Gretchen Carlson
Claudia Poccia
Jacki ZehnerThe New Agenda Blog
Can you meet me for breakfast or lunch?
May 21, 2012
by The New Agenda
We’re JUST two weeks away. Our first annual National Girlfriends’ Networking Day is JUNE 4 and we’re planning a big celebration!
WE HOPE YOU’LL JOIN US. HERE’S HOW:
1. Pledge to Connect – meet with a peer, mentor or mentee. Don’t have one? Find one on The Mentor Exchange.
2. Attend an Event – we’ll convene at 12 (noon) EST for a virtual celebration, an informative, interactive program about how to build your network and plan your career path.
Events are being held all over the country! Lunch on the East Coast, breakfast on the West Coast and coffee all over the Midwest. Check our listing of events here.
| Read Gretchen’s bio › | Read Jeannette’s bio › | Read Elizabeth’s bio › | Read Rosemarie’s bio › |
4. Donate - support our work year-round to engage young and professional women in building and expanding their networks.
3. Angel Investor - make herstory as an Angel Investor in the first annual NGN Day! Angel Investors will be listed online and recognized at our virtual celebration.
5. Social Media – tweet using @TheNewAgenda, #NGNDay; join us on Facebook!
Girlfriends, let’s build that network!!!
What is going on with our classic channels? What about our opera and concert programs?
May 18, 2012
by Marille Herrmann
The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
“Female representation.” -‐ This concept seams foreign to classic music programmers.
If I turn on the local classic channels (and I do have choices here in the Washington Metropolitan area), chances are 99 to 1, that I will not hear music written by a woman. Maybe the stations play it safe during rush hour and stick to composers everyone knows. Yet would my chance of hearing a piece composed by a woman fare better during the day? I went to WETA.org programming and WBJC91.5 playlists for many days and found a 99.9 percent chance of finding music exclusively written by male composers.
Well, maybe there is just so much more music written by men? Maybe female composers have had a short period of creativity before caring for children overwhelmed their lives, as we have been told about Clara Schumann?
Many people probably think as once I did, that conditions for women in the past were hard and thus did not allow the female development of creativity, and therefore assume our steady advancement into the future.
Since I have started collecting material for my Componistin newsletter series on female composers it has become obvious that there is no such continuous curve to show advancement for female creativity. Rather, there were conditions allowing women to compose even in the “dark” Middle Ages, interrupted by strong forces against that endeavor and that these ever changing conditions of ups and downs continue into modern times. (more…)
Picture It: Work-Life Balance
May 17, 2012
by Female Science Professor
The following article is cross-post with the express permission from the blog Female Science Professor. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
On occasion, I seek out images of Work-Life Balance (WLB), and today I decided that it was time to share some of my image-research results, inspired by assorted posts on WLB on other blogs this week (for example, here and here).Here’s how it started, this image-research: Every once in a while, I encounter an image that attempts to depict the challenges of Work-Life Balance. I find most of these disturbing, disappointing, and/or bizarre. Some don’t even illustrate what the accompanying text is attempting to say. For example, if your message is that Work-Life Balance Is Possible, why show something impossible in the illustration? If you are writing about the particular difficulty of WLB for mothers with young children, why have an illustration of a frazzled man in a suit? etc. There may be a disconnect between the people doing the writing and the people providing the graphics. This is obvious from even a cursory search of WLB images.Nevertheless, I started actively searching for WLB images, for no real reason, and I have even tried to create one of my own, with less than satisfactory results. It’s difficult. Clearly.I am sure you can easily guess some of the major elements in typical WLB images. The Big Three are:
- scales, balances, see-saws (I hate these); non-rigorously-tested observation: about equal numbers of these either show “work” and “life” as balanced or show “work” tipping the scale. Rare ones show “life” tipping the scale;
- people (typically women) apparently juggling lots of different fake objects (I hate these too);
- road signs (at 90° or 180° to each other) (more hate);
with a not-insignificant number of:
- Venn diagrams (snore).
Slightly more interesting, though not necessarily better, are:
- people (typically men in suits) on bicycles;
- people (typically women) doing more than one thing at once, in some cases with more than 2 arms;
- rounded beach pebbles in piles or other precarious configurations.
12 Telling Stats on Female MBAs
May 16, 2012
by Contributor
The following article is cross-post with permission from the author. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
WSJ Moderator Squelches Suzy Welch
May 15, 2012
by Deb Kemper
The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
At the Wall Street Journal’s Women in the Economy Conference in late April, Jack Welch created quite a stir by referring to corporate mentoring efforts for women as “victim’s units.” What a pity the moderator, Alan Murray, Deputy Managing Editor at the The Wall Street Journal, didn’t let Suzy Welch finish her answer instead of asking Jack to “save her.” Suzy has actually worked and raised a young family – who better to discuss the challenges facing female executives in today’s workforce.
The discussion was on how to increase the women in senior positions in corporate America. The original discussion was about cultural biases that limit women’s progress and Suzy was answering it quite clearly when Alan Murray cut her off. He redirected the discussion and when Suzy started answering, he spoke over her and redirected the question to Jack. Why? Jack Welch’s answer went off point and caused quite a stir with the audience. Did he really think Jack Welch would understand the challenges facing today’s female executives? While he was very successful, he is of a different era – he made it to the top by having a supportive stay at home wife whom he later divorced. He then strongly urged his 2nd wife to give up her career as a powerful New York attorney. He divorced her after starting his relationship with Suzy, who is his 3rd wife. I’m not sure he really appreciates the sacrifices women made in supporting him – therefore how do we expect him to empathize with the choices millions of working women make when they choose to start a family? (more…)
Wrong head is rolling at Yahoo
May 14, 2012
by Deb Kemper
The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Update: On May 14th, Scott Thompson stepped down as Yahoo’s CEO. Amid the controversy around his credentials, media reports are stating that one reason for his resignation is his recently diagnosed thyroid cancer.
Earlier this week, I woke up to find that a female corporate board member was resigning over Yahoo CEO Scott Thomson’s false information on his CV. When he was hired, Mr. Thomson’s bio supposedly stated that he graduated with a computer science degree, which in reality turns out to be an accounting degree. I am not privy to internal Yahoo Board discussions, but I presume there is debate as to whether or not Mr. Thomson should stay or go. Other blog posts at the Washington Post and Forbes are already addressing this issue.
I am asking a different question: why is the first collateral damage in this story a woman? Why is Yahoo director Patti Hart the first person to step down (technically she isn’t standing for re-election)? Granted the Board at the company she runs wants her out of the limelight, yet why is the Yahoo fracas falling on her shoulders? Yes, hiring a CEO is one of, if not “the”, Board’s most important duties. However, presuming she and her fellow Board members ran a robust process, why should this error which Mr. Thomson generated and then didn’t refute, bring her down? I am sure corporate boards will be reviewing their CEO hiring processes as a result of this.
There are already too few women on corporate boards – why should one of them take the fall for the CEO’s admitted falsification? Are women just “better team players”? More willing to take one for the team in this case? Isn’t the wrong head rolling at Yahoo?
Happy Mother’s Day!!!
May 13, 2012
by The New Agenda
The “XX” Factor in the GOP Vice Presidential Selection
May 12, 2012
by Whitney Zahnd
The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
A recent op-ed in the Boston Herald postulates that because of Sarah Palin’s supposed failures as the vice presidential pick will prevent any woman from being considered for the Vice Presidential nomination. The writer, Kimberly Atkins, a woman herself, titled her op-ed, “Sarah Palin factor puts women in the back row.” She goes on to speculate:
But Romney won’t choose any of them [Sen. Ayotte, Former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, or Govs. Brewer, Haley or Martinez]. He’s playing it safe. And after Election 2008, safe means Mr. Wonder Bread. (Pack those bags, Rob Portman.) Picking a woman may make people think of what happened four years ago — that gamey-changey stuff — and Romney does not want that. At all.
Thanks, Sarah.
Being a woman in the world of politics was a hard enough endeavor to begin with. But now we are feeling the full brunt of the additional Palin Factor: Whatever a candidate’s political liabilities may be, they seem somehow amplified by the lack of a Y chromosome.
[…]
“I do think that the extent to which Palin had liabilities as a candidate and as a public official has had some implications as to what we think of all women in office,” said Kay L. Schlozman, a political science professor at Boston College.