Want to Improve Morale? Hire More Women

by Caroline Turner Also by Turner, Balancing The Strengths Of Both Men And Women Women have come a long way since the 1960’s. It is great to celebrate the progress and see the glass as half full. Women are now half of the workforce, breadwinners, CEO’s and holders of high office. But [...]

She was celebrated as a feminist success story, lifted aloft for shifting the gender imbalance in women’s favour, for showing that providing financially for ones’ family is no longer just a man’s job. Though the breadwinner woman had been rising for decades, 2012 was the year she made her star turn — appearing as the subject of popular books and countless news articles, including one book, The Richer Sex by Washington Post journalist Liza Mundy, that projected women will eclipse men as the top household earner by 2030.

The researchers, from Munich’s Technische Universitaet, carried out a range of studies designed to test how leaders in business and academia are assessed and chosen and found that even the most competent and hard-working female employees may struggle to break the “glass celing” because they are stereotypically seen as friendly and sociable. In contrast employers assessing candidates from a managerial position value characteristics like assertiveness and dominance, meaning they are subconsciously biased against female candidates, researchers said.

Keynesian clowns are concerned about the decline in government jobs in the past few years. They want the government to step up spending and hire more workers to make up for the loss of jobs in the private sector. Here is a chart from reader Tim Wallace that will help put the recent loss of government jobs in a better perspective. Percentage Job Growth vs. Population Growth

Stress had a noticeable impact on businesses in 2012, with decision-makers from British SMEs indicating that the negative effect of stress levels, low morale and staff absence could be set to continue unless the economic environment improves. 29 per cent of SMEs polled state that these issues are having a negative impact on overall business performance. According to a fifth of SMEs surveyed, workforce absence levels have risen over the past two years, with 12 per cent reporting more short-term stress-related absences of less than four weeks in the last year.

Another day, another problem-with-women-in-the-law piece that perpetuates the women-in-the-law problem.

German business morale rose to its strongest level since 1991 in December, a closely-watched survey showed on Friday, as an increasingly strong domestic sector helped the economy power ahead of weaker euro zone peers.

Recalling President Reagan's statement, "Facts are stupid things", it's no surprise that the disinformation campaign arguing that the Fed has been pressured into engineering a bout of high inflation continues. Jeffrey Frankel helps bring some facts to the table.