For those obsessed, like me, with how the media is and will cover Michelle Obama, do check out the new blog Michelle Obama Watch. The site is designed to be “a repository of all of the criticism, praise, and general chicanery thrown at Michelle Obama between now and November.” And for any who missed Michelle Obama on The View, here’s the clip:
women’s leadership
So here’s to the latest women about to be demonized in the media: Michelle Obama. My heart goes out to her, and so will my pen (or keyboard, whatevs). Meanwhile, check out this piece in Women’s eNews by Sandra Kobrin, “Michelle: Hold Your Head High; We Got Your Back.”
And by the way, for an expanded version of Courtney’s comments from yesterday’s forum on media coverage of the 2008 elections, do check out “Generation Y Refuses Race-Gender Dichotomy” in AlterNet today. An excerpt:
The million-dollar question: How, with a generation bent on individuality and multiplicity, do we confront racism, sexism and all the other insipid -isms that have been brought to light by this unprecedented campaign? To my mind, we must continue to use novel interventions — like the Women’s Media Center’s great montage “Sexism Sells, but We’re Not Buying It,” the brand-new blog Michelle Obama Watch, and the evergreen experts at Racialicious — to educate people. We must use humor — as my group blog Feministing often does, as the brilliant Sarah Haskins does on Current TV, as Ann Telnaes does through cartooning over at Women’s eNews. (Note: It’s not just the boys — John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the Onion crew — that know the power of a laugh.)
We must take our roles as media consumers dead seriously, calling television executives and newspaper editors on their misguided choices and celebrating them when they get it right. In an increasingly corporatized media landscape, it is your dollar, not your disgust, that will most readily get big-wig attention. Don’t buy sexist magazines, don’t tune into to racist radio, and don’t watch reductive, recycled infotainment being pawned off as news.
But most of all, it seems to me, we must continue to push for a deeper, more authentic conversation overall. We must let the mainstream media know that we don’t want to debate “reject” or “denounce” for 24 hours or go on witch hunts for Geraldine Ferraro or Samantha Power. We want to understand what these women were trying to say. We want to explore the real issues. We want to, as my co-panelist Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now so brilliantly put it, call into question the whole idea of empire. The debate shouldn’t center on the quandary: How can we make our empire more effective? But, do we want to be an empire in the first place?
And we must demand that our candidates rise to the occasion, as I believe Obama did so beautifully with his speech on race following the Reverend Wright controversy. He brought that conversation to a new level, and we are all better off for it. We need to continue to push for that kind of brazen truth-telling — about gender, certainly, about class, for sure. That’s what politics is supposed to be about — not partisanship or strategic spinning, but honesty and uplift. Call me naïve, but that’s what the young are supposed to be, right?
Well, the primary race may be over, but our fascination with Hillary–with the prospect and reality of a Hillary–has really only just begun. I find myself eagerly tracking the post-mortem analysis, hungry to make sense of it all. If you see any particularly interesting analysis out there, please to send it along. Just a sampling of what caught my eye over the weekend:
Clinton’s Real Victory
6/7/08
Washington Post: As someone who trains women across the country to lead across all sectors, it has been easy for me to see, firsthand, the impact of Clinton’s candidacy…
Clinton Bloc Becomes the Prize for Election Day
NY Times: Now that a would-be first female president is ending her quest for the White House, the race is more about women than ever before…
And lastly, this letter of gratitude, from Ilana Goldberg, head of the Women’s Campaign Fund (thank you, Purse Pundit!):
Dear Hillary –
I say this to you almost daily, but since it’s normally to you on the TV screen, I thought I should find a way of saying it where you might actually receive the message: Thank you.
Thank you for what you have done. For your sheer tenacity, strength, and stick-to-itiveness. Thank you for working so hard every day when you must have been exhausted. For showing us what leadership looks like: doing something well, with grace, in good times and bad. Most of all, I thank you for not quitting.
Your many supporters will tell you what your race means to them and history will write what it means to the world, but it also means so much to me and to the little world I live in. I thank you on behalf of the women who have been so special in my life:
For my daughter – who is, as of yet, just an idea in my mind. But I imagine her one day reading the story of this historic campaign. I am so grateful that the story she will read will be of a complete campaign, with the biggest numbers possible – states, votes, and delegates. That story will show that our first woman presidential contender was truly competitive – nearly won competitive – and show a little girl her own vast possibilities in this country. Thank you for giving her a history worth reading.
For my mother – who is one of those women who work tirelessly to support her family, worries over rising healthcare costs and frets that her grandchildren may not have social security. She’s always been passionately interested in politics, but never before found a politician who she felt saw and understood her. She’ll be 65 next year and she wrote the first political check of her life to you. Thank you for validating the day-to-day concerns that she faces.
For my grandmother – who was, as it was noted at her memorial, “a woman ahead of her time.” I think of her every time I see one of your senior women supporters who were born before women first got the vote and were out on the streets filled with hope that they would inaugurate one in their lifetimes. Thank you for showing them that their efforts to make women loud and proud actors in American politics created real change.
For my best friend – who would listen to me talk about just about anything in the world for hours – except politics – until you started to run. Little by little, day by day, she became more engaged in your campaign and what it meant to the country and our place in the world. She started out reading your emails and went on to lobbying her husband and friends to change their votes. Thank you for awakening an incredible woman to her role in the political process.
For my former junior staffer- who did not necessarily believe that sexism was still an issue alive and well today. She watched pundit after pundit behave in ways that even she could not deny were … crude. Then she saw it pass as kind of acceptable. And then she saw it happen again and again. Finally, she took up her pen and now Chris Matthews and the MSNBC brass know her name … well. Thank you for reminding her of how much work we all still have to do.
For me – who has been, at times, described as direct, forward, forceful, pushy and a few other choice adjectives. Thank you for helping make the world a little safer for aggressive, ambitious women. Because isn’t aggressive just one way of saying “she gets things done” and isn’t ambition just another word for “dream?” Thank you for pushing for my dream – and that of so many others – to elect a phenomenally talented and capable woman to lead our country and change our world.
As you promised from the outset, you have, and will continue to, make history.
Thank you, for all us.
Sincerely,
Ilana Goldman
President, Women’s Campaign Forum
A must-read today from Judith Warner in today’s NYTimes (“Women in Charge, Women Who Charge”) in which she argues that in a nation indifferent to the sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton over the past 16 months, no wonder a film like “Sex and the City†is a hit. Writes Warner:
How antithetical Hillary’s earnest, electric blue pants-suited whole being is to the frothy cheer of that film, which has women now turning out in droves, a song in their hearts, unified in popcorn-clutching sisterhood to a degree I haven’t seen since the ugly, angry days of Anita Hill and … the first incarnation of Hillary Clinton. How times have changed. How yucky, how baby boomerish, how frowningly pre-Botox were the early 1990s. How brilliantly does “Sex†– however atrocious it may be – surf our current zeitgeist, sugar-coating it all in Blahniks and Westwood, and yummy men and yummier real estate, and squeakingly desperate girl cheer….
Read the full piece here.
ADDENDUM: As per urbanartiste’s comment, I have yet to see the movie yet and I do expect I’ll enjoy it, having been an SATC addict, nevertheless!
NCRW Plenary – Post #6
Marie Wilson, The White House Project, who has a history of being a good trend predictor, predicts that this is the cutting edge of the women’s time. (Agree? Disagree?) Snippets:
“This election has been research on the hoof, if you will.â€
“Things have changed permanently because of HRC’s run. To begin with, we’ll never have to poll the question ‘would you vote for a woman president?’ again. Because they did!â€
“If HRC had come out of the gate talking about bringing people together, it wouldn’t have worked for her. It worked for Obama. But HRC had to come out ‘tough’ and ‘competent.’ She got into fierce mode—‘I will fight for you.’â€
“The sexism in America came flat out. So now at least you can talk about it. That’s always a step forward.â€
“Because of HRC, three-year-old women are talking about politics.â€
“We need research. The Humphrey Center in Minnesota is doing research now on a new women’s political movement, and that we need to do much more.â€
Interesting exchange going on over at feministing about a Glamocracy post by Fernanda Diaz arguing that Hillary has “ruined it” for future female politicians by being “unfeminine.” As my friends at Catalyst have said and shown again and again, a woman leader is damned if she does and doomed if she don’t. It’s dispiriting to me to hear the aggressive = unfeminine argument coming from a next-generation younger woman. I mean, unreconstructed/threatened men, sure. But I just hate it how women ourselves can sometimes be our own worst enemy. You know?
A quick-hit report on women’s leadership around the globe. Read it…and weep?
She Just Might Be President Someday
5/18/08 – NY Times: A specific composite of Madam President is suggested by political strategists and talent scouts, politicians and those who study women in politics. It is based as much on the lessons of the Clinton candidacy as on the enduring truths of politics and the number and variety of women who dot the leadership landscape.
Belittled Woman
5/16/08 – Washington Post: At some point along the way, Hillary Clinton became “poor Hillary” and it stuck.
Defense Minister’s New Baby Confirms Symbolism Of Parity In Spain
5/21/08 – International Herald Tribune: Carmé Chacón, who began leave Tuesday after giving birth to a boy, became an instant symbol of the Socialist government’s commitment to gender parity in Spain, a traditionally macho society whose new equality laws are among the most progressive in Europe.
Sierra Leone: Can Women Make a Difference in the Local Government?
5/20/08 – AllAfrica.com: As the July 5 Sierra Leone local council elections are drawing nearer, a low turn out of women to contest the elections has been observed.
First Aussie Female Bishop ‘A Milestone’
5/21/08 – Sydney Morning Herald: The consecration of Australia’s first woman Bishop in Perth on Thursday has been hailed as a major step in overcoming discrimination against women.
One more must-read, just in case you (like me, gulp) missed it: Susan Faludi’s recent oped at the NYTimes. Writes Faludi:
As Thelma, the housewife turned renegade, says to her friend in “Thelma & Louise†as the two women flee the law through the American West, “Something’s crossed over in me.â€
Senator Clinton might well say the same. In the final stretch of the primary season, she seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender.
What’s more, she seems to have taken to her new role with a Thelma-like relish. We are witnessing a female competitor delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her new no-holds-barred pugnacity and gleeful perseverance have revamped her image in the eyes of begrudging white male voters, who previously saw her as the sanctioning “sivilizer,†a political Aunt Polly whose goody-goody directives made them want to head for the hills.
I know it’s over. I imagine she knows it’s over. But I admit, I’m truly enjoying that glee in her eyes. That woman is one tough cookie, and I mean that in only the best of ways.
As promised, my quick report on this week’s “Women and Ambition” panel co-sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women and PricewaterhouseCoopers:
The thing I love about corporate panels is that they start and finish on time. They are impeccably moderated. They serve food. This one delivered on all fronts, and went a step beyond. Every audience member was given a remote control devise by which to cast votes, enabling the moderator to poll us in real time and post the results on a big screen up front. It was cooler than Oprah, I swear.
There were some interesting results from the audience poll: 75% of the women in the crowd described themselves as “ambitious.” 94% of the men in attendance said the word “ambitious”, when used to describe someone, carried a positive connotation, but only 57% of the women agreed.
Women’s ambition is certainly a hot-button issue these days. Everyone agrees that we should be much further along in terms of our representation at the top tiers of corporate and political leadership than we are. How are ambitions born? What impedes then? What can companies do to help women nurture and realize theirs? Panelists–psychiatrist and author Anna Fels, the White House Project’s Marie Wilson, entrepreneurship scholar Myra Hart, law partner Marsha Simms, and economist Lise Vesterlund–sounded off on these issues, and more.
Some memorable quips:
Moderator Jennifer Allyn: “We’ve been talking about critical mass since the 1970s. There has to be more than 16% [the percent of women in Congress] before women can stop being seen as the ‘only’ and constitute more of a critical mass.”
Marie Wilson: “Anytime you have only one woman in a top position, all you see is their gender–hair, hemlines, and husbands.” “You cannot be what you cannot see. So we have to make the women who are in leadership more visible.”
Myra Hart: “Research shows that women straight out of Harvard Business School land the same kinds of jobs at the same compensation of men. But 5 years later, women’s career paths indicate a change. Much of it may be self-selection, but some of it is not.”
Lisa Vesterlund: “Research shows it’s not that women are under-confident about their ability to compete and win. It’s than men are actually over-confident about theirs.”
And my personal favorite:
Marie Wilson: “In the last 6 months of media coverage, Hillary Clinton’s ambition has been described as ‘unquenchable.’ John McCain’s ambition hasn’t been mentioned at all.”
For more on women’s leadership, consider joining me at the Council’s annual conference this year, titled “Hitting the Ground Running: Research, Activism, and Leadership for a New Era,” on June 5-7 at NYU. To register, contact Jessyca Dudley at jdudley@ncrw.org, 212/785-7335, x205 or visit www.ncrw.org.
I’m late and light on posting today because this morning I went to an 8am panel on “Women and Ambition,” sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women’s Corporate Circle. Those corporate ladies start early!
A true post about it coming before week’s end, but in the meantime, I wanted to share a little good fortune: I realized once on the subway that I already own the two amazing books that were included in the giveaway package. So I’d like to offer them as giveaways to the first two people who email me at girlwpen@gmail.com with their snail mail addresses. Please specify your choice. The books are:
1. Anna Fels, Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives
2. Marie Wilson, Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World (with a new afterword)
And an aside: I just did a quick Google image search using the word “ambition” and all the pictures that came up featured guess who…men! Except for this one above. Hmmm.
So here’s to the latest women about to be demonized in the media: Michelle Obama. My heart goes out to her, and so will my pen (or keyboard, whatevs). Meanwhile, check out this piece in Women’s eNews by Sandra Kobrin, “Michelle: Hold Your Head High; We Got Your Back.”
And by the way, for an expanded version of Courtney’s comments from yesterday’s forum on media coverage of the 2008 elections, do check out “Generation Y Refuses Race-Gender Dichotomy” in AlterNet today. An excerpt:
The million-dollar question: How, with a generation bent on individuality and multiplicity, do we confront racism, sexism and all the other insipid -isms that have been brought to light by this unprecedented campaign? To my mind, we must continue to use novel interventions — like the Women’s Media Center’s great montage “Sexism Sells, but We’re Not Buying It,” the brand-new blog Michelle Obama Watch, and the evergreen experts at Racialicious — to educate people. We must use humor — as my group blog Feministing often does, as the brilliant Sarah Haskins does on Current TV, as Ann Telnaes does through cartooning over at Women’s eNews. (Note: It’s not just the boys — John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the Onion crew — that know the power of a laugh.)
We must take our roles as media consumers dead seriously, calling television executives and newspaper editors on their misguided choices and celebrating them when they get it right. In an increasingly corporatized media landscape, it is your dollar, not your disgust, that will most readily get big-wig attention. Don’t buy sexist magazines, don’t tune into to racist radio, and don’t watch reductive, recycled infotainment being pawned off as news.
But most of all, it seems to me, we must continue to push for a deeper, more authentic conversation overall. We must let the mainstream media know that we don’t want to debate “reject” or “denounce” for 24 hours or go on witch hunts for Geraldine Ferraro or Samantha Power. We want to understand what these women were trying to say. We want to explore the real issues. We want to, as my co-panelist Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now so brilliantly put it, call into question the whole idea of empire. The debate shouldn’t center on the quandary: How can we make our empire more effective? But, do we want to be an empire in the first place?
And we must demand that our candidates rise to the occasion, as I believe Obama did so beautifully with his speech on race following the Reverend Wright controversy. He brought that conversation to a new level, and we are all better off for it. We need to continue to push for that kind of brazen truth-telling — about gender, certainly, about class, for sure. That’s what politics is supposed to be about — not partisanship or strategic spinning, but honesty and uplift. Call me naïve, but that’s what the young are supposed to be, right?
Well, the primary race may be over, but our fascination with Hillary–with the prospect and reality of a Hillary–has really only just begun. I find myself eagerly tracking the post-mortem analysis, hungry to make sense of it all. If you see any particularly interesting analysis out there, please to send it along. Just a sampling of what caught my eye over the weekend:
Clinton’s Real Victory
6/7/08
Washington Post: As someone who trains women across the country to lead across all sectors, it has been easy for me to see, firsthand, the impact of Clinton’s candidacy…
Clinton Bloc Becomes the Prize for Election Day
NY Times: Now that a would-be first female president is ending her quest for the White House, the race is more about women than ever before…
And lastly, this letter of gratitude, from Ilana Goldberg, head of the Women’s Campaign Fund (thank you, Purse Pundit!):
Dear Hillary –
I say this to you almost daily, but since it’s normally to you on the TV screen, I thought I should find a way of saying it where you might actually receive the message: Thank you.
Thank you for what you have done. For your sheer tenacity, strength, and stick-to-itiveness. Thank you for working so hard every day when you must have been exhausted. For showing us what leadership looks like: doing something well, with grace, in good times and bad. Most of all, I thank you for not quitting.
Your many supporters will tell you what your race means to them and history will write what it means to the world, but it also means so much to me and to the little world I live in. I thank you on behalf of the women who have been so special in my life:
For my daughter – who is, as of yet, just an idea in my mind. But I imagine her one day reading the story of this historic campaign. I am so grateful that the story she will read will be of a complete campaign, with the biggest numbers possible – states, votes, and delegates. That story will show that our first woman presidential contender was truly competitive – nearly won competitive – and show a little girl her own vast possibilities in this country. Thank you for giving her a history worth reading.
For my mother – who is one of those women who work tirelessly to support her family, worries over rising healthcare costs and frets that her grandchildren may not have social security. She’s always been passionately interested in politics, but never before found a politician who she felt saw and understood her. She’ll be 65 next year and she wrote the first political check of her life to you. Thank you for validating the day-to-day concerns that she faces.
For my grandmother – who was, as it was noted at her memorial, “a woman ahead of her time.” I think of her every time I see one of your senior women supporters who were born before women first got the vote and were out on the streets filled with hope that they would inaugurate one in their lifetimes. Thank you for showing them that their efforts to make women loud and proud actors in American politics created real change.
For my best friend – who would listen to me talk about just about anything in the world for hours – except politics – until you started to run. Little by little, day by day, she became more engaged in your campaign and what it meant to the country and our place in the world. She started out reading your emails and went on to lobbying her husband and friends to change their votes. Thank you for awakening an incredible woman to her role in the political process.
For my former junior staffer- who did not necessarily believe that sexism was still an issue alive and well today. She watched pundit after pundit behave in ways that even she could not deny were … crude. Then she saw it pass as kind of acceptable. And then she saw it happen again and again. Finally, she took up her pen and now Chris Matthews and the MSNBC brass know her name … well. Thank you for reminding her of how much work we all still have to do.
For me – who has been, at times, described as direct, forward, forceful, pushy and a few other choice adjectives. Thank you for helping make the world a little safer for aggressive, ambitious women. Because isn’t aggressive just one way of saying “she gets things done” and isn’t ambition just another word for “dream?” Thank you for pushing for my dream – and that of so many others – to elect a phenomenally talented and capable woman to lead our country and change our world.
As you promised from the outset, you have, and will continue to, make history.
Thank you, for all us.
Sincerely,
Ilana Goldman
President, Women’s Campaign Forum
A must-read today from Judith Warner in today’s NYTimes (“Women in Charge, Women Who Charge”) in which she argues that in a nation indifferent to the sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton over the past 16 months, no wonder a film like “Sex and the City†is a hit. Writes Warner:
How antithetical Hillary’s earnest, electric blue pants-suited whole being is to the frothy cheer of that film, which has women now turning out in droves, a song in their hearts, unified in popcorn-clutching sisterhood to a degree I haven’t seen since the ugly, angry days of Anita Hill and … the first incarnation of Hillary Clinton. How times have changed. How yucky, how baby boomerish, how frowningly pre-Botox were the early 1990s. How brilliantly does “Sex†– however atrocious it may be – surf our current zeitgeist, sugar-coating it all in Blahniks and Westwood, and yummy men and yummier real estate, and squeakingly desperate girl cheer….
Read the full piece here.
ADDENDUM: As per urbanartiste’s comment, I have yet to see the movie yet and I do expect I’ll enjoy it, having been an SATC addict, nevertheless!
NCRW Plenary – Post #6
Marie Wilson, The White House Project, who has a history of being a good trend predictor, predicts that this is the cutting edge of the women’s time. (Agree? Disagree?) Snippets:
“This election has been research on the hoof, if you will.â€
“Things have changed permanently because of HRC’s run. To begin with, we’ll never have to poll the question ‘would you vote for a woman president?’ again. Because they did!â€
“If HRC had come out of the gate talking about bringing people together, it wouldn’t have worked for her. It worked for Obama. But HRC had to come out ‘tough’ and ‘competent.’ She got into fierce mode—‘I will fight for you.’â€
“The sexism in America came flat out. So now at least you can talk about it. That’s always a step forward.â€
“Because of HRC, three-year-old women are talking about politics.â€
“We need research. The Humphrey Center in Minnesota is doing research now on a new women’s political movement, and that we need to do much more.â€
Interesting exchange going on over at feministing about a Glamocracy post by Fernanda Diaz arguing that Hillary has “ruined it” for future female politicians by being “unfeminine.” As my friends at Catalyst have said and shown again and again, a woman leader is damned if she does and doomed if she don’t. It’s dispiriting to me to hear the aggressive = unfeminine argument coming from a next-generation younger woman. I mean, unreconstructed/threatened men, sure. But I just hate it how women ourselves can sometimes be our own worst enemy. You know?
A quick-hit report on women’s leadership around the globe. Read it…and weep?
She Just Might Be President Someday
5/18/08 – NY Times: A specific composite of Madam President is suggested by political strategists and talent scouts, politicians and those who study women in politics. It is based as much on the lessons of the Clinton candidacy as on the enduring truths of politics and the number and variety of women who dot the leadership landscape.
Belittled Woman
5/16/08 – Washington Post: At some point along the way, Hillary Clinton became “poor Hillary” and it stuck.
Defense Minister’s New Baby Confirms Symbolism Of Parity In Spain
5/21/08 – International Herald Tribune: Carmé Chacón, who began leave Tuesday after giving birth to a boy, became an instant symbol of the Socialist government’s commitment to gender parity in Spain, a traditionally macho society whose new equality laws are among the most progressive in Europe.
Sierra Leone: Can Women Make a Difference in the Local Government?
5/20/08 – AllAfrica.com: As the July 5 Sierra Leone local council elections are drawing nearer, a low turn out of women to contest the elections has been observed.
First Aussie Female Bishop ‘A Milestone’
5/21/08 – Sydney Morning Herald: The consecration of Australia’s first woman Bishop in Perth on Thursday has been hailed as a major step in overcoming discrimination against women.
One more must-read, just in case you (like me, gulp) missed it: Susan Faludi’s recent oped at the NYTimes. Writes Faludi:
As Thelma, the housewife turned renegade, says to her friend in “Thelma & Louise†as the two women flee the law through the American West, “Something’s crossed over in me.â€
Senator Clinton might well say the same. In the final stretch of the primary season, she seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender.
What’s more, she seems to have taken to her new role with a Thelma-like relish. We are witnessing a female competitor delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her new no-holds-barred pugnacity and gleeful perseverance have revamped her image in the eyes of begrudging white male voters, who previously saw her as the sanctioning “sivilizer,†a political Aunt Polly whose goody-goody directives made them want to head for the hills.
I know it’s over. I imagine she knows it’s over. But I admit, I’m truly enjoying that glee in her eyes. That woman is one tough cookie, and I mean that in only the best of ways.
As promised, my quick report on this week’s “Women and Ambition” panel co-sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women and PricewaterhouseCoopers:
The thing I love about corporate panels is that they start and finish on time. They are impeccably moderated. They serve food. This one delivered on all fronts, and went a step beyond. Every audience member was given a remote control devise by which to cast votes, enabling the moderator to poll us in real time and post the results on a big screen up front. It was cooler than Oprah, I swear.
There were some interesting results from the audience poll: 75% of the women in the crowd described themselves as “ambitious.” 94% of the men in attendance said the word “ambitious”, when used to describe someone, carried a positive connotation, but only 57% of the women agreed.
Women’s ambition is certainly a hot-button issue these days. Everyone agrees that we should be much further along in terms of our representation at the top tiers of corporate and political leadership than we are. How are ambitions born? What impedes then? What can companies do to help women nurture and realize theirs? Panelists–psychiatrist and author Anna Fels, the White House Project’s Marie Wilson, entrepreneurship scholar Myra Hart, law partner Marsha Simms, and economist Lise Vesterlund–sounded off on these issues, and more.
Some memorable quips:
Moderator Jennifer Allyn: “We’ve been talking about critical mass since the 1970s. There has to be more than 16% [the percent of women in Congress] before women can stop being seen as the ‘only’ and constitute more of a critical mass.”
Marie Wilson: “Anytime you have only one woman in a top position, all you see is their gender–hair, hemlines, and husbands.” “You cannot be what you cannot see. So we have to make the women who are in leadership more visible.”
Myra Hart: “Research shows that women straight out of Harvard Business School land the same kinds of jobs at the same compensation of men. But 5 years later, women’s career paths indicate a change. Much of it may be self-selection, but some of it is not.”
Lisa Vesterlund: “Research shows it’s not that women are under-confident about their ability to compete and win. It’s than men are actually over-confident about theirs.”
And my personal favorite:
Marie Wilson: “In the last 6 months of media coverage, Hillary Clinton’s ambition has been described as ‘unquenchable.’ John McCain’s ambition hasn’t been mentioned at all.”
For more on women’s leadership, consider joining me at the Council’s annual conference this year, titled “Hitting the Ground Running: Research, Activism, and Leadership for a New Era,” on June 5-7 at NYU. To register, contact Jessyca Dudley at jdudley@ncrw.org, 212/785-7335, x205 or visit www.ncrw.org.
I’m late and light on posting today because this morning I went to an 8am panel on “Women and Ambition,” sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women’s Corporate Circle. Those corporate ladies start early!
A true post about it coming before week’s end, but in the meantime, I wanted to share a little good fortune: I realized once on the subway that I already own the two amazing books that were included in the giveaway package. So I’d like to offer them as giveaways to the first two people who email me at girlwpen@gmail.com with their snail mail addresses. Please specify your choice. The books are:
1. Anna Fels, Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives
2. Marie Wilson, Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World (with a new afterword)
And an aside: I just did a quick Google image search using the word “ambition” and all the pictures that came up featured guess who…men! Except for this one above. Hmmm.
