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Taking a Look at Women’s Parity
Women are 51 percent of the population, yet we are still less than one-quarter of our country’s leaders. Ms. Magazine has done a compilation of fascinating articles (see the section here) that details the quest to increase the number of women in leadership positions in the U.S. Head here to read about Kathy Hochul, the…
Read MoreWhat Does a Leader Look Like?
What does a leader look like? Organizational psychologists will point to well-known workshop exercises where executives are asked to draw a picture of an effective leader. In terms of gender, the results are nearly always the same. Both men and women almost always draw men. This apparently unconscious assumption is downright depressing. Still, as more…
Read MoreAnd the Numbers Are…
After a four-month delay caused by the pandemic, the U.S. Census Bureau last week released detailed 2020 population data for all 50 states and certain U.S. territories. These numbers are crucially important. They will be used to decide how federal funds are distributed to our communities for things like roads, bridges, hospitals, and daycare centers. …
Read MorePin-Stripe Suits and Fedoras
There is an old saying in journalism that goes like this: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” This is amusing to journalists because it is precisely what we are trained to do—be skeptical and double check everything. We’re supposed to look with a jaundiced eye at every story we have been…
Read MorePrime Time for Child Care – Finally
For half a century, U.S. policymakers ignored child care. Families (read: women) were essentially on our own as we struggled to maneuver both home and work responsibilities, with virtually no help from government or our employers. Your child was sent home from school/day care because she had a fever? Figure it out. The nanny suddenly…
Read MoreHappy Birthday to SC Women in Leadership
Last week I went to a birthday party. It was a glorious spring day at Boyd Plaza in downtown Columbia, where South Carolina Women in Leadership (SC WIL) was celebrating its second birthday. Two years earlier, a diverse group of 12 women had come together and “defined a multi-partisan strategy for encouraging women to lead,”…
Read MoreThe Pandemic and Our Brains
I don’t know about you, but I have had trouble concentrating during this pandemic. I used to be able to sit down and read or write for hours at a time. No longer. Now I’m up and down, checking my phone too often, doing things in short bursts, and, occasionally, forgetting why I walked into…
Read More“A rose by any other name…”
“…would smell as sweet,” remarks Juliet Capulet in William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.” I imagine Juliet is correct but, actually, I have no idea because I suffer from anosmia, the clinical term for the inability to smell. I’m not sure if I was born this way—a condition called congenital anosmia— or whether the allergies I…
Read MoreThe Waiting Game
So now, in this new year, it’s a waiting game. As COVID-19 has killed close to 400,000 Americans, we wait to receive the vaccines that cutting-edge technology has given us in record time to help stanch this awful pandemic. Several million lucky folks – mostly health care workers and residents/staff of long-term nursing facilities –…
Read MoreChristmas 2020
Yuletide is supposed to be a time of joy, peace, and goodwill. Christmas 2020, however, will be a Christmas like none we’ve seen in more than a century. Medical experts warn that we are facing a frigid, dark, brutal winter as the Coronavirus expands its frightful death march across the country. More than 300,000 American…
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