Eighty-eight years ago on August 26, women finally got the right to vote in this country. That battle did not come easy back then.  The ratification of the 19th amendment was done with little fanfare, but the women who fought for it made quite a splash in their day. In Tuesday’s New York Times, best-selling author Susan Faludi (“Backlash”) examines the movement and how little progress we’ve actually made.

Faludi’s stats were eye-openers. The U.S. ranks 22nd out of the 30 developed nations in the proportion of female federal lawmakers. Fewer than 25 percent of women hold state-wide elective office. Faludi says that number “has fallen consistently since 2000.”

But it’s not just in elective offices where we women are losing ground. Again Faludi supplies the grim numbers: Read the rest of this entry »

Managing disasters is Michele Baker’s specialty.

As emergency management director in Pasco County, Fla., for a dozen years, Baker faced enough hurricanes to make one wary. Take 2004, when hurricanes Charley, Francis and Jeanne blew through the state.

Some might say it was good training for her newest job: Baker helps manage a $1.27 billion budget and 2,000 employees. She’s chief assistant county administrator to John Gallagher, and this year’s Tampa Bay Business Journal Government BusinessWoman of the Year.

These aren’t the best of times for governments as tax revenues decline and demand for services rises.

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Balancing business and personal life is hard for everyone these days—but perhaps especially so for us women, particularly those of you who have kids. While email, laptops, Blackberries and cell phones can make juggling both aspects of your life easier, they can also make it harder to shut off work.

In this Wall Street Journal interview, Dr. Henry Cloud, author of a new book “The One-Life Solution,” makes an interesting contention: The key to handling the increasing “blur” between work and personal life isn’t in time management software or paper organizers, but in getting more in touch with our inner selves.

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Edward Jones & Co. has launched a program designed to recruit women interested in a career in financial services — an industry dominated by men.

By 2012, Edward Jones hopes that women will make up about one quarter of its financial advisers, according to the Wichita Business Journal. The program, called Women’s Initiative for New Growth Strategies, has been gaining traction since its January inception.

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Even before he won his record-breaking eighth gold medal this past weekend, Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps was already receiving a steady stream of business propositions — but the moment he broke the record, the stream turned into a flood, reports the Wall Street Journal. In fact, Phelps could potentially garner $100 million in endorsements and other deals over the course of his lifetime—but he’d better move fast.

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A donation from former Eastman Kodak executive Sue Hartman is funding a new Web site dedicated to women entrepreneurs.

SCORE, a nonprofit that works in partnership with the Small Business Administration, has launched the Women Entrepreneurs web site, a companion to the women’s blog it launched earlier this summer.

The new site offers registered users access to a sales forecast tool and monthly business checklist, a place to ask for help online from volunteer mentors and other resources for growing a business.

SCORE has been around since 1964 and has thousands of volunteers, many of them retired execs, who help nurture startups and small businesses with free and confidential advice.

This expansion into a dedicated site for women was funded by Hartman’s donation to the SCORE Foundation. Now a management consultant based in Rochester, N.Y., Hartman has served as a director of the foundation.

Mark Twain once said, “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” While part of that is obviously true (the naked part, in case you were wondering), do clothes really have that much influence on how we judge others?

The short answer is yes, but I think we women are judged far more harshly.

There was an article in the Wall Street Journal last month that read like it could have been written in the 1970s or 80s, around the time image consultant John T. Molloy wrote the mega-bestseller, “The Woman’s Dress for Success Book.” Apparently a smart, accomplished businesswoman believed until very recently that to succeed she needed to wear “understated black suits” and “closed-toe shoes” with pantyhose. Read the rest of this entry »

Deborah Shuck, president of Manor Steel Fabricators, remembers that when she was 13 years old, she nearly had to sue school officials to let her enroll in drafting, as shop classes were strictly for boys and home economics for girls.

She managed to get in three years of drafting and architecture that come in handy in her current role. Schuck was recently named the Manufacturing Businesswoman of the Year by the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

At Manor Steel, she, her husband, and VP John Gough oversee eight welders and two unskilled laborers in constructing, delivering and assembling the steel skeletons for building projects all over Florida.

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One of the few bright spots in today’s economy, believe it or not, is the video-game industry, which has long been ruled by men.

Bringing a woman’s perspective to creating and marketing video games might actually give you an edge in this booming field today. Read the rest of this entry »

Judie Courtney said that when she took a job in the check-processing department at the Federal Reserve Bank, she was not looking for a career. Having just graduated high school and planning for her upcoming marriage, Courtney said she was simply looking for a job.

Forty-two years later, Courtney is still with the Federal Reserve Bank, only now serving as senior vice president over U.S. Treasury services.

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