Women and MLM

Women and MLM—an ideal career choice. Some of the obvious reasons are:

Networking is an important part of most women's lives, and they do it as a matter of course;
MLM gives the working hours flexibility many women want when raising a family;
There's no glass ceiling; and
More women have become millionaires in MLM than in any other industry.

Why Joy has written this section

Joy started researching women's place in society some twenty years ago. All her life she had associated mainly with males, having two brothers then working in a male dominated industry. She experienced no discrimination from her colleagues, and felt she was treated equally.

In 1990 she read an article about the many ways in which women were discriminated against in her industry—and realized that almost all were true for her.

In the years since then she has been involved in many activities that help girls and women achieve their potential, and her doctoral dissertation has a major component on this topic.

As with all of our topics, this section on women and MLM has several subsections. These are listed at the end of this section.

Most women underestimate their abilities. All of my working life (several decades) I have been involved in a technical field in which women are underrepresented. This underrepresentation of women is unfortunate as women have the people skills that are necessary in most occupations, and that frequently are sorely lacking in the nerdish young men who are attracted to many of the technical areas.

The reasons for women avoiding a career that, to me, seemed to be well suited to women, became my primary area of research, and eventually the major component of my PhD.

Now that I have entered network marketing, I am able to relate some of the factors I see in network marketing to the research I did previously. No matter what the field, many, many women lack the self esteem and the confidence to believe they can tackle a new field, or to believe they can do it well.

While it is undoubtedly true that discrimination has kept many deserving women from more senior positions, it is also common that a lack of both confidence and ambition has kept them at the lower levels of an organization. Whereas men are inclined to focus on the top jobs, and focus on getting to those positions, women are much less likely to believe that they are good enough for senior roles, and to be happy working at lower levels in low paying support roles.

I see something similar in network marketing. Most of the men in this industry are aiming for the top, whereas many women are looking for some part-time income for a few years to help with the family budget. While this latter objective is no doubt a top priority and a necessity for many women, why not focus on reaching the top as well? Women and MLM means more than just party plan.

Many women lack self esteem and a belief in themselves. While they may believe that other women can achieve, they don't believe they can. Perhaps you like the idea of earning some income working from home but don't have the confidence to get started.

Reading the subsections below may help you to understand that you are not alone in this, that you are more capable than you believe and that maybe you can make a success of your own home based business (be it network marketing or something else). In the sub-sections of this section we look at:

Background research—why so many women believe that they are not as capable as everyone else;
Women and MLM—why women are well suited to network marketing and the benefits it can bring;
So you think successful women and MLM applies only to other women—are you underestimating your skills and abilities?;
Increasing your self confidence. We have included several lists of different ways in which you might increase your self confidence and your self esteem.

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