Opens Only For Love

Well…  it would appear that the Japanese have developed a tech-laden bra that will only unhook for “true love.”

The “True Love Tester” bra cannot be masterfully unhooked by some sleazy player who hit on the wearer at a club. No, this bra only comes undone when sensors embedded inside it that are connected wirelessly to a smartphone app detect a particular heart rate.

According to the Victoria’s Secret-like company that made the bra, Ravijour, a particular heart rate over time indicates “love.” 

And... this company even has a graph comparing the effects of jogging, shopping, eating spicy food and watching a horror movie with “flirting” and “surprise gift” on a lady’s heart. 

What better way to acknowledge being “in love” than having your bra fly open?

Ravijour’s slogan is “We do anything for women.”

Of course females might not want to wear this thing around in public, though. The male-designed bra cups pop open pretty dramatically.

Ravijour is marketing the bra as a way to protect women from unwanted sexual advances. It’s not clear how women can unclasp the bra if they don’t find “true love.”

Loveless flings can never happen and unwanted gropers don’t stand a chance – as long as a lady is wearing the True Love Tester.

A built-in sensor monitors the wearer’s heartbeat, making sure the front clasp remains locked – unless genuine ‘excitement’ is detected.

If it is, the bra will automatically spring open in an alarmingly violent fashion. The science behind it is rather less scintillating.

‘When excited, the adrenal medulla [gland] secretes catecholamine, which affects the automatic nerve, and stimulates the heart rate,’ said Japanese lingerie maker Ravijour. ‘A sensor reads the woman’s heart rate and sends it to a special app via Bluetooth for analysis.

Fans can't buy the bra directly, but win a chance to try it out by spending more than 5,000 Japanese yen (about $50) on the brand's website.

Women Bankers in India

Women have always worked in India, but the rise of the corporate woman in the last two decades in the banking sector has been phenomenal.

India has no fewer than eight female banking bosses - indeed the appointment of Arundhati Bhattacharya as the first chairwoman of the country's largest bank, the State Bank of India, came days before the announcement of the new Federal Reserve nominee in the US, Janet Yellen.

It's a stark contrast to places like the UK, where women run the British arm of international banks, but there are no overall female bosses. So how has India done it?

And the reason for it is very simple, according to Chanda Kochhar (above), the chief executive of ICICI, the country's second largest bank - the company promoted on merit, not gender.

"When you have an organisation that is gender neutral, and when you have a woman who is willing to give to her job whatever it takes, whether it's long hours, whether it's commitment to travel, irrespective of the fact that she's a woman, I think women get that opportunity to rise," she says.

There were, of course, sacrifices. "What it required on my part was to really give to the job whatever it took. So yes, there were children at home, but if the job demands travel, hard work, long hours of work, I think you need to give it."

ICICI is seen by many within the industry as a training ground for ambitious women. Typically, a third of its intake will be female, and the bank has made a point of nurturing talent and creating a whole crop of successful women. They include Shikha Sharma, chief executive of Axis Bank.

"There's no substitute for meritocracy and there's no substitute for hard work," she says.

"But there is the issue of women having the belief that they can make it, and everybody in society becoming sensitive to the fact that women can make it.

"The presence of more women helps both those beliefs to happen, for women to have the belief, and for society to have the sensitivity to understand that yes, women bring a different level of contribution."

Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management in south Mumbai trains those who will be the corporate bosses of the future, and counts Chanda Kochhar as a former student. Each year, the institute takes 125 young men and women, and competition to get in is fierce, with around 1,000 applications per place.

Women in Careers

The old saying, "Success is getting what you want and happiness is wanting what you get" might well sum up the dilemma of many professional women. Certainly, many gladly make the sacrifices and adjustments necessary to get what they want. Maybe that's working until midnight in order to catch their son's afternoon soccer game. Or, hiring a nanny to help take care of the kids, or maybe it's not having kids at all.

Even though their lives may not be perfect, they're pleased with what their compromises have achieved.

Surveys tend to confirm a connection between success on the job and happiness. There's the recent study presented at a meeting of the American Sociological Association, which noted that mothers who go back to work within weeks of giving birth reported feeling more energetic and less depressed than those who spent months or years at home. Or the Gallup study released in May that found stay-at-home moms were more likely to experience stress, worry, anger, and sadness than those who worked paying jobs.

 

 

Other surveys, meanwhile, refute the notion that working moms are happier moms, like the one conducted by ForbesWoman and TheBump.com, which found that a growing number of women view staying home to be the ideal circumstance of motherhood. These examples, however, prove only that happiness surveys may be second only to infidelity surveys on the scale of unreliability. There are simply too many factors involved -- maybe just a bad week at the office, or a bad week at home -- to form certainty that a trend is a foot.

There are some hard statistics, however, that seem to indicate the needle is swinging farther in one direction than the other. A 2011 report by McKinsey Research pointed out that women are claiming 53 percent of entry-level management jobs. After that, the numbers drop: to 37 percent for mid-managers, and even lower, to 26 percent, for vice presidents and up. These shrinking numbers either mean that the glass ceiling is thicker and lower than we imagined, or that younger women on the way up are finding a way out -- or, quite possibly, both.

Now that more women than ever before are tasting professional success, there's no longer a question of whether a woman can succeed in "a man's world." Of course she can, and does. Instead, the question being asked, most usually by women, is this: What does success really mean? The reason more women ask is because the answer is likely more complex for them than it is for men. Gender intelligence expert Barbara Annis believes the definition of success for men is simple. It's winning. Success might come in the form of more money or a better job or a better parking space or a hotter wife. But success is about besting the competition, in any number of contests, period.

. . . Good Old Boys . . .

The Masters, played every year at Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Ga., is one of golf's four majors. It is a tournament founded by Bobby Jones and revered by golfers everywhere. The Augusta course includes towering pines, azaleas and dogwoods everywhere and are in full bloom spring just in time for the Masters.The property was an indigo plantation until 1857, when Belgian Baron Louis Mathieu Edouard Berckmans purchased the land.

 The Masters Tournament was started in 1934 and has been played every year since then.  Steeped in tradition, the Augusta National Golf Club allows women to play golf at the club but denies them membership to the Club.  However, this year that “gold ole boy” rule will be tested.  Typically, the Club automatically gives a membership to the tournament sponsors; but, the CEO of IBM who is this year’s sponsor, is Virginia Rometty.  It is rumored that she snorkels on vacation instead of golfing but that is not the point.

So, what is it about the male mentality that looks down its nose at pretty much all women outside of the bedroom?

And, what is it about the female psychic to have such a tenacious and relentless drive to be more like a man both inside and outside of the bedroom?

Republican candiddates . . .
Good Ole Boys

Women do not just want to possess upper management positions in business, but they also want to smoke cigars like males, drink and take drugs like males; in fact, many of these women seek to compete against males and hopefully win in almost everything.  While that is admirable from some from this observer on the sidelines, I am amused that this strategy brings with it an increase in the same illnesses that have taken males to an early grave.

Yet, in my opinion, women make better Leaders and Managers than their male counterparts because not only did they work harder to get there but they do not take their position for granted like most males do.

While women leaders and managers are just as “bottom-line” oriented as males, they do so with finesse and compassion and not with intimidation and rank.

Wall Street Bankers . . .
Good Ole Boys

Watch out guys  . . .

more women earning college degrees than males.

more women globally earn college degrees than males