Sunday, January 10, 2010

Enlightened Power


Switching topics ... reading Enlightened Power: How Women are Transforming the Practice of Leadership (because I simply cannot read just one book at a time), I am inspired by the women who have paved the way for me to occupy a position of a professional, with potential for leadership and a Ph.D.  This is something that rarely happened in my mother's lifetime, and even more rarely in my grandmothers' lifetimes.  My mom worked at home, nurturing my dad, my sister and I, and encouraging us to be our best.  I often wonder how lonely that life was, even though she always has seem so fulfilled.  My dad's mom had to find gainful employment, as a widowed women, in the early 1970's and took on one of the few professions women had access to - nursing.  I can appreciate my ancestry and I look forward to the future for me, and my own daughters, who, in theory, should no longer be bound by a glass ceiling.

I still feel a glass ceiling exists, echoed by the concepts presented in Enlightened Power, even though research has proved, time and again, that women who occupy positions of power benefit their companies in profits and satisfaction for all employees.  I'm not a 'raging feminist' - rather an equal opportunist, who believes women deserve the same shot that men have enjoyed since the relative birth of humankind.  In the field of manufacturing and mining, where men are the dominant force, I strive to help women rise to power, so we can help be leaders of all those under us.  Mining, engineering, science are traditionally male-dominated fields, thus exhibited by the 90% male workforce at my plant and mine site.  In my position as an HR professional and talent management keeper, I need to put women in the forefront, and encourage our bright women engineers to grow and develop to positions of power, for the good of all.

Another issue highlighted in this book was the fact that women worldwide are subject to horrors that Western women often do not know (a topic that Oprah Winfrey has taken on, as well as Nicholas Kristoff and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn have studied and written about).  Kristoff and WuDunn's Half the Sky:  Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide inspired me to lend to women half-way across the world in the form of micro-loans, and I am sponsoring a rape victim in Africa for only $12 a month.  Research study upon research study shows that when women earn money and gain power, they are able to save for their own education and that of their children's (whereas men who earn money are likely to spend it on beer and frivolous expenditures that do not benefit humankind). When women are educated, economies are lifted to heights not known under strictly-men regimes.  How can we ignore half of our society, as we have done for centuries?  We cannot - is the answer.  Lifting women to power and leadership helps all of the world.  This is not about eliminating male power and domination, it is about equality and economic success for the entire planet.

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