Episode 63: Getting your hands dirty

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May 19, 2015

"Their world is talking about sports and getting through the day in construction, and they're outside all day. And so they're looking at all the eye candy...and you realize every woman that walks by is being observed and objectified." - Renee Mercado

17 minutes.

What could be more male than a construction site? Only 9 percent of US jobs in the industry belong to women, and even fewer involve manual labor. So what drove Renee Mercado to spend her days outdoors, managing a crew of curious and sometimes suspicious guys?

Renee Mercado

In this show we talk about what drew her to this work, the sexist comments she hears on a regular basis, and how she feels she's making a difference in a man's world.

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Episode 62: Claiming credit

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May 4, 2015

"I think many women feel this, that it is through your relationships with different people in your company that you make things happen, but you just don’t get the credit." - Mary Kopczynski

"This is not about promoting lesser qualified women over more qualified men...this is about seeing that when we put a team together...the quality of the work done will be better if it's diverse." - Curt Rice

18 minutes.

In this show we hear from four familiar guests, using parts of our conversation you've never heard before. Mary Kopczynski

Lauren Tucker is co-founder and CEO of Cooler Heads Intelligence, although when I spoke to her she was the head of a tech division at an ad agency. She talks candidly about race and whether bosses ever see your full potential at work. Mary Kopczynski of 8of9 Consulting says women have to claim credit for their work or others won't notice their achievements. Curt Rice of the University of Tromsø talks about what it's like being a man advocating loudly for women in the workplace. And Financial Times journalist Simon Kuper reminds us it's not just women who make career sacrifices for their families.

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Episode 61: Get ahead. No guilt (re-release)

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April 20, 2015

"We had never experienced anything we thought to be remotely gender discrimination. So we couldn’t even identify it when we saw it." - Jessica Bennett

"Every time you say yes to something you are saying no to something else...You are going to end up not doing the things that matter if you’re not careful.” - Heather McGregor

19 minutes.

I sometimes get emails from listeners, particularly professors, saying, 'The young women I work with believe gender equality has been sorted out - they don't believe there's a problem.' That was Jess Bennett when she began her career at Newsweek in the early 2000s. She'd never come up against any kind of gender discrimination so she didn't think it existed. It was some tired old problem from the past. She gradually realized she was wrong.

In this show we talk about subtle discrimination at work, the changing world of journalism, and, with guest Heather McGregor, the problems of female guilt and how to say no without alienating people (she's good at it).

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Episode 60: Leading in faith

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April 5, 2015

Reverend Rebecca Anderson

"As soon as I heard the criticism of this young female rabbi, the first thing that I thought of was, ‘I don’t think that would necessarily be the way that people addressed a male counterpart.” - Rabbi Danielle Leshaw

"I’ve had a very lovely older guy...say, 'We never get to see you with your hair down.' And I think, get to? It wasn’t in the job description." - Reverend Rebecca Anderson

"The church is still running behind. There are plenty of folks out there who don’t want a woman in a position of high authority." - Reverend Adrian Dannhauser

 

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Episode 59: Politics is power

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March 23, 2015

"It's a very fine line...between how people want to agitate for women's rights and women's advancement and how much there can still be a backlash against those types of issues." - Megan Murphy

"You have more resources within you than you think...try to believe that you can actually make a difference, that your voice counts." - Madeleine Kunin

29 minutes.

Megan Murphy

Countries like the US and UK may thrive in many areas, but not when it comes to women in politics. The US Congress is about 20% women and in the UK, Parliament is 23% female. Yes, it's an improvement on former decades, but in 2015 why aren't more women holding power at a national level?

We have two fantastic, outspoken guests on today's show: Megan Murphy, the Financial Times Washington bureau chief, and Madeleine Kunin, former (and first woman) governor of Vermont. Madeleine KuninWe discuss the landscape for women in politics today, what life as a female politician is actually like, and why it's so important that more women go into politics in the first place. 

This is the third in a series of podcasts I've produced in partnership with the Financial Times. Check out their coverage of women in business at ft.com/women (I read it every week) and when you tweet about the show, please use the hashtag #FTwomen.

 

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Episode 58: When men stay home

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March 9, 2015

"I thought it was interesting that people would say, 'Oh, so your husband doesn't want to work?'...The next question would be, 'Does he cook?'" - Kathryn Clifton

 "I think any dude would love to at stay home with their kids and not have to work, but their sense of purpose and those role reversals are a little bit intimidating." - Eric Bryan

Eric Bryan and Alton during our Skype interview

25 minutes.

More and more men are staying at home to look after kids while their wives or girlfriends support the family. In this show we explore what that situation means for women's careers, and what these role reversals mean for men. Evidence shows society still doesn't wholly accept stay-at-home fathers - that, in essence, we still view men as type-A go-getters who aren't 'real men' if they take on a caregiving role (see links below for more reading on this). In the US even taking a brief paternity leave can be a fraught issue depending on where you work. But will women ever be truly equal at work until more men become caregivers? 

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