The worth of a woman

This morning Oatie woke me up at 6AM, shaking and scratching and doing that dog thing that dogs do when they get wet. Only he was dry under my covers. Carrie and I split the dog up depending on who is working so he'll sleep longer.

Unfortunately, my brain usually doesn't go back to sleep once awake. So I started to peruse Facebook news stream. Lately, I've felt Facebook could be called Wastebook- there is so little information on there. I used to really enjoy reading the news from the news stream. But today from "Esc the City" was a grand post on women shortchanging themselves professionally with an excellent Ted Talk called "Why we have too few women leaders" by Sheryl Sandberg of Google.


I couldn't help but relate to the things I read, though none of them were new. Glass ceilings. Roles assigned to women. Women attributing their success to luck and help from others and personal hard work rather than due to our own innate abilities. Falling off the career ladder. Placing our value in looks not brains. Sheryl said women start leaning back and not taking higher positions way before they have a children or a husband, with the idea that they will one day. She said also, you better take a job that's challenging and interesting if you want to go back after you have a kid, because it's hard to leave that kid at home.

I thought back to the ceilings and the sexism and the different walls that I've hit over the years. I thought about my career, and the repetitiveness of every day. I'm free but without challenges. My challenges lie in other things, not at work.

I don't know what it means, but I hope if you have the time, you'll watch this talk and think about the kids in your life and what you can do to encourage them to have equal opportunities as adults and to make good decisions.

Women are more than just a pretty face. The princess and Barbie culture is helping no one.


A short film from Sundance called Miss Representation, along the same lines.