It’s been a great weekend for women in the news.  In Kuwait, four women won parliamentary seats in Saturday’s elections after just being allowed the right to vote in 2005!

At the Preakness, a filly, Rachel Alexandra beat all the boys to be the first filly in 85 years to win!

Okay, so part serious and part silly but I’ve been thinking about this a lot since hearing Rayona Sharpnack, Founder and CEO of Institute for Women’s Leadership, lead a program entitled, “Women Empowering Women - Why We Don’t and How We Can.”

It was an interesting discussion amongst the group as we could all remember at least one occasion when a woman was not quite as “empowering” as she could have been.  And, we can probably all think of at least one occasion when perhaps we weren’t as gracious as we should have been towards another woman.

One attendee shared a story of how she was nervous recommending a good friend who is also a skilled consultant for a particular role as she was concerned on how it might reflect on her if the woman crashed and burned.  She eventually did recommend her and the work turned out well but this was an example of a common story.  I’ve heard the same reasons stated for why one woman on a Board of Directors does not recommend another qualified woman she might know.

In Rayona’s work, she talks about how our culture and upbringing create the contexts for how we perceive life today.  Then we create assumptions that masquerade as facts that justify the decisions that we make.

One of my “contexts” is that you have to work more than twice as hard as everyone else just to stay even.  After hearing Rayona, I really started thinking more about the effect this has had not just on me but also on my team as I continue to push them to strive above and beyond.

There is a quote attributed to Madeline Albright, former Secretary of State under President Clinton, where she shares that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t support other women.

What contexts do you notice in your life?  In Rayona’s language, what can you “trade up” to in order to show support for other women?  Does it make a difference?  What do you think?

This entry was posted by wendybeecham on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 10:54 am and is filed under Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.