equality

Home/Tag:equality

Catch & Release—Ready to Launch!

By |2017-07-10T09:42:33-05:00July 6th, 2017|Blog|

MM-BlogHeader-July17-2

Want to understand the heart of Girl Authentic and how together we can bring about a new work equilibrium? Read on.

I have always wanted Girl Authentic to serve three purposes:

  1. Talk to women about building their own businesses and building a different model for all of us to work in
  2. Help women shape their business ideas and approach
  3. Invest in women-led business development

Today I get to share how, for the first time, Girl Authentic has provided support in all three ways.

I am thrilled to announce the launch of Catch & Release, created by Jennifer Cook. Jennifer took an idea she’s had for a long time, believed in it, and believed in herself enough to make it a reality.

Are you wondering what her idea was? Jennifer is an outdoor enthusiast. Her activities mostly revolve around fishing, boating, and camping, as well as other outdoor activities she and her kids do. From this love, she decided to create a way for outdoor enthusiasts to exchange their equipment and accessories directly – thus, Catch & Release.

I am so proud of Jennifer. She never gave up—she just kept quietly working on her idea, continued working her “day job,” found support where she needed it, and made it happen.

I know this is just the beginning of a very exciting venture for Jennifer and the community that will begin to take shape as they buy and sell their equipment and accessories through her business. Look for Catch & Release to become THE place to find the best equipment available.

JC-image1

I also have a purely selfish reason to be excited, too, since Catch & Release represents the first time Girl Authentic has provided the comprehensive support I noted above. It’s what I have always hoped Girl Authentic would become in the long term—much sooner than I ever thought I would have the opportunity.

Jennifer told me how supportive and helpful she found the GA blogs—and then she shared her idea. I knew right way she was going to make this a success. Her passion made it feel right. She used words like love and committed and community and confident. I am proud to be a part of Jennifer’s story and will be supporting her in her continued success.

So…here she is—almost a year after she first started working on Catch & Release to launch a new way for outdoor enthusiasts to create a marketplace exclusively for their needs. Please join us. If you have a need to sell something or want to try something new using top equipment without plunking down top dollar, 1) download the app, 2) put your wares up for sale or search for what you want, and 3) tell your friends. The app will let you buy and sell directly with easy payment options so you don’t have to figure out how to get paid or pay someone else.

Jennifer envisioned her dream and then put in the hard work to make it reality. Catch & Release is the real deal, and Girl Authentic is happy to support another business building work equilibrium!

 

What the world needs now is more wealthy women

By |2015-05-19T14:43:14-05:00March 13th, 2015|Blog|

BlogHeader_March15Email

What do Silicon Valley, the Catholic Church and the nation of Germany all have in common? If the articles I’m reading lately are any guide, the answer is an under-representation of women in leadership.

Germany has taken the strongest action this month, actually passing a law a few weeks ago requiring its major firms to allot at least 30% of the seats on non-executive boards to women. The same can’t be said about Silicon Valley, where a recent gender discrimination lawsuit is shining a light on a longstanding tradition of VC firms not including women in leadership (or funding them, for that matter). Meanwhile, the Catholic Church – despite some nice commentary from the Pope – may be the most entrenched organization of all. It’s unlikely to change its stance on women in leadership for centuries.

This matters. We need more visible women in leadership – because balance at work begets balance in life.

We will all experience more balance in our families, our social structures, our communities, our businesses when we first learn as individuals to value a balance of the masculine and feminine. We’ll learn that individual balance when we value and include women in every pursuit.

And we’ll value women more, when they have more wealth.

You read that right! Women having wealth is good for all of us. It changes social structures for the better. Women having wealth changes…

  • How our families operate
  • How we spend money
  • How our children are educated
  • Our business policies
  • Our political policies and approaches

There is a lot of resistance to change in most of our current corporate and political (and family and social) structures. More and more women are attaining leadership at Fortune 500 companies, for example – but the pace is far too slow. At our current rate of progress, we’ll reach parity – 250 female CEOs at Fortune 500 companies – in 411 years. I’m not that patient.

Putting more wealth in the hands of women brings the change we want. So how do we have women have wealth quickly?

  • Encourage them to start businesses – the willingness to trade creates prosperity
  • Encourage these businesses to focus on the long-term and the greater good
  • Encourage these businesses to seek a balance of the masculine and feminine – these will look, feel, and operate differently from what many of us know today
  • Match these business ideas with funding – from other women

Am I saying that wealth is the only way we can measure whether women are valued?  No. But it is a wonderful leveler of the playing field. Money knows no gender – some peoples’ money even has pictures of women on it.  Imagine that.

It Was the First Time There Was a Line

By |2015-05-19T14:41:51-05:00October 12th, 2014|Blog, Women and the Workplace|

BlogHeader_Oct14Email

I was going to have to wait in line to use the restroom. And I couldn’t have been happier.

I’ve been attending my profession’s annual global conference since I was a junior in college in 1987 (I’ll let you do the math). There was often a line for the men’s room, but never for the women’s room. It was, we used to joke, one of the perks of attending our profession’s conference as a woman. You could get into the bathroom any time, no waiting. There just weren’t that many women in our industry.

And then, this year, it was different. I walked in to the restroom – and there was a line!  I was a bit taken aback. I had been so used to attending the conference, and there never being a line. Another woman and I just stood there looking at each other, realizing we were sharing the same thought.

This was terrific!

That moment, we knew, represented a turning point. It’s something I am proud of the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) for helping to make happen in our field. And it didn’t happen by mistake.

I was lucky – I was part of the first wave of women who benefited from my profession’s efforts to create opportunities for women. And it did take specific efforts! Over the years, CSCMP has worked tirelessly to help advance women in our profession. So have many great companies. So have the terrific universities and professors that are educating the next generation of Supply Chain Management professionals.

What did they do? They started by having the right conversations and asking the right questions. What can we do? How do we attract more women? How do we support them? They do research to show whether women truly are advancing in the field, and they actively seek out women to interest them in their profession, their university programs, their companies, and the terrific jobs this field provides.

Contrast this with the International Manufacturing and Technology Show I attended with one of my business partners a few weeks earlier in Chicago. There were more than 113,000 attendees at the conference. But twice during the four days we were there, I found I was the ONLY person in the women’s restroom. (It was sort of spooky, really.)

Two professions – very different gender balance.

There is tremendous opportunity today for women – in both supply chain management and in manufacturing technologies. We may have made more progress in supply chain management today, but we can do the same in manufacturing tomorrow. We’ll do it the way we do anything in the professional world. We’ll work at it. We’ll make an effort.  And, women can lead the way by building these companies of the future.

I can’t wait to wait in more lines.

 

 

We See What We See

By |2015-05-19T14:48:12-05:00November 12th, 2013|Blog|

BlogHeader_Nov13Email

Look at the Girl Authentic logo above. What is it?

We see what we see. Until last week, every person I asked told me they saw a man’s tie first. That’s what I saw first, too. Moments later, I also saw a woman’s dress.

Some people never see the dress until I point it out. Did you?

We see what we see. We are conditioned to see a certain way – by our media, by our historical structures, by our societal structures. If most of us see a tie first, I believe that indicates something specific about our cultural norms. We see what we see every day. We see what we are told. We see what, historically, we are used to seeing. It’s what we are conditioned to see.

Guess what? Conditioning can change.

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the historically high rates of young girls enrolling in forensic science programs at school. It’s being attributed to the strong, powerful, female roles in various forensic science programs like “CSI”, “Bones” and “Crossing Jordan.” We see it in art and media – then we see it in real life.

See Jane, the programming arm of the Geena Davis Institute, has done the research to show what we actually see in the media. The numbers are not particularly stellar – the percentage of women shown in professional roles in television and film is disproportionately low. But it’s creating a deeper discussion about having more television shows and movies that portray women as computer scientists, engineers, and in other professional roles we don’t see a lot of yet. A change in what we see on the screen could mean a change in what we see in real life.  The art often comes first.

I’m ready to see that. Are you?

 

Go to Top