Sheryl WuDunn, 85 Broads and Gender Balance

I once read this self-help book, well actually I just skimmed it, called “Let Your Life Speak, Listening to the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer. The author suggests that when you are in the ‘right job’ the job you are called in to doing, you will just know it. It will feel like what is inside is connected to what you put out in to the world and you will feel the difference you are making. I have to say that at various times over my fourteen year career at Goldman Sachs, I felt that way, and I feel so privileged to be feeling that way again now.

My work is primarily about bringing attention, ideas and solutions to the issue of creating gender balance in this world. This is also the work of many other people, including Sheryl WuDunn. Sheryl is a Pulitzer Prize winning author, alongside her husband and writer, Nic Kristof. Their book, as I have written about before is “Half The Sky – Turning Oppression in to Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” We, that means YOU if you are reading this, MUST MAKE THIS BOOK A BEST SELLER. Must. Why? Because this book, like so many others on this topic, MATTER. This book both tells stories and articulates the reasons why empowering women can do more do change the world for the better than anything, ANYTHING, else we can do. The most beautiful thing is that we can all do something. This is beyond sending money to fund girls education, this is standing up in the places that we are - in our homes, in our communities, in our places of work – to gender inequities and collectively serve to hold women and girls back from being full participants in our society.

This is NOT about being anti-male. This is not about women taking over the world. This is about creating a world where everyone - man, woman and child - have the opportunity and access to reach their potential. We all win in that world. We all do…

If you are in New York come and listen to Sheryl WuDunn on October 8th with 85 BROADS. 85 BROADS is an amazing network of women around the world created by Janet Hanson. If you are not a member already consider joining. MEN are totally welcome at this event, and I encourage them to go. So often men either feel or are excluded from important conversations like this one, so please, if you are reading this and are in the city, go. Bring a friend. This movement is not a Womens Movement; it is a Movement towards Gender Balance.

PS - I have been wanting to write more about couples. About the importance and the power of two people working together, side by side, on issues they care about. Think of how few role model couples we have out there. We need more. Lots more. Why? They model the change we need to see in the world. Sheryl and Nic are to me such an exceptional example of that. Exceptional. READ this about my own couplehood - Brokenness, Hope and Women and why I believe gender balance in the home, is a model for the world.