Category Archives: Global Women

Extraordinary Women: Transforming Beijing

During Women’s History Month, I like to point to the achievements of women.  Not extraordinary women.  Ordinary women who have achieved extraordinary things Zhang's company Soho China is transforming whole areas of the Chinese capital.through persistence and vision.  I believe most of us are capable of achieving extraordinary things if we just keep working towards our goals and knowing that they are possible. Stories like this one help us know our goals are possible.

Zhang Xin: Building Beijing – CNN.com.Zhang Xin is a billionaire property magnate, has been named one of the world’s most powerful women and has played a large role in transforming Beijing’s architectural landscape.

Zhang’s company Soho China is transforming whole areas of the Chinese capital.

At 45, Zhang has made a name for herself bringing hip, urban architecture to Beijing’s previously gray and drab skyline, and making a lot of money while at it.

She co-founded her property development company Soho China — which stands for Small Office, Home Office — with her husband Pan Shiyi in 1995. When it went public in 2007, it had raised $1.9 billion.

Wealthy, stylish and dynamic, Zhang and Pan are the embodiment of middle-class Chinese aspirations of wealth and success.

However Zhang’s own path to success includes an itinerant childhood and working in a Hong Kong sweatshop when she was only 14 years old.

Zhang’s parents came from a long line of Chinese immigrants who lived in Burma but moved back to Beijing, taking jobs in the Bureau of Foreign Languages. They later separated when Zhang was only 5 years old. Zhang and her mother relocated regularly until they finally settled in Hong Kong. Zhang, then aged 14, worked in a garment factory, while learning English at a secretarial college.

She managed to get a scholarship to study economics at the University of Sussex in England and went on to gain a masters degree from Cambridge. Head-hunters from an investment bank offered her a job on Wall Street where Zhang worked until 1994, when the lure of being part of China’s rapid transformation and economic boom became too great.

She returned to Beijing where she met Pan and joined Vanatone in 1995, the property company he co-founded. The pair set up their own company that became Soho China and have since embarked on a number of projects — One of their first was a boutique hotel by the Great Wall of China.

Since then, Zhang has fostered her passion for architecture and design and invited a number of internationally renowned architects and artists to work with them, including Riken Yamamoto, Patrick Schumacher and Ai Weiwei.

Soho China’s Jianwai project in Beijing’s Chaoyang district is set to be completed in 2011, but already the mix of business and residential towers has transformed a previously run-down and depressed area in the east of the city into one of its most appealing areas for young aspiring professionals.

Last year, Forbes listed Zhang as #19 on their list of the 400 richest Chinese, with a net worth of $1.21 billion. Even in the current tough economic climate, Zhang and Soho China have a bright outlook for 2009 and beyond.

In February, Soho China made a statement saying that more projects would be completed in 2009 than in 2008 and that profits would quadruple to 2.3 billion Yuan.

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Clinton Tackles The High Profile, Big Impact Issues

WASHINGTON - JANUARY 22: U.S. Secretary of St...
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We are starting to get a glimpse of what high profile issues Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is taking into her portfolio and under her wing to move forward on the global stage. We also have a clue as to one of the ways she might approach her enormous task.

The Issues Clinton is taking on:

Diplomacy – no surprise there. But the experienced peace makers she’s chosen to advise her and act as envoys represent  a 180 degree turn from the bellicose and oil-hungry Cheney who pined to invade Iraq and, while doing it, award billions of dollars of no bid contracts to his old company pals at Halliburton. This is the company which proceeded to do such things as trucking ice hundreds of miles from Kuwait, with an armed escort, including hovering helicopters, for protection, rather than build a generator and ice maker in the Green Zone. It will be a healthy change to see foreign policy guided by a desire for peace instead of power and profit. As The Boston Globe states in Diplomacy returns: “the appointments of  former senator George Mitchell and erstwhile diplomat Richard Holbrooke are encouraging signs. Mitchell has a deserved reputation for resoluteness, fairness, and unflappability. Some of the lessons he learned from his role in forging the 1998 Good Friday agreement that led to peace in Northern Ireland are applicable to the Mideast”.  So we can have some realistic hope for the MidEast under Clinton’s tenure.

Energy security and climate change

Clinton is on record saying energy security must be an important and integrated element of US foreign policy:

“These are issues on which I will personally engage, and they will consistently receive high-level attention at the [State] Department. I will work with our friends and partners around the world, who are facing the same challenges. I also intend to ensure that the department works vigorously through the interagency process on these issues,” Clinton responded to questions following her Jan. 13 confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

As concrete demonstration of that commitment, Clinton announced a new climate change envoy Monday. According to the Earth Times, Todd Stern will become the country’s chief climate negotiator with the international community, which is hoping to agree to a new climate treaty by the end of this year. Stern, who  served as a senior advisor to former president Bill Clinton and led the US delegation to the groundbreaking Kyoto talks in 1997, will also be involved in domestic US efforts to reduce pollution.

Next up?  The Economy

Wihout saying more publicly, Clinton has telegraped the message that she plans to address global economic issues in order to improve our interrelated economies, and to alleviate the various financial stresses at home.  It won’t be a moment too soon.

Bolstering Women’s Role In The Effort For Change

To accomplish these difficult goals and meet these daunting challenges, Clinton has many tools as her disposal including extremely accomplished and capable envoys.  But she also has something else.  She has the good will of many women in the U.S. and around the world. Women who are willing to listen to her and put their shoulder to the wheel in order to bring about sorely needed change.

At her confirmation hearing, Clinton pledged to focus more attention on women’s issues, especially in Afghanistan.  It has long been a Clinton policy, dating from the Clinton administration, to leverage the underutilized resource of women and their efforts to lift up a nation and bring peace and prosperity to a region. I participated in former President Bill Clinton’s initiative to bring economic empowerment to women in the America’s by such simple but effective policies as micro-lending to allow women to start businesses.  I believe the underpinning of this approach is that unrest, dispair and instability don’t exist in a vacuum. To bring peace, a region must have hope, the kind that comes with providing education and training which allow people to lift themselves up.

Our state department now recognizes that the progress of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan has fallen back because, in part, we have failed to address these kind of issues. Neighboring Pakistan increasingly may face thorny issues because of the hiding or harboring or unwillingness to address the issue of terrorists taking cover in it’s border regions and it’s ongoing disagreements with India, including the conflict over Kashmir. The fate of Afghanistan and Pakistan are intertwined in many ways, so it is interesting to note that, according to The Boston Globe, on Friday, Clinton met with a group of visiting female Afghan legal professionals.

The fourteen judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys were in Washington on a State Department training program on justice reform in Afghanistan. According to the State Department, Clinton praised the women’s “bravery and courage” for bringing reform to Afghanistan and reaffirmed President Obama’s commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan.

Clinton has long standing credibility and ties with women’s groups both in the United States and abroad, certainly ever since she declared in Bejing in September 5th, 1995, “women’s rights are human rights.” I believe she will use these human resources to help achieve America’s goals and the goals of women everywhere.  And we applaud her for it.



Women

Clinton starts working the phones to U.S. allies – CNN.com.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has phoned a slew of leaders since taking office on Thursday, reaching out to key allies in the Middle East, Asia and Europe as the Obama administration reviews foreign policies.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces her new Middle East envoy on Thursday.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces her new Middle East envoy on Thursday.

Clinton, who was sworn in Wednesday, has spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, as well as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Jordan’s King Abdullah and the foreign ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, according to acting State Department spokesman Robert Wood.

The calls were “introductory” and did not delve into the nuances of Middle East policy, despite a simmering crisis in Gaza and Thursday’s naming of former Sen. George Mitchell as a special envoy to the Middle East.

President Obama said Mitchell will help implement a cease-fire between Israelis and Hamas and support anti-smuggling efforts to prevent the latter from re-arming.

But he added, “Lasting peace requires more than a long cease-fire, and that’s why I will sustain an active commitment to seek two states living side by side in peace and security.”

By naming Mitchell as his personal envoy, Obama is sending a diplomatic heavyweight to the region.

“He’s neither pro-Israeli nor pro-Palestinian,” Martin S. Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told The New York Times. “He’s, in a sense, neutral.”

Don’t Miss

Clinton also spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and India’s foreign minister, Wood said. Video Watch a former secretary of state discuss Clinton »

On Friday, Clinton met with a group of visiting female Afghan legal professionals.

The fourteen judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys were in Washington on a State Department training program on justice reform in Afghanistan.

The State Department issued a statement about the meeting late Friday. It was not on Clinton’s public schedule, and Wood did not mention the meeting at his daily press briefing when he discussed the secretary’s second day in office.

According to the State Department, Clinton praised the women’s “bravery and courage” for bringing reform to Afghanistan and reaffirmed President Obama’s commitment to stabilizing Afghanistan.

At her confirmation hearing, Clinton also pledged to focus more attention on women’s issues, especially in Afghanistan.

On Thursday, Obama and Clinton named Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, as a special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke negotiated the 1995 agreement at Dayton, Ohio, that ended the war in Bosnia.

Holbrooke called his latest mission “a very difficult assignment.”

“Nobody can say the war in Afghanistan has gone well, and yet, as we speak here today, American men and women and their coalition partners are fighting a very difficult struggle against a ruthless and determined enemy without any scruples at all,” he said after his appointment was announced.

Holbrooke said, “If our resources are mobilized and coordinated and pulled together, we can quadruple, quintuple, multiply by tenfold the effectiveness of our efforts there.”

Amid an administration review of North Korea, Clinton also spoke to the foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea, China and Australia — key allies working to disarm Pyongyang, the spokesman said.

She also spoke with the foreign ministers of India, Britain, France, Germany and the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, Wood said.

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The administration is also reviewing policy toward Iran, with Obama promising more engagement. Wood said that Undersecretary William Burns would be seeking input from Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia, partners in the so-called “P5 plus one” group dealing with Iran’s nuclear program. Video Watch Obama discuss the need for greater diplomacy »

Sources said Dennis Ross, a Mideast peace envoy for previous administrations, will be an envoy in charge of engaging Iran, but it is unclear what role he’ll play.

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Investment In Women in Emerging Markets Promises Long Term ROI

For some time now, women have formed non-profits, and along with governments and non-governmental agencies, have sought to provide micro-loans to other women in emerging nations, in order for them to start their own businesses.  Usually the loans were to automate a skill the women already possessed, such as enabling them to purchase an industrial sewing machine.  Or to capitalize on an asset they already possessed, such as enabling women of a Latin American mountain village, which raised geese, to start exporting pate to France and goose down pillows to the United States.  But the array of business skills they needed….in marketing, book keeping, product management…. was sorely lacking.

World Women Trade Fair

World Women Trade Fair

Ms. Okoli-Owube, 31, faced this dilemma first hand.  Even with a university degree, she found herself struggling to start a business and learn business skills at the same time. When she “saw a local newspaper advertisement last spring for 10,000 Women, a global entrepreneurship program run by Goldman Sachs, she and about 100 other women jumped at the chance to apply.”

As reported by the New York Times in Business Skills for Women in Emerging Markets, the welfare of girls and women has long been on the agenda of international agencies. The World Bank, for example, announced steps earlier this year to increase support for women entrepreneurs by channeling some $100 million in commercial credit lines to them by 2012.

But corporations have also begun to take their economic power more seriously, especially in emerging markets.

Many corporate programs employ microloans, grants or gifts to promote business education. Goldman decided to take a different approach after its research showed that per-capita income in Brazil, China, India, Russia and other emerging markets could rise by as much as 14 percent if women had better management and entrepreneurial skills.

“It’s not only philanthropy they’re after,” said Geeta Rao Gupta, president of the International Center for Research on Women. Goldman “had the idea that investment in women means a return on the gross national product of the country, and on household income.”

The company set aside $100 million over five years to bring business education to 10,000 qualified women business owners in developing countries, a commitment that remains unchanged despite banking industry turmoil.

Ms. Rao Gupta said the long-term view that Goldman and others were taking in emerging markets might help form a new economic stratum in societies where women’s participation in business traditionally had been restricted. Laws and customs in some countries, for example, bar women from opening bank accounts or require a husband’s permission to set up a company.

“This is the next step for women because it’s investing long term in business skills,” said Ms. Rao Gupta, whose institute researches and provides technical assistance for women in developing countries.

It has been said: “If you want to help a country, help the women in it.”  We applaud this commitment to women in developing countries.  We hope it continues and expands.  There is no question, in my mind, it will be a success in enpowering these women and consequently helping their families and their entire communities.

Photo Credit: World Women Trade Fair – The Goal of the International Handcrafted Gift and Home Textile Expo . is to assist women entrepreneurs living in third-world countries to ACCESS  GLOBAL MARKETS , and to also create awareness of the potential of TRADE as a mechanism for development and poverty reduction in developing countries. They use fair trade practices and eco-friendly products that do not destroy the environment. They are helping to reduce the level of poverty through community projects-building schools, health clinics, and providing training programs to other artisans leading to job creation.

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Women of the Year – The Grit To Persist

I’m a big believer in proclaiming “Women of the Year.”  I believe in identifying positive role models to give us Hillary Clintonall something to aspire to.

It also helps to give us hope when some of our goals….such as electing a woman to the White House… seem, at times, to recede before us, like those refracted heat waves that appear to form shapes, then vanish in the desert, leaving us wondering where is our palm lined pool of shimmering water? Nothing but miles and miles of dry, hot desert when it comes to women’s presidential aspirations.  But, better to light a candle than curse the darkness.  The candles women have lit and carried in the past year, or a bit over in one case, include some of the following outstanding women:

The New York Daily News named their New Yorker of the Year saying: “Hillary Clinton proved a woman of resolve and class.”

We couldn’t agree more.  And she did a lot more than that.  She made it more feasible for a woman to run for President of the United States, and she upped the ante for contenders to 18 million votes.  But Clinton’s skills as a campaigner, we predict, will be overshadowed by her skills as a serious decision maker and global negotiator.  I, for one, am heartened and relieved that , at least, the second phone call which comes in at 3am will be to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

I don’t believe in “book-ending” Governor Sarah Palin with Clinton, but neither do I believe in ignoring her plucky candidacy. She was called on and she took up the challenge, energizing her party and becoming a celebrity in the process. Common wisdom has it that she made Tina Fey a bigger celebrity in the process as well with her Saturday Night caricatures of Palin.  I don’t deny those caricatures were fun, of a type, but I will find them a lot funnier when we actually do have a woman in the White House.

I think we should give Queen Elizabeth of England some appreciation if, for nothing else, endurance.  She fills that classic Elizabeth II in 2007requirement: 50% of winning is “just showing up for the job”.  Queen Elizabeth has shown up for over 50 years, if you only count the years since her coronation. ( She also, for example, presided over public events and, during the war, trained as a driver and mechanic, and drove a military truck  making her the first, and so far only, female member of the Royal Family to actively serve in the armed forces.)

I met Benazir Bhutto in San Francisco in 2001, I believe.  Although there was some controversy surrounding her I always admired her and found her speaking inspiring. “Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state,[5] having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996). She was Pakistan‘s first and to date only female prime minister. She went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.

Bhutto returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, and was assassinated on 27 December 2007, after departing a PPP rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008 where she was a leading opposition candidate. The following year she was named one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.

Benazir Bhutto

I think Bhutto provides another example of a woman persisting in her beliefs and showing up in the face of personal danger. Although she died a few days before 2008, it is now time to mark the anniversary of her violent death.  I salute her and say farewell.

I know there are many, many more women who should be saluted and honored in 2008.

I would nominate all the women who worked so hard for their candidates in 2008.

I would nominate all the mothers and daughters and wives who worked to maintain their families and those who lost loved ones in national service in conflicts abroad.

I would nominate all of us who have persevered, despite an unlevel playing field and personal challenges.

I suspect that might be all of us.

If you have women you think should be named women of the year,  please do write and share with us who they are.

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Women Power: From The Ballot Box To The Blogosphere

WWW's

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Gretchen Glasscock, AdvancingWomen.com

Ok.  So some of women’s power is illusory.  Our foremothers not only got us the vote, we now have more women voters than men voters in the U.S. but we don’t have a single, monolithic voting bloc that can swing elections, although we can tip them.  Women have been successfully split along the lines of ideology, frequently by those who would use wedge issues to divide us, precisely so we don’t pull together as a decisive force.  (Remember: divide and conquer)  Other differences splinter us as well.  Some women who’ve clawed their way to the top don’t want to challenge the “old boy’s network” or “old media network”, because, essentially, they have become part of it.

But AdvancingWomen.com believes, for whichever women out there would like to challenge the status quo, you have to start from where you are with what you’ve got.  Wherever women are right now in our society and with whatever tools are at our disposal, we need to make a commitment to work for change and improvement in the lives of women.  In our government, women make up 18 percent of governors, 16 percent of senators and 16 percent of representatives. Not good enough!  There is one CEO of a Fortune 50 company.  There are another 11 women CEOs in the Fortune 500.  Not nearly good enough!

So that is where we are.  And that is where we have to start.  The ball is in our court.

Susan Estrich, first female president of the Harvard Law Review, first woman to run a major presidential campaign (Dukakis) wrote a book Sex & Power in which she questions whether women are ambitious enough or want power enough to do what it takes to get it. Her answer seems to be: “We don’t want it, or we don’t want it enough to pay the price, push up the mountain, do what it takes.”  And Estrich goes on to say: “You can’t change the rules if you’re not in the room. You can’t finish a revolution without getting in there and fighting. . . .”

Well, I’m not sure I agree with that.  The women I know are plenty ambitious.  Some are a little weighted down by having to work twice as hard as men to earn salaries which are not equivalent but, none-the-less, needed to support their families.  Often they are the primary care givers for children and elders at the same time.  But they are plenty ambitious and that’s why they frequently put in long hours and multi-task to a degree that might drop some men to their knees.

I think, perhaps, in the past, one major road block has been that women have always had to try to work from within a male dominated infrastructure, if they wished to effect change. If they wanted to be a journalist, they had to be accepted by a male publisher, their work approved by, frequently, a male editor.  Same with writing a book.  Or doing a TV show. Whether they wanted to create ripples in the media, academia or in corporate America, there were always male gate keepers and males in control and in charge.  Now, however, the Internet allows women to route around the male power structure and pursue their own objectives, however they choose.  We don’t have to ask anyone’s permission.  We just have to do it.

Today, women stand at a watershed moment facing a meaningful opportunity  to make their voices heard and exert more influence and dominance over their lives and future. The Net today with its enormous reach, its free platforms, automated tools and low cost of entry, combine to form an ideal platform for women to communicate, to build their communities into a powerful voice for change and women’s equity in many different arenas. They can also create businesses, write for profit, share knowledge and strategies, dispense advice and create their own platform on the Net.

Back in 1995, in the infancy of the Net, Australian author,Dale Spender, wrote a clarion call to arms in her book Nattering on the Net, urging women to stake their claim to power on the Net; to seize control and help write the rules of the new platform with its virtually unlimited potential. “In the real world men dominate communication. Men talk more often, they talk for longer periods, they adopt ‘centering positions’ (forcing females to hover around); men define the topic, assume the legitimacy of their own view, and override women who do not see the world in their terms. Much of this dominant status is achieved by interrupting and correcting. …Women are being kept out of cyber-communication with an electronic version of interruption and intimidation … women are being silenced on the net.”  In that long ago, but in many ways seminal book, Spender basically urged women to jump in and start the communication revolution on the Net to assure women would have the same voice and power as men.

The results have been dramatic.  As Cath Elliott points out in Women’s move from the ballot box to the blogosphere: ” Where we once had a very real fight on our hands to get our voices heard above the masculine fray, women have now created a space where we not only can be heard, but if we choose, we can shut out the brouhaha coming from some of the more unreconstructed men on the net. As attendees at the recent Blog Nation ( Ed. in England ) debate discovered, not only is the feminist blogosphere enjoying rude health, but women bloggers and writers are a growing force on the web.

The fact is there are now more women blogging than men. There are those, like ( the author,Cath Elliott ) who have opted to engage in some of the more male-dominated corners of the blogosphere, and there are others who have chosen to create more women-friendly spaces – virtual sanctuaries where women are free to debate their issues without having to worry about being shouted down by men, and where any would-be trolls and harassers are swiftly and mercilessly dealt with.”

But let us be clear.  Women-only spaces online are fine.  They may be as relaxing as a day at the spa or as warm and cozy or arch and competitive as one’s high school reunion.  They may be transcendent in their contemplation of women’s issues or perspective or philosophy.  But AdvancingWomen.com believes women can not afford not to engage in the rough and tumble of real-world debates involving all genders, all ethnicitys, all ages, straight, gay, pro-choice, pro-life, whatever. It’s a big diverse world out there and however much of a Mulligan stew it might be, every one has a vote in the future and we are all going to share it together, so we need to make our voices heard by all, not just the believers.

As Cath Elliott notes, ” In the same way that women have had to jump in to other male-dominated arenas in order to get our message across and to ensure our involvement in public and political life, we can’t afford to ignore the enormous potential the blogosphere affords us for both communicating our experience and making our voices count. And while there will always be a place for (women only) spaces which I cherish — what we can’t afford to do is isolate ourselves completely, and shut ourselves away in a virtual world where all we’re doing is preaching to the converted.

The blogosphere is the biggest public space we’ve ever had; we owe it to the women who fought so hard to secure us the vote 80 years ago to make the most of the opportunities a forum like this gives us, and to ensure that women are and always will be playing an equal role with men in the political and public life of this country, in all its manifestations.”

AdvancingWomen.com agrees wholeheartedly.  Now go out and start writing that blog or signing people up for your own community.

For more, read the following:

Community on the Net – The Platform To Network, The Power to Mentor

Yes, Some Blogs Are *Very* Profitable – And Some Of Them Are Women’s Blogs

“Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”


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Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women

Provinces of Sri Lanka. My own creation, based...

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Advancing Women In Leadership Journal » Book Review: Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women.

“Harvard graduate student, Paula Goldman, stumbled across an idea one morning – to send an Internet question out to the world “What defines your generation of women?” The idea gathered pace. Out of some 3,000 responses, the international editorial team picked 105 submissions from women living in 57 countries, including some well-known activists, artists, athletes, writers, musicians, photographers, and community organizers.

The resulting book, Imagining Ourselves‘ essential underlying communication platform is the Internet – the invitation to contribute to the book was sent out via the Internet, and the responses apparently were also compiled over the Internet – it is a collection of digital conversations. The book also complements a virtual web-based “living” conversation – as the International Museum of Women’s President invites readers, “The Imagining Ourselves project combines this inspiring anthology with an online exhibit and gathering place where you can participate in conversations about topics important to you … at the International Museum of Women’s website

The book’s contributors share a common profile. They are middle to upper middle class, and in some cases, members of the ruling elite. The latter include Queen Rania of Jordan, Karenna Gore Schiff (Al Gore’s daughter) and Nurual Izzah Anway, (daughter of Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister). The majority of the contributors have had access to superior education, technology, and, by extension, the global market. These are women with a high degree of mobility, freedom to express, and ability to articulate their opinions and issues.

Reading through the contributions, it is apparent that the digital world is impacting women’s observations about and interactions with the world around them. Yee-Ming Tan, for instance, pursues a conventional corporate career following her studies in Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. After her travels in Tibet she reflects that the main difference between women of the Tibetan community and her is “the digital distance”. Unlike Tibetan women who operate within their immediate environs, her support network is “thousands of miles away, I am in contact via the telephone, the Internet – with my sister in Paris, my friend in New York and my Mum in Malaysia”, she writes, “we are connected to our wider support group digitally over a great distance”.

Jess Loseby – an English artist uses the Internet as her main medium. She works on both small intimate online installations and large-scale digital projections and video. Jess is wheel chair bound, a mother of three and the Internet is an important source of information and inspiration for her artistic work. Pireeni Sundaralingam, born in Sri Lanka, educated at Oxford and living in the US, says, in reference to the Sri Lankan civil war, “thanks to advances in communication technology – there has never been such a chance for us to grasp, at a grassroots level, the similarities of our respective struggles and to build bridges between all our struggling communities.”

The author of this book review, Nidhi Tandon, laments the clear disparity in incomes between those in the West and those in emerging nations.  The income disparity and the digital divide have a clear impact on which women’s stories come to be told. Also, and perhaps as a result, the author notes:

“I was missing any critical references to women and their relationships with earth, water, resources and energy. A couple of lone voices from Bolivia and Micronesia, celebrated community, traditional wisdom, seeds, plants, food and biological diversity itself. This may have been one of the downsides of relying entirely on the Internet as a source of “diversity” of women’s stories.

This book reminds me of Women in the Material World, a book published ten years ago by the Sierra Club, which portrayed media, culture and consciousness through the eyes of women in their contexts across the world. The 256-page photojournalist book captured the myriad lives of women around the world through unfiltered lens, displaying significant material disparities among women across the world. Ten years later, Imagining Ourselves is published, this time a direct expression by the contributors themselves – and through the particular lens of literate and digitally connected women.”

Paula Goldman, Director of Imagining Ourselves

For the full review go to Advancing Women In Leadership Journal » Book Review: Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women.

For more go to Advancing Women In Leadership Journal

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