21 Women Leaders 2013 - Seven Who Carve Global Pathways. Profiles of seven outstanding women leaders dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls: Margot Franssen, Deloris Jordan, Musimbi Kanyoro, Jurate Kazickas, Gry Larsen, Heidi Lehmann, Christine Mau. Margot Franssen: Embodier of Pro-Women Business After deciding to forgo university in 1971, Margot Franssen's first job was as a clerk in a brokerage house. When she requested training to become a stockbroker she was told, "We don't pay for women. They couldn't pass. " The next few years brought similar experiences and the future seemed blocked. Deeply frustrated Franssen enrolled in business school only to experience boredom. Her boss gave her a graduation present, a Body Shop gift basket from London, a company that would become her future.
"It was heaven" says Franssen. In looking back she now recognizes that "early gender discrimination in the business world was the best training ground for owning a company that respects and helps women. " --By Jenna McGuire -- By Claire McCormack. Village bans cellphones for women - International | IOL Business | IOL.co.za. A village council in the Indian state of Bihar has banned cellphones for women, saying the phones were leading to elopements.
Women’s rights activists were outraged at the move. The Sunderbari village council in a Muslim area east of Patna, Bihar’s capital, has also imposed a fine of 10 000 rupees (R1 615) if a girl is caught using a cellphone on the streets. Married women must pay 2 000 rupees. Manuwar Alam, who heads a committee tasked with enforcing the ban, said the number of elopements and extramarital love affairs had risen in the past few months, with at least six girls and women fleeing their homes. “Even married women were deserting their husbands to elope with lovers. That was shameful for us,” Alam said. “So, we decided to tackle it firmly. Activist Suman Lal said: “Technology is meant to be used… The order is nauseating.” Fellow activist Mohammad Islam was disappointed that the village council had ignored the advantages of cellphones before banning them for just one reason. The WomanStats Project and Database. Janna Levin on The Soundtrack of The Universe. We think of space as a silent place. But physicist Janna Levin says the universe has a soundtrack -- a sonic composition that records some of the most dramatic events in outer space.
(Black holes, for instance, bang on spacetime like a drum.) An accessible and mind-expanding soundwalk through the universe. Janna Levin is a professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard, where she studies the early universe, chaos, and black holes. She's the author of “How the Universe Got Its Spots" and the novel “A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines.” Janna Levin is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Barnard College of Columbia University. Her scientific research concerns the early universe, chaos and black holes. Her second book – a novel, A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines – won the PEN/Bingham Fellowship for Writers and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award for "a distinguished book of first fiction.
" NATO should not abandon Afghanistan’s women. But the Afghan story is changing. Over the past 10 years, there has been remarkable progress. Four thousand schools have been built, and more than 100,000 new teachers have entered the classroom. Today, girls make up 37 percent of the 7 million Afghan students in primary and secondary schools. During Taliban rule, only 900,000 children, all male, attended school. Adult learning has also accelerated. More than 62,000 Afghans attend universities. The co-educational American University of Afghanistan, which opened in 2006 with 50 students, has more than 1,700 full and part-time students and offers Afghanistan’s leading MBA program. Innovative private programs, many sponsored by businesses, foundations and charities, are also transforming Afghanistan. Despite these gains, however, Afghanistan’s progress remains tenuous. In 2001, the world’s eyes were opened to the horrors suffered by Afghanistan’s women. Lovesocial-case-for-girls.jpg (JPEG Image, 2000x1535 pixels) - Scaled (41.
Blog Archive The Gender Divide: Are Men better than Women at Social Networking? « Women are more savvy networkers in the ranching industry. Men are more savvy networkers in the cosmetics industry. Wait, what? That was exactly our reaction when we saw the initial results for our latest data insights blog post on the differences in social networking behavior between men and women. The overall result in the US is that men are overall more savvy networkers than women, but the real insights start to surface when you start slicing and dicing by industry and company. Check out the infographic below highlighting some main insights, followed by more details and discussion below.
Men are more savvy networkers globally, but the data show that men and women exhibit differences in their online professional networking behaviors. In the middle are industries where men and women are equally savvy about networking in similar ways: “Market Research,” “Media Production,” “Dairy,” “Individual and Family Services” and “Paper & Forest Products.” Companies and Gender Savviness [1] Wrap up. Recruiting Women To The Burgeoning (But Mostly Male) Host Of Angel Investors. Women philanthropists have traditionally stood back from venture capital startups and angel investing; only 13% of angel investors in the U.S. are women.
That's why Natalia Oberti Noguera, a 2005 Yale graduate, founded an angel-investing bootcamp for women. Created to increase the ratio of women angel investors in the social good category, Oberti Noguera's Pipeline Fellowship is announcing a call for applications for women philanthropists who want to be angel investors in social ventures. The classes of 20 women in New York and 10 women in Boston start this year (applications can be found at the Pipeline Fellowship applications page). Oberti Noguera wants to take successful women from different industry areas and show them that they can boost the rise of venture creation by applying their passion for social change and their experience as philanthropists. Her Pipeline Fellowship will give them hands-on experience investing in women-led, for-profit social ventures. Why Women Should Go to Conferences: Guest. I get it. Certain people think women should not be going to tech conferences.
There have been countless articles written on the "why there aren't more women in tech" theme. It's been beaten to death. And I wouldn't have taken a position on this issue prior to attending Chicago's TechWeek -- a weeklong meeting of technology's leaders, visionaries, and other hotshots that's going on through today. As someone who's both attended and taken an active role in a tech conference, I can state unequivocally that I could not disagree more with the notion that women and tech summits are incompatible. Go to a tech conference, ladies. Technology is supposed to enable. At TechWeek, women were still under-represented by many a panel.
To suggest that all women should skip a technology conference is, simply put, ludicrous. But to suggest that women steer clear of tech conferences does nothing but perpetuate gender inequality. Why Women Shouldn’t Go to Tech Conferences - Susannah Breslin - Pink Slipped. 10 Incredible Lectures for Young Women in Tech. 10 Female Tech CEOs To Watch. Women in business. Diversity Fuels Innovation: A New Startup Alliance for Women in Technology. Posted by Ping Fu on April 20, 2011 at 01:33 PM EDT Today, President Obama will visit Facebook’s Palo Alto headquarters for a town hall conversation on reducing the deficit (you can watch the town hall live at 1:45pm PT, 4:45pm EDT at www.facebook.com/whitehouse).
The Shared Responsibility and Shared Prosperity town hall hosted by the President will be followed by two panel discussions, one focused on the Startup America initiative to accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship, and one focused on the role of Women in Technology. These panels will include the announcement of a new entrepreneurial alliance organized by the National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT).
Today, I am also proud to announce that my company, Geomagic, will serve as as an anchor member of this alliance, which will give high-tech startups the research, practices, and community they need to create and maintain a gender-diverse technical workforce, right from the start. Pipeline Fund Aims To Help Balance Gender Ratios in the Startup World. A recently launched organization, Pipeline Fund Fellowship, will train women how to be angel investors, but its goals extend beyond increasing the number of women in the investor community. The project hopes to increase investments in social ventures and empower female entrepreneurs at the same time.
Ten women have already been selected to participate in the program. Some, like NY Tech Meetup co-founder Dawn Barber, are well acquainted with the startup world, and others come from fields ranging from finance to dentistry. At sign up, they each agreed to contribute $5,000 to the company that the group selects at the conclusion of five workshops on investing.
Tuition is $1,000. Pipeline Fund Fellowship founder Natalia Oberti Noguera hopes educating women investors will help balance a couple of ratios. The second is a similar imbalance in the entrepreneur community. There's also, ambitiously, a third problem that Pipeline Fund hopes to tackle: funding for social ventures. Gender and the Sustainable Brain. The crucial move toward sustainability may not come easily for either huge corporations or the average consumer, but we can hasten this evolution by identifying and nurturing the personality traits that most naturally drive sustainable living. Those qualities that we’ve long called “feminine” could be the answer. No matter how many men also possess them, traits like empathy and a focus on communication and social connections have long been categorized as “women’s ways.”
But those same traits also seem to be at the root of sustainable personal and organizational behavior. Understanding known gender differences in thinking and decision-making could provide insights and tools to move sustainability forward more quickly and productively. Gender Differences in Thinking and Talking The differences, however subtle, in the ways men and women tend to think and communicate may have important implications for sustainability.
Empathy may be key to promoting sustainability. References. Heather Armstrong, Queen of the Mommy Bloggers. Book Review - Cinderella Ate My Daughter - By Peggy Orenstein. KosAbility:ADHD in a woman--it ain't pretty. ADHD is a cognitive disorder characterized by difficulty with regulating behavior and planning things, and it comes in three flavors: predominantly hyperactive/impulsive, predominantly inattentive and combined types. It is the inattentive type that seems to affect girls more, and it is what I’ll stick to, here. From Wikipedia: ADHD-PI is different from the other subtypes of ADHD in that it is characterized primarily by inattention, easy distractibility, disorganization, procrastination, forgetfulness, and lethargy - fatigue, but with less or none of the symptoms of hyperactivity or impulsiveness typical of the other ADHD subtypes.[1] In some cases, children who enjoy learning may develop a sense of fear when faced with structured or planned work, especially long or group-based that requires extended focus, even if they thoroughly understand the topic.
I always knew my brother had some kind of attention problem, although he was decades too old for Ritalin or even a diagnosis. Empowering Girls with Confidence and Self Belief - Home Page Overview. At the Business Table, Where are the Ladies? « Unsolicited Business Advice from Carol Roth. Women Laughing with Computers - Ideas Market. Why Tech Already Has Women And They're Better Than Arrington | Danny Brown. “Companies, including information technology, with the highest percentages of women board directors outperformed those with the least by 66%,” according to research by Catalyst. “Gender diversity [is] particularly valuable where innovation is key,” according to studies by Illuminate Ventures. Microsoft Canada is recognizing women’s importance in technology with Canada-wide conferences advancing women in technology and their roles within companies.
In spite of the statistical advantages of women in tech, negative trends towards male speakers and executive leadership continue. Worse, reading this negative enforcement of sexism in tech has been a damn shame. Working with great women in tech — Susan Murphy, Beth Kanter, Kami Huyse, Allyson Kapin, Amber MacArthur, Sarah Prevette, Lisa Kalandjian and Cali Lewis to name a few this year — has been a phenomenal experience for both of us, and they demonstrate every day how brilliant and capable they are. And it’s just plain stupid. More Girls Needed on Screen. You don’t watch movies the same way after you have children, because you see the screen through their eyes.
That is true, apparently, for the stars who create those movies in the first place. Larry Busacca/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival Until her daughter was born in 2004, Geena Davis knew that women were too often stereotyped and trivialized in movies, but she took pride in playing only strong women, she said during a phone conversation we had earlier this month. “ ‘Beetlejuice’ was the only housewife I played,” she said, “and she was dead.” Roles like those in “Thelma and Louise” and “A League of Their Own” had her feeling pretty good about the parts she chose over the years.
But once she had children she started watching children’s videos. She started bringing this up with the people who were in charge — studio executives, producers, writers. But while those moments were satisfying, she made less headway on a more industrywide level. So, Davis set out to find data. Women Entrepreneurs and Food. I don’t think many people would disagree with me if I would argue that most women are the ones at home cooking up the family dinners on a nightly basis.
Then why are most of the top chefs around the world men? Someone in the restaurant business once told me that many women tend to become pastry chefs because it gives them more flexibility when it comes to their lives at home. You don’t have to be there at 11pm. Interesting. Just food for thought, no pun intended. This week I chose to write about two women who have found their entrepreneurial side through food.
Co-Founder Emily Olson of Foodzie has always had a passion for food. They built the platform, put together a business plan and were accepted into Techstars and in turn were able to raise capital around their idea. I not only love the products that Foodzie supports (curates), I like that the founders are a mixture of men and women. As of December 15th, Foodzie will have been up and running for two years. The ice cream? TEDWomen: Vivek Wadhwa on TEDx Bay Area. Women Entrepreneurs and Food.