In the Spirit of Today's Celebration of Women's Equality

You cannot be afraid to be who you are. Live your values. Live your life. A woman confided to me about “sneaking out of the office” to go to her child’s play and I said, “Stop right there! I have never snuck out of any place. I walk right down the center hall, and if somebody doesn’t like it, too bad. Don’t worry about me. I will deliver.” Just stand up, do what you need to do, and smile about it. Look them in the eye and say, “If you don’t like it, fire me, and I’ll go find another job, because I’m talented enough and I’m committed enough.”

--Shelly Lazarus, chairman, Ogilvy & Mather

Many women leaders were born standing up for themselves, but a good number developed this aspect of leadership on their own. Little by little, they learned to speak up, they learned how best to influence the discussion, and eventually they learned to lead. Not only is speaking up important for your personal development, but it is part of your job.

It’s not just about your voice—it’s also about how you fill the room—to gain the confidence and commitment of those around you. Why is it that so many women are reluctant to speak up? Why do they sit quietly while some guy hijacks the conversation? It is amazing, the endless list of reasons women give:  

• “I don’t have anything important enough to say.”
•  “It’s all been said already or someone else is going to say it.”
•  “The men enjoy talking, so let them.”
• “Actions speak louder than words anyway.”
• “It’s not my place.”
•  “I’m here to listen.”
• “I’m new here.”
•  “I’m the most junior person.”
• “I get things done outside the meeting.”

Baloney. Maybe that reluctance to speak masks deeper fears, such as the fear of being “found out,” the fear of being ridiculed, or the fear of being found unworthy. Our first line of defense is often rationalization and evasion. We must dig deeper to uncover very real fears that may have served us well—until now. If we give them our power, they hurt us. Interviews suggest that fear drives many women to set an unrealistically high bar that would stop anyone...so many wait too long even to enter the conversation. (It feels a bit like double Dutch jump rope: challenging to jump in and just as hard to stay in.) Others confuse respect with remaining silent.

It is hard. And complicating matters is the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t problem. Often women who speak out suffer, too. They may get branded as aggressive, difficult, self-promoting, or worse (hello!). Research suggests that women often feel comfortable speaking up on someone else’s behalf but have a hard time speaking up for themselves. So we wait for others to recognize what we want. Yes, we wait. Why? Because it “means more” if someone else notices without our asking, women have said. While you’re waiting, men are negotiating for what they want and promoting themselves. Women are far less likely to negotiate than men; 20 percent of women have never engaged in a negotiation. 

Note: In one study that compared expectations of men and women in similar-same roles, men expected their peak earnings to be 30 percent higher than what women expected!

Barsh, J., Lewis, G., Cranston, S. (2009). How Remarkable Women Lead: The Breakthrough Model for Work and Life

"Feminism" is about equality of the sexes, and activism to achieve such equality for women. 

What does equality look like? In light of the fact that 92 years ago today, women won the right to vote, what are your thoughts?

Many key writers on feminist theory help to give us an understanding of what feminism is about -- some members of the mother line who have made the fullness of our lives possible are as follows:

Rachel Speght 1597 - ?

Rachel Speght was the first woman known to have published a women's rights pamphlet in English under her own name.

Olympe de Gouge 1748 - 1793

Olympe de Gouges, a playwright of some note in France at the time of the Revolution, spoke for not only herself but many of the women of France, when in 1791 she wrote and published the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Citizen. Modeled on the 1789 Declaration of the National Assembly, defining citizenship for men, this Declaration echoed the same language and extended it to women, as well. In this document, de Gouges both asserted woman's capability to reason and make moral decisions and pointed to the feminine virtues of emotion and feeling. Woman was not simply the same as man, but she was his equal partner.

Mary Wollstonecraft 1759 - 1797

Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is one of the most important documents in the history of women's rights. Wollstonecraft's personal life was often troubled, and her early death of childbed fever cut short her evolving ideas. Her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, was Percy Shelley's second wife and author of the book, Frankenstein.

Judith Sargent Murray 1751 - 1820

Judith Sargent Murray, born in colonial Massachusetts and a supporter of the American Revolution, wrote on religion, women's education, and politics. She's best known for The Gleaner, and her essay on women's equality and education was published a year before Wollstonecraft's Vindication.

Fredrika Bremer 1801 - 1865

Frederika Bremer, a Swedish writer, was a novelist and mystic who also wrote on socialism and on feminism.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1815 - 1902

One of the best-known of the mothers of woman suffrage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton helped organize the 1848 woman's rights convention in Seneca Falls, where she insisted on leaving in a demand for the vote for women -- despite strong opposition, including from her own husband. Stanton worked closely with Susan B. Anthony, writing many of the speeches Anthony traveled to deliver.

Anna Garlin Spencer 1851 - 1931

Anna Garlin Spencer, nearly forgotten today, was, in her time, considered among the foremost theorists about the family and women. She published Woman's Share in Social Culture in 1913.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in a variety of genres, including "The Yellow Wallpaper," a short story highlighting the "rest cure" for women in the 19th century; Woman and Economics, a sociological analysis of women's place; and Herland, a feminist utopia novel.

Sarojini Naidu 1879 - 1949

A poet, she led a campaign to abolish purdah and was the first Indian woman president of the Indian National Congress (1925), Gandhi's political organization. After independence, she was appointed governor of Uttar Pradesh. She also helped found the Women's India Association, with Annie Besant and others.

Crystal Eastman 1881 - 1928

Crystal Eastman was a socialist feminist, and in this 1920 essay, makes clear the economic and social foundations of her feminist theory.

Simone de Beauvoir 1908 - 1986

Simone de Beauvoir, a novelist and essayist, was part of the existentialist circle. Her 1949 book, The Second Sex, quickly became a feminist classic, inspiring women of the 1950s and 1960s to examine their role in culture.

Betty Friedan 1921 - 2006

Betty Friedan combined activism and theory in her feminism. She was the author of The Feminist Mystique (1963) identifying the "problem that has no name" and the question of the educated housewife: "Is this all?" She was also the founder and first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and an ardent proponent of and organizer for the Equal Rights Amendment. She generally opposed feminists taking positions that would make it difficult for "mainstream" women and men to identify with feminism.

Gloria Steinem 1934 -

Feminist and journalist, Gloria Steinem was a key figure in the women's movement from 1969. She founded Ms. magazine, starting in 1972. Her good looks and quick, humorous responses made her the media's favorite spokesperson for feminism, but she was often attacked by the radical elements in the women's movement for being too middle-class-oriented. She was an outspoken advocate for the Equal Rights Amendment and helped found the National Women's Political Caucus.

Robin Morgan 1941 -

Robin Morgan is known for her feminist activism and writing. She is a poet, a novelist, and has also written non-fiction. Several of her anthologies are classics of feminism, including Sisterhood Is Powerful.

Andrea Dworkin 1946 - 2005

Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist whose early activism including working against the Vietnam War, became a strong voice for the position that pornography is a tool by which men control, objectify, and subjugate women. With Catherine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin helped draft a Minnesota ordinance that did not outlaw pornography but allowed victims of rape and other sexual crimes to sue pornographers for damage, under the logic that the culture created by pornography supported sexual violence against women.

Camille Paglia 1947 -

Camille Paglia, a feminist with a strong critique of feminism, has proposed controversial theories about the role of sadism and perversity in Western cultural art, and the "darker forces" of sexuality that she claims feminism ignores. Her more positive assessment of pornography and decadence, relegation of feminism to political egalitarianism, and assessment that women are actually more powerful in culture than men are has put her at odds with many feminists and non-feminists.

Susan Faludi 1959 -

Susan Faludi is a journalist who wrote Backlash: The Undeclared War against Women, 1991, which argued that feminism and women's rights were undermined by the media and corporations -- just as the previous wave of feminism lost ground to a previous version of backlash, convincing women that feminism and not inequality was the source of their frustration.