We’ve been exploring some of the existing subconscious biases that we have towards women in the workplace. Here are 3 tips to counteract these biases. Avoid creating situations where male employees have additional social access to a male boss like going for a drink to build relationships, where social stigma might make that more complex for a woman.  Secondly. Amplify the voice of women in meetings: “Hey, that was good, did everyone hear that? Thanks for that Susan.” Hopefully do that without being patronizing. If a women is interrupted, since they are  interrupted more often. Try the De-Interrupt: “Good summary, but I just want to circle back to what Susan (interrupted woman) was saying, because I think it was similar. Did you get your point across?” Let her voice be the last one heard on a topic.    Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

Have you ever heard the phrase, “boys will be boys?” Implying we have not considered a man’s biological reality. The problem is that is often the only biological reality that gets considered. Take your own poll of “bad sex” amongst men and notice if they are talking about passive partners or a boring experience. When a woman talks about “bad sex”, that could mean coercion. If the guy hadn’t pushed for it or alcohol hadn’t been involved, it wouldn’t have happened. Emotional discomfort from the level of physical intimacy outpacing the desired level of emotional intimacy to feel safe. Physical pain, including faking an orgasm to speed things along because she feels bad not letting the man have an orgasm even though things have gone dry for her. Not speaking up to voice her own needs for pleasure to protect a man’s ego as if he had a right to feel great about himself at her expense. Have you ever thought about how disturbingly comfortable the world is with the fact that women sometimes leave a sexual encounter in tears?   Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

Collective intelligence is the composite or combined intelligence of a group of people, sort of like a group IQ. A group can be either more or less intelligent than the individuals that make up the group depending on the dynamics. The first correlation is that the higher the group member’s emotional intelligence, the higher the group’s collective intelligence. Emotional intelligence in this case is social perceptiveness, an individual’s ability to learn about others’ feelings and emotions from verbal and nonverbal communication like expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures and other body language. Secondly, the more empowered group members feel to participate in group discussions also is tied to a higher group collective intelligence. Thirdly, the more women on the team, the higher the group collective intelligence, this is often tied to women possessing strong social perception skills.    Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

Back when I was a licensed civil engineer, I was shading engineering plans with colored pencils to delineate different construction materials for an estimate. A senior project manager walked by and said, "nice job, you’re going to make a great mom someday.” Turning my work into playing and coloring. I was offended but said nothing.  What could I have done differently? I would encourage women now to speak up. If you have a good relationship with the manager, offset it with humor, "I don’t understand how that’s funny or complimentary but you're part of THAT generation.” Or more directly, “That’s not an appropriate comment because you wouldn't say that to a man.” On the more serious side, go ahead and report it to HR. Your company on a whole would benefit from diversity training. You’re probably asking why go to those lengths so quickly? Because so many of these small micro-aggressions happen and we wonder why there are not more women in higher level and C-suite positions. These subtle and constant backhanded compliments get delivered to women all the time.    Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

Girls are more likely to have a negative body image than boys. In the US, girls and women hear and see messages about how they look from childhood. Young girls and teens are more likely to be praised for how they look than for their thoughts or actions. I don’t recall either one of my parents ever saying I was pretty or beautiful, they weren’t really verbally affirmative people. They focused on how I was performing in school. I didn’t think I was pretty or ugly, I was just me. Your regular awkward, insecure teenager. Which means I still struggled with my body image. I was still surrounded by peer pressure and media images. But I was lucky to not have that pressure reinforced at home. No one to my knowledge was ever on a diet or trying to lose weight. It’s important to remind ourselves and young kids that the lifestyle images we see are filtered and edited. Ironically the best way to have a healthy body image is to not focus on image at all. Compliment children and adults on their efforts, talents, accomplishments, and personal values.    Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

What can you do if you are a woman and you catch yourself automatically feeling competitive? Just remember that we’ll be more powerful together than as individuals. Take a vow to treat other women as your allies even when you don’t like them. Adopt “Shine Theory”. It’s the idea that another woman’s success, or shine, is going to help you shine brighter. Imagine basking in the glow of awesome women that you surround yourself with and watch those jealous feelings disappear.   Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

There is an unconscious bias that men lead and women nurture. It’s okay for men to be ambitious, assertive, self-confident. Those same qualities in women are labeled aggressive, self-promoting. Women are expected to be unselfish, caring, emotionally expressive and interpersonally sensitive. Male executives who speak more often than their peers are deemed more competent by 10%. Female executives who speak up are deemed less competent by 14%. When it comes to the workplace, women speak less, are interrupted more and have their ideas more harshly scrutinized. Women have to walk a precarious tightrope, it’s often easier to say nothing at all than be judged. They hold back, become less engaged. What can you do about this as a woman? Speak authoritatively, without apologies. Create a buddy system with colleagues and ask them to back you up in meetings when they agree with your ideas. Women need allies. And if you see this interrupting happening, speak up. Hey, I think you interrupted her before she finished.    http://time.com/3666135/sheryl-sandberg-talking-while-female-manterruptions/   Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

Does it really cost more to be a woman? You’ll pay on average about 13% more for personal care products marketed towards women. Does it raise your eyebrows just a tiny bit that tampons are subject to a luxury tax in the US but condoms are not? Menstrual cycles are a monthly reality for women for an average of 40 years. Another curiosity is that Viagra and condoms are eligible for reimbursement with a Flexible Savings Account (FSA) or Health Savings Account (HSA). But tampons are not. A 1994 gender pricing study estimated that women paid an extra $1350 every year for personal care products and services like haircuts and dry cleaning. And that was 25 years ago. Just for fun, ask a man about how much it would cost to replace his toiletries bag if he lost it on a trip. Ask a woman the same question. Send me a note and let me know if you think the pink tax is real.

Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

Have you ever told a stranger to smile and then remarked that they look pretty or so much prettier when they do? What’s sexist about that statement you might ask. Well have you ever said to a man, “Hey man smile, you’re so much more handsome when you smile.” I have never said that to a man or heard it said. But I have been told by men, always strangers, that I should smile more. And then they would proceed to give me a compliment which I would then thank them for. Why is telling a woman to smile sexist? She either has to play the part and smile on demand or be deemed rude for ignoring and engaging in unwanted conversation. It perpetuates the idea that women should only show positive emotions or that it’s her role to look pretty for others. Stop expecting a woman to hide behind her smile, she might have something better to do like figure out how to stop living for others. So what do you do if you see a woman frowning, you can always ask are you okay? And if it’s a woman in your life that you are close to, give her a reason to smile, do something to inspire it.   Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!

Women are subject to disproportionate rates of gender-based violence and harassment including sexual assault and intimate partner violence. One in four women will experience sexual assault in her lifetime. What can we do about this? We can promote consent education, what that looks and feels like. And women need safe forums where they can talk about sexual encounters and be taken seriously as narrators of their own experience, whatever terms they choose to use. Women who have survived a rape, whether they call it a rape or not suffer lasting effects. Not acknowledging rape when it happens is not a sign that it didn’t happen. It is a sign that we do not have the adequate language for communicating the complexity of sexual violence. It’s a double crime. It denies a women of agency when the encounter is unwelcome and denies her the agency a second time in the construction of her own story.   http://behavioralscientist.org/what-the-origins-of-the-1-in-5-statistic-teaches-us-about-sexual-assault-policy/   https://www.nsvrc.org/sites/default/files/publications_nsvrc_factsheet_media-packet_statistics-about-sexual-violence_0.pdf   Want answers? Send your questions, comments and thoughts about life to [email protected]   Thank you so much for listening to The Lin Life Universe. I hope you’ve been enjoying it. Please leave a review!