The following post was written by Amanda Pouchot, co-founder of Pretty Young Professional.

Resources for young, professional women
I don’t care what they say about progress: women are still lagging behind. Although women make up more than half of all college graduates and PhD candidates, they only account for 3% of Fortune 500 CEOs.
Today we enter a professional world filled with opportunities that were not available to generations of women before us. It is clear that women are a lasting cornerstone of the workforce, but many of us lack the support we need to succeed.
In addition to new opportunities for career advancement, today’s young women also face insurmountable pressures to look perfect, to act perfectly, to do it all. We have been overscheduled all of our lives; excelling academically, involved in extracurricular activities and developing many necessary leadership skills. Yet throughout our youth we were fed media that portrayed an image of the ideal woman – and let me tell you, she wasn’t the breadwinner.
Faced with this conundrum, young women today are often stuck between the excellence we seek and the societal stereotypes that tell us to play nice and put others’ needs first. What’s a young professional woman to do?
We all can be overwhelmed by uncertainty, wondering what the future will bring
For many young professionals, the lingering question of who we are becoming and what we will do with the rest of our lives is constantly on our minds. As younger women, our lives often revolved around set paths, usually formal education with specific steps to success. Suddenly, a tremendous number of life decisions and career options become available.
Many of us feel pressured to make these choices quickly, and unprepared to make them at all. What if you make the wrong decision? What if you pass up an incredible opportunity? What if you can’t find a job? What if you end up hating your job? What if, what if, what if?
How do we choose a career and then secure that next job?
Feeling disoriented is normal when everything around you seems to be changing. In order to help ourselves and others overcome this same feeling, we asked several career specialists for ideas and exercises to identify your passions:
1. Take your excitement pulse for a week – What gets you excited when you wake up in the morning? What is your favorite part of your day? When do you get in the flow or groove of something? Also reflect on things that you find the most draining. Write all of this down for the week and reflect on the highs and the lows.
2. Record yourself talking for a full 60 seconds about who you are and how you define yourself – When you play it back, listen for what you emphasized, what matters to you, and what you omitted.
3. Look to your friends and family for help – Ask those closest to you to write 3 sentences about you. You may be shocked to see what they write!
Once you’ve identified your passions, it’s time to translate that into a career. Understand the difference between “can do” and “want to do” and then look at jobs that play to your passions and strengths.
From the outside in, identifying the real pros and cons of a career can be difficult. What does it actually mean to be a Sales Associate? A25 year old junior I-Banker? An actress or singer working for a living? .
For women who are elsewhere in their career path, we think it’s important to keep an eye on work-life balance. Being a young professional woman in the workplace can be tougher than one would expect.
We also face societal pressures that men don’t.
After the age of 13, women are twice as likely to face depression as our male counterparts. This is often the result of what one Psychologist, Dr. Hinshaw, calls The Triple Bind:
1. Be pretty, sweet, and nice
2. Be athletic, be competitive, and get straight As
3. Be impossibly perfect
Women fight for respect and advancement in the workplace, but haven’t been socialized the way men have to successfully negotiate and self-promote. (For more information, check out Women Don’t Ask, by economist Linda Babcock)
Women also don’t have as many role models in place to demonstrate paths to personal and professional fulfillment
While our generation is embarking on a road paved by women before us, there are still many barriers to advancement. In 2010 women accounted for approximately 16% of both Fortune 500 Board Seats and Corporate Officer positions at Fortune 500 companies (Women in U.S. Management” Catalyst December 2010). In my first position out of college, I was discouraged to see few women managing both successful careers and a “normal” family life. Men in their same tenures often had a stay-at-home wife, while the women had to choose between work and family.
Women face stereotypes because of our femininity or lack of femininity
Being young, ambitious and female is not easy. When we started our careers in 2008, freshly out of college and newly moved to NYC, each of us felt – in her own way — very alone. Many lessons we learned in those first months could have been learned in an easier way. Being young and female does not compromise our confidence, talent, and drive to be taken seriously as professionals.
For more information, check out www.prettyyoungprofessional.com or follow them on Twitter @PYPro. Pretty Young Professional (PYP) is an online community for ambitious women ages 18-30.
Hello Ladies is now posting exciting career opportunities for women. Visit our Jobs page.