Martha Carlson, an executive coach for women, writing in Sales and Marketing Magazine, Training Magazine, has a great pieceon:

Leading women: The women who rise to the top of your organization in the coming years may have a few things in common.

She has a list of characteristics that women (and really men too) will need in place in our own lives to be effective at leading at work; how many of these characteristics ring true?

• Authenticity: Martha defines this as a woman, “Being self-aware and doing something about it. This trait allows a woman to understand at a very base level her strengths, weaknesses, desires, and fears.”  And then taking this trait and leveraging it into her life at work.
• Fearlessness: Martha feels this trait is the opposite of being fearful.  She further notes that those who act out of fear act in an unbalanced way that compromises our ability to be effective.  Fearless women focus on what they want to achieve and very often achieve it.
• Focus: Here Martha tosses aside the notion that as women, we have an unlimited ability to multi-task and be equally effective across all our tasks.   Martha says that such practices must stop and that only focus will result in achieving the results we want in our lives.
• Energy:  Finally Martha points out the to do anything women need to take care of themselves, “working longer hours, compromising sleep, and depleting our wellness. We must know and attend to what brings us energy in the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual sense.”

Four very interesting characteristics women will need for the coming years.  If you’ve got any coffee left in your mug, mouse on over to the full article at Sales and Marketing Training Magazine by clicking to  “Leading Women“

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Update 2/29/2012:  A number of people have been reading this article but the link to the actual piece by Martha Carlson was broken.  Apparently it was moved to Training Magazine.  I’ve embedded the new link in the article above, and here it is in it’s more native form:  http://www.trainingmag.com/article/leading-women

Women’s eNews has a wonderful op-ed piece on the differences in gender coverage that the news makes. It’s well worth a read and you can visit the Women’s eNews article, “Memo: Nancy, Hillary Are More Than Elected Moms”, here, but first a few snippets to whet your reading appetite:

After Nancy Pelosi’s historic election as Speaker of the House, the Washington Post described her as a “grandmother of five.”

The Post didn’t refer to her as a “20-year veteran of Congress,” which probably had more to do with her election.

Meanwhile, the Post described Harry Reid, the new Senate leader, as the “son of a hard-rock miner” with no mention of Reid’s 16 grandchildren.

Imagine how differently the story would read if it began “Pelosi, daughter of a mayor” and “Reid, grandfather of 16.”

And here’s another interesting quote to think about relative to how gender neutral is our news coverage from the article:

The Sunday after Pelosi’s inauguration, the New York Times’ feature opinion piece written by New Republic senior editor Ryan Lizza purported to question the Democratic strategy of electing a pack of new “alpha” male Democrats in Congress. But Lizza’s opinion takes as fact that strength and leadership are “masculine” traits, to be contrasted with the image of the Democrats as the weak “mommy party.”

The suggestion was clear that male is strong; female–used interchangeably with “nurturing”–is weak.

Not surprisingly the gender differences in news reporting have not escaped the mind of researchers (one gets the visual cue of a bespecklad gray haired woman in white trench coat, coke bottle glasses tight to her eyes as she pours through endless charts of numbers, sifting them for answers). In a report from Michigan State University dated July 15, 2004, “MSU researchers find gender bias in coverage of political races”, some interesting findings were revealed from examining media coverage of political campaigns in four states; Oregon, Michigan, Illinois, and Minnesota (the press release for the report is at MSU at this link here):

• Three quarters of stories citing nonpartisan sources cited only men, while 9 percent cited only women. The rest used at least one man and one woman.

• Female experts who were cited got fewer paragraphs for their assertions than males, a two paragraph average for males and less than half a paragraph for females.

• No female expert appeared in more than one story, while male experts appeared repeatedly.

Of course none of this tells us why this is happening just shows us it is happening. It’s a little beyond the scope (or budget) for the good barista’s here to froth up a full bore study but here’s a few thoughts that might pique your own thinking. Perhaps when women are seen as nurturing, their views on our personal lives, in a one-to-one session, are received as nurturing. However, in a more public venue perhaps they are not received nearly as much so because there is no perceived sense of threat or danger on the part of the male listener. If there is no threat of being usurped or dominated why worry and why pay much attention? In the case of other women, they may receive and trust another women’s views more so as part of mutually accepting and supporting each other.

Another view is the issue of how much women are perceived to have talked. They key here is “perceived”. In Deborah Tannen’s Book, “You Just Don’t Understand; Women and Men in conversations“. She notes on page 77 that, “Studies have shown that if women and men talk equally in a group, people think the women talked more”. Like it or not, it may be that men simply wrongly perceive that women have said enough. In their minds the reporting is indeed equal. When in fact it is not.

Bias in the media is alive and well to this day. How is your own listening, and accepting of what is said, towards men and women in your life. Do you filter what is said, or bias it yourself? Maybe the media bias will change when men realize that a women’s views on the world are indeed different but just as valid and normative as their own. When that day fully comes there may be a better perspective on the world reported for all our own benefit.

THINGY (thing-ee) n.
female: Any part under a car’s hood.
male: The strap fastener on a woman’s bra.

VULNERABLE (vul-ne-ra-bel) adj.
female: Fully opening up one’s self emotionally to another.
male: Playing ball without a cup.

COMMUNICATION
(ko-myoo-ni-kay-shon)n.
female: The sharing of thoughts & feelings with one’s partner.
male: Scratching out a note before suddenly taking off for a weekend with the guys.

BUTT (but) n.
female: The body part that every item of clothing manufactured makes “look bigger.”
male: The organ of mooning and farting.

COMMITMENT (ko-mit-ment) n.
female: A desire to get married and raise a family.
male: Not trying to pick up other women while out with one’s girlfriend.

REMOTE CONTROL (ri-moht kon-trohl) n.
female: A device for changing from one TV channel to another.
male: A device for scanning through all 75 channels every 2 minutes.

TASTE (tayst) v.
female: Something you do frequently to whatever you’re cooking, to make sure it’s good.
male: Something you must do to anything you think has gone bad, prior to tossing it out.

(From Dr. Dialtone’s Amazing website (and it really is amazing!))

There is an interesting artilce on Transgenderism (gender dysphoria) in the Lahey Clinic Fall 2005 Journal. The clinic actually features this article, and you can read it at this link here. I was referred to it from doing some reading at Andrea Jame’s outstanding TS Roadmap.

The article does a good job of outlining the potential sources for our being transgendered as well as the ethical issues in intervening in children who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria. There are other good insights in the article as well, such as the authors opinion that psychological issues (such as depression, fairly common in the trans-community) are really a result of not dealing constructively with a person’s gender dysphoria.

Click here for this excellent article, from this well respected medical institution in New England

4-2-2008 Update
There is a nice Q&A Interview on the author of this Lahey Clinic article, Dr. Norm Spack. It was done in Boston.Com. You can reach the Boston.com Article by clicking here.