… but please join me and continue the conversation about “No Excuses — 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power” and many other topics on the Heartfeldt Blog! 

Today, August 26 is Women’s Equality Day, the day that commemorates passage of the 19th amendment to the US constitution, giving women the right to vote after a struggle that lasted over 70 years. A big deal, right?

Right. But that’s not what all the news was about. In fact, though President Obama issued a proclamation and a few columnists like the New York Times’ Gail Collins gave it a nod, hardly anyone is talking about Women’s Equality Day. At least not in consciousness-saturating ways that garner major media’s attention, as Saturday’s March on Washington commemorating the 50th anniversary of a similar Civil Rights march.

Yet the two anniversaries are rooted in common values about equality and justice for all. They share common adversaries and aspirations. Racism and sexism are joined at the head

And as League of Women Voters president Elisabeth MacNamara’s article in the Huffington Post explains, both movements today share the challenge of maintaining the right to vote, earned with such toil and tears and even bloodshed.

Like many people who participated in the 1960′s Civil Rights Movement, I celebrate how far America has moved toward racial justice in the last 50 ‘years. I am grateful to the Civil Rights movement for calling our nation not just to fulfill its moral promise to African-Americans, but by its example of courage and activism inspiring the second wave women’s movement, the gay rights movement, and so much more.

I remember having an epiphany while volunteering for a multi-racial civil rights organization called the Panel of American Women, that if there were civil rights, then women must have them too. That awareness ignited my passion for women’s equality which has driven my career ever since.

But just as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s galvanizing “I Have a Dream” speech thundered, “Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood,” (emphasis mine) and sisters were not mentioned, women have yet to rise to full equality when it comes to honoring women’s historical accomplishments and current voices.

And just as the commemorative March on Washington was a necessary reminder of how far we have yet to go to reach the full vision of the Civil Rights movement, so Women’s Equality Day is best celebrated by committing ourselves to breaking through the remaining barriers to full leadership parity for women.

Check out Take The Lead‘s two posts on The Movement blog calling attention to the auspicious anniversary.

The first is Susan Weiss Gross’s delightful personal story–the tractor being a perfect metaphor — of how she overcame her internal barriers to equality. The second comes from author and Ms Magazine founding editor Susan Braun Levine. Suzanne will be writing about “Empowerment Entrepreneurs” and how empowering each other is the latest development in women’s equality.

Read, enjoy, and then get to work along with Take The Lead, which I co-founded along Amy Litzenberger early this year,  in our 21st century movement to prepare, develop, inspire, and propel women to take their air and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025.

As the March on Washington twitter hashtag exhorted us to do, “#MarchOn!”

Join us for an exciting interactive webinar Gloria Feldt’s 9 Practical Leadership Power Tools to Advance Your Career led by Gloria Feldt, co-founder of Take The Lead, whose mission is to prepare and propel women to take their fair and equal share of top leadership positions by 2025.  Gloria is a nationally renowned inspirational keynote speaker with frontline leadership experience, and activist for women. Author of No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, Gloria also teaches “Women, Power, and Leadership” at Arizona State University.

Through interviews, historical perspective, and anecdotes, Gloria will examine why barriers to equality still exist in American society.  Feldt employs a no-nonsense, tough-love point of view to expose the internal and external roadblocks holding women back, but she doesn’t place blame; rather, she provides inspirations, hope, and courage – as well as sharing the 9 concrete power tools.

This webinar training is a two part series which has been customized for career-minded women seeking to further understand and embrace a relationship with power as it relates to career advancement.

LESSON I

• Change the paradigm from Power Over vs. Power To
• Embrace a new relationship with power
• Identify barriers to parity for women leaders and how to overcome them
• Introduction to your powerful Personal Action Plan
• Introduction to the 9 Practical Power Tools

LESSON II

• Laser focus on each of the 9 Practical Power Tools with examples
• How to apply the power tools in your own environment
• Finalize your Personal Action Plan to achieve a goal or solve a problem

Date – Lesson I, July 23rd – Lesson II, July 30th

Time – 75 minute duration (60 minutes of content and 15 minutes of Q&A)

4:00 PM – EST
3:00 PM – CST
2:00 PM – MST
1:00 PM – PST and Arizona (Can’t make one or both webinars in real time? If you  are registered, you will receive a link to the recorded webinars afterward.)

You can help women reach leadership parity by forwarding this post to friends and colleagues and by sharing the registration link with your social media networks!

Thank you!

See for yourself, just click on this link…

Friends Eileen and Bill, Alex and me, Jerusalem in background

money to reach its goals, and when in heck I’d get time to deal with those hundreds of e-mails and dozens of pending deadlines I left behind.

As someone who tends to work 24/7, trust me, this was not easy.

I  returned with a smile on my face, feeling a little like that Bobby McFerrin “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” song. But within 24 hours, I was back to my usual multitasking, worrying self.

Oh the power of worry.

Still jet laggy, I was awake and on my iPad at 4am when my friend Gail Blanke’s “Monday Morning Musings” hit my inbox. Gail advises, as the title of her last book says, that the solution to what’s holding us back is to “Throw Out Fifty Things.”

Today, she told this story about her friend Jake, and it moved me. Made me take stock of what I needed to let go of permanently.

 “I know what I’m letting go of,” he said. “Great,” I said, “what is it?” “I’m going to let go of my old conviction that no matter how hard I try or how hard I work, the future will never be as good as the past.”  “Boy,” I said. “that’s a big one. Can you do it?” “Yes,” he said. “How?” I asked. “I’m going to remind myself every single morning when I wake up that I no longer believe that.” Jake went on to explain to us that he was an entrepreneur and that his business was about to go under; that he’d been very happily married  for a long time and had lost is wife a few years earlier. But then he went on to say that he was resolute in his decision to let go of his old, negative conviction. “I guess it’s my ‘life plaque,’” he said. “I know I’ve got to get rid of it.” Well, not surprisingly, that single “letting go decision” changed his life. We’ve been email pals for the last three years so I can tell you exactly what happened: Jake re-imagined, re-tooled and rebuilt his business. It’s actually thriving now. And because he expected good things to happen in all areas of his life they did. He met and fell in love with an absolutely wonderful woman (who’s now also a partner in his “renewed’ business) and they’ve been together for almost two years. Jake’s happy, really happy…for the first time in a decade. And all because of that one decision to “let go….”

Are you worrying about your job, your life/work management, your next career goal?  Maybe, like Gail says,  your best strategy is to let those thoughts go. Just throw them out so you can think anew. Get rid of the power they have to hold you back or keep you mired in that stuck place.

And if one of your desires is to accelerate your career and rejuvenate your leadership skills, please do join me on July 23 and 30 to learn “9 Practical Leadership Power Tools to Accelerate Your Career.” In this two-part webinar series, I promise you’ll get some fresh thinking. Throw out old ideas holding you back and redefine power and leadership on your terms. Create your Personal Action Plan using a tool you’ll be able to take away and reuse whenever it can help you. And leave with a confident smile on your face.

Register here using my special link and you’ll automatically get a 20% discount. I’ll be so happy to see you!

And if you think you don’t have time for that vacation, or to spend a couple of hours benefitting yourself by learning new tips and tools, just remember Jake’s story.  As for me, the work didn’t do itself in my absence, but thanks to Gail’s timely advice, the smile is back. 47, 48, 49….

Yes the Adriatic really looks like this.

A tree grows in Wadi Rum, Jordan

Most of our talk about women’s career advancement seems to focus on elite colleges and high profile professions such as corporate leadership. Yet there are many jobs open to women who want to try less obvious routes to career success.
AAUW has long been a leader in workplace advancement and pay equity for women.

Their recent research into the higher student loan debt burden women experience due to the gender pay gap found that many women – more than 4 million – view community college as their best, and most affordable, option after high school. Here is AAUW’s full hot-off-the-press report on women in community colleges.

Dana Kaplan’s story of how she succeeded in a typically all-male field is a fascinating example of how community colleges can help women change careers or to gain the skills they need to advance in any chosen profession.

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Like a lot of recent graduates, Kaplan had trouble getting work in her chosen field — philosophy — after college. She realized she needed a change when she found herself stuck “9 to 5 in a cubicle. I couldn’t stand it.”Or, if you’re an auto mechanic and 2011–12 AAUW Career Development Grantee Dana Kaplan, try something completely different!

I asked Kaplan how she made the jump from one career to the next. “I always knew I wanted to work with my hands,” she said. For a while she considered going into construction, to which people generally responded, “You’re too smart; you’re too pretty [for a job like that].”

When she ran into car trouble a few years ago, Kaplan decided to learn how to fix it. She enrolled in an auto repair class at Skyline College, a community college in the San Francisco Bay Area. That’s where she met a female automotive training teacher who suggested that Kaplan pursue the three-year program for auto mechanic certification. From there, she says, “I left it up to fate. [I thought] I would just apply, and if I get in I’ll do it, and if I get a job then this is what I’ll do. And I got a job!”

When it came time to pay for the program, Kaplan applied to AAUW for support. The Career Development Grant “helped me continue on my career path and change it. If I hadn’t gotten the grant I wouldn’t have been able to continue to go to school. I was also able to buy tools that I needed for the program.”

Kaplan had no illusions that changing her career path would be easy, particularly as a woman pursuing a traditionally male-dominated field. Despite the challenge, she urges anyone considering nontraditional fields to try. “Go for it. Take the risk. Better to try than to never have tried. Know that it will be work, but it’s worth it. I came in not knowing anything and I had to play catch-up.” Kaplan explained that in her own field and for nontraditional roles in general, “Men are, from [the time they are] kids, tailored to go into it,” and the same is true for men pursuing traditionally female-dominated fields. “So there’s always catch-up. But if you really want it and are willing to work, then it’s an amazing opportunity.”

So Kaplan worked hard, played catch-up, and found a supportive community within the auto department at Skyline. “There have always been a handful of females in the automotive program. … So we thought, Let’s start a club. It became this great idea: make female presence known in the automotive industry.” The club wasHeart Wrenchers, a student organization that runs community service projects, supports women currently in the automotive program, and aims to bring more women into the industry. “They’re still on campus,” Kaplan added.

Kaplan’s story mirrors that of other women who enroll in community college to improve their job skills or to retrain for a new career but who also encounter challenges in pursuing a nontraditional field. This is one of the issues examined in AAUW’s upcoming research report, Women in Community Colleges: Access to Success.

Today, people will occasionally ask whether Kaplan “can do everything the guys can do,” or if she is willing to get her hands dirty. But Kaplan, who now works as a mechanic in San Francisco, feels confident. “It’s a lot of physical effort, but there are a lot of guys that are the same size as me in the industry. So it isn’t a problem. I get positive feedback. People like seeing me in the shop.”

Six California endowments sponsored Dana Kaplan’s grant: San Carlos (CA) Branch 50th Jubilee, Pleasant Hill (CA) Branch, Novato (CA) Branch, Menlo-Atherton (CA) Branch 35th Anniversary, Davis (CA) Branch 20th Anniversary, and Jan Barnhardt/Gladys Betts/San Bruno (CA) Branch Research and Project Grants.

This post was written by AAUW Fellowships and Grants Intern Lauren Byrnes and reprinted here by permission of AAUW.

Consider this your Women’s History Month bonus post. In the heated contemporary debate about whether Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s exhortation to women to Lean In will help women in less elevated positions, Ruth Nemzoff, Resident Scholar at Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center and author of Don’t Roll Your Eyes: Making In-Laws Into Family reminds us that this dispute is hardly new. You could substitute “Sandberg” for “Friedan” in most of Nemzoff’s article. And the takeaway lessons for women remain the same too.

Let’s not waste our time denigrating Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique because it focused only on the problems of affluent women, rather, let us praise her for starting a revolution.

“Makers,” a program on PBS about the effect of her book and the second wave of feminism, demonstrated that these criticisms of Friedan are unwarranted. She started a domino affect. Battered women, blue collar workers, all have benefited from the ideas behind Friedan’s opus. By freeing the wealthy women from hostage in their suburban gilded cages, she ignited the hopes of all women and facilitated many to take action for themselves or on behalf of others.

When I moved to New Hampshire in 1970, I noticed a two-line classified in the local free news sheet. Two factory workers, a mother-in-law and a daughter-in-law, were advertising to begin the first consciousness raising group in Nashua, NH. Soon, a group was formed. The members came from all walks of life—some were well-educated, others were not, some were affluent, and others needed every penny they could earn.

I am one of the affluent women who benefited from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. I ran for the New Hampshire legislature and eventually became its assistant minority leader. I successfully sponsored legislation to give scholarships to displaced homemakers and to open adoption records. Not only can I credit Friedan for inspiring me, but also for giving these women in need the courage to ask me as their legislator to pass laws which would change their circumstances.

Betty Friedan and The Feminine Mystique may have started with women who were well-enough off to remain outside the workplace. But in short order, the ideas had trickled down to those who needed to work to eat. Friedan’s cry for equality was heard beyond the suburbs.

Like so many other revolutions, the initial catalyst started with the more affluent. The Magna Carta granted rights and protections to feudal lords and eventually became, as Lord Denning described it, “the greatest constitutional document of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.”

Like the Magna Carta, Friedan’s work had limited reach, but set off an upheaval which dramatically changed not only the wealthy but the whole society. Other revolutions are started by the more educated—witness India: both Gandhi and Nehru had British university educations.

Instead of the press spending its time arguing over Freidan’s approach, it would serve us all better by continuing her efforts to promote equality for all. Friedan was not obligated to complete the work, let us be grateful that she started and that each and every one of us can continue her revolution.

That’s why women today who create media by producing, writing, and directing are of the utmost importance to creating the future of our choice.

Some women in leading roles on and off screen—like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Lena Dunham, and Shonda Rhimes—use their writing to make women the protagonists of their stories. Their takes on what those roles mean to women and feminism, however, are quite diverse.

In the ’90’s Tina Fey broke ground by becoming the first female head writer on “Saturday Night Live.” Her own writing has led by example. She wrote and played the part of a woman who managed a male-dominated room of writers on “30 Rock.”

Fey has brought the idea of a successful, independent professional woman to a mainstream television audience, even as she worked against the current. Her role in the comedy world has signified a paradigm shift of feminists in entertainment—no longer are employed women on television required to be masked in a cloyingly, sugar-laden “That Girl” sort-of-way.

There are hardly any diamonds and daisies on “30 Rock” when Fey’s character, Liz Lemon, appears at work in a sweatshirt. When we start seeing the positive and negative sides of a particular minority (in this case, women in leadership roles) on television, it’s a sign women as leaders are becoming normalized in society.

Amy Poehler has not only climbed the comedy ladder like her friend and fellow funny lady Tina Fey, but Poehler now also offers her expertise to young girls everywhere via short videos and a dynamic website. Rather than giving generic or gender-stereotyped advice, “Smart Girls at the Party” gives empowering guidance on how to get through those teen years, delivered straight from Poehler’s mouth.

In her ongoing video series, she’s like the cool aunt who knows exactly what to say to our young daughters. Councilwoman Leslie Knope, Poehler’s character in “Parks and Recreation,” even helps girls by creating the Pawnee Goddesses when a boy’s outdoors group keeps out girls.

Shonda Rhimes has led the way by creating multi-faceted female characters in her wildly successful shows (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scandal,” and “Private Practice” to name a few) who do not fit the status quo. She’s championed the integration of black and LGBTQ characters into mainstream media, and has produced leading ladies that defy typecasting.

Many of the women Rhimes writes in are strong and independent. Her newest series “Scandal” has recently made history by introducing the first black woman lead in a prime time network television drama in over 30 years.

Then there is Lena Dunham, both praised and castigated for her writing and executive producing of “Girls” on HBO. And her acting—has she appeared nude having sex with a jerk in every show? The name of the show might be ironic or maybe it’s retro or maybe it’s just plain fun. Whatever, “Girls” definitely has been criticized for having little diversity.

For someone whose character champions Planned Parenthood, Dunham shows an oddly large number of characters having unsafe sex. Is her character Hannah what what feminist have fought for? I shake my head and leave you to decide whether this is liberation or a new version of oppressive sexism.

These four women represent some of the many ways feminists are taking hold and reshaping the entertainment industry. For girls and young women today, seeing a diverse range of women’s roles portrayed in mainstream media can only help empower them to live by the late playwright Nora Ephron’s advice to the 1996 Wellesley graduating class:

“Always be the heroine of your life, not the victim. Because you don’t have the alibi my class had.”

This distinguished Harvard Business School professor’s influential theories about change in the workforce have permeated much of the thinking about organizational change. And unlike the men writing and teaching about it, Kanter infused her work with a lens on one of the biggest workplace changes of the 20th century: women breaking through workplace glass ceilings.

Kanter, former editor of Harvard Business Review and author of 18 books, has been named one of the “50 most powerful women in the world” by the Times of London, and the “50 most influential business thinkers in the world” by Accenture and Thinkers 50 research.

Her groundbreaking book Men and Women of the Corporation—I mean, who had ever mentioned “women” and “corporations” in the same book title?—remains a classic analysis of power distribution within organizations.

Kanter told the hard truth about women in the workforce, after conducting a five-year study on the American manufacturing company. She explained how women were tokenized to work in clerical jobs rather than management; and how even though there were plenty of women in large organizations, they rarely ran the show. She observed that the first women breaking through to leadership roles were still tokens in a male dominated workforce.

In 1979, she wrote:

The upper-level women became public creatures. It was difficult for them to do anything in training programs, on their jobs, or even at informal social affairs that would not attract public notice.

This created self-perpetuating cycles of gender imbalance. She argued that this cycle negatively affected men, too.

Are her theories that different from the questions that still permeate the public debates over women in the workplace today?

Think about how frequently the Sheryl Sandbergs  and Marissa Mayers of the world are bombarded with questions about motherhood and work/family balance, rather than being asked about their work tasks or their companies.

Why are we so fascinated by the head of Yahoo!’s family life, but we know nothing and ask nothing except the net worth of Google’s CEO Larry Page?

Opines Kanter in the Harvard Business Review blog, “You can have it all. It just won’t all be perfect.”

Thirty-five years since Kanter’s first book was published, women have yet to reach parity in corporate leadership positions. Women’s leadership roles rose to 20 percent, and then plateaued. Studies have shown that in order for people to see a boss rather than a gender, and to create a significant culture shift, women must make up 30 to 40 percent of the workforce leadership.

For that to happen, female leaders will have to make their own history: to lend a hand and pull other women along with them up the ladder—or through the jungle gym as Sandberg describes the typical career trajectory.

Still making history today, Kanter believes that remaking the workplace so women will want to stay in the game and seek leadership positions is the new frontier. Sounds like a plan to me.

The Congressional delegation from New Hampshire are the exception to that 20% barrier. Last November, two women won Congressional seats, joining the two women who already held New Hampshire’s two Senate seats. To top it all off, the state’s governor, speaker of the State House, and chief justice of the State Supreme Court are all women as well.

These women have made history by making New Hampshire the first state with an all-female Congressional delegation.

The senators include Jeanne Shaheen (D) and Kelly Ayotte (R). The new Representatives are Carol Shea-Porter (D) and Ann McLand Kuster (D). Let’s not forget about Gov. Maggie Hassan (D), the only female Democratic governor in 2013, state speaker Terie Norelli (D) and State Chief Justice Linda Stewart Dalianis.

While this should be celebrated as a historic win for women and women’s rights, the beliefs of these women are diverse, to say the least. On one hand, there’s Carol Shea-Porter, who stands with EMILY’s List and the National Women’s Political Caucus, among other feminist organizations. And then there’s Kelly Ayotte, who as her state’s attorney general vigorously defended anti-abortion legislation and consistently votes against reproductive rights and even such gender equality economic measures as the Paycheck Fairness Act .

The victory for womankind of having a totally female delegation for the first time, though one for the history books, is dampened by this lack of solidarity within the delegation. Sure, they represent their diverse interests, but some do not serve the interests of the majority of women in New Hampshire who do support reproductive and economic justice measures.
It’s ironic but not so surprising that women would dominate elections only when they’re getting paid significantly less than male counterparts in other states.

Why were so many women chosen to be a part of the 2013 delegation? Hillary Reinsberg tells Buzzfeed:

“In a state with an abnormally large, unpaid legislature, the ground-level civic engagement that has always been the province of stay-at-home-moms — school boards, letter-writing campaigns — becomes the work of low-rent state legislators. These positions carry less of the fanfare or pay that come with legislatures in almost any other state. But they do something else: They offer a path past a glass ceiling that, in other states, can block women with similar career paths from running for Congress from their perches on, say, school boards or community groups.”

However unfortunate the pay is (N.H. legislators earn $100 per year), perhaps New Hampshire’s methodology for state elections does have that one benefit for gender equality. Still, it’s a reminder of how many women have yet to make it to Washington. Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, and Vermont have never sent a woman to the House or the Senate.

There is much women’s history yet to be made.