I recently interviewed the award-winning reporter Liza Mundy, who’s most recently the author of the book, The Richer Sex: How the new majority of female breadwinners is transforming sex, love, and family. Our conversation about “breadwomen” ranged far and wide and sparked a lot of thoughts about where we are—and how far we still have to go. You can see a longer version of the interview here. Meanwhile, thanks to Jaci Pearse and Steve Goldbach for organizing the event, and Monitor New York for hosting.
Stories, moments, people and ideas of interest from within the worlds of innovation and design, spotted and written about by Helen Walters, design writer, editor, and ideas editor at TED. Attitude, errors and opinions obviously all the writer's own.
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July 13, 2012
December 19, 2011
"When I caution them that they might have to have their uterus removed because of reproductive infections, they just say, ‘So what? How long are we going to live anyway?’"
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Stark commentary from Indian women who weren’t interested in using a new type of sanitary pad, despite its cheap price. An Indian Inventor Disrupts the Period Industry purports to be a success story of a male entrepreneur’s dogged pursuit of truth about an issue he’d never experience personally, and his willingness to go to extremes to understand why things are the way they are is admirable. (Though frankly, I understand his family’s dismay at his decision to collect used pads; yes, the functionality of pads needs to be tested, but I’d imagine there are other, less visceral ways to do this.) But there’s also a much larger, cultural story here. Until the intended audience, the women who might actually use these pads once a month are prepared to think of themselves as cherished and valuable members of society, no product can make a real difference.
[Story via Deb Mills-Scofield.]
July 5, 2011
"I believe in bringing your whole self to work. We are who we are. When you try to have this division between your personal self and your professional self, what you really are is stiff."
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Facebook COO, Sheryl Sandberg has become something of an unwitting icon for women in the workplace. In this sprawling New Yorker piece, A Woman’s Place, writer Ken Auletta assesses Sandberg’s nuanced attitude to women in the workplace, as well as her approach to helping to run Facebook. While you might expect the statement above from an executive from a social network that relies on people having a singular identity, I love this quote for representing a very different type of approach to business than was held to be right or proper only decades ago. I also loved the following, which reflects the mercurial nature of work and the futility of trying to organize life too rigidly:
I always tell people if you try to connect the dots of your career, if you mess it up you’re going to wind up on a very limited path.. The reason I don’t have a plan is because if I have a plan I’m limited to today’s options.
Here’s the TED Women Talk referred to in the piece.
