Status of women still abysmal: Let's create an extraordinary future for young women

I'm looking forward to hearing what the Women's Foundation of Minnesota finds out on its Road to Equality Tour. The foundation has done a terrific job of publicizing its research results during the past week. And the results are not surprising, women lag in wages, safety and security, health and reproductive rights, and political power. 

These depressing statistics are old news. Touring communities and finding out what people have to say about how to CHANGE women's lives is inspiring.

I want the young women who date my son, who are my nieces and students to have more options than I did. I have few regrets but lots of frustration about having to fight for things men take for granted, which is why I have great empathy for today's minorities who have to fight for what whites take for granted. 

I'll keep you posted on what solutions the Women's Foundation of Minnesota discovers. In a world that is facing so many depressing problems, I want to encourage people in my circles to focus on Solutions. If we take the energy we spend on Problems and turn it toward Solutions, this can be a decade that goes down in the books as a turning point rather than a spiraling downturn.

(From a recent Women's Foundation of Minn. Press Release) 2010 Road to Equality Tour - June 21-30, 2010 

To deepen its understanding of what the data looks like in communities across the state, the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota will visit seven cities on its 2010 Road to Equality Tour, June 21-30, including Warroad, Moorhead, Grand Rapids, Duluth, Willmar, St. Cloud and Rochester. The Foundation will present the data and gain community input. 

PDF downloads of the full report and summary of Status of Women & Girls in Minnesota and more information about the 2010 Road to Equality Tour is available at www.wfmn.org. 

Nick's salmen shark

Rosenblum's column today makes good point about dangers of keeping kids safe

As the mother of a kid in Alaska who is fishing for 300 lb. fish, sharks and hunting bears (I can't verify the bears because I confess I really don't want to know.), I appreciated Gail's piece in the Strib today, because it sees beyond the black and white borders of young sailor Abby Sunderland's story: http://tinyurl.com/2wdx3yy.

We do tend to go out of our way to keep our kids safe, sometimes at their own peril. Many of my son Nick's friends are hanging around the Twin Cities, jobless this summer. And I have to admit the dangers of urban bars and other temptations for bored young people make the wilds of Alaska more attractive from a Mom's perspective.

A couple weeks ago, he told me he was going to kayak on a glacier. "What does that mean?" I thought, quickly followed by "Do I really want to know?"

Last time he was in Alaska he told me he was going after a Salmen shark during his weekend off.
"This," I told him, "is the type of thing I'd like to hear about when you get back ... safely."

Ultimately, columnist Gail Rosenblum is right, every kid is different and parents' decisions need to account for that.

Columnist Ellen Goodman explains double-bind most women have experienced

Many of us have experienced the double-bind; we just didn’t know what to call it. Boston Globe and Washington Post columnist Ellen Goodman spoke to attendees this week at a fund-raising event sponsored by Women Winning, a Twin-Cities based advocacy group that supports female pro-choice candidates. See www.womenwinning.com.

She pointed out that we’ve made a lot of progress since her last visit to the Twin Cities in 2002, citing the victories of Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Still, she lamented, women are lagging farther behind in politics than in any other profession. Part of the reason for this, Goodman suggested, is that it’s easier to get into politics than it is to change it. But change it we must, because as she points out: Politics is where we change our values into policies.

She explained her perspective on what she calls “the double-bind”. Hillary had to prove she was tough enough to be commander in chief, while Obama’s feminine side helped win him votes.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor had to prove she wasn’t biased, though the groups charged with selecting U.S. supreme court justices are all seriously under-represented by women.

The double-bind often shows up at work. A woman who chooses her kids over her work is told she doesn’t make her work a high enough priority, while a man who leaves work to attend a soccer game is congratulated.

It is extremely unfortunate that we don’t respect women’s traditional styles and choices. In the land of the free, is it too much to ask to be yourself without having to apologize for it?

Think of the talent we lose when women who are sick of the double-bind get fed up and drop out of work, politics or other male-dominated environs.

Ellen Goodman is one of the last of the grand dames of the opinion pages. She has now retired; syndicated columnist and author Molly Ivins is dead; only New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd http://tinyurl.com/n2y38u is left to carry on.

We need more great women columnists to generate opinions with the feminine perspective. When I worked at the Star Tribune Opinion pages, I was struck by how helpful it is to read someone’s opinions to help form your own. Without strong women’s voices, we’re left to form our opinions based primarily on male perspectives.

Unfortunately, most men don’t know much about the double-bind or other critical issues we deal with on a daily basis. So topics we care about never make it to traditional media pages. It’s unfair to us, and it will be the death knell for traditional media that must generate more audience members or perish.

Build your life around pursuing your passions

This one step ... choosing a goal and sticking to it . . . changes Everything. (Scott Reed, African-American writer)

In my line of work, setting goals is essential. There are literally millions of ways to generate positive Public Relations, but what I like to tell my students is: “there are only a few ways that demonstrate the most effective way to spend your limited time and money.”

As a young executive, I saw how goal setting helped the company I worked for achieve its objectives. Eventually, I began incorporating goal setting into my own life. It started with simple New Year’s resolutions, which grew into page-long, bulleted annual-planning documents.

As I began to achieve my goals, I was more motivated about setting them. I attribute getting my master’s degree and finally working at a daily newspaper at age 35 to my regular practice of goal setting.

While there are many resources for organizational goal-setting, resources for setting personal goals are more scarce. I’m talking about goals that really turn you on – that you may not get a lot of social support for – that some may even think you’re a bit crazy for pursuing: like running a marathon, writing a book, becoming a painter, beginning a jewelry-making business, starting to play an instrument, or learning a language later in life. Research

Some people see life coaches or therapists for help in defining their purpose, which I think is a great idea. Having a powerful goal and staying on track is motivating and rewarding. And it gets back to my premise that if you set the right objectives, you’ll be most successful in expending the limited time and money that you have.

Questions to consider

As you begin your own goal-setting process, alone or with the help of a guide, here are some questions to ponder:

1. What are your three most important goals?
2. Why are they important to you?
3. How will you deal with fears and other barriers?
4. Until now, what’s most helped you become successful in reaching your goals?
5. If you could do over parts of your life, what would you change?
6. What are you most proud of to date?
7. At your funeral, what would you like to be acknowledged for?

To figure out your true passions may require peeling away layers of expectations and clutter that have gotten in the way of you pursuing your dreams. Since my early teens, I’ve been warned by my parents and others not to depend on a chancy career like writing to support me. This well-meaning advice sidetracked me into public relations, a career that I enjoy and that has been lucrative, but it has also contributed to my fears about becoming a full-time writer.

My dear friend Chris Wing is one of the wisest and smartest women I know. A couple years ago, I consulted her on goal setting because she has accomplished some big goals in her life. She’s the mother of two extraordinary daughters and the wife of a wonderful man. She’s been a small business manager, a school board member, and a hospital manager. Chris has two master’s degrees and is working on completing her Ph.D. She’s also worked for X years as a speech pathologist with some of the poorest children in Minneapolis, driving 100- mile roundtrips each day to do so.

She acknowledges doing a lot of personal therapy as an adult to heal abuse she experienced as a child. “It will always be part of my life process,” she says. “As I got older, I went from trying to keep things from happening to me to being in charge. The problem was that I didn’t even know what I liked.”

This is a common dilemma for people who have experienced abuse and for children who grow up trying to please a controlling parent.

As Chris got older, she realized that “A true goal gives you energy back while ‘shoulds’ drain us. A real passion makes your heart beat faster. When you take something on, consider carefully: is it a goal or a should? I have this goal because: ask three times to make sure your goal is something you want to pursue.”

One of Chris’s goals is to Have Fun! “Part of me just wants to play and enjoy life,” she says. “Spending time in therapy has giving me more capacity for that. I now believe that it is a worthy goal to Have Fun.”

Dealing with fears and other barriers

Accomplishing goals requires discipline and tenacity. It also requires changing your goals if you obtain new information that suggests you should re-examine your goals or if the journey toward your goals is no longer fulfilling. This doesn’t mean backing off when the going gets tough, but it does mean not mindlessly pursuing a goal just because you set it. There’s a lot of value in regularly considering:

• What progress am I making?
• Am I getting out of this what I am putting into it?
• Given my limited time, money and talent, is this the best use of my precious resources?

At work, we don’t set goals and then operate on autopilot. We must be conscious and reflective about our personal goals as well. It took me seven years to get my black belt in karate. During the process, I quit training to focus more on graduate school. I got pregnant and lost a baby, and during sparring, I got hit in the head so hard that my jaw clicked for a year. Still I persevered because the rewards in terms of what I was learning about myself and how I operated in the face of adversity were so valuable to me.

On the other hand, if karate had begun to hurt me more than it helped me, the intelligent thing to do would be to give up even if I have an aversion to being a quitter. Taking a balanced approach to life requires considering the black, the white and everything in between. During my corporate years, I was very ambitious and rose quickly to be a director in the company. After 10 years, some of the people I loved to work for left the company, and I was no longer being treated well or being intellectually challenged, so I quit my prestigious job and went to graduate school. Instead of viewing it as quitting, I eventually embraced leaving as my chance to do the next things in my life that I had been longing to do.

The years have taught me that I don’t always reach my goals the way I thought I would, that I will not always get what I want, and that I likely will experience discomforts I didn’t anticipate along the way, but if I stick to what’s important to me and follow my path despite the stumbles, eventually, I will reach my goal if it’s truly important to me.

Emerging from the tomb

Image via Wikipedia

A friend’s minister shared his perspectives on Easter at a service last year. He made an analogy between Jesus emerging from the tomb and the challenges we face in our own lives.

This is the kind of ministry that I admire. Straight talk we can apply to our own lives.  He challenged his parishioners to consider what kind of tomb they may be in, as well as the role they play in staying there.

He further explained that he once counseled a woman who was married to an alcoholic, and although her husband was successfully recovering from chemical dependency, the woman was married to her role as her husband’s martyr. There was something about the role of victim that was familiar, even comforting to her. She didn’t want to give it up.

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We all have these kinds of roles in our lives. We complain about them, but we don’t do much to change them. Typically, they keep us from doing or feeling something we don’t want to do or feel.

What keeps us in our own tombs?

Like most of us, I have a variety of “tombs” ranging from being overly-busy to being overly-responsible. All of them have matching rationales that sound reasonable, but I know they are feeble excuses for not wanting to change familiar responses to scenarios that make me uncomfortable.

Still I peck away at the tombs and see some light streaming in. And I take the time to try to objectively analyze what really keeps me over-busy: fear of not reaching goals I’ve set for myself and wanting a plausible excuse? Fear of feeling uncomfortable feelings like disappointing someone dear to me?

My husband often reminds me that I’m responsible for my overly-busy schedule; he is right. Yet something continues to compel me to take on more than is usually manageable.

I’m grateful to my friend for sharing her minister’s story.

As the holiday approaches, it reminds me that Easter is a perfect time to come out of the tomb and into the light.

Women at the top -- 25+ years later, still a depressing story

I joined the corporate world in 1981.  In the old days, when they hired you, they could still ask you when you planned to have children. Women in the '80s were expected to dress like female versions of men. Though we could reveal a flash of color in the bow ties we wore around our necks.

I've had a fabulous career, so I'll keep my complaining to a minimum. When I worked for a corporation, I managed big budgets, was responsible for communications to vast audiences, ranging from the thousands to the millions, got to travel the United States, and got to work with some of the smartest people I've ever met.

Lonely at the top

Still, I can't help but be chagrined by the stats revealed at a luncheon one of my former corporate co-workers, Jane Blanco, and I attended today.

•  Women hold 14 percent of the available board seats in Minnesota's 100 largest publicly held companies. The overall percent is not increasing.
• Only 32 of the top 100 companies have two or more women corporate directors.
• Minnesota cos. with larger revenues tend to have a greater number and percentage of women board members than smaller companies.

The keynote speaker for today's lunch event was Jeffrey Ettinger, president, CEO and chairman of Hormel Foods Corp. Hormel has four female directors out of a total of 12 and three female senior managers. Undoubtedly, it's lonely at the top.

When I was younger, I was intensely competitive. I became one of the youngest female execs at the Fortune 100 company I worked for. After 12 years of 60-hour weeks (80 during the merger with our parent co.), I hit the glass ceiling and left my extremely well-paying job. And I haven't looked back.

Like many women, I opted out of a big co. where I felt over-worked and under-appreciated. I started my own company. Within a few years, I was making almost what I was making in the big corporation. And the freedom to run my life the way I wanted to was amazing. While I continued to work hard, I was in charge of my schedule -- not my secretary who chuckled every morning when I asked if she'd left any time for me to go to the restroom.

I give the CEO of Hormel, the Minnesota Women's Economic Roudtable and St. Catherine University credit for hosting an event to talk about this very important and still sensitive topic. We all know that women directors and senior managers have positive effects on companies. Management guru Tom Peters gives convincing arguments about research on how women are stacking up against men as effective managers. He also gives impressive stats on how influential women are in our country's collective purchasing power. He's been scratching his head for years about the irony of male-dominated marketing departments trying to capture lucrative female target groups.

Are quotas the answer?

But I digress. Back to the luncheon. After his presentation, Ettinger bravely offered to take questions from the audience. One woman asked if he had noticed that the face of this country's financial crisis was male. He moved quickly on to another audience member who asked what he thought of the European countries quotas to get more women on boards.  He answered that he hoped that wouldn't be necessary.

But think about it. Who voluntarily gives up power?

After 30 years in the workforce, I personally don't want to continue 12-plus-hour days to prove I'm board worthy. But I am willing to shop at companies who have leaders who look like me. I figure that's the most efficient and effective way I can communicate at this stage in the game.

I'm interested in your opinions.

PS:To see the full 2009 Minnesota Census of Women in Corporate Leadership report, click on: http://www.stkate.edu/mn_census/09/index.html

She's so responsible

When I asked my fellow students in 1975 why they elected me senior class president of our high school in Forest Lake, Minn., the most common response I received was: “You’re so responsible.”

Six reunions later, I’m feeling less responsible and a bit worn out by high expectations. There are definitely goodies that come with the reputation of being extremely responsible – job promotions, spots on boards, control over tasks, being the leader rather than a follower, and generally having things go your way.

Responsibility begets more responsibility

But there are costs as well. Consider the lives of two fictional (but reality-based) co-workers: Ava, who is overly responsible, and Ena, who does just enough to get by. Ava rises with the sun, exercises, makes sure her house is in order, checks the calendar to make sure she, her husband and her children are heading in the right directions.  Ena gets up an hour before work, fools around with her buff boy toy, takes a quick shower and heads into work with her hair still slightly wet.

Ava and Ena work in the same office. Ava averages 60 hours a week; Ena averages less than 40. Ava’s a director, and Ena is a manager. Ava makes $100 K per year, and Ena makes $80 K per year. Ava spends most of her discretionary money on furnishings for her home and programs for her kids. Ena spends most of hers on travel, socializing and items related to scuba diving, her favorite hobby.

During a typical week, Ava has about 10 hours for her personal interests (beyond exercising). She usually spends them as a spectator at her kids’ programs or watching her favorite TV shows because she’s too tired to do anything else.

Ena is out of work by 5 p.m. and never works on weekends. She spends 10 hours a week biking, golfing or skiing, five hours on manicures, haircuts, massages, etc., and 10 hours a week going out to eat and socializing with her friends. She also volunteer at a local animal shelter. Because she lives in a modest 2-bedroom condo, she has the time and money for the travel necessary for scuba adventures, manicures and pedicures, and the latest scuba gear.

Both women are happy with their lives, though Ena sometimes wishes she had a husband and children, and Ava dreams of more time to do what she wants to do: hang out with friends, take a painting class, volunteer for a political campaign, etc.  Ava and Ena don’t have a lot to do with each other at work because they don’t have a lot in common. Ava thinks Ena is lazy, and Ena thinks Ava is a workaholic.

What I’ve learned from Ena

After almost 40 years of following Ava’s propensity for over-achieving, I’m finally ready to acquire some of Ena’s more self-focused habits.  So I’m looking for some new role models.

• Who do I know that doesn’t work more than 40 hours a week?
• Who do I know who has fun hobbies that are as important to them as their work?
• And who do I know who’s been self-assured enough to set healthy boundaries at work and at home?

People who are super responsible get lots of kudos. If they want people to like them, it’s natural for them to become more and more responsible and less and less happy. It’s not so obvious that the best role models for people who are overly responsible may not be those who are getting multiple medals for their multitude of achievements. It’s probably those who are enjoying their lives, their families and their friends.

So when I see my old high school buddies at our 35^{th (!!!)} reunion this summer, I expect they’ll meet a happier, less responsible me.

Realistic resolutions for a rigid recession: Have a solid Plan B, and maybe a Plan C and Plan D

I’ve been writing resolutions and keeping most of them as long as I can remember. Sometimes they’re short and sweet. Sometimes they’re long and complex. Last year, I actually took the time to do a progress report on my old resolutions before I cranked out the new ones. As I get older, I realize going full speed ahead without looking back to reflect on what worked, what didn’t work and what I (and others in my life) deserve credit for.


My goals for 2009 were pretty simple: sell the house; stick to my fitness plan; and make quantifiable progress on my writing projects. While I made solid progress on goals 2 and 3, goal #1 stubbornly refused to budge despite the down payment we made on a condo downtown, despite our efforts to make our home as appealing as possible, and despite all the great advice from friends who had successfully sold their homes during the past couple years.

When it was clear that our home was not going to sell (at least given the current price, condition and Realtor), I told my young assistant “this is the first goal in almost 20 years that I haven’t been able to achieve.” After a year on the market, when we took the house off the market last May we finally realized we were dealing with an opponent far larger and more implacable than we were.

As I ponder resolutions for 2010, do I dare include “sell the house” again? And what have I learned from my 2009 resolutions beyond some hard real estate realities? My major takeaway is that Plan Bs are key in recessions. I’ve always told my students who are graduating to go for the job of their dreams. Now I tell them to go for the job of their dreams but be willing to accept something less if necessary. And I tell them to get experience in their chosen profession, even if they have to work as an intern for free. I add, “Hang on to your job as a server to pay for your living expenses.”

This tide will turn

2010 is not a year to give up on our dreams. It’s just a year to be a bit more realistic about whether they’ll come true on our timetables. I was in my mid-30s before I got the job of my dreams (working for a daily newspaper in a major media market). Ironically, I found out that my original job of PR consulting was a much better fit for me. So Plan Bs can turn into Plan As. I imagine that is true of Plans C and D as well.
We may not get everything we dream of in 2010, but if we play our cards right and keep our eyes on the big picture, I’m confident we can get closer to our heart’s desire.