“Anything a man can do, I can fix”

This is a very funny, inspiring, touching and awakening video about a very interesting mother and about our own humanity. It is told from the voice of a son, one everyone should hear: Chris Abani: Telling stories of our shared humanity.

An amazing passion: Isabel Allende and passion

Isabel Allende speaks to a variety of women issues and needs and strengths with a very inspiring, funny and encouraging voice in this video titled Isabel Allende: Tales of passion. Very funny comments about Sophia Loren’s beauty and very amazing, deep and serious stories about women.

The Missing Voices

In one of my earlier posts, Inspiring a better world with courage and entrepreneurship I mentioned that a particular project, The Women’s International Perspectives, had called my attention because it brings to the forefront the under representation of women’s voices in on-line news publication.

After I stumbled into this project I spent an entire evening reading about this issue. It was a bit disconcerting to realize that women journalists, trained by their professions to investigate and report on all sorts of issues, have not gained much ground on their own turf .

Why was this? But, more importantly, what does this mean for the rest of the women with fewer tools than journalists and who might expect journalists to carry our voices?

Well, today, Carol Jenkins has an article in The Christian Science Monitor titled: Voices too often missing in op-ed land: women’s, with the sub-header It’s up to women and editors to create a better gender balance.

Two opposite points from two women quoted in Jenkins’ article are relevant to my questions:

• “Ruth Marcus, one of two female staff columnists at the Post, believes it is women’s reluctance to speak out, rather than “male chauvinist editors.” It’s a variation on what the Brookings Institution calls the “ambition gap.” [Is it a woman’s reluctance or preference?]
• “…we agree with Ms. Howell, whose analysis of the Post’s op-ed imbalance blamed the numbers on the “tradition” of hiring white men to write and the failure of more women and people of color to submit.”

At the end of the day, Jenkins’ article is the media version of the ones written about the gender gap in the technology field and which I refer to in my post To Choose or Not to Choose.

The parallels are of great importance because they reflect the same realities as summarized in To Choose or Not to Choose:

• This research focuses on “personal preference” as a determinant of “whether a qualified woman would go into the information technology field.” [One of the points in Rosenbloom’ study has to do with women choosing careers based on preferences that tend to take them away from scientific fields. Is it a woman’s reluctance or preference?]
• According to the Athena Factor’ findings, the reasons why women weren’t staying in the technology field ranged from “machismo that continues to permeate these work environments” to women being unable to decipher the mysteriousness of some career paths.

After reading about the gender gap in both fields, media and technology, I tend to believe the issues are virtually the same. In fact, I believe the gender gap issues are virtually the same in all fields because they are all based on the same social and professional realities.

So far, none of the material or projects I have read and found offers any promising answer to how the gender gap can be bridged.

However, I have found a promising hope in the fact that the media industry might not survive unless it embraces new technology changes.

The hope comes from the fact that the new technology changes are being driven by a generation of individuals that is becoming socially conscious very early on. This new generation seems to be gender blind and more concerned about the well-being of others than previous generations. And it could be our hope to really start bridging the gender gap and have women journalists trully carrry women’s voices.

Flourish Superwoman!

For our confidence buster chest:

Could Web 2.0 help women be other women’s best friends?

There is hardly any professional woman out there that doesn’t have at least one personal anecdote they use as an example that “women can be other women’s worst enemy.”

I have always disliked this generalization because, for every woman’ story, there are many more examples about men being each other worst enemy.

Men’s mantra tends to be conquer, kill or destroy. Most of us have probably met more executive businessmen who lead their teams to the market with a “we are going to kill the competition” instead of a “we are going to do the best for our customers” mission. These men are always the biggest, the baddest and the strongest. Considering that most of the executive roles in today’s marketplace are still dominated by men, how worst of an enemy can an executive man get than the one that wants to kill him?

Seriously. Few women go around killing their enemies, so how can they really be other women’s worst enemy?

For one story about women’s rivalry, we can quickly come up with many more about men’s destructive rivalry.

Now, to the point of this post.

The increasing acceptance of Web 2.0 is opening unparallel opportunities for women to collaborate with each other and break into areas traditionally inaccessible to them.

Web 2.0 is the use of web technology and web design to facilitate collaboration. Because of its inherent mission of bringing together individuals that share similar goals or belief systems to achieve something of mutual benefit, Web 2.0 removes many sources of conflict.

Some small groups, like Women2.org blog, are founded by women to work with other women “with world-changing aspirations.” Others, like Women of Web2 are working toward expanding the collaborative benefits Web 2.0 offers and encourage women to work together.

And sites like Blogher, although not web 2.0 sites per say, are bringing together large number of Web 2.0 women with all sorts backgrounds. Their impact on women’s participation in technology is rather considerable.

In fact, if it wasn’t because I can’t attend the Blogher conference in person, I would have kept postponing signing up for Second Life, one of the highest level of social networking technology in the Internet where I can attend the conference “digitally.”

But, something even bigger.

If you think about it for a minute, there are hundreds if not thousands of women blogs listed in Blogher. These women are using their own voices to comment about what is happening in their worlds and how they see those happenings shape. The web enables women to speak up and NO ONE can tell them to shut-up or stop doing it. Nice!

What other venue has come near to enabling such freedom for women? Today, women are even blogging from war ravaged regions where they have no voice or rights and freedom of speech does not even exist as a term. Yet, they are freely expressing themselves via the web.

The sheer number of women that are collaborating with each other and brought together by Web 2.0 is unparallel.

Who knows, maybe soon we will have all sorts of corporations building products with female users in mind from the very beginning and not just as an after thought. Wouldn’t that be nice too?

Socially Responsible Immigration?

During dinner last night, my husband, who patiently endures my conversations and at time monologues about social responsibility and women subject matters, asked me as he usually does an insightful question that sent me deeper into the subjects:

To what country are immigrants subject to being responsible to and how?

Since my husband’s question had nothing to do with the legal state of the immigrants, I’m leaving that complexity aside for the rest of this post.

Morally, my answer in my mind was a virtual no brainer: “To both and in whatever way they can.”

But, in reality, the question opens a Pandora box full of deep social issues that will become greater as globalization, global warming, food and energy shortage and drastic economic changes increase across the world. These increasing social issues will have their greater impact on the poorest communities, thus generating massive migrations.

Although I recognize that I am by no means an expert in any of the related subjects, I thought this is a subject for regular exploration in this blog since:

• “Women around the world have been migrating more in recent decades and have thus constituted an increasing share of migrant populations almost everywhere,” and
• As of 2005, “nearly half (49.6 per cent), of all international migrants – some 94.5million individuals – [were] women.” That percentage continues to grow.

On one hand, the first issue in trying to answer the question is whether we can define social responsibility with standards that can be measured and enforced at the individual level in order to educate the native and immigrant populations about what are the rules and expectations.

Some are easy enough, i.e. everyone should recycle. Others are way too complex and beyond the

The Girl Effect: Invest in a Girl and

she will do the rest.

One of the things I really like about what’s going on in today’s technology world is that no matter what subject matter I am researching, sooner than later I find the intersection between technology, social responsibility, entrepreneurship and women.

It is just amazing to discover how much people are doing with technology to help others. And this is by no means limited to non-profit or social entrepreneurship projects.

Larry Brilliant made a very valid point it in his presentation Case for Optimism. One of his points was that, unlike the older generations who tend to become philanthropic in their later years, today’s generations are using their wealth, passions and knowledge very early on to help others.

Just a couple of examples to illustrate how delightfully pervasive the intersection between technology, social responsibility, entrepreneurship and women is:

This morning, while reading a feed from TechCrunchIT about what Twitter, the micro-blogging/text messaging and social networking service, is up to, I clicked on a link to Summize, a search engine using Twitter.

To see what Summize did, I searched for the term “social responsibility.” Now, it is important to note that Summize data comes from the micro-blogs, short entries from people on the move. The search gave me results for Twitter SocialBridges and WOW, lots of results and the third one was titled:

Women empowerment and support as the root of social change. A video clip whose main point is The Girl Effect: Invest in a girl and she will do the rest. The video site also provides a Fact Sheet about what happens when a girl gets a chance and when she doesn’t.

So what? Well, it wasn’t just the large number of results that was exciting. Two things are very encouraging about this:

1. The large amount of people who are investing time throghout their days sharing and exchanging information about social responsibility, in just this one application, and
2. The high value and quality of the content of the information they are sharing.

Considering how often many of us dismiss text messaging and the time people invest in some of these applications and tools, seeing this result list is reason for optimism. These tools are helping build a social consciousness unlike any we have seen before, and better yet, these people are from all over the world. The exchanges are also bringing diversity into the picture.

Yesterday, the path to the intersection was the opposite. While reading a feed about social responsibility, I found this post about Funding Women Entrepreneurs, which mentions Omidyar Network.

Omidyar is an investment organization created by eBay’s founder, Pierre Omidyar and his wife, Pam. This organization by itself is an intersection between technology, social responsibility and entrepreneurship because the Pierres founded it “based on the belief that every person has the potential to make a difference.”

But, they didn’t stop there. In addition to funding women entrepreneurs as a “normal” part of their portfolio, they are behind many non-profits and for-profits that are becoming key players delivering technology solutions to social needs, generating tremendous social changes and value, while still making money.

The concept of not doing things just as charity, which often proves to be unsustainable and costly in the long-run, is also a key aspect I find in this intersection.

But, the best part of the intersection between technology, social responsibility and entrepreneurship is that the new generations of entrepreneurs and technology gurus seem to be blind to the social rules that created the gender gap in the first place.

I hope I am right on what I am seeing, but if I am right, this new breed of business people will not only believe in The Girl Effect, but will deliver on it.

Simply put, they better deliver on it because there is no stopping this intersection from touching all aspects of our lives and it is probably the best chance we have to bridge the gender gap.

Square Watermelon…no kidding!

Hardnoklife has a funny, but encouraging post titled Lessons of the Square Watermelons about the growing of square watermelons in Japan.

Although the subject doesn’t directly address women, Knox’s points apply to every single endeavor we might be taking:

1. Don’t Assume
2. Question Habits
3. Be Creative
4. Look for a Better Way
5. Impossibilities Often Aren’t

I think these are good points to keep in mind at the beginning of every day.

A Broken Backbone? Reality of Social Services

Last Friday evening my husband and I spent some time with our neighbor Mike and his girlfriend Lisa. Best neighbors we could have ever asked for. Lisa has been a Head Start teacher for almost ten years and makes just under $9.00 per hour, no health benefits.

Although I have no children nor intend to have any, it has always bothered me how little value the U.S. places on those charged with raising and educating children. As of 2006, the average salary for a lead Head Start teacher was $24,737 and $23,194 for teachers with associates’ degree. The 2008 median salary for child care workers is $17,630. To put this into some perspective, the 2008 federal poverty level for a family of three is $17,600, so a single mother working as a child care worker faces poverty living standards.

Emily Yoffe published an article last month titled Diaper Genie: Can I cut it as a day care worker, one of the most exhausting, worst paid, and smelliest jobs in America? The article perfectly describes why such low salary is just unconceivable.

In addition to the not so pleasant details about puppy cleaning, Yoffe writes, “because of the long hours the children spend, the workers are a primary civilizing influence. They’re the ones who do the heavy wiping in toilet-training these children; they’re the ones who teach them to set the table before they eat; they’re the ones who remind them committing assault is not the way to get a toy.”

I wished the article had gone deeper into what it means to raise other people’s children under today’s legal and educational systems. Educational institutions have grown so concerned about liability issues that teaching characteristics such as discipline, good manners, respect, tolerance and any other requiring the enforcement of boundaries becomes framed around the possibility of being sued.

But, I digress. That is for another post.

You would think that the most developed country in the world would recognize the important role these “early influencers” play in the future generations that would run it by at least granting them a more decent living wage.

Unfortunately, the issues don’t just end up with poor wages. To cover basic needs, most of these “early influencers” are forced to lean on the very same system that ignores their roles. Lisa had to get

To Choose or Not to Choose

A couple of recently published studies about women in science, engineering and technology are making the rounds in the blogosphere and are creating an interesting dialog about why is it that women’s participation in these fields is much lower than that of men.

The most recent one was published last month by The Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP) and is titled The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology.

If you have been somewhat informed about women in the labor force, you might know that getting women to increase their participation in math and engineering fields has been a social concern in the U.S. for several decades now.

One of the study’s key findings is that “41% of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technologists on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders are female — a talent pipeline that is surprisingly deep and rich. Despite the challenges girls face at school and in our culture, a significant number make the commitment to begin careers in science.”

So, after all, it is not that women do not choose these fields as career paths. It seems to be that women do choose not to stay in these fields for what the study calls “5 antigens.” A couple of articles that describe what these antigens are:

Harvard Business Review – Stopping the Exodus of Women in Science

Computerworld – Why women quit technology careers

The second study was published late last year and is titled Why are there so few women in information technology? Assessing the role of personality in career choices, co-authored by economy professor Joshua Rosenbloom. This research focuses on “personal preference” as a determinant of “whether a qualified woman would go into the information technology field.” Rosenbloom also had a 2006 paper on this subject.

The Boston Globe has an article that tries to describe the findings of Rosenbloom’s research, The Freedom to Say “no”, but I think one must read the actual research to really get the points of the findings.

The Human Resource Executives has a summary on both studies at Analyzing Female Brain Drain.

I’m still absorbing the content of these studies, but accepting the generalizations arrived at by these two researches makes me feel like if we have been swimming against the current and I’m not quite sure that it is the case. Have we really been looking at the participation, or lack of, by women in these fields the wrong way? Is it truly that women do prefer “people” roles over “scientific” and eventually give into these preferences because it is easier than to figure out how to stay in the field?

Regardless, the one thing these studies and virtually all of the ones I have read on this subject agree on is that the gender gap in scientific fields has nothing to do with women’s skills and ability to successfully perform in these fields. It has to do with social and environmental issues. I’m waiting to see who really dares to bring genes into this picture.