Episode 11: Women of a Certain Age

December 13, 2012

What happens to your career as you get older? We know the few female CEOs out there are mostly in their 50s and above (with the exception of the wildly famous and fertile Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer). But for many women life at work takes on a different dimension as you age and deal with other people's perceptions of what 'older' means. So what do you do about it if you still love your career and want to stay in the game? Tune in to hear Leah Eichler, editor of Femme-o-nomics and r/ally, energy industry executive Gail McMinn and Financial Times columnist Mrs. Moneypenny discuss women, employment and age, and why it's never too late to change careers. 

You can read Leah Eichler's Femme-onomics and Globe and Mail column on women and age at work here, and take a peek at Mrs. Moneypenny's book on women's careers here.

Episode 10: Selling Stereotypes

November 15, 2012

In this show we look at how women come across in the media and how that affects the way we think about ourselves and what we might do with our lives. Did you know women only have 30 to 40 percent of speaking roles on TV and in movies? And when women do have a voice, we're often not exactly sparkling on the conversation front (but you can be pretty sure we'll be wearing a low-cut top). Thanks to the Tow-Kight Foundation for sponsoring this episode. Tune in to hear cable TV pioneer Kay Koplovitz, women from the Spark movement, veteran activist Gloria Feldt, Jennifer Pozner, author of 'Reality Bites Back' and reality TV producer Troy DeVolld thrash through the issues. 18 minutes.

If you'd like to follow up on any of the studies and articles I mentioned in this episode (and one I didn't), here are a few links:

Forbes Woman: Why Millennial Women Do Not Want to Lead

Women's Media Center 2012 report on the state of women in the US media

Kaiser Family Foundation study on young people and media use

Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media study on gender roles and occupations in the media

Girl Scouts Research Institute survey on how reality TV affects girls aged 11-17

Ambition and Power: bonus track

October 21, 2012

I gleaned a lot of interesting insights from my interviews with Caroline Turner and Nicki Gilmour for the ambition and power episode, which I released a couple of weeks ago. As I'm trying to keep the podcasts short, I often end up having to leave out some great stuff that deserves to be heard and debated. So I'm trying an experiment: I've put together a bonus track or 'extras' episode featuring some of the things I couldn't fit into the original podcast. Let me know what you think. Worth doing occasionally?

Episode 9: Ambition and Power

October 2, 2012

In this episode, we explore women's fraught relationship with ambition and power. Some of us are happy to describe ourselves as ambitious while others balk at the term. Power? No thank you, many women say. Things look nasty at the top. But having power is about far more than ruling the roost. 

If you want to read more about the Stanford promotions study mentioned in the podcast, you can do that here. Nicki Gilmour mentioned Her Place at the Table, co-authored by Carol Frohlinger. You can find out more about Nicki at The Glass Hammer and Caroline Turner at Difference Works. 

Episode 8: The Good Girls Revolt

September 10, 2012

Lynn Povich never considered herself career savvy or ambitious. After all, she started work in the middle of the 1960s, when nice girls like her could aspire to be a secretary, teacher or nurse once they graduated from college (if they didn't marry right away). But after Povich landed her first secretarial job at Newsweek in 1965 the journalism bug bit, and she was soon working as a researcher for the magazine. Still, all was not well. At Newsweek, men were writers, and women ('the dollies' in office parlance) fact-checked their pieces. That's just the way things were, and the women accepted it. Until they didn't. Lynn and her colleagues sued Newsweek for sex discrimination in 1970, the first ever female class action lawsuit.

Tune in to hear about the suit that changed so much for women in the media and the workplace in general, and let me know how much, if anything, you think has stayed the same.

Episode 7: non-white and female

August 15, 2012

In this episode we look at the merits of diversity training for white men (for the participants and the company). We meet a manager who reluctantly signed up for three days of a 'white men's caucus' but came away with a new mindset. (He says even his marriage has benefitted. I'll have to trust him on this.) And we talk to journalist Stacy-Marie Ishmael about what it felt like to be one of the very few non-white people in the newsroom at the global publication she joined straight from college. Feedback welcome.