Power Over vs. Power TO — Finally, It’s A Recognized Thing

Issue 233 — June 26, 2023

I took a class in Tai Chi last weekend. The teacher started by describing the practice as “intentional movement.”

Intentional movement is a useful framework for thinking about one’s own behavior as a leader and for interpreting or attempting to interpret the behavior of other leaders.

Read More

A Few Tips to Shake Things Up!

We’re not going to belabor the ‘stuck in your comfort zone’ thing but after our last email, we would be remiss if we didn’t pop in and share a few tangibles ways to break free from the grips of your comfort bubble. (-;

If you’re truly ready to take steps away from your comfort zone, here are some tips that can help.

Read More

The Sum – Meaning of the Week: Eclipsed

“The first responsibility of leadership is the creation of meaning.”—Warren Bennis. The word of the week is ECLIPSED As in: Where were you during the solar eclipse? As in: Did anyone notice Women’s Equality Day is August 26? As in: And when did the Equal Rights Amendment pass? Let’s start with the first question, probably…

Read More

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 march-on-washington-widerunning 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 More

She's Doing It: Tiffany Dufu Leads the White House Project Forward

Tiffany Dufu

This week’s “She’s Doing It” features a first person account of how a woman I very much admire came into leadership and stepped into her power as naturally as rivers flow from their source, despite some negative messages she received as a girl. Tiffany Dufu is a role model and example of how younger women are moving the leadership needle forward for themselves and others. Read on. And if you’re one of the over 13,000 who has had an experience with The White House Project thus far, won’t you share it here?

It all started when I got the Girl of the Year Award.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest as the daughter of a homemaker and minister, I remember adults around me insisting: “little girls can’t lead.” Yet taking the award into my hands that day, I realized how eager I was to make a profound impact. I had a deep desire to not only affect change, but also be public about it so that other girls would see that they could be leaders, too…

Read More

Friday Round Up on Saturday: Women’s Equality Day Edition

“Men, their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.” ~ Susan B. Anthony, 19th Century Women’s Rights and Suffrage Leader

In celebration and in reflection of Women’s Equality Day, this week’s Round Up collects some wonderful reading about it. Not only about the time when women achieved the right to vote via the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 26th, 1920 but also frank and honest discussions about where women are today in this journey and about the work ahead. Here’s a great timeline from the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership, headed until her untimely death last week by my friend and dedicated leader for women’s equality, Nora Bredes.

PANELPanel at the University of Rochester’s Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership. With Susan B. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton pictured in the background, and the late Nora Bredes at the podium moderating panelists Jennifer Lawless (Director of the American University Women and Politics Institute), Allida Black (Founder of the Eleanor Roosevelt Project) and me (in my Susan B Anthony costume–she always wore black with a red scarf) in October, 2010.

Read More

Make History With Your Media Activism on Women’s Equality Day

NOW Womens Equality Day invitationNote: This is posted today as a Women’s Media Center Exclusive

The invitation to today’s Phoenix-Scottsdale National Organization for Women (NOW) “Equality Day Feminist Convergence” depicts a quaint sepia photo of suffragists picketing the White House. It telegraphs “old.” After all, the event celebrates the 91st anniversary of the date in 1920 when women’s right to vote entered the U.S. Constitution.

But, remember, in the decades at the beginning of the 20th century those purple and white sashes and those picket signs wielded by (purposefully) demurely dressed women were new media in action.

Fittingly, attendees at the Arizona event will have a contemporary victory to celebrate, one involving media activism squarely in the suffragist tradition. But this one is powered by e-mail and concerns itself with very modern day attire. Tight jeans to be exact…

Read More

Three Ways Not to Celebrate Women’s Equality Day – August 26, 2011

Congresswoman (D-NY) Bella AbzugAs second wave feminism gathered peak velocity forty years ago, the late bombastic and behatted Congresswoman (D-NY) Bella Abzug persuaded Congress to designate August 26th as Women’s Equality Day. It recognized the 19th Amendment to the Constitution that in 1920 gave all U.S. women the right to vote.

There are many reasons to celebrate the 91st anniversary of women winning the ballot, which some suffragist leaders mistakenly believed culminated the struggle for women’s rights. But it turns out the solution to a problem changes the problem–creating uncomfortable new questions about the value of equality and what to do once we get there.

We’ve come a long way, maybe…

Read More