Posts Tagged ‘gender parity’
What a Week: Making Women’s History and Future Every Day
Issue 254 — March 18, 2024
I absolutely love Women’s History Month. I love it as an opportunity to write into the generally known history the many women who have been overlooked or under-recognized for their accomplishments.
And increasingly, I focus on tomorrow’s history that we each make by our actions today.
Read MoreI Owe You an Update
Issue 225 — April 9, 2023
Thank you for supporting Take The Lead! You make this essential work for gender parity possible.
As a donor, you deserve to know what your gifts accomplish. We’ve been heads down doing the work — delivering training, creating valuable leadership content, and planning exciting new programs. Here’s a brief update for 2023 so far. I’d love to elaborate if you want more information, and I’ll be happy to take your questions, ideas, and comments. Please send them to me here.
Read MoreI Wish My Mother Had Taken Mackenzie Scott’s Advice
Issue 215 — December 19, 2022
My mother’s Wedgewood Bone china and Tiffany crystal wine, water, and cordial glasses glisten in the hutch I bought, where they could be not just stored but seen.
Mother had kept them packed away for many years. Why? Because she was “saving them for nice,” as she put it.
Read MoreLucky 7: Saluting Take The Lead’s 7 Years On A Mission To Parity
Issue 161 — February 22, 2021
Grady Gammage auditorium, with its classic Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, buzzed with excitement, filled to its 3000+ seat capacity on the campus of Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ. Local people who were unable to get tickets hosted watch parties in their homes and offices, and dozens of groups from India to Seattle sent pictures of their watch party events.
Read MoreParallel Pandemics, Convergent Solutions
Issue 129 — June 1, 2020
We are in a profoundly disruptive time. A time when just a week ago, I could see many opportunities to reshape a better world post-pandemic. That’s until another pandemic, a pandemic of racism was laid so bare that layered on top of COVID it feels like a leaden blanket we’ll never be able to throw off.
As New York Times contributing editor Roxane Gay says, “Eventually, doctors will find a coronavirus vaccine, but black people will continue to wait, despite the futility of hope, for a cure for racism.”
Read MoreWhat My Grandmother Molly’s Cherry Wine Says About Humanity During COVID-19
ISSUE 126 — April 13, 2020
Making a grocery store run, I spotted a lone bottle of cherry wine on the shelf. Memories of my paternal grandmother Molly or Malle came flooding in.
Read MoreHow COVID-19 Elevates Anxiety and Opens Possibility for Radical Change
Issue 125 — April 6, 2020
How are you feeling today?
Early in the social distancing, shelter-in-placing, self-quarantining pandemic life, were you enjoying having more time with the family and binge watching your fave series? But now the stress is starting to wear on you?
Read MoreFriday Round Up: What Kind of Education = Girl and Woman Power?
Autumn has officially arrived, and with it back-to-school education talk has been a big topic this week. Today’s Friday Round Up explores the power of education in general, and its power to foster gender parity specifically…
Friday Round Up: Does Gender Matter Anywhere Anymore?
After my keynote at the AAUW national convention last Sunday, I overheard an attendee tell her friend about the graphic I’d used of a hot dog with “No More” written in mustard on it. I didn’t have to say a word when I put the graphic on the screen for the entire audience to start laughing at the shared awareness that I was referencing now-former NY Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-Stupid). And that by implication I was referencing the fatigue and disgust so many people feel about the seemingly unending waves of philandering politicians who thus far have been almost entirely male.
Read MoreThe Value of Women's Work
There has been a marked change in the estimate of [women’s] position as wealth producers. We have never been “supported” by men; for if all men labored hard every hour of the twenty-four, they could not do all the work of the world. A few worthless women there are, but even they are not so much supported by the men of their family as by the overwork of the “sweated” women at the other end of the social ladder. From creation’s dawn. our sex has done its full share of the world’s work; sometimes we have been paid for it, but oftener not.
Any idea when this statement was made? OK, a clue: I recently ran across it in a speech given by Harriot Stanton Blatch at a suffragist convention–in 1898.
Isn’t it amazing that Blatch made this argument 113 years ago? Her point still resonates today. A study released by the Center for American Progress shows that in the down economy, women increasingly became the sole breadwinners, despite the persistent wage gap, since men were being laid off at higher rates to trim companies’ bottom line. More and more men became “stay-at-home fathers.” And yet we aren’t seeing a change in workplace culture as a result.