I am truly tired of listening to the likes of Marissa Mayer and Sheryl Sandberg talk abut women in the workplace when, in fact, their world bears no relationship to the majority of women locally or globally.

Elite women, like their male counterparts, marry later and have fewer children than their less-educated sisters. They take shorter breaks from paid full-time employment (a reverse from past trends) and claim an ever greater share of overall female income while relying on nannies and other household help.

Also, I’ve always doubted that having hot women wearing minimal outfits as a booth attraction at tradeshows gives a company an edge. And guess what? It doesn’t.

Booth babes do NOT convert. How do I know? Well, I actually split-tested this a few years ago and the results were indisputable. If you have invested in a trade show to generate new business, using booth babes is a lead conversion boat anchor. –Spencer Chen, marketing professional

Interesting research from Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Jill J. Avery focuses on the effect female cooties have on masculine brands. Who knew that masculinity was so very fragile?

“Gender contamination occurs when one gender is using a brand as a symbol of their masculinity or femininity, and the incursion of the other gender into the brand threatens that… Girls and women seem to have more freedom to consume products and brands commonly associated with the other gender than boys and men, who are more tightly constrained by the prevailing views of masculinity that associate being masculine with avoiding anything feminine.“

Then there’s the ongoing problem of women in STEM—or the lack of them, actually.

There is a lot of systemic bias in the system against young women taking this kind of direction with their studies and their career. And we must change that bias and it must be changed at the middle school level.

While many recognize that solutions need to be applied in middle school or sooner, new research shows that just having a male teacher may impede progress and intimidate interest.

The stereotype that men are better at math than women is so ingrained in our culture that women feel stereotype threat — and as a result, perform more poorly in math — just from watching a man take a dominant role in a math study group.

IBM is one company that is actively fighting back.

Women have played a key role in some of the most important innovations in IBM’s history. Meet some of them through the Technologista series that celebrates some of these accomplishments.

I think my favorite pro STEM-for-girls is Debbie Sterling, who starts much earlier. She’s the entrepreneur who not only didn’t buy into the hype, but also created toys to combat it.

Who said girls want to dress in pink and play with dolls, especially when they could be building Rube Goldberg machines instead?

YouTube credit: GoldiBlox 

I had brunch today with two friends.

During the conversation one told me that he couldn’t believe I was still such an idealist at my age (older than dirt:).

His wife disagreed, saying that she couldn’t believe how cynical I had gotten.

They are both right.

I am, and always have been, a pragmatic idealist.

How do you become a pragmatic idealist?

By always striving to implement the ideals in which you believe, while fully functioning within the reality in which you actually live.

Image credit: http://www.warningsigngenerator.com

In spite of the importance of Obama’s success in office, there is only so much I can read on a subject before I become jaded. As a result I try to make my sources as objective as possible, which is difficult when the subject is political.

I’m also not a political junkie, so in looking for ‘how’s it going’ information I tend to skip sources with rigid ideologies, since I pretty much know what they will say.

(I must say I find it amusing and satisfying that we finally have a president that both the far right and far left don’t like.)

I did find three articles to share, two short and one longer.

The first is a compendium of opinions from a varied group of Wharton professors, one phrase I really liked was when Obama was termed “short on ideology and long on pragmatism,” an attitude I wish the entire country would adopt. I also found it amusing that he was downgraded for attacking too many major topics at once—healthcare, the economy, two wars—as if he had any choice.

The second is from economist and Harvard Professor Jeff Frankels. Be sure to click the link at the end to see the comments at another location.

Finally, a far ranging Business Week interview with President Obama that speaks especially heavily to the business community.

All have links to additional resources for those of you so inclined.

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: nono farahshila on flickr and jurvetson on flickr