One of your company's most powerful competitive weapons may at this very moment be cleaning out her desk — or contemplating doing so. Can you afford to let her go?

In researching my forthcoming book, Top Talent: Keeping Performance Up When Business Is Down, we found that in the wake of last year's financial crash, high-powered women were more than twice as likely as men — 84 percent compared with 40 percent — to be seriously thinking jumping ship. And when the head and heart are out the door, the rest of the body is sure to follow.

Women are falling victim to two types of attrition: they're being disproportionately let go and they're disproportionately quitting. Yet whether they're jumping or being pushed, figures show that a female exodus is bad for business.

Research conducted by both Catalyst and McKinsey & Company demonstrates that companies with significant numbers of women in management have a much higher return on investment.

In addition, a recent study from London Business School shows that when work teams are split 50-50 between men and women, productivity goes up. Gender balance, the research posits, counters groupthink — the tendency of homogenous groups to staunchly defend wrong-headed ideas because everyone in the group thinks the same way.

Muslims have lived in South Africa for hundreds of years - but Islamic marriages remain unrecognised in law, making divorce potentially disastrous for women. As the BBC's Mohammed Allie reports from Cape Town, that situation could be about to change.

Unlike most other women, however, this means she has been left in poverty. "Financially we are messed up, I only actually want what is rightfully mine, what I've worked for, what I've sweated for," she says. "Not just for me, but for my kids, that's all that I want."

She says she lived in a home to which she and her husband both contributed - but following her divorce she was left with nothing and was forced to move back to her parents' house.

South African couples who marry legally do so in community of property, which allows both parties an equal share of material possessions in the event of a divorce. But women married under Muslim rites have endless problems.

Click here to read the full story on BBC News

Nearly three decades of war, brutal totalitarianism, invasion, occupation and insurgency in Iraq have left behind at least a million widows - and several million children without fathers.

That was the conservative estimate earlier in 2009 by Iraq's acting minister for women's affairs, Narmeen Othman. She believes there may even be two million widows.

Under Saddam Hussein, despite the brutality of his regime towards so many of Iraq's people, war widows were looked after by the state. Now, they are mostly hidden and vulnerable.

It's been called Iraq's cultural time bomb.

Close to the surface of the new normality here, there are painful memories, and a yearning for lost loved ones. And - there's anxiety about looking after the children when the breadwinner has gone.

Umm Fatima, for example, worries about her children. Their father Ahmad was shot dead nearly three years ago by men wearing military uniforms. He'd simply been refuelling his taxi cab when they killed him.

Umm Fatima has lost a husband and the family income. She believes it's very important for her and for the children that she re-marries. "A father for them would make us all more secure," she told me - financially, and emotionally.

"They miss their dad," she went on. "And when they meet men sometimes, they want them to give them a hug."

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By Hugh Sykes
BBC News, Baghdad

Susan notes: Buried at the bottom of an economist article about poverty in Guatemala is this telling statement: “Guatemala lags behind in educating girls in particular.” The piece goes on to say that mothers lacking in education may improperly prepare and distribute food supplements to their starving children, thus contributing to the ongoing widespread malnutrition in a country “rich enough to prevent it.”

It is hardly one of Latin America’s poorest countries, but according to Unicef almost half of Guatemala’s children are chronically malnourished—the sixth-worst performance in the world.

In parts of rural Guatemala, where the population is overwhelmingly of Mayan descent, the incidence of child malnutrition reaches 80%. A diet of little more than tortillas does permanent damage.

This chronic problem has become acute. Higher world prices for food have coincided with a recession-induced fall in money sent back from Guatemalans working in the United States (remittances equal 12% of Guatemala’s GDP).

Drought in eastern Guatemala has made things worse still. Many families can scarcely afford beans, an important source of protein, and must sell eggs from their hens rather than feed them to their children.

The government and aid donors are providing emergency food supplies for 300,000 people scattered in some 700 villages. Up to 400,000 more may need help. In Jocotán, in the east, rehabilitation centres have admitted dozens of children who are so malnourished that their black hair has turned blond, their faces are chubby from fluid build-up as their organs fail, the veins in their legs become a visible black spider-web and their face muscles are too weak to smile.

What makes this even more distressing is that Guatemala is rich enough to prevent it.

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The Economist
Photo @ Reuters

I was recently asked if, as a female professional, I had ever come up against a 'glass ceiling'. The question intrigued me as fortunately I had not, in both my careers in the corporate and non-profit world. However, there are many women out there who have.

Women's rights have been a debatable topic since the days of Virginia Woolfe and Huda Sha'rawi, the Egyptian feminist who broke new ground in the 1920s and 1930s. Back then, the emancipation of women was one of the most controversial topics.

As Woolfe put it, "The history of men's opposition to women's emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself". Although at the time the issue was in its embryonic stage, it caused a great uproar and consequently Woolfe went down in history as one of the most influential people of her era.

Today, the debate continues. The United Nations Development Fund for Women provides us with an interesting quote: "Countries that do not fully take advantage of one half of the talent in their population are misallocating their human resources". This is certainly an issue that we in the UAE do not face.

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By Muna Al Gurg
Gulf News

Taking a 13,000-foot plunge from an airplane will earn most jumpers a certificate. Instructor Paul Peckham Jr. knew that wouldn't be enough for 92-year-old Jane Bockstruck.

Peckham, a former Air Force combat controller, cut the parachutist wings he had sewn 30 years ago on his own helmet bag and gave them to Bockstruck — who celebrated her birthday this month with a flawless, 120-mph free fall in front of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

"These silver wings represent courage, and you certainly displayed that today," Peckham told her after the two landed safely Sept. 19 in Orange, Mass., after a tandem dive.

For Bockstruck, it was just another in a string of adventures in her full life. She has traveled around the world, been married seven times, and loves to boast that she kidded with John Wayne while working as a seamstress on the set of "True Grit."

Click here to read the full story on MSNBC
By Associated Press
Photo @ P.j. Jackson / AP

Toward the end of her marriage, Rabia Iqbal said she feared for her life.

Iqbal was born in New York to parents who had immigrated to the United States from the tribal areas of Pakistan. She had a strict Muslim upbringing and when she was 16, her parents arranged her marriage to a 38-year-old man. She claims her husband turned violent during their 10 years of marriage.

When she finally left him, she did not know where to turn. Going home wasn't an option, she said.

Click here to read the full story on CNN