(originally published April 18th, 2005)

There’s a discussion taking place in an online networking group I belong to on sex and networking. More specifically, the difficulties some women have in trying to network when the men they’re talking to only seen to want to date them.

In the healthcare billing field, the overwhelming majority of employees are female. I’ll admit that when I was 23 years old and first in the field, it was hard to ignore just how many very nice looking women there were. However, within a couple of years, I came to see them as co-workers and people with their own ultimate skills. That didn’t mean I stopped noticing women who dressed nice and looked nice; it just means that my focus changed. I had learned how to treat women as professional colleagues.

Many men never learn this lesson. Heck, many women never learn this lesson about themselves, or each other, either. There’s still a long way to go in order to equalize the differences between the sexes. However, I hope many people are ready for the first step when their time comes to step up to the plate.