First, I would like to take time to congratulate my blog-mate Kathy Allen for her recent article in Forbes -- awesome job! I'm sure this won't be the last we see of Kathy in Forbes. Second, I had to laugh when I read the male engineer's quote in Kathy's latest post: " Excellent advice, even for those of us among the weaker sex." At least until I thought about it for a minute and realized that this assessment rings true. By many measures, in American business today women are increasingly pulling ahead of men.

According to a recent article in the New York Times, women out-earn men in part-time jobs. As the review of U.S. Department of Labor statistics for 2009 clearly showed, most women make more than men who work equivalent part-time hours, with the exception of workers who put in fewer than five hours a week. Of course, as the chart shows, this earning advantage on the part of women evaporates as soon as the line into 40-hour-per-week, full-time work is crossed. Women still earn less than their male counterparts when working full-time jobs. But it's a start.

And then there was the article published by Atlantic magazine last month titled "The End of Men." The article pointed out among other things that early this year women became the majority of the U.S. workforce for the first time in U.S. history, that most managers are now women, and that for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same.

So, yes. When it comes to business, it appears that the engineer who commented on Kathy's Forbes article was right. Women are no longer the weaker sex, and men are beginning to notice.