Why?

Sabotaging Yourself Without Knowing It Change Your Mindset Putting yourself down directly is the most destructive negative mental habit people have, This habit is hard to break,  because negative self-talk evolves into an automatic impulse for many. Women in particular get into the habit of downplaying our accomplishments to others (and ourselves), becoming overly self-effacing. Doubting Yourself When you lack self-confidence, you end...

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Womenomics

Global Financial Literacy Suppose you put $100 in a savings account that earns 10% interest each year. After five years how much will you have? That was a question posed in a multiple-choice quiz (completed by 150,000 people in 144 countries) by Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency. The answers proferred were "less than $150", "exactly $150" and "more than $150". The intention was to test whether respondents understood...

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Musings & Amusings

Can’t say I was a fan of Leaning In so loved Lucy Kellaway’s comments (didn’t read the whole book I confess): Stop leaning in at once. It isn’t a comfortable position to adopt, and I’m not at all surprised to hear that after 18 months you are suffering in body and soul. Forget Sheryl Sandberg and try my three easy rules for leaning out which I have been perfecting for the past quarter of a century. 1. Never ever go to any evening events for work...

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Everyday Money

Setting Aside Shame and Blame in Financial Decisions Shame fails at changing behaviour, it can also trigger the very mistakes we’re trying to avoid. Shame is something we internalise, and we capture it with a statement like, “I’m a bad person.” With guilt, we focus on the action and say, “I made a mistake. That’s really dumb.” In other words, we make shame about us, but guilt is about the event. Think about the last money conversation you...

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Who's Counting?

8 Ways Women's Lives Have Changed For The Better Since 2005 More women have access to higher quality health care. Women's representation in politics is higher than it's ever been. Same sex marriage is legal Women’s equality in the workplace has improved – along with our ability to fight for it. The entertainment industry finally started to recognise that women are consumers of pop culture, want to see our experiences represented, and are pretty...

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Finance & Investments

The key component of personal finance is financial planning, which is a dynamic process that requires regular monitoring and reevaluation. In general, it involves five steps: 1. Assessment: A person's financial situation is assessed by compiling simplified versions of financial statements including balance sheets and income statements. A personal balance sheet lists the values of personal assets (e.g., car, house, clothes, stocks, bank account),...

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Who's Counting?

Why Swedish men take so much paternity leave ALONG with its Nordic neighbours, Sweden features near the top of most gender-equality rankings. The World Economic Forum rates it as having one of the narrowest gender gaps in the world. But Sweden is not only a good place to be a woman: it also appears to be an idyll for new dads. Close to 90% of Swedish fathers take paternity leave.   Forty years ago Sweden became the first country in...

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Why?

Club rules keep women out of the network A week ago Lady Judge, the newly appointed chairman of the Institute of Directors, held an unusual party.  The room at the London club’s grand headquarters in Pall Mall was filled with the great and the good(ish): over champagne and canapés, the UK home secretary and the head of the Royal Mail hobnobbed with a former Lord Mayor of London and other senior figures in business and politics. Nothing...

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Everyday Money

At first glance the patriarchy appears to be thriving. More than 90% of presidents and prime ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men dominate finance, technology, films, sports, music and even stand-up comedy. In much of the world they still enjoy social and legal privileges simply because they have a Y chromosome. So it might seem odd to worry about the plight of men. Yet there is plenty of cause for concern. They earn...

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Womenomics

Daughters of Working Mothers Earn 23 Percent More When a woman works outside of the home before her children are 14 years old, she improves her daughter’s career prospects, a new report found. Harvard Business School’s recently launched “Gender Initiative” analyzed data of nearly 50,000 adults aged 18 to 60 in 24 nations from 2002 to 2012. The data was from the International Social Survey Program, a multi-country program that looks at social trends...

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Musings & Amusings

South Asia is one of the worst places in the world to be female India’s bachelor leader, Narendra Modi, struggles with the opposite sex. For a man usually so eloquent, Mr Modi occasionally lands his sandalled foot in his mouth: on June 7th he made an especially crass comment during an otherwise successful visit to Bangladesh, praising his host, Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, for being tough on terrorism “despite being a woman”. Critics back...

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