Category: Dealing With The Ugly Stuff

  • Should You Leave Your Job After Being Sexually Harassed?

    Should a woman quit her job after being sexually harassed?

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    http://www.123rf.com/ 24249834 –

    Recently Trump stirred up some media controversy when he said that if his daughter Ivanka was sexually harassed at work “I would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case.”

    This of course created a storm because it wasn’t the correct answer that states that a woman shouldn’t have to upend or disrupt her career because a male colleague is a jerk and an idiot.  However, the idea of changing jobs isn’t something a woman should rule out or feel bad about.  It can be the best decision.

    After you report what happened, you know your company’s response.  Hopefully, they will take it seriously and take the appropriate action.  There are plenty of good men out there with values and morals.  They have wives and daughters in the workplace and have no tolerance for harassment.  It is important to know who these men are in your workplace even if they aren’t in your direct reporting line because they can help you.

    However, there are still many workplaces that just want to make the issue go away.  They ignore it.  Or they “address it” by having with a “confidential conversation” with the offender and you know nothing will change.  The offender now knows “what not to say,” but the attitude remains.  You know there will always be an excuse as to why you don’t get the recognition you deserve or the subsequent new opportunities to advance your career.

    It makes you feel angry and hurt and frustrated.

    You want them to apologize.  You want them to recognize what you do.  You want to force them to change.

    You then begin listening to outside commentary.  They say you can’t let men get away with it.  They have to pay!  You need to sue!  They tell you to fight on and get justice for yourself.

    But this is where you have a choice.

    This is where you feel your empowerment.

    You get to decide how you want to expend your energy.

    You can spend a lot of time and energy trying to fix your workplace.  But to what end?  Your career still won’t advance, your colleagues will be uncomfortable around you and you will dread going to work.

    Is it your duty and responsibility to all other women in workplaces everywhere to fight on?  Is there going to be a special place in Hell for you if you don’t?

    If you don’t take a stand then will the company continue to harass and discriminate against women?

    Maybe.

    But maybe they won’t be hiring any more women…or men, because their business is declining.

    Before you put you make the big decision on how to react, make a honest and realistic assessment of your workplace.  Are they growing, stagnating or declining?

    I’ve found that a workplace that allows women to be harassed has a slew of other problems as well. The same culture that believes men are superior also creates problems with clients, customers and other business relationships.  It creates performance problems.  My guess is that they aren’t a thriving and growing company. They aren’t the industry leader.  If you make an honest assessment you will probably find yourself on a sinking ship.

    So why stay with a sinking ship?

    Why rescue a sinking ship?

    Instead of expending your energy trying to fix your workplace, would your energy be better directed on yourself?  Can you find a new job where your talents are recognized and rewarded?

    What we don’t tell women enough is that we have the right to reject their workplace.  We don’t have to make them see our value, we can tell them they aren’t worthy of our energy and efforts.

    This is what men do.  If they are mistreated, or not given opportunities they think they deserve they move on.  So take a look around, are the men unhappy?  Are the best men leaving?

    My advice to any woman who is in a declining or stagnant backward workplace is to start looking for new opportunities. You don’t have to quit your job right away.  Take your time.  Find the right new job.  It may take a year or two.

    Contrary to what we are told by people who are zealous to make men pay, there is nothing wrong with prioritizing yourself ahead of your workplace.  You aren’t upending your career; you are taking positive steps to move yourself forward.  The sexual harassment may have just been the eye opening wake-up call you needed to make some changes.

    What is ultimately most important in this situation is that we maintain our positive energy.  By staying and fighting we attract and absorb negative energy which makes us angry, stressed and miserable.  Are they worth it?  Is the situation worth it?  Can you make a point by having a group of people write negative comments on Glassdoor?

    Only you can answer that.

    Just remember your goal is to invest your energy in yourself and your future.  It takes courage and strength to stand up for yourself, move yourself forward, and leave them far behind in the dust.  That is what being empowered is really about.

     

    Empowered Women Can Choose to Leave a Bad Situation

     

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  • How To Get Justice When You Are Wronged

    We experience a wrong-doing at work.  It upsets us.  We want justice.  We want management to be just as outraged and upset as us but they aren’t.  They just make it to go away.  This makes us even angrier that this is how the system works.  It isn’t fair.25898150_m

    We have all been there – experienced a wrong-doing that seems to get swept under the rug.  But it also seems that in these situations women are treated more unfairly than men.  Women get dismissed as emotional if not crazy.  Men seem to brush it aside and all go out for a beer together.  To women it doesn’t seem like men care about justice or righting the wrong.

    How do women get justice?

    Let’s go through a scenario.

    We suffered a wrong-doing and we immediately have an emotional reaction – hurt, anger etc.   We tell all of our friends what happened and they are outraged too.  They tell us we need to do something about it.  We need to stand up for ourselves.  Our wrong-doer can’t be allowed to get away with it.  Now we are really upset.  Our friends did what we needed – they validated that we were right to be upset.  Now we are very upset.

    We report the wrong-doing to the appropriate person.  They give us a patronizing look and tell us to calm down.  They will look into the situation.  Over the next few days we watch our wrong-doer.  We are waiting for them to disappear for a couple of hours then come back looking beaten up and disgraced.  We harbor a fantasy that they will be fired and we will watch them take the walk of shame with their box of personal items.  That will make us feel vindicated.  But as the days go by, our wrong-doer is happy and carries on like normal.  We know we were blown off.

    The reason we don’t get justice is due to a series of mistakes.

    Our first mistake is looking for emotional validation by talking to our friends.  (Men do this too.)

    Our second mistake is delving into the drama and emotion of the situation.  This is what we are taught to do because we live in a society that is in love with drama.  So when we suffer an injustice we do as we were taught – we feed the drama monster.  (Men do this too.)

    Once we feed the drama monster he grows quickly.   When our friends feed him he grows even more.   Soon he is really big and fat and ugly.  As we look at him we believe he was created entirely by the wrong-doing.  Therefore the facts of the wrong-doing have to align with and support his existence.  We then write our story of facts to align with and support his existence.  We tell this story to ourselves over and over again until it all feels natural.  We accept that our original perception was incomplete and our current story is true because if it wasn’t our big ugly drama monster wouldn’t exist.  (Men do this too.)

    Monster 1When we present our big, fat, ugly drama monster to other people we want them to be horrified.  We want a dramatic outcry by the masses.  We want everyone to rise up and join us in our feeling of injustice.  We want our feelings vindicated.  (Men do this too.)

    Our drama loving society tells us that if we create enough drama and enough of an outcry then people will be forced to give us justice.

    However, it doesn’t happen.  People abandoned us and we are left standing alone with our drama monster.

    Our fatal mistake was in believing drama gets justice.  In reality, we have to build a factual case to get justice.

    Men and women get two very different reactions when they present their drama monsters.  This is because we are taught to believe that women react emotionally and men react rationally.  As a result women get discredited and men don’t.

    When men are emotional, even very emotional, they are seen as functioning through the right side of their brain.  To act rationally they just need to switch over to the left side.  To do this, you drop him on his head, kick him in the butt or yell in his face.  Men are literally treated as if they have a switch that can be flipped to make them act rationally.  Flip the switch and he is back to normal.

    Once he is back to acting rationally, the problem is solved.  It’s time to go get a beer.

    To women this makes no sense.  What about the wrong-doing that initially caused his emotional response?  Women continue to feel the injustice until the situation that caused the wrong-doing is corrected.  Once they feel justice, then the situation is resolved.

    To the male-dominated workplaces this makes no sense.  Women are told to let it go – let go of the emotion and it will all be good.  Women are treated as if they have a flush valve that once activated will release any excess emotion.  The problem men have is that they don’t know how to activate the valve in women.

    The reason they can’t activate the flush valve is because women don’t have one.  That’s not how women work.

    A few months ago I wrote an article about The Difference Between Male and Female Brains.  In this article I cited a study about the difference in connections between the male and female brain.  The point of the article was to dispel the stereotype and myth that women only respond emotionally.

    Because of the connections in women’s brains, women respond emotionally AND rationally.

    Women are every bit as rational as men but also filter events through their emotions.  Contrary to what we are taught this doesn’t create a weakness.  It creates a tremendous strength – a superpower.  Women see more, pick up on more and understand more deeply.  Women are tuned-in in a way men don’t comprehend.

    The problem women have is that they aren’t taught to use their superpower.  They are taught they are emotional and react emotionally.  And our drama loving society continues to feed that narrative knowing that it discredits women.

    Women have to be taught how to use their superpower to their advantage to get justice.  They have to learn and practice processing events emotionally and rationally simultaneously.  Women aren’t men who separate and switch between emotion and rational thinking.

    When women experience a wrong –doing and have an emotional reaction (just like men) they need to vent (just like men).  They vent to one person who will listen and nod but not feed the drama monster.

    After women vent, they need to start thinking and gathering the facts.

    Rule #1 in gathering facts is to keep your mouth shut.  Tell no one what you are doing.  If you need help use a neutral third party who won’t feed the drama monster.  If you tell your friend, the drama monster will get fed.

    When women keep their mouths shut, their superpower kicks into high gear.  Their emotions become their radar.  By listening to initial feelings, gut responses, intuition and funny little feelings they can read a situation.  They become incredibly situationally aware.

    When you fully understand the situation, you know how to present your case.  You also know how it will be countered.  You can then present the counter to the counter argument.

    Sound complicated?  It isn’t.  It’s what women already do.

    One of my first articles was  about the Rachel Letter.  The name came from the episode of Friends where Rachel writes Ross an 18 page letter – front and back.  Women (and men who have been the recipient of one) know exactly what I am talking about.  This letter has a powerful business application.  (All men just said “Oh no!”).

    Women’s ability to write this type of letter is really about their ability to organize and connect a great number of details.  When those details are connected logically and rationally, we build a case that is hard to dismiss or dispute.  (Maybe this is why women make such great lawyers.)

    Typically when women write a Rachel Letter in their private lives they include emotion and feelings.  In business those have to be removed.  You want to present the facts, just the facts.

    It takes practice to build the skills to eliminate emotion and present pure facts.  I used other opportunities such as writing plans, reports and proposals to learn how to write and state a case.  I also did a lot of briefings and presentations.  For me there was two prong benefit – I got really good at business communication and I could build the detailed case to right any wrong-doing.

    It also takes practice to stop feeding the drama monster.  It takes practice to stop talking to everyone for validation and to start venting so the emotion is processed and can be put to a constructive use.

    Many years ago I knew a woman who caught her powerful husband having an affair with his secretary.  She told no one.  She gathered her facts.  With the help of an attorney she worked out her plan.  She then secretly presented her facts to her husband’s boss.  With no notice, the boss flew in, walked into the husband’s office and instantly removed him from his position.  It was a perfectly executed castration that all of us were in complete awe of.  She got her justice.

    Women can get justice.  For the most part it is a matter of not doing what they were taught – following the drama route.  Their justice comes from empowering their natural superpower.

     

    Empowered Women Get Justice.

     

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  • Do Women Self-Discriminate?

    Recently I read a comment in a post:18692973_m

    “Women want to be treated the same as men except when they want to be treated differently.”

    Then I did a double take – the comment was written by a woman and had over 10,000 Likes.  Wow!

    I couldn’t help but wonder what experiences 10,000 people had to make them all find more than a grain of truth in that statement.  Do women really want to pick and choose when they want to be treated as equal to men?

    I will admit I’ve known some women like that.

    Gender equality means men and women have equal value and equal treatment.  So to understand the comment, I Googled gender inequality issues, reasons, causes, etc.  Most of the articles discussed income inequality and the wage gap.  There were also a lot of general discussions about glass ceilings and gender biases.  The articles all came from the perspective of how society is constructed to hold women back or make it difficult for women to have economic parity with men.

    However the comment and the experiences of 10,000 people say that it isn’t just society holding women back.  Women aren’t doing all they can to advance themselves either.

    After many hours of searching I still couldn’t find any articles that discussed why women pick and choose their moments of equality.  Then buried in one article I found the term “diminished responsibilities.”  The example it cited was men dismissing a woman who wanted to help unload a truck.  “Don’t worry sweetheart, we got this.  You go on back to the office.”

    According to the article if she wants to unload the truck then the men should let her.  That sounds good.  That sounds like equality.

    But wait!

    What about the other 2 women who work in the office?

    Shouldn’t they be out helping to unload the truck too?  Isn’t that equality?  Or do they get to decide that unloading the truck is man’s work so this is one of those situations they don’t want to be treated as equals?

    In the past we’ve excused women from this type of work because it was physical.  However, current workplace safety rules have pretty much negated this excuse.  Equipment must be used to lift heavy objects, even by men who are strong enough to lift the object without equipment.  So there is no reason why women can’t help unload the truck.

    Today there is no reason why women can’t do the overwhelming vast majority of things once considered a man’s job, even physical work.

    So I see diminished responsibilities expanded with four applications:

    1. It is men saying women can’t  do something because it is a man’s job
    2. It is women excusing themselves from doing something because it is a man’s job

    (We can all come up with examples to fit these applications.)

    1. It is women saying men can’t do something because it is a woman’s job.

    (Sorry, I am having a hard time coming up with an example of this except for giving birth, breast feeding and helicopter mothers who never cut the apron strings to their sons.  I can think of a lot of things we let men do but then aren’t satisfied with the results.  So, if you have an example, leave a comment.)

    1. It is men excusing themselves from something because it is a woman’s job

    (We can come up with a long list of examples but they are all considered politically incorrect.)

    If women will stop themselves from doing a man’s job but won’t stop a man from doing a woman’s job, we can conclude that women pick and choose when we want to be equals.

    That makes women sound like hypocrites.

    If we are going to have true equality then we need to eliminate all four applications of diminished responsibilities.  We need to set a new standard where we see most jobs, tasks, responsibilities and accountabilities in terms of being an adult, not in terms of being a man or a woman.

    Actually this isn’t even an equality issue – it is just a fact of modern life.  Today, there are a lot of single people in all age groups who have to carry life’s responsibilities solo.  Men have to cook, clean the bathroom and do laundry.  Women have to take care of their cars, earn a living and manage their finances.   This is just the way it is.

    And yet, we are still using a mid-20th century perspective of inequality.  Too often we are solely focused on others oppressing or discriminating against women.

    We ignore that many women are still sitting back, letting men take the lead and in a secondary role by their own choosing.  Our society still allows women to choose #2 – to see tasks and jobs as men’s jobs and opt out.

    Even though this still perpetuates the idea that women are weaker or inferior to men, we don’t call this politically incorrect, discrimination or inequality.  But it is self-inflicted discrimination.

    As women we have to look in the mirror and see if we are choosing to hold ourselves back – if we only want to assume the perks of equality and not the less pleasant responsibilities and accountabilities that come with it.

     

    As a society we have to apply equality evenly – between men and women and amongst women.  This means we see men and women as adults who share a common list of responsibilities and accountabilities and have an equal expectation of living up to them.  If we don’t then we all wind up confused and with 10,000 people liking the comment above.  And that’s not good for anyone.

    Empowered Women Don’t Self-Discriminate

     

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  • Why Women Are Mean to Other Women In the Workplace?

    We want to think of women as caring and we hope their presence makes the workplace a more cooperative environment.  As one of my female traits I list that women work in groups and we assume that their groups are cooperative and supportive.  While we want to associate women with positive, peaceful and loving characteristics, we know women can also be extremely nasty to each other in the workplace.  A lot of women report they have worse relationships with female colleagues and supervisors than their male.  24371149_m

    Even though I’ve worked with 50 times more men than women, I would say half of the meanest people I’ve worked with are women.  And by far, the #1 top position is held by a woman who personified every negative quality ever associated with a woman to an extreme degree.  I will give credit to other women who tried to rival her Queen of Mean position, but they all fell short.  And if anyone out there thinks they have a story about a mean and nasty woman in the workplace, believe me, my story can top yours.

    Why can women be so nasty to other women?       

    I think it happens because there is a conflict between who women naturally are and the type of person they think the male-dominated workplace expects them to be.  A lot of women believe that the male-dominated workplace is competitive and in order to rise up, you have to pull down.  Another woman in the workplace is a unique competitor.  Competing against her is not like competing against male colleagues.    

    Women know that being the only or one of a few women in the workplace is an advantage.  We know how to manipulate situations to our advantage in ways our male colleagues can’t.  This was one of the very first lessons I learned as a woman in the male-dominated workplace. 

    When I went into the Air Force, as new 2nd Lt’s we were assembled into groups of 12-15 to meet the top brass.  Typically I was the only woman in the group or on occasion there may have been one other woman.  When the Colonel was introduced to a dozen random faces, he remembers the one that was different.  He always remembered the name and role of the woman in the group.  This was huge advantage. 

    It didn’t take long for me to figure out other ways to take advantage of being a woman.

    If my workplace was working on an important proposal or report, I volunteered to use my better communication and writing skills to proofread.  I could invite myself in as a team member on the most important projects.

    If there is a big meeting with outside clients or senior management, I knew how to get myself introduced.  I just played hostess when lunch was brought in.  Setting up lunch, I got into the conference room.  There is always a man who is anxious to eat.  I introduce myself, strike up a conversation and eat lunch with the big boys.  Meanwhile my male colleagues are wandering around the office trying to figure out how to get in. 

    In one workplace, a retiring male colleague taught me another trick.  The women in the workplace make it their business to know what is going on.  I learned how to use the network of office women to know what was really going on in my workplaces. 

    I’ll be honest, I play the woman card to my advantage.  Some women are afraid of being associated with the stereotypes but we use them to get our foot in the door.  It is what we do once we are in the door that is important. 

    When another woman comes into the workplace, we suddenly have competition – someone who can do what we can do.  Our woman card is no longer as valuable.  Now that competitiveness we were taught to have, kicks in but in a slightly different way than being competitive with men. 

    We see this new woman as invading our turf.  That makes her the aggressor.  She knows we have an advantage in the workplace and she needs to pull us down so she can take our place.  This makes us defensive and women are the most aggressive when they are defensive. 

    Before it became politically incorrect to say so, we believed women had a maternal instinct that made us great defenders.  You Tube is full of videos of females in every species defending their young against predators.  They never back down.  They fight to the death.  No matter what we call it this instinct it makes females incredible defenders.  We will be mean and defend our turf against the new woman. 

    There is another characteristic of the male-dominated workplace can cause women to be nasty to other women – Autonomy.  Men work autonomously.  Women feel ostracized and rejected when their male colleagues work autonomously and not as part of a cooperative team.  I’ve seen this a lot and women become bitter.  They then put on blinders and refuse to help others.  Again, this is a defense mechanism to ward off unhappy feelings.

    When a new woman comes in and the men gravitate toward her because she is the new, a woman’s feelings of estrangement increase.  There is jealousy.  When women see everyone else getting along and they are left out it hurts.  Women can lash out. 

    There are many issues that make women nasty in the workplace.  One of the first things I look for is bullying.  As a manager, I’ve learned that most of the women who were mean, nasty or bullying to other women were acting out from being bullied in the workplace.  Some other women act out due to abuse at home or from being abused as a child.

    When women are mean or nasty in the workplace, we shouldn’t assume they are just ugly people and accept it.  We need to find out the root cause and get it addressed.  Most workplaces have an Employee Assistance Program (EAP) that gives employees resources for free counseling.  Our goal is not to punish and further ostracize the woman but to solve the root cause of the issue so we can bring her into the team if possible. 

    I’ve found it is best if women are allowed to work out the issues amongst themselves with little HR involvement.  A third party is used to choose sides.  And if a male manager wants to get involved don’t let him!  I’ve never seen men getting in the middle of a dispute between women without making it worse.  He will allow himself to be used to choose one side, then the other side, then back to other.  Men try to treat women like men when resolving their conflict.  It makes the backstabbing between the women escalate. 

    While we can’t stop either men or women from bringing their personal baggage and issues into the workplace, we can change the male-dominated workplace so women don’t feel the need to compete and take down each other.  Women should understand that we excel when we work in cooperative and supportive groups.  If we aren’t working that way then we need to figure out why.  That may sound Pollyanna-ish but it is part of our responsibility as being empowered women.      

    Empowered Women Ensure Women Work in Supportive and Cooperative Groups

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  • Speaking from a Female Perspective Isn’t Sexist

    I read a post from a male friend on facebook who was upset over Carly Fiorina quoting Margaret Thatcher during the Republican debate: “If you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

    Copyright: lightpoet / 123RF Stock Photo
    Copyright: lightpoet / 123RF Stock Photo

    He was angry at her for both saying it and thinking it. He thought she was being sexist against men. He was upset that none of the male Presidential candidates took issue with her. He assumed the reason they didn’t was out of fear of being labeled sexist.

    I suggested to him that they didn’t respond because from a female perspective there was a lot of truth to what she was saying and they didn’t want to step into that hornet’s nest.

    His comments reminded me once again how sensitive many men and women are about the subject of empowering women.

    The reason why is simple. We grew up with values and norms that told us how to be good and successful people. They told us how we can fit into society and find our acceptance. So we all have perceptions about ourselves that we depend on to make us feel good about who we are. If those perceptions are challenged, questioned or even if someone expresses a different point of view, it can affect how we feel about ourselves. So we naturally become defensive and protect our perceptions about ourselves.

    For many men the idea of empowering women still makes them feel very defensive. They believe that empowering women means disempowering men. This is why I love the concept that women hold up half the sky. It says we don’t need to take power from men because we have our own. But even with that there are men who grew up believing men hold up the entire sky and  will still see themselves losing half the sky.

    A former employer told me my website was “politically incorrect.” They were afraid I was offending men (potential clients) who didn’t perceive women as equal. But their perception was actually based upon their own perceptions of the potential clients. In reality the potential clients supported advancing women as evidenced by the women’s STEM and educational programs they generously funded.

    Many women don’t like that I say men and women have some differences because they define equal as being the same. To them, for women to be equal to men, means we must be the same as men. They believe that if men and women have different traits, then female traits will be rated as inferior to male traits.

    Some women say I bring back the stereotypes if I group career women and stay at home mothers together as women. Many people still perceive them as two very distinct types of women with very little in common.

    Much of this sensitivity exists because our society still highly values traits we classify as male. We were taught to equate success with male traits. Therefore, we haven’t thought there was much value in exploring the traits we classify as female or understanding the characteristics unique to women so we can find their value.

    Going back to my facebook friend, his perception comes through his pure male perspective. He never worked with a woman as his peer – he only understands women from the perspective of his personal relationships. Therefore he has no experience to draw on in order to understand the how women think and work in a business or government environment.

    I suspect his real problem with Carly’s quote was that it threw off his perception that she was a man in a dress. For the first time he saw her as a woman with a female point of view. That made him very nervous. Then using the rest of his perceptions he evolved her into being “part of the sexist divisive liberal culture.” That allowed him to dismiss her and protect his comfort zone.

    The reality is that he isn’t ready for a female President because he has no concept of what that would mean.  He has no idea how a woman acting through a female perspective would be different from a man.

    Margaret Thatcher, Carly Fiorina, Hillary Clinton and many other women know men through society’s male perspective and through their own female perspective. It is from their female perspective they make statements like “If you want something talked about, ask a man. If you want something done, ask a woman.”

    It can be shocking statement to men who haven’t heard women in a professional setting express themselves through their female perspective.  But the truth is professional women make these comments all the time – amongst ourselves.  Kudos to Margret Thatcher for openly expressing her female perspective.

    Making men like my facebook friend comfortable with a female perspective requires exposure and experience. And we obviously still have a long way to go. Like my male peers through the years, he has to learn first-hand that a female peer doesn’t diminish him in any way. Women help men like him along when we openly express ourselves through our female perspective. That doesn’t make us sexist or divisive and we shouldn’t stop speaking just because someone throws out those labels. Their intent is to stop us from expressing ourselves so they can remain safely tucked in their comfort zone. But we are much stronger than that and we will continue to speak from our female perspective.

     

    Empowered Women Express Their Perspective

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  • How Your Male Co-Workers View Your Availability

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    Last week Meghan Casserly of Forbes published an article – Every Man You Work With Thinks You Want to Sleep With Him.  This article raised some eyebrows.  Is this true?  Do the men we work with look at us sexually even though we have platonic relationships?  And is it true that it doesn’t matter if we are in a relationship – they still think we want to sleep with them??

    Meghan has an attention getting headline and her article has some truth.  But it doesn’t explain what men are really thinking and how we as women can control this situation.  So, let me explain.  (more…)

  • How To Respond To An Inappropriate Comment

    A reader wrote to me about a job interview in which the male interviewers made inappropriate comments. It brings up the question – what should we do in this situation? Our initial instinct is to get angry and tell them off but more often than not we don’t call them on it at all.  How do we find the appropriate response that makes us feel proud of ourselves? (more…)