Kamala Harris comments by Obama, Sheryl Sandberg: Remarks reveal a double bind for working women. Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for TheWrap Since President Obama expounded on Kamala Harris’s appearance, media outlets have been buzzing over whether the president’s comments were simply a statement of opinion, a gaffe, or a form of benign sexism. The discussion took place against a backdrop of weeks of controversy over Sheryl Sandberg’s advice that women "lean in" at the workplace, advice that touched off a significant public debate around women and work.
Yet no one made the connection between Sandberg’s Lean In missive and the president’s statements. Both speak to the catch-22 that expects women (particularly in male jobs) to be sufficiently masculine to be perceived as competent and sufficiently feminine to be perceived as likeable. As Sandberg describes in Lean In, research shows that women who succeed in traditionally male jobs tend to be viewed as competent but not likeable. And this same research finds that likeability is integral to success in the workplace. The Rise of Executive Feminism - Joan C. Williams and Rachel W. Dempsey. By Joan C. Williams and Rachel W. Dempsey | 11:58 AM March 28, 2013 In the aftermath of the publication of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, two things are becoming clear. One: we are in the midst of a powerful new feminist movement. And two: the backlash has already begun. Led by high-powered women like Sandberg and Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, a new wave of executive feminism has emerged aimed squarely at the highest levels of the professional world.
And it’s becoming increasingly clear that’s sorely needed: Only 21 Fortune 500 CEOs are women. For a while it looked like this problem would fix itself, but at this point we’ve being waiting for top-level women to emerge from the pipeline for forty years. Women leak out of the pipeline well before they reach the top. It’s not your mother’s gender inequality — but it’s no less real. This is the new frontier of feminism. The conversation these women have started is easy to dismiss. Paolo Woods: “Nouvelles Russes” documents career women in Russia in 2006 and 2007 (PHOTOS). Paolo Woods/Institute The photographer Paolo Woods began a career as a photojournalist, in his words, “rather late.” He isn’t in a rush to catch up, though he has rapidly built a portfolio of fascinating and deeply researched projects around the world including Iran, China, Afghanistan, and Russia.
Woods worked in the fine art world (he ran a gallery in Florence, Italy) before dedicating himself to photojournalism in 1998. Much of his work has been part of a 10-year worldwide collaboration with the writer Serge Michel; they have published four books together. “I work in blocks,” Woods said about his process during a call from Haiti, where he is currently based. “A subject interests me, I do a story about it, which is eventually a magazine piece, and then part of that story becomes part of a bigger story that eventually becomes a book and a show. At the time, there were many stories about the new wealth in Russia, most of it focused on men. Hijacking feminism - Opinion.
A new trend is on the rise. Suddenly high-powered women are publically espousing feminism. In her recently published book, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg advocates for a new kind of feminism, maintaining that women need to initiate an "internalised revolution". Sandberg's feminist manifesto comes on the heels of Anne-Marie Slaughter's much-discussed Atlantic opinion piece, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All", which rapidly became the most widely read essay in the magazine's history. In her piece, Slaughter explains why professional women are still finding it difficult to balance career demands with their wish for an active home life: social norms and the inflexibility of US workplace culture continue to privilege career advancement over family.
The buzz that has surrounded these two "how-to-reinvigorate-feminism" programmes suggests that Sandberg and Slaughter have struck a deep cultural chord. The liberal feminist narrative. On Femen, Amina and ‘NOT asking for it’ Where are the women Kerouacs? Much of my investigation for GQ hinged on finding some record of a girl left dead in a dumpster in the summer of 1985.
She was a teenage hitchhiker, and I had been there when her body was found. Two days later, a truck driver picked me up hitchhiking and led me to believe that he had killed her. He then pulled over to the side of the road, took out a huge knife and told me to get into the back of the truck—he was going to kill me. I was able, for reasons I still don’t fully understand, to escape into the woods.
But I did not go to the police. I did not go for help. My search for stories about the young woman in the dumpster led me back through many of the truck stops I’d known as a teenager. Now, it would be tempting to say that her reticence was rooted in a sense of company loyalty, or in a straight-out fear of getting fired. Siddhartha, Dante, and Frodo Siddhartha wants liberation, Dante wants Beatrice, Frodo wants to get to Mount Doom—we all want something.
So yes.