The Confidence Gap. For years, we women have kept our heads down and played by the rules. We’ve been certain that with enough hard work, our natural talents would be recognized and rewarded. We’ve made undeniable progress. In the United States, women now earn more college and graduate degrees than men do. We make up half the workforce, and we are closing the gap in middle management. Half a dozen global studies, conducted by the likes of Goldman Sachs and Columbia University, have found that companies employing women in large numbers outperform their competitors on every measure of profitability. Our competence has never been more obvious.
And yet, as we’ve worked, ever diligent, the men around us have continued to get promoted faster and be paid more. Some observers say children change our priorities, and there is some truth in this claim. We know the feeling firsthand. We began to talk with other highly successful women, hoping to find instructive examples of raw, flourishing female confidence.
Coveting Not a Corner Office, but Time at Home. Darren Hauck for The New York Times “I really don’t want people to come away from my story thinking that I’ve figured it out, or that I have the answers for anyone else. I have been very blessed in so many ways," said Sara Uttech, a working mother in Fall River, Wis. More Photos » The Balancing Act Articles in this series will look at the ways working mothers from varied backgrounds are balancing careers and family responsibilities. Ms. Uttech, like many working mothers, is a married college graduate, and her job running member communications for an agricultural association helps put her family near the middle of the nation’s income curve. “I never miss a baseball game,” said Ms. Ms. Ms. But probably the career move she is proudest of — and the one she advocates the most — is asking her boss to let her work from home on Fridays.
“People have said to me, ‘It’s not fair that you get to work from home! Not everyone aspires to be an executive at Facebook, like Ms. Up Early, Always Moving Ms. Gender, Globalization and Cosmetic Surgey in South Korea | Ruth Holliday. Existing research on cosmetic surgery in Korea frames cosmetic surgery primarily in two ways - either as an undesired effect of Western cultural influence or as a feminised issue evidencing women¶s continued subjection to patriarchy. However this research questions these simplistic explanations. We will show using contemporary South Korea as an example that the meanings and practices of aesthetic surgery represent a process of negotiation between multiple discourses concerning national identity globalised and regionalised standards of beauty official and nonofficial religion traditional beliefs and practices (albeit in some instances historically imported from some other place) as well as the symbolic practices of coming of age caring for the self marking social status and seeking success.
F eminine or culturally imperialist practice is a key weakness of the existing literature and produces only partial accounts of national cosmetic practices. 1998) from newspaper and magazine articles surgery and. Why Gender Equality Stalled. Missing the Love Boat - The Case for Marriage — Modern Love. Still, I knew he was the one, or at least I thought he was. He had moved across the country for me. He was funny and spontaneous. He wore his heart on his sleeve. If I ever were to marry, I imagined it would be him. But I wasn’t the type of girl to fantasize about “happily ever after.”
And then, on a trip to Seattle, where we met the year before, I got that thing every girl supposedly dreams of. We never made it. We had talked about spending the weekend at a hotel, so that part wasn’t a surprise. “Do you know why we’re here?” I should have. So, as he knelt beside me and reached into the bedside table, my heart pounded and my hands became sweaty. I didn’t know what to do. “Yes,” I said, terrified I had paused too long. We were engaged for 20 minutes, until I mustered the courage to choke out, “What if I’m not ready?”
I loved him desperately. And yet the moment I saw that ring, I was terrified. I begged him to forgive me. He was devastated, but he loved me too much to let go. He laughed. Modern Love - Want to Be My Boyfriend? Please Define. Why Do They Hate Us? - By Mona Eltahawy. In "Distant View of a Minaret," the late and much-neglected Egyptian writer Alifa Rifaat begins her short story with a woman so unmoved by sex with her husband that as he focuses solely on his pleasure, she notices a spider web she must sweep off the ceiling and has time to ruminate on her husband's repeated refusal to prolong intercourse until she too climaxes, "as though purposely to deprive her. " Just as her husband denies her an orgasm, the call to prayer interrupts his, and the man leaves. After washing up, she loses herself in prayer -- so much more satisfying that she can't wait until the next prayer -- and looks out onto the street from her balcony.
She interrupts her reverie to make coffee dutifully for her husband to drink after his nap. Taking it to their bedroom to pour it in front of him as he prefers, she notices he is dead. She instructs their son to go and get a doctor. Yes: They hate us. But let's put aside what the United States does or doesn't do to women. Reuters. Where Have All the Girls Gone? - By Mara Hvistendahl. How did more than 160 million women go missing from Asia? The simple answer is sex selection -- typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female -- but beyond that, the reasons for a gap half the size of the U.S. population are not widely understood. And when I started researching a book on the topic, I didn't understand them myself.
I thought I would focus on how gender discrimination has persisted as countries develop. The reasons couples gave for wanting boys varies: Sons stayed in the family and took care of their parents in old age, or they performed ancestor and funeral rites important in some cultures. Or it was that daughters were a burden, made expensive by skyrocketing dowries. But that didn't account for why sex selection was spreading across cultural and religious lines. Once found only in East and South Asia, imbalanced sex ratios at birth have recently reached countries as varied as Vietnam, Albania, and Azerbaijan. The U.S. Melinda Gates’ New Crusade: Investing Billions in Women's Health - Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
Angelina Jolie: We All Are Malala. The far-right Christian Patriarchy—brought to American audiences by the Duggar family—is on the verge of collapse after a series of alleged sex scandals involving the movement’s leaders. Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have put many years and a lot of work into putting a smiling, nearly normal-seeming face on the extreme Christian right. The couple adheres to a fringe strain of fundamentalist Christianity dubbed the “Christian patriarchy” or sometimes the “Quiverfull” movement, and while there is a lot of internal diversity to the movement, they generally preach a combination of beliefs that run counter to mainstream America: absolute female submission, a ban on dating, homeschooling, a rejection of higher education for women, and shunning of contraception in favor of trying to have as many children as humanly possible.
The strategy has been surprisingly effective, with Michelle Duggar being able to act like she’s just like any other reality TV star, giving sex tips and sharing recipes. Magazine - All the Single Ladies. In 2001, when I was 28, I broke up with my boyfriend. Allan and I had been together for three years, and there was no good reason to end things. He was (and remains) an exceptional person, intelligent, good-looking, loyal, kind.
My friends, many of whom were married or in marriage-track relationships, were bewildered. I was bewildered. To account for my behavior, all I had were two intangible yet undeniable convictions: something was missing; I wasn’t ready to settle down. The period that followed was awful. I barely ate for sobbing all the time. Also see: The End of Men Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Delayed Childbearing Though career counselors and wishful thinkers may say otherwise, women who put off trying to have children until their mid-thirties risk losing out on motherhood altogether. Marry Him!
In Search of Mr. Let's Call the Whole Thing Off The author is ending her marriage. The implications are extraordinary. The Startling Plight of China's Leftover Ladies - By Christina Larson. The Spicy Love Doctor was running late. A well-heeled crowd one recent Sunday afternoon had packed into the second-floor lounge of Beijing's Trends Building -- home to the publishing offices of several glossy magazines, including the Chinese editions of Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and Harper's Bazaar -- to hear Wu Di, a contributor to China's Cosmopolitan and author of an alluring new book, I Know Why You're Left.
The poised, professional crowd, outfitted in black blazers, leather boots, and trendy thick-framed glasses, was composed mostly of women in their mid-20s to mid-30s -- prime Cosmo readers and all there waiting patiently to hear Wu, who typically charges $160 an hour for "private romance counseling," explain their surprising plight: being single women in a country with a startling excess of men. The majority of her talk was devoted not to such timeless aphorisms, but to describing a new conundrum in China: the plight of its sheng nu, or "leftover ladies. " But it's not just China. Lisa Firestone: The Real Reason You're Not Married (And What to Do About It)
Whether it's those lurking peak wedding months or the daily talk of royal nuptials, marriage is a subject we're hearing a lot about lately. Feelings about this trend seem to range from wild enthusiasm to mild resentment. Forgetting for a minute the adversity surrounding the institution of marriage and setting all ceremony aside, stripped down to its barest of bones, marriage is really just a long-term commitment to a serious intimate relationship. Regardless of one's feeling about marriage, the idea of a lasting romantic relationship is of much significance to most people. So, despite this post's provocative name, what I really wish to offer here isn't so much a lecture on why a person isn't married but an explanation of why many people aren't able to form a lasting union with someone they love.
For many couples, the honeymoon phase is over before they even make it down the aisle. If we are used to taking control, we may seek someone who is passive. Every human is flawed. Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders. Sheryl Sandberg & Male-Dominated Silicon Valley. In 2007, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, knew that he needed help. His social-network site was growing fast, but, at the age of twenty-three, he felt ill-equipped to run it. That December, he went to a Christmas party at the home of Dan Rosensweig, a Silicon Valley executive, and as he approached the house he saw someone who had been mentioned as a possible partner, Sheryl Sandberg, Google’s thirty-eight-year-old vice-president for global online sales and operations. Zuckerberg hadn’t called her before (why would someone who managed four thousand employees want to leave for a company that had barely any revenue?)
, but he went up and introduced himself. “We talked for probably an hour by the door,” Zuckerberg recalls. It turned out that Sandberg was ready for a new challenge. She had even talked with Donald Graham, the C.E.O. of the troubled Washington Post Company, about becoming a senior executive there. Sandberg was born in 1969, in Washington, D.C. “I said, ‘You’re right.’ Why Women Still Can’t Have It All - Anne-Marie Slaughter. The culture of “time macho”—a relentless competition to work harder, stay later, pull more all-nighters, travel around the world and bill the extra hours that the international date line affords you—remains astonishingly prevalent among professionals today. Nothing captures the belief that more time equals more value better than the cult of billable hours afflicting large law firms across the country and providing exactly the wrong incentives for employees who hope to integrate work and family.
Yet even in industries that don’t explicitly reward sheer quantity of hours spent on the job, the pressure to arrive early, stay late, and be available, always, for in-person meetings at 11 a.m. on Saturdays can be intense. Indeed, by some measures, the problem has gotten worse over time: a study by the Center for American Progress reports that nationwide, the share of all professionals—women and men—working more than 50 hours a week has increased since the late 1970s. Revaluing Family Values. "What’s Stopping Women?" by Anne-Marie Slaughter. Exit from comment view mode. Click to hide this space PRINCETON – When I wrote the cover article of the July/August issue of The Atlantic, entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” I expected a hostile reaction from many American career women of my generation and older, and positive reactions from women aged roughly 25-35.
I expected that many men of that younger generation would also have strong reactions, given how many of them are trying to figure out how to be with their children, support their wives’ careers, and pursue their own plans. I also expected to hear from business representatives about whether my proposed solutions – greater workplace flexibility, ending the culture of face-time and “time machismo,” and allowing parents who have been out of the workforce or working part-time to compete equally for top jobs once they re-enter – were feasible or utopian. Reactions differ across countries, of course. The Germans are deeply conflicted. Why Women Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect - Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Over the past 30 years–first at Harvard Business School, where I was on the faculty for nearly two decades, and now, at Barnard College, where I serve as president–I have watched thousands of bright and talented young women start to plot the course of their lives.
I have watched my friends’ and colleagues’ lives evolve in complicated and unpredictable ways. And I have juggled like mad, with three wonderful kids, a husband I adore, and jobs that leave me perched perpetually on the edge of insanity. Like most working mothers, I have snuck out of meetings to attend piano recitals and missed track meets when a deadline was looming. I have sprinted through airports in the futile hope of catching an earlier flight home and tried to comfort a sobbing child when, inevitably, the plane was late. Through all this chaos I have become increasingly convinced of two interconnected points. So what, then, are we to do? These are the pressures that are tougher to address.
Magazine - The End of Men. Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history. Most managers are now women too. And for every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same. For years, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle for equality. But what if equality isn’t the end point? What if modern, postindustrial society is simply better suited to women? A report on the unprecedented role reversal now under way— and its vast cultural consequences John Ritter In the 1970s the biologist Ronald Ericsson came up with a way to separate sperm carrying the male-producing Y chromosome from those carrying the X. In the late 1970s, Ericsson leased the method to clinics around the U.S., calling it the first scientifically proven method for choosing the sex of a child.
Feminists of the era did not take kindly to Ericsson and his Marlboro Man veneer. Ericsson, now 74, laughed when I read him these quotes from his old antagonist. Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg: ‘No one can have it all’ The Opt-Out Revolution. The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In. Mother Inferior? Ayelet Waldman on Amy Chua's 'Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother'