CNN Archives - Diane Hamilton

Women Becoming More Successful Than Men

Women are passing men in their abilities to get a degree, handle families and garner success at work. As men are falling behind, women are making huge strides. CNN reported that, “For the first time in history, women are better educated, more ambitious and arguably more successful than men.”

Over half of college degrees are now being awarded to women. “In 1970, men earned 60% of all college degrees. In 1980, the figure fell to 50%, by 2006 it was 43%. Women now surpass men in college degrees by almost three to two. Women’s earnings grew 44% in real dollars from 1970 to 2007, compared with 6% growth for men.”

Women are becoming stronger entrepreneurs as well. Forbes recently reported: “As of 2011, it is estimated that there are over 8.1 million women-owned businesses in the United States. Overall, women-owned firms have done better than their male counterparts over the past 14 years. The number of men-owned firms (which represent 51% of all U.S. firms) grew by only 25% between 1997 and 2011—half the rate of women-owned firms.”

A study by Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research may have some of the answers to why women are surpassing men. One of the reasons they found is that women are less likely to take unnecessary risks or make rash decisions. The Huffington Post backed up this point stating, “A 2005 study by Merrill Lynch found that 35% of women held an investment too long, compared with 47% of men. More recently, in 2009, a study by the mutual fund company Vanguard involving 2.7 million personal investors concluded that during the recent financial crisis, men were more likely than women to sell shares of stocks at all-time lows, leading to bigger losses among male traders.”

Women Dominating Sales Positions
Most Inspiring Women Entrepreneurs
Are Women Making Teams Smarter?
Female Career Choices That May Surprise You
11 Momentous Female Firsts in Academia

Are Teachers Being Treated as Inventory? LIFO Used as a Method of Deciding Teachers’ Fate

via google.com

Any business major should probably be able to define LIFO and FIFO. These letters stand for “Last in First Out” and “First in First Out”. They are usually associated with how inventory is handled. For example, if you had produce on a truck, and you dealt with it in a LIFO method, that means the last produce put on the truck would be first to come off of the truck. That would probably not be good of a method in that situation because the produce put on first would get rotten. So in that instance, FIFO would be a better system…First on the truck, first off the truck so that the inventory would stay fresh.

LIFO is now a term you may be hearing when schools are considering laying off teachers. In other words, last teachers hired would be the first teachers fired. CNN reported, “A wave of layoffs will likely happen this summer…StudentsFirst.org, calculates that at least 160,000 teachers are at risk of losing their jobs. What makes this even tougher on kids is that the majority of the country’s states and school districts conduct layoffs using an antiquated policy referred to as “last in, first out.” The policy mandates that the last teachers hired are the first teachers fired, regardless of how good they are. As it stands now, teachers’ impact on students plays absolutely no role in these decisions.”

In the produce example, using FIFO made sense for the sake of product freshness. In the example of how to decide educator layoffs, schools may be choosing LIFO for reasons of fairness to those who have put in their time. However, does being on the job for extended periods of time, make the employee a better employee? Michelle Rhee, author of the CNN article, thinks not. Rhee launched StudentsFirst to defend children’s’ rights in schools. “StudentsFirst formed in 2010 in response to an increasing demand for a better education system in America.” For more information about StudentsFirst, click here.

NJ joins NYC war on LIFO – New York Post (news.google.com)
Reasons Why LIFO is Outdated (brighthub.com)

Product Placement – Is it Shameless or Just Good Business?

I teach a lot of marketing classes where we talk about product placement. In a recent discussion we were talking about FedEx and the movie Castaway. I read that the company didn’t pay for that mention. I find that hard to believe but I guess it is possible.

Product placement is big business. Recently BeBe launched a new line of clothes based on its popularity from 90210.

Here is a list of some very noticeable products placed in movies that you may remember.