The world economy has been in turmoil since 2008, and it doesn’t appear to be stopping anytime soon.  Unable to rely on others for employment, many people all over the world have been opening their own businesses since the economy has faltered.  It only seems just and right to allow anyone the opportunity to do the same — and it may just be these small businesses that help the broken economies of the world rise from the ashes.

Sadly, archaic laws forbidding women to own businesses in many countries can be detrimental to the recovery process.  Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit this past November, addressing the issue.  She said:

At a time when the global economy is still struggling, we cannot afford to  ignore this potential. [...] When we liberate the economic potential of women, we  elevate the economic performance of communities, nations and, indeed, the world.

She went on to cite a World Bank report that stated the more women who are allowed to engage in the global economy, the faster the recovery will be.  At the moment, many women in Asian-Pacific countries are either not allowed to own businesses or are subject to an entirely different set of rules and regulations, such as higher tax rates, than men.  Taking down these barriers can only be a positive move for economies and women’s rights in general.

Canadian Eva [last name not provided] of Canada started her own hair growth oil company and has seen booming business in the last few years.  She receives many requests from women all over the world who are interested in marketing her product in their country, but are unable to due to unfair regulations imposed on them.  Let’s do the right thing — the smart thing — and make these opportunities available for everyone.

Women are constantly fighting a glass ceiling which exists in many industries to this day both in terms of pay for job placement, but also in terms of being promoted to the highest levels of companies.

One industry which has been slow to adapt is the wine industry.  There are a select few female winemakers in the major wine producing regions of the world like Bordeaux, Napa Valley and Burgundy.

That isn’t to say there is not hope for the future.  As any wine of the month club member can tell you, reading only a winemaker bio or two a month as part of a shipment gives you a pretty good idea about how a winemaker gets to their job. It usually starts with a viticulture degree from one of the few Universities which offer such a program.  In the United States, UC Davis is far and away the leader in producing upcoming winemakers.  The viticulture program at Davis now boasts at least 60% of its students, are women.

Time will tell, but this feels like the beginning of a more equatable distribution of work within the wine industry.

Mistreatment of women is known to cause stress & depression, often these conditions remain even years after the original stressor. Excessive stress affects our health because our immune system is compromised due to what the body sees as our priority – the stress it’s dealing with at the time. Under stress, cortisol (the so-called “stress hormone”), is released into the body in preparation for fighting or fleeing. However, when neither of these take place, because it’s no longer appropriate to fight, and uncool to flee, the body is left with a flood of hormones to use up. Too much cortisol in the body can produce cravings for carbohydrate and high cholesterol diet.

I wish I knew the stuff I know now about handling stress when I found myself a single mum bringing up a daughter on a very low income who had stress & depression haunting her from her past experiences. Back then (15yrs seems so long ago) I battled depression myself while trying to take care of my 10mth old daughter on my own. A doctor prescribed antidepressants, which I didn’t want to take but I didn’t know where else to go for the help I needed to handle the overwhelming rollercoaster of emotions I was experiencing.

I felt angry, depressed and powerless, and didn’t know what to do with it all. My way of coping was to sleep as much as possible and try not to interact too much with people because I developed anxiety and overwhelm when I did.

Depression is prevalent in mistreated women and you only need take a look at the statistics of anti-depression prescriptions written each year as well as the over-the-counter sales of “stress busting” natural and synthetic potions to realize just how big a problem it is.

Often stress at the initial time of learning is the cause of these “blind spots” and unfortunately there are triggers setting off that original stress over and over again. It’s vital for the women going through this get the necessary help, be it stress management, time with mental health professionals or support group. It’s important to further improve this infrastructure & constantly push the appropriate institutions to further work & finance these programs.

Women in the work place face a large number of personal and physical problems in various areas. Even today women in the work place are plagued by problems like discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, caste, color or economic status.

There have been a large number of factors responsible for the low percentage of women in the professional workforce. One of the main factors has been that since generations there has been a trend in society to consider the man as the breadwinners and the woman as the child bearer and housekeeper in the family. Through generations men and women have been conditioned to think in this manner, but nowadays with an increase in awareness in society there has been a definite increase in the percentage of women opting for professions other than child bearing and housekeeping.

The early part of the previous century saw an increase in the percentage of women choosing to work outside their families, but nowadays studies have shown a decline in the number of women who want to go out of their houses and work. Discriminations and inequalities on the basis of gender, harassment, abuse, lack of security, medical facilities, and inadequate support from the family and society are some of the main factors deterring women from taking up full time professional careers. Certain issues like household stress combined with job stress have a negative effect on a woman’s desire to work in a professional setup.

Nowadays there has been a lot of improvement in the facilities available to working women, and a lot of organizations have taken an initiative in addressing the various issues affecting women. Authorities need to be able to recognize and identify the different issues related to women and provide adequate support and facility to ensure a feasible solution to the issues faced by women in the work place. Problems like stress, anxiety, depression due to uncomfortable work environment need to be addressed, safety nets & support groups need to be readily available along with mental health professionals qualified to perform depression test, bipolar test & various other mental health tests that might be necessary for a proper diagnosis in order to provide the best possible support.

In order to improve the prospect’s of women in the work place it is important that women be provided with adequate training and information regarding their chosen vocations. Counseling and guidance in dealing with issues related to the family and work related problems are also necessary to ensure the increase in the percentage of women in the work place.

With so much emphasis placed on looking slim, many women today are neglecting their health for the sake of outward appearances. The fact of the matter is that dieting, in other words restricting our calorific intake, is un-necessary – provided that we consume the right kinds of foods. There is so much confusion in the popular press today and many women believe that consuming a low carb diet is their best option. Unfortunately this just goes to show the power of marketing over facts.

We need to get back to our roots and start remembering what our mothers told us when we were growing up. Did you ever hear your mum tell you to put down that apple or don’t eat that banana? I somehow doubt it. In fact, they’d be even less likely to say eat more of that fatty meat.

So rather than a fried breakfast every morning, or another mistake, no breakfast in the morning – what we should be encouraging our children, husbands, friends, colleagues and everyone we know to do is to eat fruit for breakfast. It’s quick, it’s simple, it’s healthy, it’s hydrating, it’s nutritious, it’s tasty and it gives us the energy we need at the start of the day.

Many households these days consume fruit and vegetable juices. Are you looking for the best juicer? There are a range of different options, one of which is sure to be perfect for your home.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to introduce Nexa, a women owned Lifestyle Company focusing on living and investing in Central American.  The address for the Nexa website is: http://www.nexausa.com/

Now before I share further details about how Nexa came about and why it’s special that it is owned by women I need to disclose that I am one of the co-founders.  I am not involved in the day-to-day management, but was closely involved in developing the goals of the organization and it’s vision.

Having lived and invested for the last 10 years in Central America (primarily Nicaragua, Panama and Belize) I noticed that women were generally absent when it came to real estate development and sales.  Most brokerages were owned by men.  There were certainly a scattering of individual female real estate agents, but the firms where governed by men.  The same situation emerged when I looked at real estate develops.  Despite the fact that females make up a good proportion of buyers in these projects, they were almost exclusively men owned.

Nexa is one of many companies that grow out of a series of  “Successful women in Central America” forums that we ran.  These showcased the work of dozens of very impressive women.  A great deal of networking and collaboration opportunities arose.

Our next step is to encourage women owners in Central America to showcase a specially designed “Woman Owned” badge on their websites and at their physical place of business.  This will eventually be tied to a code of ethics so that clients, customers and buyers understand some of the benefits that can accrue to them following their support of women in business.

When it comes to seeking equality for women then it is normally for issues such as women’s rights in countries that are still using traditional laws that are extremely outdated.

There are numerous issues that can be addressed when it comes to women’s issues but one that wasn’t addressed until fairly recently was that of women and smoking. For decades it was thought to be a predominantly male problem due to the social and financial aspect of smoking. Studies taken in the last to decades though have shown smoking to be an increasing problem for many women indifferent countries worldwide.

There are many reasons for the increase in women smokers, as an example, the production of cigarette brands targeted directly to women such as Kim, Virginia Slims and Charm & Eve. There are also still advertisements in magazines portraying smoking as a romantic, liberated and sophisticated thing to do as well as many women believing that smoking can help control weight and if they quit they will pile on the pounds.

The key to controlling cigarette smoking amongst women could be with the types of cessation devices made available as well as healthier alternatives. One such alternative that could be the answer is the E-Lites electronic cigarette, a device that delivers a dose of nicotine without the many carcinogens that are the cause of many smoking related diseases. This alternative can be more cost effective as well with nicotine cartridges being far cheaper than cigarettes as well as the use of an discount code for E-Lites to save more money.

For women to address their smoking problem they don’t need to cut out nicotine immediately, this has been the downfall for many when attempting to quit. Maybe the electronic cigarette could be the answer for all smokers?

The female human rights activist Zainab Salbi deserves everyone’s attention. She experienced first hand war torn Iraq. She pleads the media and those who consume media reports about war zones to look not only at the geo-peolitical and logistical aspects of a conflict, but also the human aspect of war.

Zanib Salbi as a child remembers hearing and seeing a missile fly overhead. She said a secret prayer that the missle wouldn’t land on her family home. The missile landed instead in her bother’s friend’s family home. The mother survived the missile attack and Zanib remembers she went to her school to beg for photos of her dead son because she had lost everything.

In the TED talk below you can see Zanib discuss war and war reporting. She brings insight into this topic. Showing how the media casually treat casualties; how the essential pain of war is drained out of reporting.

She wants to tell the world about the ‘unbearable silence’ that conflict creates – as if humanity itself has gone silent. She wants to tell the world that5 80% of refugees are women and children. That 80% of amputees are women and children.

Zainab Salbi is the founder of Women for Women International.

In some ways Thailand, and in particular Bangkok, is a great place for female workers. A story in the Bangkok Post for 9th March 2012 shows that women in Thailand grab 39% of senior management roles. This is much better than the global average of 21%, and very much better than other Asian emerging economies.

Thailand has good infrastructure. It has over 90% literacy rates. The minimum wage has been steadily rising over the last ten years. Tourism, agriculture and Japanese factories have done the Thai economy a lot of good, and has also raised the general living standard of the country.

There are many female office workers in Bangkok. They have a good transport system to use, receive benefits and also a weekend. As would be expected the general level of salary for women working in Bangkok whether in an office, in a bar, in a service orientated business or some other type of business is higher than anywhere else in Thailand.

It is estimated that there are between 30,000 and 1 million sex workers in Thailand.  Bangkok is the center for this trade. The prostitution business in Bangkok is often misunderstood. It is not just a result of tourism – most of the sex workers are for local men. In most cases the women aren’t forced into sex slavery, but rather are pushed into it by social attitudes and by economic necessity. A girl working in a go go bar can send $300 a month back to her family. This would be impossible with an office salary.

The only effective way to curtail the sex industry is to improve employment options for women and also to crack down on the male consumers. Criminalizing sex workers has been shown to be an utter failure.

The Bangkok authorities show no political will to tackle an issue it sees as of low importance. Indeed, it is a patriarchal view that generally sees nothing wrong with the objectification of women

Feminism is a belief by some women that they are entitled to equal opportunities in every area of the society. Some of these areas include education, economic, social rights, political rights that ensure that women are not oppressed by men in the society. Many feminists believe that they are equal to men and therefore should not be identified by their gender but by their performance in various aspects of the society. Due to these beliefs there are some men who do not want to be associated with these women they associate with the need for emancipation. This approach by men has made it hard for feminists who might be interested in dating and eventually starting their own families.

However, with the growth of online dating sites feminists are now able to find potential partners who are supportive of their beliefs and are willing to have a relationship with a woman who believes in the importance of their emancipation. Many feminists indicate on their profiles about their beliefs so that any man who is interested is aware of the kind of person they are dealing with. The meeting of men online allows them to be able to separate those that respect their views and those that do not. They are also able to control the progress of the relationship determining whether it is worth their time or not, which gives them as sense of empowerment as women.

Online dating reviews also help feminists in the selection of the dating websites that they would want to sign up on depending on the benefits they will receive as well as the type of people they are likely to meet on the site. Whenever a feminist feels that they are empowered in their choices then they can be successful in online dating.

I have a feminist friend who I talked about before in this space.  After talking to her some, it became apparent that she loves women and her role as a consumer in increasing their roles in the workforce. How does she do that you might wonder…..

Take her recent purchase of a group of wine gift baskets for her colleagues after she received a promotion at work. She had decided that she would only purchase products made by women.  The baskets were easy, she found a store which sells fair trade certified baskets from Africa.  The chocolate and crackers were pretty easy to find since she has a ton of choices right in her San Francisco neighborhood.  She said that the wine was the most difficult part because there are very few female winemakers working at wineries owned by women.  I guess there is a glass door of sorts still within the wine industry since plenty of women are becoming winemakers, but there are an incredibly small number of winery owners who are women.

The campaign for equal rights for women needs to take the fight to professions which are usually dominated by men. One of those professions is engineering.

Only 20% of new engineer graduates in the USA in 2001 were women. Despite an upturn in the next two years in female enrollment in engineering courses, by 2003 only 11% of the workforce of engineers were women. This is hard to understand – women are just as capable of studying the theory of engineering as men, moreover modern engineering doesn’t require great physical strength or back breaking work.

Why are there so few women working in electrode design, in aerospace, in chemical engineering, in the automobile industry, in software design? To name but a few of the many jobs available to the modern engineer.

A large part of the problem is education. Even today educators either wittingly or unwittingly push boys in one direction and the girls in another direction. The humanities is often seen as suitable for women to study. Men it seems should study science, engineering and maths. It is part of the ingrained chauvinism of many communities. Yes there has been many great female writers and painter, but there has also been several great female engineers.

There is Kate Gleason who helped propel her father’s business to the forefront of gear-cutting machines in the USA in the early 1900s. Kate Gleason was the first female member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Here is a list taken from http://blog.ansys.com of important female engineers and inventors:

Helen Augusta Blanchard – one of the greatest inventors of the industrial era
Martha J. Coston – developed signal flares that are still used today by the U.S. Navy
Edith Clarke -  the first woman to earn an electrical engineering degree from MIT
Olive Dennis – the first female member of the American Railway Engineering Association
Elsie Eaves -  the first woman to be a full member of the American Society of Civil Engineers
Irmgard Flugge-Lotz – Stanford University’s first female full professor in engineering
Lillian Gilbreth – the first female to be elected to the National Academy of Engineering
Grace Murray Hopper – a remarkable woman, rear admiral and PhD who grandly rose to the challenges of programming the first computers
Emily W. Roebling – considered to be in charge of day-to-day construction of the Brooklyn Bridge
Nora Stanton – the first female member of the American Society of Civil Engineers
Mary Walton – a pioneer in reducing air pollution during the Industrial Revolution

These are the role-models we should tell female students in school about. Their biographies will do no small amount in the long run to get more women into engineering.

All people are created equally and women should be treated the same way. We have been fighting prejudice for many, many years and it has yet to be defeated. Even though, the United States government was created under the idea that all people are created equal, we have come a long way to even get some of that freedom to its people. But, not only is prejudice apparent in the United States, but it is spread out all throughout the world. You can see females getting mistreated and not being given their rights, when they should be. People are created equal period. We all have freedom and nobody should be denied their treatment of equality.

Women can do all things that men can do, and sometimes even better then them. They are able to teach, practice business and law, perform athletically and many other things. They can even jump higher than some men do. If they practice vertical leap training and practice ritually, while reading the jump manual for tips on jumping higher, they can definitely learn to jump. But not only, can women perform athletically, they can do well in other areas, that were once thought that only men can do.

Academics is another example. Whether they are male or female, they both can do well in academics. It’s not like our brains are different sizes by being one gender or another. You can teach a male as easily as you can teach a female. The most important thing to note is that, the sex isn’t important. It’s the individual that makes the person. The character is the most important part of a person and it should always be viewed as that, whether they are men, women, blue, green, or animals. Outer appearances shouldn’t affect anybody’s freedom and anybody’s rights. Certain laws in certain countries should be eliminated due to sexism and the color of ones skin. We, as a society have evolved to add more freedom to an individual than ever, and our laws should reflect that.

Turning your hobby into a profit is no small undertaking for neither men or women, but you can succeed too only to enjoy working your dream job. When faced with this reality, many of us will dream of the many ways our lives would improve if we were our own boss. We usually think that men do the work and business than women. But, works which is done by men can now be done with women. It is a wrong thinking that only “Men and Business” because it can also be “Women and Business”. Some will understand full well that there is a “glass ceiling” at the top of their corporate ladder or they have begun to understand they are working a dead end job. The most important point is assessing also what you dislike most working for others. It is essential that you have a good working relationship with one another in a certain workplace. We talked to a woman who loved making parfume, and have turned that into a successful business. Parfume was just a small test project she had when she started out, now parfume is one of the largest internet shops in its niche as you can see here Parfume. 

Women knows a lot about how to deal with life and any problems and it can be perfect for business. Remember assessing your life in a logical fashion will help you when you turn your hobby into a profit. Asking yourself specific questions will help give your future business an excellent managerial foundation. Through channeling ideas about what you really hated at your last job, to focusing on a time line and other business aspects, you can start the preliminary stages of planning to help you turn your hobby into a profit like we saw above with parfume. Now that you have compiled all of the things you hated or loved about your old job, you should be able to incorporate these important traits into the business you will soon create. You need to consider this step an important aspect to design your business so you should take this step seriously. Usually, this is too general for women when they want to turn their hobby into a profitable business. Try to incorporate this idea into all of the ideas you have already sketched out for your business model. You will likely think of more ideas to incorporate into your business model once you introduce your hobby into it. Focus on the specifics of their business.   

While there are many ways to learn the art of sales, the best way is to have a job in sales so you can regularly practice how to sell any product to another individual. One of the most popular ways is doing like the Parfume company did and start it as an online shop. Learning sales should be a top priority for you as you get ready to turn your hobby into a profitable business. If you decide this to be a method of your choice, make sure you find a salesman, any salesman, so you can incorporate everything you learned in the book to a realistic situation. If you decide to follow a salesman, make sure you are watching these crucial parts of their sales call, otherwise, you have wasted your time following them.

By doing this, you will keep your customers happy and will continue to help your business grow and prosper as you rise in a new industry. Whether you decide to implement other things into your business or keep your business small until you are financially ready to expand, make sure you are constantly analyzing your business to look for new ways to improve.

Many people claim that women are better at lawyering than men; one of the main reasons is their ability to quickly counterattack arguments and make sense of them even when they don’t seem to make sense.  During my teenage years a few friends of mine got into problems and hired women lawyers who got them off the hook with ease.  I personally was in need of credit card debt relief a few years back and saw a woman bankruptcy attorney.  She was able to get me a great deal through the courts.

We have seen such great strides over the past 50 years with civil and woman’s rights.  One can only imagine how far we will come in the years ahead.  I for one and optimistic, I have seen firsthand on many occasions where women do just as good if not a better job than men.  Just a few years ago we almost saw the first woman president elected, but rather got the first African American president elected, so either way we were breaking new ground and this is a good trend.

Today I had the pleasure of interviewing Gosia Swierk, an active feminist who recently won an award from the International Council of Women in recognition of her work in promoting Women’s issues through viral marketing activity. The interview was to be held in a hotel at the heart of Amsterdam and before I entered the hotel lobby, I thought about all the achievements we’ve made as an Organization that has existed for over a hundred years. Knowing that others continue to lead the fight gives me strengthens my conviction in that we must have done something right to get where we are now.

The interview was held in the hotel restaurant and I began asking numerous questions about her marketing campaigns to her thoughts on being awarded woman of the year. Gosia works for the Massive Splash SEO agency and she has clients from across the globe but her favorite clients are always the non profit organizations.  ”I enjoy working with them because its a breath of fresh air especially if you deal with clients who only want to extend their profit margins”. “My very first campaign was working with Kiva to help increase awareness of women who have difficulties attracting capital investments even though their business models were sound.”

She then continued on about the many challenges she faced and how she overcame them by utilizing guerilla marketing techniques. “With Massive Splash, we had to think off cost effective methods to get the message out and we determined that search engine optimization and referral marketing were the best methods we had so far. I also ran webinars with my colleague Michael to extend our reach and welcomed participants to share and distribute the webinar recordings. It was a hit!”

When I asked her of her achievement in winning the woman of the year award she said “It feels good knowing that my creative marketing skill sets have been used to better society as a whole. With social platforms appearing almost everyday, its becoming clear that you don’t need a million dollar marketing budget to get an effective message out.”