Women Career and Education

The Native Leadership Scholarship (NLS) program creates educational opportunities for women around the world who are grassroots leaders, organizers and activists demonstrating financial need. NLS invests in women’s leadership and leadership development by supporting non-doctoral graduate education in human rights, sustainable development, and public health.

The NLS Selection Committee awards four to eight scholarships per year, up to US$25,000 per academic year for a maximum of two years. The awards help the recipients meet the costs of tuition, fees, books, educational supplies, housing, maintenance, and travel to and from the home country and the educational institution. WLS awards are paid directly to the institution in a student’s account. For foreign women intending to study at U.S. universities, WLS funding for expenses other than tuition and books is subject to a 14% U.S. tax. Read more!

Whether you’ve been downsized, are looking for a career change or are just starting out, your resume speaks volumes about you. If your resume doesn’t make it past the first cut, you’re doomed; no matter how qualified you are.

Below are ten common mistakes to avoid when putting your resume together. Remember, you only get one chance to make a good first impression.

1. Multiple pages – You need to be concise. Keep it to one page and one page only. If you can’t highlight your talents on one page, you’re giving the message that you are unorganized and tend to go on and on.

2. Fancy paper – If your skills don’t speak for themselves, then your fancy paper isn’t going to make a bit of difference. Read more!

This person values your opinion of him or her, and you’d be glad to help them advance. The problem is you’re unsure of what to say or how to say it!
Here are four tips to keep in mind when preparing your recommendation.

1. Ask the employee about the new position they are applying for. What types of job duties are involved? What sort of characteristics are they looking for in a good employee? In your letter, describe certain instances where this employee or colleague really shined – such as staying late to complete a mission-critical project, working diligently to help a customer make a product decision, providing thorough technical support or service, and so on. These specific situations have more effect on the person doing the hiring than general run-of-the-mill phrases like “terrific manager”, “enthusiastic worker” and so on. Read more!

When interviewing others the goal is to hire the right people for the job and to reduce turnover. Here are some pointers:

1) Establish and maintain control.

Your first objective should be to establish control of your interview. The following introduction has proven to be very effective:

“My purpose here today is to find out about you. If I determine there is potentially a good fit and you’re the type of person I feel I could work with I’ll invite you back for a second interview. We certainly don’t make hiring decisions based on just one interview. What I’m going to do is ask you a series of qualifying questions.” Read more!

Many educational systems only offer career counseling to students in their junior or senior years in high school, if at all.
Counselors, who are often dealing with the more formidable issues of teen pregnancy, drug use, and violence, lack the hours and energy to guide female students to positive futures. Thus, young women look to popular magazines for inspiration; magazines that assert that the “right” clothing, makeup, and dating strategies are keys to a joyful womanhood. If these popular magazines discuss work at all, it is in relation to planning oneÃ¥s career wardrobe.

Today, models are often photographed in career-like settings, sipping coffee or chatting on the phoneëbut that is the extent to which most fashion magazines depict women in careers. Finally, because popular publications fail tglamorousze the benefits of “nontraditional” career fulfillment, teenage girls avoid pursuing careers in mathematics, science, or technology. Read more!

The age at which a woman first marries is directly related to the number of children she will bear because it affects the length of time she will be at risk of becoming pregnant. Of course, unmarried women may also have children, but the vast majority of childbearing takes place within marriage throughout most of the world, which makes the age at marriage a valuable indicator of a woman’s lifetime fertility.

The total fertility rate — or average births per woman — for German women, who marry around age 24, is 1.3. Conversely, women in Chad, who marry earlier, average 7 children. Within countries, rural women tend to marry earlier than urban women and tend to have larger families. Access to contraception is an important contributor to the differences in the fertility rates among countries, but culture and socioeconomics weigh heavily as well. Read more!