By Carolina de la Fuente
Women make 79 cents to a man’s dollar every time they are paid. To many, 21 cents is chump change, but for women all around the country, these 21 cents speak volumes about the state of gender equality.
I recently participated in a research project at my college and it helped me understand feminism a little bit better and I’d like to share my newfound insight with you.
But first, a quick statement on terms: Feminism isn’t about women alone, it’s about equality of the sexes.
In this project, I specifically focused on women in the field of communications, but this information can be relevant to any woman in any field. There’s a greater picture here.
In 2013, TIME magazine stated “For three decades more women than men have graduated from college, but that academic dominance has not led to corresponding business or political success.”
There is a sort of stereotype embedded in society that tells us that women are “the softer sex” and that men are the leaders.
Sometimes, we are naturally partaking in this narrative and we don’t even notice it. The mere fact that women make up only 5 percent of CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies makes this a very big concern of mine.
So how can we fix this? Calling ourselves feminists and tweeting things like “MY P*SSY, MY CHOICE” can only go so far. Though, there is some valid rationale behind that concept.
The most important thing we have to do is empower women.
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, said in a 60 Minutes interview: “Women play it too safe. They must aim high and fight the instinct to hold back.”
It’s a matter of identity. We have to reiterate the narrative that it’s okay for a woman to be outspoken and assertive without having to be perceived as a “bitch.”
Women need to identify and become comfortable with all their aspirations and not let this stereotype come in the way or shy them down.
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Mindy Marques, the Executive Editor and Vice President of the Miami Herald, reinforced this notion in a recent talk she made at Florida International University.
“As women, we tend to dwell on our weaknesses, and men I think focus more on their strengths,” Marques said. “We often bring that self-criticism to the workplace as well, and so we’re dissecting our abilities; second-guessing ourselves.”
Photo Credit: Charlotte Cooper/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Besides issues of identity, there is a whole system that also needs to be tapped into in order to change this disproportionate number of women leaders.
In this case, it is leadership training that could be the big fix.
In order for women to become empowered, we must train them and provide them with resourceful skills to go out on their jobs and be able to ask for that pay raise, or speak up about an unpopular opinion in that business meeting.
Kathy Fitzpatrick, Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Communication at American University, suggests colleges should implement a standard curriculum for leadership training in communications.
“We can learn a lot from schools of business and other schools who have taken a lead in attempting to identify the core content and objective of leadership training,” Fitzpatrick said in a recent speech at FIU.
Leadership training is a crucial skill that needs to be held as a priority in this field whether it be through curriculum reform or mentorship programs.
As fun as it is to angry-tweet when you want to feel empowered, it’s important to understand the root of the problem and the solutions we can present to our institutions.
And it is even more important to remember that a big chunk of the responsibility is on the woman herself, to feel empowered and to continue empowering.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us.
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Here’s The Email That Shut Down LA’s Schools
The email that led to the controversial closing of all Los Angeles public schools has been obtained by multiple media organizations including KTLA and KABC.
According to Vice News, the email was sent from a user using the address, [email protected].
READ: Email that shut down LA schools.
“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
I am emailing you to inform you of the happenings on Tuesday, 12/15/15.
Something big is going down. Something very big. It will make national headlines. Perhaps, even international ones. You see, my last 4 years here at one of the district high schools has been absolute hell. Pure, unmitigated, agony. The bullying, the loneliness, the rejection… it is never-ending. And for what? Just because I’m ‘different’?
No. No more. I am a devout Muslim, and was once against violence, but I have teamed up with a local jihadist cell as it is the only way I’ll be able to accomplish my massacre the correct way. I would not be able to do it alone. Me, and my 32 comrades, will die tomorrow in the name of Allah. Every school in the L.A. Unified district is being targeted. We have bombs hidden in lockers already at several schools. They are strategically placed and are meant to crumble the foundations of the very buildings that monger so much hate and discrimination. They are pressure cooker bombs, hidden in backpacks around the schools. They are loaded with 20 lbs. of gunpowder, for maximum damage. They will be detonated via Cell Phone. Not only are there bombs, but there are nerve gas agents set to go off at a specific time: during lunch hour. To top it off, my brothers in Allah and I have Kalashnikov rifles, Glock 18 Machine pistols, and multiple handheld grenades. The students at every school in the L.A. Unified district will be massacred, mercilessly. And there is nothing you can do to stop it.
If you do end up trying to, by perhaps, beefing up security, or canceling classes for the day, it won’t matter. Your security will not be able to stop us. We are an army of Allah. If you cancel classes, the bombings will take place regardless, and we will bring our guns to the streets and offices of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Bakersfield, and San Diego.
I wish you the best luck. It is time to pray to allah, as this may be your last day.”
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An American In Paris: Her First Day In The City Of Light Came On November 13
By Taylor Neuman
When planning for a weekend excursion to Paris you expect nothing less but sight-seeing, eating delicious French cuisine, touring the finest art museums, going out and enjoying everything the City of Light has to offer; but this wasn’t the case for me.
On Friday, Nov. 13 I traveled to Paris for an amazing weekend with my study abroad program.
When we got there we immediately ate at this tiny little French café a little ways from our hotel, walked around a bit to get a feel of the area we were in and then came back to get ready for our tour of the Louvre.
We took a big bus to the Louvre. It was absolutely amazing just like everyone had told me, and I was incredibly excited to finally see the Mona Lisa in person.
After about an hour and a half tour, we were all ready to get dinner around the area. Some of us talked about what each other had planned for the night.
Some planned on going to the Germany vs. France game, some planned on seeing the Eiffel Tower lit up at night and some planned on going out and enjoying the nightlife.
A group of my friends and I decided to go to this really tasty crepe place pretty close to the Louvre for dinner, we had planned to meet some friends afterwards at the Eiffel Tower but instead we decided to head back to the hotel and see the Eiffel Tower the next day.
Since we were pretty far from our hotel we decided to take the metro back to our destination.
After waiting for sometime for everyone to get their metro passes we waited patiently for the train to come. Then we hopped on and sat around talking about how excited we were for the night ahead.
I never thought I would experience Paris this way, the weather was cold and gray and you could feel the sadness that swept throughout the city that day.
After one stop we realized that three police officers had jumped onto the metro.
Over the intercom they started saying something in French, none of us know French so we disregarded it and continued to enjoy ourselves as usual, agreeing that we would just get off the next stop open. When we got off we still had a 15 minute walk back to our hotel. We walked and walked and finally we started to notice police and ambulances flying by one by one, it seemed like it was never going to stop.
We just figured it had something to do with the soccer game, or maybe a bad car accident, we never thought anything more than that. We continued on our path with nothing more than our plans for the night in mind.
People walk in Paris during a winter night in 2012. Photo Credit: August Brill/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
We finally arrived to the hotel to find our lobby flooded with people on their phones, crying and watching television.
Immediately I knew something was wrong, I looked at the TV and it was all in French but the only word I could make out was “explosion.”
All of a sudden my heart felt like it was going to fall out of my chest; I didn’t even know how to react. I asked someone what had happened, and they said “terrorist attack,” and what was even worse was that it was only 5-10 minutes away from our hotel, and where we had walked around earlier that day.
The first thing I thought of was calling my parents to tell them what had happened because they didn’t know.
I told them I was safe and that everything was going to be ok, but they immediately panicked.
My friends and I felt so unsafe so we hid ourselves in our hotel room for the rest of the night watching TV and not knowing how to respond to the situation. We didn’t know if we were going to be the next victims, all we saw was the number of deaths and injuries keep rising and we knew it was getting really bad.
All we wanted to know is if all of our friends that went to the soccer game, out to eat, and to the Eiffel Tower were okay. We all fell asleep after finding out everyone from our program made it back to the hotel safe but the feeling of uncertainty still hung over our heads.
The next morning I woke up to the television on and all I could see was 129 dead. I almost threw up.
All of our organized trips were canceled and the president issued a state of emergency so it was almost impossible to go out and see the city. It hit 3 o’clock and all of us were in a state of shock, our group advisors had told us they only wanted us to go in small groups across the street to grab food.
We were eventually allowed to go around sight-seeing but we weren’t allowed to go on public transportation or in big groups so we went to the Eiffel Tower. Security was extremely tight everywhere and there was an overwhelming amount of military personnel and police guarding the streets.
I never thought I would experience Paris this way, the weather was cold and gray and you could feel the sadness that swept throughout the city that day.
We went to go visit the sites where the terrorist attacks occurred and it was probably the hardest thing I ever had to do.
Hundreds of people flooded the streets holding flowers in their hands, tears running down their faces, and lighting candles to remember the victims.
It was something I had never experienced before, a feeling I will never forget.
Taylor Neuman is a writer for Rise News. She is also a student at the University of Alabama who is studying abroad in Europe this semester.
Cover Photo Credit: Cristian Bortes/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Jeb Bush’s Connection To A Healthcare Company’s ObamaCare Boon
This article was originally published on www.risemiaminews.com on April 10, 2015.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s public political beliefs and personal financial gain seem to have been at odds during his time as a member of the board of directors of Tenet Healthcare.
The potential republican candidate for president stepped down from the company in late December, a move that came as no surprise to political watchers. But with the announcement, new attention is focusing on what Bush actually did at the nation’s third largest for profit hospital chain and whether he supported the corporation’s embrace of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare.
Just to put into perspective how big of a boon ObamaCare has been for Tenet, it’s CEO Trevor Fetter reported in a November 2014 press release that the company’s net earnings grew over 59% from the same time in 2013. Fetter said that 40% of that growth had come as a direct result of ObamaCare reforms.
Specifically, the additional revenue came from the Medicaid expansion in five states which Tenet operates in and a decrease in uninsured and “charity” hospital admissions.
“We drove an accelerating contribution in the third quarter from healthcare reform, with sequentially higher declines in uncompensated care and increases in Medicaid volume,” Fetter said in the release. “We achieved another quarter of strong performance across every dimension of our business.”
“It would make sense to pay Jeb Bush, because he’s a well connected guy.”
Bush joined Tenet soon after leaving public office in early 2007 and served until the last day of 2014. Bush came on the board shortly after the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accused the company of wide spread Medicare fraud between 1999 and 2002.
The government said that Tenet’s strong earnings in those years came about because of the company’s “exploitation of a loophole in the Medicare reimbursement system.”
Tenet refused to admit or deny the allegations made in the SEC complaint and agreed to pay a $10 million civil penalty. However, it did also pay $725 million to settle a Justice Department inquiry on the same matter.
Bush was brought on in part to help clean up Tenet’s corrupt image and instill greater public confidence. That strategy seemed to have worked.
And Bush was not the only politician on the ten-member board. Former Democratic senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska spent over a decade on the board starting in 2001, then temporarily stepped down in order for run for senate in 2012 and quickly rejoined it after losing. Kerrey did not respond to a request for comment.
According to multiple experts on corporate finance and governance, it is not unusual for politicians to be brought into the fold of companies.
“It is to most boards advantage to have people from both sides [of the political spectrum]”, Carlos Parra, a professor and Corporate Sustainability expert at Florida International University (FIU) said. “It would make sense to pay Jeb Bush, because he’s a well connected guy.”
That “well connected guy” happens to be a conservative leader and a son and brother to American presidents. Bush is also according to multiple polls, an early frontrunner in the 2016 republican presidential primary.
Bush at a town hall meeting event at Adams Opera House in Derry, New Hampshire. Photo Credit: Michael Vadon/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
He also really doesn’t like ObamaCare, at least not in public.
In an interview on ABC’s “This Week” in October 2013, Bush emphatically said that, “Obamacare, flawed to its core, doesn’t work.”
But while he was publicly opposing President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, he and his company were profiting from its successes.
According to an SEC filling, Bush was paid $128,000 in cash and received $170,000 in stock options, for just under $300,000 in total compensation from Tenet in 2013.
2013 was a banner year for Tenet as it turned out. The company finalized a blockbuster deal to buy up Vanguard Health Systems, which increased the number of hospitals under Tenet’s management from 49 to 77.
Fetter told CNBC that the merger was sought after because of Vanguard’s footprint in states that had embraced the Medicaid expansion, or soon would. In other words, Fetter sounded confident that the law would be staying in place.
“Any board member has a higher calling to the shareholders than his political beliefs”
“The more you’re exposed to states with large numbers of uninsured people today, the better it is for a hospital in the future,” Fetter said in the cable interview.
Some find Bush’s perceived cognitive dissonance on the issue to be potentially problematic.
“If it were to come out that he were opposing ObamaCare but while on the board he was privately supporting it, then that would be a huge conflict,” Everett Wilkinson, a South Florida Tea Party leader said in a phone interview. “If I was on the board of Tenet Healthcare, I would not be happy that the president of the company came out and supported the legislation.”
A Bush spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the former governor strongly opposed ObamaCare in Tenet board meetings.
Tenet declined to release copies of the minutes to the meetings from board gatherings during Bush’s tenure, saying through a spokesman that they were not publicly available.
It’s worth noting that many business insiders see nothing wrong with the situation.
Bruce Foerster is the president of South Beach Capital Markets Advisory Corporation, a company that offers advice to firms and corporate boards. He said that he found Bush to be an upstanding businessman who played by the rules and liked the ideological balance on the Tenet board.
“Any board member has a higher calling to the shareholders than his political beliefs,” Foerster said. “The CEO of Tenet [Fetter] has the courage to have differing opinions in the board room, which is a rare trait for a CEO.”
But Qiang Kang, a professor of finance at FIU took a different view, saying that if Bush was making a profit directly from ObamaCare than he should disclose it. “I would not call it a conflict of interest but I do think it is an interesting issue,” Kang said.
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