Cool Fashion Site - Polyvore

If you can dream of it, you can probably make it happen on the web today if it isn't already happening on the web today! Today I cam across a site called Polyvore, a fabulous site that helps you put sets of clothes together from many popular brands today. I love the interactive nature of the site that allows you to arrange images of the items with a tool so its not just a shopping site but designer site as the images are worthy of fashion magazine content. Alternatively ask the community for advice on what would work well with a favorite pair of boots or t-shirt to complete an outfit.

Earlier in the year I had drafted a plan for what kind of service I thought would be great that possibly only a woman could invent but as it turns out the CEO is female but the three co-founders are male. All the co-founders come from computer science backgrounds, with two of them having experience from Yahoo! Their new CEO comes from Google Inc. with extensive experience in business. It is still essential for startups to be enabled that their founders are tech-savvy and code-abled, so it remains essential that women stay engaged with computer science. It will be interesting to see where this site goes in the future. However as the average female user of the site is 22 year fold female, I'm not sure I'm going to find the best options for myself here but who knows, maybe I'll be inspired.

What was "Good Work" for women in the thirties?

Here's a little historical find. This film was made prior to 1931 by the Women's bureau of the department of labor in the US. It was around the time of scientific management processes and it was believed if people were appropriately assessed that they could be placed in positions better to their liking.

This film was shown to young girls in high school to encourage them to enter the workforce, that is until they got married. So 80 years ago this was progress, yes, yes we have made terrific progress but every so often I pause with sadness for the women of that generation and generations before that - they were talented and skilled but not given the support we get today.

However the take home line from the film is still appropriate today. "Waste is prevented when women like their jobs and do good work."

Do it - Make Appealing Apps for iPad for Women

And so it seems that there's a technology adoption at work that is following a very common curve. While initially men were significantly the early adopters of the iPad that the trend is turning in the US to women starting to pick up grown in adopting the ipad.

Yahoo! has reported that initially the ratio of adoption of the iPad was a 2:1 ratio of male to female adopters. This number has now become a 3:2 ratio. Frequently female are the later adopters but are also the most loyal, and steadily creative adopters.

Initially digital photography was the domain of men, while the women still tried to maintain the family photo albums, then eventually the tools became less 'geeky' and women could return to being the primary photo story-tellers in the family. Blogging - was initially seen as a mail past-time because the bloggers that got the most attention were written by men, but in the background it was women that were generating the mass movement of blogging personal stories. Could the iPad be another of these trends? Could the iPad be the form factor that is used when waiting in the pick-up lane at a school? or when visiting ailing parents at care-centers?

What could iPad provide you with to just make it an emotionally satisfying and useful moment?

What is gender equality? 50/50 or do we settle for less?

A survey was conducted by the Pew Research Center that asked for opinions on rights between the genders. One question in the survey was do men deserve jobs more when jobs are scarce. If people truly believed in equality the response would have 100% but that is not the case. In the survey, a question was asked about whether respondents believed in equality between genders, and also a question about who deserved jobs more in times when jobs are scarce. At first glance I was much relieved that in European countries and US that progress has been made, however on second review I realized that, wait a minute, the numbers are still not 100% and that continues to mean lack of support for equality. I always find it surprising how I initially look at numbers related to equality and am often grateful when the numbers are no single digits, or when a number has nudged up a few percent, and that anything above 19% seems 'almost there in terms of equality'. For example at work (engineering software company) I am use to being in a room with myself being the only female or a couple of others in a room of 10-20 people. So when we get to 5-6 women in the room it feels almost balanced.

When my family was visiting England a year ago, the taxi driver was asking my husband about women in politics, and my husband started to tell the driver that in the US things were pretty good for females in politics, he was talking merrily and one would almost think equality had been achieved, he seemed surprised when I said I didn't think it was the case. By comparison to his youth there are a lot of females in government but in fact there are only 17 female senators out of 100 today. Does this pass for 'equality'?

74 congress-women out of 448 - compared to previous decades this is significant but its not equality. How do we stay the course until the number is 224, or at least 224 plus/minus 10.

Government is one place where every senator and congress-person has a single vote so representation is important and makes a difference. What's the best I can hope for in my lifetime? 25% female representation?

Getting Investment Dollars to Female-owned Startups

Here's another story on the challenges women have in getting investment dollars for their startups. The numbers for 2007 state that only 3% of startups that receive funding are headed up by women. This is seriously sad.

Astia is a non-profit organization that tries to introduce women who are looking for funding to potential investors, and also advisers and coaches that can help them in their quest to get their companies moving. Astia has a good track record of supporting women but Sharon Vosmerk wants to figure out a way to scale that support. Earlier this month the organization held a summit to review this question: are there different characteristics between women who start companies and men, with the belief that it was older women starting up companies looking for better work/life balance. However what they found were the characteristics were the same. They did find a difference though that showed women look for relationships more (such as seeking out mentors, morale supporters, finance partners) whereas men need less encouragement to get started.

I love the fact the article closes on - if female start ups received the same funding that male startups currently receive they would add 6 million jobs to the market place in less than 5 years. See - this is why it matters that women get the support they need.

Science and Housework - What's the Connection?

So what should be considered when trying to figure out how to increase the number of females in top science positions at universities? Try, housework! This study focused only on scientists and studied scientist that were in a partner relationship. They found out what percent of each household activity the male partner did and the female partner did. And what do you know, female scientists (in a partnership relationship) are more likely to spend around another 10 hours a week doing household activities, making a total of 20 hours of household chores a week!

Recently my husband and I were discussing multi-tasking, and I made the general statement that I thought women were better at it than men. However we had been talking about a lab experiment type of situation, and he claimed that he didn't know of any gender research that proved that point. Afterwards I reflected on my generalization - did I really "think" we're better multi-taskers, I certainly "feel" it, and if so what variables are at play. I realized that unfortunately the variables that make me believe that we are explanations like I feel compelled to get 101 things done before I do something of personal enrichment like reading the newspaper, or responding to email at the weekend. I have laundry to put away, kids hair to brush, birthday presents to buy, shoes to polish, homework to do with kids, ride shares to schedule, put away toys, sort out old books from kids book shelves, and on, and on. Seriously, am I multi-tasking or am I prioritizing differently? So if it were an experiment and one task were to read an article on the internet for personal enjoyment, and the other was to complete some household tasks to keep the family running - I would probably score 100% on the household chores but run out of time for the article, whereas my husband would probably score 100% on the reading task (oh, and then some because why not check out another article related to one you're reading about, and maybe wikipedia also has something to say about it....) and he'd score significantly lower on the household tasks, though some of the tasks would definitely be somewhat completed but probably not in a sustainable manner. So I'm not entirely sure if it is multi-tasking I should be comparing the genders on but sustainable household management behaviors.

(However I still declare that let's just take the task of being able to walk up the stairs, notice items on the lower steps that need picking up and putting in a room upstairs, before sitting in front of the office computer a multi-tasking event - and I know which gender does that one WAY better than the other).

What We Could Learn From a Day with Hilary?

Seriously, what does a day in the life of Hilary Clinton look like? What skills does she have to employ to accomplish her goals? How did she learn to become a master of negotiation? How does she know when to keep a hard line and when to keep doors open?

This week in Newsweek there is an article on Hilary, which talks about how she has created a strong working relationship with Obama, once her rival for the presidency and now her President and boss. I would love to get an itemized list of her behaviors and verbal skills for one day to see how she demonstrates mastery of political skills. I can only imagine she's outstanding most of the time, but is this a skill she knows she is working day after day, or does it come naturally now. Does she smile inside when she's hit a home run, talking someone into a position where she can move towards a goal she's come to accomplish. Does she walk into meetings having deliberately prepared moves, statements, positions, and carefully plays her hand? Does she leave the room sometimes having got what she wanted but is emotionally drained at the effort it required?

I can only imagine that she is focused, and driven, and action oriented. In fact there's a quote from an NSC official in the article that belittles her in a way I doubt a man in the role would be referred to, "She has no real strategic vision, but she'll get done what she has to do. She's the good little Methodist girl. In the end she'll have her list of the nine or 10 things she has to do and check them off one by one", I like Clinton's come back to that comment, "At the end of the day, have you solved the problem or haven't you? Have you crossed it off the list or haven't you?". Isn't results driven one of the skills one wants to see in Secretary of State?

Maybe the role of Secretary of State requires a diverse perspective these days - the last 4 who have held these positions have been from a minority: 3 women, and 2 African-American (of course Condeleezza Rice gets to clock up a count on both fronts). Progress, moving an agenda forward and managing diplomacy requires skills to check the ego at the door and to keep focused. I really must read more about these individuals.