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  • Senior Women Web Interviews Muriel Seibert

    She is certainly one of the most powerful women in finance in this country as the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the first to head one of its member firms, Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc., but she is also nicknamed Mickie, and is the most unpretentious and generous of women in any field.

    When you walk into her impressive offices on Third Avenue in New York, you might find Monster Girl, Mickie’s little fluff of a Chihuahua yipping out a greeting to you. She has the run of the office poking her nose into everyone’s business in the course of her day with Muriel. “I can’t imagine life without her,” Mickie says. Indeed Monster Girl went with her when the Stock Exchange honored Ms. Siebert on her 30th anniversary by inviting her to ring the closing bell.

    Buying that seat was no easy matter in 1967, as you might imagine. Do you remember women’s place in the world of Wall Street trading in those days? It almost didn’t exist, but Muriel Siebert was determined to forge ahead against formidable opposition. She was a partner in a leading Wall Street brokerage firm, but she had been turned down by nine of the first ten men she asked to sponsor her application for a seat on the Exchange. The Stock Exchange made up a new condition before they would accept her: she had to have a letter from a bank saying they would lend her $300,000 of the $450,000 price of the seat. But banks would not lend her the money until the Stock Exchange would agree to admit her. She managed to overcome all these obstacles. “For everyone who was terrible,” she said on an interview on the Charlie Rose show (you can watch the whole interview on video by going to www.siebertnet.com), “a stranger would offer to help.”

  • Nichola Gutgold

     Nichola Gutgold

    Nichola D. Gutgold is a professor of communication at Penn State and author of numerous books on women trailblazers.  Visit her website at www.nicholagutgold.com.  Her latest book is a children’s book version of The Rhetoric of Supreme Court Women, Growing Up Supremely:  The Women of the Supreme Court.  Perfect for granddaughters ages 6-12.  She is in her twenty-five full time year as a professor who encourages everyone she meets to Speak Up and Speak Well!

    Photo: Marco Calderon

  • Hats off to Bella Abzug for Women’s Equality Day — August 26th

    By Nichola Gutgold

    The often hat-wearing late Representative Bella Abzug (D, NY ’71-’73) turned a phrase that caught on when she declared, “This woman’s place is in the House – the House of Representatives!” She was responsible for  the US Congress designating August 26 as Women’s Equality Day.  It isn’t a big, splashy holiday with greeting cards to go with it, but it is a day worth remembering, perhaps best with a little history and awareness.Bella Abzug

    The date was selected to commemorate the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.  It  also calls attention to women’s continuing efforts toward full equality.

    Bella Abzug, member of the US House of Representatives (D-NY), at press conference for National Youth Conference for ’72, 30 November 1971. Photograph by Warren K. Leffler, US News & World Report Magazine

    This is history that is important to remember. Even though women outnumber men in college and graduate schools nationwide, many women still don’t have equal footing in the workplace and what’s also disappointing is that many women don’t often have equal footing at home.  Women still do most of the parenting and housework in many households, which creates a career barrier that, thanks to Sheryl Sandberg and others, is being discussed and debated.  Discussion, debate, deliberation are all good steps toward progress.

    There are also cultural boundaries that focus on a woman’s appearance more than her ideas and that’s another issue we need to push to the forefront.  See my TED talk that underscores the problem with women’s appearance and the US presidency.

    It is important for us to remember and honor the women who passionately sought to create equality, not because they’d get to enjoy any of the freedoms in their own lifetime but because they knew we’d get a better shot at equality.   Our daughters and granddaughters should have it even better, but only if we remember that we aren’t quite there yet.

    It is good to note the women who made remarkable achievements  in fields where they had no role models.

    Women’s Equality Day Quiz:

    1. Who became the first female Secretary of State of the United States, appointed by President Clinton in 1997?
    2. Who took over management of Columbia Sportswear Company in the late 1930’s, when it was near bankruptcy, and turned it into the largest American ski apparel company worth $4 billion in 1972?
    3.  Who wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1968 and became a leading figure in the Women’s Movement?
    4.  Who ran for US President on Equal Rights Party in 1884 and  1888 and was  an American delegate to the first world peace Congress in Paris in 1889?
    5. Who is considered the first American woman to be ordained by full denominational authority in 1864, and who also campaigned vigorously for full woman suffrage?
    6. Who was the first African American woman elected to the US Congress and was a founding member of the National Women’s Political Caucus?
    7. Who was the ecologist writer whose path-breaking book, Silent Spring in 1962, initiated the environmental movement?
    8. Who was the first black woman and the youngest poet laureate in American history when she was appointed in 1993?
    9. Who was imprisoned and then hanged for her Quaker faith in Boston in 1660 and 400 years later her statue was placed in front of the state House?
    10.  Who became the first woman vice-president candidate on a major political party ticket when selected in 1984?  And here’s even a bigger test:  encourage the women you know to ‘go for it’ and men be an equal partner at home.

      Answers, Page Two

  • Senior Women Interviews: Julie Harris – Too Good to be True?

    Rose Madeline Mula interviewed the late actress in March, 2001:  I had read that Julie Harris was brought up in affluent Grosse Pointe, Michigan, but she was disenchanted with the debutante scene and fled to New York at 19 to become an actress. I assumed her family must have been very upset. She laughed, “No, it wasn’t like that at all! I had spent my last year of high school in a New York boarding school, Hewitt’s Classes, on 79th Street.” She lived with Miss Hewitt, who ran the school. When Harris graduated, she went to the Yale Drama School for a year, with a brief interruption to do her first play in New York, “It’s a Gift.” She got that part through a Yale classmate whose friends were producing the play and holding auditions. “She thought it would be good experience for me to go and read for it,” said Harris. She did, and much to her surprise, was offered a role.

    “I never expected that,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do.” So she went back to Yale and asked the advice of Walter Pritchard Eaton who headed the Drama School. He laughed, “Why did you come here?” “To act,” she told him. “Well, go act!” he said. So she accepted the part. The play ran about six weeks, and then she went back to Yale and finished the year.

    Was it always that easy for her, I asked? Hardly, she said. “Actors have to face rejection all the time. You learn to deal with it.” She has “dealt with it” by amassing dozens of nominations and awards, including an Oscar nomination, a Grammy, two Emmys and five Tonys — a record; but she really didn’t want to talk about it. And when I asked her if she has videos of all her movies and television performances, she laughed and said, “Good heavens, no!” No resting on her laurels and basking in past glory for this lady. At 75, she’s too busy living today’s life and planning future projects.

    How closely does Harris identify with the roles she plays — is she able to leave them behind at the theater, or do they go home with her? “For the four-week rehearsal period, when I’m trying to build a character, I definitely take a role home with me” she said, “but not after that, as a rule.” That’s fortunate, I observed, since she has played so many tragic heroines. “When you became immersed in the role of Joan of Arc, for instance,” I asked, “you didn’t have nightmares about being burned at the stake?” No, that doesn’t happen, she laughed. “You can separate the reality from what happens on stage or in front of the cameras.”

    Though most of us remember Julie Harris for her darker, dramatic roles, she also enjoys and has excelled in comedies. In fact, she won her third Tony in 1969 for the light and frothy “Forty Carats.” Also, she pointed out that there’s a lot of comedy in tragedy. “‘The Belle of Amherst’ is a serious play,” she said, “but it has many wonderful, funny moments.there are even comic moments in ‘Hamlet.’”

    I wondered how she copes with doing the same play night after night, month after month. Is it still possible to keep her performance fresh and to enjoy it? “Oh, yes!” she said enthusiastically. “It never gets boring! With each new audience it’s a new experience.”

    What about the physical demands, I persisted. All of us find as we get older that we’re not able to do many of things we did easily in the past. But not true for Harris’s acting regime — not yet, at any rate. She still thrives on a busy touring schedule, going from city to city, and performing eight times a week. “You get used to that,” she said with her characteristic good nature. If anything, she believes the hectic pace keeps her agile physically, and the effort to remember lines keeps her mind young.

  • Elaine Soloway’s Caregiving Series: When the Caregiver Needs Care

     

    So I’m on the appliance store’s website and thinking the 5 cubic foot  Frigidaire White Chest Freezer at $197 might be a good idea. I could fill it with the pack of 4 Palermo pizzas I spotted at  Costco, and dozens of packages of frozen vegetarian dinners that my husband likes. That way, when I go to the hospital for two days, and when I’m thumping around on crutches, or with a cane, or pushing a walker, Tommy can possibly prepare meals.

    My hip replacement surgery is scheduled for Sept. 20, eight months after two orthopedic specialists said, “You’re limping. It’s not your back, it’s your hip.” X-rays verified arthritis had eroded the cartilage in my right hip and the spooky, “bone on bone” was the culprit.

    “Do it sooner rather than later,” my neighbor, the physical therapist, advised. Others chimed in with supportive quotes like, “wish I had done it 10 years earlier,” “I feel like a teenager again.”

    But thoughts of any surgery, hospitalization, and rehab bumped up against my care-giving responsibilities. How would my husband fare if I had to be gone from him overnight? How would he continue his three-times-a-week exercise routine at the Y if I couldn’t drive for at least four weeks? Laundry,  grocery shopping, and this-and-that, kept me postponing a visit to a surgeon.

    When I admitted I could no longer walk even once around our neighborhood park, I booked the appointment that led to the scheduled date. The surgeon concurred, “If medication and injections no longer work, surgery is the only option to relieve the pain and get you walking easily again.” He penciled me in his hospital schedule, gave me instructions for the interim (continue my cautious workout routine), and told me his nurse would be in touch. My planning began.

    I alerted dozens of relatives, neighbors, and friends to my due date. Their responses: “I can help,” “Count on me,” “Whatever you need,” eased my mind. And when I told my husband the September date, and assured him his routines would continue unabated, he gave me two thumbs up.

    I relaxed even more when I replayed a scene in my head. It was the first meal Tommy made for me after we met in 1996. He had been a bachelor for 15 years following a first marriage.  I was separated from my husband of 30 years and living in a new townhouse a few doors from Tommy’s apartment.

    “This is lovely,” I remember saying as I toured his place. I thought he must have spent time tidying it up for my visit, but now, after having been married to him for 14 years, I realize he’s an orderly person and his apartment was likely untouched.

    Tommy was smitten with me back then — I have letters and notes to prove it. “Sit here,” he had said, pulling out a dining room chair slowly so it wouldn’t scrape or shriek. There was a place mat, I’m sure, and silverware on one side of a dinner plate. (I have since demonstrated how they are separated: fork to the left, knife and spoon on the right.)

    Our meal was broiled chicken, cooked squash, and… What was the starch? I can’t recall. But I so remember the squash because I have replicated his recipe many times since then. (Brown sugar stirred into the defrosted and cooked block.)

    The other thing that sticks in my memory of my bachelor Tommy was his Friday nights at the laundromat. As he described his weekly routine to me,  I could see my middle-aged swain sitting on a chair next to an empty shopping cart, a paperback mystery in his hands. One load of his laundry is soaking and spinning.

    When he moved in with me, just a few months after the chicken and squash dinner, I took him by  hand to my washer and drier. “No more laundromats,” I said. I was happy to declare this. “Terrific,” he said as he put his arm around my waist and kissed my cheek.

    So, why am I stressing? My husband can no longer speak, but he can certainly cook a frozen pizza and place an Amy’s fake meatloaf dinner in the microwave.  And, although Tommy hasn’t had to tumble a load for 14 years, I bet he could follow the instructions permanently imprinted on the inside cover of the Whirlpools.

    If I purchase the extra freezer I could include several blocks of squash in the inventory. My husband’s memory is intact; I’m certain he’ll remember the recipe. Brown sugar is the key.

    ©2013 Elaine Soloway for SeniorWomen.com

  • Teens Online, Mobile Apps and Privacy Concerns: New Pew Internet Reports

    by Mary Madden, Amanda Lenhart, Sandra Cortesi, Urs Gasserteen girl texting

    Teen girl texting, US; Wikimedia Commons

    Full Pew Internet Mobile Apps Privacy Report Online

    As more teens gain access to smartphones and tablets that are optimized for mobile applications, teens, like their adult counterparts, have embraced app downloading. But many teen apps users have taken steps to uninstall or avoid apps out of concern about their privacy. Location information is considered especially sensitive to teen girls, as a majority of them have disabled location tracking features on cell phones and in apps because they are worried about others’ access to that information. Here are some of the key findings in a new survey of US teens ages 12-17:

    • 58% of all teens have downloaded apps to their cell phone or tablet computer.
    • 51% of teen apps users have avoided certain apps due to privacy concerns.
    • 26% of teen apps users have uninstalled an app because they found out it was collecting personal information that they didn’t wish to share.
    • 46% of teen apps users have turned off location tracking features on their cell phone or in an app because they were worried about the privacy of their information.
    • Among teen apps users, girls are considerably more likely than boys to say they have disabled location tracking features (59% vs. 37%).

    Teens and Mobile Apps Privacy

    58% of teens have downloaded an “app” to their cell phone or tablet computer.

    As part of an ongoing collaboration with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University to study American teens’ technology use and privacy-related behaviors, the Pew Internet Project has undertaken a study that focuses specifically on youth use of mobile software applications or “apps,” using both a survey and focus group interviews. The focus on apps in this study follows policy makerand advocates’ interest in the topic, as growing numbers of teens gain access to internet-enabled smartphones and tablet computers.

    The nationally representative survey of youth and parents finds that 58% of all U.S. teens ages 12-17 have downloaded a software application or “app” to their cell phone or tablet computer. Among American teens, 78% of teens have a cell phone3 and 23% of teens have a tablet computer; 82% own at least one of these mobile devices. Within this subgroup of teens who own cell phones or tablets, 71% say they have downloaded an app to one of those devices. These figures are higher than similar measures of adult app downloading on mobile devices.4

    As noted in previous reports, older teens are more likely than younger teens to own cell phones, but teens of all ages are equally likely to own tablets.5 However, among teens who own at least one of these mobile devices, app downloading does not vary significantly by age; 66% of those ages 12-13 download apps, compared with 73% of those ages 14-17.

  • Updated: Looking Ahead to 2014 Elections, Voting Laws Roundup 2013

    We’ve updated our April, 2013 article on Looking Ahead to 2014 Elections: Voting Laws Roundup 2013 with the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law August 15th summary of these state legislature actions:

    Voting Laws Roundup 2013Election Day 1922

    August 15, 2013
    Voting Rights & Elections
    Voting Reform Agenda
    Voter Registration Modernization
    Restricting the Vote

    In 2013, some state legislators continue to push laws that would make it harder for eligible American citizens to vote. But there’s good news, too. More and more states are pressing measures to improve elections.

    “Country Gentleman” magazine cover, November 1922. The 19th Amendment giving all women the right to vote wasn’t ratified until August 1920. Painted by J. F. Kernan, Wikimedia Commons

    Below you will find a regularly-updated, comprehensive roundup of introduced, pending, active, and passed voting laws. (See a detailed summary of restrictive legislation, introduced as of April 29th).

    Numbers Overview

    Since the beginning of 2013, and as of August 6, 2013, restrictive voting bills have been introduced in more than half the states:

    • At least 82 restrictive bills were introduced in 31 states.
    • Of those, 7 restrictive bills are still pending in 4 states.
    • Of those, one restrictive bill is currently active in Wisconsin, in that there has been legislative activity beyond introduction and referral to committee (such as hearings, committee activity, or votes).
    • Eight states have already passed nine restrictive bills this session.

    At the same time, across the country, politicians from both sides of the aisle have introduced and supported bills that expand access to registration and voting.  

    • At least 219 expansive bills that would expand access to voting were introduced in 45 states.
    • Of those, 65 expansive bills are still pending in 8 states.
    • Of those, 18 expansive bills are currently active in 6 states[1], in that there has been legislative activity beyond introduction and referral to committee (such as hearings, committee activity, or votes).
    • Ten states have passed thirteen bills that expand opportunities for eligible citizens to register and to vote.

    Voting Restrictions

    Note: In the cases where more than one piece of restrictive legislation has been introduced in a state, the map reflects the state’s passed, active, or pending status based on its most active piece of legislation.

    Restrictions Passed in 2013 

    Arkansas:

    • Photo ID required to vote (legislature overrode gubernatorial veto)

    Indiana

    • Authorizes challengers to demand proof of identification

    Montana

    • Referendum to repeal Election Day Registration, placed on the ballot for 2014

    Nebraska

    • Reduces the early voting period

    North Carolina

    • Photo ID required to vote, eliminates same-day registration, eliminates pre-registration for 16- and 17-year-old citizens, reduces the early voting period.

  • “Marriage is no longer compulsory”; More Than a Century of Change

    wedding bell favors

    Fewer women are getting married and they’re waiting longer to tie the knot when they do decide to walk down the aisle. That’s according to a new Family Profile from the National Center for Family and Marriage Research (NCFMR) at Bowling Green State University.

    According to Marriage: More than a Century of Change,  the US marriage rate is 31.1, the lowest it’s been in over a century. That equals roughly 31 marriages per 1,000 unmarried women. Compare that to 1920, when the marriage rate was a staggering 92.3.

    Since 1970, the marriage rate has declined by almost 60 percent. “Marriage is no longer compulsory,” said Dr. Susan Brown, co-director of the NCFMR. “It’s just one of an array of options. Increasingly, many couples choose to cohabit and still others prefer to remain single.”

    Furthermore, a woman’s average age at first marriage is the highest it’s been in over a century, at nearly 27 years old. “The age at first marriage for women and men is at a historic highpoint and has been increasing at a steady pace,” states Dr. Wendy Manning, co-director of the Center.

    There has also been a dramatic increase in the proportion of women who are separated or divorced. In 1920, less than 1 percent of women held that distinction. Today, that number is 15 percent. “The divorce rate remains high in the U.S., and individuals today are less likely to remarry than they were in the past,” reports Brown.

    The marriage rate has declined for all racial and ethnic groups, but the greatest decline is among African Americans. Similarly, the education divide in marriage has grown. In the last 50 years there have been only modest changes in the percentage of women married among the college educated and the greatest declines among women without a high school diploma.

  • Volunteering: Does It Improve Your Employment Probability?

    The United States continues to face persistently high levels of unemployment and an increased share of workers have found themselves out of work for an extended period of time. Some, including many recent college graduates, look to volunteer work as a way to build their resumes and gain valuable experience. A new analysis from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) examines volunteering as a pathway to finding a job during a period of high unemployment.tax assistance

    A VITA-certified tax assistance volunteer deducts and itemizes in New Jersey. New Jersey Library Association

    The report, “Does It Pay to Volunteer: The Relationship Between Volunteer Work and Paid Work,”  estimates non-working individuals’ probability of being employed a year later if they volunteered during the 12-month period. Pooling three years of data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) Volunteer Supplement covering the period ending in September of 2011, the analysis found a positive volunteer effect on the probability of employment for persons who were not employed and volunteered for more than 20 hours per year.

    For example, the employment rate for non-working persons who volunteered between 20 and 49 hours per year was 57 percent higher than the rate of non-volunteers. And controlling for personal characteristics such as age, gender and ethnicity, there was a substantial increase (6.8 percentage points) in the probability of employment for persons who volunteered between 20 and 99 hours per year.

    Strikingly, many volunteers did not volunteer in the professional field in which they were seeking employment. This suggests that even without accumulating the relevant human capital for the fields in which they were seeking employment, volunteering may have signaled to prospective employers that the applicant possessed desirable qualities such as motivation, creativity and reliability. Thus, volunteering could be particularly useful for job applicants with little prior experience such as recent college graduates or persons attempting to re-enter the labor market after a period of joblessness. The data did not indicate that volunteering has a significant impact on wage growth of the typical person.

    A volunteer is defined as person who performed unpaid volunteer activities over the previous 12 months through or for an association, society or group of people who share a common interest. Volunteering in an informal manner, such as helping an elderly neighbor is not included in the survey. Unpaid work, including internships for for-profit employers, is also not considered volunteer work, while some other types of unpaid internships may be included, if the person considered it volunteering rather than work.

    The report, including a more robust description of who volunteers and the methodology used in the analysis can be found here.

  • Nostalgia, Elegance of Language and Incomparable Ilustrations

    by Joan L. CannonAndrew Lang Brown Fairy Book
     
    Reading “A Trip to New York City: The ABC of It; Why Children’s Books Matter” about the New York Public Library’s exhibit of children’s books, and one from a recent The New York Times article bemoaning the departure of pleasure horses from Central Park has brought back almost too many memories — if there are such things as too many.
     
    Nostalgia engulfed me as I read. Having learned to ride at summer camp, I spent many happy hours on horseback in the park. I’d save up my allowance, take the subway up to Aylward’s Riding Academy somewhere above Columbus Circle, and have a dream hour on one of their rather good mounts. How sad to think that no one at any age level can do that any more, and that most who might want to could never afford it now anyway. Then, it cost me $5 an hour.
     
    Then I read “A Trip to New  York City…” Another surge of happy memories.
     
    How those books do matter.  Not least for their illustrations. I noticed the second example for the article was by Henry Ford (not of auto fame) who illustrated  many of the Longmans Green & Co’s series, referred to as the ‘Coloured’ Fairy Books by Andrew Lang and The Book of Romance (from the morte d’Arthur) that my cousin and I read and reread as children. We had the Crimson, Orange, Olive, and Blue True Story books. Our grandmother was a certified Anglophile, and she would get us another in the series whenever Wanamaker’s book department in Philadelphia received a new one. Unfortunately, she gave them to us both, so that the day finally arrived when we quarreled over which belonged to whom. I got the Crimson and the King Arthur tales. Ford could make even the Questing Beast look attractive, as you can see from that incredible monster in the lower foreground of the picture accompanying the article.Henry Ford's Illustration from The Blue Fairy Book
     
    Those books were presented with both elegance of language and with such incomparable illustrations — like Howard Pyle’s and the Wyeths’ later on — that we were hard put to decide if we liked what we read better than what the illustrations showed us. When I later saw Arthur Rackham’s work, it seemed less precisely and realistically rendered than Ford’s, but more mysterious and evocative.

    Henry Justice Ford’s (1860–1941) illustration, Rumpelstiltskin, from Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy Book
     
    Naturally, I thought of my father’s two children’s books. The first was published, I think by Doubleday, in 1925.  Alice in Orchestralia later appeared in several foreign countries, some in English changed the title unfortunately. The English version was published by a company that sounds unreal to modern ears: The Bodley Head which is now part of the Random House Group.
     
    The illustrations for none of the editions were outstanding, but the book remained in print for quite some time after its author’s death. It was made into a series of radio broadcasts, recorded with music by Don Gillis conducted by the author more than two decades later. It showed its usefulness in teaching children about the instruments of a symphony orchestra for three generations. Alice in Orchestralia was followed by Marching Notes, in which Alice learns the rudiments of music writing and reading from the clefs and notes themselves, ranked like soldiers from the generals down. I remember the dust jacket of Alice, but both my copy and my mother’s have evaporated over the years. I keep meaning to acquire a second-hand copy some day.