10 Good Reasons for Women to Work in Business

For women in business or who want to be in business, the following post shares 10 good reasons to take advantage of the opportunity.

The legend goes that prior to becoming the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Carly Fiorina (now former CEO of HP) stuffed her pants with socks for a male-dominated meeting. Her message was clear: “I have everything it takes to compete.” Although Fiorina might be alone in literally stuffing her slacks, it’s a sure thing that plenty of other women have gone to great lengths—pulling longer-than-necessary hours, cutting maternity leaves short, and so on—to prove that they can keep up with the men. But the times they are a-changin’.

Today, says Vickie Milazzo, the need to play down femininity is a thing of the past. The almost constant changes to the way we communicate, interact, innovate, and do business are setting up an opportunity-filled future for women—no socks required!

“There’s never been a better time to be a woman in business,” says Milazzo, author of the New York Times bestseller Wicked Success Is Inside Every Woman. “It’s undeniable that the more masculine command-and-control way of doing business is on its way out. Increasingly, businesses—and society in general—are coming to value more feminine qualities like participation, engagement, collaboration, relationship-building, and an appreciation for the greater good. Qualities that come naturally to most women.”

“Of course,” clarifies Milazzo, “that doesn’t mean women are suddenly getting a free ride to the top of the corporate ladder.”

Read on for a few feminine features that make women primed to succeed in business, and how you can take advantage of them:

Women aren’t afraid to take action. Whether it’s calling the plumber about a newly-sprung faucet leak while dressing your kids and packing your own briefcase…or changing your meticulously-planned sales pitch strategy on the fly because of a client’s last-minute request…women aren’t afraid to do what needs to be done.

Women aren’t afraid to ask for help. Since they were little girls, most women have automatically reached out to friends when they needed help, advice, company, or a listening ear. That impulse isn’t surprising; after all, women are usually more communal and collaborative than men. And because women have often had to fight for everything they’ve achieved in the business world, helping each other has become a common practice.

Women are highly engaged. Women are the tycoons of commitment. Regardless of their profession, all women are CEOs; i.e., Chief Everything Officers. They manage careers, households, children, meals, shopping, event planning, and more—simultaneously—while doing everything in their power to make sure that not one single ball drops. The “edge” that this type of engagement gives them is a huge asset when channeled professionally. During good times it gives women extra fire, and during bad times it keeps them going when they’d rather throw in the towel.

Women are enterprising. As Milazzo has already pointed out, most women do a lot. They run a successful combination of a job, education, family, friendships, hobbies, etc. By anyone’s definition, that’s a complex enterprise! And the ability to keep multiple systems running and multiple people happy is an obvious asset to have in the workplace.

Women are great relationship-builders. Most women want to give their all to every relationship they have, be it with a coworker, significant other, child, family member, friend, client, etc.—and when they can’t, they often feel guilty. Our complex society of family, friends, career, and spiritual and social obligations constantly pulls us in different directions. This bombardment does lead some women to over-commit, but when tempered to a manageable scale, a natural willingness to build relationships sets women up for great success today.

Women are natural multi-taskers. Chat up any group of women with a variety of talents, emotions, and intelligence and you’ll find most of them are juggling a dozen different projects, a handful of important relationships, and at least one pressing dilemma. Women excel at multi-tasking—a true leg up in a world that is constantly asking us to do more, more, more.

Women know how to collaborate. The rising use of Wikis and other collaborative software indicates the rapid acceptance of a growing need to share knowledge, ideas, and energies. Office technology has advanced to provide a platform for sharing, reviewing, editing, and completely rethinking documents or graphics. As our workforce has gone global, software has permeated the vacuum created when we are unable to meet simultaneously. And all of these things play to women’s communal natures.

Women know the importance of mutual support. According to a landmark UCLA study on managing stress, the bonds women form with each other also benefit their health and longevity. The hormone oxytocin, enhanced by estrogen and released as part of their stress response, encourages them to gather with other women. The bond that forms helps to fill emotional gaps and lowers the risk of early death. Men experiencing stress go into a fight-or-flight response. Women’s broader response system may explain why they consistently outlive men.

Women understand the power of giving. In business—and life in general—the best long-term strategy isn’t to get ahead and stay ahead of everyone else. Instead, it’s to partner with others—to give everyone a piece of the pie and build up the people around you—so that everyone has an incentive to win. When you give other people a bit of advice, a word of encouragement, a few minutes of your time, or even a sought-after opportunity, you’ll usually see valuable returns.

Women know how to trust their intuition. Women’s intuition is actually a scientific fact. Women have a larger splenium of the corpus callosum which accounts for greater interconnectivity between the left and right hemispheres of their cognitive brains. Some scientists believe this broader connection enables women to access both sides faster and easier than men.

Women are not more “right-brained,” as is the myth; their brain functions are actually more holistic and generalized. Women fluently engage the limbic brain, where higher emotions are stored, and the instinctive brain, which is responsible for self-preservation. This holistic combination of emotion, instinct, and cognition equates to women’s intuition.

“Does it make sense to have such an extraordinary tool and not use it?” asks Milazzo. “Not in my book. By trusting my intuition, I created a new industry where a void formerly existed. My intuition told me lawyers needed nurses, even if they didn’t know it yet themselves. If anyone ever tells you one person can’t accomplish anything big, or you shouldn’t go against the odds, don’t believe it. Intuition worked for me. And it will work for you. It all starts with your intuitive vision.”

“I’m not saying that women are ‘better’ than men, or that men don’t have as much to offer,” Milazzo concludes. “That’s certainly not the case. What I’m saying is that as the business world comes to value collaboration, participation and relationships more and more, women are going to be able to put their natural skills to work for them. And many women are already doing just that by taking advantage of greater opportunities to insert themselves into the big picture.”

“Who knows?” she adds. “In the not-so-distant future, a male CEO might come to a meeting and feel the need to stuff socks in his shirt!”

Vickie Milazzo, RN, MSN, JD, is author of the New York Times bestseller Wicked Success Is Inside Every Woman (WickedSuccess.com). From a shotgun house in New Orleans to owner of a $16-million business, Wall Street Journal best-selling author Milazzo shares the innovative success strategies that earned her a place on the Inc. list of Top 10 Entrepreneurs and Inc. Top 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies in America.

Vickie is the owner of Vickie Milazzo Institute, an education company she founded in 1982. Featured in the New York Times as the pioneer of a new profession, she built a professional association of 5,000 members.