Congratulations! You have signed up for the Fitness Challenge 2009 at the Love...Yourself event and are ready to be in great physical shape.
Come to this site regularly and post your successes, chat with others who are taking the challenge and get inspired and motivated all over again!
On the right side, you will see there is a Fitness tip of the day - check it out, there will be some great tips in there.
Good luck!
Pauline Field
Friday, February 6, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Centered leadership-McKinsey 2008
Re-defining Leadership
Centered leadership: How talented women thrive
A new approach to leadership can help women become more self-confident and effective business leaders.
September 2008 • Joanna Barsh, Susie Cranston, And Rebecca A. Craske
Women start careers in business and other professions with the same level of intelligence, education, and commitment as men. Yet comparatively few reach the top echelons.
This gap matters not only because the familiar glass ceiling is unfair, but also because the world has an increasingly urgent need for more leaders. All men and women with the brains, the desire, and the perseverance to lead should be encouraged to fulfill their potential and leave their mark.
With all this in mind, the McKinsey Leadership Project—an initiative to help professional women at McKinsey and elsewhere—set out four years ago to learn what drives and sustains successful female leaders. We wanted to help younger women navigate the paths to leadership and, at the same time, to learn how organizations could get the best out of this talented group.
To that end, we have interviewed more than 85 women around the world (and a few good men) who are successful in diverse fields. Some lead 10,000 people or more, others 5 or even fewer. While the specifics of their lives vary, each one shares the goal of making a difference in the wider world. All were willing to discuss their personal experiences and to provide insights into what it takes to stay the leadership course. We have also studied the academic literature; consulted experts in leadership, psychology, organizational behavior, and biology; and sifted through the experiences of hundreds of colleagues at McKinsey.
From the interviews and other research, we have distilled a leadership model comprising five broad and interrelated dimensions (exhibit):meaning, or finding your strengths and putting them to work in the service of an inspiring purpose; managing energy, or knowing where your energy comes from, where it goes, and what you can do to manage it; positive framing, or adopting a more constructive way to view your world, expand your horizons, and gain the resilience to move ahead even when bad things happen; connecting, or identifying who can help you grow, building stronger relationships, and increasing your sense of belonging; andengaging, or finding your voice, becoming self-reliant and confident by accepting opportunities and the inherent risks they bring, and collaborating with others.
We call this model centered leadership. As the name implies, it’s about having a well of physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual strength that drives personal achievement and, in turn, inspires others to follow. What’s particularly exciting is that we are starting to discover ways women can actively build the skills to become more self-confident and effective leaders. Centered leadership also works for men, though we have found that the model resonates particularly well with women because we have built it on a foundation of research into their specific needs and experiences.
Centered leadership emphasizes the role of positive emotions. A few characteristics particularly distinguish women from their male counterparts in the workplace. First, women can more often opt out of it than men can. Second, their double burden—motherhood and management—drains energy in a particularly challenging way. Third, they tend to experience emotional ups and downs more often and more intensely than most men do. Given these potentially negative emotions, centered leadership consciously draws on positive psychology, a discipline that seeks to identify what makes healthy people thrive. Although none of the women we interviewed articulated her ideas in precisely those terms, when we dived into the literature and interviewed leading academics, we found strong echoes of what our female leaders had been telling us.
Meaning
‘To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?’
Meaning is the motivation that moves us. It enables people to discover what interests them and to push themselves to the limit. It makes the heart beat faster, provides energy, and inspires passion. Without meaning, work is a slog between weekends. With meaning, any job can become a calling.
It starts with happiness. Positive psychologists (including Tal Ben-Shahar, Jonathan Haidt, and Martin Seligman) have defined a progression of happiness that leads from pleasure to engagement to meaning. Researchers have demonstrated, for example, that an ice cream break provides only short-lived pleasure; in contrast, the satisfaction derived from an act of kindness or gratitude lasts much longer. Katharine Graham, the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 enterprise (the Washington Post Company), famously said, “To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?”
Why is meaning important for leaders? Studies have shown that among professionals, it translates into greater job satisfaction, higher productivity, lower turnover, and increased loyalty.1 The benefits also include feelings of transcendence—in other words, contributing to something bigger than yourself generates a deeper sense of meaning, thereby creating a virtuous cycle. Finding meaning in life helped some of the women leaders we interviewed take new paths and accept the personal risks implicit in their goals.
Shelly Lazarus, the chairman and CEO of the advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, described how she “just followed [her] heart, doing the things that [she] loved to do.” This sense of meaning inspired her, early in her career, to jump from Clairol to Ogilvy. Lazarus commented that everyone she knew thought that her decision to go from the client side to the agency side was a strategic move. But “it wasn’t really like that,” she says. “I just loved the interaction with the agency because that was the moment I could see where the ideas came to life.”
People seeking to define what is meaningful can start, as one interviewee put it, by “being honest with yourself about what you’re good at and what you enjoy doing.” Building these signature strengths into everyday activities at work makes you happier, in part by making these activities more meaningful. Although there is no simple formula for matching your strengths to any single industry or function, you can look for patterns in jobs that have and haven’t worked out and talk with others about your experiences.
The connection between signature strengths and work can change because priorities do; sometimes, for example, a job is better than a calling, especially for young mothers. Our interviews show that this ebb and flow is natural and that the key to success is being aware of the shifts—and making conscious choices about them—in the context of bigger goals, personal or professional.
To read more on meaning:
Tal Ben-Shahar, Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment,
Martin E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment,
Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want,
Managing energy
‘Flow’—a sense of being so engaged by activities that you don’t notice the passage of time Actively managing energy levels is crucial to leaders. Today’s executives work hard: 60 percent of the senior executives toil more than 50 hours a week, and 10 percent more than 80 hours a week.2 What’s more, many women come home from work only to sign onto a “second shift”—92 percent of them still manage all household tasks, such as meal preparation and child care.3
We’ve found that work–life balance is a myth—so the only hope women have is to balance their energy flows. This means basing your priorities on the activities that energize you, both at work and at home, and actively managing your resources to avoid dipping into reserves. Burnout is a reality for men and women alike, but for women who can opt out, so too is throwing in the towel.
But work doesn’t have to be exhausting. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, a founder of positive psychology, studied thousands of people, from sculptors to factory workers. He found that those who frequently experienced what he called “flow”—a sense of being so engaged by activities that you don’t notice the passage of time—were more productive and derived greater satisfaction from their work than those who did not. Further, it energized rather than drained them.
Zia Mody, a top litigator inIndia, described how she gained energy from a life that most people would see as exhausting. Even when her three daughters were young, she put in 16-hour days to prepare her cases. A woman among thousands of men at court, she lit up as she told us, “I love it! I love winning. I love being in court. . . . It excites me—I cannot tell you how much.”
One useful tactic is to identify the conditions and situations that replenish your energy and those that sap it. Self-awareness lets you deliberately incorporate restorative elements into your day. It can also help you to space out your energy-sapping tasks throughout the day, instead of bundling them all into a single morning or afternoon. A particularly useful tip, we have found, is to give yourself time during the day to focus without distractions such as blinking lights and buzzing phones. Your productivity will benefit several times over.
To read more on managing energy:
Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience,
Edy Greenblatt, “Work/Life Balance: Wisdom or Whining,”Organizational Dynamics, 2002, Volume 31, Number 2, pp. 177–93.
Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal,
Positive framing
No matter how pessimistic you are by nature, you can learn to view situations as optimists do
The frames people use to view the world and process experiences can make a critical difference to professional outcomes. Many studies suggest that optimists see life more realistically than pessimists do, a frame of mind that can be crucial to making the right business decisions. That insight may be particularly critical for women, who are twice as likely to become depressed, according to one study.4Optimists, research shows, are not afraid to frame the world as it actually is—they are confident that they can manage its challenges and move their teams quickly to action. By contrast, pessimists are more likely to feel helpless and to get stuck in downward spirals that lead to energy-depleting rumination.
Martin Seligman, a psychologist who was an early proponent of positive psychology, found, for example, that optimists are better able to deal with the news that they have cancer. Confident that they can handle the prognosis, they immediately start to gather facts and dive into treatment plans; pessimists, on the other hand, become paralyzed with fear. Seligman also shows that optimism can be learned—an important insight that underlies positive framing.
Positive framing and positive thinking, we would emphasize, are two different notions. The latter tries to replace adversity with positive beliefs. The former accepts the facts of adversity and counters them with action. Talking yourself into a view contrary to the facts has a temporary effect at best.
The experience of Andrea Jung, the chairman and CEO of
No matter how pessimistic you are by nature, you can learn to view situations as optimists do. The key is self-awareness. If a meeting goes badly, for example, you should limit your thoughts about it to its temporary and specific impact and keep them impersonal. It helps to talk with trusted colleagues about the reasons for the poor meeting and ways to do better next time. These discussions should take place quickly enough for you to make a specific plan and act on it. You should also undertake some activity that will restore both your energy and your faith in yourself—perhaps having a hard workout, going out with friends, or spending time with your children.
To read more on positive framing:
Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom,
Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind and Your Life,
Connecting
‘We were supporting each other, and there was power in the many’
People with strong networks and good mentors enjoy more promotions, higher pay, and greater career satisfaction.5 They feel a sense of belonging, which makes their lives meaningful. As Mark Hunter and Herminia Ibarra have noted in the Harvard Business Review, what differentiates a leader from a manager “is the ability to figure out where to go and to enlist the people and groups necessary to get there.”6 Yet not all networks are equal. Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist who studies social belonging and rejection, believes that men tend to build broader, shallower networks than women do and that the networks of men give them a wider range of resources for gaining knowledge and professional opportunities.7 This theory is a matter of substantial debate among academics. Our experience with hundreds of women at McKinsey, however, offers additional evidence that women’s networks tend to be narrower but deeper than men’s.
The experience of Dame Stella Rimington, who in the late 1960s joined MI5, theUK’s domestic intelligence organization, offers an example of the power of broad networks to get things done. Rimington, later the agency’s director general, says that “women were definitely second-class citizens” in those days. They weren’t allowed to do fieldwork, for example, yet “many of the women were completely indistinguishable from the men: they had the same kind of education.”
She continues: “So we women—there were quite a few of us by then—we sort of ganged up and did a kind of round-robin thing and said, ‘Why is it that we have a completely different career than men who are exactly like us?’ And for the first time, the powers that be started to scratch their heads because they suddenly had to find an answer. . . . And in the end, of course, they decided that they would have to promote a few women.” She later concluded that “no one of us would have asked that question on her own. We were supporting each other, and there was power in the many.”
The leaders we interviewed also talked about the importance of having individual relationships with senior colleagues willing to go beyond the role of mentor—someone willing to stick out his or her own neck to create opportunity for or help a protégée. Such a person is what Ruth Porat, a vice chairwoman at Morgan Stanley, called a “sponsor.”
A number of studies have shown that women who promote their own interests vigorously are seen as aggressive, uncooperative, and selfish. An equal number of studies show that the failure of women to promote their own interests results in a lack of female leaders. Until one of these conditions changes, sponsors, we believe, are the key to helping women gain access to opportunities they merit and need to develop.
Porat explained how a managing director took a chance on her when she was a second-year associate, asking her to present to a client’s board of directors. “The consumer client wanted a woman to be present. I had never been in a boardroom, let alone presented in a boardroom. ‘Sink or swim,’ he told me. ‘You’re in.’ I still remember to this day a mistake I made and that it was, overall, a good presentation. He took a real chance on me.”
One surprising thing we learned as a result of talking with female leaders was that they often fail to reciprocate and find expectations that they should do so distasteful. A senior partner at McKinsey noted that men naturally understand that you must “give before you get,” but women don’t. This tendency—which other leaders have described to us as well—combined with the sometimes awkward sexual politics, real or perceived, between senior men and younger women, makes it harder for women to find sponsors.
Yet women can learn reciprocity. To start, it’s important to assess your comfort level with the people you know through work, as well as how influential they are professionally. Most women we’ve worked with typically find that the colleagues they are close to are not influential—and vice versa. Explicit planning and some risk taking are needed to change this.
One approach is to provide and ask for help on a regular basis. Finding ways to forge connections through interests outside of work is another. Over and over, we heard, “Make it personal,” in the sense that others will get along with you more easily if they see your human side. You can express this in all kinds of ways at work, without inappropriately blending your professional and personal lives. The female leaders we interviewed acted on this insight both to find sponsors and to build networks.
To read more on connecting:
Catalyst, Creating Women’s Networks: A How-To Guide for Women and Companies,
Monica Higgins and Kathy Kram, “Reconceptualizing Mentoring at Work: A Developmental Network Perspective,” Academy ofManagementReview, 2001, Volume 26, Number 2, pp. 264–68.
Lois J. Zachary, The Mentor’s Guide: Facilitating Effective Learning Relationships,
Engaging
‘You did the work, so you’ve got to talk about it’
Many people think that hard work will eventually be noticed and rewarded. That can indeed happen—but usually doesn’t. Women, our interviewees repeatedly told us, need to “create their own luck.” To engage with opportunities by taking ownership of them, you must first find your own voice, literally. Julie Daum, a prominent Spencer Stuart recruiter who specializes in board placements, told us that even senior women on boards still lose out by not speaking up: they hang back if they think that they have nothing new to say or that their ideas fall short of profound.
One senior woman we interviewed told us how she learned to join in: “Every Monday, we had a senior-management meeting. In the beginning, I just listened. I learned from the guys because they were all there. And after a while I started to speak up. You did the work, so you’ve got to talk about it. And I did.”
Women who want to grow as leaders should also take ownership of their professional development. Mary Ma, Lenovo’s former chief financial officer, said that she drew inspiration from using the Japanese auto industry as a metaphor, reshaping herself to become more competitive by identifying what she had to change and then actually changing it. As Ma noted, she didn’t complain to her boss or to her colleagues but rather looked inward to see how she could be a more effective leader. Instead of waiting for someone to tell her what to do, she took a systematic approach to self-improvement.
Engagement is equally about risk taking. The women we interviewed accept risk as a part of opportunity. Some have the confidence and courage to dive in; others use analytic problem solving to assess risks and then proceed to action. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert says his research indicates that people who make a choice for risk and work with it, rather than avoid it, report a greater degree of happiness than others do.
Shona Brown, Google’s senior vice president of business operations, described how she handles opportunities and the risks that accompany them. “I’ll use a skiing analogy because I like to jump off cliffs,” she says. “But I generally jump off cliffs from which I’m relatively confident I’m going to land—or if I don’t, it’s not dangerous.” Brown said she enjoys risk. “I like to be at that point where you’re about to jump. Your stomach is kind of going ‘woo’! It’s not so simple that you’re sure you’ll succeed. But you’re not in a life-threatening situation.”
Our interviews have shown us that to embrace opportunity, people must often take sharp detours and that the risks of unexpected changes commonly seem more obvious than the benefits. Reaching out to others—not to avoid making decisions yourself but to learn the best outcome from change can often help you see opportunities in the right frame and decide whether to go for them.
To read more on engaging:
Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling On Happiness,
Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation—and Positive Strategies for Change,
Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life,
Within McKinsey and in the corporate world, our work on centered leadership continues (see sidebar, “Initial results”). To understand how men and women practice it across tenures, industries, and regions, we are interviewing more female and male leaders and launching large-scale surveys—again, with female and male respondents.
Our research is exploring the hypothesis that today’s leaders can become even more effective through the model of centered leadership: a shared purpose with deep meaning for the people involved, explicit awareness and management of energy, positive framing, strong informal and formal networks, and the collaborative creation of opportunities. In time, we hope to help increase the number of female leaders significantly by giving them the tools to build leadership skills for any playing field.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Women's Rights are Human Rights...
Joe Bertani, a member of the Board of the United Nations Association of Pasadena sent us the following, chilling notice. Given the fundamentalist Islamic stand on women, this is particularly frightening:
Center for Inquiry Defends Freedom of Expression at the U.N. Human Rights Council
New Report Critiques Movement at United Nations that would Prohibit "Defamation of Religions"
United Nations, Geneva (September 17, 2008)—As a coalition of Islamic states leads a movement to restrict freedom of expression that "defames" religion, the Center for Inquiry is speaking at the Ninth Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva to defend liberty to doubt, dissent, and blaspheme. At a September 17 briefing at the Council, CFI released a new position paper, which critiques an effort led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to undermine the universality of human rights.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), an umbrella organization of 57 Islamic states, has appropriated the traditions of Islam and Islamic law to contend that so-called "Western" conceptions of universal rights do not apply to their citizens. This effort has penetrated even the Human Rights Council (HRC), the United Nations body charged with defending universal rights.
In place of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, members of the OIC have adopted rival declarations, including the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. Despite official claims that they are "complementary," both undermine equality of persons and freedom of expression and religion by imposing restrictions on nearly every human right based on Islamic Sharia law.
In the HRC, a March 2008 resolution assigned the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression with the task of reporting abuses of free speech that offend religious belief. Non-governmental organizations have been silenced. Meanwhile, the General Assembly has passed yearly resolutions combating "the defamation of religions" and "Islamophobia." However, believers are already protected from dangerous incitement by existing human rights instruments. The new proposals seek nothing less than a blasphemy prohibition to protect belief itself.
"Rights belong to individuals, not ideas," states the Center for Inquiry report, titled "Islam and Human Rights: Defending Universality at the United Nations." It describes the efforts by the OIC and its political allies seek to create a parallel system of human rights, and how some UN agencies are considering the integration of "defamation of religions" into international human rights law. Such an outcome would be "legally indefensible, morally objectionable, and politically disastrous," according to the report.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
· Permit free discussion of religious matters at the HRC. When states use religion or culture as a justification for either human rights resolutions or transgressions, they must not be granted immunity from criticism, regardless of the sensitivities or cultural particularities involved.
· Restore the original mandate of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. The proper limits to free expression and threats to religious liberty are addressed by existing instruments. An official who protects free speech cannot simultaneously limit it.
· Reject the concept of "the defamation of religions." Believers deserve protection. Beliefs do not. Member states must move to stop these resolutions by the General Assembly and prevent the legal entrenchment of the concept of "defamation of religions."
· Clarify the status of Islamic human rights. HRC members and UN member states generally must voice their concerns about the "Islamization" of rights discourse, and its consistency with universal standards.
On Friday, September 19, representatives of the Center for Inquiry will address the Human Rights Council main session on the topic of the defamation of religions. Past interventions by non-governmental organizations in favor of secularism have been interrupted by representatives of the OIC.
Center for Inquiry Defends Freedom of Expression at the U.N. Human Rights Council
New Report Critiques Movement at United Nations that would Prohibit "Defamation of Religions"
United Nations, Geneva (September 17, 2008)—As a coalition of Islamic states leads a movement to restrict freedom of expression that "defames" religion, the Center for Inquiry is speaking at the Ninth Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva to defend liberty to doubt, dissent, and blaspheme. At a September 17 briefing at the Council, CFI released a new position paper, which critiques an effort led by the Organization of the Islamic Conference to undermine the universality of human rights.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), an umbrella organization of 57 Islamic states, has appropriated the traditions of Islam and Islamic law to contend that so-called "Western" conceptions of universal rights do not apply to their citizens. This effort has penetrated even the Human Rights Council (HRC), the United Nations body charged with defending universal rights.
In place of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, members of the OIC have adopted rival declarations, including the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, and the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. Despite official claims that they are "complementary," both undermine equality of persons and freedom of expression and religion by imposing restrictions on nearly every human right based on Islamic Sharia law.
In the HRC, a March 2008 resolution assigned the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression with the task of reporting abuses of free speech that offend religious belief. Non-governmental organizations have been silenced. Meanwhile, the General Assembly has passed yearly resolutions combating "the defamation of religions" and "Islamophobia." However, believers are already protected from dangerous incitement by existing human rights instruments. The new proposals seek nothing less than a blasphemy prohibition to protect belief itself.
"Rights belong to individuals, not ideas," states the Center for Inquiry report, titled "Islam and Human Rights: Defending Universality at the United Nations." It describes the efforts by the OIC and its political allies seek to create a parallel system of human rights, and how some UN agencies are considering the integration of "defamation of religions" into international human rights law. Such an outcome would be "legally indefensible, morally objectionable, and politically disastrous," according to the report.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
· Permit free discussion of religious matters at the HRC. When states use religion or culture as a justification for either human rights resolutions or transgressions, they must not be granted immunity from criticism, regardless of the sensitivities or cultural particularities involved.
· Restore the original mandate of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. The proper limits to free expression and threats to religious liberty are addressed by existing instruments. An official who protects free speech cannot simultaneously limit it.
· Reject the concept of "the defamation of religions." Believers deserve protection. Beliefs do not. Member states must move to stop these resolutions by the General Assembly and prevent the legal entrenchment of the concept of "defamation of religions."
· Clarify the status of Islamic human rights. HRC members and UN member states generally must voice their concerns about the "Islamization" of rights discourse, and its consistency with universal standards.
On Friday, September 19, representatives of the Center for Inquiry will address the Human Rights Council main session on the topic of the defamation of religions. Past interventions by non-governmental organizations in favor of secularism have been interrupted by representatives of the OIC.
The Next Survivor Series
Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks.
Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.
There is no fast food.
Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of 'pretend' bills with not enough money.
In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week.
Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time--no emailing.
Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment, a dentist appointment and a haircut appointment.
He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care.
He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function.
Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flowers outside and keeping it presentable at all times.
The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done.
The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed.
During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.
They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.
They will need to read a book to the kids each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.
A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child's birthday, height, weight,shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name.
Also the child's weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor, each child's favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.
The kids vote them off the island based on performance.
The last man wins only if...he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice.
If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18-25 years eventually earning the right To be called Mother!
After you get done laughing,
send this to as many females as you think will get a kick out of it and as many men as you think can handle it.
Just don't send it back to me.... I'm going to bed.
Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.
There is no fast food.
Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of 'pretend' bills with not enough money.
In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week.
Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time--no emailing.
Each man must also take each child to a doctor's appointment, a dentist appointment and a haircut appointment.
He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care.
He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function.
Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flowers outside and keeping it presentable at all times.
The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done.
The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed.
During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.
They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.
They will need to read a book to the kids each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:00 am.
A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child's birthday, height, weight,shoe size, clothes size and doctor's name.
Also the child's weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor, each child's favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.
The kids vote them off the island based on performance.
The last man wins only if...he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment's notice.
If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18-25 years eventually earning the right To be called Mother!
After you get done laughing,
send this to as many females as you think will get a kick out of it and as many men as you think can handle it.
Just don't send it back to me.... I'm going to bed.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Now Conservatives Get A Taste of Sexism
Have Conservatives Discovered Sexism?
Below the Belt: A Column by NOW PAC Chair Kim Gandy
September 5, 2008
Hey, have you heard? Conservatives have discovered sexism in the media!
And they're learning that it's disrespectful toward women, potentially damaging to their careers, intrusive into their personal lives, and just plain unfair. That is, unless a feminist like Hillary Clinton is charging the media with sexism -- then it's called liberal whining or playing the gender card.
Read the whole story at: http://www.now.org/news/note/090508.html
Below the Belt: A Column by NOW PAC Chair Kim Gandy
September 5, 2008
Hey, have you heard? Conservatives have discovered sexism in the media!
And they're learning that it's disrespectful toward women, potentially damaging to their careers, intrusive into their personal lives, and just plain unfair. That is, unless a feminist like Hillary Clinton is charging the media with sexism -- then it's called liberal whining or playing the gender card.
Read the whole story at: http://www.now.org/news/note/090508.html
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Are We Done Yet?
Some young women think we don't need a woman president. Others think that
the whole feminist/women's movement is so over/unnecessary. Today in the
New York Times, Susan Faludi begs to differ:
the whole feminist/women's movement is so over/unnecessary. Today in the
New York Times, Susan Faludi begs to differ:
August 26, 2008
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Second-Place Citizens
By SUSAN FALUDI
San Francisco
MUCH has been made of the timing of Hillary Clinton¹s speech before the
Democratic National Convention tonight, coming as it does on the 88th
anniversary of women¹s suffrage. Convention organizers are taking advantage
of this coincidence of the calendar &lsqauo; the 19th Amendment was certified on
Aug. 26, 1920 &lsqauo; to pay homage to the women¹s vote in particular and women¹s
progress in general. By such tributes, they are slathering some sweet icing
on a bitter cake. But many of Mrs. Clinton¹s supporters are unlikely to be
partaking. They regard their candidate¹s cameo as a consolation prize. And
they are not consoled.
³I see this nation differently than I did 10 months ago,² reads a typical
posting on a Web site devoted to Clintonista discontent. ³That this travesty
was committed by the Democratic Party has forever changed my approach to
politics.² In scores of Internet forums and the conclaves of protest groups,
those sentiments are echoed, as Clinton supporters speak over and over of
feeling heartbroken and disillusioned, of being cheated and betrayed.
In one poll, 40 percent of Mrs. Clinton¹s constituency expressed
dissatisfaction; in another, more than a quarter favored the clear insanity
of voicing their feminist protest by voting for John McCain. ³This is not
the usual reaction to an election loss,² said Diane Mantouvalos, the founder
of JustSayNoDeal.com, a clearinghouse for the pro-Clinton organizations. ³I
know that is the way it is being spun, but it¹s not prototypical. Anyone who
doesn¹t take time to analyze it will do so at their own peril.²
The despondency of Mrs. Clinton¹s supporters &lsqauo; or their ³vitriolic² and
³rabid² wrath, as the punditry prefers to put it &lsqauo; has been the subject of
perplexed and often irritable news media speculation. Why don¹t these
dead-enders get over it already and exit stage right?
Shouldn¹t they be celebrating, not protesting? After all, Hillary Clinton¹s
campaign made unprecedented strides. She garnered 18 million-plus votes, and
proved by her solid showing that a woman could indeed be a viable candidate
for the nation¹s highest office. She didn¹t get the gold, but in this case
isn¹t a silver a significant triumph?
Many Clinton supporters say no, and to understand their gloom, one has to
take into account the legacy of American women¹s political struggle, in
which long yearned for transformational change always gives way before a
chorus of ³not now² and ³wait your turn,² and in which every victory turns
out to be partial or pyrrhic. Indeed, the greatest example of this is the
victory being celebrated tonight: the passage of women¹s suffrage. The 1920
benchmark commemorated as women¹s hour of glory was experienced in its era
as something more complex, and darker.
Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton¹s candidacy, not merely a cause in
itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other
ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American
law, its retinue was turned away.
In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women¹s
voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the
women¹s movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor
inroads into elected office, and women¹s advocacy groups found themselves at
loggerheads. ³It was clear,² said the 1920s sociologist and reformer
Sophonisba Breckinridge, ³that the winter of discontent in politics had come
for women.²
That discontent was apparent in a multitude of letters, speeches and
articles. ³The American woman¹s movement, and her interest in great moral
and social questions, is splintered into a hundred fragments under as many
warring leaders,² despaired Frances Kellor, a women¹s advocate.
³The feminist movement is dying of partial victory and inanition,² lamented
Lillian Symes, a feminist journalist.
³Where for years there had been purpose consecrated to an immortal
principle,² observed the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, her
compatriots felt now only ³a vacancy.²
Even Florence Kelley, the tenacious progressive reformer, concluded,
³Keeping the light on is probably the best contribution that we can make
where there is now Stygian darkness.²
The grail of female franchise yielded little meaningful progress in the
years to follow. Two-thirds of the few women who served in Congress in the
1920s were filling the shoes of their dead husbands, and most of them failed
to win re-election. The one woman to ascend to the United States Senate had
a notably brief career: in 1922, Rebecca Felton, 87, was appointed to warm
the seat for a newly elected male senator until he could be sworn in. Her
term lasted a day.
Within the political establishment, women could exact little change, and the
parties gave scant support to female politicians. In 1920, Emily Newell
Blair, the Democratic vice chairwoman, noted that the roster of women
serving on national party committees looked like a ³Who¹s Who² of American
women; by 1929, they¹d been shown the door and replaced with the compliant.
The suffragist Anne Martin bitterly remarked that women in politics were
³exactly where men political leaders wanted them: bound, gagged, divided and
delivered to the Republican and Democratic Parties.²
Male politicians offered a few sops to feminists: a ³maternity and infancy²
bill to educate expectant mothers, a law permitting women who married
foreigners to remain American citizens, and financing for the first federal
prison for women. But by the mid ¹20s, Congress had quit feigning interest,
and women¹s concerns received a cold shoulder. In 1929, the maternity
education bill was killed.
Meanwhile, male cultural guardians were giving vent to what Symes termed
³the new masculinism² &lsqauo; diatribes against the ³effeminization² that had
supposedly been unleashed on the American arts. The news media proclaimed
feminism a dead letter and showcased young women who preferred gin parties
to political caucuses.
During the presidential race of 1924, newspapers ran headlines like ³Woman
Suffrage Declared a Failure.² ³Ex-feminists² proclaimed their boredom with
³feminist pother² and their enthusiasm for cosmetics, shopping and
matrimony. The daughters of the suffrage generation were so beyond the
³zealotry² of their elders, Harper¹s declared in its 1927 article ³Feminist
&lsqauo; New Style,² that they could only pity those ranting women who were ³still
throwing hand grenades² and making an issue of ³little things.²
Those ³little things² included employment equity, as a steady increase in
the proportion of women in the labor force ground to a halt and stagnated
throughout the ¹20s. Women barely improved their representation in male
professions; the number of female doctors actually declined.
³The feminist crash of the ¹20s came as a painful shock, so painful that it
took history several decades to face up to it,² the literary critic Elaine
Showalter wrote in 1978. Facing it now is like peering into a painful
mirror. For all the talk of Hillary Clinton¹s ³breakthrough² candidacy and
other recent successes for women, progress on important fronts has stalled.
Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its
proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state
legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women¹s
share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since
2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86
percent male.
Women¹s real annual earnings have fallen for the last four years. Progress
in narrowing the wage gap between men and women has slowed considerably
since 1990, yet last year the Supreme Court established onerous restrictions
on women¹s ability to sue for pay discrimination. The salaries of women in
managerial positions are on average lower today than in 1983.
Women¹s numbers are stalled or falling in fields ranging from executive
management to journalism, from computer science to the directing of major
motion pictures. The 20 top occupations of women last year were the same as
half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk,
maid, hairdresser, cook and so on. And just as Congress cut funds in 1929
for maternity education, it recently slashed child support enforcement by 20
percent, a decision expected to leave billions of dollars owed to mothers
and their children uncollected.
Again, male politicians and pundits indulge in outbursts of ³new
masculinist² misogyny (witness Mrs. Clinton¹s campaign coverage). Again, the
news media showcase young women¹s ³feminist &lsqauo; new style² pseudo-liberation &lsqauo;
the flapper is now a girl-gone-wild. Again, many daughters of a feminist
generation seem pleased to proclaim themselves so ³beyond gender² that they
don¹t need a female president.
As it turns out, they won¹t have one. But they will still have all the
abiding inequalities that Hillary Clinton, especially in defeat, symbolized.
Without a coalescing cause to focus their forces, how will women fight a foe
that remains insidious, amorphous, relentless and pervasive?
³I am sorry for you young women who have to carry on the work in the next 10
years, for suffrage was a symbol, and you have lost your symbol,² the
suffragist Anna Howard Shaw said in 1920. ³There is nothing for women to
rally around.² As they rally around their candidate tonight, Mrs. Clinton¹s
supporters will have to decide if they are mollified &lsqauo; or even more
aggrieved &lsqauo; by the history she evokes.
Susan Faludi is the author, most recently, of ³The Terror Dream: Myth and
Misogyny in an Insecure America.²
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