Womenomics: Is This The New Reality?

I don’t watch a lot of TV. I heard the buzz surrounding Mad Men, and I finally rented Season 1 on DVD a few months ago. I thought it was AMAZING. AMC did a great job at showing the 1960s workplace. The fact that they were smoking and drinking on the job was crazy enough to see, but the way that women were treated was downright appalling.

Of course, we all know that women were treated unequally and have heard the stories, but seeing it acted out really put things in perspective. Women were treated horribly and were extremely undervalued.

Flash forward to 2009. A new book came out today titled “Womennomics: Write Your Own Rules For Success.” Written by news anchors Claire Shipman and Katty Kay, this book examines the power that women now hold and teaches them how to use it to negotiate what they want in the workplace.

It’s easy to see how this might come into play in a large city, but can this be possible in Middle America? Is Womenomics still a fantasy? Or is it becoming the new reality?

As someone who has always lived in a relatively small town, I think the idea of negotiating a four day work week  is still pretty much a fantasy for most women. If my sister walked into her boss’ office and made those kinds of demands, she ‘d get told to walk out to the parking lot and not come back.

However, I do think that this book could describe how things will be in the future. Technology is opening up new alternatives to the traditional way people work. More and more people are working from home in virtual offices. Companies are starting to realize that this saves them money and the flexibility makes their employees happy, which further increases the bottom line.

While a traditional company set in small town America may not be ready for the revolution this book describes, there are plenty of companies who are! Women who are running service based businesses can already use these tactics to start negotiating better deals with their clients.

This book is definitely worth picking up; it’s informative and delivers sound advice. It’s also very interesting to read the statistics of how much more successful women run companies are.

I can only imagine the expressions on the faces of the Mad Men characters if they were told just how much things would change. The men? Astounded! The women? Overjoyed!