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The Cost of Success for Women: Perspectives from a Male Ally

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After reading a recent article by Sendhil Mullainathan in the New York Times, I understood what my black colleagues mean when they say that having white allies gives them room to breathe. What are allies? The North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) offers these helpful definitions:

  • Allies validate and support people who are different from themselves.
  • Allies examine their own prejudices and privileges and are not afraid to look at themselves.
  • Allies act to be part of the solution.
As a white woman, I have spent much of my life thinking and talking and writing about how women need to work together to push for change to improve the lives of women. Mullainathan, a professor at Harvard, writing as a male ally about the part men play in creating challenges for successful women, gives me room to breathe. Even when women manage to buck societal barriers and become successful, Mullainathan reports on the unseen costs of success for women:
  • A recent Swedish study of gender differences found that the divorce rate increased for successful female political candidates, but not for male candidates. The authors acknowledge that this study, like most, focuses only on heterosexual partners.
  • Women who become CEOs divorce at a higher rate than men.
  • Another study found that women who received Oscars in Hollywood for best actress were more likely to divorce, which is not the case for men who won for best actor.
  • When the wife in a couple earns more than her spouse, she spends more time on household chores than her husband and is more likely to end up divorced.
Other researchers concluded that to a significant extent, “women are bringing personal glass ceilings from home to the workplace,” installed by spouses who cannot tolerate their success. The author steps forward as an ally when he notes that if sexism is so widespread among other men, he himself is probably sexist. “Fixing these problems is my responsibility—and the responsibility of other men, too.” He suggests that men need to
  • Engage in introspection and become aware of their attitudes and behaviors
  • Ask questions of the women in their lives and listen to their pain-filled answers
  • Identify behavior changes they can make and encourage other men to do the same
When I read this article, I immediately felt and thought, “I can breathe!”   Photo courtesy of Ryan McGuire (CC 1.0)]]>

International Roundup: Women Are Making Progress

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Inspiring news about women’s progress comes from many parts of the world. We all need some good news these days, so I am glad to shine a spotlight on a few of them: Iceland: Katrin Bennhold, writing for the New York Times, identifies Iceland as practically a gender utopia. She explains that

  • Selling pornography has been banned in Iceland since 1869.
  • Iceland directly elected the world’s first female president in 1980.
  • Iceland elected the world’s first openly lesbian prime minister in 2009.
  • The World Economic Forum (WEF) has ranked Iceland first for gender equality for nine years in a row, using an index that includes educational opportunities, life expectancy, pay equity, and other factors.
  • Eight out of ten Icelandic women work.
  • The pay gap is due to be closed in 2022, while globally, the WEF says it will take 217 more years to close the gender pay gap.
  • A new law went into effect in Iceland on January 1, 2018, that requires organizations with more than twenty-five employees to prove they are paying men and women equally. Despite many measures of success in terms of gender equality, a gender pay gap has stubbornly persisted in Iceland and the government determined that additional measures are required to eradicate it.
Iran: Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times reports on a small number of Iranian women who are staging public protests against the government’s strict enforcement of Islamic law since 1979 concerning women’s clothing. These brave women are removing their head scarfs in public places, placing them on a stick, and waving them for all to see. Some have been arrested. More and more small groups of women are staging these public rejections of authority. As one woman stated, “If a lot of people do this, it will have more influence,” and the numbers are growing. Oxford, England: Stephen Castle writes in the New York Times that for the first time in the thousand years of Oxford University’s existence, incoming female students outnumber their male peers. He notes that this change could reflect the growing proportion of female academics at Oxford who could be positively impacting the unconscious bias that previously screened women out of the selection process. Castle cites Sam Smethers, chief executive of a gender equality charity, as saying that this may be only a step on a longer road. “What matters is . . . what happens when they leave,” she says. “We know that women are still underrepresented in math, science and engineering subjects, and female graduates experience a pay gap on entering the workplace.” Yes, but this is still an important step. South Korea: In South Korea, the #MeToo movement has broken down a wall of silence as sexual harassment complaints now trickle out on social media, reported by Choe Sang-Hun in the New York Times. A strictly hierarchical societal code and a command-and-compliance work culture leave women in South Korea particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and assault. The WEF ranks this country 118 of 144 in terms of gender equality, yet public accusations from actresses, a female prosecutor, factory workers, nurses, and writers in publishing houses are giving other women courage to speak out and demand change. Canada: Ian Austen and Catherine Porter of the New York Times write that thanks to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in the United States, “Canada is reeling from a maelstrom of accusations of sexually inappropriate behavior against men in positions of power, and their swift removal.” One big difference between Canada and the United States is that Canadian politicians from all parties are calling for change and supporting the victims, unlike the government in Washington. Women in Canada are not only emboldened by the #MeToo movement, but they are also galvanized by the election of President Donald Trump. They are determined to speak out to ensure that they do not ever end up with a prime minister who is accused of (and taped bragging about) sexual assault as is the case with Trump. In fact, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been leading the push for change and his government introduced a broad definition of sexual harassment as “any comment, gesture or touching ‘of a sexual nature’ that could offend or humiliate an employee.” Have you heard more good news for women in other parts of the world? Please share your stories.   Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera English (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Joy-Ann Reid of MSNBC: Journalist, Scholar, and Role Model

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Not long ago, a woman coaching client, who was trying to find a vision for herself for the next stage of her life, explained that she could not come up with any women who were role models to inspire her. She was looking for a public figure. She asked me to name some women—and it took me a long time to name only a few. I have been on the lookout ever since for inspiring women in public life, and I find Joy-Ann Reid of MSNBC to be one of them. I have been impressed with Reid for some time in her role as an anchor on MSNBC because of her knowledge, intelligence, and no-nonsense interviewing style. But she really got my attention when I recently watched her regular Saturday morning show, AM Joy, on MSNBC and witnessed how she handled a powerful man who was trying to bully her. Reid, the daughter of immigrant parents from British Guiana and the Democratic Republic of Congo, was interviewing a pastor, who was also African American, about President Trump’s disparaging remarks about Haitian and African immigrants. The pastor, a Trump supporter, refused to acknowledge Trump’s use of vulgar language in reference to these countries, rudely interrupted Reid, and talked over her when she tried to engage him. My jaw dropped when she told him his rudeness was unacceptable and he was wasting her time. He shot back with an insult. She stayed calm, looked into the camera, said “goodbye” to the pastor, and called for an unscheduled break from the interview. When she came back on the air, the pastor was gone. I loved seeing a woman refuse to be bullied. She is a truly inspiring, strong black woman. I was previously unaware of Reid’s background until reading an article in the New York Times by Laura M. Holson. Holson explains that after Reid graduated from Harvard, where she studied documentary filmmaking, she became interested in politics and worked for various news organizations in radio and print, where many of her stories focused on race in America. She investigated voter suppression, the burning of black churches in the South, and a modern-day lynching. She also published a highly acclaimed book in 2015 entitled Fracture: Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide, and she teaches a class at Syracuse University on race, gender, and the media. Her current show, AM Joy, focuses on race, gender, and culture—and she never takes her eyes off of the investigation into Russian meddling in our elections. Reid has developed a large following on social media with fans who call themselves #reiders. Rachel Maddow, another award-winning MSNBC anchor, takes every opportunity to sing Reid’s praises and provides us with a role model for women supporting women. These women are smart and talented journalists, scholars, and role models, and I highly recommend checking them out.   Photo by Phil Roeder (CC BY 2.0)]]>

What Gender Bias Looks Like

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Gender bias can be subtle and difficult to understand. At the beginning of my women’s leadership programs, many women cannot see it and eventually discover that it is so much a part of their daily lives, they have become numb to it. The following are some recently published examples of gender bias from the media, finance and biopharma, economics, and Wall Street that silence women’s voices and create barriers to women’s participation in shaping our world. News Media: Amanda Taub and Max Fisher of the New York Times write that women are underrepresented in news coverage by a ratio of three-to-one. Being quoted or cited in news articles helps determine who is considered to be an authority on a topic. Taub and Fisher note that the social machinery that equates expertise with maleness is complex and creates a vicious cycle that shuts women out. For example, news organizations use online searches to find experts to quote or cite. Because women are underrepresented in news coverage, their names do not come up as often in searches and they continue to be excluded. Finance and Biopharma: Rebecca Robbins and Meghana Keshavan of STAT share an example of gender bias at a large annual healthcare conference sponsored by J.P. Morgan: men represented 94 percent of the 540 people making high-profile presentations to biotech executives and investors. Let’s be clear—these events are where careers are made and enhanced by the opportunity for visibility. And women are not visible. This lack of representation of women on panels and in speaking slots at professional conferences is a trend that has been recently reported in several fields. Economics: Justin Wolfers of the New York Times writes about the scarcity of women and women’s voices in the field of economics and the implications for all of us. He notes that “because economics has an outsized influence on public policy . . . [and] many debates are likely to be dominated by men for years to come,” there are so few women in economics. Wolfers cites surveys that show stark differences in opinion between women and men economists: women economists, by large margins, favor policies that promote income equality, big government and government regulation, mandatory employer-provided health insurance, and labor policies that promote environmental quality over economic growth. Women economists tend to focus on different topics than men, and as Wolfers writes, “If there were more female economists, more attention would surely be paid to these issues.” The number of women studying economics has stalled, and women are a minority in every level of training and rank in economics. Wolfers notes that a host of careful studies has identified barriers that discourage and drive women out of the field, such as being held to a higher standard for publishing or not being given tenure credit for publishing with men, while men get credit for publishing with women. Jim Tankersley and Noam Scheiber of the New York Times, also writing about women in economics, share new research on patterns of gender discrimination in the field. One study on the most popular introductory economics textbooks found that the textbooks refer to men four times more than to women and that 90 percent of the economists cited in the texts are men. This new research also notes that the bias against African American women in economics is especially pronounced—only fifty-two black women earned doctorates in the field between 2006 and 2015. Black women are incredibly invisible. Wall Street: A new lawsuit against the investment firm run by Steven A. Cohen, Point72, is reported by Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times. The woman bringing the suit explains, “The company is a testosterone-fueled ‘boys club’ in which men comment on women’s bodies, belittle their abilities, exclude women from meetings, and pay them less than male peers.” Further evidence of gender bias is offered: women are fewer than 3 percent of managing directors and, of the 125 portfolio managers, only one is a woman. When women’s voices and perspectives are missing from the classroom, research, business, and government, we all lose. Let’s keep the pressure on for change.   Photo courtesy of businessforward (CC BY-SA 2.0)]]>

Women Are Breaking Barriers

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Women are breaking barriers and forging new pathways. Michael Tackett of the New York Times reports that because they are dismayed by the direction the country is going and energized by the Women’s March in 2017 after Trump’s inauguration, women are running for office in record numbers. Stephanie Schriock, the president of Emily’s List, the largest national organization devoted to electing female candidates, reports that more women than ever before have contacted Emily’s List about running for office. Schriock notes that about a thousand women contacted Emily’s List in the year before the 2016 election, but in the twelve months since the election, twenty-two thousand women have contacted the organization. Here’s what we know at this point:

  • 11 women flipped seats in the Virginia House of Delegates race in November 2017. Their numbers included the first Latinas, the first Asian American woman, and the first transgender candidate in Virginia.
  • 354 female candidates are running for the United States House of Representatives in 2018, which is four times the number of women who ran in 2016. Twice as many women are running for the United States Senate in 2018 compared to 2016.
  • While the majority of the female candidates are Democrats, Republican women are also running in larger numbers than ever before.
When asked why they are running, many female candidates report that damage to the social safety net, threats to the Affordable Care Act, attacks on reproductive rights, and the recent flood of sexual harassment allegations, some against Trump himself, have motivated them to seek election. Tackett notes that, after all, both Republican and Democratic women know how it feels to be harassed. Women are running for local offices as well. Rick Rojas of the New York Times writes about a town council race in Greenwich, Connecticut, where women have taken a sudden interest in running for council seats. This race, which has previously had more seats available than candidates to fill them, currently has 270 people, 110 of whom are first-time candidates and over half of whom are women, running for 230 seats. Some of the women running explain that they were motivated by the Women’s March, where they heard the message “If you want to make a change, start locally.” One candidate explained that she couldn’t “be a bystander anymore.” The record number of women running for the United States Congress in 2018 even includes some veterans. Michael Tackett writes in the New York Times that Elaine Luria, Amy McGrath and Mikie Sherrill, all graduates of the United States Naval Academy, are trying to do something that “no female Annapolis graduate has ever accomplished: to win seats in Congress.” Luria commanded an assault ship with a crew of four hundred in the Persian Gulf, McGrath was the first female Marine to fly an F-18 fighter jet in combat, and Sherrill was a Navy helicopter pilot. The three were motivated to run after Trump’s election. Tackett notes that military credentials have always propelled men to office. We will see how these well-credentialed military women do. In another first, Senator Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois and a veteran of the Iraq War who lost both of her legs in combat, will become the first United States senator to give birth while serving in the Senate. Matt Stevens of the New York Times reports that Senator Duckworth will be one of only ten women who have given birth while serving in Congress. This will be the senator’s second child. Her staff report that Duckworth, as a working mother, brings an “important” and “underrepresented” perspective to Congress, where she has sponsored legislation to support working mothers. Change is in the air. What changes are you seeing in your local elections?   Image courtesy of JIRCAS Library (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Why Training and HR Fail to Stop Sexual Harassment: What Organizations and Individuals Can Do

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One of the patterns emerging in recent sexual harassment cases brought to light by the #MeToo movement is the failure of human resources (HR) departments in many organizations to respond to sexual harassment complaints from employees. In fact, we’ve heard example after example of HR enabling retaliation against accusers, protecting powerful men who are accused, or simply dismissing complaints with only cursory investigations or none at all. Noam Scheiber and Julie Creswell of the New York Times explain that although employees are told to report mistreatment to HR, HR is often not the right place to go. The authors explain that there are various inherent conflicts in HR’s role:

  • HR is charged with protecting the company from liability and therefore faces a conflict of interest when also expected to protect employees. In other words, HR’s main client is the company and the senior leaders.
  • Scheiber and Creswell note that “even if human resources officials conclude that the accused should be disciplined or fired, they typically have no independent authority to make it happen.”
  • HR personnel are subject to the same power dynamics as other employees if they recommend termination of a valuable employee and incur the wrath of a senior executive—their own job could be at risk.
Another issue the #MeToo movement is bringing to light is that sexual harassment prevention training does not prevent sexual harassment. Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times writes that research shows that corporate sexual harassment training, at best, only teaches people basic information. At worst, it can make people uncomfortable and reinforce gender stereotypes. Most often, the training is rejected as a waste of time because people view it as either legalistic or impractical because it does not teach people how to stop harassment when it occurs. In fact, most sexual harassment training exists because the Supreme Court mandated it in workplaces in 1998 so companies could avoid liability in sexual harassment lawsuits. Most organizations are just checking this box for their own protection and not for actual prevention of sexual harassment. Miller suggests that, to prevent harassment in all forms, “companies need to create a culture in which women are treated as equals and employees treat one another with respect.” Here are some ways to create this type of culture:
  • Offer bystander training to give everyone the skills to stop disrespectful behavior by coworkers.
  • Involve white men in delivering bystander training so discouraging sexual harassment is seen as important to white men as it is to women and minorities.
  • Promote more women. Miller notes that companies with more women in management have fewer sexual harassment incidents.
  • Pay and promote men and women equally.
  • Create gender-balanced teams, hiring panels, and performance review panels.
  • Give dozens of people in the organization responsibility for receiving complaints so people can talk to someone they feel comfortable with and are not limited to HR, where they may not feel safe.
  • Institute proportional consequences for harassers. Consequences should reflect the severity of the offense. Automatic firing is not the solution. Nip small offenses in the bud.
If you work in an organization without the supporting practices and structures described above, Marty Langelan shares these tested tactics for discouraging sexual harassment on the Ms. blog:
  1. Use an all-purpose statement such as “Stop harassing women. I don’t like it—no one likes it. Show some respect.”
  2. Name the behavior, and don’t smile when you say it.
  3. Use an interruption tactic, such as a time-out gesture, to cut off the behavior.
  4. Force the person to explain him- or herself. Langelan suggests asking questions such as “Why do you think it’s okay to ask me to give you a massage?”
  5. Organize consistent group action against a persistent harasser. Agree on what you will all say to him or her, and repeat that statement whenever the bad behavior occurs.
  6. Document the incident on the spot with your phone’s camera or a written record.
  7. Use short, direct statements to give the harasser feedback on why his or her behavior is inappropriate and what behavior would be better.
  8. Use basic self defense if you are physically attacked. Take an aikido class if you can.
  9. If you are a bystander, speak up.
  10. Recruit unexpected allies, including the bully’s buddies.
Langelan recommends using consistent, everyday interventions to redefine workplace cultures. If your organization is not doing enough to create a safe workplace culture, organize your colleagues to work together. You can make a difference, but not alone.   Image courtesy of T’ruah (CC BY 2.0)]]>

Women Are Calmer under Pressure: New Research

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New research by Alex Krumer of the University of St. Gallen, as reported in the Harvard Business Review, finds that women respond better to pressure in competitive sports than men do. Krumer and his colleagues analyzed more than 8,200 games from high-stakes Grand Slam tennis matches. They chose to include only the first matches of Grand Slams to control for the fatigue factor. They also chose Grand Slam tennis matches because performance was easy to measure, the monetary incentives and ranking points were the largest out of all the tournaments, and men and women received the same prize money. Krumer and his colleagues found that the men’s performance in unbroken serves deteriorated more than the women’s when the game was at a critical juncture, such as a 4-4 tie. Krumer said, “Among women, we saw barely any difference between pre- and post-tie performance.” While the researchers acknowledge that applying this information to the labor market is difficult, they also speculate that biological differences between men and women identified by other researchers are consistent with their results. These are just two examples:

  • The literature on cortisol, the stress hormone, shows that levels of it increase more rapidly in men than in women, which can hurt performance.
  • Testosterone, a proven performance enhancer, increases after a victory and decreases after a defeat in men but not in women. Spikes in testosterone can lead to overconfidence and higher risk taking.
In previous articles, I reported on studies that show similarities and differences in factors affecting decision making between women and men. The differences in risk-taking behavior show that overconfidence is a major obstacle in making smart decisions. The tennis researchers note that while they cannot demonstrate a direct relationship between performance in Grand Slam tennis matches and competence in the business world, other research shows significant differences, probably at least partially biologically based, in how women and men handle pressure. The researchers suggest that we consider the variety of roles in which we want leaders who can stay calm under pressure, such as CEOs and political leaders with control of nuclear weapons. Krumer suggests that “if you’re talking about mental toughness, maybe in certain circumstances it’s women who have the edge,” yet we have a dearth of women in CEO (4 percent of Fortune 500 chief executives) and political leadership roles. Clearly, that needs to change. What steps are you taking to make a difference?   Image courtesy of businessforward (CC BY 2.0)]]>

How We All Lose When Women Are Devalued

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A coaching client recently shared with me that while still a college student she was sexually assaulted by an important person at her school. When she told her guidance counselor about it, he advised her to say nothing to protect the reputation of the school. She said nothing. Now, many years later, and thanks to the #MeToo movement and some professional development work she’s engaged in, she has become aware that some of her physical and emotional problems are probably related to the buried trauma from her sexual assault. For the first time, she is starting to talk about what happened to her, which is so important for the healing process. Untreated trauma from sexual assault can cost victims their health, marriages, careers, and their lives if it is not addressed. As Sallie Krawcheck of the New York Times writes, it can seem like a seismic shift is taking place in our culture as the avalanche of sexual harassment and assault stories, previously unspoken, silenced, or disbelieved, come pouring out. While this outpouring is important, Krawcheck notes that sexual harassment is part of a larger problem in our culture: women are demeaned and devalued. The cost of demeaning and devaluing women is not only the high incidence of sexual harassment and a general culture of rape on our college campuses and elsewhere but a problem that’s costing all of us in other ways as well:

  • Women’s ideas are discounted and their talents ignored in all kinds of social, academic, and work settings. In a previous article, I wrote about Krawcheck’s direct experience with the ways that homogeneity on Wall Street resulted in the groupthink that crashed our economy in 2008 with the subprime lending debacle. Krawcheck was fired from a senior leadership position at Smith Barney for diverging from the groupthink of the financial industry and daring to be client focused. We all lost when the market crashed.
  • Krawcheck points out that, “despite research showing that companies with more diversity, and particularly with more women in leadership, offer higher returns on capital, lower risk and greater innovation than firms without such leadership, Wall Street has been, and is, predominantly male at the top,” as are most other sectors of our economy. Without diversity of perspectives and a broad range of skills, poor decisions get made that can have widespread impact on the lives of everyday people.
I agree with Krawcheck that the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements are important, but that the current focus on sexual harassment is only one step on the change journey. Valuing girls and women means eliminating gender bias in our workplaces and institutions and creating safe, respectful and inclusive workplaces, schools, and social institutions.   Photo by Sam Valadi, CC BY 2.0.]]>

Why Gender- and Race-Blind Hiring Does Not Work to Combat Bias

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Two years ago, my niece, an engineer in her twenties with solid work experience, started a new job about which she was very excited. She was one of very few women in this engineering company, which was not unusual. When she returned from maternity leave about six months ago, after having her first child, she was treated so badly by her male manager that she eventually resigned. After her return from maternity leave, her manager took away her meaningful projects and gave her boring work that no one in the company cared about. He denied her requests for flex time, for permission to occasionally work remotely, and for permission to leave early on days when she had medical appointments. He made disparaging remarks about her needing breaks to pump and made comments that implied she was useless to him because she would probably have more babies. She complained to HR who said nothing could be done. She could not thrive there. With every day that passed, she felt worse about the company and began to doubt herself. She left. Organizations think they can solve the problems of underrepresentation of white women and women and men of color in their workforce by using gender- and race-blind résumé screening to eliminate bias in the hiring process. Katharine Zaleski of the New York Times describes “blind hiring” as a dangerous trend. In this process, the names of candidates are removed from résumés and voices are altered during phone interviews to “mask” the gender and race of candidates in an attempt to eliminate bias. Zaleski cites studies showing that blind hiring does not work because

  • The résumés of white women and women and men of color still get screened out when gaps in a résumé signal the applicant is probably a woman who took time out for caregiving, or when the names of colleges, college majors, or volunteer activities indicate the applicant may be a person of color.
  • Even if the blind résumé gets a candidate through an initial round of screening, the biases of hiring managers kick in later during the traditional in-person interview.
  • Using blind-hiring processes does nothing to create organizational cultures where white women and women and men of color can thrive. Once hired, they will not stay if the organization has not worked to create an inclusive culture where diversity is valued.
Zaleski notes that blind hiring “is a misguided distraction from the hard work of evaluating and fixing the ways in which their cultures drive out” white women and women and men of color. My niece now works for a different company. Her new boss is a woman with young children who is relaxed and confident about parents being good workers. The organization has solid family-friendly policies and practices. My niece says her goal is to work hard, do her best work, and advance as a professional in her new company. In other words, she feels she can thrive there. Her old company pushed her out and lost a valuable employee because of gender biases. That didn’t have to happen.   Photo by Amtec Staffing, CC BY-SA 2.0.  ]]>

How One Small Business Fights Global Gender Inequality

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Have you ever wished you could have more of an impact on making the world a better place? Do you ever feel you are not doing enough to make a difference? I have thought and felt all these things, and I was truly inspired by the story of one young entrepreneur’s business plan to fight gender inequality in the coffee industry, reported by Dan Hyman of the New York Times. While still in her twenties, Alyza Bohbot decided to take control of her family’s coffee roasting business and spin off an exciting new business. She wanted both to save the family business, which her parents were ready to close or sell, and to have a positive social impact. Hyman writes that, while attending an International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) conference in Seattle, Alyza heard the story of a Columbian widow who lost her family’s coffee farm because of her gender. As a woman, the widow was not allowed to make decisions about her own business because of cultural norms. Hyman reports that Alyza also learned that, “according to the International Trade Center, women do 70 percent of the work in getting coffee to market but regularly cede or are barred from financial control.” It was during the IWCA conference that Alyza got her idea to form the new business, the City Girl Coffee Company, to make a difference for women in the coffee industry. As a result, City Girl Coffee Company

  • Buys its beans exclusively from farms and cooperatives that are owned or managed by women.
  • Donates 5 percent of all profits to organizations that support women in the industry.
Hyman writes that, as a result, women who sell to City Girl Coffee Company are viewed as leaders in their communities and say they now have their own identities. Alyza’s business, based in Minnesota, is booming and she feels she is able to make a difference. “I feel hopeful,” she explains. We women are demanding “our place in society.” Do you know a small business that is making this type of positive impact for women? Let us hear your stories.   Photo by Shared Interest, CC BY 2.0.]]>