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It’s 2011 and women are still fighting for their voices to be heard in the workforce.

The New Zealand Herald recently reported that Avivah Wittenbert-Cox, an international expert on gender balance and best-selling author is fighting the good and all too familiar fight for female equality in the workplace. This goal is to start hiring more women and stop sending the few already there to training courses designed to teach them how to work like a man.

With more and more women graduating with college degrees in their field, there is an expectation that these numbers cannot be ignored and organizations will begin to adapt to them and to their needs and working styles. But many companies still use the glass ceiling metaphor in how far women may advance on the management train. Should you get sidetracked by family or personal reasons that women and men alike cannot help, Wittenbert-Cox says that this is the case where, “the career train passes only once and if you miss it, you can’t get back on -ever.”

What is happening here?

Granted this is an international publication I’m quoting from, but that should not make this sort of practice acceptable. I should not have to state that women are making progressive strides in business because it should be a given. There are Renaissance women all around us, wearing and working with different hats all day long. Not one of those women should have to change their working style if it has been proven to be successful because it isn’t like a man’s. In order to survive in the future, companies throughout the world had better listen to the sound because women today aren’t going anywhere but to the top- we’re Renaissance women you know!