Women Leaders – Maureen F. Fitzgerald

A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson

Have you read “A Return to Love” by Marianne Williamson? If you have not read it, you must. In her very practical way, she explains how we were taught mostly through our traditional religions that we are not lovable (we are sinners). As a recovering Catholic myself, it was helpful in understanding how my

It took 13 years for discrimination case shame on lawyers

2300 women sue financial sector giant! Read this article in Bloomberg. “Gender discrimination case against Goldman Sachs has finally won class-action status. Three plaintiffs will represent as many as 2,300 current and former employees at the company who believe they have been treated unfairly because of their gender. This Bloomberg piece dives into the backstory of one

Are your training materials sexist?

I just found out that a big Canadian bank is training all of its employees by a UK company. The UK facilitator gave a free book to all participants called The Chimp Paradox by Steve Peters. The book includes some fairly absurd ideas about how humans think. Worst of all , it is sexist.

Women Journalists win Pulitzer and Create Movement

This is absolutely fantastic. Read this NYT article. Here is an edited synopsis from Fortune: The Pulitzer Prizes—the most prestigious awards in the journalism world—were given out yesterday. The award for Public Service went to the New York Times and the New Yorker for their game-changing reporting on sexual harassment. Indeed the NYT’s Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey and

Massive gender pay gap for women in finance

Did someone say that women suffer no discrimination?? Here is a great article from Fortune dispelling this myth. Here is a quote: “The bank revealed that it pays female employees in the U.K. an average of 56% less than their male colleagues, a disparity that widens to 72% when year-end bonuses are factored in. A significant

Four WRONG stereotypes lead to women getting less money

Here is a great article in HBR on why women entrepreneurs tend to get less funding. Four harmful stereotypes were identified (and disproved): Women are cautious; women are reluctant to grow their businesses; women don’t have resources and women’s ventures under-perform. All are false. We need to challenge these assumptions AND ALSO a much deeper biases

Best Talk by Reese Witherspoon

Here is an excerpt from Reese Witherspoon’s talk of the year. “I think we are in a culture crisis in every field. In every industry, women are underrepresented and underpaid in leadership positions. Under 5 percent of CEOs of fortune 500 companies are women. Only 19 percent of Congress is women. No wonder we don’t have

I got rave reviews at my recent talk

BRAG ALERT! I gave a talk at the University Women’s Club last week. It was a preview of my TEDx talk (that I am giving on Nov 12). I have been getting some flack recently since gender equality is still a bit of a HOT topic. So I was glad to get this positive

Please come to my TEDx SFU on November 12

I am so excited about (finally) doing a TEDx talk! Please buy tickets since they might sell out. It is on Sunday November 12 in Vancouver on Granville Island at the Arts Club Theatre (on the water!). My talk is called: Lean Out, Don’t Lean In- How to close the gender leadership gap. I explain

Must listen to Melinda Gates on sexism in IT

This is an amazing interview with Melinda Gates. Everyone should listen to it.