Carolyne Zinko, for SFGate from the San Francisco Chronicle, writes about the plethora of websites springing up for women. Working professionally or stay-at-home, either way. Websites that appeal to all facets of being female. Are they good? That’s up to each individual woman, it seems.

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HRZone.co.uk writes about the changing face of HR and how the job is much more “masculine” than perceived. In previous generations, HR was all about personnel - now it incorporates negotiation, conflict resolution, data management, etc. - decidedly masculine skills whether performed by a woman or a man.

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The HR site changeboard writes:

“There is a recognition that this group are clearer about what they want and they are more likely to go for it and take action to ensure they get it. For example they are more concerned about work/life balance – it’s important to them and employers have to respect that. There is no way employees can cut them out – they are their new pool of potential employees.”

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SeattlePI.com reports from the Economist that female executives don’t seem to be being promoted into top ranks as much as before. Catalyst reports “The report claims that while many companies have made it easier for women to ascend the corporate ladder, efforts to propel them to the very top rungs have “stalled” in the past couple of years. Women occupy only one in seven board positions in Fortune 500 companies, according to Catalyst.”

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PersonnelToday.com writes in the Work Clinic that many female entrepreneurs, like most women, want to employ people they trust. That includes their spouse!

“Since 2000 the number of women running their own businesses has grown by almost 20% to around 1 million. A large proportion of these female entrepreneurs left traditional roles in order to have more freedom and flexibility, and to develop a better work-life balance. And for some of them, employing someone familiar and trustworthy - their husband - was an obvious next step.”

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The Ontario Mining Association writes in the Canadian Mining Journal that the industry better wake up and start hiring women now. In addition to the staffing issues, read this:

“There is a paucity of women in mining and it is in your best interest to get more women in the industry,” Foot said. “There is a company involved in the Alberta oil sands that only hires women drivers and it has found that the equipment lasts 35% longer and I think in some cases women will treat the trucks and equipment better than their kids.” The latest census data shows that females comprise 46.9% of the Canadian workforce but only 13.1% of the mining workforce.”

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Maya Dollarhide writes for CNN.com/living:

“In three studies, 463 men and women between 18 and 70 years old watched video of actors pretending to be job seekers or employers. The participants then wrote down which applicants should get the job, the type of responsibility they could handle and how high their salaries should be.

“We found that the women (on the tapes) who were judged as angry lost out in every category,” says Victoria Brescoll, an assistant professor at Yale University’s School of Management. She and Eric Uhlmann, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, conducted the research.”

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Lorrie Lykins writes about this very controversial topic for TrendWatcher, The Institute for Corporate Productivity. Lykins writes: “Several nations are saying “enough is enough” when it comes to what they view as a persistent glass ceiling in today’s boardrooms. The average percentage of board directorships held by women is just 9.7% in Europe and 15% in the U.S. (Catalyst, 2008). In recent years some European governments have decided that the wait for gender parity on boards has gone on too long, and they’re using legislation to compel publically traded companies to appoint more women to their boards (Wachter, 2008).

This trend is sparking a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of such laws and, more practically, about whether more countries will follow suit in coming years. Norway is blazing the trail. It passed legislation in 2003 mandating that public companies address gender imbalance on their boards with the requirement that women hold 40% of the board seats by 2008. Companies that failed to comply faced sanctions ranging from fines to closure. At the time, 6% of directors in Norway were women (Wachter, 2008).

The legislation gave companies five years to comply with the quotas and, despite rigorous and vocal opposition at the outset, business has generally complied. Five years later, Norway now boasts unprecedented board representation for women - 44.2% in 2008 (Catalyst, 2008).

But the road has not been smooth.”

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Patti Wood, a body language expert, discusses in her blog the differences in eye contact between men and women during communication. There are gender differences indeed!

Patti writes