For Gloria Feldt, founder and president of Take The Lead, it was watching Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” in the theater as a young girl that taught her anything was possible.
“It was the first movie I saw where the female was the protagonist. Dorothy was a role model when girls did not have role models,” Feldt said in the recent lively conversation with Gloria Steinem and Jamia Wilson, author and activist.
Read MoreIssue 248 — December 18, 2023
Oftentimes well-meaning men ask me how they can help women to advance in their careers.
I answer, “Listen. Just listen.”
Now comes a breathtaking example of what can happen when men don’t listen to women:
Read MoreIssue 240 — September 4, 2023
Philosopher William James called sports “the moral equivalent of war.”
That’s an inherently patriarchal lens on sports. Everything in that framework is about power and power in turn is about war and fighting, with the assumption that someone has to win, someone has to lose, and there’s no in-between.
Read More“I was the kid who loved all kinds of things.”
As a girl growing up outside Trenton, New Jersey at Fort Dix, where her father was based in the U.S. Army, Lily McNair loved books—a biography on Harriet Tubman especially, plus a psychology textbook—and a chemistry set that taught her how to make little volcanoes.
The miniature chemistry set her parents gave her one Christmas ignited McNair’s love of science. Tubman’s story inspired her to live a life helping others. And the psychology textbook her father bought (though he had not attended college) showed her she wanted to pursue a career in psychiatry or psychology.
Read MoreIssue 186 — December 6, 2021
Dr. Harbeen Arora enters a full room of women leaders from around the world. She lightly clangs a spoon against a teacup. Immediately, attention focuses on this petite woman, whose passion fuels her intention for global gender equality. Soft spoken and eminently gracious, she calls one by one on the G100 global chairs and then country chairs eager to join in her bold vision; she aims to mobilize a global network of powerful women and men who support the effort to turn the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #5, to “Achieve Gender Equality and Empower All Women and Girls” by 2030 from rhetoric to reality.
Read MoreIssue 171— July 5, 2021
Philanthropist Melinda French Gates stood for a photo op with French President Emmanuel Macron at the UN Women’s Generation Equality Forum June 29-July 1, 2021 and discussed the Gates Foundation’s new commitment of $2.1 USD to women’s economic empowerment, family planning, and (Hallelujah! At last!) accelerating women’s leadership.
Read MoreIssue 152 — December 6, 2020
“There are plenty of top-notch people in every demographic group for even the most high-level jobs. You just have to see them and open the barricades that have blocked them from serving.”
— Jodi Enda re Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s diverse choices of top advisors.
Real change is in the air. And it’s happening fast.
Read MoreAll of us—we can assume—want to be good at what we do.
Many of us understand fully the need for validation, applause and recognition in the workplace. A nod from the manager, an email from the boss. It matters.
Read MoreThe good news if you are a woman working in healthcare, architecture, engineering, education and a few other industries is that pay equity is the norm when your organization has pay transparency. The bad news is if you are a female in food services, retail, customer service, transportation and a few more male-dominated fields, you will likely be paid less than men doing the same job.
Read MoreMy son gave me a cool gift last year called StoryWorth. I answered a question about my life (almost) every week and it was shared with my children for their comments. The company will turn all this content into a book now. Nice. I’ve had fun looking back at my history. And the exercise reminded me that it’s not so much the facts of what happened but the meaning of those facts — how you interpret them, what you learn from them, and how all that informs one’s choices.
Read MoreYou may have heard the joke that goes like this (and you can fill in the blank): How do you know if a man (won an award, got a job promotion, attended an Ivy League school…)? Answer: Because he will tell you. Women, not so much. A new study called The Self-Promotion Gap of more than 1,000 men and women shows that 69 percent of women would rather downplay their accomplishments than talk about them.
Read More“Remember the ladies,” future First Lady Abigail Adams implored her husband, John, in March 1776 as the Continental Congress was crafting the U.S. Constitution.
“All men would be tyrants if they could,” she wrote. “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
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