9 Ways Blog
She's Doing It: Keli Goff Sizes up Politics and the Power of Women (Plus Big No Excuses News!)
I’m leaping with joy: the paperback edition of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power is coming.
On Leap Day February 29, 2012!Could there be a more perfect day for a book urging women to embrace their power?
Thank you for making No Excuses “the little book that could.” It had a 9-month stint on amazon.com’s leadership and feminist theory bestseller lists. It has inspired many, even changed a few lives, and moved me to create a new No Excuses Leadership Workshop in addition to keynotes and panels.
I interviewed amazing women for the book, and I was curious what they’ve learned about power and leadership since then. Today, the “She’s Doing It” weekly series will start answering that question.
The first is a woman I admire greatly for her astute political analysis and smart writing. Keli Goff is the author most recently of The GQ Candidate and you can catch her regularly on The Dylan Ratigan Show. She’s a contributing editor at Loop21.com and blogs at www.TheHuffingtonPost.com. Follow @KeliGoff on twitter. Now, read more from her here:
Gloria: Was there a moment when you felt very powerful recently?
Read MoreFierce and Female: A Self-Defense Expert Challenges Women To Define What is Non-Negotiable
We often think of power as being a concept that is disembodied and theoretical. But it’s also very physical.
I previously posted here about Ellen Snortland, whose book, Beauty Bites Beast, about the psychological value as well as the physical importance of women becoming proficient at self-defense I always recommend to my students when I teach Women, Power, and Leadership.
Now comes Dr. Ruthless with yet more practical tools for what she refers to as the “Killer Instinct…to preserve and protect life.” And, she says, women need to forge their fear into fire. Read on…and share your experiences with physical fear and strength.
Q&A With Dr. Ruthless on her “Dharma of Defense” and Why we Must Venerate the Warrior Spirit
What happens when you combine primal self-defense methods with the insights of a psychotherapist and the heart of a warrior?
Meet Dr. Ruthless, also known as Melissa Soalt. An award-winning women’s self-defense expert and Black Belt Hall of Fame recipient, Dr. Ruthless emerged at the forefront of the women’s self defense movement in the mid 1980’s and has created her own “Dharma of Defense.” You can see her in action in her acclaimed DVD, Fierce & Female.
Her teachings encompass the physical and spiritual dimensions of self-defense. She unabashedly advocates for women to leverage their Killer Instinct —not for the sake of destruction, but to preserve and protect life. In this interview, Dr. Ruthless shares her perspective on the female warrior spirit and why we must learn to mobilize our survival instinct and forge fear into fire.
Brooke Axtell: What attracted you to training in self-defense and teaching other women how to defend themselves?
Dr. Ruthless: In my late teens, I lived in the Middle East and traveled around Asia. I was attacked multiple times and violently groped. I learned I was a scrappy bitch. I successfully fought off rape attempts in Israel and Pakistan and I suffered a lot of indignities. Women who have been violated know what it’s like to be reduced to anti-matter. It’s utterly dehumanizing. I also witnessed appalling inequities, the ways women are controlled by men. This birthed my undying reverence for female disobedience and the need for women’s self defense.
Read MoreShe's doing It: Catherine Engh Wants More Female Characters Like Leslie Knopes
Catherine Engh is a feminist and an aspiring writer particularly interested in the ways that girls and women are represented in fiction and television. She wrote this piece for 9 Ways–it’s a great example of No Excuses Power Tool # 8: Employ Every Medium. Plus there are some useful tips on how to be a media activist.
Catherine also likes to do as much yoga as is possible–perhaps she’ll write about that next.
Why Television Needs more Leslie Knopes
Recently, I couldn’t help but notice that many of my favorite television shows are about men. Don Draper, Nucky Thompson, Walter White, Hank Moody and Vincent Chase are just a few male lead roles that come to mind.
It is not news that stories about the identity struggles of white men sell. Thus, they are more commonly aired than shows that explore women’s lives and choices. Though women are more likely to watch entertainment programming than men, the majority of those involved with television creation are male. Women’s Media Center reported that in the 2010-2011 year,
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Merle Hoffman – "It Takes Bad Girls to Get Good Things Done"
Often when I speak about No Excuses, I ask “When did you know you had the power to __(fill in the blank)___?”
This question intrigues people, but rarely does anyone have as clear and direct answer as Merle Hoffman, this week’s “She’s Doing It.” She seems to have been born knowing, and born quite willing to buck the norm of being the archetypical nice and compliant “good girl” in favor of getting done the things she believes are important.
Merle, the President and CEO of Choices Women’s Medical Center, has recently published a memoir I highly recommend, Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion Out of the Back Alley and Into the Boardroom.
Merle was kind enough to answer some questions about her life and times for 9 Ways:
Tell me your personal story…why and how did you come to be doing what you a doing?
I really fell into it serendipitously. My early years and adolescence were spent preparing to become a concert pianist. After I graduated from Music and Art, I also dabbled in painting and drama. When I finally decided to go to college at the age of 22, I need three part time jobs to pay for tuition—and one was with an internist , Dr. Martin Gold, for whom I worked as a medical assistant. At just this time (1970), abortion was decriminalized in New York which was three years before Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationally. Dr. Gold, one of the architects of HIP, wanted to start a service for women subscribers. I got involved in the beginning of this project and it has become my life’s work.
What motivates you? What’s your passion?
I am motivated by very deep feelings of responsibility which began with the first patient who came to Choices.
Read MoreFriday Round Up on Monday: Women See Red and Get Over the Pink
UPDATE 2/7 : Karen Handel resigned her position at Komen this morning, angrily claiming she was right, everyone else was wrong, and that she would be telling her side of the story. Oh sister, this plot just keeps thickening!
It’s been quite a week for the women of America, as two women’s health care icons, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation and Planned Parenthood squared off. I’m not sure why Planned Parenthood waited so long to tell people the Komen Foundation had decided last December to discontinue funding them, but I do know if the women’s movement seizes this moment, which has obviously cracked open something much larger than any particular organization, it can create an amazing resurgence that will last another generation.
I wrote this in the Daily Beast today cheering you on: Women’s Tahir Square Moment…
(Your comments, shares, and links will be appreciated!)At last, women saw enough red to get over the pink, the fear, the preference to play victim rather than embrace our own power. And that’s exactly how to stand down ideologues terrified of women getting a fair shake and the small but powerful fringe obsessed with other people’s sex lives. (read the rest here).
Here’s a round up of some of media that caught my attention during the past week. I’d love to capture other stories you particularly resonated with—so please post them in the comments section below.
Settling the Score: Dorothy Seymour Mills Finally Tells Her Story
“Everyone assumed that he had done all that work by himself — that’s what he wanted them to assume, but we were equal partners” –Dorothy Seymour Mills
- Photo source: Dorothy Jane Mills
Dorothy Seymour Mills is one of the great baseball historians of all time. But you probably never heard of her.
Instead, she worked alongside her late husband, Harold Seymour. From 1960-1990; he received all the credit and did become famous in his field. Together they completed three of the earliest and most widely read books on baseball history.
First in the Field is Dorothy’s belated claim to her own life’s work. In it, she reveals her approach to baseball history, pervasive attitudes about woman interested in baseball, her reasons for finally demanding the credit she deserves so late in life and her struggle for recognition after her husband’s death.
The short eBook reads more like a research paper than a memoir. But then, the author is after all first and foremost a historical researcher. First in the Field moves through her personal and professional history much as an encyclopedia entry might, chronologically from fact to fact, event to event. Readers will not find much in the way of literary language: Dorothy’s narrative is told without literary flourish or thematic subtlety.
Yet despite the stylistic simplicity, or perhaps because of its straightforwardness and lack of pretense, the story will tug at the heartstrings of anyone who has experienced discrimination. And in recognition that one’s personal story is also political, Dorothy ties the personal injustices she faced to the widespread marginalization of women
Read MoreAre You an Iron Lady?
The Golden Globe Awards this week featured the most gorgeous dresses I’ve ever seen (yes, I confess to being a fashion watcher) and Meryl Streep winning her 9th Golden Globe, for her extraordinary portrayal of the British rock-ribbed Conservative former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the first and only woman ever to serve in that post.…
Read MoreShe’s Doing It: Shoshana Weinberg Finds Spa Everywhere
Read MoreHow in the world did Shoshana Weinberg get from the “tiny country town” of Clarksville MD to Hong Kong? How in the world did this director of the Four Seasons Spa Hong Kong happen upon my 9 Ways Blog? And what in the world does she mean when she says, “Spa is everywhere?”
I asked those and other questions when Shoshana e-mailed me out of the blue saying she’d found my blog to be inspirational and wanted to be profiled as a “She’s Doing It” woman. I think you’ll find her answers fascinating as she tells her story (that’s No Excuses Power Tool #9 of course!) here…
Friday Round Up: Will Egyptian Women’s Revolt Sustain a Movement?
I was incredibly moved to see photos of Egyptian women marching in Tahrir Square earlier this week. A few hundred protesters were expected; thousands showed up. And they were angry.
Women figured prominently in the demonstrations that brought down Hosni Mubarak last February . But once the government toppled, they were pushed aside, and not included in the constitutional reform committee. Egyptian feminists warn that decades of painstaking advances could be reversed, as religious fundamentalists ascend to power in what has been a nominally secular state.
This week’s protest was spurred my pervasive police and military brutality to women. Attacks on women,
Read MoreWhat Leadership Lesson Are You Most Thankful For? Bonus Gift Edition
Wow! Thanks, for sharing so many fabulous, and fabulously helpful, leadership lessons that you are thankful for! With the season of giving in full swing, here are more great gifts of wisdom shared by women leaders.
Want to give a gift to others? Post your leadership lesson in the comments section below.
And while you’re at it, post YOUR most burning leadership question for the New Year too…
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