Theme One: Teach a Woman to Fish, Save the World
This argument is a given among leaders now: empowering women and girls globally is crucial to global security, ending violence, and lifting countries out of poverty. This year, almost 32% of the commitments from public and private entities at the Clinton Global Initiative directly impacted women and girls through classroom education, health education, micro finance and other teaching tactics. It’s crucial, lifesaving work.

CGI is a public private partnership, but the heavy lifting in creating such programs has been done by NGOs, governments and other charitable entities, according to Dr. Isobel Coleman from the Council on Foreign Relations. She says if you add up all the money spent on women by NGOs and other non-profit organizations it’s somewhere under $5 billion dollars. This is significant money but pales compared to the estimated $1 trillion alone of investment capital wanting to invest in socially responsible business. Dr. Coleman notes, it is crucial to enlist the private sector in this empowerment to really make change.

At CGI, Andrew Kassoy, Co-founder, B Lab said there are 60-70 million consumers who WANT to buy from good companies. And many companies, whether explicitly socially responsible in their charter or not, have the intention to have a positive impact on society. But it’s tough to make money and it’s hard for socially responsible businesses to scale. Many explicitly pro-women businesses are in this spot.

Theme Two: Women are Power Consumers, Hence They Have Power
Nearly every US-focused public conversation will touch on women’s sheer might as consumers of goods and services. Organizations usually seize women’s purchasing power as proof of the strength of women’s voices in the marketplace. I’m not sure this translates. And frankly, if I hear this statistic again, I’m going to scream: women drive 85% of household purchases. Women are the “Chief Household Officers.” Women are the power consumers…you know the story.

This information is accurate, valuable and hey, I make my living largely from it. But it’s not enough to change the balance of power and improve the global plight of women. I’ve written before how the single-minded emphasis on women’s role as power consumer is the new Feminine Mystique. I don’t see much evidence that women’s predominance as consumers of packaged goods, etc. translates into our larger power.

Theme Three: If Things Are Really Going to Change, Women Need More Access to Capital

Empowering women as producers of economic wealth is the hardest part of the equation to solve. There is incredible work being done globally and in the US in the micro-finance sector, but women need access to capital beyond the micro scale. There are two examples I want to highlight below of how this can be done at scale.

Wal-Mart’s recent commitment to empower women is an example of bringing socially responsible business to scale but also of an organization committing to tackle the hardest question behind women’s lack of global equity.

In a strong new women’s empowerment initiative, Wal-Mart has taken the lead doubling sourcing from women suppliers, source $20 billion from women owned businesses. They promise to track and measure their actual spending with women suppliers worldwide and hold themselves accountable. This includes large and small batch producers of goods and services.

Wal-Mart also pledges to work with more women professional services providers, such as lawyers, ad agencies, accountants and technology firms. Yes, Wal-Mart has a tough record when it comes to championing women in the workplace. But ultimately, it’s empowering women as key producers in the multi-billion dollar Wal-Mart supply chain. The vision, according to Executive Vice President for Corporate Affairs Leslie Dach, is to bring about a “global marketplace where women’s contributions are really and truly valued…Helping women live better will make Wal-Mart a stronger business.”

It’s not micro, and while it’s a PR campaign, there are real numbers behind it.

And yes, in a press conference to announce the initiative, he noted women are the majority of Wal-Mart shoppers. But I’ll forgive him that one.

Second, there’s great energy afoot to increase the number of women on corporate boards of directors. The average Fortune 500 company board is only 16% women. This means corporate decisions that affect us in the US and all over the world are 84% made by men. Doesn’t that figure put the “82% of purchases are made by women” figure into a stark new light?

At a launch for the new non-profit organization 2020Women on Boards, both MA State Treasurer Steve Grossman and CEO of PAX Worldwide Joe Keefe, who runs a mutual fund featuring only companies that invest in gender equality, drummed home this simple and powerful point: women hold more power than we think. Not only are many women individual investors in mutual funds, but our pension funds, unions and employers are among the largest holders of company shares. Every year, we are sent proxy forms and we usually throw them out or check the boxes suggested. But these boxes approve Boards of Directors, and we can use our proxy votes to change things; we need to read them, and scout them for gender diversity. There are also several new databases that host the information of thousands of qualified women Board candidates. This is a powerful way to change the ratio and get more women on Boards.

Because it’s all about numbers, and all about scale.

Disclosure: I did consulting work for Wal-Mart at a past job in 2005.

I thought, “you can’t be the only one,” so I decided to write a quick piece for my sisters in anxiety out there. You see, BlogHer is a little like high school. And if for some reason you were not popular in high school, or you were angsty, or you didn’t have people to sit with at lunch or didn’t get invited to cool parties, you might have flashbacks at BlogHer Con. I went to girls high school, and it was vicious at times. Whenever I walk into a room full of women I’ll have a bout of social anxiety. Do they like me? Am I awkward and not worth knowing?

It’s not BlogHer’s fault. The three founders are the most wonderful, down to earth women you’ll ever meet. The women I know from my blogging community are my true friends, my role models and mentors, my colleagues and even my clients. BlogHer has enriched my life in ways I never thought would be possible.

But get any posse of women together (let alone several thousand) and dynamics will ensue. Not to mention that many attendees are selling themselves, making connections, working it hard…and it can get intimidating. Every party you’re not invited to, every elite piece of swag you don’t get, every person who doesn’t know your name. You will meet people more famous/rich/full of Twitter followers than you. It wears on a person, even an adult with a wonderful life back home.

So here is my guide if events like this make you anxious. Every time you feel a twinge, say to yourself:

I’m just here to learn. If I have fun and meet people while I’m here, that’s great. But this is just a learning experience. I’m going to observe, and that’s all. I’m along for the ride.

I try to let go of whatever agenda I had…because if you hang out and observe at BlogHer, you never know where you’ll end up.

If this isn’t enough, think of all the people who love you back home. Think how wonderful it is to be an adult, to make your own rules and your own friends and not care if people like you all the time.

Then, have a glass of wine, smile, and open yourself to the experience.

See you there!

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.

“Childcare is part of a jobs agenda,” Gillibrand said in the live chat, hosted by the women’s political organization committed to supporting pro-choice candidates, voicing her frustration at a expense that has become a significant burden to numerous families with both parents in the workforce.

As a result of the rising cost of childcare, Gillibrand is proposing legislation that will help to reduce the ballooning cost of care. “In this difficult economy, parents cannot afford the rising cost of child care. Families’ incomes are just not keeping pace,” Senator Gillibrand said. “I speak with parents all over New York State, who tell me that something must be done. In addition to making child care more affordable for parents who work and go to school, my plan will provide special assistance to businesses that help their employees with the tremendous costs.”

Gillibrand’s proposal includes increasing the Dependent and Child Care tax credit to $6000, giving larger tax breaks to businesses that offer on site child care services, getting more workers into the child care industry and encouraging businesses to allow more telecommuting — a proposal that wouldn’t just cut the amount of money needed to be spent on childcare, but would also reduce road congestion, fuel consumption, and business expenditures for keeping employees in an office.

It seems reducing hierarchy in the workplace increases diversity in leadership:

“The introduction of self-directed work teams was associated with a decline in the probability of white male managers by 8% and an increase in the odds of white female managers by 9%, as well as an increase of black female managers by 3.5% and of black male managers by 5%.”

My mom was a highly educated educator but she stayed home to raise us. She and my dad had a deal: she was “the inside man” in our family growing up. My father was the “outside man” and he earned a good living for us all. He couldn’t do it today, not on what he earned. But earn it he did and we had a nice life. Until she and my dad divorced, and my mom went back to work, and the home economy became cereal for dinner and a messy house. There’s a lesson in that.

I, on the other hand, can do almost nothing manual (I am a pretty good cook). I’m grateful to have the education and skills to earn a decent living, and so that’s what I do.

The website Primary Dilemma offers a way at looking at working mother “methods.” Founder Lynn Hall identifies five types of working mom methods- methods, I think, are the way we balance responsibilities at home and work. Although I like to defy typology, I suppose I fit into “equalizer”- equally engaged in work and parenting. This is a label I’ll proudly wear.

However, the downside of being an equalizer is that everything besides parenting and working becomes a nagging problem to be solved. And because I spend all the time I’m not earning a living trying to parent and be a wife, I outsource everything domestic I possibly can.

Recently, to help move house, I hired a woman I found on Craig’s List to help pack boxes. I figured paying her to pack so I could work made economic sense. But Barbara helped shift my thinking about how I invest my time. Barbara writes a blog called“The Chief Cook and Bottle Washer,” an old saying I’ve become fond of. Barbara explained her typical week to me: as the stay at home mother of three she’d planned meals carefully, assembled a shopping list, and on Tuesdays, had leftover night, in which the fridge was cleaned out and dinner was whatever was left. Nothing was wasted and convenience food was minimized.

This approach impressed and frankly stunned me. My approach to cooking has become as unbalanced as my work days (constant checking of email when I’m supposed to be with the kids, and vice versa): we’d either scrounge around for cereal or whatever is in the fridge, or I’d spend way too much at Whole Foods on an elaborate, organic spree, and feel guilt after. There was no sense of purpose or sense.

I need to save money and regain pride in my domestic role. I know that as a professional working mother I’m supposed to outsource as much as possible to retain time for parenting, but I think this approach leaves us alienated from our home environment, and possibly, even more broke than we already are after paying for childcare.

The lost art of home economy gets confused with craft and decorating “porn.” Home economy is not about buying expensive materials to create elaborate crafts, and it’s not about cooking exotically or keeping the perfect home. It’s not about Martha Stewart Living and the plentiful, aspirational approach to domestic consumption. It’s about practical consumption.

There’s been much written, mostly aimed at men, along the Shop Class for the Soul bent. Books and articles ask men to return to the soulful craft of making things with one’s hands. “Artisanal” and “locavore” have become clichés. But what’s a working mother who wants to simply manage her costs, not become Pioneer Woman or start another urban farm?

It’s been a big discussion and challenge among my friends: how to be more mindful when it comes to household consumption. Here is my small start.

Simply, stick to a monthly household food budget. I’m starting with grocery shopping and I’m reclaiming my wifely role as ‘chief cook and bottle washer.” Each week, I have a shopping list and a shopping budget. I’m buying less convenience food and packaged kids food, which is incredibly expensive. I’m trying to buy organic, but only what’s on special.

I’m trying, like Barbara, to plan meals ahead, and only buy what I need. It’s a powerful shift in thinking and it’s a lot of work.

Domestic economy is more work than working.

At this new crossroads of my life, I find myself reflective, and grateful that I work for the organization that I do. I have always been the queen of flexibility.

I needed it: my husband always traveled, and I was essentially a single parent Monday through Friday. I used it: worked compressed workweeks, part time schedules, had daily flex leave for school conferences, paused my career, reentered the workforce. I valued it: I am one of the 87% of people who consider having flexibility to be extremely important when (if) looking for a new job. And I believe that having that flexibility allowed me to be a good parent and a good worker, while always aspiring to positions of more responsibility.

Confession 1: I thought that when I was at this point in my life, I would not need workplace flexibility anymore.

Confession 2: I need it more than ever. Why? Because I have learned, after being in the workforce for 30 years, that in order for me to the best worker, and reach my highest potential and productivity, I need to be whole in my life.

On a personal note, in order for me to be whole in my life, I need, and want to continue to be there for my daughters. I want to be able to move my older daughter into her first apartment, and go to Home Depot and Target, and construct the do-it-yourself furniture. I want to be able to take my younger daughter out to lunch in NYC this summer and hear all about her first corporate work experience. I want to visit my daughters during the year, (both of them are a 3 hour flight away) and be able to leave on a Thursday night, work remotely on Friday, and not have to jam a visit into a 48-hour weekend, because I am confined by the traditional work schedule of being in the office till 5:00 on a Friday and back in the office at 9:00 on Monday.

Is this selfish? Maybe. Who benefits? Definitely me, but I would also argue that my employer benefits just as much. I am loyal (been here 12 years!) and hard working; I’ve never missed a deliverable, and have supported my co-workers when they have needed to take time off for their personal lives. So, I am one of the lucky ones; I have had access to flexibility without jeopardy to my career or advancement.

As I travel around the country for the When Work Works initiative, and speak to different audiences, a key message I deliver is that workplace flexibility must work for the employer first, and then the employee. I am forever learning that workplace flexibility is needed and wanted by individuals for so many different reasons, and organizations are creating so many innovative solutions to this need, that yield positive business results .

So, I ask readers to share- What stage of life are you in? Do you need workplace flexibility? What types of flexibility would best fit your needs at this stage in your life? How would workplace flexibility help make you whole? And, are you one of the lucky ones? Do you have flexibility in your organization?

But here’s the problem when you make stories like this about MOMS. People don’t always takeaway the whole story. As Cali Yost and Dan Mulhern show in this recent interview, men are entering the discussion. News flash, men want to work differently too. Dan Mulhern thinks we’re at a tipping point in which the discussion will cease to be about moms. I’m not sure- this article in the Post makes it seem as if people who work flexible schedules are only mothers…even worse, they’re “moms.”

Here’s the truth, from Jane Leber Herr at University of Chicago:
“You would think that, given the rise in education of women, their experience, their presence in high-investment, high-income, high-value fields, the proportion of those who leave the labor force would have gone down,” said Herr, who noted that women now make up the majority in many colleges and professional programs. “What’s shocking is that it hasn’t.”

What people may choose to hear:
“Don’t invest in women of childbearing age. They’re probably just going to leave.”

It’s a profound honor to be a part of ONE’s Mom Advisory Committee and to recognize Mother’s Day here today with all of you.

I’m a mom of four from Pittsburgh, Penn., and I co-run a website for mothers called The Motherhood. We’ve learned many truths about mothers through our community, but these three remind me the most of what we are focusing on with ONE:

1. Even though mothers often carry the burdens of the world, they do so on strong shoulders.
2. Moms have an unmatched ability to “make it happen.”
3. A mothers’ DNA carries within it the mantra, “leave everything better than you found it.”

In other words, mothers make the world go around.

We witness it all the time. Ordinary moms, every day, see a need — and without hesitation do what they can to make a difference in that need. That is why I love formally bringing moms into ONE, with all that represents and everything it will help make happen.

Maria Mchele Mwasonge of Tanzania is a powerful inspiration to me as we move forward.

Maria and her five kids used to sleep on a rag that covered the floor, but that all changed when Maria was trained how to grow sweet potatoes.

From her small potato farm, Maria has built a thriving business. Now her children go to school and the family lives in a new home. Other farmers have learned from Maria how she grows the most nutrient-rich plants, and in the process local health clinics report that malnutrition in the area’s young children has dropped.

Even when she sleeps, Maria said, she thinks about her potatoes.

(If you haven’t already, be sure to read the ONE report “Africa’s Future is Female,” which includes Maria’s story.)

An age-old description of mothers popped into my head when I read about Maria: “She is a tree of life to them.”

“Them” is certainly her children, but when it comes to mothers, many times “them” means everyone she can help or lift up in her own way.

Today at 1 PM ET, The Motherhood will be hosting a live, text-based talk with the ONE Campaign and Every Mother Counts to celebrate mothers everywhere. Please join us and share what inspires you about mothers and learn more about what we can do to help mothers and kids around the globe who need us.

We hope to see you there!

PS. This amazing video by Former First Lady Laura Bush is a beautiful reminder that for moms, one child is every child. I hope it motivates you as much as it did me!

Follow Cooper on Twitter: @coopermunroe

If I asked you if you work “mother’s hours,” what would come to mind?

It turns out “mother’s hours” is a term of art used to refer to jobs that provide the flexibility around family priorities. It can mean working a compressed day, or working from home while making time to attend a kid’s event during the workday. I’m sure it’s been used with derision more than once. I don’t care. I worked mother’s hours before I had kids, and I’ll do it after they leave home, I hope. It’s how I function best.

Working at home gets a bad rap. People don’t help when they use airquotes when talking about “working” at home, like they’re really watching TV all day. If you do this, please stop. It doesn’t help the millions of us who do work at home and do a damn fine job of it.

It’s true some managers don’t believe their people really work when they are at home, but the research shows the other extreme: people overwork. Ironically, in the digital age, many remote workers report they can’t shut off. They may feel a need to prove they’re actually working when they are home; they might even work more than they would at the office because they feel a need to overcompensate and thank their employer for “letting” them work from home.

Research from Northeastern University finds role transitions are especially challenging for people who work at home. Humans like to compartmentalize: We put work in one domain, and family in another. When you work at home, you will be in your home environment and you will face distraction during the day. A dirty kitchen, lonely cat, sick kid or leaky faucet can be your ruin if you let it. Working at home takes discipline and a keen sense of purpose.

When I tell people I work at home, they always ask me, “How do you make sure your kids don’t bother you”? I always say, first, I have childcare. Working at home while you’re watching the kids isn’t working, unless you run a daycare. My colleague Leanne Chase has a good solution for her home office: “I have two signs for my daughter. She can’t read yet, so I put a sign up. One sign has a smiley face – which means she can knock on mommy’s door. There is also a smiley face with a cross through it, which means she has to go to the nanny or daddy unless there’s a fire.”

It’s important to create what Dr. Jay Mulki calls “segmentation” when you work at home. You need the barriers between your work self and your home self. Many create rituals that allow for these barriers, even if they are symbolic. Why? Because in a world where work is undefined, we’re creating, in the words of Northeastern University researcher Kim Eddleston, new “temporal, spatial and psychological boundaries” to manage the transition from home to work, even if we don’t leave our home to begin work.

Recent research on remote workers and telecommuters brings all sorts of new rituals to light. For instance, if you don’t commute into work each day, how do you make the transition to start your workday? For some, it’s going out for a cup of coffee. Some complete the school run, then return home to work. I bet a lot of people walk the dog. I might start the day early, doing “check-in” work — check my email inbox, review my schedule, do billing or administrative tasks — while still in my pajamas or workout clothes. But I’ll hold phone calls, writing or doing any serious thinking work until I am dressed in some semblance of grown-up clothes, and my face has to be made-up, or at least moisturized.

For many who hold “mothers’ hours,” there’s an evening back-to-work ritual, as well. Put the kids to bed, log on. Watch the evening news, then pick up again.

Many of us, and not just mothers, structure a workday that meets our needs. But work is still work, and we’re creating a new set of rituals to create a semblance of a workday with a beginning, middle and end. About a third of American workers have flexible schedules. Only 11 percent of wage and salaried employees currently work from home, but almost all employees would like the ability to occasionally work at home. Big companies like BlueCross Blue Shield are heavily investing in the at-home workforce, and then there’s a whole “tribe” of people like me who work for ourselves and work at home. With mobile technology, the number of non-traditional information workers will only increase.

But even when you’ve forgone the traditional nine-to-five, a routine is important to most of us. Otherwise, work doesn’t feel like work. And that’s not always a good thing.

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Thanks to the New England Work and Family Association for access to this research on engaging the remote and telecommuting workforce.