My Sources (#1)

My sources are what have breathed life into all of my posts. Without them, the content on my blog would be limited to the few things I know about women in business. And since I'm not very knowledgeable in that subject, one can only imagine how unimpressive my blog would look like right now. Thankfully, that isn't the case.

In order to fully understand women's strifes and strides in the male dominated business world, I explored blogs, business articles, and other types of informative websites. Although few of the blogs I found struck me as useful, I did come across two particular blogs that sparked my interest. Mamas, Don’t Let Your Sons Marry Professional Women and We’ve Come a Long Way Baby, focus their attention on a recent Forbes article titled Don’t Marry a Career Women. According to Michael Noer, the author of this article, “Professional women are more likely to get divorced, more likely to cheat and less likely to have children . . .” The main goal of these blogs is to stick up for career women who, time and time again, have endured harsh criticism simply because they are dedicated to their careers. The writer of Mamas, Don’t Let Your Sons Marry Professional Women breaks down each one of Noer’s arguments in a blunt and quite humorous way. For example, Noer states that marrying a successful woman is "asking for trouble", not only will both spouses end up dissatisfied, but their home will end up looking like a pig sty. In response to this, the feisty female blogger writes:

Look, numb nut, if both spouses are working full time, of course the house is going to be dirtier than if the wife stays at home and dedicates herself to domestic chores. Jesus fuck, am I being too Captain Obvious here? What the author also neglects to mention is how in households in which both spouses work, women often still end up doing the lion's share of the housework.

Not surprisingly, the two blogs mentioned above, turned out to be very female biased, and are mainly geared towards independent, career driven women.

During my search for information, I came across the blog site Free Democracy. This site contains several posts dealing with political and business news, one of which is titled How Carly Lost Her Gender Groove. This piece of work is not a blog, but is actually a repost of an article written for the New York Times. In this article, readers learn about some of the bumps, potholes, and dead ends that prominent CEO, Carleton Fiorina, encountered during her journey to the top.

When it came time to search for non-blog sources, I decided that I would search for three types of information. First, I would look for articles relating to women’s recent successes in business schools and in the business world. Second, I would seek sources that addressed the many struggles, obstacles, myths, and misconceptions that have been associated with women. Finally, I would search for miscellaneous business articles that may or may not be useful to me in the future.

Two articles dealing with women's successes are America’s Top Business Women and As Leaders, Women Rule. America’s Top Business Women came out Forbes magazine and serves to introduce readers to the names, industries, and career histories of some the most prominent female business leaders in the United States. These women include: Judy Lewnt- CFO and Vice President of Merk, Jamie Gorlick- Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae, and Dina Dublon- CFO and Vice President of JP Morgan Chase. The second article, As Leaders, Women Rule, came from Business Week magazine and addresses studies that have found women to be better executive leaders than men. In addition to those two websites, I also found a site the provided me with essential quantitative information. The AACSB site displayed many facts and figures regarding the number of Masters Degrees and college degrees that have been awarded in the United States over the past 50 years.

My second group of sources deals with the downfalls of being a woman in business. The site titled Feminist Research addresses many of the issues that I would like to elaborate on through out the course of the semester. This site touches on topics such as the glass ceiling, and it causes. Most interestingly, this site discusses many of the myths and facts that are associated with business women. The article titled Women and Minority Owned Businesses explains a few of the inequities women face when opening up a new business. The biggest obstacle, according to this article, is obtaining capital. The content of another source, Turning Advantages into Disadvantages, overlaps with a few of the topics found in the articles mentioned above. This particular article does a great job at explaining the barriers that women encounter, and also touches on topics such networking and capital finance.

Finally, my last group of sources consists of miscellaneous articles. Although I originally thought that these articles would be of little use to me, I have found them to be quite useful. For example, the Fortune piece titled Power Portraits contains very little writing and mainly consists of portraits depicting prominent business leaders. These portraits alone inspired me to write my last blog post titled “Where Are All The Women?” The Forbes article titled Don’t Marry a Career Women, was another article that I wasn’t sure what I would do with. Shortly after I discovered it, I used it to write one of my first comments on another blogger's page.