The Broad Experience

Chances are you've noticed that professional women are often stressed out. In this show we aim to find out why and bring some relief. First we meet Jen Yip, a Broad Experience listener who lived a stressful existence for years, but kept going because plowing through was the only option she knew - until she started to crack.Then we hear from therapist and corporate consultant Marjorie Hirsch, who has some advice about how to cut down on stress. This includes tackling stuff women tend to suck at, such as saying no, setting boundaries, and asking questions that'll make your life easier.

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This is the second of two shows on women in their twenties. Last time we heard from two young women talking about communication problems, confidence, and the competition they're up against. This time two women in their forties look at the twenties from their perspective: Broad Experience listener and professor Dawn Edmiston, and Dr. Meg Jay, TED talker and author of The Defining Decade.

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For some the twenties are a fun, relatively carefree time (who are these people?), but for many women this decade is stressful. They're trying to work out how they fit into the workplace, whether they're even in the right career, and how to communicate with older colleagues. The world is far more competitive than it was 20-plus years ago when I started working. But that's not the only thing that's different about the old me and today's twenty-somethings. My guests are London-based digital marketer Ade Okeowo, Broad Experience intern April Laissle, and Dr. Meg Jay, author of The Defining Decade.

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In the summer I did a show about communication at the office, but it left out one glaring component: body language. So today we tackle hunching, spread legs, eye contact, and kissing by gender - all in a business setting. I speak to Yale psychology professor Marianne LaFrance about how men and women play up their power, or lack of it, through non-verbal communication at work. And Financial Times journalist Elaine Moore talks about how she deals with unwanted male kisses at business meetings.

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This has been a big year for stories about women in tech, ranging from depressing tales of sexual harassment at startups to controversy over egg freezing and advice from a prominent CEO on *not* asking for a raise. The spotlight is shining on women in technology far more strongly than when I first covered this topic on the podcast in 2012. In this episode we focus on Silicon Valley, the tech capital of the world, and ask why it can be such a challenging place for women to work. My guests are Financial Times journalist Hannah Kuchler and tech worker Talia Fukuroe.

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Women have a problem valuing themselves - both setting prices and believing they're truly worth something in the marketplace. We tend to charge too little for our work. Sometimes we don't charge at all. It's a complicated, multi-layered issue, and it's part of the reason women earn less than men. As someone who squirms whenever I have to talk about how much I'm worth, I knew I had to tackle the topic on the show.

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Who hasn't compared themselves to someone else at work, envying the relationship they have with the boss, or the amount of attention they get for their work? Then there's the other side of comparison - boosting your ego by assuring yourself you're better than that woman down the hall.The comparisons we make at work can hold us back in our careers, whether we work for a company or for ourselves. In this show Canadian leadership coaches Lauren Bacon and Tanya Geisler explain how we can overhaul this relationship and turn it into something less destructive, more constructive.

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Female entrepreneurship is rising fast. In the US, a third of businesses are now owned by women. But look a bit deeper and you find nearly all these businesses are 'solopreneurships' - they don't have any employees and they don't bring in much money. This is sometimes by design, but not always: many women are unprepared for the inequities that still exist in entrepreneurship. In this show we meet two ambitious entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies: Julia Pimsleur and Denise Barreto. They have advice about how to survive in the male-dominated world of fundraising, why hiring other people is a must even when you can barely afford it, and how passion for your work isn't all it's cracked up to be.

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So much attention is focused on women in the workplace today that you might think progress is everywhere. Yes, more women are joining company boards, and some prominent women have top jobs. But other numbers haven't shifted much. In this show Financial Times journalist Carola Hoyos laments the slow pace of change in Britain in particular. But she says one upcoming move could turn things around. Meanwhile, Norway is getting a lot right on work and life. Curt Rice of the University of TromsØ says the future looks good for both sexes - and not just in the far north.

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More and more women are reaching their mid-forties without having children. Sometimes this is by choice, and sometimes it's not. But here's what both sets of women have in common: they're operating in a world where being a mother is still considered the default setting for women. Discussions of women in leadership usually assume every woman has to juggle her work with children. But where does that leave the rest of us?

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