Thursday, July 1, 2010

Are women more emotional than men are? Do they cry more?

The perception that women cry more than men is pretty widespread. But as babies and children, boys and girls cry about the same amount on average. Only during puberty do girls begin to cry more than boys do. Women cry four times as much as men.

A possible explanation for this is the hormone prolactin, which contributes to how much people cry. Prolactin is present in blood and tears, and it's more prevalent in women than in men. Women's tear ducts are also shaped a little differently from men's, which could be either a cause or an effect of increased crying In addition, people who are depressed may cry four times as much as people who are not, and two-thirds of people diagnosed with depression are women.

Of course, another common explanation is that some societies encourage women to cry while discouraging men from crying. In the United States, an exception to this standard seems to be the business world. In some businesses, crying is discouraged -- a woman who cries in the office may be viewed as weak or ineffectual

Women in business:Zim women making it

as i was reading the standard this week, i was facinated by this story about how women are making it in business. our own Zimbabwean women are taking over. you may want to read this story.

Kiri strives to inspire women in business
Saturday, 27 March 2010 18:18
A fitness guru, a cosmetic expert, a former top model and an astute business woman to boot, Kiri Davies is the embodiment of what most women dream of being and few achieve. Born to the Makhaya family in Bulawayo 42 years ago, Kiri was the fifth child in a family of seven girls and one boy. She was educated in Bulawayo and then moved to Harare.
“I was never quite sure of what I wanted to be in life. All I knew was that I wanted to be very successful,” she says of her early ambitions. She may not have known where she was going, but that did not stop her from working hard to get there.
With her looks she turned to modelling at 18 and was a great success. She won a Janet Jackson look-alike contest. She was on the cover of Mahogany, a prestigious lifestyle magazine, in 1986. In the same year she was also voted the top TV model of the year. “I was the Edgars girl. I did all the Edgars ads, fashion shows, everything. They never left me out,” she recalls nostalgically.
Two years later, having realised that her inclinations were firmly rooted in the beauty industry, Kiri left for Europe where she armed herself with diplomas in health, fitness instructing, beauty, grooming and alternative therapy.
Back home, in 1992, she put all her acquired knowledge to use and established Kiri’s Wellness Centre and Gym, which includes a woman’s gym, a sauna and a beauty clinic. “I wanted a place that takes care of all a woman’s wellbeing needs,” she explains.
In 2004 she introduced her own brand of beauty products, the “Deep range by Kiri” “They are products created by a Zimbabwean woman for Zimbabwean women.” She is an advert for her own products. She still looks as though she is in her early 30s. She has won several awards including one for Excellence in Business from the Anointed Women in Business Network.
She went on to produce and present a TV programme on beauty from 2004 to 2008. A very versatile woman, Kiri released a gospel album in 2009. “I am not limited in my outlook and interests,” she confesses. She is also an actress and will be starring in an upcoming film entitled Choices. There are plans to introduce a stress management centre in Harare very soon.
Married and a mother to Chanelle and Jack, Kiri uses breathing exercises to wind down. “I am a very active person and exercises are a major part of my life,” she tells me with a serious face. She lists dancing as one of her hobbies. Action packed movies, Van Damme style, are another indulgence.
She listens to gospel music mostly, but all soul and Rn’B is on her hit list. “R Kelly, Rihanna, I listen to them all. The all time best is Lionel Ritchie. Anything from him is always amazing,” she enthuses. She usually hangs out in coffee shops with friends.
Kiri is unashamedly a glamour queen. “I love Yves St Lauren, which is my favourite clothes designer. I think Giorgio Armani and Gucci are good as well.” She laughs. She is also hooked on designer fragrances. “Paris and White Linen from Estee Lauder are divine, but I usually go for Red Door by Elizabeth Arden,” she confides in me, woman to woman.
She goes on to confirm this impression when I ask her the one thing that she would never leave home without in her handbag. “Make-up and perfume. Those two.” She does not hesitate to answer.
On the joys of being a woman, Kiri is not coy. “Women are more attractive than men. I like to have that advantage over them.” Sisters, go on, use your looks to outshine the brothers (but just keep your self-respect at all times).
A jetsetter, she rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous. “I love soul music and it was wonderful when I met the Commodores when they were on tour in London.” She has also hobnobbed with Tevin Campbell and the Jacksons.
Davies has a deep side to her nature. “I am very involved with my church, Word of Faith. We have a Kingdom Prosperity Business Network and it is my wish to see more women get into entrepreneurship.” There is passion in her voice as she says this.
Kiri has established her own trust called Child of Africa that looks after orphans. She has helped fundraise for the Mayor’s Christmas Cheer Fund and is one of the organisers for the newly-launched Miss Deaf pageant. “It is my dream to see the Miss Deaf become an annual show,” she says. With her ability to achieve what she sets out to, then it is most likely that this will be a reality soon.
Kiri Davies is inspired by Nelson Mandela and Oprah Winfrey to do things for others. “Mandela is a rare character. He is so forgiving, even after all that he has been through. Oprah is motivating and they are both courageous. I really value that trait in anyone’s character. When you have courage, nothing can ever defeat you.” She explains her fascination with the two personalities.
It is those two who have shaped Kiri’s own motto in life. It is a perfect summary of how she has achieved her incredible accomplishments. “I always strive to inspire others. I think we should all help each other to be the best that we can be.”

link to the story:

http://www.thestandard.co.zw/entertainment/23869-kiri-strives-to-inspire-women-in-business.html

Making working families work

By Rebecca A. Clay
An article to help you work with your families. Ladies, take time to be inspired and help work out your family strategies. take note that this is not my own writing but its from rebecca for you.
Add "single-earner families" to the list of endangered species.
In 1940, according to the Employment Policy Foundation's Center for Work and Family Balance, 66 percent of working households consisted of single-earner married couples. By 2000, that percentage had dropped to less than 25 percent. By 2030, the center estimates, a mere 17 percent of households will conform to the traditional "Ozzie and Harriet" model.
As the number of working parents continues to grow, psychologists note, so have the time pressures, housework battles and other struggles associated with juggling work and family obligations. Now psychologists are also identifying the many benefits of dual-earner couples and the strategies-ranging from striving for equitable partnerships to indulging in daily back rubs-they use to successfully manage the balancing act. They're sharing these and other tips with couples in their practices. And they're teaching the next generation of psychologists how to help couples negotiate this growing family norm.
"The work/family conflict literature focuses on how work conflicts with family and family conflicts with work," says psychologist Rosalind Chait Barnett, PhD, director of the Community, Families and Work Program and senior scientist at the Women's Studies Research Center at Brandeis University. "Now people are starting to talk about work/family enhancement."
A paradigm shift
According to the conventional wisdom, says Barnett, juggling work and family invariably leads to stress. That's just not true, she says.
"The dominant theory used to be that multiple roles were bad for women because women had only a limited amount of energy and engaging in multiple roles meant a net loss," says Barnett. "An alternative theory-the expansionist theory-says that having multiple roles actually produces a net gain. Even though you expend energy, you get back psychological, monetary and other rewards."
To find out which theory best reflected contemporary realities, Barnett launched the first large-scale study of two-earner couples. The National Institute of Mental Health-funded study of 300 couples collected data on both husbands and wives between 1989 and 1992. The title of the resulting book neatly summarizes the findings: "She Works/He Works: How Two-Income Families are Happier, Healthier and Better Off" (Harvard, 1998).
Barnett isn't the only one to discover benefits of dual-earner families. In a 2001 article in the American Psychologist (Vol. 56, No. 10, pages 781-796), she and a colleague reviewed two decades' worth of empirical data and confirmed that multiple roles bring psychological, physical and relationship benefits to men and women.
In fact, several studies they cite counter the often-idealized view of happy homemakers. One study, for instance, found that employed women who moved to part-time work or became homemakers became more depressed over the study's three-year period, while homemakers who joined the work force became less depressed. Another study found that while the presence of preschool-aged children in the home was associated with distress for all women, working moms were less distressed than stay-at-homes.
Of course, admits Barnett, there is an upper limit to the number of roles people can juggle without getting overloaded. A woman who's a wife, mother and president of a small business, and then adds caring for an elderly parent to the mix, may feel distressed. But in general, she says, multiple roles benefit the whole family.
But media images haven't caught up with these findings, says Toni S. Zimmerman, PhD, a human development and family studies professor and director of the marriage and family therapy program at Colorado State University.
"One image you see is the working mom with a cellphone in her ear, briefcase in her hand and no time for her kids," she says. "The other mom you see is the one who's home 24/7 baking cookies. You don't see a lot of moms in between, even though that's where most moms are."
Successful strategies
Zimmerman is taking a variety of approaches to counteract such polarized imagery.
In one position paper, she and colleague Ruth McBride enlisted child-care workers to battle inaccurate messages that result in guilt among working mothers. Noting that child-care workers themselves often believe these messages, the researchers suggested ways that child-care workers could share the research on child care's benefits and make the experience more positive for children and parents alike.
In addition to countering negative images, Zimmerman is determined to tell the story of successful dual-earner families.
Along with colleague Shelley Haddock, PhD, she used ads in newspapers, on the radio and other venues to identify couples who defined themselves as successful dual-earner families. The researchers then conducted intensive interviews with 47 couples and analyzed the resulting transcripts for recurring themes.
The couples had in common four main strategies for successfully balancing work and family:
• Striving for a true partnership with equal responsibility for domestic chores and child care. "In our research, the partnership between mom and dad-their ability to work well together and have each one's job and time be as valuable as the other's-was foundational," says Zimmerman.
• Making family a priority without succumbing to what Zimmerman calls the "hyper-parenting model" so prevalent today. "Over and over, we heard parents say they didn't encourage their kids to be in six sports every semester or play seven instruments," says Zimmerman. They also lowered the bar on their to-do lists, she says, noting that these families "didn't feel like every dinner had to have 14 ingredients."
• Spending time with their children, each other and alone. While being available and attentive to their kids, says Zimmerman, these couples also spent time as couples and individuals.
• Drawing on the support of extended families and employers. In fact, the workplace environment played a key role in these families' success, emphasizes Zimmerman. Whether parents were bakers, sales clerks or CEOs, they responded to workplace flexibility and autonomy by working harder and feeling more loyal toward their employers. "They didn't tend to be chatters at work," she explains. "They tended to get real focused and get a lot done in a little bit of time."
It's not that successful dual-earners aren't tired or busy, adds Zimmerman. "But single college students are tired and busy," she says. "We have a darned busy culture."
In therapy offices
With that ever-busier culture, many psychologists report an increase in the number of dual-earner couples seeking help with balancing work and family.
Women beleaguered by their husbands' unwillingness to tackle their fair share of domestic burdens is one of the most common issues, says Peter Fraenkel, PhD, director of the Center for Time, Work and the Family at the Ackerman Institute for the Family in New York.
"The problem isn't about working," says Fraenkel. "It's about the longer and longer hours that partners are being asked to work. When you've got two people working, and they've got kids and a home to manage, there's just less and less time for those home activities."
And while technology has brought flexibility, he says, it has also erased the boundaries between work and family life. "Given a choice between intimacy and e-mail, unfortunately more and more people are choosing to check their e-mail," says Fraenkel, who's also an associate psychology professor at the City College of New York.
Fraenkel and other psychologists have developed a variety of strategies to help clients overcome such challenges:
• Facilitating honest discussions about expectations regarding the division of labor. "Working women still pick up two to three times the amount of domestic chores and child care than do men," says Fraenkel. "That becomes a sore spot. Women, rightly so, feel unfairly burdened." Fraenkel has patients examine their beliefs about gender roles and devise plans for more equitable sharing of work. If all else fails, he shares research that finds that the more unfair women find the distribution of work, the less likely they are to desire sex.
• Helping partners reconnect despite hectic schedules. An intervention Fraenkel calls "rhythms of relationships," for example, has couples establish regular couple or family time. In one intervention couples brainstorm ideas for pleasurable activities they can do with their partners in under a minute and then squeeze in six every day. Fraenkel also recommends that couples establish "decompression rituals" for the end of the work day, which, he notes, is the moment of highest stress. The ritual may combine some time for each partner alone-for instance, soaking in a hot bath or using an exercise machine-with time together to share events of the day, rub each other's shoulders or listen to music while cooking or doing mindless chores.
• Helping partners develop better communication skills. For Jay Lebow, PhD, past-president of APA's Div. 43 (Family) and a clinical professor at the Family Institute at Northwestern University, these skills are especially important in discussions about who does what at home and with the children, he says. These discussions can descend into what Lebow calls "classic not-so-good arguments," where "messages get delivered with such overwhelming affect that the meaning is obscured."
Psychologists, says Lebow, can help patients remember the big picture, educate them that they're not alone in facing such issues and provide "a safe holding environment to really talk, hear each other and problem-solve."
Educating families and future psychologists about dual-earner families is critical, says Froma Walsh, PhD, co-director of the Chicago Center for Family Health and professor of social service administration and psychiatry at the University of Chicago.
"There's a nostalgia to return to a 1950s image of family life," says Walsh, also the editor of the third-edition book "Normal Family Processes" (Guilford, 2003). "But we forget that in the 1950s, when we had full-time homemakers, husbands were married to their jobs. Today we have both parents much more involved in family life than we did in that idealized past."
Psychologists need to understand the benefits of dual-earner situations and know how to help families balance multiple realms, she says. Most importantly, they need to recognize that such arrangements are no longer the exception. "They're the norm," she says.
Rebecca A. Clay is a writer in Washington, D.C.

Motivational quotes from women.

Women have proved beyond doubt that they do not only inspire and motivate their families only but they also care for everyone. I came across these notable quotes from some famous women and decided to share it with you. These women have spoken from their heart, and their words leave an indelible impression on the reader's mind.
Erica Jong, author
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, writer
Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Nadezhda Mandelstam, Russian writer, Hope Against Hope
I decided it is better to scream. Silence is the real crime against humanity.

Dianne Feinstein, politician
[on women's role in government] Toughness doesn't have to come in a pinstripe suit.

Anne Frank, writer Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Parents can only give good advice or put them[children] on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.

Eleanor Roosevelt, activist You Learn by Living
You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

Susan B. Anthony, feminist
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union.

Anne Frank, writer
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death

Oprah Winfrey, American TV personality
As you become more clear about who you really are, you'll be better able to decide what is best for you - the first time around.

Indira Gandhi, Indian politician
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

Peace Pilgrim, spiritual leader
When you find peace within yourself, you become the kind of person who can live at peace with others.

Anne Frank, writer
How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Janis Joplin, American singer
Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got.

Dr. Joyce Brothers, American psychologist
Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.

Barbara De Angelis, American researcher
You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.

Dolores Huerta, activist
If you haven't forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others?

Mother Theresa, social activist
I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much.

Joyce Carol Oates, writer
It is only through disruptions and confusion that we grow, jarred out of ourselves by the collision of someone else's private world with our own.

Louisa May Alcott, American novelist
Love is a great beautifier.

Dolly Parton, singer
If you want the rainbow, you've got to put up with the rain.

Maya Angelou, poet, educator
You can write me down in history with hateful, twisted lies, you can tread me in this very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.

Helen Hayes, American actress
Rest and you rust.

Kaethe Kollwitz, German artist
I am gradually approaching the period in my life when work comes first. No longer diverted by other emotions, I work the way a cow grazes.

Doris Lessing, writer The Golden Notebook
None of you [men] ask for anything -- except everything, but just for so long as you need it.

Bella Abzug, lawyer
We are coming down from our pedestal and up from the laundry room.

Susan B. Anthony, women's activist
There never will be complete equality until women themselves help to make laws and elect lawmakers.

Susan B. Anthony, women's activist
A woman must not depend upon the protection of man, but must be taught to protect herself.

Ayn Rand, writer
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

Virginia Woolf, writer
Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.

Maya Angelou, poet, educator
It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself, which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.