National Weiner Day

As heart breaking as this news is for the ever fabulous Huma Abedin, the long time aide to Hillary, I couldn't help but notice that the new developments with Anthony Weiner sexting post-resignation from Congress happened on National Hot Dog Day....

Lipstick LobbyList 7.23.2013

Massachusetts State Senate Prez Therese Murray features in the "Women Up" column of the Boston Business Journal.  This question was particularly awesome:

Did you ever experience discrimination in what was considered a male-dominated field?
"I still go to events or meetings, particularly out of state or in a place where people don’t know me, where they will turn to the male staffer next to me, shake their hand and say, 'Senator,' or 'President.' That continues to happen."

The New York Times has a profile of  Silda Wall Spitzer as the real life “Good Wife”:

"Much has changed for Ms. Wall Spitzer, a former corporate lawyer, since her husband resigned in 2008. She has grown more independent, relishing a return to her corporate career and working 60-hour weeks at a private equity firm where she helps guide investments in clean energy. She oversees her children’s charity, generationOn, which earlier this year honored Chelsea Clinton, and has pursued new business ventures, including an e-commerce Web site, New York States of Mind, that highlights products from businesses in the state."

With Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer doing well in recent polls, WaPo’s She the People Blog asks: “Could a former stripper be elected president?”

Ann Friedman writes for Elle magazine a profile of freshman Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, the first openly bisexual member of Congress. At only 36 years old, Kyrsten is changing the face of Congress and blazing a new path for women in office.  From the article: "12 of the last 18 presidents kicked off their political careers before age 35. Sinema is part of the first generation of women to follow that timetable, and at 36 has already been in public office for almost a decade. Consider this: At her age, Nancy Pelosi was 11 years away from winning her first election, Hillary Clinton 17."

Read more: Representative Kyrsten Sinema on Gay Marriage - Kyrsten Sinema Interview - ELLE
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The Atlantic has a great overview of recent campaign ads that feature male politicians in the kitchen. It’s great to see some of my favorite Massachusetts women and organizations getting some air time on this topic (Barbara Lee Family Foundation, former Massachusetts state treasurer Shannon O’Brien, and the Center for Women in Politics and Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston).

The special election primary date is set for the 5th Congressional seat recently vacated by now Senator Ed Markey: October 15th. The general election will be on December 10th. In related (& exciting!) news, Melrose state Senator Katherine Clark hosted her official campaign kick-off on Saturday. Katherine is facing off against two Democratic state Senate colleagues, William Brownsberger and Karen Spilka, Middlesex County Sheriff Peter Koutoujian and state Rep. Carl Sciortino.

Boards Snap Up Female CFOs  "Female chief financial officers may be relatively few in number, but they are trumping their male peers by a wide margin in at least one career achievement: winning outside board seats. Women account for just 12% of CFOs at the 500 large public companies tracked by executive-recruiting firm Korn/Ferry International. But more than half of those women serve as directors at another company.  That makes female CFOs about three times as likely to serve on an outside board as their far-more-numerous male counterparts. CFOs rarely serve on their own company’s board, in part because they are considered to be at the board’s beck and call as part of their regular job."
 
Guilty Pleasure: Emily Nussbaum in the New Yorker on Sex and the City

Born to Run

It's great to see some women with political ambition in the news this past week.

First up, Stephanie Schriock.  Politico has a great profile of EMILY's list head Stephanie Schriock, who is considering running for U.S. Senate in Montana to fill the seat vacated by Sen. Max Baucus.  I always love to see fellow Democratic women from the "flyover" states run for higher office. Stephanie is a perfect example. From the profile:

“I love Montana, it is my home and it owns my heart, and the honest to God truth is this has been something I’ve wanted to think about,” said Schriock, who isn’t married but has a longtime boyfriend and likes to spend her free time fishing, kayaking and hiking. “I am very proud of my home state and I do hope someday to work for the people of Montana.”

Sandra Fluke is keeping her name in the mix by co-authoring an Op-Ed in the LA Times Monday, "Women to L.A. City Hall: Remember us?".  Unbelievably, LA currently has no women elected to city government.  Sadly, this trend is very familiar as Boston currently only has one woman on the City Council out of 13 councilors.

Wendy Davis is wisely riding the wave of national attention (and the fundraising this brings) from her brave filibuster in Texas a few weeks ago with her own Op-Ed in the Washington Post.  She makes a reasoned and thoughtful case for access to good women's health services, and at the same time boasts some Texan pride:

"Texas really is the greatest state in the greatest nation. Texans — and women all over the country — deserve leaders that care, that listen and that work to protect their interests. The people’s filibuster demonstrated that Texans — and women everywhere — are ready and willing to fight back."

I adore Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and think she is doing absolutely amazing work in her relentless, yet smart approach to pushing her legislation for a military sexual assault process reform.  She has proven this week to have the skills to secure much needed bi-partisan support with Senators Paul and Cruz adding their names as co-sponsors.  Gillibrand is a woman to watch for the White House for sure!

And honorable mention to the women who considered a run for higher office, but chose not to run:

• Montana state insurance commissioner Monica Lindeen for the U.S. Senate seat and
• Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan for Illinois Governor.

I'm keeping my eyes on these ladies, as I hope to see more from them both in the future!

Progesterone Girl

Happy 60th birthday, Martha Coakley!

I will be the first to admit that when I saw the headline in the Globe a few weeks ago that Attorney General Martha Coakley is considering a run for Massachusetts governor next year, I was not immediately jumping with excitement.

And I don't think I was the only woman-who-loves-to-support-Democratic-women-candidates who felt this way. Maybe it's campaign fatigue from this ruthless series of special elections we find ourselves in in Massachusetts.  Maybe we're still a little tender from the Scott Brown victory in 2010.  Maybe it's because several strong candidates are already in the race.

Sigh. Or maybe it's because I'm too big of a girl and don't want to face another loss.

Then former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer announced he's running for NYC comptroller.  And with all of the coverage of male "comeback" stories (or as Joanna Weiss so aptly called them "the testosterone boys"), something struck and I thought: "Why the hell isn't she running?"

She had no scandal, just a poorly run and ill-timed campaign.  She's done an excellent job as AG with an impressive record on DOMA and human trafficking.  And she's sat out two US Senate races.  Most men would have declared by now for the next race.

So if Martha has the progesterone to go "ovaries out" and run for governor, I say go for it.  Let's see her put her best (stylish heeled) foot forward.  While she remained coy this weekend at the Democratic State Convention about her intentions to run, she showed some much needed spunk and brought a strong show of support.  Much like the Boston mayoral race, I'm both exhausted and excited to see how the 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial field will shake out.  But I do believe that we can benefit competitive primaries and having a woman (or women!) in the field makes the discussion all the more rich. 

PS - cheers to EMILY's List for helping to ensure that the Massachusetts field has a strong woman contender in the race.  In addition to Martha, they have identified another strong candidate in Juliette Kayyem, a national security expert  and Boston Globe columnist, to run for governor if Martha chooses to opt out.

(image source: www.facebook.com/TobyGTweets)

Lipstick LobbyList 7.12.2013

Thirty years since Sally Ride broke the space glass ceiling to became the first woman in space, it so exciting to see NASA have four women (50%!) in this year's astronaut class.

The New Republic has an interesting look at the gender politics of reporting mega-donations from husbands and wives.  Spoiler alert: women are often minimized as the "mega" part of the couple.

Two of my favorite actress, with two very different responses to the label "feminist":

1. Amy Poehler in Time Out New York:  "So the answer is: Yes, I consider myself a feminist, and it informs my work only in that it’s just who I am, in the same way that I’m a woman, or I’m 5'2" or whatever. I was lucky that I came through a system that had many people who did much more hard work and road-clearing before I got there."
2. Susan Sarandon in the Guardian: "I think of myself as a humanist because I think it's less alienating to people who think of feminism as being a load of strident bitches and because you want everyone to have equal pay, equal rights, education and healthcare.  It's a bit of an old-fashioned word. It's used more in a way to minimise you."

Amy - I'm with you on this one!

EMILY's List adds an eighth endorsement to their list of the "Year of the Woman Mayor," Marilyn Strickland, for her reelection for mayor of Tacoma, WA.  Marilyn joins Boston candidate Charlotte Golar Richie and NYC candidate Christine Quinn on their list of endorsements.

And finally, yes, I know this has gone viral all week, but it was definitely worthy. Dustin Hoffman on "becoming a woman" for his role in Tootsie:

"I think I'm an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen [as Tootsie] and I know that if I met myself at a party, I know that I would never talk to that character because she doesn't fulfill, physically, the demands that we're brought up to think that women have to have in order for us to ask them out. There are too many interesting women I have not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed."

Let's hear it for the boys

It's been a year since Anne-Marie Slaughter published her article in the Atlantic and four months since the release of Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In.  So it's refreshing to see several articles this past week from men who are trying to support their families and spouses "have it all".  We talk so much about the need for women to have a seat in the boardroom, yet we spend far too little time talking about making room for men at the child care table.

So let's hear for the boys and lean back to hear what they have to say.  After all, Sandberg tells us that the most important career decision a woman can make is who they will marry.

On Sunday, a male Facebook employee Tom Stocky wrote an incredibly honest and insightful post about his experience taking the full paternal leave that his company offers.  He writes:

"What I never got used to was the double-standard for fathers when it comes to childcare. I experienced it predominantly in three forms: (1) low expectations for fathers, (2) negative perceptions of working mothers, and (3) negative perceptions of 'non-working' fathers."

Stephen Marche takes to the pages of the Atlantic to write his own manifesto for families trying to "have it all" arguing that many career and child care decisions by couples are made by pure economics rather than gender role assumptions. It's a thoughtful addition to Slaughter and Sandberg in that he lays out the challenges facing men who take less "traditional" roles in their families.  I found it particularly resonating with me, as so many of my straight friends with kids have active and attentive fathers, while the mother has the more high-powered, more demanding, and often the more lucrative career.  His conclusion is spot on: "A conversation about work-life balance conducted by and for a small sliver of the female population only perpetuates the perception that these are women’s problems, not family ones."

I sincerely hope that more men will join Marche and Stocky in taking their company's full paternal leave or choosing to stay/work from home with the children.  While these articles are encouraging, men like this do remain the exception not the rule.  Stay-at-home dads are increasing at a sad rate. And men simply do not take the full paternal leave that their company policy allows.  Just as women need more female role models in top positions, men need to have more peers and leaders visibly choosing to take leadership roles in child rearing.

Lipstick LobbyList 7.8.2013

My favorite t-shirts at the NYC Pride Parade this year (left) are back on sale.  Limited edition and a prize for any feminist t-shirt collection.  This one is going to have a special spot next to my Hillary '08 shirts.

Speaking of Hillary...Jennifer Graham on why Hillary's age won't be a problem in 2016.
A door opens in Texas with Governor Rick Perry announcing he won't run for re-election.  Will Wendy Davis run? (giddy with excitement!)

And speaking of Wendy Davis...old news, but still makes me laugh.  I loved the Amazon.com reviews of Wendy Davis' now famous pink tennis shoes.  The top rated review today: "Five Stars: Marathon shoe for marathon filibustering. The next time you have to spend 13 hours on your feet without food, water or bathroom breaks, this is the shoe for you. Guaranteed to outrun patriarchy on race day."

An excellent and fair NYT op-ed this weekend about the now ousted Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard: "In Australia, Misogyny Lives On". While her term was rocky, it did have impact.  The last line in the article says it all:

And the robust discussion we had about archaic attitudes about women has mattered.  A 4-year-old girl from Canberra, when told that Australia had a new prime minister, said: “Really? What’s her name?”