Your Daughter on the Board of Directors?
Further to my post yesterday about encouraging girls to pursue an interest in science, math and technology. Dropping these subjects as they make their way through school also drops the girls out of the running for many a career. Workplace inequality is still a fact of life for women, and more needs to be done to address this issue. A study just released by "Catalyst", a research organization, finds that women sit in only 13.6% of the board of director seats at Fortune 500 companies. It's a percentage that is rising, but only "at a snail's pace", and according to Catalyst analyses of the current rate of change, "women will not make up one-quarter of board directors 20 years from now."
We need to make this different. We need to make it better. As I said yesterday, girls have to be encouraged by their parents, the people who should be their biggest fans, to stand strong in the face of the buffeting they'll receive from the fickle winds of societal favour. Those winds will blow hard against the girls, pushing them in the direction of fashionably skinny , properly made-up clothes hangers, but it will do nothing for their intellect. When was the last time you saw Paris Hilton or Ms Spears being praised for some pearl of wisdom they had uttered? Girls are pushed too much in the direction of the beautiful decoration on a man's arm. Parents need to push back, on behalf of their daughters. If you have a daughter, sit down with her tonight in front of the website I enthused about yesterday. Help her to see there's a lot more for her to aspire to than simply imitating the likes of Hilton and Spears. Who knows? Maybe someday, she'll be sitting in one of those Fortune 500 director's seats.
We need to make this different. We need to make it better. As I said yesterday, girls have to be encouraged by their parents, the people who should be their biggest fans, to stand strong in the face of the buffeting they'll receive from the fickle winds of societal favour. Those winds will blow hard against the girls, pushing them in the direction of fashionably skinny , properly made-up clothes hangers, but it will do nothing for their intellect. When was the last time you saw Paris Hilton or Ms Spears being praised for some pearl of wisdom they had uttered? Girls are pushed too much in the direction of the beautiful decoration on a man's arm. Parents need to push back, on behalf of their daughters. If you have a daughter, sit down with her tonight in front of the website I enthused about yesterday. Help her to see there's a lot more for her to aspire to than simply imitating the likes of Hilton and Spears. Who knows? Maybe someday, she'll be sitting in one of those Fortune 500 director's seats.
2 Comments:
When I was growing up in the 80's and 90's, Gloria Steinem was my hero. She still is in a way. When I look at young girls trying to emulate the latest tart-du-jour it makes me want to shake them.
When did it become ok to go back to being an arm-charm? When did we lose all sense of ambition and self? Why do we want our women dumb?
I encourage my nieces to be what they want, when they want and thoroughly discourage the emulation of the tart of the day.
So true. Most businesses are still the haven for the ole boys club ... and of those women that make it, quite a few sacrifice their sisters along the way. You would think women would be better than men ... but sometimes, they just aren't.
If you want to read about two women that are making their own way, despite the odds, check out:
Sophie Vanderbroek, and
Liz Vanzura.
Both were recently profiled in BusinessWeek. Vanderbroek's story was inspiring.
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