Women struggling to land top jobs in Silicon Valley

It seems there is still a big gap between the employability of women and men. This news article tells us how women are not yet accepted as co-equal with men in terms of
getting the juicy positions from top corporations. What's wrong?



Women struggling to land top jobs in Silicon Valley

Excerpt of the news:


SAN FRANCISCO -- Silicon Valley may be leading the way in the technology sector, but the IT hub is still lagging behind when it comes to the battle of the sexes, a recent study has shown.

Women account for only 6.5 percent of board members on Silicon Valley firms, and of that figure only 8.8 percent occupy top positions within the companies, the University of California, Davis study found.

The survey, which involved around 400 firms with an annual turnover of $100 million or higher, also reveals that only 10.2 percent of women have positions of responsibility within the companies.

Of the 400 companies taking part, 103 are based in Silicon Valley. The study showed that high technology firms' success in promoting women lags behind averages for the rest of the California business sector.

The number of female board members came in at 6.5 percent for companies in the survey against 8.8 percent for California as a whole; while women directors are 8.8 percent against 11.7 percent.

Those figures lag behind national averages, where 14.3 percent of board members are women, who also occupy 15.7 percent of top jobs, according to two surveys carried out in 2005 by Catalyst.

Several prominent Silicon Valley firms have bucked the trend, with computer giant Hewlett Packard and software manufacturer Hyperion each having around 31 percent women in leading positions. Nineteen percent of board members of Internet sales site eBay are female, meanwhile, and the company has been led with success by a woman, Meg Whitman, since 1998.

"The top industries that are represented in Silicon Valley tend to be more focused on the high tech industry, such as semiconductors, electronics, communications, and our data have showed that these industries have much fewer women as board members and executives," said the study's author Katrina Ellis.

Chris Melching, president of a women's business association, attributes the shortfall to a reluctance to change.

"If you look at the habit and the pattern of always looking for men, they look at what's familiar," Ellis said. "It's much easier to call people you already know than to go, 'I'll have someone completely opposite of what I have looked at'. It's harder to do and it takes a lot more time."

Melching added that women offered formidable leadership skills to businesses. "Women bring strong communications skills, we are very intuitive, we have excellent negotiation skills, we like to collaborate intuitively, we multi-task".

A 2004 study by Catalyst appears to support Melching's views, indicating that an increase in female representation in senior positions often led to improved financial results.

That view was endorsed by Godfrey Sullivan, the head of Hyperion.

women,Silicon Valley,jobs

Cum Cum Disease afflicts Japanese Women

This is the first time I ever heard about this disease of a woman, i.e. getting
orgasms any time of the day even without slight sexual provocation.

Let me reproduce the whole news so that it would be more infomative for the
readers.

Deadly 'iku iku byo' reaches a climax
Growing numbers of Japanese women are afflicted with an illness that gives them orgasms virtually 24 hours a day. And with suggestions that it could be deadly, the women hardly know whether they're coming or going, according to Shukan Post (11/24).

"If a guy simply taps me on the shoulder, I just swoon. Even when I go to the toilet, my body reacts. I'm a little bit scared of myself," one woman sufferer tells Shukan Post.

Another adds: "When I got on the train one day, I could feel blood gushing toward a certain part of my body and it felt so good I almost let out a moan. It was sheer murder when everybody got pushed into the carriage."

Yet another woman has her say.

"Even the vibration of my mobile phone is enough to set me off," she says. "My friend said there's something called Iku Iku byo (Cum Cum Disease). I guess I've got that."

What may be afflicting these women, the best-selling weekly says, is an ailment called persistent sexual arousal syndrome (PSAS).

PSAS has been described as an affliction that brings about orgasm through the slightest of jolts regardless of whether they're aroused, or even thinking about sex. What's more, orgasms experienced by PSAS sufferers are not just momentary phenomena, instead affecting women over anywhere from a few days to a week, with one reported case seeing 300 orgasms in a single day.

Awareness in Japan of PSAS -- which was first documented by Dr. Sandra Leiblum in the United States five years ago -- is growing, especially in the blogsphere, where it is being called Iku Iku byo.

Hideo Yamanaka, a doctor at the Toranomon Hibiya Clinic in Tokyo says the disease can be debilitating.

"For women to orgasm, they need to have some sort of sexual stimulation. There are nerves around the female genitals which react to sexual stimulation. The body gradually builds up to a crescendo, that ascends to a climax," the doctor tells Shukan Post. "However, with this disease, women are mysteriously reaching climax without any external sexual stimulation at all. One possible cause that I can think of is an irregularity in the sensory nerves."

PSAS discover Leiblum says that the disease has a tendency to strike post-menopausal women in their 40s and 50s or those who've undergone hormonal treatment. But she adds that there have also been cases reported among women in their 30s, stressing that too little is known about the syndrome to pinpoint anything and adds that the nature of the ailment means that many sufferers may be too ashamed to report it.

PSAS numbers in the U.S. are high enough for support groups to have popped up, suggesting it won't be too long before Japan sees the same.

"Awareness levels are still too low," Jeannie Allen, the head of PSAS Support, tells Shukan Post. "I think there's a strong possibility that there are Japanese patients."

Manga artist Akira Narita, who says he has slept with over 1,000 different women, says he has come across some he believes may have had PSAS.

"There must have been about 15 who came without me doing a thing. We'd only need to stare in each other's eyes and they'd start wiggling about, gripping tightly onto whatever was around them and their bodies would start to shake. There were others who'd orgasm repeatedly just because I'd stroked their hands," the self-professed sexpert says. "I'd always thought of these women as types who got off in their minds, but I think perhaps they may have had PSAS."

PSAS is not sex addiction and, considering the constant orgasms can be draining, can often be a painful and demeaning experience. Many sufferers are driven to the verge of suicide, prompting medical experts to recommend anybody who suspects they have the ailment to seek a doctor's advice immediately.

"Anybody who has the slightest suspicion," physician Yamanaka tells Shukan Post, "should get to a gynecologist or neurologist straight away.

"

women,orgasm

Retired Husband Syndrome in Japan

According to an article written by Paul Kenyon, the common problem of sixty per cent of old women in Japan is the husbad.

The effect of the husband on the wife causes what is now diagnosed as retired husband syndrome.

The baby boomer generation husbands were "married to their jobs" when still working that the wives were left alone tending to their homes and children. The husbands go to work early morning, then come home in the evening merely to eat and sleep.

The couples are practically living separate lives and become strangers to each other.
When retirement comes, the wives exhibit physical signs of depressions and anxieties with the thought of the husbands staying the whole day at homes.

For those belonging in this generation, the women were treated as commodities and not
as wives. Imagine, a woman who had lived peacefully the whole day would find herself with a company to whom she is obliged to serve.

One old woman claimed that she developed rashes every time she gets near her husband.

The syndrome was discovered by Dr Nobuo Kurokawa who, over the past 10 years, has been treating a steady flow of Japanese women of a certain age with the same symptoms, including depression, skin rashes, ulcers, asthma and high blood pressure.

According to the doctor, if it is ignored, the symptoms will just get worse.
"If the husband doesn't try to understand, the illness becomes incurable," he says.

Although divorce is recognized in Japan, the generation is covered by the outdated law that exludes the wife from the husband's pension (just amended to include the wife and would take effect only in 2007)/. Women who have been financially dependent on the husbands would not survive without his support in case they divorce.

So many women suffering from it actually want to keep their husbands. Stranger still, the husbands are completely unaware that they are part of the problem.

women,divorce,syndrome.

Why Women Cry?

This is from a friend bayi.

A little boy asked his mother, "Why are you crying?" "Because I'm a woman," she told him.

"I don't understand," he said. His Mom just hugged him and said, "And you never will."

Later the little boy asked his father, "Why does mother seem to cry for no reason?"

"All women cry for no reason," was all his dad could say.

The little boy grew up and became a man, still wondering why women cry.

Finally he put in a call to God. When God got on the phone, he asked, "God, why do women cry so easily?"

God said:

"When I made the woman she had to be special.

I made her shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world,

yet gentle enough to give comfort.

I gave her an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times comes from her children.

I gave her a hardness that allows her to keep going when everyone else gives up, and take care of her family through sickness and fatigue without complaining.

I gave her the sensitivity to love her children under any and all circumstances, even when her child has hurt her very badly.

I gave her strength to carry her husband through his faults and fashioned her from his rib to protect his heart.

I gave her wisdom to know that a good husband never hurts his wife, but sometimes tests her strengths and her resolve to stand beside him unfalteringly.

And finally, I gave her a tear to shed. This is hers exclusively to use whenever it is needed."

"You see my son," said God, "the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.

The beauty of a woman must be seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart - the place where love resides."

women

Women dress their best when ovulating

My old folks used to tell us that when a pregnant lady dresses well, it means that the baby is a girl.

This research shows that women even though she's not pregnant with a baby girl still dress their best when ovulating. This is the story:

Women dress their best when ovulating, study says

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Women dress better when they are most fertile, according to a study published online last week in the journal Hormones and Behavior.

Using 30 college-age women as subjects, five researchers had a panel of 42 men and women compare photos of the women taken both when they were ovulating and when they were not, asking in which photo each woman looked more attractive. Sixty percent of the time, the panel chose the photos of the women taken when they were most fertile.

In an interview, the study's lead author, Martie Haselton, called the findings "highly statistically significant" and said, "We know the effects have something to do with ovulation." She added that the judges thought the women dressed increasingly attractively the closer they were to their most fertile day.

While other species emit scents or display other physical changes when they are ready to mate, researchers have traditionally assumed humans conceal their fertility, the paper's authors wrote. They added that their work suggests that ovulating women engage in "self-ornamentation through attentive personal grooming and attractive choice of dress."

"It's just showing us our evolution, our biology, is showing up in even the most modern of behaviors," said Haselton, a scientist at the Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture at UCLA.

The researchers were uncertain what was motivating these women, however: whether ovulating women may be trying to attract mates beyond their primary partners or simply reflecting a mood change, they wrote.

Source: SF GATE.

women

Gender? It's A Gray Area.

This is one article that is very interesting to understand the difference between men and women.

'The Female Brain' Dissects Our Differences Above the Neck

By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 24, 2006; D01
SAUSALITO, Calif.
According to pop psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, author of the best-selling new book "The Female Brain," men and women come equipped with completely different operating systems -- not only below the belt but between the ears.
Like bath towels, there are his-and-her brains.
Or so Brizendine interprets the latest skull scanning: Woman is weather, "constantly changing and hard to predict." And man? Man is mountain. But maybe you knew that.
Brizendine insists this is a scientific fact. Males and females may perform similar calculations, but they use different "circuits." Woman is Mac. Man is PC. Blame the brain.

The female version excels at conflict resolution, deep friendship and mood reading. "These are talents women are born with that many men, frankly, are not," says Brizendine, who recently spent a morning at the kitchen table in her waterfront home, issuing similar sweeping observations about the neurological underpinnings of wicked-bad PMS, teen girl text-messaging, and the frisky later chapter of life known as "post-menopausal zest."

First of all, Brizendine says, our floor plans are different. She's got the bigger "worrywart center" (the anterior cingulated cortex), and so stress tends to wig her out, as "conflict registers more deeply in the areas of the female brain."
That more ripe prefrontal cortex of hers? Makes the ladies pacific and patient. Her hippocampus also runs a size larger. Meaning "she never forgets a fight, a romantic encounter or a tender moment -- and won't let you forget it, either," says Brizendine, founder of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood & Hormone Clinic at the University of California, San Francisco.
Her bottom line? "There is no unisex brain," says Brizendine, and "it follows these two brain models can produce quite different behaviors." Such as: Average Woman sure talks a lot. Average Man does not. She obsesses on her sexual allure. He obsesses on sex. It's not our fault. Not only is the architecture of boy/girl brains different, but wait until the hormones do their work.
His brain is "marinated" (her favorite word) with testosterone, "the rocket fuel" of sex and aggression (and barbecue?). While her brain is a spinning Tilt-a-Whirl of estrogen and progesterone, and the new darling of the hormone world oxytocin, which you definitely want to check out, the hormone Brizendine describes as the "fluffy, purring kitty; cuddly, nurturing earth mother; the good witch Glinda in 'The Wizard of Oz.' "
For Brizendine, it's all about the juice.




"The female brain is so affected by hormones, they control her very perception of reality," says the doctor. "Her values, her desires, what's important to her, even whom she loves."
You buying this? There is some disagreement. The 53-year-old neuropsychiatrist, by way of Yale and Harvard, with the Tina Fey eyeglasses and her auburn hair back in a ponytail, has been offering her take on the female brain on the morning talk show circuit and is scheduled for an upcoming episode on ABC's "20/20." Her book cracked the Top 10 list at Amazon and is garnering generally favorable reviews -- and heat from her critics, who say Brizendine (pronounced BRIZ-en-dine) is guilty of hyping gender differences and misrepresenting the research.
In the pages of "The Female Brain," briskly selling as an owner's manual for women and a kind of cheat sheet for men, Brizendine promises to reveal the neurological explanations why:
• Men think about sex every 52 seconds, while a woman does only once a day.
• Women speak faster on average -- 250 words per minute vs. 125 for a typical male.
• A woman uses 20,000 words per day, while a man uses only 7,000.
• Boys don't listen to mommy (answer: because "he physically cannot hear the same tone of warning").
• And "a woman knows what people are feeling, while a man can't spot an emotion unless somebody cries or threatens bodily harm."
These are simply remarkable differences, and naturally they have been repeatedly cited in book reviews and news reports about "The Female Brain" and its claims.
She is a motor-mouthed empath with bat-like hearing? Or does it just seem that way, because men think about sex 69.2 times an hour?
Alas, we do not know if any of these factoids are true -- and they very well may not be.
Brizendine includes 58 pages of references and 19 pages of footnotes in her book, but when asked to produce the primary scientific studies that produced the numbers above, she could not.
"I have to say the pattern is very consistent. When you attempt to track down her sources for some of the more sensational claims, it is not satisfactory," says Mark Liberman, a professor of linguistics and computer science at the University of Pennsylvania who has blogged on the language-use claims in Brizendine's book.
According to Liberman, most research concludes that men and women use an equal number of words in a day. Liberman also says that the study that Brizendine cites to show that women talk twice as fast as men "doesn't support this at all, and in fact I found other research that showed men speak slightly faster."
These claims, Liberman says, "simply violate common sense." Gender differences, outside of contests of physical strength, when they are found at all, are mostly only a matter of a statistical point or two. Rarely is one sex two or three times better or worse at anything -- except, well, giving birth. "It reminds me of the myth that Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow," Liberman says. "They don't. The various Eskimo languages and English have the same number."
In a follow-up e-mail exchange about her sources, Brizendine stated, for example, that she found the sex-on-the-brain figure in the work of John Bancroft, formerly head of the Kinsey Institute. But in the FAQ section of the Kinsey Institute Web site, it reports that 54 percent of men think about sex every day or several times a day, while 19 percent of women think about sex every day or several times a day -- or so they say. (These figures are included in 1994's "Sex in America: A Definitive Survey" from a University of Chicago research team.)
Sloppy or not, Brizendine is on to something. The last decade of science, especially the ability to scan the brain while it performs simple tasks (the human subjects lie in magnetic resonance imaging tubes), is providing evidence of gender differences in the architecture and activity of the noggin. But a lot of it is pretty subtle and the meanings still obscure.
"There does appear to be more than one brain design," agrees Richard Haier, professor of psychology at the University of California, Irvine, whose own studies have shown that women possess, on average, a greater density of white matter, and men more gray matter (gray is the cell bodies of neurons; white is the stuff that connects them).
But it is equally interesting, Haier says, that male and female brains arrive at the same destination. IQ scores are essentially equal between the sexes. (Though in SATs, males consistently score slightly higher; some argue the tests are male-biased.)
Phrenologists at the turn of the last century, upon discovering that the average male brain is about 9 percent larger than the female (true -- and attributable to body size), shouted "Eureka!" and put the observation to work to justify little lady stereotypes about women. Post-1960s researchers tended to see men and women as neurologically identical, and any differences as culturally learned (hence the short-lived trend of giving boys dolls and girls trucks).
The pendulum is swinging again, and the "gender genre" is currently as hot as a flash in perimenopause, with "The Female Brain" sharing shelf space with other popular science books such as "The Mommy Brain" (eeeek, it shrinks! ), "The Essential Difference" (autism is an extreme form of maleness) and "Why Gender Matters" (immediately enroll your kid in a single-sex school). It is a contentious brew of biological determinism, stirring up bugaboos about gender "traits" and "strengths" that a feminist may say always end up conveniently relegating women to roles as nurturing caregiver (vs. Condoleezza Rice).
Look no further than last year's furor when Lawrence Summers, now former president of Harvard, suggested that the reason women do not occupy the top ranks of science and engineering has something to do with their brains. Brizendine says that Summers was actually right and wrong. Her take: When boys and girls enter their teens, their math and science abilities are equal. "But as estrogen floods the female brain," she says, "females start to focus intensely on their emotions and on communication." Talking on the phone, furious text-messaging, dressing-room confabbing. "At the same time, as testosterone takes over the male brain, boys grow less communicative and become obsessed about scoring -- in games, and in the back seat of the car. At the point when boys and girls begin deciding the trajectories of their careers, girls start to lose interest in pursuits that require more solitary work and fewer interactions with others, while boys can easily retreat alone to their rooms for hours of computer time." (Noted: Most science is done by teams of researchers.)
Brizendine says she was initially torn about highlighting the differences between male and female brains. Her politics are Bay Area liberal, and she's as politically correct as anyone.
"I thought, oh boy, this isn't going to be good for women," Brizendine says. "I struggled with it. I was very cognizant that some of these will be used against women. But I decided I would go with the data and the science. Because actually this is very good for women in pointing out their innate skill sets and strengths."
But some of her critics say that what Brizendine did was overstate the science. In part, it may be the style that Brizendine adopts when she speaks and writes. When science looks for differences, it finds them in the average male and average female -- meaning that if six in 10 women show an advantage in one area, so do four in 10 men. But this gets lost in the prose.
For example, according to Brizendine, "during puberty, a girl's entire biological raison d'etre is to become sexually desirable" and "they are almost exclusively interested in their appearance." The female brain, she writes, is "a machine . . . that is built for connection. That's the main job of the girl brain, and that's what it drives a female to do from birth."
Brizendine, in part, blames her publisher for requesting that she edit out her repeated use of the words "typical" and "average."
"These are stereotypes, and stereotypes die hard," says Janet Hyde, psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, whose own studies find that instead of vast differences between the sexes, males and females are more psychologically similar. Hyde reviewed 46 so-called meta-analyses that examined gender differences (across a wide swath of categories, such as math, reading, sexuality, happiness, assertiveness, etc.). Her study showed that "in most areas there are either no differences or very small differences," she says, with a few exceptions: Men are more physically aggressive, better at throwing; they masturbate more often, have more relaxed attitudes about casual sex. But Hyde prefers that science adopt a "gender similarities hypothesis" rather than search for differences.
Brizendine sees her point. "What we are finding is small differences in the male and female brain," she says. "But medical science tells us that small differences can have big outcomes." Think of cancer, she says; the slightest alteration of cells can have the most lethal consequences.
In a 2001 National Academy of Sciences report, the authors write: "Sex matters. Sex, that is, being male or female, is an important basic human variable that should be considered when designing and analyzing studies in all areas and at all levels of biomedical and health-related research."
This is going to be a bumpy ride.

menopausal ,gender,women issues

Women graduates in Iran changing the society

Iranian women students are not only increasing in number but the working mothers as well. This younger working women generation are sharing workload with their young husbands who are also coming out of their macho shells.

Read the entire news.

The number of women graduating from Iran's universities is overtaking the number of men, promising a change in the job market and, with it, profound social change.

Twenty postgraduate students are sitting in a plush modern classroom listening to a lecture on environmental management at the Islamic Azad University - a private institution with 1.6 million students across Iran.

The room is darkened so the students can watch the lecturer's slide show comparing energy consumption around the world.

Three quarters of the students in this class are women - the five men in the class are huddled together in a corner.

As Professor Majid Abbaspour explains, this is a far cry from the past:

"When I was doing my bachelor's degree in Iran we had a class of 60 in mechanical engineering with only four women.

"Now the number has changed a lot - I think this may be because the attitudes of families have changed."

Well over half of university students in Iran are now women. In the applied physics department of Azad University 70% of the graduates are women - a statistic which would make many universities in the West proud.

It is a huge social shift since the 1979 Revolution: Iran's Islamic government has managed to convince even traditional rural families that it is safe to send their daughters away from home to study.

Alarm

But in some areas the larger number of women than men is beginning to alarm the authorities.

"As a matter of fact it's starting to get worrying - in some fields maybe they will put some limitations?" says Professor Abbaspour, referring to suggestions that there should be positive discrimination for men in certain key subjects.

We women want to show we are here and we have a lot to say - for years we have lived under the heavy shadow of men - our fathers and brothers and now we want to come out of that Massoumeh Umidvar Student and working other

He explains: "In the oil and gas industries at the present time there is no discrimination but... for example when they want to work on the oil and gas platforms in the Persian Gulf area it might be very hard for women to do so."

Part of the reason for more women in university education seems to be that many young men are more interested in making money.

"We women want to show we are here and we have a lot to say," says Massoumeh Pahshahie Umidvar.

"For years we have lived under the heavy shadow of men, our fathers and brothers, and now we want to come out of that."

Massoumeh holds down a job in a factory, has a child and is doing a postgraduate degree. Her life is completely different from that of her mother who stayed at home, cooking and looking after children.

'Historic opportunity'

"Before the revolution everybody supposed that if you wanted to be a rich person with a good standard of living you needed to be educated," explains journalist and social commentator Sayed Laylaz.


"But after the revolution because of a lot of changes - especially because of the Iran-Iraq war - this mentality changed.

"At the moment boys don't think that if they want to be a successful person they should be educated and because of this they leave free more places for girls to go to university."

Mr Laylaz calls it a historic opportunity for women that they have eagerly seized. He hopes this new generation of educated Iranian women will force social change in the decades ahead.

It will not be long, he argues, before women are in charge of recruitment in offices. Already he sees signs that Iran's politicians recognise the importance of women's votes in elections.

Massoumeh tells her husband that it will not be long before Iranian men will be forced to sit at home while their wives run the country.

Already it has become a problem for women with degrees to find husbands with the same level of education.

Marriage or a career

Another social change is that young women who do have careers are now beginning to think twice about getting married. Especially as under Iranian law a woman needs her husband's permission to go to work.

Sudabeh Shahkhudahee has just finished a night shift as a nurse and is relaxing in front of her cousin's satellite TV and reading her horoscope.

After studying at university and finding the right job Sudabeh is nervous about her future - she could lose it all if she marries the wrong man.

"I will choose a person as a husband who lets me work because I love my job," she says.

"I will not give up my job after I get married."

This is a sentiment that is increasingly being heard in a society where a single woman even has trouble hiring an apartment to live alone.

Sudabeh knows it is going to be hard to find a man who will not have a problem with her doing night shifts and being away from home for long periods, especially when she has children.

Working mothers are a relatively new phenomenon in Iran but attitudes are changing among the younger generation of working women, many of whom will no longer accept a husband who does not share the workload at home.

"Our men are coming out of this macho shell and becoming more co-operative," says a young married student.

Many believe Iranian women who have worked hard to overtake Iranian men will be the ones to bring about social and political change.

"Maybe in the near future we can get our rights - at least I hope," says another student.

Philippine Heroes,
women
society

REASONS WHY MEN DOMINATE SCIENCE

I just love this news article. When I was trying to climb the so-called corporate ladder, I was met with opposition and indifferences from the pant-wearing/beard/shaving citizens of the Earth, both from the top and lower rungs of the ladder. According to my deceased ma-in-law, my sis-in-law, the Harvard graduate lawyer did not pursue an academic career because of the same experience. Green-eyed but never was legally blonde, she excelled in her practice of law profession.

Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist Biologist Who Underwent Sex Change Describes Biases Against Women

Excerpt of the news:

Neurobiologist Ben Barres has a unique perspective on former Harvard president Lawrence Summers's assertion that innate differences between the sexes might explain why many fewer women than men reach the highest echelons of science. That's because Barres used to be a woman himself.

According to Barres who used to be Barbara, it is the bias which prevents women from succeeding in science and if I may add business as well.

Just look at the comments that he/she gathered in her own personal experience.

1. "Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister's.- a comment made by another scientist who did not know the transgender operation Barres had so he's referring to the same person.

2. "Your boyfriend must have solved it for you."--comment made by his/her professor when once solved a difficult math problem.

3. "I had never met a woman surgeon who was as good as a man." --comment by a surgeon he had conversation with.

Besides that he felt that he is more respected now that he is a man than when he was a woman. "I can not even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted".

Another woman shares this opinion of Barres.

Nancy Andreasen, a well-known psychiatrist at the University of Iowa, agreed with Barres. She said it took her a long time to convince her husband that he got more respect when he approached an airline ticket counter than she did. When she stopped sending out research articles under her full name and used the initials N.C. Andreasen instead, she said, the acceptance rate of her publications soared.

PMS

When women say that they have PMS, it means that they feel ugly, fat, tired and bloated. PMS or Premenstrual Syndrome is a disorder characterized by hormonal changes that cause disruptive symptoms for up to two weeks before menstruation. While there is no need for medication, some women require medical treatment for marked mood swings and behavioral changes. These symptoms regularly occur from ovulation until menses.

How to Avoid Having PMS
1. Excercise. It helps boost the endorphins which are the body's natural painkillers. They may help cramped feeling.

2. Avoid sweets and eat six small meals at regular three-hour intervals, high in complex carbohydrates and low in simple sugars. This helps to maintain a steady blood glucose level and avoid energy highs and lows.

3. Reduce and eliminate use of caffeine, alcohol, salt, fats, and simple sugars to reduce bloating, fatigue, tension and depression.

4.Daily supplemental vitamins and minerals may be administered to relieve some PMS symptoms.

1. A multivitamin with B6(100 mcg)
2. B complex, magnesium (300mg)
3. Vitamin E (400 IU) and
4. vitamin C (1000 mg)

These vitamins alleviate irritability, fluid retention, joint aches, breast tenderness, anxiety, depression and fatigue.

PMS ,feminine+issues,vitamins,premenstrual syndrome

Midlife Crisis

Midlife is not linked to hormonal changes of women so it is not true that it starts after 40 like menopause. According to San Franciscan psychologist and author, the transition changes manifest between 35 and 40. Men may not have them until 45.It can be triggered by death of a loved one, job change, separation and divorce.A woman in her late thirties or early forties realize that they are approaching the age when childbearing is riskier if not bear physically and or or mentally incapacitated children.According to Carl Jung, it is a normal part of 'maturing'. A journey.A difficult journey with a certain amount of suffering, meaning to live through or to allow by suffering the loss, change, and letting go of much of what was brought into midlife. This transition is not easy and is greatly resisted. Midlife is ultimately about the search for true meaning in life. So when women start asking who they are, what are they doing in their lives, assessing what they have done, they are said to be going through the crisis.How do you know that you are into this crisis even you have not reached the start of life at forty? "New York Times" Editorial Page Editor Howell Raines wrote that

"it typically begins with mild twinges of dread, disappointment and restlessness that tiptoe in on little cat feet. Then in some cases, the cat feet turn to elephant feet.

Some symptoms of the crisis:

1. Fear or anxiety. Women tend to become secure of their security for the love of their spouses, their jobs or their financial resources and attention of their growing children.

2.Tension and stress. Plans that are perceived to be not going anywhere.Failures and disappointments are more in numbers than successes.

3. Anger of struggle. Believing that one does not deserve such struggle if only people she depends on are very cooperative and generous.

4. Health condition. Recognizing the symptoms associated with ageing process make one thinks of the mortality.

5. Time is running out. Aware that sooner or later, one is restricted physically and mentally to engage in activities/chores because of age.

6. Relationship. For unmarried or unattached women, the issue of being single at that point in life make them question what lead them to have celibate lives.


midlife crisis,identity crisis,crisis

St. Joan of Arc

Joan of ArcLeader of the French Army, 1412-1431

St. Joan of Arc was born at Domremy to Jacques and Isabelle d'Arc, during the Truce of Leulinghen. Receiving a mandate from God to drive the English out of France, she was escorted to King Charles VII. After gaining the approval of the Church scholars at Poitiers in March of 1429, she was granted titular command of an army which quickly lifted the siege of Orleans on May 8, 1429, captured Jargeau, Meung-sur-Loire, and Beaugency in mid-June, and defeated an English army at Patay on June 18.As a reward for her service, Charles VII granted her noble status along with her family on December 29, 1429. She returned to the field the following year, despite predicting her own defeat. Captured at Compiegne on May 23, 1430 and transferred to the English, she was placed on trial in Rouen by a selected group of pro-English clergy, many of whom nevertheless had to be coerced into voting for a guilty verdict. Convicted and executed on May 30, 1431, she was subsequently declared innocent by the Inquisition on July 7, 1456 after a lengthy re-trial process which was initiated shortly after the English were finally driven from Rouen, therebyallowing access to the documents and witnesses associated with her trial; the presiding Inquisitor, Jean Brehal, ruled that the original trial had been tainted by fraud, illegal procedures, and intimidation of both the defendant and many of the clergy who had taken part in the trial, and she was therefore described as amartyr by the Inquisitor. After the usual lengthy delay associated\r\n with the sluggish process of canonization, she was beatified on April 11, 1909 and canonized as a saint on May 16, 1920.
Links:
Catholic Encyclopedia,Joan of Arc,France

TIA CARRERE-beautiful woman-beautiful mother

Adjudged as one of the most beautiful women,she played the villain in the now Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's True Lies in 1994. She is also a singer having released a solo album in 1993 entitled Dream.She lives in Hawaii with husband and her first born. As she bid goodbye to the Dancing with the Stars, she is happy to relish the thoughts of being a mother to her beautiful baby.

Tia Carrere, a beautiful woman, a beautfiul mother, a Filipina.

Dancing with the Stars,Cheryl Burke,Stacy Kiebler,Jerry Rice,Tia+CarerreTrue Lies,Mike Myers,People's Magazine