Women of the world: Female leaders can change the course of our political and economic future--for the benefit of everyone.

Another fine article from Ode magazine:

Women of the world: Female leaders can change the course of our political and economic future--for the benefit of everyone.

Marie C. Wilson | October 2005 issue

I often hear people say that the lack of women in positions of political leadership is an issue that pales next to world crises—global terrorism, fragile economies, inadequate health care, troubled schools, corporate greed. They see no connection between the frightening situations we’re in and the fact that few women sit at the table to determine the solutions.

No wonder we’re where we are today.

This fundamental imbalance, with men running the world and women mostly spectators (or victims), is not a trivial detail. It is the problem. It is also the one solution we have not tried, and the one most likely to work.

It’s not that putting women in power is simply the right thing to do—it’s the only thing to do. The values that women uniquely bring to the table—empathy, relational skills, community focus, inclusion across lines of authority—are vital if we are to solve any of the monumental issues facing our world today.

This is not just me talking. Three decades of research in state legislatures, universities, and international public policy centers have proven beyond doubt that women, children, and men all benefit when women are in leadership. Broader social legislation, benefiting everyone, is more likely to pass if women are in office. We know the power of women as peacemakers in the world from scores of stories about their effectiveness at negotiation, from Ireland to Pakistan to Norway to South Africa to India and beyond.

We can ill afford to use only half our talent, when we know for a fact that today’s complicated challenges demand more than one vision. It’s time for real and permanent power sharing, for real and permanent change—women ruling side by side with men, allowing their voices to rise with different solutions and allowing men to think outside of the masculine box. In this way, we get fresh eyes and fresh solutions from both genders,

applied to both old, abiding problems and to new, frightening ones.

This is not a call to pry power from the fingers of men and turn it all over to women. Together we can create a different world, shifting the burden from male shoulders and allowing the diversity of thought and life experience to transform our actions—perhaps bringing a greater peace, perhaps allowing men to be better fathers, perhaps providing a new paradigm for our security.

It’s not easy to get there. Those in power rarely let go without a fight, even if they would benefit by doing so. For women to truly gain the leadership roles, we must be insistent and persistent. We must enlist our many male allies. We must step up to the plate, letting it be known that we are ready to lead, that in fact we demand it as a birthright. If we think creatively, if we use our community resources (a particular strength of women), if we support women who say they want to lead, if we use our voices and our votes to get there, we will achieve the transformation of power. And everyone will be better for it. Our daughters and sons and grandchildren will thank us, because their world will offer more options. We owe it to them. And to ourselves.

Marie C. Wilson is founder and president of The White House Project (www.thewhitehouseproject.org), a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing women’s leadership across sectors and fostering the entry of women into all positions of leadership, including the presidency. She is also the author of the new book Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World (Viking). This text was adapted from the book If Women Ruled the World, edited by Sheila Ellison (Inner Ocean Publishing).

How Women Will Change The World: The not-so-secret secret to changing the world

There is a timely article about how women in Rwanda are changing that country and turning it around from the horrible genocide that left the country devastated to today's economic revival. The country was left with a population 70% women after the genocide. Today " the women of Rwanda are behind one of the most inspiring comeback stories of national transformation in recent history."

I have been researching giving to charity and how to make your giving have the most positive impact. Micro-lending to women has proven to have the most significant positive impact to a community. When you help a woman, she helps the whole family. Teach a woman and she teaches the family.

An unfortunate inverse applies. When a society becomes majority male population, women's rights suffer, and the society as a whole suffers. This is happening in China and India today with the years of using new technology and old traditions to increase the male population at the expense of baby girls. In both China and India there are social issues including an increase in sexual crimes that will resonate for many years to come. China has reacted by sharply decreasing the wholesale adoption of girl babies to foreign countries. India has not acknowledged the issue, a typical response for a country that is still in denial about its growing AIDS epidemic.

The article first appeared in Ode, and was latter referenced in the Huffington Post. And here:

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left the country in tatters, its future fraught with uncertainty. Of the more than 800,000 people killed, most were men and boys. Rwanda’s remaining population was 70 percent female. Fast-forward to the present day: The economy has revived and is holding steady. Major road arteries between cities and outlying villages, which were destroyed, have been rebuilt. Today, the Rwandan lower house of Parliament is nearly half female, the highest percentage of women in any parliament worldwide. Girls are attending school in record numbers.

The women of Rwanda are behind one of the most inspiring comeback stories of national transformation in recent history. And while their story is dramatic, it’s not unique. Indeed, in the field of international development, women have emerged as the not-so-secret secret to changing the world.

As former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, “If there is one lesson we in the United Nations have learned over the years, it is that investing in women is the most productive strategy a country can pursue”—to raise economic productivity, improve nutrition and health, and educate the next generation.

When economist Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his innovative work in microcredit lending, he made it clear that it was women who make up the bulk of the poor but ambitious small business owners lifting their communities out of poverty with their entrepreneurialism. What many people don’t realize is women are behind many of the primary drivers of social change.

In the U.S., for example, women earn 78 cents to a man’s dollar, which may lead you to think they give less to charity. Think again. In fact, women control over half the total wealth in America, and give just as much as men to charity. Unlike men, however, they’re more willing to take risks on smaller or new organizations they believe have a strong vision for change. Studies show women volunteer more than men, and since the 1960s have turned out in greater numbers at the voting booth. In other words, women are the single most important market opportunity for changing the world.

Unfortunately, their potential has yet to be fully tapped. Professionals in the social-change sector, including advocacy groups, humanitarian organizations and philanthropists, haven’t always been thoughtful about targeting women as partners. But if more of them did appeal to women, what would it look like? For starters, it would involve invoking the values that matter most to them. Research from sociological studies to the latest in brain science show that above all, women value connection and community. For women, it’s not about “me,” it’s about “we.” That means women are less concerned about the pecking order and more committed to keeping harmony in the coop.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the greatest social and environmental challenges that confront us make these values a winning blueprint for transformation. Both globalization and climate change have already made national borders more tenuous. If the reigning ethos of our history as a species has been “survival of the fittest,” the temperature of today’s planet requires a paradigm shift to “survival of the connected.” Women can lead the way.

You don’t have to be an international diplomat to take this new ethos to heart. An important first step is to ditch the niche. That is, banish the notion that women are a peripheral audience and place them squarely in the centre, where they belong. Next, engage women by speaking directly to their values and encouraging their active participation. With women on your side, you’ll both build a community and catalyze the change you want to see in the world.

Lisa Witter is the chief operating officer and Lisa Chen a senior vice president at Fenton Communications, a U.S. public interest media relations firm. They are the co-authors of The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World—and How to Reach Them, which will be published by Berrett-Koehler in June.

"Lust Telepathy"

Huffington Post blogger Dr. Belisa Vranich writes in Lust Telepathy: An Unexplored Psychological Phenomenon, writes about the connection between couples that allows them to feel 'almost telepathically connected'. She describes it as a brain activity similar to the high a drug addict feels.

It is a strange thing that happens between a couple. You can feel it when it happens to you. And sometimes you can see it when it happens to others. And when it happens to one person but not the other it is the stuff of tragic unrequited love. And all of these are being mapped to parts of the brain.

So, if these experiences have to do with neurons and neurotransmitters and the electrical circuitry of our brains, is there a non-verbal communication taking place? And I don't mean batting eyelashes. Is there a level of transmittal between electrons that takes place without the complex processing of bringing an emotion to consciousness and assigning verbal signifiers?

And for people who do not easily bring emotions to consciousness and who do not easily translate neuron sensations into the abstraction of language with its assignment of signifiers to signifieds, is there some way for them to communicate?

And why are some people more able to comprehend their feelings than others? Or more able to make that intense connection?

Vranich writes "Classic psychology explains that the "merging" feeling--the well-sung "losing yourself in another" moment--is something that resembles the feeling infants have of being connected to their mothers, their gaze ("mirroring") being an intrinsic part of the development of the self."

Is their something in the maternal bonding process that needs to take place in order for the adult mind to have the capacity to bond with another?

Pandas!

See cute panda video posted by NPR. These pandas are located at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.