Starting the Year Strong
Happy New Year from The State of Women and Women Investing in Women Digital! We hope you are all starting the year strong, healthy, and with clear vision on goals, progress, and challenges for women in the coming year and decade. This week, we've collected just a few stories about women around the world—and whether it's women directors breaking records in the past year, preserving systems that work to empower and raise up women, changing outdated ideas that need to evolve, or new initiatives to promote entrepreneurship for women and girls; we think it's clear that the world's women are looking forward with 20/20 vision!
Female Directors Broke Records in 2019, from Fortune—“(A)t the ceremony, women mostly won in the acting categories, from Phoebe Waller-Bridge to Awkwafina to Michelle Williams (who used her speech to champion reproductive rights). Ellen DeGeneres, with an emotional tribute by Kate McKinnon, was the first person besides Carol Burnett to receive the Carol Burnett Award for outstanding contributions to television. Overall, some talented women accepted golden statues last night—but as awards season continues, hopefully we’ll see more women behind the camera honored, too.”
Challenging Our Gendered Idea of Mentorship, from Harvard Business Review—“The reality is that just as women benefit from male mentors, sponsors, and allies, men also gain from the mentorship, leadership, and sponsorship of women. But stories about women leaders are scarce, and they often narrowly focus on how women help each other. Even more rare are examples of the positive impact women leaders have on the careers and business of men. This imbalance reinforces negative bias about the ability of women to lead and contributes to the scarcity of women at the top.”
Why Professional Networking Groups for Women Remain Valuable, from Fast Company—“What the study shows is that women who focus on making a lot of professional contacts may not necessarily receive the same benefits that men get from doing so. They need to supplement that with closer connections with other women they trust. The study’s authors speculate that these inner networks help not just with finding opportunities, but also by exchanging advice specific to the unique challenges women face.”
Recognizing Workplace Challenges Faced by Black Women Leaders, from Forbes—“Gender bias makes career advancement markedly harder for women than men. But gender bias is not the only discriminatory obstacle women face in their careers. Women whose social identities are different from the dominant workplace expectations—that is, women who are not white, straight, less than 40, and childless—encounter three additional obstacles: having to navigate more precarious lose/lose double binds, being forced to conform to cultural norms that may be at odds with their social identities, and encountering biases in addition to those about gender. These three sorts of obstacles are brought into sharp relief by comparing the workplace experiences of black women and white women.”
What Goes Into the Production of a New Girl Scout Cookie Brand, from Fortune—“‘These messages not only remind girls about the leadership abilities they already possess within them, but they also remind consumers that buying Girl Scout Cookies powers amazing and important experiences for girls,’ Girl Scouts CEO Sylvia Acevedo tells Fortune. ‘Whether it’s through selling the new Lemon-Ups cookie, Lemonades, or any other cookie in our lineup, the Girl Scout Cookie Program fosters a multitude of business and life skills in girls, preparing them to be the ambitious entrepreneurs and leaders of tomorrow.’”
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100 Women, 100 Years And More Milestones For Women Leaders to Celebrate
taketheleadwomen.com - To properly salute the 100th edition of the Take The Lead This Week newsletter, we look outside of Take The Lead to gather a list of our favorite lists of women global leaders, healers, executives, entrepreneurs, funders, innovators, groundbreakers and cookie makers. We hope these may become some of your favorites too. To make the celebration of these groups of 100 go down more smoothly, we suggest a box or two of Girl Scout Cookies, celebrating the 100th year of sales helping girls from around the country “earn money for fun, educational activities and community projects, but also play a huge role in transforming girls into G.I.R.L.s (Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, Leaders)™ as they learn essential life skills that will stay with them forever,” according to the site.
“From the very beginning the Girl Scout Cookie Program—and Girl Scout Cookies—has been the engine that powers Girl Scouts. The sale of Girl Scout Cookies has made an indelible impact on the millions of Girl Scout alumnae who have sold them. In fact, 57 percent of Girl Scout alumnae in business say the program was key in the development of their skills today.”
Girl Scouts Exec: Girls Shouldn't Pursue Perfection
Chief Girl and Parent Expert at Girl Scouts of the USA Andrea Bastiani Archibald used the magazines' differing approaches as an opportunity to address the larger issue of girls and perfection. Read below and click through to learn why teaching our girls to strive for the appearance of perfection actually holds them back--now and throughout their lives.
And whether it's with the latest fashions and full makeup or in a T-shirt and messy ponytail, may we encourage all girls to explore their futures.
To join Girl Scouts as a girl member or adult volunteer, visit www.girlscouts.org/join.
motto.time.com - The bombardment of image- and status-driven messages today’s girls and young women receive through media and our culture at large is destructive. Success is the currency for entry—or rather, the illusion of success. Finding just the right Instagram filter to ensure your latest selfie as enviable and drool-worthy as possible is a must for boosting your social capital. And girls are often the most impacted in this “nothing-less-than-success” theater.
Social media recently erupted over the controversy surrounding the cover of the September issue of Girls’ Life magazine (touting multiple beauty tips and how-tos on luring a potential boyfriend for its core audience) compared to the cover of Boys’ Life (splashed with the more substantive headline “Explore Your Future”). These dueling magazine covers highlight the stark difference between how society communicates life priorities and the trappings of success to girls versus boys, and serves to reaffirm an obsession with cultivating a perfect, unattainable façade.
If girls internalize the idea that everything undertaken in life must be image-centric, flawlessly executed and successful, that may cause fear of venturing beyond one’s comfort zone—or of even trying. Because if there’s a chance that you’re going to mess up, and not do something perfectly, why risk it? Just imagine all the rites of passage a girl might not pursue for fear of embarrassment or failure: not trying out for a sports team, not raising her hand in class to answer a question, not approaching a classmate to make a new friend, not volunteering for an exciting class project. Being too afraid to embrace these important growth milestones has serious implications, putting girls at a disadvantage as they grow into women and venture out into a deeply competitive and demanding world.