Activism
How Women Lead: Not A Hero, Everyone as Hero
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Arizona State University student Lauren Sandground at a meeting to plan the Take The Lead Challenge Launch event (happening February 19 at ASU—check it out here and plan to be there live or by livestream). Lauren, a senior, started an organization named Woman as Hero in 2009 after being surprised to encounter gender biases in her own life even today, when young women are told they can do or be anything.
Mothers or Others? Why Choose? How Maternity Leave Policy Crushes Women’s Leadership Parity
Jamera Lee Massop was an administrative assistant in New York when she became pregnant. She didn’t think being pregnant would or should impact her job. However, with no reason other than “your contract says we can terminate you at any time for any reason,” Jamera’s company fired her when she was six months pregnant.
A Vision, a Goal, some Mustard: Women’s Leadership @ ASU
Somebody once gave me a greeting card that read, “Just when you think you are done, you are really just beginning.” That is certainly my story with Take The Lead which I co-founded with my wonderful partner-in-good Amy Litzenberger. So when the question came up about how I came to be teaching this online certificate course, “9 Practical Leadership Power Tools to Advance Your Career,” I took a little trip down memory lane to recall why I became an advocate for women’s leadership parity and how I learned what makes a successful movement to achieve that–or anything else you want to make happen.
Women’s Equality Day and the Civil Rights March
It was all over the news for days. Every pundit, every political talk show, every newspaper 
running big retrospective spreads. Op eds galore, and reminiscences of what it was like to march together toward equality.
Today, August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, the day that commemorates passage of the 19th amendment to the US constitution, giving women the right to vote after a struggle that lasted over 70 years. A big deal, right?
Right. But that’s not what all the news was about. In fact, though President Obama issued a proclamation and a few columnists like the New York Times’ Gail Collins gave it a nod, hardly anyone is talking about Women’s Equality Day. At least not in consciousness-saturating ways that garner major media’s attention, as Saturday’s March on Washington commemorating the 50th anniversary of a similar Civil Rights march.
Yet the two anniversaries are rooted in common values about equality and justice for all. They share common adversaries and aspirations. Racism and sexism are joined at the head.
Read MoreWomen’s Campaign Fund Won’t Settle for Less Than Half
Monday night I attended the bipartisan Women’s Campaign Fund’s annual “Parties of Your Choice“.
As always, they begin with a raucous reception at Christie’s for several hundred guests, after which we all scatter around town for intimate dinners in beautiful homes. At each party, there are several WCF-endorsed candidates or elected officials who tell their tales and make their pitches.
Here are a few photos I took during the evening, which was peppered with chants of “Change the players. Change the game.”
Read MoreThe Young Politica: Why Be Politically Active After Elections
Now that the election is over, many young voters will likely retire their ‘concerned citizen’ badge until presidential primaries start up again. Being a politically active young person, however, is more than just voting for a president. There have been dramatic repercussion in the last four years due to youth voter inactivity between presidential elections.
In our own instant gratification generation psyche, many of us thought we had already created change by electing one man into the U.S. presidential seat. When it came to the midterm races in 2010, there was a 60% youth voter decline from 2008.
If more of us would have voted in 2010, perhaps there would have been tremendous changes. Perhaps the youth vote would have decided the election like it did in 2012.
Isn’t the rip-and-tear of the House over the past two years, all the ‘gridlock’, worth taking a stance?
Read MoreFaith-based Support for Abortion Rights
The Gallup poll is showing abortion as the #1 voting issue for women in key swing states, with the economy second. Though the pollster didn’t indicate whether the female registered voters polled were pro or anti choice, it’s clear there is a heightened awareness of the consequences of a Romney/Ryan presidency as well as the…
Read MoreGrace, Grit, and Paycheck Fairness – When?
The annual hooplah over Equal Pay Day is over. At gatherings around the country last month, politicians and activists alike decried the persistent 20% plus pay gap between men and women. Now what? Back to work with our heads down as usual?
Not if you’re Lilly Ledbetter.
The namesake of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act—the first bill President Barack Obama signed into law while surrounded with the smart political optics of Ledbetter, bipartisan members of Congress, and other women leaders in red power suits—knows this:
- Securing fairness and equality in compensation requires each woman to be persistently aware of what she’s worth and stand up for herself in the workplace.
- Securing fairness and equality in compensation is a long haul process that requires changes to laws and policies so the system is fair to all.
The personal and the political are, as usual, intertwined.
Sure, negotiation expert Victoria Pynchon can coach you on how to negotiate compensation more effectively for yourself. And when I speak and teach about my book No Excuses and its 9 Power Tools, I emphasize #3—use what you’ve got—to help women identify just how much power they have in their own hands, including the power to make changes in their paychecks.
And sure, as the Daily Muse pointed out, it’s good that the U.S. Department of Labor held an Equal Pay App Challenge seeking an app to educate people about the persistent problems of equal—or rather, unequal—pay.
But clearly these individual actions, as important as they are, constitute isolated drops in the deep blue ocean of needed systemic change.
Ledbetter’s new memoir, Grace and Grit: My Fight for Equal Pay and Fairness at Goodyear and Beyond, takes the personal and weaves it together with the political as she describes how she became a leader in the fight for equal pay.
Read MoreRometty’s Epic #FAIL to Lead at Augusta
Talk show bloviator Rush Limbaugh calls 30-year-old Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a slut for advocating insurance coverage of contraceptives. Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus compares women to caterpillars. And the Augusta National Golf Club’s perfectly manicured greens remain firmly planted among those last bastions protecting male hegemony over society’s most powerful economic and political institutions. 
The all-male golf club, based in Augusta, Georgia, has failed once again to award its coveted green jacket to a woman who clearly deserves club membership—IBM’s president and CEO Virginia “Ginni” Rometti. IBM is one of three major corporate sponsors of the club’s vaunted Masters golf tournament, and Rometty is Big Blue’s first female CEO.
But as much as I’ve excoriated Augusta’s male leaders for perpetuating this exclusionary practice, and as much as I believe IBM’s board is culpable for not standing up for their own CEO, I’m even more distressed over Rometty’s failure to take this unprecedented opportunity to lift up not only herself but all women aspiring to the upper echelons of corporate leadership.
Read MoreHoodies, Gender, and Telling Truths
Politico Arena Asks:
Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) plans to send House Speaker John Boehner a letter requesting that the House chamber’s dress code be more strictly enforced after Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) was booted from the House floor yesterday for wearing a hoodie. 
Rush sported the sweatshirt and a pair of sunglasses to bring attention to the shooting of Trayvon Martin. However, some members argue that Rush was unfairly treated as it is fairly common practice for members to ignore attire rules.
Is this incident a sign that the Trayvon Martin case has become too politicized? If so, who is responsible?
My Response:
Between Trayvon Martin, Sandra Fluke, and women’s reaction to the Komen Foundation’s epic fail, the world is splitting open and making way for many previously untold truths about race and gender.
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