Career-Business Notes

Glass Ceiling Cracking

While women's representation in topexecutive positions shows few new cracks in the glass ceiling, more Fortune500 companies have advanced women in large numbers, according to a new study.

The 2000 Catalyst Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners found ten percent, 50,of Fortune 500 companies have women holding a quarter or more of corporateofficer titles, twice the number since 1995, when Catalyst began measuringthis data.

Even more promising, four companies have reached more than 40percent women corporate officers: Ikon Office Solutions, SLM Holdings,PacifiCare Health Systems, and Nordstrom. Yet, 90 Fortune 500 companies haveno women corporate officers in 2000, not much progress since 1995 when 115companies had no women officers.

Women corporate officers number 1,622 out of 12,945, or 12.5 percent, asof March 31, 2000, compared to 979 out of 1,124, or 8.7 percent in 1995.

For additional information, visit Catalyst.

Traditional Workday Boundaries Are a Blur

Leaving work at the office is no longer possible for many American workers, according to theNovember 2000 Xylo Report: Shifts in Work and Home Life Boundaries.

Forty percent of employees put in overtime or take work home with themat least once a week and 75 percent take care of personal responsibilitieswhile they are on the job, according to the report.

The Xylo Report is a national survey on work/life issues conductedmonthly by Wirthlin Worldwide for Xylo, Inc. Xylo (formerlyemployeesavings.com) is a leading provider of Web-based work/life solutionsused by Fortune 500 companies to attract and retain employees.

The concept of the regular eight-hour workday is changing, with 40 percent of employees who work outside their home responding that they eitherwork overtime or take work home with them at least once a week.

• 17 percent put in overtime or take work home with them every day
• 15 percent put in overtime or take work home with them two to three times per week
• 8 percent work beyond their scheduled hours once each week

The traditional workday is seeing a shift within specific gender groups andincome levels.

• 19 percent of men reported working overtime every day compared to 14 percent of women.
• People with incomes between $30 — 60,000 dollars per year are over three times as likely to work extra hours on a daily basis than people making less than $30,000.

For more about the report, visit Xylo, Inc.

Women Entrepreneurs are Key to Long-term Economic Growth

Increasing the number of womenentrepreneurs is critical for a country's long-term economicgrowth, according to a new global study on entrepreneurship.

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2000 (GEM), a21-country study of entrepreneurship and economic growth, the need to encourage more women and individuals outside the 25-44 agegroup to become more involved in entrepreneurship is about the impact ofpopulation demographics on entrepreneurial activity. An expanding populationleads to an increased demand for goods and services with the escalatingdemand resulting in greater numbers of entrepreneurial opportunities.

"Entrepreneurship makes a difference to economic prosperity and acountry without high business start-up rates is risking economicstagnation," said Michael Hay, a GEM project director and professor atLondon Business School. "Countries that are able to replenish the stock ofbusinesses and jobs and have the capacity to accommodate volatility andturbulence in the entrepreneurial sector are best placed to competeeffectively."