While discussing The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Black women (See Headliner, Page 8) with a friend of mine, she repeated a comment on the subject from a friend of hers: “We’re the most studied group of women.” That gave me pause. When our conversation ended, I reflected on portrayals of Black women, individually or as a group, in the last year.

Here is the case of a woman in her 50s who has not worked for 10 years. She has an Ivy League education, with excellent foreign language and writing skills. She worked as a paralegal 25 years ago to see if she liked law before attending law school. She liked it and was accepted, but didn’t finish because the pressure got to her. 

As The Network Journal began the vetting for its 13th annual list of “25 Influential Black Women in Business,” I received a here’s-how-I’m-doing email from former TNJ Assistant Editor Inés Bebea in Paris. Born in Spain and a resident of New York since she was a teenager, Inés just completed postgraduate journalism studies at the Sorbonne through the City University of New York and hopes to break into the field there.

Struggle has been our lover for too long. It has become friend, temple, tomb — the one relationship that persists after all the movements, all the battles waged by Black people worldwide to get us to where we are today. It is as if struggle is our only calling, our world, our worth, our future. What we need right now is emotional justice

Despite the spate of predictions at the start of the year, very few forecasters can claim long-term success at looking into the future. Events and context change, demanding changes in investment strategy. But basic principles stay the same.

Recipients of federal benefits who receive their payments by paper check have about a year to switch over to an electronic payment method. Under regulations announced by the U.S. Treasury Department in December 2010, all federal benefit payments, such as Social Security, will be paid electronically by March 1, 2013.

According to The Washington Post, “a complex portrait” of Black women emerged from a recent nationwide survey the paper conducted with the Kaiser Family Foundation. Researchers polled 808 Black women on a range of issues by telephone between Oct. 6 and Nov. 2 last year.

Small-business lending is re-bounding, albeit at a cautious pace, after the big squeeze of 2008 and 2009 at the height of the economic recession. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, commercial banks in 2010 began to ease the tight lending conditions they had imposed on small businesses when the economy began its downward slide early in 2007. Loans under $1 million, the ceiling of a typical small-business loan, totaled $695 billion in fiscal year 2009, ending Sept. 30, 2009, up from $687 billion in FY2007.

More and more people are clicking on Google’s “+ 1” button, the equivalent of Facebook’s “Like” button. Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, estimates that Google+ has more than 62 million users, with about 635,000 new accounts each day. Chitika, a data analytics company, reports the new social media phenomenon saw a whopping 118 percent growth spurt just from September to November last year.

On Super Bowl Sunday, Ferris Jackson, 72, crossed the finish line of the Galveston Mardi Gras Marathon in Galveston, Texas. He had done the same just three weeks earlier at the Chevron Houston Marathon. Jackson has been running the Chevron Houston Marathon every year since 2007.

If you are what you eat, then it’s probably a good idea to read food labels. Americans have become more health-conscious, with many people reducing their caloric intake in order to lose weight and monitoring the use of certain ingredients, such as salt, because of medical conditions.

Information on events listed in this calendar may be subject to change. Please confirm with the event sponsors, including any fees charged for attendance.

You’ve run out of breath just running in place. For months you’ve been more than willing to work 60-hour weeks. Nights and weekends are the norm and you never complained. You’ve taken classes, gotten certified, volunteered for committees, but it hasn’t seemed to matter. Your career is stalled. What’s holding you back?