No. Because for a talented young woman, a place at HQ of a presidential campaign will pay dividends for the rest of her life. The truth is, there are some jobs you can take when you’re young that act just like getting an MBA from Stanford or a law degree from Harvard. When you leave them, they allow you to leapfrog several years ahead of your rightful place on the career ladder. Working at Google or Apple is one of these jobs. In my world, it’s working on a political campaign or in an Administration in a staff role.

The recent article on Sheryl Sandberg in the New Yorker highlighted her incredible smarts, drive and people skills. But I also found noteworthy how Sandberg got herself into a leapfrog job (U.S Treasury) at a young age. There, she had the sponsorship of Larry Summers and got experience and exposure well beyond her qualifications. Only from Treasury was she able to jump to Google, Facebook and the stratosphere.

So if you’re young and you have an opportunity to work on a major political race or in an Administration, do it, even though it will be exhausting, full of landmines and extremely aggressive people who’d kick you aside in a second to get ahead.

The parade of thinkers, revolutionaries and world-crafters was as diverse as those who are leading change. And honestly, I believe it was women’s role in the uprisings in the Middle East this spring that inspired such diversity at this year’s conference in lower Manhattan. This doesn’t mean to sugarcoat the events or outcomes in the Middle East, but to acknowledge the very true public role of women there.

Because the medium is the message, we need to always look critically at who is up on the big stage driving discussion at major conferences. It’s who you see who sets the agenda, and if you have worked in the technology or media space for some time, you know that a constant refrain from producers is, “I wanted to invite more women, but I just couldn’t find them.”

Even the inimitable Kara Swisher just wrote “about how all the often touchy-feely men entrepreneurs of the hottest Web 2.0 companies ha[ve] a glaring problem. While most of them have women as a majority of their customers, they could not seem to find even one qualified woman for any of their boards. This makes it a struggle even in programming our D: All Things Digital conferences. We have featured almost every significant female tech exec we could.”

At the PDF Conference, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was the most senior U.S. elected official to speak. Senator Gillibrand spoke to the crowd about her commitment to using the Internet to make politicians (including herself) more accountable to voters. Amid other speakers’ vivid snapshots of the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, Senator Gillibrand referred to the drive for more transparency in the U.S. Congress as “a quiet touch of revolution.” For example, Gillibrand will publish her Federal Election Commission campaign finance disclosures online, in easily searchable electronic format. She also put all her earmark requests online so voters can see what money she is requesting.

Gillibrand drew praise from the Sunlight Foundation’s Ellen Miller for voluntary disclosures she makes already, including her schedule of official meetings, voting record, and federal funding requests.

New York’s Junior Senator also touched on the issue of accessibility. She said we need to make sure all Americans have access to the internet, and she is working on increasing funding for rural broadband access.

Gillibrand is 44, not quite a Digital Native but of the generation that recognizes digital issues are paramount to American competitiveness and that Internet facility and access are key. It’s a far cry from a highlight of the conference in 2008, when digital strategist Tracy Russo asked of then presidential-candidate John McCain “how can a person who doesn’t know how to operate a computer be the kind of leader we need to move us forward and fulfill the potential all of our tomorrows hold?”

Three years later, in the aftermath of the economic collapse, the revolutions in the Middle East and social media’s role in each, I can’t imagine a viable U.S. leader admitting, as McCain did, that he doesn’t “really do computers” (insert Anthony Weiner comparison here).

Keep reading at BlogHer.com

Her husband, her story, was so sordid. But Elizabeth Edwards’ is a woman of such articulateness, it’s hard for me to group her in with her slimy husband. I’ve reposted our interview below.

I had the honor of interviewing Elizabeth Edwards last week in Cambridge. I said, “I’m going to interview you for BlogHer.” She said, “thanks for doing that,” and I said “your fan base on BlogHer is beyond” and she said, “these are my people.” So, “people”…

Does the media cover elections as if candidates were Hollywood celebrities, bestowing coverage on who’ll make the best copy and sell most?

Elizabeth Edwards thinks so. When she spoke at Harvard’s Kennedy School last week the thrust of her public address was this: campaign coverage focuses less on substance and more on personality. In a race dominated by two “mega-celebrities,” she used Senator Joe Biden as an example of media slight that created an avalanche of negative effects on one “by any measure a serious candidate.” Biden had but one appearance on the front page of the New York Times. There were more news articles about Elizabeth than about ten of the presidential candidates! The “narrative template” of the media’s choosing was an African American man and a woman. And the media went there, and the result was sky-high ratings for election news.

“Who got to decide this?” she asked about the media’s anointment of certain candidates over others. “Whoever decided this probably also decided that Fred Thompson was a serious candidate for president.” She pleaded for less Britney Spears, who even graced the Atlantic Monthly’s cover, and more dissection of critical issues like health policy. Instead we get “strobe light” journalism to make the sound bite. You have to craft a “zinger,” she noted. Mrs. Edwards can master the zinger but she is a truly thoughtful person and I wish she were running for president. So much for journalistic objectivity, there, but I’m no journalist.

I wanted to talk to Elizabeth about civic life, since she is a true civic leader, not just a political leader. I asked her, “what happens after Election Day? We’ve seen it before- there’s a huge surge, excitement, people vote and then…what would you say to young progressives about how to keep people involved”?

One of the things that John and I tried…OneCorps. As you’re working, you’re out there, meeting with the other volunteers. We need to think about this post-Election period and where will people turn their energies. Our hope was that people would turn their energies to their communities. We hoped people would turn towards a potential candidate, great potential candidate… say “how can we help them” In particular try thinking about it outside the progressive community- thinking, ‘I’m gonna do an anti-poverty project and I’m gonna go to that Baptist Church and see if they want to do it with us and build the bonds there’…and maybe doing something else that would appeal to another group. People get used to working with one another to make the communities better and stronger. We try to do it through OneCorps, it helps, people feel like they’re part of a bigger network if we have something [formal]. Whoever is the candidate, win or lose, one of the things they should do is build that operation into something that’s more civic-minded. The problem is that the way you do that is you use your email list, and the email list is a commodity that civic organizations are unable to afford. One of the things I want us to be able to do is to donate the list to OneCorps…

Politicians have a political agenda, so it’s important to incorporate those who aren’t running again. But “if people understood their own power and their own ability to change their communities…. It’s especially important if McCain wins the election because he’s against government activity that supports the work of organizations like OneCorps.

Let’s talk about why women don’t run for office, and how moms especially can get engaged in civic life so we can start thinking about running?

I think one of the reasons- and not having considered running- or not seriously considered running myself- I think money is really important. EMILY’s list is really important. We are unlikely to have-this is historical- the donor base that men are likely to have. I know we’re used to juggling home and work, and politics is more demanding than most jobs, in terms of the time it’s going to take, at least to do it well. It often also requires being in Washington [DC] away from family, or being in the State Capital. Your family has to be ok with that…The women who are in Washington have launched a move to Washington, particularly the ones with children. Men, it’s much more split. McCain is an example…very often the wives and the children stay at home in the home district or the home state and the official moves to Washington. Women have a much bigger family decision to make.

Me: Is there any solution or is that how it is?

That’s how it is. I think there are just some things we have to say, that’s how it is. ….the way I’d like to improve it is I’d like to see the men to feel the same responsibility! I don’t want it to move in the other direction…I kind of think families ought to live together- that’s one of the things that makes us a family. Certainly as much as our blood makes us a family, living together makes us a family.

I don’t think we feel hesitation anymore whether we can be effective advocates, whether we can be effective candidates. I think it’s lifestyle that keeps us from running [for office]….If we had public financing we’d have a lot more people engaged.

We talked a lot about the effect of money on our elected officials.

There are certain things you wish you could do sort of “candid camera” and we could follow people around congress…to everything…they could go to the bathroom themselves but that’s it. And people couldn’t arrange their schedule…to meet with “Mothers of Dead Soldiers” or things like that all day long. The distance we now have from them, the lack of transparency, we don’t have that connection. We get it back maybe a little bit during campaign season but…

[after Election Day}

“But everyone goes home. I think that’s what it’s gonna be. Even if Obama wins…Hillary has exhibited a toughness that has quieted some people’s concerns that she’s a woman. Obama has appealed to people as this gentle, thoughtful man. People want to see the toughness too.

So I asked her about the role of soaring rhetoric in this election cycle:

“It’s getting people excited and that’s really great. It’s also raising people’s expectations perhaps unrealistically. Jimmy Carter was a really nice man, with a really good heart…but what he didn’t have was the capacity to change the rhetoric of his vision into action. And as a matter of fact, the sort of naïve way in which he had approached it meant he faced even more hurdles than someone who was practiced

What do you think of the whole “bitch is the new black” approach- is that an effective strategy?

“No…I am concerned with the way in which the percentage of women voting for Hillary, the percentage of African Americans voting for Obama, will change. I’m afraid—as many Democrats are—of disaffection in these groups when their candidate is no longer in the race. Because the appeal has been made— not so much by the candidates— but certainly by surrogates and others—this pitch has been made that this is important, for your gender, for your race. In a way it is important for them. But I’m concerned about the disaffection when the candidate is no longer in the race. That’s the real argument for the forced marriage between them, is the possibility of disaffection.

I actually disagree with Elizabeth on this point. I don’t think if Hillary doesn’t win the nomination that women voters will feel disaffected. I think new precedents have been set and the bar’s been moved. Do you? I do wish for a ticket with both Obama and Clinton.

I closed with asking Elizabeth about her civic role in coming years. She said until she can’t make anymore contributions, people will keep hearing from her. I know she said she hasn’t seriously considered running for office but I encourage her to re-think. We need her.

For more recent Elizabeth Edwards news:

Kate Phillips covers Elizabeth’s speech at the Kennedy School, including her fantastically moving answer to the eternal question about criticism about having cancer, young kids, and staying on the campaign trail: New York Times Caucus Blog

Click here to watch Edwards’ public address and Q and A.

But I was inspired by this post from Amy Sample Ward. She wrote:

In her birthday wish post, Beth announces that she’s trying to send 53 Cambodian children to school by raising $530. Last week, Stacy Monk and I were chatting and thought that our community could help smash that goal by raising much more funds as well as awareness for the work the Sharing Foundation does in Cambodia.

How does it work?

We’re hoping to inspire 53 bloggers to publish a post today that shares how Beth has impacted his/her work and shares Beth’s birthday wish with his/her blog audience. (Of course, you’re invited to make a gift to make her wish come true as well!)

What’s the point?

We’re hoping to make her birthday a very happy one by:

1. making her wish come true, and
2. reminding her how much she’s contributed to the community.

I knew Beth Kanter from BlogHer and from blogging in general; I admired how she had developed a singular expertise. Back in 2007 she graciously agreed to let me interview her for a paper I was writing at Harvard on bloggers as entrepreneurs. I had a theory that the most successful and inspiring independent bloggers, such as Beth, were less citizen journalists than they were entrepreneurs, using social media to build their brands and create their own path by which to live and work. Who better embodies this than Beth? She has inspired me and many other women who want to work on their own terms, to do really good work while fighting the good fight. After I wrote my paper and finished grad school, I too started my own business, on my own, working for clients who focused on women in the workplace. In my paper, I called Beth “Betty.” I quoted her,

“Betty, who writes a blog about non-profits and social change, notes that her readers are very
demanding. I asked her why her readers like her: ‘The most important thing is consistency. I hear that a lot from readers — you’re consistent, you’re always right. And if I slack off, my subscriber numbers go down.’”

Beth is disciplined, innovative, and true. Happy Birthday!

The goal of our community journalism initiative is to foster a frank, open, and civil discussion surrounding the current health care policy debate. We all could use a little more of that right now, so please help me out by entering a question.

Visit BlogHer and submit your question- many thanks!
http://bit.ly/4DY5z1

My prep reading list:

Atul Gawande
Ezra Klein
Julie Pippert
RH Reality Check
David Sirota
The Corner

In a recent piece, I talked about women leading the charge on the financial mess. I was asked in an email to, “Write a piece and send it around or something.” Ya’ll didn’t know I take requests did you? So, in my best Wayne Newton, and I could pull this off if I shaved my goatee and took off the top 3/4 of my mustache  — “This one’s for the ladies: ”

1) First, I’ll start with Yves Smith, who I came across end of last summer. A bio of her states she has 25 years in financial services, worked for, amongst others, Goldman, McKinsey, and Sumitomo, and a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Business School. Her blog is Naked Capitalism. She has shown great knowledge and greater courage, from my experience, these two traits are too rare together. Her writing is exceptional and if you want a good overview of the financial mess and what’s gone on over the past year and half, I couldn’t more highly recommend, paging through her blog’s archive. The president should replace Geithner with her. Time we had our first woman Treasury Secretary.

2) Next, Elizabeth Warren. Either mistakenly, which I believe is the case, or purposefully, in which case I’d have to reevaluate my opinion of Harry Reid, Warren was appointed by Reid to head the Congressional Oversight Panel for all the money being handed to the banks. Warren is Professor of Law at Harvard and wrote the excellent book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. So, she documented the great underbelly of Wall Street’s debt bubble, that is, its destruction of a big chunk of working America. I don’t know if when Reid appointed her, he thought he was getting some doddering academic, but instead he got a strong and energetic public advocate. There’s been a pretty hard effort to discredit Ms Warren, and Yves Smith takes a look at the hatchet job done by NPR here. Here’s a good interview with Bill Mahr. I’ve been nothing but impressed when I’ve heard her talk and strongly second the motion by Greider to give her subpoena powers.

3) In October 2007, working for Oppenheimer, Merdith Whitney wrote a report calling Citi the pile [of] junk it is. Amazingly, she was pretty much the only one in the whole industry to do so. Since then, Whitney has been straight at the big banks, holding nothing back on what bad shape they’re in. She’s the Anti-Geithner. In the middle of latest pop in the stock market, which has gotten the banks $50 billion in new capital over the past couple months, Whitney appeared here on CNBC,(excellent) and called the banks’ profits “manufactured” by the government, and stated things would begin heading south again. She’s an eagle above the weasels scurrying below on Wall Street.

4) Gretchen Morgenson writes for the NYT business section. In the last year and half, she has written far and away some of the best coverage of the financial crisis in the mainstream media. Most importantly, she put Mr. Blankfein at the meeting with Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke when the bailout of AIG was decided to the advantage of Goldman for at least 14 billion. By the way, Goldman hasn’t returned that 14 billion! Again, if you want to read some good things on the last year and half, scroll through her articles in the Times’ archive. The Nation just did an ok piece on her. Unfortunately, it suffers from the author’s “objective journalism” disease.

5) Finally, I’d throw in Sheila Bair, who was appointed head of the FDIC by none other than George W. Bush. Ms Bair has frequently tangled with the boys in the government, taking on Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner, and Summers. She’s stated repeatedly the banking crisis is not over, tried to slow the foreclosure tsunami, and most recently stated again Citi is a pile of shit and needs to be placed into receivership.

These women are inspiring! Citizens all, helping breathe life into this old republic.

Indeed, the article is a relief because it gives equal time to moms and dads.

Brenda Barnes, now CEO of Sara Lee, has gotten a lot of press because she left the corporate workforce for a decade to spend more time with her children, and recently returned to be CEO of a major company. Barnes is indeed a rare person, and women can make themselves feel guilty and bad for making trade offs when they’re raising a family. But there are plenty of women out there who illustrate that scaling back work to spend time with family is not a professional death sentence in the long run.

Christine Heenan, who spent her twenties in the Clinton White House and later, time with little kids running her own small business, notes that even after jumping off the corporate ladder, “You can absolutely come out on top. I had a period of time I thought, I’ll never be back in those circles…” She’s now back in a demanding new leadership role at a global institution, a role that requires the whole family’s cooperation, but, “after a decade of really balancing work with my kids, we approach this new challenge as a team. I couldn’t have considered this career move if I hadn’t taken that time to be with my kids more ’til now.”

Heenan got her start on the Clinton White House policy team, and in 1995 became the head of government and community relations at Brown University, where she also taught. When Christine was recovering from delivering her first baby, her boss from Brown called Christine in the maternity ward: there was a crisis at work. After Christine had her second baby, she left Brown to start her own business, the Clarendon Group.

The Clarendon Group won a Sloan Foundation Award in 2006, for “business excellence in workplace flexibility.” Obviously Christine made flexible working a priority when she ran the Clarendon Group. Indeed, she told me a fond memory of first starting her company and preparing a presentation with her first employee, also a mother. Christine took all the kids to the local park while her colleague hammered out the pages on the ink jet printer. Heenan noted that she would be curious to measure her employees’ children’s impressions of what work looks like, since the kids spent so much time in the office with their mothers, and felt like they had the run of the place. To them, kids and work were comfortably intermingled.

As I read Christine’s story in the book Womenomics I thought, great, another “success” story about a high-powered woman who jumps off the corporate ladder to start her own business and get a life. But, Christine’s story doesn’t end with Clarendon. She jumped back on the ladder, in a major way.

In July 2008, Christine became Harvard University’s Vice President for Government, Community, and Public Affairs. I was curious, how did her ten years in a flexible work environment — her own — affect her return to a corporate role?

I asked her how she decided to return.

She said,

“My kids are now at an age where we could make the decision as a family.” She said that because so much of her time during the past decade was spent “as a mother and a professional had been considering those needs I thought it was the right time” to take her own career goals into account again.

Still, “It’s been an adjustment of a year- but it’s been more of a team spirited discussion because of how the decision was made.” Christine told me that recently she was walking the dog with her ten year-old son and complained to him, “‘I have 100 emails- I don’t want to work any more today!’ And my son said, “‘Mom, we talked about this.’”

I asked her if she actually worked harder running her own business than for someone else?

She said,

“I restructured my relationship with Brown into a consultant role after her second son was born. Two years into that, I hired my first employee who was actually my neighbor, whose background was banking and non-profits, but was home with her three young children at the time. She and I, and our next employee – also a career professional now home with a new child — and our moved into a sublet office, then gradually grew.

“As your own boss, it’s not so much working harder as much as work always being with you. It’s your name on the door. But for me it was an easy trade off for being able to do what I wanted. No one could tell me I couldn’t.”

“Our flex policy was fairly organic. When it was just me and my neighbor we traded off aspects of work and time with the kids. The way we ended up having so many moms working flexibly was that’s what we became known for. At any given time at the firm, there was at least 50% of the staff working flex schedules. It wasn’t always women- for example we had a male colleague whose new wife was beginning a brutal schedule as a resident in Boston, and he worked two days a week [from his home] in Boston.”

Q: Could you describe a little how you negotiated when considering the Harvard job? Was flex on the table?

A: I did raise it in my first meeting with the search firm. I had nothing to lose; I wasn’t looking for a job. If they had explained that this was where [considering me] would have ended, fine. I was prepared to be out of the running due to my family demands. But it was actually the two women at the search – one pregnant with twins – convinced me to interview for the job. They argued: why not at least have that conversation?. So I did go forward with the search process, and I did raise it in my first meeting with the search committee. The most honest and important piece of advice I got in that first meeting was from a senior level colleague at Harvard who said, “It’s pretty safe to say everyone at this level is 24-7, and no one much cares where you are at 3 in the afternoon….”
Since taking the post, Christine has noted that both men and women model that attitude. Christine noted she has a colleague who is general counsel whose son is a very competitive high school wrestler. “There have been times that Jeff’s wrestling matches meant tied up evenings or weekends, and that is not hidden from view — everyone shares in and endorses those priorities here. It is really nice.”

Q: What do you miss about being your own boss?

“After school; I miss that after school window. Both my children are boys. If you ask them at 6 pm to elaborate on their school day, they’ve forgotten it! They’re like, that was 5 hours ago mom! But we manage phone conversations after school, and I try to go home for homework time and the backpack download. I learned from not doing it right at first. When we started this year, I felt very disorganized and out of a groove. Now we have better check-in structures… We’re much more attuned to the family schedule, we all review the week on Sunday.”

Q: In Womenomics you talk about the loss of status you first felt when you left the DC-NY power corridor. How has that changed over time?

A: “One thing I have learned about myself in the last year is that the most important status I confer myself is, at the end of the day, my performance as a mother and a wife. I feel as though I’m more often challenged now by ‘am I doing everything right as a mom?’ than when I was worried about “am I off the fast track as a professional?” for the decade I was out of Washington DC.

“If you are committed to trying to do it all, you have to let yourself off the hook. It’s easy to assume anything you’re not doing right in one sphere is because of devotion to the other sphere.” She noted, your son would still have that problem if you were home every afternoon!

Q: What quick tips do you have for making work and family work?

A: “Try to live as close to the office as possible. I am three miles from desk to door. If you can’t live close, when you get that call someone has a fever make sure you have a relative or friend who can do emergency pick ups.

“I think having at least one colleague who is really aware of your commitments outside the office — who knows next Thursday is your son’s birthday — is very helpful. It’s helpful to have an outlet to be supported in your family responsibilities at work. At Harvard my assistant Monica — she’s really my partner in helping me balance. I think its ok to be explicit about your family commitments with your team — to say please make sure your note this day in my calendar for family.

“And, we have the Sunday night ritual of calendaring. Who has kung fu on what day? When are this week’s baseball games? My husband travels a lot so it’s important we all understand what the week looks ahead.

Finally, let yourself off the hook! Women are so inclined to let themselves beat themselves up… Rather than focus on the fact that you got to the pickup five minutes late, or to the office meeting 5 minutes late, focus on the fact that you got there.”

While doing research for a CNN.com Live appearance on health care reform and the Senate, I collated a series of helpful links. I am a proponent of single payer reform, but as has been reported, it’s just off the table on Capitol Hill. Obama himself said, “if he could start from scratch, single-payer might make sense—the same thing he said during the campaign.” But apparently, single payer is off the table. Without a public option, I don’t see how health reform can last and really make change. Mandating everyone to get insurance doesn’t solve the problem that just having insurance doesn’t really make things better! After all, writes Robert Kuttner,

“The U.S. health care system is the most expensive and least cost-effective in the advanced world mainly because private insurance companies waste about 25 cents on the premium dollar on claims, profits, administration, and marketing. They have no serious financial incentives to emphasize prevention, and every possible incentive to avoid sick people. Doctors and hospitals, meanwhile, make their money from increasing costs.”

Some sort of “public option”–a public health insurance plan (a la Medicare) that competes with private plans– is on the table, but whose version? See here for details. And visit Montanansforsinglepayer.org to see how Montanans are influencing their very influential Senator, Max Baucus.

read more….

I never thought I’d see the day when a U.S. Congresswoman’s breast milk was the star of a nationally televised segment, but there we go. On CNN, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin fed her five month old from a Medela bottle. I’ve never seen a mother in real life actually using those bottles to feed (the flow), so she must have been making a statement: “Hey, this is breast milk, not formula!” This signal is to nursing mothers what Conservative code words about crosses and the like are to right wing Republicans: something you only pick up if you’ve lived it.

Recently CNN featured a piece on the “baby boom among female lawmakers.” Seven, now eight (with Linda Sanchez) women have given birth while in Congress, recently Kirsten Gillibrand and Herseth Sandlin. Even post-Palin, to say new mommies in elected office are a novelty is an understatement. So I’m glad that the media is re-introducing the concept now, while we’re in love with Democrats and Mommy-party governance is not a pejorative. But let’s take a feminist perspective on the CNN piece, just for fun.

Margaret Thatcher famously staged a scene during which she ended a Cabinet level meeting at 5pm to hurry to the shops to get “her Denis” his bacon before the shops shut. Done for the benefit of the press, Thatcher wanted and needed to tone down her Iron Maiden image.

In a way, Herseth promoting her breastmilk on CNN is as much of a canned statement as Thatcher’s. Women politicians are often still a novelty, and as the Politico points out this week, the old boys club is alive and well on Capitol Hill. Erika Falk writes of how media treatment of elected women differs from the way men are covered. Coverage perpetuates female novelty and cultural biases. Women are described differently than men. This maintains the perceptions that women in leadership roles are tokens and focuses people’s attention on more personal aspects rather than on more relevant information.

Most political associations and legislative bodies are skewed groups, with percentages at about 85% men to 15% women. Both houses of the US Congress are at about 17% female– keeping women in token roles. As Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Kanter wrote, tokens are not judged on their individual merits, but are expected to act as one expects their larger group to act, as mommies, for example. They are highly visible, and they typically perform their jobs under public and symbolic conditions different from those of the dominant group.

Let’s talk about the comfort factor. One of the most common threads in the leadership literature is the impact of the “double bind,” in which people like a woman if they see her exhibiting communal traits, but do not respect her as a leader with the necessary agentic qualities. The reverse is also true, that a woman can be seen as possessing agentic qualities, but will not be liked and therefore not seen as a successful leader. I actually see this changing in the coverage of women officials, and I think we can thank Hillary Clinton for it. The thing I liked about coverage of Gillibrand was that her work as a tough lawyer for Phillip Morris showed her as pretty cutthroat and a true corporate force to be reckoned with.

But does any of the media coverage matter if women accomplish important tasks while in office? There is the “New Hampshire” effect and this is what gives me hope. New Hampshire with its female majority has introduced a trifecta of paid leave and work family bills. This message is being carried to the federal level: “Our approach to policies that were important to us before become even more important, whether it’s early childhood development and how you fund it, child-care, quality child-care, child nutrition, prenatal care,” said Herseth Sandlin.

So, the time is right for breastfeeding Congresswomen; hopefully the novelty will wear off. I’ll close with the words of Michelle Obama at a recent Corporate Voices for Working Families meeting:

“We need to discuss flexible work hours that give employees greater ability to attend to important family responsibilities like child pick-up, something as simple as that; doctors appointments for those not just with kids, but for people with elderly parents. We’re finding more and more that families are in that crunch, as well.

We need to discuss paid leave for birth or adoption of a child and when there’s a serious illness that arises.

We need to discuss quality on-site child care, something that keeps many of us up at night as families; you’re just wondering where are we going to put our children where we feel like that they’re being safe — that they’re safe and being loved. That will relieve many of the stresses that parents feel on the job throughout the day.

These types of policies can be the key to whether a family remains economically viable or slips into financial uncertainty.”

PS: Ellen Galinsky is offering us the chance to ask Michelle Obama questions about work and life policy solutions, based on the First Lady’s talk last week.