Are
you a woman working in a business?
Would you like to start a business?
If so, you'll find plenty of useful information and advice on
the Internet.
How
do women get ahead in business? How
can women handle both a business career and a family?
What kinds of opportunities are there for women to combine
family care and business at home?
A
few years ago it would have been difficult to find answers to these
questions. Now, with the
World Wide Web advancing at a staggering pace, the answers to these
questions are readily available.
When
searching for answers, the challenge lies in narrowing sources to the
best. The number of Web sites available is massive.
Enter "women" 
and
Google reports over 272 million sites! "women in business"
has 111 million sites and "outstanding business women"
narrows down to 6,650,000!
While
no one can claim to have found the best Web sites for women, those who
are interested in business careers will find the sites recommended
useful.
At
1-800-family.net
you’ll find "10 Mottoes of Successful Business Women"
compiled by Marnie Pherson. As
she mentions, "In learning about what works for other business
people, we can combine their philosophies about business with our own
to lead us to even greater success. I asked several business women to
share with me their mantras or mottoes for success."
In
addition to the ten developed ideas that she gleaned from others, she
adds one of her own. Marnie’s
motto is "Create
Once, Sell Many". She adds, "Use anything you create 5 or 6
times. For example, an article you write can be turned into a special
report that you give as a bonus item when people buy your products. It
can be used as a section in a book, or you can use it as a handout for
a seminar or the basis of a class. Stretch the mileage from every
creation."
With
so many sources of information available, a good approach is to narrow
a search through directories that summarize links to numerous sites.
The Open
Directory Project does that.
Scan through the list for topics and summaries related to your
own interests.
Digital
Women
provides one of the most practical Web sites for women.
It includes all sorts of useful links and resources, including
Money Resources, How To Articles, Business Tips and Free Daily
Planners. Digital Women
was created for women in business all around the globe looking for a
place to gather free resources, free business tips, free sales and
marketing tips, home business ideas, and a place where business women
could gather together. They
have an extensive list of home business ideas for women who want to
start a business of their own.
Interested
in starting your own business? Read
a great article by Lynne Franks at iVillage
on "Discovering Your Passions to Choose a Business."
The site has other excellent articles for women going into
business, but Lynne's can help you choose the right business.
Click on "Discover Your Passions"
American
Business Women's Association
has dedicated more than 50 years to
women's education and provided workplace skills and career-development
training for more than 545,000 members.
Their goal: "To bring together businesswomen of diverse
occupations and to provide opportunities for them to help themselves
and others grow personally and professionally through leadership,
education, networking support, and national recognition."
Advancing
Women in Leadership
is an on-line professional, refereed journal for women in leadership.
They publish manuscripts that report, synthesize, review, or analyse
scholarly inquiry that focuses on women's issues. The site is both
professional and academic.
CareerWomen.com
has an extensive collection of links including the Best in Women's
Career Resources, Professional Association for Business Women.
For
an unusual site with loads of useful information for business women
who are also parents, visit The
Entrepreneurial Parent.
The site features many well-written articles in a number of
different categories: family,
career, business, experts, news archives and a resource centre.
A
quick look at the annual WoW awards
for the top 25 women who have most inspired people worldwide with
their efforts to advance technology can convince anyone that hi-tech
leadership is no longer an exclusive male bastion.
The site features biographical sketches and photographs of the
current year's winners, and the names of previous winners.
Find
inspiration in the lives of cosmetics executives Madame C.J. Walker,
Helena Rubinstein, Elizabeth Arden, Estee Lauder and Adrien Arpel who
shared similar entrepreneurial tactics and characteristics.
Despite humble beginnings, these women emerged as experts in
skin care and business as a result of their hands-on involvement.
Walker, Rubinstein, Arden and Lauder used their kitchens to develop
products.
For
the stories of these and other successful women whose names you
know, you need only use a search engine like Google.
Just type in the name of the person you're interested in
knowing more about.
Can
you, a woman with aspirations, succeed in business?
Part of the answer rests with overcoming a frequent problem
referred to by Cathleen Fillmore:
"We
don't suffer from delusions of grandeur, we suffer from delusions of
insignificance. We tend to think we're smaller than we really are and
overlook that divine spark within. We sometimes think what we do
doesn't really matter in the larger scheme of things. It does."
