Every election cycle you hear “every vote matters”! I can tell you from personal experience how relevant these words are, especially in local elections. In local runoff elections, the stakes are even higher.
In 1979 I met Julia Child, the iconic “French Chef” of television and cookbook fame. She and her husband, Paul, came to a reception in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to meet the new class of Nieman Fellows, mid-career journalists who had been selected to study at Harvard for an academic year. I was lucky enough to be a member of that group.
The cri de coeur from U.S. Supreme Court nominee Kentanji Brown Jackson at her confirmation hearings earlier this spring pierced my heart, too. “I’m saving a special moment in this introduction for my daughters, Talia and Leila,” now-Justice-Elect Jackson said. “Girls, I know it has not been easy as I’ve tried to navigate the challenges of juggling my career and motherhood. And I fully admit that I did not always get the balance right. But I hope that you’ve seen that with hard work, determination, and love, it can be done. I am so looking forward to seeing what each of you chooses to do with your amazing lives in this incredible country. I love you so much.”
The reasons women remain severely underrepresented in technology & coding careers are vast & varied. From systemic differences in how girls & boys are parented or taught from a young age, to the conscious or unconscious biases that continue to proliferate in the technology industry & workplace. Throw on top of that, a worldwide pandemic which forced 5.4 million women out of the workforce and the situation can feel somewhat dire. But there’s good news, I promise!
Partisan gerrymandering, i.e., designing electoral maps to benefit a particular political party during the redistricting process, goes against the core value of our democracy: that the people should choose their representatives, not the other way around. While the federal courts have decided they will ignore partisan gerrymandering, advocates across the country, joined by local Leagues, have taken up the fight for fair maps.
The prevailing male leadership style of take charge, be decisive and save the day presents a problem for the workplace today. This masculine way of leading represents black or white thinking that leaves many options on the sidelines. Thankfully, today we do not value as highly this authoritarian leadership style.
Recognition of celebratory months at schools, like Women’s History Month, Black History Month and others, should recognize all cultures, religions, and genders so that some kids don’t feel as if they are any lesser or more superior.
School boards are more important now than ever. Wait…what?
If you follow the news, it may seem that the fate our country rests in the hands of a few underpaid and underappreciated parents and educators, who find themselves in the public spotlight as the arbiters of some of the nations most polarizing issues–Covid mitigation measures and, I refuse to use the buzzwords, race-sensitive materials in the classroom. Well-meaning public servants on school boards are being used as political pawns and sent to the front lines of the culture wars. I can imagine the phone calls and emails our current school boards have fielded–and worse, have heard about harassment and threats levied against them.
One of my granddaughters is a topnotch volleyball and basketball player at her middle school. Her younger sister is a crackerjack softball player and also a superlative gymnast. Does this mean these girls might be more interested in running for public office one day than their not-so-athletic friends?
As the former First Lady Michelle Obama shared an intimate conversation with the members of Chief, her message of authenticity resonated with me – loudly. As a business owner in a male-populated industry, I was reminded of a time when women who wanted to achieve success in business were coached in the finer points of “being more like a man.” We had our solid-colored three piece suits hanging in the closet and we practiced speaking with our deeper, and supposedly more confident, voice.
