WiNfluence - The WiN-Canada Blog

The Grindstone blog ran a poll this month about whether or not women need to dye their hair to get ahead in the careers. The post quoted a recent UK survey that found more than 50% of executive women dye their hair, compared with just 3% of men. The survey comments included: “Grey hair makes a businessman look distinguished but just makes a woman look old.”

The Grindstone polling, to date, is showing the following results:

Do you think women should dye their hair to help their careers?

Yes, it sucks, but that is what society expects. On men, grey hair just works better. (9.5%)

No, society can suck it up. If a woman wants to go grey then she should. (61.9%)

I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting to look your best and younger, especially if it helps your career.
(28.6%)

For those of you who know me, you know that I have chosen to let nature decide my hair colour and yes, that colour is grey and has been for some time. I like to think I suffer from pre-mature greying and not old age. I made the decision not to colour my greying locks, more for pure convenience than any noble stand. It is all I can do to get to the hair dresser to cut my hair, let alone keep up with colouring the exposed roots.

I feel I have earned each one of those grey hairs over the years. Somehow my grey hair, which I still think of as brown until the mirror reveals all, is a badge of honour. It stands for years of hard work as a Mom, in my career, the hours spent doing volunteer work, being a wife, daughter, sister and friend.

Has this hurt me in my career? I really can’t say. No one has outwardly told me they didn’t want me for a job because of my hair colour. Years ago, I remember my Aunt Donna tell me that she felt she had to dye her hair for work, or face the consequences of being seen as old and out of date and replaced by someone younger.

I think it is a sad reflection on our society and the workplace if you are judged by the colour of your hair and not by your work ethic, experience and knowledge. However, we all know, that stereotypes play havoc in the workplace and this could quite possibly be another sad example.

How would you vote in the poll? Do you think women should dye their hair if they expect to be seen as more youthful and somehow more valuable to an organization? Or do you think that grey hair suggests a wealth of life and work experience that should be valued? Do you look at a woman with grey hair differently than a man with grey hair? Do you find yourself thinking a woman with grey hair is old and out of date? All important questions to ask yourself. Take part in the discussion by leaving a comment.

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the amount of content out there? Each week I will share a few interesting links I have come across in order to share more content with WiNfluence readers. The information is not necessarily something I’m endorsing but links that I think are thought provoking and warrant a further look.

Check out this week’s interesting links.

A Checklist for 2012: Learning from Mentors -  The Glass Hammer by Jessica Titlebaum. If you are still struggling with setting your 2012 goals, Jessica shares a few action items she has learned from her mentors and provides a checklist that has helped her achieve her career goals.

Friendly Fire -  Huff Post Parents by Glennon Melton. Tried of the stay-at-home/working Mom debate. Glennon writes a great post on the insanity of this discussion. Glennon suggests we all do a great job of beating ourselves up through Mommy guilt and we need to quit beating each other up over the issue.

10 Things Not to Do When Making An Elevator Pitch - The Grindstone by Meredith Lepore. If working on your elevator pitch was a goal for 2012 Meredith offers up some great advice on how do to that effectively.

Development: Taking Charge of Your Career  - ANS Nuclear Café by Elizabeth McAndrews-Benavides and Jennifer Varnedoe. Some great career advice here from North American Young Generation Nuclear members.

Women Constantly Undermining Each Other In The Workplace? Total Myth -  The Jane Dough Business News we Knead by Amy Tennery. "Women actually feel worse watching their same-sex counterparts being mistreated at work, according to a new study from researchers Texas A&M University and Buena Vista University in Iowa."

To-Do Lists Don’t Work -  Harvard Business Review by Daniel Markovitz. Daniel makes come compelling arguments against using the to-do list. Personally, I’d be lost without mine but I wanted to share a different point of view.

Women’s Role in Fixing the Women’s Role in Fixing the “Pyramid Problem”  - The Glass Hammer by Caroline Turner. Caroline writes an excellent article on the importance of getting men on side to fix the lack of advancement of women to senior levels. One of the best written articles with very rich content (check out the links in the article as well) I’ve read in a very long time. A great article to share with senior leadership in your organization.

Do you have any interesting links you’d like to share with WiNfluence readers? Pick one thing that inspired you this week and post the link in the comments section below.

January as National Mentoring Month began in 1997 by Harvard University and in 2002 was formally put in place by the U.S. and adopted by other countries including Canada.

January was chosen because it is the month when people make resolutions and set goals for the upcoming year and the organizers thought, “Why not resolve to mentor?” The alternative to that would be, why not resolve to find a mentor?

Much has been written about mentoring. Catalyst has done some great research on this topic, including, “Making Mentoring Work”, with the added benefit of tools to help you achieve success in your mentoring relationships.  Most recently Catalyst has offered up new research “Sponsoring Women in Success” that takes mentoring to a new level and suggests that seeking out a sponsor, someone who can advocate on your behalf, may be a better way to support your career goals to the senior levels. Sponsorship is a more influential and specific professional relationship.

Whether you choose to ask someone to mentor or sponsor you, keep a few of things in mind:

1. Respect - You are asking them to give up valuable time to meet with you so be very flexible about meeting times, which very well may need to be re-scheduled at the last minute.
2. Preparation - Come prepared to ask for advice and guidance. You may want advice on how you handled a specific situation or you may want to review a project or assessment that you are working on. Make sure you demonstrate leadership, initiative and self-reliance. Think about different ways to ask questions or gain information other than simply asking your mentor. It is always good to show that you have explored other avenues before you come to the meeting.
3. Career Goals - Come prepared to discuss your career aspirations along with your strengths and weaknesses and concrete ideas of how to strengthen your weaknesses.
4. Homework - Be prepared to go away with homework. It may be a book or an article to read and be ready to discuss at your next meeting.

The second piece to National Mentoring Month is a Mentor Appreciation Day to thank those people who have mentored you over the years and helped you accomplish your goals. Take a few minutes before month end to think about all the wonderful people who have contributed to your career over the past year. Send them a short thank you expressing your appreciation of their efforts and tell them how their mentorship helped you achieve your goals.

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the amount of content out there? Each week I will share a few interesting links I have come across in order to share more content with WiNfluence readers. The information is not necessarily something I’m endorsing but links that I think are thought provoking and warrant a further look.

Check out this week’s interesting links.

Five Lessons From World Changers  - Harvard Business Review by John Coleman - John Byrne's new book, World Changers.* In it, Byrne recounts discussions with 25 entrepreneurs who have changed the world — people like Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Richard Branson. Byrne focuses on allowing those people to tell their stories, but in reading them, John finds several valuable lessons for world changers in the making, which he shares.

The Future of Work? Top 10 Employers of Gen Y Workers - Forbes by Jenna Goudreau -  A new study released this morning by Millennial Branding reveals how and where Generation Y is working today, and may shed light on the future of work.

5 Ways Body Language Can Cost You The Job - Career Realism by Debra Wheatman -  - What your body conveys can tell far more about your feelings than you suspect. How you stand, your eye contact (or lack thereof), and the position of your hands, among other things send a message. Depending on your body’s language establishes a tone you subconsciously convey.

Train the Brain to Focus  - Harvard Business Review by Paul Hammerness and Margaret Moore - The good news is that the brain can learn to ignore distractions, making you more focused, creative, and productive.

New Research: How Girls Can WiN in Math and Science - The Daily Beast by Caryl Rivers and Rosalind C. Barnett -  Now that we have reason to believe that gender stereotyping starts much earlier than previously thought, we also need to accept that countering it requires more sophisticated approaches than those we now use. If girls continue to lag behind in STEM areas, our future economy and competitiveness could suffer. It’s critical that we start our efforts in the primary grades and look beyond the obvious to succeed.

Do you have any interesting links you’d like to share with WiNfluence readers? Pick one thing that inspired you this week and post the link in the comments section below.

As announced last week WiNfluence has a new feature for 2012. Are you feeling overwhelmed by the amount of content out there? Each week I will share a few interesting links I have come across during the week in order to share more content with WiNfluence readers. The information is not necessarily something I’m endorsing but links that I think are thought provoking and warrant a further look.

Check out this week’s interesting links.

Career Advice: 5 Steps to Transform Yours Now Huff Post, Women by Linda Descano - Linda explores how to get started if you are thinking about a career reinvention.

Why You Need a Better Elevator Pitch Harvard Business by Jeffrey Hayzlett - “Today, elevators are much faster and attention spans are much shorter, so you've got to amp up your pitch. You've got to have a 118.”  That’s 118 seconds are you ready?

New Report Reveals Steps Women Must Take to Attain More Senior Level Positions, Germaine Consulting . “A new report, Women and The Paradox of Power, based on research by Dr. Anne Perschel of Germane Consulting and Jane Perdue of Braithwaite Innovation Group finds that corporations are leaving money on the table and forgoing future success by failing to place more women in senior leadership roles. Perschel and Perdue also claim that businesswomen must prepare themselves to take on these executive roles by understanding and using power more effectively.” Five actions for women are identified.

Ten simple and powerful body language tips for 2012,

“the effective use of body language plays a key role in effective leadership communication. From The Silent Language of Leaders: How Body Language Can Help - or Hurt - How You Lead, Carol provides 10 tips she has learned during the past two decades of coaching leaders and their teams around the world.”

A 7-step process to achieving your goals, Harvard Business Review by Alexandra Samuel. Having trouble keeping those New Year’s resolutions. Alexandra provides 7 steps to help you achieve your goals.

Women and Success, Huff Post Women by Kathy Caprino. Having trouble talking about your successes? Read on to find out why women have difficulty tooting their own horns.

How you can benefit by bragging, Forbes by Nancy F Clark. Still having trouble talking about your success. Nancy shares the benefits of bragging.

The New “Getting Ahead”: What it takes to succeed in 2012 ,The Glass Hammer, by Robin Madell . “To get the New Year started right, The Glass Hammer spoke with a diverse group of women in leadership positions in law, technology, and finance—as well as workplace experts in other industries—for practical strategies that you can really use.”

Three Steps to Getting What you Want, One New Thing by KW. Ask for what you want and see what happens!

Do you have any interesting links you’d like to share with WiNfluence readers? Pick one thing that inspired you this week and post the link in the comments section below.

As if making New Year’s resolutions wasn’t enough pressure, someone in their wisdom declared Jan. 5-9 as Women’s Self Empowerment Week.

Did you miss the ribbons, lapel pins and the huge amount of media coverage? Me too. (Don’t feel bad I couldn’t find any evidence of fan fare for this week of self empowerment.) Apparently, it missed everyone’s radar.

But seriously, as we move into 2012, January is that time of year when we should really take the time to think about our past accomplishments and set goals for what we want to achieve in the year ahead. Self reflection and goal setting are probably two of the best paths to empowerment, so I guess it makes sense to have a week in early January to celebrate all of that.

So before this week with zero awareness disappears, take a few minutes to take stock of your life, pat yourself on the back for all you have accomplished, think about the important role you play in your community and let all of those warm and fuzzy feelings inspire you to set your goals for 2012.

Writing down your goals for 2012 and posting them to review daily, weekly or even monthly will help you stay on track and remember what is important in the sea of deadlines and daily tasks. Sharing your goals with others will move them from resolution to proclamation. 

In that spirit, I want to share one of my goals for 2012. I proclaim to call people (and by people I mean both men and women) on gender stereotypes this year. I actually started doing this in 2011 and I found it quite interesting to see how others reacted. Almost every time I pointed out someone’s behaviour they were absolutely amazed how what they said or what they did was perceived. Almost every time I got the response, “that wasn’t my intention.” Proving once again that things like gender discrimination and stereotyping are very deeply seeded in our culture.

I have given myself permission to take charge of my work place and call colleagues and superiors on this type of behaviour. Of course when calling people on their behaviour you have to be kind about it, don’t call them out in the middle of a meeting or presentation in front of their peers. But a kindly worded email, a phone call or a short personal conversation after the event to explain how a particular statement made you feel, as a woman in the audience, goes a long way. Mostly I found the people I spoke with gave my comments some important reflection and thanked me for raising the point.

Self empowerment is all about taking small steps to improve yourself and your life. So take control of your life and start living it like you want to. Celebrate your self empowerment all year long, not just on one week that no one seems to pay any attention to.

Happy New Year! to all WiNfluence readers.

I receive a lot of content each week through my Twitter feed and other news feeds that I often think is worth sharing with WiN members and other colleagues. I share a lot of this information through links on my Facebook wall but I know that only reaches a few Facebook users. In order to reach everyone who follows the blog I am starting a new feature this year. Each week I will share some interesting links that I have come across in an attempt to get more content out to you in an easy format. The information shared is not necessarily something I’m endorsing but information that I think is thought provoking and worth sharing.

Check out this week’s interesting links. You’ll notice a trend - all links are about helping you set your career goals for 2012.

Nine resolutions that will make your career better in 2012 - The Grindstone - Meredith Lepore - Meredith speaks to Shelly Gorman, Director of Career Management at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business school, about some proactive resolutions whether you are trying to move up higher in your current field or land a new job. 

Five top career investments for 2012 - Forbes - Glenn Llopis - “it’s time to get serious about investing in yourself, your career and your immediate future.”

New Year’s Resolutions Beware! - Aubrey Daniels - “Here are some practical suggestions to help you be successful should you want to carry on the New Year’s Resolution tradition.”

Do you have any interesting links you’d like to share with WiNfluence readers? Pick one thing that inspired you this week and post the link in the comments section below.

To wrap up the year, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect on the wonderful accomplishments within the WiN organization in 2011:

* WiN-Canada membership continues to grow with an 11% increase
over last year.
* We held our first ever election in 2011 with competitions for most positions.
* We had diverse attendance from companies in industry at our annual conference. We very much appreciate the sponsorship we received from the industry, which helped to realize a profit of $34,000 to be used for 2012 programming.
* We participated in 13 Skills Canada dinners across Canada, helping to sponsor 4 dinners.
* We facilitated a successful full week summer GIRLS Science Camp, a 2-day March break camp and 5 club sessions. Other chapters are doing outreach in schools, attending community events i.e., Dove Days in Pembroke and Spirit of Sisterhood Event in Durham Region.
* We finished off the French version of The Catch video and the English and French version of the supplementary educators’ guide for The Catch video in partnership with The Learning Partnership. The video and guide is being accessed by all high schools across Ontario and beyond.
* We reached over 2,000 young people in the past year through our GIRLS Science, Skills dinners and outreach programs - this does not include students we reached through The Catch video, insertion of the nuclear operator family in Skills booklets at every secondary school, and our new position paper, Women in the Skilled Trades and Technologies - Myths and Realities.
* We secured continued support for the full time Executive Director position from Bruce Power and OPG.
* We completed our new position paper, Women Working in the Skilled Trades and Technologies, Myths and Realities and launched the paper at a breakfast in Toronto with many stakeholders in attendance.
* We sat on the Communication Working Committee, the Social Media Working Committee at the CNA and participated in Industry Association Alignment meetings with the industry. We also hold a seat on the Electricity Sector Council Ontario Working Committee.
* We helped organize and participated in a very successful Parliament Hill Day with over 40 participants attending meetings with 20 senators, MPs and parliamentary staff.
* We participated in the WiN-Global social media campaign to provide information on Fukushima to the public through Facebook and Twitter. 

* We raised $5,000 for Fukushima through sale of wristbands.
* Our website drew over 27,108 visitors from 155 countries. The blog was read 14,057 times over the past year and the women on WiN feature drew 5,672 page views.
* We continue to work on the incorporation of WiN.
* We held a number of local chapter activities mentoring young people and covering excellent topics through great speakers in our meetings, helping to better educate our members.

It has been a very busy 2011 and 2012 proves to be just as active. All this work is the result of our dedicated members and leaders in the nuclear community who are committed to WiN’s success and helping the nuclear industry be successful. I  hope you all come back renewed and ready to take an active role in all WiN's activities in 2012.

As this is my final blog for 2011, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the happiest of holidays. Enjoy your time with family and friends. It has been a great year for Women in Nuclear (WiN) and we look forward to bigger and better things in 2012. 

WiNfluence will be back in January 2012. Watch for a new feature on the blog in January.

December 6 is Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence against Women  and the anniversary of the Montreal Massacre  of 14 female engineering students at l'École Polytechnique de Montréal. The day has come to be known as White Ribbon Day.

In 1991, a handful of men in Canada, which included the late Jack Layton, decided they had a responsibility to urge men to speak out again violence against women. Wearing a white ribbon would become a personal pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women.

Shelley Rolland-Poruks, Chair of the Eastern Ontario chapter of WiN-Canada wrote the following in an email to her members:
“If you’re like me, December 6 is an important day in my life. I remember very clearly in 1989 learning about the 14 women from l'École Polytechnique de Montréal, who were murdered on December 6 while studying to become engineers.  I will never forget how I felt that day - scared, confused and angry. I knew then as I know now, that as a woman I shouldn’t be ashamed of wanting to learn and to have the choice of any career that I worked hard for.”

No doubt that day touched many Canadians and will not be forgotten. It was unthinkable to imagine that such a terrible thing could happen in Canada and that those murdered where chosen only because they were women studying Engineering, what was perceived by a disturbed man as a male only domain.

Shelley closed out her email, “Regardless of the career paths we have each taken, I believe it is important to reflect each year on this Canadian tragedy.”

We should all reflect and take action to stop violence against women. Wearing a white ribbon is a way of saying, “Our future has no violence against women.” A donation to a local women’s shelter helps those folks who do heart-wrenching work every day to help keep women and children safe and move on from abusive relationships. Talking about violence will bring awareness to this very serious issue and help empower people to speak out against violence. Remaining silent suggests that you condone the behaviour.

For help to know how to talk to an abuser or seek help for the abused visit http://www.neighboursfriendsandfamilies.ca/index.php.

We all have a leadership role to play in ending violence. Start today.