193: The Self-Empowered Woman: Women in Our Lives

Dear Followers,

In light of the unexpected challenges I've faced  the past month, the following story (sent by my good friend Donna Agins--who flew 3,000 miles for a long-delayed visit only to see me propped up in a hospital bed recovering from surgery--and slightly edited by me) seems to be a good reminder of how important the women in our lives truly are.

A young wife sat on a sofa on a hot humid day, drinking iced tea and visiting with her mother. As they talked about life, about marriage, about the responsibilities of life and the obligations of adulthood, the mother clinked the ice cubes in her glass thoughtfully and turned a clear, sober glance upon her daughter…'Don't forget your sisters,' she advised, swirling the tea leaves to the bottom of her glass. 'They'll be more important as you get older.

“No matter how much you love your husband, no matter how much you love the children you may have, you are still going to need sisters. Remember to go places with them now and then; do things with them. And remember that 'sisters' means ALL the women...your girlfriends, your daughters, and all the other women in your life, too. You'll need other women. Women always do.”

“What a funny piece of advice!” the young woman thought. “Haven't I just gotten married? Haven't I just joined the couple-world? I'm now a married woman, for goodness sake! A grownup! Surely my husband and the family we may start will be all I need to make my life worthwhile!”

But she listened to her mother. She kept contact with her sisters and made more women friends each year. As the years tumbled by, one after another, she gradually came to understand that her mother really knew what she was talking about. As time and nature work their changes and their mysteries upon a woman, sisters are the mainstays of her life. And after more than 60 years of living in this world, here is what I've learned:

THIS SAYS IT ALL:
Time passes.
Life happens.
Distance separates.
Children grow up.
Jobs come and go.
Love waxes and wanes.
Men don't do what they're supposed to do.
Hearts break.
Parents die.
Colleagues forget favors.
Careers end.
Illness comes to visit, and sometimes it stays.

BUT...

Sisters are there, no matter how much time and how many miles are between you. A girlfriend is never farther away than needing her can reach. When you have to walk that lonesome valley and you have to walk it by yourself, the women in your life will be on the valley's rim, cheering you on, praying for you, pulling for you, intervening on your behalf, and waiting with open arms at the valley's end. Sometimes, they will even break the rules and walk beside you....Or come in and carry you out.

Girlfriends, daughters, granddaughters, daughters-in-law, sisters, sisters-in-law, Mothers, Grandmothers, aunties, nieces, cousins, extended family and friends—they all bless our lives! The world wouldn't be the same without women, and neither would I….When we began this adventure called womanhood, we had no idea of the incredible joys or sorrows that lay ahead. Nor did we know how much we would need each other. Every day, we need each other still. Pass this on to all the women who help make your life meaningful. I just did.

Looking forward to your comments…

192: The Self-Empowered Woman: Home Sweet Home

Dear Followers,

Wow! How have I ever missed writing about Self-Empowered Women! 

As many of you know, I have just returned home from an unexpected 8-day hospital stay, and I will begin sharing my online love letters to high-achieving women as soon as I dig myself out of my backlogged paperwork.

In the meantime, thank you for you calls, cards and gifts and for being so supportive to Tony--known throughout the hospital as "Mr. Wonderful."

By this time next week I plan to have a new "Introduction" ready to send your way...

191: The Self-Empowered Woman: Olympe de Gouges

Dear Followers,

It’s no secret that there’s a special place in my heart for the brave Self-Empowered Women who were born centuries ago. Today I’d like to introduce you to Olympe de Gouges, who was born in Southwestern France in 1748—I find her story of particular interest because she bravely argued for women’s rights, and (unfortunately) paid the ultimate price for doing so. Plus, it’s worth remembering that French women had to wait for the right to vote until (!) 1944, which is almost 200 years after de Gouges’ birth.

Although she was raised by a butcher and a mother who was the daughter of a cloth merchant, there was always speculation that Olympe was the illegitimate daughter of Jean-Jacques Lefranc (the Marquis de Pompignan) (1: No Paternal Safety Net). He, however, rejected her claim and many believe this was why she worked so hard on behalf of illegitimate children (2: An Early Sense of Direction).

Little is known of her childhood, but when she was 17 she “was married to” Louis Aubry, a caterer whom she didn’t really love, and they had a son, Pierre. When he died less than two years afterward (in 1770), she and her son moved to Paris, and she changed her name from Marie Gouze to Olympe de Gouges.

Three years later, she had a long relationship with a wealthy man (Jacques Bietrix de Rozieres), who was one of several men who supported—but never married—her (15: Forget About Prince Charming). Her putative biological father died in 1784, and that's when she began to write articles, essays and socially-conscious plays. During this time she began to move among the aristocracy and supposedly worked to lose her provincial accent. One of her notable works was “Zamore and Mirza,” which was an anti-slavery play that was so controversial it was renamed three times, and only performed on rare occasions (11: Risk Addiction).

She was a passionate advocate of human rights (7: Magnificent Obsession), and was an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution. But when “egalite” (equal rights) was not extended to women she was deeply disappointed. Even though the government would not listen to her, in 1791 she became a member of The Society of the Friends of Truth, which fought for equal political and legal rights for women. This is where de Gouges’ most famous controversial statement (“A woman has the right to mount the scaffold, so she must possess equally the right to mount the speaker’s platform”) originated (5: Life is Not a Popularity Contest).

Later that year she wrote and published “Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen,” which was a 17-point manifesto that addressed her idea of gender equality. For example, the second “right” is “The purpose of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of woman and man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and especially resistance to oppression.” This gender-inclusive call to action was an alarming stand for a woman of that era, especially one from the provinces (13: More Than Meets the Eye).

Her political activity seemed to anger both sides of French politics. Because she opposed Capital Punishment, she was against the execution of Louis XVI, but since the Republicans opposed any political participation by women they (like the Royalists) also loathed de Gouges. One critic even wrote that “She allowed herself to act and write about more than one affair that her weak head did not understand.”

By 1793, she was arrested, spent three months in jail, and without the help of an attorney she tried to represent herself (12: Hard Times). She was sentenced to death on November 2nd 1793, and guillotined on the next day. More recently, in March 2004, the junction of Rues Beranger, Charlot, Turenne and Franche-Comte in Paris’ Third Arrondissement was proclaimed "Place Olympe de Gouges" (8: Turning No Into Yes).

Looking forward to your comments…

190: The Self-Empowered Woman: Rachel Barton Pine

Dear Followers,



Today I'd like to introduce you to an amazing American musician, who has had more than her share of challenges, but has survived them beautifully. Rachel Barton Pine was born on October 11th, 1974 in Chicago. When she was only three years old she heard a group of older girls (who were dressed "in beautiful dresses") play violin when she and her family were at church (3: Belief In The Unbelievable). She loved the music so much that she asked her parents if she could have lessons.

Her family didn't have much money, and they were sure that her infatuation with the violin would end by the time she started kindergarten, so they rented a violin for her, and found a local teacher for her lessons. Instead of losing interest, when she was five years old she began signing her name "Rachel Violinist" (2: An Early Sense Of Direction).

As a child, she would arrange stuffed animals on the sofa, and then stand on top of the coffee table to pretend it was a stage. She would bow and then play (9: Music) for her "audience," so she never suffered from stage fright even though she was such a young performer.

By the time she was seven, she debuted with the Chicago String Ensemble, and by ten she had performed with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, which is the training arm of the Chicago Symphony. While most of her peers were in junior high school, she was receiving the equivalent of a graduate-level education. When she was 14, she was named concertmaster. Because she was homeschooled, by the time she was eleven years old, Pine was able to practice as much as eight hours a day (10: The Critic Within).

Her parents later divorced, but when she was a child her father had trouble holding down a job, so (as an adolescent) Rachel actually became the major breadwinner for the family. She took jobs playing at weddings and orchestras to earn money, and said "I put on a lot of makeup and pretended I was older then I was. I was responsible for the mortgage, the utilities, the groceries...there was so much pressure growing up like that" (1: No Paternal Safety Net). In spite of those challenges, at 17 she was the youngest violinist and first American to win a gold medal at the Johann Sebastian Bach International Competition in Leipzig, Germany (13: More Than Meets The Eye). 

When she was 20, and her career was just beginning to really take off, she was severely injured in a train accident in the Chicago suburb of Winnetka, where she taught violin lessons. As she was leaving the commuter train with her violin case over her shoulder, the door closed on the strap of her case, which pinned her left shoulder to the train. She was dragged 366 feet by the train, before she was pulled underneath and run over. One leg was severed and her right foot was mangled. When the train finally stopped passengers rushed to apply tourniquets, which saved her life (12: Hard Times).

After a number of operations, she was able to leave the wheelchair behind, and walk with a prosthetic leg; fortunately, her upper body was not hurt in the accident. Only two years after being injured, she began touring with the help of her mother (8: Turning No Into Yes). She is now married to Greg Pine, a former minor league pitcher she met at church, and he travels with her for her performances, and manages his computer business when they are on the road. 

In the music world, Pine is known for her amazing versatility. She has played with rock bands, and even performed her own arrangement of Metallica's "Master of Puppets." She is admired for incorporating orchestral versions of rock music into her coaching sessions with chamber music groups and youth orchestras.

In 2001, she started the Rachel Elizabeth Barton Foundation to help deserving young musicians as well as promote the study and appreciation of classical music, including string music by black composers. It provides grants, loans and scholarships to help cover everything from sheet music to instrument repair, travel expenses and supplemental lessons for musicians between the ages of 10 and 30. Awards are given on the basis of great musical talent and accomplishment, artistic aspirations, and serious financial need (7: Magnificent Obsession).

In stark contrast to her orchestral and heavy metal leanings, her latest album "Violin Lullabies" features work by a wide range of both well-known and obscure composers. Ms. Pine researched the unusual collection of lullabies around the world and on the Internet. The album was inspired by the birth of her daughter, Sylvia, in September 2011 (16: Intensive Motherhood).

Looking forward to your comments...



189: The Self-Empowered Woman: Elizabeth H. Blackburn & DNA

Dear Followers,

TELEMERES




Today I’d like to introduce you to a remarkable woman who made a major discovery that should be of interest to anyone who wants to look and/or feel as young as possible in spite of the passing years. Elizabeth H Blackburn, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for her groundbreaking discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase, is considered America’s expert when it comes to the factors that connect emotional stress, health and DNA to aging.

Blackburn was born in Australia in 1948, to a family composed of doctors and scientists. Both of her parents were doctors, and her maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were geologists. Additionally, her father’s sister and her mother’s brother were also family physicians.

As a young child, Blackburn would pick up ants in her backyard and jellyfish on the beach, and was known for keeping tadpoles in glass jars. She was the second child of seven siblings and the family’s home was full of pets and animals, in her words, “all over the house and garden.” Perhaps because of her love of animals, from an early age she was fascinated by biology, and the biography of Marie Curie was her favorite childhood book. By the time she was a teenager, she had made up her mind to become a scientist (2: An Early Sense Of Direction).

Although it sounds like an idyllic Australian childhood, there were problems. Her father was rarely home, and Blackburn told her biographer that she longed for his attention. He drank too much, and when she was a teenager her parents separated (1: No Paternal Safety Net).

On her own with so many children, Blackburn’s mother suffered from depression, which sometimes required hospital stays. For this reason (as well as the fact that the young Blackburn didn’t want to be judged or pitied), she rarely invited friends to her home (5: Life Is Not A Popularity Contest).

Fortunately, she was able to attend Broadland House Girls Grammar School, where she received an excellent education. Her two regrets are that neither Greek nor Physics (which she learned at the local public high school in evening classes) was offered at her school. She was, however, able to study piano, which she loved enough to "wistfully hope" that she could become a musician (9: Music).

During her teenage years, schoolwork (instead of friendships) became her focus, and she excelled, particularly when few female students were focusing on science. She majored in biochemistry at the University of Melbourne, and moved to England to earn her PhD at Cambridge. During that time she became an expert in DNA sequencing (7: Magnificent Obsession).

As if moving to England were not enough of a radical change, in 1975 Blackburn moved to America where she became a post doctoral fellow at Yale, where her fiancee (John Sedat) would be teaching. They married in 1975, and moved to San Francisco where both Blackburn and her husband worked at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Ultimately, in 1986, she moved again to become a professor--with her own laboratory--at the University of California, Berkeley (14: Selective Disassociation).

In 1989, three years after the birth of her son, Benjamin, she decided that  the drive from the family to Berkeley each day simply became too much.  So she--and her laboratory--relocated to UCSF.  Blackburn was president of the American Society for Cell Biology in 1998, and in late 2001 joined the President's Council on Bioethics.  She disagreed with some of the council's recommendations (11: Risk Addiction), and after two years the personnel office of the George W. Bush White House informed her that she would no longer be on the council.

In 2009, Dr. Blackburn, one of her researchers (Dr. Carol W. Grieder) and Harvard's Dr. Jack W. Szostak won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of the enzyme telomerase (8: Turning No Into Yes). Until then, only eight women had won Nobel Prizes in Medicine.

Dr. Blackburn has discovered that traumatic events early in life can affect both telomeres and health for decades afterwards.  She is currently researching the impact of meditation on telomeres.  Her hope is to offer testing to the public within the year because unusually short telomeres may indicate a health problem.  She feels that measuring telomeres could become part of a new direction in medicine--one that could "intercept" disease. 

Working in a primarily male-dominated field has brought a number of challenges to Dr. Blackburn's career. In fact, at one point she admitted that when younger "I would have been a little afraid to do things because my male colleagues wouldn't have taken me seriously as a molecular biologist."  Now, however, "Being senior enough in the field, having enough solidity, I don't feel afraid of being marginalized" (13: More Than Meets the Eye).

Looking forward to your comments...



188: The Self-Empowered Woman: Female Breadwinners

Dear Followers,

Recently, The New York Times ran an article that caught many social observers by surprise. According to the Pew Research Center, four out of every ten American households that include children under the age of 18 now have a mother who is either the sole or primary wage earner for her family. This statistic--the highest ever on record--has quadrupled since 1960.

Some analysts believe this is because it is now so common for single women to raise children on their own. Nearly two-thirds of the women who are chief breadwinners for their family are single parents. Other experts feel that the recession--during which men employed in construction and manufacturing, and were therefore more likely to lose their jobs--is to blame.

In 2007 (before the recession officially started), 20% of mothers told PEW that they would rather work full time than part time or not at all. But by the end of 2012 that had risen to 32%.

The median family income for single mothers (who are more likely to be younger, less educated, Hispanic or Black) is $23,000. But the median household income for married women who earn more than their husbands (who are more likely to be slightly older, college educated, and White) is $80,000. Of all married couples, 24% include a wife who earns more than her husband, while in 1960 that number was only 6%. Interestingly enough, economists discovered that wives with a better education and stronger earning potential than their husbands are less likely to work.

If the job market continues to evolve, marriage/income issues may change as well. Experts agree that college degrees are becoming more important to both finding and keeping a job. And, of late, more women than men are earning 4-year degrees. In 2011, 23% of married couples with children included a wife with more education than her husband; in 17% of those couples the men had higher educations. The remaining 60% included spouses with near-equal levels of education.

In 2007, 71% of Americans felt that the growing number of children born to unmarried mothers was "a big problem." But only two months ago that number was 64%. Republicans are more likely than either Independents or Democrats to be concerned about the increasing number of unmarried single mothers.

In 1960, the share of never-married single mothers was only 4%, but by 2011 it had risen to 44%. Never-married mothers tend to earn less money than their divorced or widowed peers and, according to PEW, are more likely to be a member of a racial or ethnic minority.

Looking forward to your comments...

187: The Self-Empowered Woman: Beyonce & Chime for Change

Dear Followers,

 

I hope that you will be able to tune in to" The  Women's Concert for Change: The Sound for Change Live from London" tomorrow night at 9 P.M. on NBC. And I REALLY hope that you'll let all your girlfriends  (and female relatives) know about this ground-breaking event for girls and women.

This important event is the centerpiece of CHIME FOR CHANGE, which is a new fundraising campaign founded by Gucci. The idea is to raise both awareness and money to highlight female empowerment around the globe. Funds will be distributed to over 50 non-profit organizations in 38 countries, and focused on the key areas of education, health care and justice.

Beyonce is the artistic director of the concert (as well as the co-founder of CHIME FOR CHANGE), and the program will begin with a 45-minute performance--other performers, like Jennifer Lopez, John Legend, Jay Z and Florence + The Machine will also perform. Presenters during the program include Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Gloria Steinem, Halle Berry, Madonna, Zoe Saldana and other A-list celebrities.

The concert event will be broadcast to over 175 countries and will celebrate inspirational stories from around the world. One goal is to generate awareness about local and global issues that affect girls and women, and the other is to raise money to help non-profit organizations that are trying to create much-needed change.

CHIME FOR CHANGE is a foundation that was created by the creative director of Gucci, Frida Giannini, actress Salma Hayek-Pinault and Beyonce Knowles-Carter. The "advisory board" of advocates, issues experts and global leaders include former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Beyonce is the mother of one-year old daughter Blue Ivy, and obviously feels strongly about this movement. In her words, "I have always felt strongly about equal opportunity for women. Girls have to be taught from early on that they are strong and capable of being anything they want to be. It's up to us to change the statistics for women around the world. I'm honored to be in the company of women who live fearlessly and set an example for the next generation of young ladies. I am really happy that so many amazing artists and presenters have come together to support CHIME FOR CHANGE. Our goal is to have a great time together while we unite and strengthen the voices of girls and women around the world."

Ticket buyers for the live concert in London will each be able to choose which of the many projects CHIME FOR CHANGE supports, and this means that their ticket money will be directed to a specific non-profit organization.  Frida Giannini added, "We have reached a significant moment in the history of girls' and women's empowerment and now is the time for change. I think it is essential for girls and women to see and celebrate what is possible. I hope that through CHIME we can help the voices calling for change to become so loud that they cannot be ignored."

Looking forward to your comments...