Status Unconscious
Chalk it up to inner peace. Researchers Nickles & Ashcraft, in the latest edition of their Update: Women survey, say that women are much less brand-oriented than they once were. According to “Millennium Women,” this is largely due to the fact that women are more educated and have gone into the workforce in greater numbers. In others words, they don't need to buy something to give them a sense of self-worth. “For women today, status comes from within, rather than without,” says Laurie Ashcraft, coauthor of the study. They're more interested in wellness, Ashcraft says, rather than in how they look. Brand-oriented types, on the other hand, tend to need reinforcement from others and are more concerned with what others think of them. Today’s women just don’t give a damn.
 

Don’t Call Me Slacker, Dude
They may waste hours playing video games now, but Gen Y has big plans for the future. Roughly 64 percent of 16-to-19-year-olds in a new survey by researchers Nickles & Ashcraft and Greenfield Online believe their goals in life are quite ambitious. Just one-third of boomers share the same go-get-’em attitude. But aren’t teens, no matter what the generation, more optimistic about life than their elders? Not so, the researchers contend. Since 1979, Nickles & Ashcraft has seen the percentage of 20-to-24-year-old females with ambitious plans jump 11 percent. It's been a different story with females aged 35 to 50. The number of women in that group who claim to have high goals has declined 16 percent in the last 20 years. By Jennifer Lach
 

STEP ASIDE, POPS   (Percentage of respondents who agree with the statements)
I feel my goals in life are quite ambitious
Total Male Female	age 16-19 64% 62% 67%	age 20-24 66% 65% 67%	age 25-34 49% 52% 44%	age 35-40 35% 37% 33%
I believe in women postponing childbearing to establish a career
Male Female	age 16-19 33% 53%	age 20-24 35% 47%	age 25-34 22% 47%	age 35-40 17% 25%
I believe in men postponing having a family to establish a career
Male Female	age 16-19 37% 51%	age 20-24 39% 44%	age 25-34 26% 29%	age 35-40 23% 26%
Source: Gen Y2K Study, Nickles & Ashcraft and Greenfield Online

Published by
St. Martin’s Press.

Buy NOW at amazon.com

Why the e-revolution has changed the way every company and individual must operate to stay competitive

  Based on unique research and interviews, The Change Agents is a clear-eyed look at what living in a wired world really means to organizational and individual success. The media has been full of stories of hot dotcommers over the last few years, but The Change Agents shows how the rest of us are irrevocably affected by a paradigm shift as wrenching as the industrial revolution.
  What does it mean when decision-making has sped up beyond imagining? When life and work are fused rather than relegated to their own places and times? What about the impact of the serial career on industries built with the expectation that they were training employees for the long haul?
  Nickles has identified a mostly young and self-empowered group she labels “change agents” who are demanding more power in the workplace than previous generations were granted after years with a company—and they’re getting it. The Change Agents shows how they do it and why it matters.