Leaning in to the Sandberg debate

April 12, 2013

Just a quick post before the next show comes out on Monday - actually, I have just heard from Mule Radio that it's coming out this afternoon. OK, so very quickly, a few days ago I gathered in a Greenwich Village apartment with five other women, all from Generations X and Y, to discuss Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean In'. As I hoped, while some of us shared views about the book, there were a lot of different opinions floating about, and the more the wine flowed, the freer they became (and it was only Monday night). I'm going to list a few points here.

• Everyone reads this book through their own very personal lens. Despite not being remotely Sandberg-like myself, I still enjoyed the book a great deal, and didn't feel browbeaten into being a superwoman. Others felt the book and Sandberg have now moved the conversation on feminism to being entirely about getting to the top, and find that very limiting. It sparks incredibly different reactions in people.
• If you haven't read it because you've been put off by all the initial criticism of Sandberg as a rich elitist who couldn't possibly relate to a normal human, read it. Only once you've done so can you have an opinion. Maybe it won't be a good opinion, or perhaps a mixed one, but it is worth a read. And for the record, Sandberg comes off as very human (to me, anyway), and often quite humorous as well. Her co-writer Nell Scovell has probably done a lot of this work, but it's a well written book.
•  Sandberg has started a conversation that is very much worth having. I began this show for a lot of the reasons Sandberg wrote the book. But her voice is infinitely louder than mine will ever be. 

Grit and glitz - welcome to Tina Brown's Women in the World summit

April 7, 2013

(Photo: Marc Bryan-Brown/Women in the World)

"Too many people see the fortunes of women and girls as separate from society at large." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

Last week I spent an intense day and a half at the Women in the World summit. This is a yearly gathering at Lincoln Center in New York put on by Tina Brown, former editor of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Talk, and now of Newsweek/The Daily Beast. The gathering was full of luminaries including Hillary Clinton, Meryl Streep, and Oprah Winfrey, and highlighted issues concerning women around the globe. Some of the topics focused on the workplace, but to be honest the most arresting panels were about the kinds of things most of us reading this don't - thankfully - come up against regularly ourselves.  

I say 'intense' because these issues are some of the most serious and depressing affecting women worlwide, from 'honor' killings of supposedly undutiful daughters, to women being sold into the sex trade, to the number of women around the world who still die in childbirth. One of the best panels was on Friday and concerned sexual violence in India - we all know about that terrible gang rape that took place in New Delhi in December, which ultimately claimed the life of the rape victim, a young medical student. The discussion began when moderator Cynthia McFadden interviewed a young Indian rape survivor (her preferred word) about her experience of being raped and trying to bring her case to court. The young woman sat with her back to the audience, as she needs to keep her identity secret to guard her safety. The subsequent panel was made up of three women and one man, all Indian, talking about the pervasive problem of male and female attitudes to women in India and just how much has to change before society as a whole begins to shift its mindset.

(Photo: Marc Bryan-Brown/Women in the World)

Just to show you what the women of India are up against, here's a snippet of what panelist Shoma Chaudhury (in the bright red jacket) said. You can read her piece on this in the Daily Beast here.

"The police are habitually callous...There is an endemic idea that women ask for what happens to them...One judge said, 'All marriages have some level of beating…get used to it.'"

Incredibly inspiring was a panel featuring three young Pakistani women - one filmmaker and two activists - who are trying to change attitudes to women's and girls' education in Pakistan. These women are risking their lives to try to convince men with frankly medieval mindsets that girls deserve an education. One of them knows personally Malala Yousafzai, the teenager shot in the head by the Taliban last year for advocating for girls' education. Christiane Amanpour moderated that panel (below, with 24-year-old Humaira Bachal of the Dream Foundation Trust). Humaira has her work cut out. We saw some film of her in a village talking to local men about letting women go to school. The men laughed and explained it simply wasn't an option. Women had to stay indoors where no one would look at them. Going out just caused stares and whispers. If any woman defied them, they said, 'that would mean the bullet.' 

(Photo: Marc Bryan-Brown/Women in the World)

After this, Angelina Jolie appeared at the podium, almost Virgin-Mary-like in dress, honoring Malala and introducing a video where Malala herself talked about a new foundation in her name that she will dedicate to girls' education in Pakistan. (This combination of grit and glitz summed up the conference.) 

Hillary Clinton encompasses both. She had begun the day on Friday by talking about some of her efforts to advocate for women and girls around the world, and how little appreciated they were when she started. Here's a bit of what she said:

"Too many people see the fortunes of women and girls as separate from society at large...I’ve seen it, I’ve been kidded and ribbed, challenged in boardrooms and official offices across the world. But fighting to give women and girls a fighting chance isn’t a ‘nice’ thing to do. It isn’t some luxury…it is a core imperative for every human being and every society."

Delighted though many were to hear Clinton speak live, there were literally squeals of excitement in the press gallery moments before Oprah Winfrey came on stage. People leapt to their feet, applauding wildly when the legendary talk show host appeared.

(Photo: Marc Bryan-Brown/Women in the World)

Sitting next to her is Dr. Tererai Trent, a Zimbabwean educator (somehow 'teacher' doesn't seem enough here), who Oprah - well it is Oprah after all - calls her hero. Trent already had three children by the age of 18 (she'd had another, but the baby died as she couldn't produce enough milk). But she transformed her poor and frankly very unpromising beginnings into a tale of hard graft in Zimbabwe and the US, where she got her education while sharing a trailer with her abusive spouse and, by then, five kids. These days she, too, is devoting her life to education, but not just of girls. 

"When we educate boys, they will be so respectful of girls."

At least that's the hope. A lot more happened at the conference, but these were some of the highlights. 

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.