“
White people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions. Regardless of whether a parent told you that everyone was equal, or the poster in the hall of your white suburban school proclaimed the value of diversity, or you have traveled abroad, or you have people of color in your workplace or family, the ubiquitous socializing power of white supremacy cannot be avoided. The messages circulate 24-7 and have little or nothing to do with intentions, awareness, or agreement. Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how--rather than if--our racism is manifest. When we move beyond the good/bad binary, we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others.
I repeat: stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don't have them. We do have them, and people of color already know we have them; our efforts to prove otherwise are not convincing. An honest accounting of these patterns is no small task given the power of white fragility and white solidarity, but it is necessary.
”
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Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
“
The feminism of equality, of toughness, of anti-discrimination, has been overwhelmed by one of victimhood and demands for special treatment....At a certain point, when we demand an equal ratio of men to women in certain fields, what we’re criticizing is not “the system,” but the choices that women themselves are making.....let’s keep our eye on the question of equal opportunity and stop obsessing about equal outcomes, lest we find ourselves trying to cure society, not of sexism, but of free choice.
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Elizabeth Wasserman
“
Because he's the boss, there's no stopping his dick fingers, and that's why no workplace is ever truly equal.
”
”
Natalie Sue (I Hope This Finds You Well)
“
Both the veil and makeup are often seen as voluntary behaviours by women, taken up by choice and to express agency. But in both cases there is considerable evidence of the pressures arising from male dominance that cause the behaviours. For instance, the historian of commerce Kathy Peiss suggests that the beauty products industry took off in the USA in the 1920s/1930s because this was a time when women were entering the public world of offices and other workplaces (Peiss, 1998). She sees women as having made themselves up as a sign of their new freedom. But there is another explanation. Feminist commentators on the readoption of the veil by women in Muslim countries in the late twentieth century have suggested that women feel safer and freer to engage in occupations and movement in the public world through covering up (Abu-Odeh, 1995). It could be that the wearing of makeup signifies that women have no automatic right to venture out in public in the west on equal grounds with men. Makeup, like the veil, ensures that they are masked and not having the effrontery to show themselves as the real and equal citizens that they should be in theory. Makeup and the veil may both reveal women’s lack of entitlement.
”
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Sheila Jeffreys (Beauty and Misogyny: Harmful Cultural Practices in the West)
“
Delicious baked goods were the great work hostility equalizer, no matter how unorthodox the workplace.
”
”
Molly Harper (Better Homes and Hauntings)
“
It wasn't until I got into the workplace that I realized gender equality was not a given; it was something to claim.
”
”
Scarlett Curtis (Feminists Don't Wear Pink (And Other Lies): Amazing Women on What the F-Word Means to Them)
“
skyscraper would remain one of the most peculiarly American of white-collar institutions, much more a symbol of the prowess, even ruthlessness, of American-style capitalism than what it equally was: an especially tall collection of boring offices.
”
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Nikil Saval (Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace)
“
These two voices represent opposing paths for the feminist movement. On the one hand, Sandberg and her ilk see feminism as a handmaiden of capitalism. They want a world where the task of managing exploitation in the workplace and oppression in the social whole is shared equally by ruling-class men and women. This is a remarkable vision of equal opportunity domination: one that asks ordinary people, in the name of feminism, to be grateful that it is a woman, not a man, who busts their union, orders a drone to kill their parent, or locks their child in a cage at the border. In sharp contrast to Sandberg’s liberal feminism, the organizers of the huelga feminista insist on ending capitalism: the system that generates the boss, produces national borders, and manufactures the drones that guard them.
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Nancy Fraser (Feminism for the 99 %)
“
Most women and people of color have to claw their way to any chance at success or power, have to work twice as hard as white men and prove themselves to be exceptional talents before we begin to entertain discussions of truly equal representation in our workplaces or government.
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”
Ijeoma Oluo (Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America)
“
When you can’t keep women out anymore, and you can’t force them all to become secretaries or teachers because modern social politics demand that you at least pretend to support gender equality in the workplace, what can you do to keep women out of powerful positions in business? You can set them up to fail—or, to be more accurate, you set them up to fall.
”
”
Ijeoma Oluo (Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America)
“
Changes in technology come along roughly every five to seven years, so no one can ever have any expectation of permanence in the workplace. People's skills will always need upgrading. But the right kind of education for the twenty-first century is the one that prepares us to weather these changes—and which does so equally, without regard to where we are from or what your parents do.
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Fiona Hill (There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century)
“
Sam, with her fiery hair and equally fiery spirit, had become an unexpected variable in the equation of my life. And as much as I wanted to maintain my usual dominance, I found myself intrigued, challenged, and inexplicably drawn to her sass.
”
”
Evie James (Night Shift)
“
Practically speaking, when more than 90 percent of women got married and divorce was rare, discrimination in favor of men at work meant discrimination in favor of their wives at home. When workplace discrimination worked in favor of women at home, no one called it sexism. Why? It was working for women. Only when discrimination switched from working for women to working against women (because more women were working) did it get called sexism. For example: During the years I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City, the most resistant audiences I ever faced in the process of doing corporate workshops on equality in the workplace were not male executives—they were the wives of male executives.
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Warren Farrell (The Myth of Male Power)
“
At the time, I thought the point was about representation: there should be more women chefs covered by the food media, just as there should be more people of color. But no, we’re talking about something much more vicious. It’s not just about the glass ceiling or equal opportunity. It’s about people being threatened, undermined, abused, and ashamed in the workplace. It’s embarrassing to admit how long it took me to grasp that.
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”
David Chang (Eat a Peach)
“
This myth of meritocracy and equal opportunities encourages individualism over collective action, because when people believe this myth, they obviously see no need for protest movements around particular classes or identities, such as the Women's Movement or the Civil Rights workplace, education or in their personal lives, they are more likely to blame themselves, rather than sexism, racism, class oppression or homophobia; concepts which in current society are often seen as out of date. This type of blame even applies to experiences of actual violence or harassment with too many people believing that it is their fault if they are sexually harassed in the workplace or at school, abused by a partner or are a victim of sexual violence. Our society encourages this view, and in turn, that keeps people isolated and alone, rather than providing them the opportunity to get involved in collective struggles against such common experiences.
”
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Finn Mackay
“
His full lips tasted like sin and salvation in equal measure, and his tongue danced with mine in an erotic ballet that left us both panting.
”
”
Evie James (Night Shift)
“
We work to create workplaces where everyone can bring our whole selves to work every single day.
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”
Selisse Berry (Out & Equal at Work: From Closet to Corner Office)
“
Thank you for changing the world one cubicle and one workplace at a time.
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”
Selisse Berry (Out & Equal at Work: From Closet to Corner Office)
“
Women need to keep asking for what they’re worth, and leaders need to make sure women are paid the same, whether they ask for it or not.
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Mikaela Kiner (Female Firebrands: Stories and Techniques to Ignite Change, Take Control, and Succeed in the Workplace)
“
Despite all of the social advances in women’s rights and the push for gender equality in the workplace, it seems like modern men still want a woman that they can take care of at home.
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Shannon Mullen (See What Flowers)
“
Women must show their public face. We must help to work out our own community problems. We must insist on having equal voices and equal responsibilities. . . In large part, success depends on changing minds at home, in the streets, and at the workplace - not just in legislatures and in the courts. Each and every one of us has and important role to play in completing that task.
”
”
Joan Biskupic
“
For Ginsburg, therefore, the #MeToo movement, in which women used social media and other platforms to demand the same respect in the workplace as their male colleagues, was a vindication of her vision that women should empower themselves by joining the workplace in numbers and refusing to tolerate unequal treatment, intentional or unintentional. Ginsburg believes that the Constitution should be interpreted to root out unconscious biases that subordinate women. But as she recognized decades ago, true equality requires that men and women work together to root out unconscious bias in families and in the workplace.
”
”
Jeffrey Rosen (Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law)
“
What it boils down to is knowing that women are equal to men, and living that knowledge. It’s about ensuring that that equality is recognized in the home, in the workplace, in public life. And it’s about acknowledging that we all—women and men—are strong sometimes, weak sometimes, coolheaded sometimes, emotional sometimes, right sometimes, wrong sometimes. Locking away your feelings and vulnerabilities has got nothing at all to do with it. That’s something else entirely.” She
”
”
Sarah Haywood (The Cactus)
“
We must not forget that the very concept that women are equal to men is a relatively new one. It emerged only in the West and despite its advancements—from the right to vote to protection from discrimination in the workplace—has yet to achieve the complete equality to which feminists aspire. This fragile near equality, which exists in law if not in every home and workplace, has existed for only a fraction of time, and history has shown us that such achievements can be quickly reversed.
”
”
Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights)
“
As I was editing this chapter, a survey of more than thirty-five hundred Australian surgeons revealed a culture rife with bullying, discrimination, and sexual harassment, against women especially (although men weren’t untouched either). To give you a flavor of professional life as a woman in this field, female trainees and junior surgeons “reported feeling obliged to give their supervisors sexual favours to keep their jobs”; endured flagrantly illegal hostility toward the notion of combining career with motherhood; contended with “boys’ clubs”; and experienced entrenched sexism at all levels and “a culture of fear and reprisal, with known bullies in senior positions seen as untouchable.”68 I came back to this chapter on the very day that news broke in the state of Victoria, Australia, where I live, of a Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission report revealing that sexual discrimination and harassment is also shockingly prevalent in the Victorian Police, which unlawfully failed to provide an equal and safe working environment.69 I understand that attempts to identify the psychological factors that underlie sex inequalities in the workplace are well-meaning. And, of course, we shouldn’t shy away from naming (supposedly) politically unpalatable causes of those inequalities. But when you consider the women who enter and persist in highly competitive and risky occupations like surgery and policing—despite the odds stacked against them by largely unfettered sex discrimination and harassment—casual scholarly suggestions that women are relatively few in number, particularly in the higher echelons, because they’re less geared to compete in the workplace, start to seem almost offensive. Testosterone
”
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Cordelia Fine (Testosterone Rex: Myths of Sex, Science, and Society)
“
We would often lead workshops in offices that were 95-100% white, and yet the participants would bitterly complain about Affirmative Action. This would unnerve me as I looked around these rooms and saw only white people. Clearly these white people were employed - we were in their workplace, after all. There were no people of color here, yet white people were making enraged claims that people of color were taking their jobs. This outrage was not based in any racial reality, yet obviously the emotion was real. I began to wonder how we managed to maintain that reality - how could we not see how white the workplace and its leadership was, at the very moment that we were complaining about not being able to get jobs because people of color would be hired over "us"? How were we, as white people, able to enjoy so much racial privilege and dominance in the workplace, yet believe so deeply that racism had changed direction to now victimize us?
”
”
Robin DiAngelo
“
The truth is that modern inequality exists because democracy is excluded from the economic sphere. It needs therefore to be dealt with by an extension of democracy into the workplace. We need to experiment with every form of economic democracy – employee ownership, producer and consumer co-operatives, employee representatives on company boards and so on.
”
”
Richard G. Wilkinson (The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone)
“
I always liked your piety, Jack.” “I’m a lot cuter than the women of your generation,” Betsy said, playing up to Capers and Mike. “Wrong, junior Leaguer.” I could feel myself turning mean. The cognac was doing its work and I felt the thrilling disquiet that had come into the room. I took Betsy’s measure, and went for her throat. “The women of my generation were the smartest, sexiest, most fascinating women ever to grow up in America. They started the women’s liberation movement, took to the streets in the sixties to stop the unbearably stupid Vietnam War. They fought their asses off for equal rights in the workplace, went to law school, became doctors, fought the corporate fight, and managed to raise children in a much nicer way than our mothers did.” “Chill out, Jack,” Mike said. “Betsy’s a kid.” “She’s a dimwit,” I said. I turned to Betsy. “The women of my generation make men like me and Mike and your chicken-hearted husband look puny and uninteresting by comparison. Don’t talk about those women, Betsy, unless you’re on your fucking knees genuflecting out of admiration
”
”
Pat Conroy (Beach Music)
“
I’m done being polite about this bullshit. My list of professional insecurities entirely stems from being a young woman. Big plot twist there! As much as I like to execute equality instead of discussing the blaring inequality, the latter is still necessary. Everything, everywhere, is still necessary. The more women who take on leadership positions, the more representation of women in power will affect and shift the deep-rooted misogyny of our culture—perhaps erasing a lot of these inherent and inward concerns. But whether a woman is a boss or not isn’t even what I’m talking about—I’m talking about when she is, because even when she manages to climb up to the top, there’s much more to do, much more to change. When a woman is in charge, there are still unspoken ideas, presumptions, and judgments being thrown up into the invisible, terribly lit air in any office or workplace. And I’m a white woman in a leadership position—I can only speak from my point of view. The challenges that women of color face in the workforce are even greater, the hurdles even higher, the pay gap even wider. The ingrained, unconscious bias is even stronger against them. It’s overwhelming to think about the amount of restructuring and realigning we have to do, mentally and physically, to create equality, but it starts with acknowledging the difference, the problem, over and over.
”
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Abbi Jacobson (I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff)
“
Almost every woman I know has talked about equality in the workplace, about women supporting women, and about women championing other women. But I've also seen that women knock each other down and say mean things about other women more than I've ever seen from my male counterparts. Women: Stop knocking each other down, and let's start building each other up. Men are already there to stomp on you; the last thing we need is for women to join in on the act.
”
”
Tan France (Naturally Tan)
“
The top managers are defensive about these departures; they point to how safe, attractive, and up-to-date the workplace is. Rodney Everts is less defensive but equally perplexed. “When somebody tells me there’s no future here, I ask what they want. They don’t know; they tell me you shouldn’t be stuck in one place.” Fortunately, the job market in Boston for low-wage workers is strong at the moment, but there is something puzzling about the sheer impulse to get out.
”
”
Richard Sennett (The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism)
“
Just as most American employers give us ‘at will’ employments, our entire existence has become subject to their will. We have arrived at a point where most of our stress is a result of not knowing whether we will get the next paycheck. Exploitative employers love it this way. So long as we are afraid, they are sure to get 100 percent submission from us. We cannot let our toxic way of working be accepted as the norm and as the typical American work ethics. We deserve and can do much, much better than this.
”
”
Louis Yako
“
If trust is the core value that allows us to meet the world in a cheerful stance, then tolerance is the equally important quality that allows us to deal with the realities of differences and conflict. Let's be honest: If people were all more or less the same — if there were no differences in race, religion, sexual orientation, political leanings — life would in some ways be easier. But, boy, would it be dull! Diversity is the spice of life. Our ability to embrace diversity makes our own lives richer.
Conversely, whenever we fall victim to prejudice or unadmitted bias, we make our own lives smaller and poorer. You don't believe that women are the equal of men in the workplace? Well, your world has just shrunk by half. You have a problem with gay people? Well, you just deprived yourself of 10 percent of the population. You're not comfortable with black people? Latinos? You get my drift. Keep giving in to intolerance, and eventually your world contains no one but you and a few people who look like you and think like you; it gets to resemble a small, snooty, and deathly dull country club! Is that a world worth living in?
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Peter Buffett (Life Is What You Make It: Find Your Own Path to Fulfillment)
“
My generation was raised in an era of increasing equality, a trend we thought would continue. In retrospect, we were naïve and idealistic. Integrating professional and personal aspirations proved far more challenging than we had imagined. During the same years that our careers demanded maximum time investment, our biology demanded that we have children. Our partners did not share the housework and child rearing, so we found ourselves with two full-time jobs. The workplace did not evolve to give us the flexibility we needed to fulfill our responsibilities at home. We anticipated none of this.
”
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Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead)
“
Too right things could be better, that’s my whole point. My going to work for the badge will not change that, will it?” Joanna said, “And Pride? There is absolutely no pride in being used and cast aside every twelve-weeks for someone equally replaceable. Do you see pride on the faces of people on Workplace? I don’t. I see worry, I see weariness, I see downcast men and women, shuffling to and from work, ridiculed at the shops when their badge has ran out, shouted down in the streets with insults like ‘badger’ and ‘scum’ for simply doing all they can to survive. Pride, I don’t see that, and you know what else I never see? Any fucking hope.
”
”
Paul Howsley (The Year of the Badgers)
“
Most of us have come to realize patriarchy - rule by a male-dominated society revering solely a male god - is not working for Mother Earth or most of the people on the planet. How do we counter beliefs that there is no option but the authoritarian father? How does society go about making a course correction? How do ideas that permeate every level of society from womb to tomb, boardroom to bedroom, voting booth to the workplace shift into a more fair, equal, and just world of partnership, sharing, caring and peace? Hear the contributors to the anthology and radio show, Voices of the Sacred Feminine - women and men - offering their vision and solutions to reshape our world.
”
”
Karen Tate
“
I always liked your piety, Jack.” “I’m a lot cuter than the women of your generation,” Betsy said, playing up to Capers and Mike. “Wrong, junior Leaguer.” I could feel myself turning mean. The cognac was doing its work and I felt the thrilling disquiet that had come into the room. I took Betsy’s measure, and went for her throat. “The women of my generation were the smartest, sexiest, most fascinating women ever to grow up in America. They started the women’s liberation movement, took to the streets in the sixties to stop the unbearably stupid Vietnam War. They fought their asses off for equal rights in the workplace, went to law school, became doctors, fought the corporate fight, and managed to raise children in a much nicer way than our mothers did.
”
”
Pat Conroy (Beach Music)
“
I mean, I get it, In life, we're judged according to what we've done. And women are consistently assessed more harshly. A New York University study showed that women have to do much more than men to be perceived as equally productive in the workplace. So we keep chugging along. Me? I'm great. I got so much done today! We want to have spotless homes, healthy-yet-gourmet meals, executive-track promotions, well-behaved children, a robust spiritual life, spotless community service, hot sex, and on top of all that, some time to relax. But herein lies the conundrum, If we continue to pursue productivity for productivity's sake, women will continue to position ourselves diametrically opposed to satisfaction.
You may feel like the most productive person alive, but without a purpose, you're just busy.
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Erin Falconer (How to Get Sh*t Done)
“
The sexual segregation of the labour force, and the preservation of workplaces as arenas for fraternal solidarity, have remained remarkably stable during the twentieth century.59 Most women can find paid employment only in a narrow range of low-status, low-paid occupations, where they work alongside other women and are managed by men, and, despite equal-pay legislation, they earn less than men. Marriage thus remains economically advantageous for most women. Moreover, the social pressures for women to become wives are as compelling as the economic. Single women lack a defined and accepted social place; becoming a man’s wife is still the major means through which most women can find a recognized social identity. More fundamentally, if women exercised their freedom to remain single on a large scale, men could not become husbands – and the sexual contract would be shaken.
”
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Carole Pateman (The Sexual Contract)
“
There is an old question, rarely voiced these days, but nevertheless running as an undercurrent beneath the squabbles and misunderstandings that occur in households, workplaces and universities on a daily basis. ‘What do women want?’ has been asked in a bewildered, almost exasperated, tone since women first began to say they wanted more. Yet the answer seems to us to be simple and entirely self-evident. Women want what all sentient human beings want. They want to develop their own talents and put them to good use, to earn and control their own money so they can be truly independent and make free choices. They want to gain status and respect as they prove to be worth of it. To love and to be loved as free and equal adults, to be allowed their human flaws and foibles and not to be unfairly judged for them, and to be forgiven when they fail, behave badly or have trouble coping. To be the subject and not the object. They want, in short, what men want.
”
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Jane Caro
“
The prevailing discriminatory practices during the sixties, whose targets were working people, women, and people of color, were atrocious. Thus, an enforceable race-based -- and later gender based -- affirmative action policy was the best possible compromise and concession. Progressives should view affirmative action as neither a major solution to poverty nor a sufficient means to equality. We should see it as primarily playing a negative role -- namely, to ensure that discriminatory practices against women and people of color are abated. Given the history of this country, it is a virtual certainty that without affirmative action, racial and sexual discrimination would return with a vengeance. Even if affirmative action fails significantly to reduce black poverty or contributes to the persistence of racist perceptions in the workplace, without affirmative action, black access to America's prosperity would be even more difficult to obtain and racism in the workplace would persist anyway.
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Cornel West (Race Matters)
“
I awoke to the fraud that had been committed in socialism’s name, and felt an immediate obligation to do something about it. All those laws formulated by the British Labour Party, which set out to organize society for the greater good of everyone, by controlling, marginalizing or forbidding some natural human activity, took on another meaning for me. I was suddenly struck by the impertinence of a political party that sets out to confiscate whole industries from those who had created them, to abolish the grammar schools to which I owed my education, to force schools to amalgamate, to control relations in the workplace, to regulate hours of work, to compel workers to join a union, to ban hunting, to take property from a landlord and bestow it on his tenant, to compel businesses to sell themselves to the government at a dictated price, to police all our activities through quangos designed to check us for political correctness. And I saw that this desire to control society in the name of equality expresses exactly the contempt for human freedom that I encountered in Eastern Europe.
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”
Roger Scruton (How to Be a Conservative)
“
It is a truism today, in this highly technologically-developed
culture, that students need technical computer skills. Equally
truistic (and, not incidentally, true) is that the workplace has
become highly technological. Even more truistic – and far
more disturbing – are the shifts in education over the last two
decades as public elementary schools, public and private high
schools, and colleges and universities have invested scores
of billions of dollars on “digital infrastructure,” computers,
monitors and printers, “smart classrooms,” all to “meet the
demands” of this new technological workplace.
"We won’t dwell on the fact – an inconvenient truth? –
that those technological investments have coincided with a
decline in American reading behaviors, in reading and reading
comprehension scores, in overall academic achievement, in the
phenomenon – all too familiar to us in academia – of “grade
inflation,” in an alarming collapse of our students’ understanding
of their own history (to say nothing of the history of the rest of the world), rising ignorance of world and American geography, with an abandonment of the idea of objectivity, and with an
increasingly subjective, even solipsistic, emphasis on personal
experience. Ignore all this. Or, if we find it impossible to ignore,
then let’s blame the teachers...
”
”
Peter K Fallon (Cultural Defiance, Cultural Deviance)
“
Indeed, equal amounts of research support both assertions: that mentorship works and that it doesn’t. Mentoring programs break down in the workplace so often that scholarly research contradicts itself about the value of mentoring at all, and prompts Harvard Business Review articles with titles such as “Why Mentoring Doesn’t Work.” The mentorship slip is illustrated well by family businesses: 70 percent of them fail when passed to the second generation. A business-owner parent is in a perfect spot to mentor his or her child to run a company. And yet, sometime between mentorship and the business handoff, something critical doesn’t stick. One of the most tantalizing ideas about training with a master is that the master can help her protégé skip several steps up the ladder. Sometimes this ends up producing Aristotle. But sometimes it produces Icarus, to whom his father and master craftsman Daedalus of Greek mythology gave wings; Icarus then flew too high too fast and died. Jimmy Fallon’s mentor, one of the best-connected managers Jimmy could have for his SNL dream, served him up on a platter to SNL auditions in a fraction of the expected time it should take a new comedian to get there. But Jimmy didn’t cut it—yet. There was still one more ingredient, the one that makes the difference between rapid-rising protégés who soar and those who melt their wings and crash. III.
”
”
Shane Snow (Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking)
“
SELF-MANAGEMENT Trust We relate to one another with an assumption of positive intent. Until we are proven wrong, trusting co-workers is our default means of engagement. Freedom and accountability are two sides of the same coin. Information and decision-making All business information is open to all. Every one of us is able to handle difficult and sensitive news. We believe in collective intelligence. Nobody is as smart as everybody. Therefore all decisions will be made with the advice process. Responsibility and accountability We each have full responsibility for the organization. If we sense that something needs to happen, we have a duty to address it. It’s not acceptable to limit our concern to the remit of our roles. Everyone must be comfortable with holding others accountable to their commitments through feedback and respectful confrontation. WHOLENESS Equal worth We are all of fundamental equal worth. At the same time, our community will be richest if we let all members contribute in their distinctive way, appreciating the differences in roles, education, backgrounds, interests, skills, characters, points of view, and so on. Safe and caring workplace Any situation can be approached from fear and separation, or from love and connection. We choose love and connection. We strive to create emotionally and spiritually safe environments, where each of us can behave authentically. We honor the moods of … [love, care, recognition, gratitude, curiosity, fun, playfulness …]. We are comfortable with vocabulary like care, love, service, purpose, soul … in the workplace. Overcoming separation We aim to have a workplace where we can honor all parts of us: the cognitive, physical, emotional, and spiritual; the rational and the intuitive; the feminine and the masculine. We recognize that we are all deeply interconnected, part of a bigger whole that includes nature and all forms of life. Learning Every problem is an invitation to learn and grow. We will always be learners. We have never arrived. Failure is always a possibility if we strive boldly for our purpose. We discuss our failures openly and learn from them. Hiding or neglecting to learn from failure is unacceptable. Feedback and respectful confrontation are gifts we share to help one another grow. We focus on strengths more than weaknesses, on opportunities more than problems. Relationships and conflict It’s impossible to change other people. We can only change ourselves. We take ownership for our thoughts, beliefs, words, and actions. We don’t spread rumors. We don’t talk behind someone’s back. We resolve disagreements one-on-one and don’t drag other people into the problem. We don’t blame problems on others. When we feel like blaming, we take it as an invitation to reflect on how we might be part of the problem (and the solution). PURPOSE Collective purpose We view the organization as having a soul and purpose of its own. We try to listen in to where the organization wants to go and beware of forcing a direction onto it. Individual purpose We have a duty to ourselves and to the organization to inquire into our personal sense of calling to see if and how it resonates with the organization’s purpose. We try to imbue our roles with our souls, not our egos. Planning the future Trying to predict and control the future is futile. We make forecasts only when a specific decision requires us to do so. Everything will unfold with more grace if we stop trying to control and instead choose to simply sense and respond. Profit In the long run, there are no trade-offs between purpose and profits. If we focus on purpose, profits will follow.
”
”
Frederic Laloux (Reinventing Organizations: A Guide to Creating Organizations Inspired by the Next Stage of Human Consciousness)
“
As I have tried to show throughout this book, white people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions. Regardless of whether a parent told you that everyone was equal, or the poster in the hall of your white suburban school proclaimed the value of diversity, or you have traveled abroad, or you have people of color in your workplace or family, the ubiquitous socializing power of white supremacy cannot be avoided. The messages circulate 24-7 and have little or nothing to do with intentions, awareness, or agreement. Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest. When we move beyond the good/bad binary, we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others.
”
”
Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
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Ginsburg believes that the Constitution should be interpreted to root out unconscious biases that subordinate women. But as she recognized decades ago, true equality requires that men and women work together to root out unconscious bias in families and in the workplace.
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Jeffrey Rosen (Conversations with RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Life, Love, Liberty, and Law)
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Journalists in the South predicted rapid and sweeping political and cultural change. Black people would register to vote in huge numbers. Staunch segregationists would be shoved out of office. In cities and counties where Black voters outnumbered white, Black politicians would win office and wield power. Black citizens would get a fair share of government services, including new schools and paved streets. As schools integrated, achievement levels and income levels would rise until Black and white Americans, eventually, achieved parity. Neighborhoods and workplaces would integrate, voluntarily. Police and judges would deliver equal justice. It might take a few generations, but the political and cultural changes would begin, and life would improve for all. “The
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Jonathan Eig (King: A Life)
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In the ever-evolving landscape of modern workplaces, bias continues to cast an insidious shadow, subtly influencing interactions, decisions, and experiences. While conversations on workplace bias often center around overt discriminatory practices, it is equally essential to shed light on more subtle, nuanced forms of bias.
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Jim Woods (Unseen: Unmasking Bias and Embracing Diversity in Our Daily Lives: A Journey into Recognizing and Challenging Our Inherent Biases)
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As I have tried to show throughout this book, white people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions. Regardless of whether a parent told you that everyone was equal, or the poster in the hall of your white suburban school proclaimed the value of diversity, or you have traveled abroad, or you have people of color in your workplace or family, the ubiquitous socializing power of white supremacy cannot be avoided. The messages circulate 24-7 and have little or nothing to do with intentions, awareness, or agreement. Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how—rather than if—our racism is manifest
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Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
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The national team players were in camp in Orlando, Florida, preparing for a pair of friendlies against Colombia when Rich Nichols and Jeffrey Kessler scheduled a conference call with the players on the team’s CBA committee. It was then that Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Alex Morgan, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Megan Rapinoe were presented with the idea of filing a wage-discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, against U.S. Soccer. If the players agreed to sign on, they would be asking a government agency to investigate whether U.S. Soccer was violating U.S. laws against workplace discrimination. In other words, the players were going to publicly accuse U.S. Soccer of discriminating against the women’s national team. It was a move guaranteed to ratchet up the tension between the national team and the federation. “I was nervous about that call the entire week because, in essence, what we were asking these great players to do was to sue their current employer for wage discrimination,” Nichols says. “That takes huge courage from anybody.
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Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women who Changed Soccer)
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The women I interviewed seemingly “opted out” of what Rachel, whom I cited earlier, called “the enormous experiment of engaging in capitalism.” Their choice to leave the workplace can be seen, as some of them suggested, as a resistance to neoliberal capitalism—to its exclusive valorization of the sphere of commodity production and the toxic competitive work cultures on which it depends. Their embrace of full-time motherhood can be understood as an attempt to shift priorities and to put care before competition. It is seemingly removed from the demands of advanced capitalism and the public sphere of work that they left, but which their government promotes and their husbands—mostly in high-powered, high-income jobs—occupy. Yet, as a consequence of heading home—a choice that was in part imposed by the pressures of advanced capitalism—women have become heads of their home who run their families as small enterprises, and endorse “intensive mothering”72 as a means of trying to ensure the invincible middle-class future and security of their children. In rechanneling their professional skills and competitive spirit through their children, and taking on the role of family CEO, these women may be reproducing what many found so brutal in the workplace. They have reproduced neoliberalism in the sense that their children have become human capital—investing in them is a way of increasing good returns in the future.73 In the words of Sara, the former senior financial director, “And the competition lives on, it’s just in a totally different guise.”" (from "Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality" by Shani Orgad)
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Shani Orgad
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For Swedish society, gender equality meant the equal distribution of society’s opportunities, positions, and wealth among women and men in every walk of life. It was qualitative, ensuring women’s and men’s knowledge and experience to promote society’s progress. Women and men were treated equally in educational institutions and workplaces. If any discrimination was noticed, educational institutions, authorities, and employers were bound to investigate and take preventive actions. The Swedish constitution was above all religions, religious beliefs, myths, superstitions, and gods. There was a gender equality agency that organized gender mainstream programs, and the goal was gender equality in every realm of people’s lives.
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Varghese V Devasia (Women of God’s Own Country)
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Topics & Questions for Discussion In Chapter One, “Cyrus Jones and the Magic Funeral,” Asha describes Cyrus as “mostly human, a little bit cartoon, a tiny bit ghost.” Having read the book, what do you think of Cyrus as a character? Have you met anyone like him in real life? Think back to your high school crush(es). Do you recall that first feeling of attraction? How would you react if you happened upon that person now? What does Asha’s relationship with her older sister Mira bring to story? How does she add to your understanding of Asha as a person? Jules is a source of support, emotional and financial, for Cyrus and Asha. What other roles does he play in the novel? Recall the manifesto Cyrus writes in Chapter Three: “We don’t try to convince people to buy things We don’t spy on anyone We don’t sell our souls (we don’t sell anything) and We are equal partners and make all decisions together.” Did you predict any of these points might falter? Were you correct? Consider what kind of workplace Utopia is. Would you like to work there? What elements would you like to see in your current work situation? At the end of Chapter Five, Asha thinks about the cultural differences between her and Cyrus, contemplating his “whiteness.” To what extent do you think their differences affect their understanding of each other? Have you had to think about cultural differences in a similar way? Besides WAI, several other app ideas are mentioned in the novel: Consentify, LoneStar, Buttery, Flitter, and so on. Discuss your favorite, or if you have any other start up ideas. Asha, Cyrus, and Jules must delve into all the logistical aspects of starting and growing a business, from assembling the right team to sourcing funding. What seem to be the biggest challenges to starting a business? The novel deals with themes of gender dynamics and white male privilege throughout. At what points can you see these dynamics at play, and how do the characters respond? If you were Asha’s friend, or family member, how would you react to her relationship with Cyrus? Would you have warned her or supported her? What does or doesn’t seem to work about their marriage?
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Tahmima Anam (The Startup Wife)
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Seventy percent of women retire in poverty after a life time of institutionalized discrimination in the workplace without equal pay or compensation for staying home to care for their families.
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Karen Tate
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laws criminalizing gender violence are a cruel hoax if they turn a blind eye to the structural sexism and racism of criminal justice systems, leaving intact police brutality, mass incarceration, deportation threats, military interventions, and harassment and abuse in the workplace.
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Nancy Fraser (Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto)
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Everyone can’t be owners unless everyone’s influence and empowerment is equal.
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Elaina Noell (Inspiring Accountability in the Workplace: Unlocking the Brain's Secrets to Employee Engagement, Accountability, and Results)
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Do thousands of women a year die because men are stronger, because they have more body mass, because biology was on their side in the distribution of physical vigor? Of course not. Do we die because we like to live dangerously, because we like to do and say provocative things that eat away at men’s confidence until we drive them crazy and out of control? Of course not. Women die because they have dared to move a few fractions of an inch or several miles outside the sphere that patriarchy has relegated them to. Whether at home or in the workplace, on the streets or in intimacy, we die because there are men who are incapable of accepting us and themselves. We die because we like to (foolish as we are) act like we’re equals.
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Gabriela Wiener (Sexographies)
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Every role is essential. But not equal. At the end of the day, everyone knows who gets the most credit.
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Christina Estes (Off the Air)
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Although we cannot create meaningful work by government diktat, we can achieve this by empowering employees to shape their workplaces so that they better reflect their priorities.
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Daniel Chandler (Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society)
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with works councils we could immediately establish a body in every workplace with a legal mandate to represent employees’ interests in discussions and negotiations with their management
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Daniel Chandler (Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society)
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Whatever the details, for co-management to work well, a few safeguards would need to be in place. Since the primary aim is to democratize the workplace, worker representatives on boards and in works councils should be elected on a “one worker, one vote” basis.
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Daniel Chandler (Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society)
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Lion Daily Schedule 5:30 a.m.: Wake up, no snooze. 5:45 a.m.: Breakfast: high-protein, low-carb. 6:15 a.m. to 7:00 a.m.: Big-picture conceptualizing and organizing. Morning meditation. 7:00 a.m. to 7:30 a.m.: Sex. If you have kids who need help getting ready for school, make it a quickie. 7:30 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.: Cool shower, get dressed, interact with friends or family before heading to work. 9:00 a.m.: Small snack: 250 calories, 25 percent protein, 75 percent carbs. Ideally, have it at a breakfast meeting. 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.: Personal interactions, morning meetings, phone calls, emails, strategic problem solving. 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m.: Balanced lunch. Go outside for sunlight exposure, if possible. 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.: Creative thinking time. Listen to music, catch up on reading and journaling. In a workplace setting, lead or attend brainstorming meetings. 5:00 to 6:00 p.m.: Exercise, preferably outdoors, followed by a cool shower. 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.: Dinner. Keep it balanced—equal parts protein, carbs, and healthy fats. A carb-heavy meal like pasta might make you crash. 7:30 p.m.: Last call for alcohol. A drink after this hour will knock you out. 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.: Socialize on the town, or connect with loved ones online while relaxing at home. You bought yourself an extra hour, so make the most of it! 10:00 p.m.: Be in your home environment by now. Turn off all screens to begin the downshift before bed. 10:30 p.m.: Go to sleep.
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Michael Breus (The Power of When: Discover Your Chronotype—and the Best Time to Eat Lunch, Ask for a Raise, Have Sex, Write a Novel, Take Your Meds, and More)
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Childhood is for playing and learning. Adulthood is a time for accomplishment and mastery -- the time to provide for ourselves and our loved ones and to fulfill community and workplace responsibilities.
Elderhood is equally as important as childhood and adulthood. It is not a time when we begin to fail at adulthood. It is the time for being, contemplating, and sharing. Let’s embrace elderhood and treasure it for the magical time it is.
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Judy Cornish
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Tate, I’m sure you’re aware that this is an equal opportunity workplace. I have a unique set of skills—” “Ha!” I laugh. “Okay, Liam Neeson. Good to know I can call you if I get taken.
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Lauren K. McKellar (Fame (Not Like the Movies Book 1))
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We will never get to real equality in our workplaces until we get to equality at home.
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David Schardt (Sheryl Sandberg: From Bossy to Boss (Webmasters Book 3))
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Expecting real equality for women in the workplace is ‘unnatural’ – nature wants women to clock out of public life when and if they have kids, and if they don’t want to have kids, they must be unnatural. Women who are ambitious and independent are unnatural. Women who actively express sexual desire are unnatural. Women refusing to make themselves pretty and pleasing for men are unnatural. Women who demand respect and security while not being beautiful and young are unnatural. Abortion is unnatural. Contraception is unnatural. Pleasure for its own sake is unnatural. Unnatural, in short, covers a lot of the fun stuff.
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Laurie Penny (Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution)
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...organisations sometimes mistake good intentions for good practice.
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Catherine Mayer (Attack Of The Fifty Foot Women)
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7. Energy. Your degree of personal energy and enthusiasm has a great deal to do with whether or not someone will want to hear the message you are trying to communicate. Believing in what you have to say also helps you to overcome interactive inhibition. If you care passionately about something, your life force will flow naturally, energizing you, and you will be able to focus better on getting the message out to others.
Before entering an interactive situation, try “turning yourself on.” Put yourself in a peak state of enthusiasm. This might involve playing a piece of music that makes you feel great or thinking back to a time when you felt absolutely unstoppable. By accessing memories of a time when you felt energetic, you can induce the same state again.
8. Pitch and tone of voice. Speaking in a monotone is a quick way to turn off any audience. Practice using a variety of vocal qualities in your speech. Try using a tape recorder to make sure your voice is pleasant to listen to, and that your message matches your tone of voice. People pick up more from the voice tone than from the actual words you use.
9. Animation and gestures. Don’t be afraid to use your body, especially your hands, to use moderate gestures during conversation. Gestures send signals of enthusiasm and energy. Whenever you speak, you are essentially on stage, and appropriate gesturing helps you to communicate.
10. Ability to hold interest of others. In an interview, be prepared to discuss a variety of topics—not just the job you are applying for. And be sure to ask questions (prepare some in advance if necessary).
11. Commitment. This attribute has to do with caring passionately—about yourself, the other person, and the message you are trying to convey. If you convey that you can make a positive difference in the prospective workplace, you are much more likely to influence the interviewer and leave him or her with a lasting positive impression of you.
12. Ability to make others feel comfortable. In order to make others comfortable, you must first appear comfortable yourself. Practice looking more comfortable and relaxed by watching yourself in the mirror.
Encouraging others to speak openly and freely also helps them to feel more comfortable and at ease with you. Dominating a conversation makes others feel uncomfortable very quickly. Asking others for their opinions, feelings, and values opens them up to you equally quickly. In an interview situation, it is usually a good idea to let the interviewer do most of the talking. Again, prepare some questions to get a two-way conversation going.
All twelve elements are essential for good communication. They should work together in harmony, and each element should support the overall message you are communicating.
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Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
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A Consciously Constructive organisation must equally balance the 6 Proven aspects of a High Performance Workplace using the proven CLEARx framework. Philosophy and System.
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Tony Dovale
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In the American colonies, the first laborers were European indentured servants. When African laborers were forcibly brought to Virginia beginning in 1619, status was defined by wealth and religion, not by physical characteristics such as skin color. But this would change. Over time, physical difference mattered, and with the development of the transatlantic slave trade, landowners began replacing their temporary European laborers with enslaved Africans who were held in permanent bondage. Soon a new social structure emerged based primarily on skin color, with those of English ancestry at the top and African slaves and American Indians at the bottom. By 1776, when “all men are created equal” was written into the Declaration of Independence by a slaveholder named Thomas Jefferson, a democratic nation was born with a major contradiction about race at its core. As our new nation asserted its independence from European tyranny, blacks and American Indians were viewed as less than human and not deserving of the same liberties as whites. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the notion of race continued to shape life in the United States. The rise of “race science” supported the common belief that people who were not white were biologically inferior. The removal of Native Americans from their lands, legalized segregation, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II are legacies of where this thinking led. Today, science tells us that all humans share a common ancestry. And while there are differences among us, we’re also very much alike. Changing demographics in the United States and across the globe are resulting in new patterns of marriage, housing, education, employment, and new thinking about race. Despite these advances, the legacy of race continues to affect us in a variety of ways. Deeply held assumptions about race and enduring stereotypes make us think that gaps in wealth, health, housing, education, employment, or physical ability in sports are natural. And we fail to see the privileges that some have been granted and others denied because of skin color. This creation, called race, has fostered inequality and discrimination for centuries. It has influenced how we relate to each other as human beings. The American Anthropological Association has developed this exhibit to share the complicated story of race, to unravel fiction from fact, and to encourage meaningful discussions about race in schools, in the workplace, within families and communities. Consider how your view of a painting can change as you examine it more closely. We invite you to do the same with race. Examine and re-examine your thoughts and beliefs about race. 1
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Alan H. Goodman (Race: Are We So Different?)
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In addition to the external barriers erected by society, women are hindered by barriers that exist within ourselves. We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in. We internalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives - the messages that say it's wrong to be outspoken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve. We continue to do the majority of the housework and child care. We compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet. Compared to our male colleagues, fewer of us aspire to senior positions. This is not a list of things other women have done. I have made every mistake on this list. At times, I still do.
My argument is that getting rid of these internal barriers is critical to gaining power. Others have argued that women can get to the top only when the institutional barriers are gone. This is the ultimate chicken-and-egg situation. The chicken: Women will tear down the external barriers once we achieve leadership roles. We will march into our bosses' offices and demand what we need, including pregnancy parking. Or better yet, we'll become bosses and make sure all women have what they need. The egg: We need to eliminate the external barriers to get women into those roles in the first place. Both sides are right. So rather than engage in philosophical arguments over which comes first, let's agree to wage battles on both fronts. They are equally important. I am encouraging women to address the chicken, but I fully support those who are focusing on the egg.
Internal obstacles are rarely discussed and often underplayed. Throughout my life, I was told over and over about inequalities in the workplace and how hard it would be to have a career and a family. I rarely heard anything, however, about the ways I might hold myself back. These internal obstacles deserve a lot more attention, in part because they are under our own control. We can dismantle the hurdles in ourselves today. We can start this very moment.
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Sheryl Sandberg
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Each incident of sexual harassment of woman at workplace results in violation of the fundamental rights of “Gender Equality” and the “Right to Life and Liberty”. It is a clear violation of the rights under Articles 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution. One of the logical consequences of such an incident is also the violation of the victim's fundamental right under Article 19(1)(g). The meaning and content of the fundamental rights guaranteed in the Constitution of India are of sufficient amplitude to encompass all the facets of gender equality including prevention of sexual harassment or abuse
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Anonymous
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I have written this book to encourage women to dream big, forge a path through the obstacles, and achieve their full potential. I am hoping that each woman will set her own goals and reach for them with gusto. And I am hoping that each man will do his part to support women in the workplace and in the home, also with gusto. As we start using the talents of the entire population, our institutions will be more productive, our homes will be happier, and the children growing up in those homes will no longer be held back by narrow stereotypes.
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Sheryl Sandberg
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He also lied about where he stood on slavery. He told the American public and political allies that he didn’t believe in political equality for slaves because he didn’t want to get too far ahead of public opinion, Mott says.45
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Jeffrey Pfeffer (Leadership BS: Fixing Workplaces and Careers One Truth at a Time)
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All things being equal, we’ll find a sympathetic story that explains and justifies our own behavior. We remember what we got right, and as we’ll explore in the next chapter, we ascribe generally good intentions to ourselves. Ninety-three percent of American motorists believe they are better-than-average drivers. In a 2007 BusinessWeek poll, 90 percent of the managers surveyed believed their performance in the workplace to be in the top 10 percent.4 These biases can make difference spotting tougher still since we each feel it’s the other who is biased. In fact, we’re both biased, and we each need the other in order to see the whole picture more clearly.
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Douglas Stone (Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well)
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Equally important, downsizing is mimicked by a politics that consistently sacrifices the needs of the poorer and often the more vulnerable classes—the counterparts to civilian casualties. Reduction of social benefits, lax enforcement of workplace standards, preserving a scandalously low minimum wage, all these are part of strategies devised to achieve an electoral victory and demonstrate the political superfluousness of the working classes.
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Sheldon S. Wolin (Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism - New Edition)
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What it boils down to is knowing that women are equal to men, and living that knowledge. It’s about ensuring that that equality is recognized in the home, in the workplace, in public life. And it’s about acknowledging that we all—women and men—are strong sometimes, weak sometimes, coolheaded sometimes, emotional sometimes, right sometimes, wrong sometimes
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Sarah Haywood (The Cactus)
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Mass shooters without a history of childhood trauma more commonly experienced significant trauma as an adult. They were more likely to commit mass shootings at restaurants, retail establishments, workplaces, and other public locations than at schools or colleges, which equally implies that their will to murder came later in life.
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Jillian Peterson (The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic)
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[...] The revolution was left unfinished. The feminists of the sixties and seventies challenged the rigid division of labour between men and women; they wanted women to have access to the workplace, and men to rediscover their role at home. The psychotherapist Susie Orbach reflects on the thinking of the seventies: 'We wanted to challenge the whole distribution of work we wanted to put at the centre of everything the reproduction of daily life, but feminism got seduced by the work ethic. My generation wanted to change the values of the workplace so that it accepted family life.'
This radical agenda for the reorganisation of work and home was abandoned in Britain. Instead we took on the American model of feminism, influenced by the rise of neo-liberalism and individualism. Feminism acquired shoulderpads and an appetite for power; it celebrated individual achievement rather than working out how to transform the separation between work and family, and the social processes of how we care for dependants and raise children. Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt remembers a turning point in the debate in the UK when she was at the National Council for Civil Liberties: 'The key moment was when we organised a major conference in the seventies with a lot of American speakers who were terrific feminists. When they arrived we were astonished that they were totally uninterested in an agenda around better maternity leave, etc. They argued that we couldn't claim special treatment in the workplace; women would simply prove they were equals. You couldn't make claims on the workplace. We thought it was appalling.
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Madeleine Bunting (Willing Slaves: How the Overwork Culture Is Ruling Our Lives)
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She went through the interview process three times, and each time she came out on top. 'They kept testing you because they didn't want to give the position to a woman,' a friend in human resources confided to her. Eventually, however, the center was obligated to hire Gloria, the best candidate for the job, the first woman in the position.
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Margot Lee Shetterly (Hidden Figures)
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It is imperative to think of the task of decolonizing knowledge production as inseparable from every other aspect of our lives. It must be applied to the smallest and most hidden details of life, including but not limited to decolonizing romantic relationships (stop seeing beauty only in whiteness, blue eyes, and blond hair); decolonizing social connections (stop believing that there is more value in socially connecting and networking with powerful people who often happen to be Westerners); decolonizing the workplace (stop believing that expertise, management and power are embodied in Western individuals); decolonize our hobbies and activities (don’t do things or enjoy activities promoted and imposed on us by the West such as going to the beach or wasting one’s life watching TV or Netflix); decolonize travel destinations (shatter the illusion that nowhere is more worth seeing that Europe, or that traveling around Europe equals ‘seeing’ the world). We need to seek and discover new destinations, peoples, and cultures to travel to and learn about and from.
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Louis Yako
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Diversity training is any program designed to facilitate positive intergroup interaction, reduce prejudice and discrimination, and generally teach individuals who are different from others how to work together effectively. "From the broad corporate perspective, diversity training is defined as raising personal awareness about individual differences in the workplace and how those differences inhibit or enhance the way people work together and get work done. In the narrowest sense, it is education about compliance – affirmative action (AA), equal employment opportunity (EEO), and sexual harassment." A competency based definition refers to diversity training as any solution designed to increase cultural diversity awareness, attitude, knowledge, and skills. Diversity training is thought to be more needed because of the growing ethnic and racial diversity in the workplace.
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Wikipedia: Diversity Training
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Women were never absent from film history; they often simply weren’t documented as part of it because they did “
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Erin Hill (Never Done: A History of Women's Work in Media Production)
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As I have tried to show throughout this book, white people raised in Western society are conditioned into a white supremacist worldview because it is the bedrock of our society and its institutions. Regardless of whether a parent told you that everyone was equal, or the poster in the hall of your white suburban school proclaimed the value of diversity, or you have traveled abroad, or you have people of color in your workplace or family, the ubiquitous socializing power of white supremacy cannot be avoided. The messages circulate 24-7 and have little or nothing to do with intentions, awareness, or agreement. Entering the conversation with this understanding is freeing because it allows us to focus on how - rather than if - our racism is manifest. When we move beyond the good/bad binary, we can become eager to identify our racist patterns because interrupting those patterns becomes more important than managing how we think we look to others.
I repeat: stopping our racist patterns must be more important than working to convince others that we don't have them. We do have them, and people of color already know we have them; our efforts to prove otherwise are not convincing. An honest accounting of these patterns is no small task given the power of white fragility and white solidarity, but it is necessary.
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Robin DiAngelo (White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism)
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Google relies more on temps and contract workers than on full-time employees. Of the roughly 750,000 workers around the globe who help make and sell Apple products, only around 63,000 work directly for Apple. Before the rise of this chopped-up or “fissured” workplace, large firms standardized wages and benefits for all their employees. This had an equalizing effect, raising the income of, say, a janitor at an automobile factory. Today, temp agencies compete over who can offer the cheapest labor.
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Matthew Desmond (Poverty, by America)
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Many of us think that the less feminine a woman appears, the more likely she is to be taken seriously. A man going to a business meeting doesn’t wonder about being taken seriously based on what he is wearing—but a woman does.
“I wish I had not worn that ugly suit that day. Had I then the confidence I have now to be myself, my students would have benefited even more from my teaching. Because I would have been more comfortable and more fully and truly myself.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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Many of us think that the less feminine a woman appears, the more likely she is to be taken seriously. A man going to a business meeting doesn’t wonder about being taken seriously based on what he is wearing—but a woman does.
I wish I had not worn that ugly suit that day. Had I then the confidence I have now to be myself, my students would have benefited even more from my teaching. Because I would have been more comfortable and more fully and truly myself.
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (We Should All Be Feminists)
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I have lost track of the number of times when I chatted with DEI professionals or even diversity hires of different races and backgrounds who painfully told me that they are put in a position that makes them incapable of making any meaningful changes in their workplace. That their job is primarily to be tokenized and make the institution look and feel good, but in reality they – and any diverse person in their workplace – feel totally paralyzed in environments that look good, but are in fact extremely controlled by the few privileged at the top.
[From “The Trump Age: Critical Questions” published on CounterPunch on June 23, 2023]
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Louis Yako
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Men and women face choices and constraints that differ significantly from those faced by their counterparts in previous eras because of the contradiction between the demands of relationships of any kind (family, marriage, motherhood, fatherhood) and the demands of the workplace for mobile, flexible employees. These choices and constraints are responsible for pulling families apart. Rather than being shaped by the rules, traditions, and rituals of previous eras, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim argue that contemporary family units are experiencing a shift from a “community of need,” where ties and obligations bound us in our intimate lives, to “elective affinities” that are based on choice and personal inclination. In spite of these difficult changes, the lure of the romantic narrative remains strong. In an uncertain society, “stripped of its traditions and scarred by all kinds of risk,” as Beck and Beck-Gernsheim put it, love “will become more important than ever and equally impossible.
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Sam Atkinson (The Sociology Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained)
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That’s a worry, now you mention it. I’m not one for needlework, and you can only read so many books before your eyesight fails. Someone suggested volunteer work, but that’s out of the question. I’m accustomed to being paid, and the idea of giving away my time and my skills is an affront. Braver women than I fought decades for equal compensation in the workplace, so why would I undo their accomplishments?
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Sue Grafton (X (Kinsey Millhone, #24))
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Coworking together is not just about welcoming remote workers. It is important for real estate because it benefits both companies and their employees equally. Collaborating takes up the most important business and expensive costs — the workplace — and renders the service. The space-as-a-service model introduces balance sheets and creates staff flexibility.
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wish coworker
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The single most notable thing about him is that he often discreetly touches his penis (via his pockets, but we can all see the movements) and then openly touches the door handles, printers, and Nespresso buttons, leaving his penis dew that seeped through the pocket fabric everywhere. Because he’s the boss, there’s no stopping his dick fingers, and that’s why no workplace is ever truly equal.
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Natalie Sue (I Hope This Finds You Well)
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Sociological studies of heterosexual couples from all strata of society confirm that, by and large, mothers draft the to-do lists while fathers pick and choose among the items. And whether a woman loves or hates worry work, it can scatter her focus on what she does for pay and knock her partway or clean off a career path. This distracting grind of apprehension and organization may be one of the least movable obstacles to women’s equality in the workplace.
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Anonymous
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Although conservatives might accept violence against socialists and trade unionists, they would not tolerate it against the state. For their part, most fascist leaders have recognized that a seizure of power in the teeth of conservative and military opposition would be possible only with the help of the street, under conditions of social disorder likely to lead to wildcat assaults on private property, social hierarchy, and the state’s monopoly of armed force. A fascist resort to direct action would thus risk conceding advantages to fascism’s principal enemy, the Left, still powerful in the street and workplace in interwar Europe.
Such tactics would also alienate those very elements—the army and the police—that the fascists would need later for planning and carrying out aggressive national expansion.
Fascist parties, however deep their contempt for conservatives, had no plausible future aligning themselves with any groups who wanted to uproot the bases of conservative power.
Since the fascist route to power has always passed through cooperation with conservative elites, at least in the cases so far known, the strength of a fascist movement in itself is only one of the determining variables in the achievement (or not) of power, though it is surely a vital one. Fascists did have numbers and muscle to offer to conservatives caught in crisis in Italy and Germany, as we have seen. Equally important, however, was the conservative elites’ willingness to work with fascism; a reciprocal flexibility on the fascist leaders’ part; and the urgency of the crisis that induced them to cooperate with each other. It is therefore essential to examine the accomplices who helped at crucial points. To watch only the fascist leader during his arrival in power is to fall under the spell of the “Führer myth” and the “Duce myth” in a way that would have given those men immense satisfaction. We must spend as much time studying their indispensable allies and accomplices as we spend studying the fascist leaders, and as much time studying the kinds of situation in which fascists were helped into power as we spend studying the movements themselves.
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Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
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In a future ready organization, ‘talent’ is increasingly a metaphor for capability—at the right place, at the right time and equally, at the right price.
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Gyan Nagpal (The Future Ready Organization: How Dynamic Capability Management Is Reshaping the Modern Workplace)
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if we agree that in the future, every organization is essentially a digital organization—enabled through digital technologies, engaging customers on digital platforms and using online applications to drive sales, engagement or compliance—then it isn’t just the seamlessness of outcomes, but equally the methodology employed to deliver those outcomes which must be consistent across a large organization
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Gyan Nagpal (The Future Ready Organization: How Dynamic Capability Management Is Reshaping the Modern Workplace)
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Remember, it takes courage, vulnerability, and humility to admit what you don’t know and experiment with new behaviors.
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Mikaela Kiner (Female Firebrands: Stories and Techniques to Ignite Change, Take Control, and Succeed in the Workplace)
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Whether a woman loves or hates worry work, it can scatter her focus on what she does for pay and knock her partway or clean off a career path. This distracting grind of apprehension and organization may be one of the least movable obstacles to women's equality in the workplace.
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Gemma Hartley (Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward)
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few things subvert true gender equality in the workplace more than a micro-aggressions mentality that condemns normal male behavior and “rescues” a particular young woman even when she hasn’t been harmed. Resentment follows among most males and even many females, and productivity declines.
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Michael Gurian (Saving Our Sons: A New Path for Raising Healthy and Resilient Boys)
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Tackling inequality is actually every leader's job, it is the definition of leadership. And it’s also the ultimate privilege. So, to be able to remove barriers that you yourself never have to experience is the ultimate form of privilege, and it’s actually a requirement of every leader. Because if you want to advance women in your workplace, you cannot do that without knowing what the barriers are, and taking steps to remove them. So, by and large leaders just simply haven’t been leading when it comes to equality in workplaces, so we need them to lead, it’s an imperative in terms of advancing women, and also advancing men and creating environments where men can show up differently.
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Michelle P. King
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Because he’s the boss, there’s no stopping his dick fingers, and that’s why no workplace is ever truly equal.
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Natalie Sue (I Hope This Finds You Well)
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Of course I knew that. My old boss Iain had been equal parts jealous and pleased that my interview (and skin color) had painted his workplace to be capable, diverse.
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Sonya Lalli (Serena Singh Flips the Script)
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In the workplace I had a perspective that universally everyone should be respected equally. Respectfulness should be a core tenet; it is not an option. It should be in the fabric of everything we do,” she told me. “Treat everybody like you would like to be treated. Everybody wants to be treated with respect; it doesn't matter what their background is. You want everybody to be treated with respect.” To instill a culture of respect in the workplace, whether it's a multinational corporation like PepsiCo or a fledgling startup, the leaders have to model a respectful behavior.
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Robert L. Dilenschneider (Respect: How to Change the World One Interaction at a Time)