Blog

My work in the common good and political advocacy sectors are defined by the women who brought me up in the world. My impatience stems from seeing the slow pace of change for gender norms in the home where I grew up. My career was unfathomable as a naive Missouri farm girl. Then I met Mindy. She was a pay-it-forward manager and chief of staff who hired me as an intern and wouldn't let me go. She coached and navigated me around every career pivot and barrier. Networks are a constellation of mentors, pipelines, alma maters - professional and personal associations. Often these networks are implicit. They expand the obstacles that divide those who were born into the norms of public service and those of us who stumble upon public service after strife and righteous indignation call us to change the world.
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As a woman in corporate America, I’ve been both personally and professionally invested in the question of female representation in board rooms. The level of dialogue on this critical issue has never been higher.  However, has there been enough action taken? Where are we on the journey from awareness to diagnosis to formulation to action to a resolution?
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The USA World Cup win has put the need for fair pay policies back into discussion. Of course, the usual arguments against this concept are also in play, with the idea that pay differentials are tied to differing commercial values between men’s and women’s sports and that there are different pay structures for performing different work. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. Women’s National Team will be successful in their gender discrimination suit against the U.S. Soccer Federation.
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We’ve all witnessed it – state after state restricts access to birth control and abortion, and undermine other hard-won and rightful reproductive freedoms. Much of the South and some Midwestern states are implementing draconian policies without consideration for the impact on women’s health or self-determination. A few, mostly coastal or traditionally more progressive states, are opting instead to legislate proactively to protect these rights. Here in Rhode Island, we're fighting hard to enshrine the current level of access to abortion, one already not sufficiently inclusive.
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April 2 is “Equal Pay Day” and represents how far into the year U.S. women must work to earn what men earned in the previous year. It’s important to note that the date differs when we segment by ethnicity. Black women’s equal pay day is August 22 and for Latina women, it is Nov. 20.Studies done by the Association of American University Women and the National Bureau of Economic Research, while recognizing that some of the wage gap is due to occupational segregation and family care choices, also
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Moving Women from the End of the Chapter: The Continuing Challenges of Women’s History Emily J. Sack -- WFRI Board MemberAs a history graduate student in the early 1980s, I met with an archivist at the French National Archives to discuss my proposed research project, which related to women during the French Revolution. The archivist regretfully explained to me that in the archival cataloguing system for that time period, there was no entry for women. In order to find materials on my subject, I
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When the #MeToo movement exploded last year, I think nearly every woman could think of their own personal #MeToo story to share, big or small. Recently, I listened to an episode of the On Being podcast where Krista Tipett interviewed Rebecca Traister and Avi Klein about the #MeToo movement through a solutions lens (https://onbeing.org/programs/rebecca-traister-and-avi-klein-metoo-through-a-solutions-lens-dec2018/).A few things that stood out to me while I was listening were the fact that the
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I will be honest. I pondered whether I would watch the “State of the Union”. I knew I would cringe at the hateful rhetoric about immigrant communities and roll my eyes at claims that the current administration’s policies are making our country great in spite of the fact that they have pushed policies to deny health coverage for reproductive health care, roll back protections for transgender people, and block the availability of federal funds for family planning providers. But feeling the need to
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Many of us, especially women, are still “riding the high” of the recent midterm election, in which women candidates showed up like never before to run for governor, U.S. House seats, and U.S. Senate seats. We also saw some individual victories – like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, youngest woman elected to Congress, who many of us have been watching intently since she first made a splash on the national stage.Rhode Island saw victories for women, and progress toward equality, too. Women increased
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Like many noble causes, we often designate an annual day or month of observation for national attention and awareness, and October was National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Symbolized by the purple ribbon, last month’s opportunity to reflect on the impact of domestic violence in our community and state is nothing to take lightly as more than 20,000 phone calls are placed to domestic violence hotlines across the nation on a daily basis (2013 census data presented by National Coalition
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