Women rule!

I am pro-women. I think women rock. I've had the pleasure of being surrounded by a lot of women throughout my life. In my high school class there were 8 boys and over 25 girls. In the university most of the people on my course were girls. In AIESEC usually there were 80-90% girls. I've had female team mates, subordinates and bosses. Friends and lovers. Based on this I know (yes, know) that women rule.

There are many people on this planet who agree with me. Some data to support this argument:

Economist, 15 April. Leader, page 14. "Forget China, India and the Internet: Economic Growth Is Driven by Women.":

"Girls get better grades in school than boys, and in most developed countries more women than men go to university. Women will thus be better equipped for the new jobs of the 21st century, in which brains count a lot more than brawn. ... And women are more likely to provide sound advice on investing their parents' nest egg: surveys show that women consistently achieve higher financial returns than men do. Furthermore, the increase in female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth in the last couple of decades. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, India and China."

Goldman Sachs in Tokyo has developed an index of 115 companies poised to benefit from women's increased purchasing power; over the past decade the value of shares in "Goldman's basket has risen by 96%, against the Tokyo stockmarket's rise of 13%."

A fact: women buy everything:
94 percent of home furnishings.
92 percent of vacations.
91 percent of houses.
80 percent of do-it-yourself projects.
51 percent of consumer electronics.
68 percent of new cars.
83 PERCENT OF ... ALL CONSUMER PURCHASES.
Household investment decisions ... 67 percent. Small business loans ... 70 percent. Health care decisions ... 80 percent. Yet 91 percent of women say that "advertisers don't understand us"; 58 percent of women say that they're outright "annoyed" by advertising.

That's kinda stupid, isn't it?

Judy Rosener, author of, among other things: America's Competitive Secret: Utilizing Women As a Management Strategy, argues that women's strengths match the new economy's imperatives . For example: Women tend to link rather than rank workers. Women tend to favor interactive/collaborative leadership style, believing that empowerment beats top-down decision making. Women tend to sustain fruitful collaborations. Women are comfortable with sharing information. Women see redistribution of power as victory, not surrender. Women favor multidimensional feedback. Women value technical & interpersonal skills, individual & group contributions equally. Women readily accept ambiguity. Women honor intuition as well as pure rationality. Women are inherently flexible. Women appreciate cultural diversity.

BusinessWeek Special Report: "As leaders women rule: New Studies find that Female Managers Outshine their Male Counterparts in Almost Every Measure."

How about sales? Men, we lose again. Selling is a Woman's Game (look for a book by Nicki Joy
and Susan Kane-Benson). Take this quiz:

Who manages more things at once? Who puts more effort into their appearance? Who usually takes care of the details? Who finds it easier to meet new people? Who asks more questions in a conversation? Who is a better listener? Who has more interest in communication skills? Who is more inclined to get involved? Who encourages harmony and agreement? Who has better intuition? Who works with longer 'to do' lists? Who enjoys a recap to the day's events? Who is better at keeping in touch with others?"

A couple of final assertions: (1) It is now agreed that "the single best investment that can be made in the developing world" is educating girls. (2) Also, surprisingly, nations with the highest female laborforce participation rates, such as Sweden and the U.S., have the highest fertility rates; and those with the lowest participation rates, such as Italy and Germany, have the lowest fertility rates.

Hmm. As I said, women rule.