Blog - Page 60 of 93 - Maureen F. Fitzgerald

Quote of the Week

“The real heart of helping others is to be able to accept their feelings and emotions without running away or imposing our own prejudices. You don’t need to agree with what a person is feeling. You just need to ackowlegde it.” Jane Hope, The Meditation Year.

Beaten mother who tried to hire a killer dragged through years of courts

As a lawyer I am shocked that this case was appealed twice by our government lawyers (crimnal prosecutors) at the public expense all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada!. In the words of a few law students “The Crown is prosecuting Ms Ryan with a vengeance.” Apparently Ms Ryan was beaten, sexually assaulted and

RCMP internal report shows women officers afraid to speak up

We all know about the 100 plus women who are suing Canada’s national police force ( the RCMP) for systemic sexual harassment. Well, I just found out about an April report written by an internal RCMP diversity expert. Sadly it says what we women know all too well. In this particularly military-style lead organization both women and

Quote of the week – Tyranny of Nice

“The tyranny of nice and kind — the demand that girls act perfectly nice and accommodating — is oppressive to girls and wreaks havoc with their relationships. Such expectations require girls to push everything else they feel and think, especially anger, underground or out of public view. This creates fertile soil for those forms

Are longer school days really bad for kids or society?

Rhetoric abounds. I just read an opinion piece by a school principal who argued that school days should not be longer. It harms children. As a mother, I have written about how the 8-3 school day holds working parents (usually women) back …but also think of this: What if we had wonderful learning spaces where

Gender neutral names advance females

I just read an article about Godyne Sibay – a woman lawyer and partner at McCarthy’s in Toronto. Apparently at her first interview with a Bay Street law firm years ago the interviewer told her that there must have been some mistake. Her name sounded like a man’s name. She was told that the law firm had a

Yeah for Kathleen Taylor CEO of Four Seasons Hotels

I love celebrating women who seem to get to the top while making full use of their feminine strengths. Kathleen Taylor is a lawyer and is also very particular about the fine details of each and every one of her hotels. She also values spending lots of effort in selecting the right people and says she

Quote of the week

“What is most beautiful in virile men is something feminine; what is most beautiful in virile women is something masculine.” Susan Sontag

New book by Naomi Wolf: Vagina

I just read about Naomi Wolf’s new book “Vagina.” I will look for it today. At the minimum it brings the “V” word out into the open which reduces women’s learned shame about their bodies, but it may also enlighten women and men about womens sex anatomy, which is lawys a positive thing. I note

Please join me in Writing a Collaborative Book or Two

Many of you know I write books for a living. I have been writing three (yes 3!) books at the same time over the last few years. Crazy, I know. So this is what I have decided to do. Over the next few months I will post my content (lots of it!) on this website.