Women-Advancing Equality, Strengthening America
In Focus: The Women Effect – Advancing Equality, Strengthening America
Together with the Rockefeller Family Fund and the Scholars Strategy Network, the Wyss Foundation has partnered with an innovative collaboration of leading scholars and civic activists who are developing new strategies to strengthen female leadership and boost economic opportunities for women and their families.
Through this collaboration, scholars and leaders recently published five papers exploring topics that range from how workplace standards can be improved to meet the needs of 21st century families to how to expand political participation of women and achieve gender equality in political leadership.
At a February symposium at Harvard University, the papers’ authors presented their findings and, in a discussion moderated by the journalist and author Ellen Goodman, discussed next steps toward developing achievable policy changes to improve economic opportunity and equality for women.
Noting the gains made toward greater equality of opportunity in newsrooms and other workplaces since the start of her career, Goodman cautioned attendees that progress has been nonetheless incomplete and unfinished.
“We are… increasingly conscious of how much more that there is to do,” said Goodman, “especially when we see our daughters bumping up against the glass ceiling and being curtailed and crunched by the work-family walls that have kept them from their largest achievements. Today, we have a chance to think about where we are, how much change there has been, where we have gotten stuck, what ‘stuck’ is, and how to get unstuck.”
The Wyss Foundation’s support for the symposium, titled “The Women Effect: Advancing Equality, Strengthening America,” is part of its philanthropic focus on helping build a society in which women have equal opportunities in the political, cultural, and economic spheres.
To watch and listen to the presentations and discussion at “The Women Effect” symposium, click here.
The five papers from leading scholars and leaders are civic activists are below:
“A Long Term Agenda for Women,” Fran Rodgers, Work/Family Directions, Inc.
“A Roadmap: Modernizing Workplace Standards to Fit 21st Century Families,” Heather Boushey, Washington Center for Equitable Growth
“Confronting Hierarchy: The Women’s Movement in the Inequality Era,” Heather McGhee, Demos
“Barriers and Solutions to Increasing Women’s Political Power,” Shauna Shames, Rutgers University-Camden
“Comment: The Next American Women’s Movement,” Theda Skocpol, Harvard University and Scholars Strategy Network