As a woman, what are top 3 challenges that you have personally faced at your current workplace in building your professional career?

When someone applies for an entry-level position, a typical job interview question they might be asked is how they’ve handled significant obstacles in the past. If you are currently in high school or college and lack work experience, interviewers may phrase this question as, “Tell me about the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a student.” These challenges might be academic or personal—there is a wide gamut of situations you might choose to share. Perhaps you were faced with completing an important team project, but your teammates bailed at the last minute. Maybe you were an officer in an extracurricular or service organization tasked with organizing a major fundraising project. Or, like many students today, you might have struggled to balance your classwork with the demands of a necessary part-time or full-time job. • List the interpersonal/people skills that empowered you to overcome challenges as a student and highlight these in your response. • Ideally, use your answer to persuade your interviewer that you would readily accept challenges in order to grow your skills and contribute productively to their workplace. • Use the STAR interview response technique to create a unique, illustrative example that the interviewer will remember when it comes time to make a hiring decision. What the Interviewer Really Wants To Know This question is a way for interviewers to get a sense of how you tackle problems and adversity. They are also interested in your level of self-motivation...

Women have a right to be proud of their achievements in the long-running fight for equal pay in the workplace. Women are developing a strong presence in practically every field that was once dominated by men. Nonetheless, there are still obstacles in the workplace for women. The majority of these key difficulties aren’t new. Successfully overcoming these hurdles will include recruiting appropriate and strategic cooperation from others inside the company. Going it alone as a worker may result in you being labelled as a problem employee, limiting your capacity to advance in your profession. As an employer, you must support the initiative and demonstrate your dedication to your employees. Motherhood Employers are not allowed to discriminate or take adverse action against a woman because she is pregnant. However, an employer is not required to give paid maternity leave or paid child care leave in the future. A woman’s absence from work to care for a kid is likely to have an impact on her career advancement. Negotiating an arrangement that offers flexible work choices such as telecommuting and working non-standard business hours can help a career woman who becomes pregnant or a working mother deal with this issue. Employer incentives such as flexible schedules and hours are becoming more common as a method to attract talented employees. In fact, professional flexibility allows both men and women to choose their family lives over career growth. Equal Pay On an average, women con...

Thanks to technological developments and globalisation, people nowadays are more connected than ever before. Therefore, the Read more: 5 common diversity and inclusion challenges in the workplace Despite offering diversity and inclusion in the workplace does come with a handful of challenges. Here are five common reasons why employers feel hesitant to embrace a multinational environment. 1. Communications barriers It is undeniable that a diverse and inclusive workforce can lead to Communication barriers are an obstacle that every international business faces. Even when people use the same language, for example, English, variations of colloquialisms and accents between American, British, and Australian English could potentially cause misunderstandings. More important, a language can have many implications that only people from these regions could understand correctly. Moreover, some gestures could easily be considered an offence even without us realising it. Read more: Therefore, there will be more conflicts than in a normal working environment since the employees need more time to understand and cooperate. Working in highly diverse organisations calls for strong interpersonal skills and cultural sensitivity; not something that can be taught at school. 2. Stereotypes and prejudice Whether you like it or not, stereotypes directed at specific groups of people happen. While working, instead of trying to communicate and understand each other, employees may use these stereotypes...

• Share to Facebook • Share to Twitter • Share to Linkedin While the world is evolving, women are still lagging behind when it comes to leadership roles in business. Today, only 26 women are in CEO roles at Fortune 500 companies, making up 5.2% of the female population, according to a report by Pew Research . The stats stay virtually the same for women CEOs of Fortune 1000 companies at 5.4%, showing that there is little movement of women making up these high-ranking positions as company leaders. With women still pushing to reach the top, they are faced with a range of challenges that many of their male CEO counterparts don’t have an understanding of. It is these issues that are preventing many women from achieving their goal of becoming a leader at their company and diminishing their ability to get ahead in business. 1. Being Treated Equally One of the biggest challenges my female clients are currently facing is equality in the workplace. My advice for women leaders everywhere is to go for what they want in their careers and not to give up. Hone the skills necessary to give you those opportunities, such as your communication skills, leadership development, and emotional intelligence. Raise your hand in meetings. Speak up, and be heard. - Valerie Martinelli , Valerie Martinelli Consulting, LLC 2. Building A Sisterhood The biggest challenge my female clients face today is garnering support from other women. My advice to women worldwide is to support and empower each other, s...

Background The recent The dearth of gender diversity at the highest levels is also apparent in the event tech sector. I’ve seen it throughout my career as an event tech entrepreneur. It wasn’t a field I set out to enter — I never attended a trade show until after college. But once I became familiar with how events operated, I knew there had to be a better way, which led me to co-found CadmiumCD. I recently spoke with Cathy Breden, EVP & Chief Operating Officer of the International Association of Exhibitions and Events (IAEE). She has also seen the lack of gender diversity firsthand. She estimates that women fill about 2% of C-level roles: “In our sector, women tend to be on equal footing in operational positions but vastly outnumbered in the executive ranks,” Breden observes. “To their credit, many tech leaders understand they need to fully use the talents of the entire workforce to achieve the company’s potential.” The Challenges 1. Lack of Business Contacts & Experience The question is, how do we get from here to there? From my own experience as a woman in the technology field, I believe one of the biggest challenges women face is a lack of business contacts to obtain financing to start a business. Women tend to build contacts around their children’s school and sports activities, whereas men are more likely to network with business contacts. There are exceptions, of course, but that’s how networks typically evolve, which can put women at a disadvantage when it comes to f...