Posts by Gloria Feldt
Burlington Book Festival: Burlington, Vermont
The Burlington Book Festival was the second stop on my book tour. It was an honor to appear with authors like Peter Galbraith and Ann Hood. You can read more about it in the Burlington Free Press.
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Left: Signing books after my presentation at the Burlington Book Festival, I met this amazing women who told her “power to” story: younger sister to five brothers, she told her mother she wanted to be a scientist. Her mother told her her brothers could become doctors and she could be a nurse. She persisted and became a scientist, one of few women in scientific research at the time. Her power to moment came when the men she worked with attempted to take the credit for her findings. She insisted that they give her equal billing–and they did.
Center: This woman is unlimited. She’s founder and CEO of a wind power company. Maybe the female Bill Gates is on the way?
Right: You can’t get there from Burlington except by Greyhound. After speaking at the Burlington Book Fair, I took the bus for Boston to attend a Jewish Women’s Archive board meeting.
Read MoreBook Signing and Keynote Speech at Northern Trust Bank
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Left: Michelle Robson was a rock star when I interviewed her at the Northern Trust book event about starting EmpowHer.com. Read more about the interview at EmpowHer.com.
Right: My first No Excuses book signing!
Read MoreCountdown to Publication: Queries!
Goddess willing and the crick don’t rise, my long- delayed website—the one I’ve been angsting about on these pages for several weeks–will soft launch Friday 9/24 and be fully public by the date of my next newsletter blast 9/28. (If you want to sign up for my newsletter, by the way, just e-mail me.) Check back next week for the urls. (Hooray! Corks about to pop!)
Meanwhile…are you signed up for HARO? It stands for Help a Reporter Out. Three times a day, you get queries from a wide array of media outlets. It takes a bit of sifting through, but I’ve secured several worthwhile media opportunities, and connected with some terrific women’s topics reporters like Liz O’Donnell. You can also sign up as a journalist and issue queries for your articles, books, or blogs. Check it out.
Peter Shankman, who started HARO, usually ends his opening speil with “Queries!” And, SheWriters, my Countdown this week is all about my queries for you.
I’m creating a blog dedicated to discussing the “9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power” that I have written about in No Excuses. Will you help me prime the pump with your answers to my queries?
You can respond to any questions that resonate with you in comments section below. I’ll pop your comments onto my website as soon as it’s ready. Feel free to include a link to your book or website so I can help you spread your word(s) too.
Ready? Queries!
Read MoreCountdown to Publication: Defining My Terms
My second in the “Countdown to Publication” series I’m writing for SheWrites.com. Any writers here? Tell me what you think below, but also please consider going to SheWrites.com and commenting on my post there. Join SheWrites.com while you’re at it!
Hi SheWriters-
I’m embarrassed to ask, but did you ever forget what’s in your own book between when you finished writing it and your first launch event?
I found I needed to reread No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How we Think About Power stem to stern before my first in-person media interview about it yesterday. I literally couldn’t remember the chapter titles, let alone the 9 Ways.
Last week I shared my website predicament. The central element of my marketing campaign was six weeks behind schedule, delaying my newsletter and much more. Quick update: as Deborah suggested, I employed power tool #3: use what you’ve got. I’m framing my first newsletter as a sneak preview, being honest that I don’t have it all together yet–but grateful for supportive friends and my passion for helping women lead unlimited lives. It’ll go out September 13. Meanwhile I’m using social media daily to build interest in the book.
It’s also time to focus on short lead media. By last Friday, my eyeballs felt like they were about to fall out from reviewing and adding to spreadsheets my publicist had sent. It hit me that pitching highest leverage media intensively and knowing deep in my bones what core messages I want to communicate to them will be infinitely more fruitful than trying to list and do everything that possibly could be done.
So what I want to share with you this week is the most important of all the 9 Ways: Power tool #2: Define your own terms—first, before others define you. This has profound implications for women and our relationship with power. Because whoever defines the terms usually wins the debate and determines what’s considered important in our personal lives, at work, and in the civic arena.
Read MoreDiscussing Reproductive Health on EmpowHer.com
EmpowHer: Women’s Health asked me to discuss several aspects of reproductive health care, including insurance coverage for contraception, and how to talk to your daughter about birth control. Here’s the video of my interview, which is broken up into several segment. Gloria FeldtGLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several books including No Excuses: 9…
Read MoreNo Excuses (Well, Just a Few) Countdown to Publication
From now through my book launch Oct 5, I’m writing a weekly column for one of my favorite websites, SheWrites.com. If you are a woman who writes in any medium, do check out SheWrites for fantastic resources, inspiration, and support network. Here’s column #1:
Dear SheWriters.
As I start my Countdown, I’m incredibly grateful to each previous contributor for sharing your experiences generously, honestly, and sometimes humorously. I’ve been lounging around your pool of wisdom, absorbing tips from every column—Hope Edelman’s computer meltdown a year ago through Lori Tharps’ thrill at seeing her first novel on the shelves last week. Now I’m on the high board, about to plunge. Deep breath.
No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power took eighteen months of writing but a lifetime of learning on the frontlines. It’s about American women’s ambivalent relationship with power, why after almost two centuries of the women’s movement, 51 percent of the population holds only 18 percent of influential leadership positions in work and politics, with similar dynamics in personal relationships. There are many reasons why we’re still so far from parity, but there are no excuses any more. So, practical activist that I am, I set out to find inspiring women’s stories and to create the 9 Ways—specific “power tools”–women can use to lead unlimited lives.
Read MoreAniston-O’Reilly Tiff Mirrors Gender Disparities on Women’s Equality Day 2010
Posted today on Truthout:
Jennifer Aniston sparked a classic Bill O’Reilly firestorm when she said a woman doesn’t need a man to have children and a perfectly fine life, thank you very much.
Defending not her personal situation but the character she plays in “The Switch,” her hit movie about a single woman who chose to be impregnated by a sperm donor, Aniston opined, “Women are realizing…they don’t have to settle with a man just to have a child.”
O’Reilly retorted that Aniston trivialized the role of men, saying she was “throwing out a message to twelve and thirteen-year-olds that ‘Hey, you don’t need a dad,’ and that’s destructive.”
Read MoreThe Politics of Elder Blogging
Susan Swartz is a retirement-resistant journalist friend who has written a book and now writes a delightful blog, both called “Juicy Tomatoes.” They extol the virtues and occasionally give a nod to the vices of the second half-century of life.
I ran into Susan at the Blogher conference her in New York earlier this month, when she ran up to me after I appeared on the closing keynote and asked me if I’d ever heard the term “elder blogger.” I had not, though admittedly blogging in general has the air of youth about it.
Read MoreAre These GOP Women Candidates Good for Women?
This Time Magazine article— “A Breakthrough for the GOP: More Women Running”– is prime proof of why the Democrats must prioritize recruiting and supporting progressive women candidates.
These “Mama Grizzly” GOP women candidates are co-opted into being just like their right-wing male counterparts–doing nothing to help women. Like Sarah Palin, most oppose the Fair Pay act and economic policies that would enable women to have equal opportunities in the workplace. They oppose a woman’s right to reproductive self-determination even as they claim their own. Women make up to 60% of the Democrats’ voter base. Will the Dems step up to the plate?
Watch this video of the panel I moderated at Netroots “Why Women are the Key to Progresive Electoral Victories” to see what panelists Joanne Bamberberger, Pam Spaulding, Barbara Lee, Roxanne Conlin, and Maria Teresa Kumar had to say on the topic.
Read MoreBlogher 2010 Conference
At the 2010 Blogher Conference, I was a keynote speaker on closing panel, called “How to Use Your Voice, Your Platform and Your Power.” Need to Know PBS anchor Alison Stewart moderated a powerhouse panel: Marie Wilson, Founder and President of The White House Project (and creator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day), and P. Simran Sethi, Emmy Award-winning journalist, blogger and environmentalist.
Empowerment is a constant theme at and on BlogHer. All signs point to others recognizing our power – as a group and as a demographic. How are we leveraging that power as individuals? How should we be?
Now that we know marketers and advertisers seek the opinions of women (who make over 80% of consumer purchases) and their blogs, how can we control what we are being sold? Now that we know having a unique presence online has turned us into “personal brands,” how can we use it to our best professional advantage? Now that we’re each part of the large BlogHer community and many sub-communities, how can we harness and strategically focus that collective power? How and when and for what can and should we turn on the power spigot?
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