Sandra Day O'Connor and Madeleine Albright in conversation

March 29, 2013

“I’m not one of those people who thinks the world should be run entirely by women. If anyone thinks that, they’ve forgotten high school.” - Madeleine Albright

On being the first woman on the Supreme Court:

“Well, you don’t want to be the last!” - Sandra Day O'Connor

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor does not suffer fools. Or journalists, who, to her, are probably the same thing (just ask Terry Gross, or mock-journalist John Stewart). Or, sometimes, Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was leading last night's conversation with O'Connor and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the New York Public Library. Questions are often irritating to this veteran of the Supreme Court, to be dealt with in as few words as possible.

Who could resist an evening with two such distinguished women, moderated by another impressive woman now probably more famous for her Atlantic article on women not being able to have it all than she ever was for her work at the State Department? She was, by the way, a great moderator (with an excellent radio voice - well, I would notice these things, wouldn't I?)

The evening started with Slaughter asking each woman a little about their respective books. Justice O’Connor has one called Out of Order, about the history of the Supreme Court, and Madeleine Albright’s latest book is Prague Winter, a remembrance of her war-torn childhood, which began in Czechoslovakia. Pretty early on you got a sense of each woman’s personality. O’Connor is extremely businesslike and happy to talk about the Supreme Court and its workings, but her answers on most things are short and to the point. She's not one for introspection. She was not to be drawn on issues like what difference it made to be a woman on the court when it came to making decisions, even when Anne-Marie Slaughter prodded her gently to expand on her answers. O'Connor conceded that perhaps it made a difference when the decision had to do with women’s lives (she did not elaborate) but that, no, on the whole she did not believe a man or a woman made different types of decision because of their sex. Nor was she to be engaged too deeply on her family. Slaughter asked what part family had played in each woman’s career. “Well, they didn’t play any part in my career,” O’Connor replied with a hint of exasperation. But, she added, they had played a big part in her life. “They are my life.” She talked about how devastating it was to see her husband of many decades succumb to Alzheimer's. "He was so funny," she said. "He made us laugh every day, and then...this terrible disease." Turning to the audience, she said, "Don't get it!"

Madeleine Albright was much more expansive. She called herself a feminist, and talked about the role reversal that had happened when she became Secretary of State in the late 1990s and started traveling extensively. She handed care of her bills and home afffairs to one of her three daughters, who then started grilling her mother on her purchases.

• She thought women were good diplomats because “women are better at putting themselves in others’ shoes”. On the flip side, she said “women take arguments personally”. Not a helpful trait in this line of work. Or, you might argue, any other.
• On her rise to Secretary of State, she said she had far fewer problems with men in the rest of the world and their perceptions of her than she did with those in Washington DC. She put this down in part to the fact that these men had seen her come up through the ranks over many years, and even remembered her from her 'car pool' days, so for them, her appointment prompted whispers of, 'How did she get to be Secretary of State'? I'm sure this is familiar to many women: you're still seen by some as the thing you were, not what you've become.
• On being a female diplomat, she recalled, “I’d say, ‘I feel we need to do this,’ and the men would say, ‘What do you mean feel?’”

The evening almost came to a premature end when, suddenly, Justice O'Connor announced, "Anne-Marie, we've run out of time." This prompted laughter from the audience and discombobulated Anne-Marie Slaughter for a good few moments, as Justice O'Connor insisted that if she didn't believe her, Slaughter should consult her own watch. Slaughter ascertained from library staff that she did in fact have ten more minutes, recovered herself, and continued. Hats off to her for conducting a fascinating evening with two distinguished, and occasionally intimidating, guests.

The wisdom of Ursula Burns

March 19, 2013

Today was a marathon of women's events, to the extent that I am now unwinding with a gin and tonic. This morning I went to New Tech City's 'How Tech is Changing the Way Women Work' event in downtown Manhattan. Really interesting stuff featuring some great women, two of whom I knew personally, three of whom I didn't. You can watch it here. The place was packed.

From there it was off through a freezing downpour to the Catalyst annual conference at the Waldorf Astoria. And from now on this becomes a post about keynote speaker and CEO of Xerox Ursula Burns. It was worth going just for Burns. For those who don't know, she worked at Xerox for 30 years before being appointed CEO in 2009. She's the first female African-American CEO of a Fortune 500 company. She was wonderfully candid in the Q&A session with Catalyst CEO Ilene Lang. (To get a sense of her personality, you can hear Burns in her own words in these short videos at Makers.com.)

Here are some of the things she said that really jumped out at me and can potentially be helpful for all of us.

• She said her management team at Xerox was "insanely mixed up - it's not just race and gender but people with differences in background and language skills," all of which she said amounted to a great thing for the company.
• On the inevitable "how did you cope with work and family?" question, Burns said she had a lot of help (including an older husband, of which more in a minute), from neighbors to her sister. It was a hotchpotch of people, and sometimes chaotic, but basically it worked.
• That brings me to work/life balance. In Burns's view, there's no such thing as having balance all at once. In other words when you are at the stage of life where you have a crazy job and young kids, you have no balance. She says we should look at balance as something that happens over a long lifetime, and take the pressure off ourselves to try to achieve it NOW.
• On trying to make it to all your children's events, Burns was equally blunt: forget it. She said that she never doubted her single mother loved her, "but she didn't make 90 percent of my stuff". She says parents shouldn't feel they have to try, and that "a lot of it's boring" anyway. I told you she was blunt.
• Maybe that decision came out of a particular trip to the doctor's she told us about. At one point she was at her doctor's, who knew the whole family, and he told her that sure, everything was great, her husband was happy, her kids were happy, she had this great job...it was all great, except "you're gonna be dead." That was her tipoff that she was trying to do way too much. 
• Part of her advice to young women was, half-jokingly, to marry an older man. Her husband is 20 years older than her, and had "done that growing up stuff" by the time they got hitched. Just as her job was getting really nuts, he retired, so her kids had a parent who could be there a lot even as she traveled.
• "Boards are the tightest friggin' club in the world," she says. Getting on a board is all about networking.
• On mentorship and sponsorship, Burns says men and women need both, but women need them more. She said Henry Kissinger is now a kind of sponsor of hers and asks her to events where she meets people she would simply never meet otherwise. She added, "it's important to have them and to be them."
• Even Ursula Burns has been known to suffer from 'imposter syndrome'. This is when women are given some kind of compliment on their skills and immediately say to themselves, "I'm not THAT great." Burns said what we all know. Many guys would just accept the compliment - and believe it. She, on the other hand, finds herself wondering whether she deserves it.
  
  It was a funny and inspiring talk. Do check out those Makers videos for more on Ursula Burns. I'd love to talk to her for the show one day.

Mixed messages on dating and 'leaning in'

March 13, 2013

(Are they leaning in, or back?)

I was listening to the Slate DoubleX podcast at the weekend and towards the end DoubleX and New Republic writer Noreen Malone made a good point. To be fair, it's one I first heard from my friend and former Marketplace colleague, the ever observant Stacey Vanek-Smith, a few months ago. As the wider world becomes more aware of Sheryl Sandberg and her book 'Lean In' it's worth echoing what Stacey and Noreen have said: when it comes to advice, women's dating and work lives clash. In the world of dating, 21st century advice is still to lean back, not in (unless the date is going really well) and let the man take the initiative in everything. Women are advised that no matter how far we may appear to have come, the man must be allowed to take charge. Don't call him, let him call you. Don't bug him. Don't talk too much. Don't offer to pay. (I regularly flout all this advice. Hmm...) So is it surprising that women do not - in general - conduct themselves at work in the more confident manner Sandberg advocates? I'm only on the first chapter of 'Lean In' but I was interested to note that as a young woman, Sandberg thought getting married was the achievement to end all others. She turned down her Harvard mentor Larry Summers' advice to get a fellowship abroad because it didn't mesh with her determination to land a husband ASAP. The idea that getting married should be a top priority came from her parents, who had stressed it throughout her youth. Most women, even in the educated, privileged world I mainly operate in, still harbor this exact same belief, even if they may not always articulate it. Anyway, it makes sense to me that part of the reason putting themselves forward in a work situation may seem distasteful to so many women, as it did to me for ages, is linked to the decades-old messages we receive on finding a mate.

Changing the subject, this is a great piece by Elizabeth Yin of LaunchBit on being a female company founder vying for venture capital dollars in Silicon Valley. From being called a 'meek Asian woman' to being mistaken for the catering staff at events, the indignities mount, and female readers' jaws drop. I'd love to have her on the show.

Do women have a marketing problem?

March 8, 2013

Perhaps that’s a blasphemous thought to voice on International Women’s Day, but it’s something I think about a lot as I try to sell The Broad Experience, not just to the usual suspects, people who are deeply interested in 'women's issues' but to what I think of as normal people - everyone else. It’s been on my mind even more since I watched the documentary ‘Makers’ last week (subtitle: ‘Women Who Made America’). It was three hours in all – no small commitment.  I found it fascinating and inspiring. You can watch lots of great short videos featuring women from the film here – women including Sandra Day O’Connor, Condoleeezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Gloria Steinem, Sheryl Sandberg and many others. The Irish-American housewife whose life of domestic abuse was changed after she began reading smuggled copies of 'Ms.' really stands out for me.

I was especially interested because I didn’t come to this topic of women and work through being a feminist. I didn't know much about the women's movement growing up, didn't think twice about the roles men and women played in society, and by the time I was going off to university, the whole thing seemed totally passé. We were beyond that stuff (or so I thought). To this day I haven’t read any feminist theory (it's on my list), and until I moved to the US I don’t think I realized such a thing as ‘gender studies’ even existed. I don't even like the world 'gender', and I'm not the only one. When I was doing research for The Broad Experience last year I got some feedback from a few friends discouraging me from doing anything that focused on women, because they found the whole topic of gender a huge turnoff. I was discouraged from using the word 'women' in the title of my show for the same reason.

I understand. The subject of women's rights has overtones of worthiness that I wish it didn't. It's become something scholarly and serious. And it is serious, particularly when you think about all the women in the world who don't have any rights at all. But somehow it's become something everyone else (i.e. not the people specifically interested in this stuff) groans at when they hear about it - medicine to swallow rather than an interesting topic for intelligent people to engage with. I speak as someone who for years thought of it as such. I came to be interested in this area through a combination of reporting I did for Marketplace, and experiences I had at work - experiences that made me realize I was behaving one way, men were behaving another, and men were getting what they wanted while I was still waiting for a tiara to land on my head (see episode nine for clarification).

I think the idea of women as victims is part of what makes the topic offputting to so many, myself included. [NB: I am NOT implying that women all over the world are not victims. They are. I am talking specifically about the small world of college-educated women in white-collar jobs, because currently the show is aimed at those people.] Perhaps this is why I’m not ashamed to say I support Sheryl Sandberg with her ‘Lean In’ efforts. While I realize there is still plenty of institutional bias remaining at companies and within society, bias that stubbornly refuses to budge, the inner me revolts against dwelling on that too much because I’m driven enough to think I can make at least some kind of difference in the world (and this comes from a natural pessimist). I hate the idea of sitting still and dwelling on the fact that I may be a victim. It's so completely disempowering. Be assured that I have been in work situations that lent themselves to that mindset. Situations where others felt sorry for me but I did not, because I chose to see the situation in a different light rather than wallow in the unfairness of it all. Feminism has for many, I think, become synonymous with the idea of women seeing themselves of victims of an oppressive system. But I don’t think young women see themselves that way at all (you could argue, of course, they haven’t had time to be mangled by the system yet). My perception of women in their twenties and early thirties is that rather than reflect on how hard things are, they want to do something about it instead. 

I'd love it if 'women's issues' - at least the non-medical kind - didn't even exist in another 50 years.

[If this post's tone rankles, go to the show's Facebook page to read the reaction of one listener, and my response.]