Generation Equality: Will the Revolution Be Funded After All?

Issue 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.

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Why I know we can reach gender parity by 2025 (and a surprise)

Issue 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.

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A Woman’s Place Is At The Table

“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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5 Things You Can Do Today for Equal Pay

This was in my Twitter feed today to remind me it’s Equal Pay Day: This is funny, + sadly, true. On average, ♀ r working 22% of the time 4 free. We need 2 fix this. https://t.co/c76v6hqeXC @GloriaFeldt — Sheryl L. Axelrod (@sher_lawyer) April 14, 2015 I don’t know about you, but I’m sooo tired…

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How “Play Like a Girl” Went From Epithet to Compliment

Play Hockey Like a Girl

I’ve never been to a professional hockey game nor wanted to. I stay far away from sports bars. But I do resonate with hockey legend Wayne Gretzky whose pithy leadership advice is, “Don’t skate to where the hockey puck is. Skate to where the hockey puck is going.” I love the direction the hockey puck is going…

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How Can Women Reach Parity in Elected Office?

I just finished recording this Blogtalk Radio program “Feisty Side of Fifty” hosted by the wonderful Eileen Williams. The other guest was Terry Nagel, currently mayor of Burlingame CA, now running for San Mateo County Supervisor–a woman who walks her talk.

Feisty Side of Fifty Blogtalk Radio 3/15/11

Give it a listen and let me know your thoughts on Eileen’s main question: How can the U.S. get more women in elected office?

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To Run the World (Better), Power Up Feminism

In the Spring ’09 edition, On The Issues Magazine writers and artists discuss feminist and progressive values that transcend politics — our Lines In The Sand. I’m pleased to have been asked to contribute this article to the mix.

Were you thinking we were done with elections and could take a few minutes to celebrate a pro-woman administration and a Democratically-controlled Congress that appears ready to embrace pro-choice and pro-equality measures? Sorry, my Sisters. Elections are never over when they are over.

Candidates are already gearing up for 2010 and 2012. It’s critically important that feminists review the lessons of 1992 and its parallels to 2008 so we can avoid repeating mistakes—and more urgently, so we can charge ahead with strategies that advance a bold vision of gender equality and justice.

After all, men have been making America’s political decisions for over 200 years now, and I don’t need to tell you it’s not a pretty picture. Women, especially those not afraid to identify themselves with the F-word, are the change we need. But whether women will be the change we get depends on whether we use the power we have.

For the one constant in politics is that every victory sows the seeds of the next defeat and every defeat sows the seeds of the next victory, unless eternal vigilance is applied. This means using a movement mentality that continually advances bold new ideas and keeps its grassroots watered.

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The Value of Work Deja Vu All Over Again

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.

Blatch went on to raise issues much like what Ai-Jen Poo said at the “Unfinished Business” program 111 years later, what Moms Rising has organized itself to organize the troops about now, and what dozens if not hundreds of bloggers will be talking about this weekend over at Fem 2.0:

Unpaid work never commands respect; it is the paid worker who has brought to the public mind conviction of woman’s worth…If we would recognize the democratic side of our cause, and make an organized appeal to industrial women on the ground of their need of citizenship, and to the nation on the ground of its need that all wealth producers should form part of its body politic, the close of the century might witness the building up of a true republic in the United States.

Yep, don’t agonize: organize. Band together to make the workplace and worklife such that people of both genders can both earn a living and have a life. This is the necessary next wave of the feminist movement, one in which both men and women must participate. Because these days, men want to participate in their children’s lives as women have always done.

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