Right now, only 15 companies in the Fortune 500 have women as CEOs. The top ranking company with a female CEO is no. 27.
Just to do the math, that means that only *3%* of the Fortune 500 has a woman in charge. This is better than the 1% figure that was true not so long ago, but is still a stark illustration of how far we have to go before we achieve gender parity.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Back to Atlanta
Recently the film "Driving Miss Daisy" entered the rotation on cable TV. I caught large parts of it again, and find it still to be a real champ.
Through the miracle of Wikipedia, I'm almost effortlessly informed that DMD won the Oscar for best picture some 20 years ago, and Jessica Tandy won for best actress. Morgan Freeman was nominated for best actor but did not win.
Wonderful as Tandy and Freeman are in this movie, I have to say that I always think of Martin Luther King as its top star. A recording of his voice is heard at a key part of the narrative (with the premise that he's the speaker at a dinner Miss D is attending). MLK's image is not shown. The message he delivers, with unmatched eloquence, is that the real tragedy of the South during the civil rights struggle was that of the many good people who stood by and did nothing. It is an evergreen message, applicable to all times, and hits home with me still. I struggle to find ways not just to stand by.
Through the miracle of Wikipedia, I'm almost effortlessly informed that DMD won the Oscar for best picture some 20 years ago, and Jessica Tandy won for best actress. Morgan Freeman was nominated for best actor but did not win.
Wonderful as Tandy and Freeman are in this movie, I have to say that I always think of Martin Luther King as its top star. A recording of his voice is heard at a key part of the narrative (with the premise that he's the speaker at a dinner Miss D is attending). MLK's image is not shown. The message he delivers, with unmatched eloquence, is that the real tragedy of the South during the civil rights struggle was that of the many good people who stood by and did nothing. It is an evergreen message, applicable to all times, and hits home with me still. I struggle to find ways not just to stand by.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
More from "Finland Station"
Here's Wilson with an anecdote about Mikhail Bakunin, a Russian expatriate revolutionist, rival to Marx, proponent of universal destruction and father of anarchism. Bakunin was passing through a German town where the peasants were revolting, but just [Wilson quoted A. I. Herzen] "making an uproar around the castle, not knowing what to do. Bakunin got out of his conveyance, and, without wasting any time to find out what the dispute was about, formed the peasants into ranks and instructed them so skillfully ... that by the time he resumed his seat to continue his journey, the castle was burning on all four sides."
I had never had any idea what anarchism was all about, but now I gather it stems from a belief that the human world is so rotten that it would be best destroyed.
* * * * *
Am now in the last part of "To the Finland Station", which part tells the stories of Lenin and Trotsky. My perception is that Wilson's writing is less vibrant here, as if he were mainly paraphrasing traditional Communist Party accounts of their "great founders". Wilson writes of Trotsky in the present tense--it seems that Trotsky must still have been alive when the book came out in 1940, though he was to be assassinated later that year by an agent of Stalin.
In the introduction to the 1971 edition, Wilson attempts to balance his earlier benign depiction of Lenin by relating many examples of Lenin's cruelty and contempt toward his opponents. For the first tiime Wilson suggests that revolutionary ideals may have been tools in aid of a fierce pursuit of power on Lenin's part, rather than his primary motivation.
I had never had any idea what anarchism was all about, but now I gather it stems from a belief that the human world is so rotten that it would be best destroyed.
* * * * *
Am now in the last part of "To the Finland Station", which part tells the stories of Lenin and Trotsky. My perception is that Wilson's writing is less vibrant here, as if he were mainly paraphrasing traditional Communist Party accounts of their "great founders". Wilson writes of Trotsky in the present tense--it seems that Trotsky must still have been alive when the book came out in 1940, though he was to be assassinated later that year by an agent of Stalin.
In the introduction to the 1971 edition, Wilson attempts to balance his earlier benign depiction of Lenin by relating many examples of Lenin's cruelty and contempt toward his opponents. For the first tiime Wilson suggests that revolutionary ideals may have been tools in aid of a fierce pursuit of power on Lenin's part, rather than his primary motivation.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
A diversion from American history
My airplane reading to and from AZ was "To the Finland Station" by Edmund Wilson. Here are a few nuggets.
The first is relevant to the earlier discussion of history telling and myth. Wilson quotes the great French historian Jules Michelet on the story of Joan of Arc:
"What legend is more beautiful than this uncontestable story? But one must be careful not to make it into a legend. One must piously preserve all its circumstances, even the most human; one must respect its touching and terrrible humanity. . . . However deeply the historian may have been moved in writing this gospel, he has kept a firm hold on the real and never yielded to the temptation of idealism."
* * *
Nugget no. 2:
"[The communitarian leader Robert Owen] attended in 1817 a Congress of Sovereigns..., and he met there a veteran diplomat, the secretary of the Congress. Owen explained to this personage that it was now possible, through the extraordinary progress of science ... for the whole of the human race, and no longer merely the privileged few, to be well-educated, well-nourished and well-bred. ... Yes, the veteran diplomat said, they all knew that very well--the governing powers of Europe which he himself represented--and that was just what they didn't want. If the masses became well-off and independent, how were the governing classes to control them?"
~~Fortunately for the powers-that-be, the culture wars and scandals de jour were invented, sometimes adequate replacements for the constraining effect of grinding poverty.
* * *
Monty Python aside, one doesn't usually associate comedy with Karl Marx. But consider this incident (Cologne, 1848 or 9, where Marx was a revolutionary leader):
"Two non-commissioned officers appeared to beard [Marx] in his house one day, declaring he had insulted their rank; but he held them at bay in his dressing gown by the threat of an unloaded revolver."
The expounding prophet of the class struggle as Quick-draw McGraw? *He'll* do the thin'in' around here...
The first is relevant to the earlier discussion of history telling and myth. Wilson quotes the great French historian Jules Michelet on the story of Joan of Arc:
"What legend is more beautiful than this uncontestable story? But one must be careful not to make it into a legend. One must piously preserve all its circumstances, even the most human; one must respect its touching and terrrible humanity. . . . However deeply the historian may have been moved in writing this gospel, he has kept a firm hold on the real and never yielded to the temptation of idealism."
* * *
Nugget no. 2:
"[The communitarian leader Robert Owen] attended in 1817 a Congress of Sovereigns..., and he met there a veteran diplomat, the secretary of the Congress. Owen explained to this personage that it was now possible, through the extraordinary progress of science ... for the whole of the human race, and no longer merely the privileged few, to be well-educated, well-nourished and well-bred. ... Yes, the veteran diplomat said, they all knew that very well--the governing powers of Europe which he himself represented--and that was just what they didn't want. If the masses became well-off and independent, how were the governing classes to control them?"
~~Fortunately for the powers-that-be, the culture wars and scandals de jour were invented, sometimes adequate replacements for the constraining effect of grinding poverty.
* * *
Monty Python aside, one doesn't usually associate comedy with Karl Marx. But consider this incident (Cologne, 1848 or 9, where Marx was a revolutionary leader):
"Two non-commissioned officers appeared to beard [Marx] in his house one day, declaring he had insulted their rank; but he held them at bay in his dressing gown by the threat of an unloaded revolver."
The expounding prophet of the class struggle as Quick-draw McGraw? *He'll* do the thin'in' around here...
Sunday, March 8, 2009
The first pre-nup--myth or fact?
As the room was emptying after my lecture to the New Rochelle Historical Society a few weeks ago, I managed to get embroiled in brief but spirited disputation with the estimable woman who had chaired the meeting. My interlocutrice, long a stalwart of the NR LWV as well as the Historical Society, was eager to inform me that Carrie Chapman Catt had "invented the pre-nuptial agreement". The story was that CCC and her second husband, George Catt, had agreed in writing prior to their wedding that CCC would be free to travel around campaigning for suffrage several months of the year.
I had come to regard this tale as a legend, rather than some well-established fact--something in the cut-down-the-cherry-tree or threw-the-dollar-across-the-Potomac category. I did not believe CCC (or Carrie Lane Chapman, as she then was) would have married any man whose promises needed to be put in writing. I also knew that CCC had regularly and often exceeded the supposed 4-month per year limit in traveling away from home. But for the LWV veteran who raised it, that Carrie had invented the prenup was evidently a cherished belief.
Anyway, while preparing this blog post I engaged in a bit of research. Here's what Jacqueline Van Voris has to say on the subject in her biography of Catt (page 20): "A story circulated that the Catts signed a contract that guaranteed her two months each spring and fall to work on woman suffrage. If such a contract existed, perhaps it was one of their quiet jokes, or perhaps they drew it up to illustrate to others the nature of their private agreement."
Thus the best informed historian seems to portray the prenup story as a myth. What is fact is that George Catt's financial support for Carrie was vital to her career as a suffrage leader.
In sum, CCC invented many things--the LWV, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the organization committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the women's physical education program at Iowa State University--but the prenup? I don't think so.
I had come to regard this tale as a legend, rather than some well-established fact--something in the cut-down-the-cherry-tree or threw-the-dollar-across-the-Potomac category. I did not believe CCC (or Carrie Lane Chapman, as she then was) would have married any man whose promises needed to be put in writing. I also knew that CCC had regularly and often exceeded the supposed 4-month per year limit in traveling away from home. But for the LWV veteran who raised it, that Carrie had invented the prenup was evidently a cherished belief.
Anyway, while preparing this blog post I engaged in a bit of research. Here's what Jacqueline Van Voris has to say on the subject in her biography of Catt (page 20): "A story circulated that the Catts signed a contract that guaranteed her two months each spring and fall to work on woman suffrage. If such a contract existed, perhaps it was one of their quiet jokes, or perhaps they drew it up to illustrate to others the nature of their private agreement."
Thus the best informed historian seems to portray the prenup story as a myth. What is fact is that George Catt's financial support for Carrie was vital to her career as a suffrage leader.
In sum, CCC invented many things--the LWV, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the organization committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, the women's physical education program at Iowa State University--but the prenup? I don't think so.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
another missing book
And where is the full scale (but not *too* long, if you please) biography of Alice Paul? I don't think I'm alone in considering her to be the most interesting personality that the suffrage movement produced. Her genius for publicity alone would make her fascinating.
I thought and hoped that book was the recently published "Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign" by Adams and Keene, but the scope is rather narrowly focused on her suffrage work, and it is deadly dull besides. (Someday with luck and added diligence I *will* finish reading it.)
So we have this odd situation: (A) Carrie Catt has three good to very good adult level books about her, and three kid bios as well, but no *movie*, whereas (B) Alice Paul has no complete book-form treatment of her life, but has a widely seen HBO "feature film" about her, Iron Jawed Angels. (While that vid-flick is ludicrous in many ways, IJA is probably ultimately worthwhile because of its harrowing--and I believe pretty accurate--portrayal of the unjust imprisonment, mistreatment, force feeding, etc. of the militant suffragists.)
Come on woman/woman-squared historians, can't you give Alice her due?
I thought and hoped that book was the recently published "Alice Paul and the American Suffrage Campaign" by Adams and Keene, but the scope is rather narrowly focused on her suffrage work, and it is deadly dull besides. (Someday with luck and added diligence I *will* finish reading it.)
So we have this odd situation: (A) Carrie Catt has three good to very good adult level books about her, and three kid bios as well, but no *movie*, whereas (B) Alice Paul has no complete book-form treatment of her life, but has a widely seen HBO "feature film" about her, Iron Jawed Angels. (While that vid-flick is ludicrous in many ways, IJA is probably ultimately worthwhile because of its harrowing--and I believe pretty accurate--portrayal of the unjust imprisonment, mistreatment, force feeding, etc. of the militant suffragists.)
Come on woman/woman-squared historians, can't you give Alice her due?
the book that wasn't there
Quite some time ago I had what I thought would be a great idea for a kid's book--maybe at the advanced jr. high, beginning high school level. The subject would be the diplomatic history of the relationship between the U.S. and Britain. My concept assumed that kids at that age (and even earlier) are well attuned to the "he/she used to be my best friend but now so-and-so is my best friend" type of narrative.
My plan, such as it was, was to find a good book for adults on the subject and then rewrite and recast it for a younger audience. But here's the thing (aside from my general lack of time and energy), no such book for adults appears to exist.
I thought I had found that book when I learned of God and Gold by Walter Russell Mead. I read a fair part of it and found that it was more of an essay/intellectual history of what Mead believes to be the ascendancy of the Anglo-American mindset, and the reaction to the same by the rest of the world. I also gathered from Mead's discussion of the existing literature that the book I sought had yet to be written.
So, if you know a specialist in diplomatic history, you could let her/him know that there's a fat target out there. If someone could write it well and bring it in within 300 pages, it could be a major classic.
I'll also imagine some of the high points of such a book:
--the founding of the English colonies and their development
--the perception of English pundits by the mid 18th century of the potential for rivalry between the colonies and the homeland. (Viz. A Struggle for Power by Theodore Draper, another book that I failed to finish.)
--the Revolutionary War and the 1812 War, and the treaties in between.
--commercial rivalry/British investment in the American economy
--the British tilt toward the Confederacy during the Civil War
--the rise of Germany and the Fish treaty
--alliance in WWs 1 and 2; FDR/Churchill
--the middle east, Sinai and beyond to the second Iraq war
--along the way, Reagan/Thatcher and Clinton/Blair/Bush
Undoubtedly it would take a master of compression and pith to bring this in under the page limit, but what an achievement that would be. At least let us hope if this book ever happens, the author will avoid the 500 page + behemoth.
My plan, such as it was, was to find a good book for adults on the subject and then rewrite and recast it for a younger audience. But here's the thing (aside from my general lack of time and energy), no such book for adults appears to exist.
I thought I had found that book when I learned of God and Gold by Walter Russell Mead. I read a fair part of it and found that it was more of an essay/intellectual history of what Mead believes to be the ascendancy of the Anglo-American mindset, and the reaction to the same by the rest of the world. I also gathered from Mead's discussion of the existing literature that the book I sought had yet to be written.
So, if you know a specialist in diplomatic history, you could let her/him know that there's a fat target out there. If someone could write it well and bring it in within 300 pages, it could be a major classic.
I'll also imagine some of the high points of such a book:
--the founding of the English colonies and their development
--the perception of English pundits by the mid 18th century of the potential for rivalry between the colonies and the homeland. (Viz. A Struggle for Power by Theodore Draper, another book that I failed to finish.)
--the Revolutionary War and the 1812 War, and the treaties in between.
--commercial rivalry/British investment in the American economy
--the British tilt toward the Confederacy during the Civil War
--the rise of Germany and the Fish treaty
--alliance in WWs 1 and 2; FDR/Churchill
--the middle east, Sinai and beyond to the second Iraq war
--along the way, Reagan/Thatcher and Clinton/Blair/Bush
Undoubtedly it would take a master of compression and pith to bring this in under the page limit, but what an achievement that would be. At least let us hope if this book ever happens, the author will avoid the 500 page + behemoth.
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