Women are a hot topic. Are you ready? by Katharine Griffiths (Guest Blogger)

International Women’s Day this year felt less like noise for me and more like a tsunami of women’s voices preparing to completely transform every level of every industry in its path. The drive toward gender equality is the evolution of business, but the path to success is not paved with a scattering of token women expected to adopt masculine principles.

The point of gender equality is to embrace natural feminine attributes to balance the male attributes that dominate most organizations today: compassion over hostility, open communication over back-room deals, collaboration over competition, and community over individualism. There is a largely untapped market of possibility to be realized by increasing female representation to a tipping point in the board room and at executive levels.

At times I wonder if women are the only ones paying attention to the plethora of diversity and gender equality material being published, but then I see a high-tech company like Cisco walking the talk with 36% women at both the board and senior executive levels, and I’m hopeful that this much needed change isn’t going to take the predicted one hundred years to happen.

Cisco isn’t alone. There are many progressive companies educating their teams to prevent gender bias, disrupting the status quo to achieve gender equality, and implementing zero-tolerance sexual harassment policies that encourage women to stay in male-dominated fields.

According to a Catalyst.org study, women are leaving STEM fields at the alarming rate of 53% globally and their reasons for leaving have little to do with their capabilities. This begs the question, ‘what needs to change to encourage women to stay so we can benefit from the value gender equality is proven to produce?’.

Women are the authority on the value women bring to the table. We can’t wait another hundred years to realize the benefit of gender equality. And, as Einstein quoted: ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them’. We don’t know what we don’t know, but by actively driving toward equality, we will witness the next wave of growth and innovation. It is not only going to come from the millennials; it is also going to come from embracing feminine ideals.

Are you ready for the future?


Katharine Griffiths is a telecommunications veteran who is channeling her passion for gender equality into helping companies drive successful gender diversity agendas. Her strengths in operations, writing, and public speaking; coupled with her extensive experience working in a male-dominated industry, make her an expert adviser for companies ready to make the transition to a more gender neutral workforce.



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This blog post was curated and/or edited by The Ardent Reader, Esther Hofknecht Curtis, BSOL, MSM-HCA. The views expressed in this blog post are those of the guest blogger. Visit www.parrotcontent.com for more information.

The Plight of Women in America

All my life I've been drawn to stories of women like Amelia Earhart, Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dorothy Day, Clara Barton, and Queen Esther. These women didn't ask for permission to do what they needed to; instead, they broke rules and made history. They didn't conform to social norms. They did what they thought was right. I like that, and I always have. 

Not long ago, I realized that for every women who rose above the status quo, millions lived and died in horrific circumstances that destroyed their bodies and spirits for thousands of years before me. They lived through hell.

Women were once considered second-class citizens and the property of their fathers and husbands. Yes, that was here in the U.S. In fact, it was legal for a husband to beat his wife and children, and many suffered such extreme abuse that they never recovered. Women were beaten until they could not or would not stand up for themselves. Watch The Color Purple or The Stoning of Soraya M  and let yourself feel the pain of these characters, which reflect so many other true stories that will never be told. 

Until 200 years ago, women weren't permitted to attend any institutions of higher education. They were welcome to attend grammar school, but "were at a significant disadvantage in access to most forms of higher education." Academies for women were not much more than high schools, and were "restrictive and inferior when compared to the educational opportunities available to young men." In 1836, women were able to pursue their higher degrees at only two universities in the whole United States. Men had no such restrictions, and flourished. 

Women kept pushing to crack the glass ceiling and be elected to the U.S. Congress, despite losing election after election to male opponents. The first woman voted into Congress was Jeannette Rankin, a Republican from Montana, who served in the House of Representatives. One hundred years ago, she took her seat in the 65th Congress in 1917, a full 128 years after congress was established. (Because women couldn't vote, she couldn't even cast a vote for herself, but you know she damn well used her congressional vote to push through women's suffrage.) 

In the early 1900s, suffragettes fought to vote, a right that had been bestowed upon men in the U.S. Constitution, but had not been extended to women. In 1920, women won the battle, but not without being imprisoned, tortured, and some even killed for their activism. I still get chills thinking about the bravery of these women, and I'll always vote because of their sacrifices on my behalf. Watch Suffragette to better understand their struggles. 

The Women's Liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s - which I am so, so pissed that I missed - focused on the fact that women outnumbered men (51% of the American population) and still had nowhere near as many rights and opportunities. They focused on a variety of causes, including better pay, more higher education admissions, reproductive freedom, better employment opportunities, and among other things, dissolving the traditional gender roles so women weren't limited to domestic roles. The term "feminist" was used to describe these revolutionary women who spoke out for equality and absorbed every punch they were dealt. They are both revered and vilified by all manner of historians. 

Even now, in 2017, women are undervalued in the American workplace, and underrepresented in leadership roles, on boards, and in Congress. Women have to work twice as hard to gain the same success as their male counterparts even with superior education and experience. Look at the leadership of any Fortune 500 company and you'll see that most are overwhelmingly comprised of men, unless they are women-owned organizations. And the gender pay gap is another can of worms entirely; women still earn about 80% of what men earn to do the same jobs. And men are selected for promotions more often than women. 

Women have continued to push for equality because for hundreds of years our country has taken advantage of our strengths and all but ignored our contributions to its success. 

With the #NoMore movement, the feminism wave is rising again. Women are tired of being beat up, underrepresented, treated like doormats, and most of all, sick of being expected to continue to put up with it. And guess what? We really hate that we continue to be victims of sexual assault and abuse in this civilized day and age. Men should be able to control themselves and keep their hands to themselves, end of story.

Right now, many women who have chosen to speak out against sexual assault and abuse are being absolutely destroyed by the press and social media. They stay strong despite the onslaught of criticism, and I salute them for their bravery. Their voices will be the catalyst for positive change in our society, and I hope that even more will decide to come forward. Perhaps their voices will be the reason one abused woman will have the courage she needs to finally walk away.

Women: Assault and abuse and harassment leave deep wounds that never heal. A woman speaking out is reliving the most shameful moment of her life. She's ashamed because she was too scared or shocked to stop her assailant. She's ashamed because she's lived with this secret for her entire life and by keeping it a secret, she's protected the person who hurt her. Speaking out is the hardest thing she's ever done, and she's doing it for all of us - even those of you that choose not to believe her. One in five American women suffer assault, abuse, or harassment, so you could end up in her shoes. Wouldn't you want people to believe you if you had the guts to speak out? 

Men: Don't complain about the storm of allegations against news icons, movie stars, elected officials, and film directors. Women have been putting up with a lot of shit for a lot of years, and these guys have had it coming. If you're shocked, it only shows how ignorant you are of the horrors women have had to endure since the beginning of time. Don't act like this is something new. These guys represent the tip of the iceberg. Just support us as we get through it. The process is just like pulling weeds out of a flower bed. These stories need to be told so that we can get through this as a nation and be better as individuals.

We've been ignoring these problems for a long time, and now is not the time to strike these stories from the record and sweep them under the rug. Now is the time to listen.

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Book 164: My Life on the Road by Gloria Steinem

It turns out I picked the perfect book for our vacation to Canada: My Life on the Road by gender equality activist Gloria Steinem. In this book she chronicled her travels around the world and the U.S., during which she gained experience that made her so well-equipped for roles as a women's right's activist, writer, journalist, speaker, and grassroots community organizer.

Each chapter of this book focuses on a different travel experience and shows how each experience gave Steinem tools to approach her next challenge or build a following around an issue. In one chapter after another, Steinem described herself as a veritable modern gypsy, more comfortable and alive on the road than anywhere else. Now in her 70s, Steinem says traveling is the reason she's stayed young at heart.

My Life on the Road was not just about travel. It was about exploring controversial topics - racism, gender equality, homosexuality, HIV/AIDS, prostitution, abortion, human trafficking, migrant workers, LGBTQ, civil, and human rights - through Steinem's interactions with people impacted by these issues. As she traveled, she learned more about the U.S. than she ever would have in the history books. And she also saw firsthand how women and minorities were treated, and how they fought back by building vibrant, supportive communities.

I found this book fascinating for many different reasons. For one, I believe in equal rights for women but also believe we are centuries away from achieving it. This book gave me hope that perhaps one day, a man will feel shame in addressing any women over age 10 as "honey" or "sweetie." It also validated some of my own experiences, such as being called "aggressive" and given poor marks on a performance review when I was, in fact, doing my best to hold male coworkers to normal workplace behavior standards. Also, like Steinem, I am so shocked when someone does something obviously demeaning that I don't know what to say in the moment. I think a lot of women deal with the same crisis of conscience: the desire to remain respectful, professional, and polite while also wanting to tear someone's head off for not being respectful, professional, or polite.

I began the book while on vacation, and ended it as I was pulling into my hometown, which was precisely when Steinem was concluding her book with a story about the comforts of home. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone of any gender (but certainly adult).