $335 per five-hour shift while ovulating, compared with $260 per shift during the luteal phase after ovulation, and $185 while menstruating. Participants using contraceptive pills showed no estrous earnings peak.

The dancers' scientifically gyrating pelvises provided the first direct evidence for human estrus in contemporary human females.

The feminity of poverty

Heard from NPR radio today: although women count for 51% of US population, 60% of people under the poverty line are women. 1/3 of households headed by women are under the poverty line. The main reason of this femininity of poverty ? women paid the major portion of ever increasing childcare cost.

Women have shopping genes

According to a new online survey of over 3,000 women, ages 18-49, by AMP Agency, how a woman approaches shopping does not change as she grows older, shifts from life stage to life stage, moves from region to region, has children, or moves income brackets. A woman's approach to shopping is very much part of who she is: "it is part of her DNA.", or personalities.

The report states that there are distinct approaches to shopping, and identified and segmented women across four distinct mind-sets or "Shopping Genes" :

1. Content Responsible (practical, loyal, efficient, neither a trendsetter nor trend spreader) - consists 20% of women surveyed.

2. Natural Hybrid (confident, balanced, classic, a cross between a social and trend-following butterfly and a grounded domestic diva) - 34%.

3. Social Catalyst (social, smart, trendy, the top of the influencer spectrum and the strongest brand advocates) - 35%.

4. Cultural Artist (creative, impulsive, adventurous, always shopping and willing to try new and different things ) - 11%.

Speaking of me, definitely the Content Responsible type.

Moms tired of working

Corporations of America be aware - full-time working mother are tied of working. In the past decade, the percentage of working mothers who say full-time work is ideal dropped from 32% to 21%, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. Now, 60% of them say they'd rather work part-time, up from 48% in 1997.
Likewise, only 16% of stay-at-home moms say they'd prefer to work full-time. That's down from 24% a decade ago. Nearly 50% of at-home moms say not working at all is ideal, up from 39% in 1997. Not surprisingly, 72% of fathers prefer working full-time.
Rating themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 on how well they've done at parenting, 43% of at-home moms said 9 or 10. Only 28% of full-time working moms rated themselves so highly.
Finally, 44% of at-home moms think it's bad for society to have so many mothers away at jobs, while just 34% of working moms think that.
I can list at least 3 reasons for this major attitude change from working mother - longer commute times to work; more demanding working environments; deteriorating children care services.