Why I Have Children...

Rushing home at lunch today to make chili for this evening’s dinner, the thought that came to me was my life would be far different if I didn’t have children. Most days, I can’t get home at the noon hour, but when I can it feels like a reward. Chili seemed like the perfect meal on a frigid day. As I stirred the chili, in between bites of a sandwich I thought: without children I would be at least $500 richer each month in child care alone. Without children I would probably be thinner, going to the gym when I rush out of work at night instead of going to the grocery store for milk and bread like I did yesterday. Without children I would live in a smaller house, have less bills, more free time.
My revelry was interrupted by the site of my 10 year olds Christmas list. Printed in the neatest of her handwriting (it has always been a struggle for her) on copy paper, it begins with “yellow leggings.” “Leg warmers, black boots, smell-good lotion and brownish red lip gloss” are on the list with a “flip video thing” (“pink if they have it”) a head band (“a summery one, not a winter one”) and “v-neck shirts, not white.” Rounding out the list on the bottom is “Buttons (the dog) List” and includes a “chew toy, a bone and a sock.”
I chuckled to myself. Without children I would never have that laugh that touched my heart when I read the list. I would never have the memory of my oldest who used to say when I was quiet with her “Are you mad to me?” And if I said no, would say, “Are you sad to me?” I wouldn’t have the quick goodbye hugs in front of friends, or the sitting on the lap while watching TV (or the fights they had over who got to sit next to me until I sat in the middle). I would never have the lullabyes I sang to them or them to me when they were little, or the Christmas mornings full of excited faces and toys. I would never have the little hands that gripped my finger or the moments when we all fell asleep on the couch together.
I sighed. Maybe the weight gain is not so bad, they are getting older now and maybe I will be able to get back into an exercise regime soon. I guess I can apply that commercial about things costing so much and then other things being priceless to our lives. As a mom I am tired a lot of the time, I am always trying to catch up on my sleep, my friends, my exercise, my bank account. But when it comes to Christmas lists and hugs and kisses, I am way ahead of myself. And it’s great.

Unsung (S)heros

Saw the movie “Blind Side” Thanksgiving weekend and thought about all of the women I have met and worked with in my life that are out there, changing the world, one day at a time. While it sometimes looks like they are just having fun, and their pictures end up more on the society pages than on the front page, they are the ones who make our world a better place.

These women, they really are the news of the day, making the world a little better, not just around the holidays or during an event, but all the time. They are the fabric upon which many a charitable organization does its good works. These women never earn a salary but they contribute far greater stuff.

Years ago, when I worked in a battered women’s shelter, I would drive up and see the BMW or a Jaguar parked at the curb. Those cars looked strangely out of place until they didn’t. Whether it was answering the phone or driving a child to school or planning the next fundraising event, these women were there, changing the world for the thousands who crossed the path of our Center.

Today, I work with an equally wonderful cadre of women who contribute their time, talent and treasure. The annual fundraising events that shares with the community the good works of this or that charity and raises money so that the next generation of children won’t live like this is always precisely run by these silent (s)heros. Our whole system of charitable organizations would cease operation if it weren’t for the women who step in like the woman who sheltered and nurtured Michael Oher. It isn’t always easy, to give of yourself freely, to work tirelessly for no pay and very little recognition. Today, thinking about all of these unsung heroes who have made me a better person, in addition to contributing to all of the organizations through which I worked, I am very grateful.

Confidence

That panicky feeling took over. The rendezvous point for my daughter in middle school was her former elementary school. My younger daughter was out there waiting, but where was her sister? We circled back in the car to her middle school, to the park where she often waits for a while with other friends who walk from the middle school to the elementary school. Not there. Ugh!

What to do? Breathe. “Let’s head up toward home, there is only one street she can follow,” I say to my younger daughter who is sensing my panic. We start up the street, a couple blocks and no sign of her. Then, I see her, a block or so away, jacket strung across her backpack (it was a chilly day), that familiar gait of her long legs. Relief!

I pull over, she smiles. I breathe.

“Mom, I feel so good about myself, I knew where I was going. Are you mad?”

“No! I was worried about you! I am so glad you are safe.”

“Mom, I knew how to get home, I knew I could do it.”

Confidence to know where we are going, is it something learned or is it something with which we are born? Sometimes I think it is the small things that remind us of who and what is within us. Throughout most of her life, I had never heard my daughter sound that confident. She espouses a lot of “knowing” I think mostly to annoy her younger sister. But that place of speaking out with your whole voice, that voice of confidence, I was pleasantly surprised to hear it coming from her.

Knowing is confidence. Sometimes we don’t trust what we know. That still small voice in us says something, and we say “sshhhhh, I don’t want to hear that.” Or we hear the override from the world which tells us we don’t know what we think we know. Those tween years, that’s when the inside voice begins to lose its power. This was a good day for my daughters and I. We all got to see the strength of the inside voice that knows. Here’s to hoping my daughter can hang on to her own voice as the voices of friends and others begin to gain volume in her world.

Rewarding the Care Voice in Economics

Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson won the Nobel prize for Economics. The headlines start with the remarkable fact that since 1969, when the prize was first awarded, a woman has never won. More interesting, it seems, is the nature of the work that Williamson and Ostrom were doing and its contribution to what we believe about the way people behave when it comes to commonly owned or used “stuff” and/or when resources are scarce.
After the economic meltdown, many decried the way that people, particularly men on Wall Street and in financial institutions had used the market and other people’s money for their own gain. The NY Times reported that the committee, was highlighting “the shortcomings of an unregulated marketplace, in which “economic actors,” left to their own devices, act in their own self-interests”…and the theory that “in doing so, (it) will enhance everyone’s well-being.”
What Ostrom and Williamson and people like Rosabeth Moss Kanter in her book World Class, point out is that the market can be influenced by relationships and behaviors that develop among companies that are competitors but find ways to resolve together common problems. Ostrom’s work focused on common properties like lakes, pastures, woods and ground water basins. Her observations and research found that resource users can and do create sophisticated rules to address basically, something we learned as children – how to share. Williamson, in his work, focuses on the propensity of firms (organizations) to work together when there are limited resources. (Firms are more likely to cooperate and solve problems together.)
The work of these two individuals and many others like them (for a really great read on how companies and cities have worked together to address common problems, read Kanter’s book) point to the care voice that has always been present in our world, but often gets scant attention. This voice, often socialized into girls and women, is alive and well in our marketplace; it is just that we sometimes don’t call it out as a positive force for good. Often, we trivialize the importance of working together, sharing and addressing scarce resources and believe we have to regulate sharing through interventions by governments or larger corporations. The research of these two economists, points out that sharing is not only possible, it leads to positive outcomes. We need the care voice in our world. Hurray for the Nobel Committee for calling it out!

Girls Soaring

Why does the thrill of soaring have to be preceded by the fear of falling? Good public speakers, athletes, and actors all talk about that initial anxiety that accompanies the speech, the event, the play. I have heard it said that just a little of that anxiety can help you create the edge you need to push yourself to the next level. Once, while taking a class in self defense, we were told to “feel the fear and do it anyway.” That is a good lesson to learn when you are trying to overcome something; in this case, old patterns and scripts of being unable to defend yourself.
As girls are socialized, they come to an edge of knowing and not knowing themselves. Before my eyes I, am watching my 11-year-old try on new “selves.” Last year as a fifth grader, she was somewhat reserved around others and very judgmental of teachers who she did not feel were in integrity. This year, she observes the passion in her English teacher for a book he likes. She tells me, “It would be like me talking about the books I really like, mom. He just goes on and on about this book.” She doesn’t like the book and thinks it is boring. Last year, she would have resisted completely, dug her heals in and chosen not to participate. This year, she is plodding through, reading the book and doing the assignments.
Looking at the canon of works they are reading, I am saddened to see there are no women authors. There are few men of color. I want to push back on this edge, even though she has backed away from it. Her conformity comes with her socialization. As her mom and as a woman in this culture, I know she has to conform. She can’t step out and fly off this ledge. She has to be successful in school and to be successful she has to accept the canon of books as the best of the best, even though she will not see herself reflected in it. She must deny the voice inside herself that wants to demand a book that engages her and connects her.
To soar as women sometimes means to leave the comfort of the group, to challenge the status quo, to speak out when something doesn’t feel right. Sometimes we don’t even recognize any more what we accept as true, even though it may not be true for ourselves. Raising daughters, watching them, I see those edges and have to trust that eventually, my daughters will know when to soar.

Women as Consumers

In the September issue of the Harvard Business Review, there is a article about women consumers (The Female Economy. http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2009/09/the-female-economy/es) Women control more than $20 trillion in consumer spending and represent a market larger than China and India combined. As a state, we could do so much more to encourage businesses not only to address women’s needs, but also to encourage women’s businesses.
Recently, Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce took a trip to China to open up trade. All the while, Oklahoma is 46th in the nation as a great place for women to live and work. (Center for Women Policy Studies) I wonder what would happen if some of the energy we are using to seek new markets across the seas, could be focused on satisfying women’s needs locally, we would build a better state as well as create more prosperity for our companies.
The authors of the HBR article, Michael Silverstein and Kate Sayre, talked to women consumers and found that most women feel “vastly underserved. Despite the remarkable strides in market power and social position that they have made in the past century, they still appear to be undervalued in the marketplace and underestimated in the workplace.” Surveying 12,000 women, the authors concluded that “women not only will represent one of the largest market opportunities in our lifetimes but also will be an important force in spurring a recovery and generating new prosperity.”
Whether nature or nurture, women’s lives are different than men’s. We are responsible for the most part, for children, for care of our elderly parents and for housework. In the U.S. women reported that they do approximately 66% of all of the home chores. We do see the world differently-- often leaning more toward the importance of not leaving anyone out and caring about our environment.
In the survey that the Girl Scout Research Institute did before and after the election, girls see leadership as connection and relationship building, while boys aspire to power over. Post election, girls and boys both saw how hard it is to get recognition for your leadership skills if you are female. Girls gravitate toward making the world a better place. As the authors of the HBR article point out: “Women seek to buy products and services from companies that do good for the world, especially for other women. Brands that—directly or indirectly—promote physical and emotional well-being, protect and preserve the environment, provide education and care for the needy, and encourage love and connection will benefit.”
In a recent guest editorial I did for the Oklahoman, I wrote that “allowing women access to positions of power also creates benefits for companies and communities. Recent economic studies bear this out. Pepperdine University found that Fortune 500 companies with the best records of putting women at the top were 18 – 69% more profitable than the median companies in their industries. Sixty-nine percent! It would be foolish not to consider having women either in the C-suite or on your company’s board with numbers like that.”

“But it is not just this Pepperdine study. McKinsey looked at European countries and found that the companies with greater gender diversity in management had higher than average stock performance. Catalyst, a research firm found that Fortune 500 companies with just 3 or more senior women managers scored higher on top measures of organizational excellence. Companies with 3 or more women on their boards outperformed their competition by 40%.”

Women as consumers and/or women as workers: our world is changing and businesses and corporations need to change with it. Not just for women, but for all of us.

Perception is Everything

In a recent meeting I attended, the lone man in the room said quite seriously, “well, now that women have taken over the world, you all don’t need to worry about all this.” My immediate thought was that life really is all about perception. We recently appointed only the third woman in 111 justices to the Supreme Court; there are just 17 women in the U.S. senate; and Oklahoma ranks 49th in women serving in state elected office.

Girls who participated in focus groups on leadership after the presidential election in 2008 pointed out that it was much harder for women leaders to succeed in this country than men. But perception is everything. And the lone man in the room felt that we had taken over.

Once, while teaching a college class on Adolescent Female Development, I led a guided imagery to the class, asking them to go back and connect with the 8-year-old self that they were, before body changes and social perceptions changed how they may have perceived themselves. Since it was a class on female development, I used the pronoun “she” as the generic term instead of “he.” Right away, the three men in the class fidgeted until the quiet imagery part was over. Immediately their hands went up: “We can’t do that.” “I could not translate ‘she’ to ‘he.’” said another.

Do we women even think about that? When the word “mankind” is used, women have no problem including themselves under that terminology. Unless you were somehow blessed with the perception to question the status quo (I sometime want to figure out why I liked the “emperor has no clothes” story so much!) most of the ways women are disconnected from or denigrated in the picture are missed: the photo of all the white, male scientists; the assumption that the doctor is male, or that the picture of Sotomayor hanging from a rope in a cartoon was supposed to be funny because she was depicted as a piñata.

But just because we miss what is being said to women in subtle and not so subtle ways, do those images still influence us? A recent study about teens links stress with pregnancy. While researchers thought that teen moms were often stressed after the birth of their child, the studies point out a good predictor of teen pregnancy, is often stress before the onset of pregnancy. Higher levels of psychological distress in their teenage years led not only to pregnancy, but lifelong issues with depression.

This study, coupled with the Centers for Disease Control’s report a year or so ago about the increase in suicide and suicide attempts in girls 10-17 makes me wonder if living as a girl in our society, whether you know it or not, can be hazardous to your health. If an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, I am grateful I am doing the work that I am doing: working with girls to develop their voices and to build their leadership muscles, can only help them as they encounter the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.

Navigation Skills, Race and Childhood

Our personal characteristics give us navigational tools that steer us in the world. The craftsman who sanded and resurfaced the floors in my house is deaf and through the “feel” of the sander on the surface he could tell the depth and make-up of the sub-floor. His senses sharpened in one area because of his limitations in another make me think of a recent story in the news about bats and their use of sonar to navigate the world.
My heritage is Irish and Welsh. My daughters are African American. I believe that like deafness, our heritages can sharpen our senses in unique ways, too, and our personal characteristics reflect the way that we use our senses to navigate in the world. My daughters use their senses very differently to find their way in the world.
My 11-year-old is a quiet, reflective young woman. She shows up in public life softly, never asserting herself, striving to fit in. In spite of her quiet characteristics, she has had her share of conflict with peers and adults. I believe that some of the conflict is a result of her skin color. Her response to conflict is to not fight back. Whether she detects discrimination at play in some of the conflict, I don’t really know. But from my perspective, race can be a factor when she is accused and sentenced at school and in community activities by white and black people alike. Her response when accused is to take whatever punishment is meted out and move on. In her efforts to fit in, she accepts the actions of others, believing that it is she who has failed. To explain herself or resist would go against her quiet nature and bring the attention she strives to avoid. I can’t help but wonder if she detects a difference in the way that her white friends navigate their world, especially in the way that they are listened to and understood.
My 10-year-old is very different. She demands to be seen and heard for her full personhood. Her “in your face, this is who I am” nature seems to keep her from being the victim of someone’s inability to see past the color of her skin. She connects with adults and children in a lively, open way. It is hard to get past her “me-ness.” She won’t allow her race to be the reason for someone’s judgment of her. She leads with a big personality that demands and receives attention.
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina who was raised by a single mom in the Bronx. The richness of her heritage and experience has shaped her direction and point of view. Yet during the hearing it appeared as if the white male point of view still dominates certain types of thinking – even to the point where it seemed she nearly renounced her previous remarks about the power of experience and heritage in accruing knowledge and wisdom. I understand why she repositioned her point of view, but believe her experience and persona would bring an important point of view to a Court decision. I think that even Lady Justice, blindfolded and all, knows that the more diversity is brought to an opinion, the better the outcome. I also imagined my two girls in Sotomayor’s seat and how different their responses to the questions would have been.
Watching my daughters navigate the world, listening to my own heart, trying to help them figure out how to live peaceably, lovingly, and wisely in the world, I am reminded of a song I learned at a church retreat: “how could anyone ever tell you, you were anything less than beautiful, how could anyone ever tell you, you were less than whole, how could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle, how deeply you are connected to my soul.”

Leadership Part II: Finding Your Voice

One of the ways I think we discover our own voice is to spend quiet time alone. As a single working mom with two kids, that is not always an easy task. I know many moms and dads who have difficulty finding that time to listen to our inner voice. In Girl Scout Essentials, our initial workshop for new volunteers, we created a guided imagery that takes volunteers back to that 8 or nine year old self who is unabashedly truthful. There, many women and men get to begin the discovery of the voice of the self through that process. For, if we are to help young girls become the leaders of today and tomorrow that Ken Blanchard (see previous blog) and Steven Covey (see below), believe we need, understanding and having a relationship with the self is critical.
Covey, in his blog on his community web site, believes that finding your voice is answered in four questions: “1) What are you good at? That’s your mind. 2) What do you love doing? That’s your heart. 3) What need can you serve? That’s the body. 4) And finally, what is life asking of you? What gives your life meaning and purpose? What do you feel like you should be doing? In short, what is your conscience directing you to do? That is your spirit.”
He points out that sometimes key to finding your voice is a mentor or someone who really sees you. I have experienced this both as the mentee and the mentor and it is powerful. When someone really sees you for your gifts, you are more likely to step into them more fully. Even more powerful is when someone sees your talents and challenges you to step into them further. A wonderful man I once worked for always said to me “Stackpole, you are a giant, and you need to practice giant behavior and be around other giants.” I knew exactly what he meant and his words encouraged me to be the leader he saw in me.
As a supervisor, I have had many occasions to hear from someone that I had encouraged to step into their greatness as I was encouraged to do. Over the years, I have received several notes from people who shared specific incidences in which I had helped a person step into her greatness just by acknowledging the talents that I had seen. One woman wrote, “You always challenged me to try just one more thing that I didn’t think I could do. Your encouragement helped me to be the person I am today.”
In Girl Scouts, this mentoring model is woven into the very fabric of what our leadership development program is all about. Girls are encouraged to try on new behaviors and ideas, in a cooperative learning environment. Along the way, adults also benefit as we have to practice that which we seek to instill in others.

Leadership: The Importance of Self

Like many traits or characteristics (joy, beauty), I believe leadership is an inside job. Socially conditioned to think of others first, women, most often forget the Self in the equation when it comes to leadership. Ken Blanchard in a speech to the Association of Girl Scout Executives in Phoenix this summer said that leadership has three parts: Leadership of the Self, Leadership to one other and Leadership to the team. In her ground breaking work that still resonates in my life, Carol Gilligan talked about the importance of discovering your own voice. She points out in her book, Meeting at the Crossroads, that girls at 9 are more than willing to tell you what they need and want. But at 13, those same girls, when asked, shrug their shoulders and say “I don’t know.”
In my work with women and children who have been abused, I thought that it was the abuse that took away their voices, but as I have witnessed in other arenas including women and girls in Girl Scouts, and many of my friends and peers , we all put others first at the exclusion of the self. I think this idea of self exclusion is key, for as women and girls are socialized to think about what others need, we bring to the world a relational style that is often missing in our world and I think badly needed. In a video blog on www.bigthink.com, Carol Gilligan points out that when considering a moral dilemma, women most often think of themselves as “living on a trampoline.” We can’t think about something without thinking about its connection to others. She says that for women, the questions of morality cannot be considered without understanding the relational parts of the issues.
However, without having a clear relationship to the self, we may be unable to really understand or empathize with another. We may think we know what another needs and wants, but unless we are truly understanding our own needs and wants, we may miss the mark. To me, the pinnacle of good leadership includes the ability to empathize with all concerned, not just the loudest voices. In addition, when you have an understanding of yourself – I find you are better able to speak from the heart.
All of us involved in Girl Scouts are committed to helping one girl find her true voice, to help her see her and express what she wants in life. Accomplishing that is the true measure of leadership.

Properties, Part Two

In asking the question of whether or not we needed to own camp properties in order to make sure we continued to provide a camping and outdoor experience for girls, (May 14, 2009) we heard from many Girl Scout leaders and adults who believe that we should never discontinue our camping program. I agree. Outdoor education is an essential part of the GS leadership experience.
The question I continue to grapple with as we seek answers to strategic priorities as an organization, is whether or not each Girl Scout Council needs to own properties in order to have a rigorous camping program or whether we could put our collective resources together and offer even broader, more diverse camping experiences to girls. Looking around our region of the state, I wonder if there is a way to work with other GS councils and other owners of property in order to fulfill our mission to provide an outdoor education and camping experience in place of actually owning outdoor education property. This idea is based upon an economic reality and strategic thinking about our finances and the financial climate that we all are facing today.
To me, from a program perspective, giving girls outdoor experiences are essential. In May, we brought about 90 girls from the south side of OKC schools out to Cookieland (our council’s Girl Scout property in Newalla, OK). Girls who never experienced a walk in the woods were mesmerized by the beauty of the trees and land. Every year when we do this, it is a great experience for the girls. Most often, the bags we fill with donated goodies to take home are emptied and filled with pine cones, rocks and other natural materials they collect from the woods.
Like the volunteers from each of our legacy councils, I have a special place in my heart for the camp at Bear Mountain in New York where I went as a Girl Scout. While I think it would be awesome for my daughters to experience that camp, I know that it may not be possible to make that happen. Similarly, when I was little, my dad took me with pride to the site that once was Palisades Park. It was exciting to think about all of the images I had in my mind from the song of the same name and seeing the excitement in my father’s eyes as he told the story of going to Palisades Park as a boy. The bottom line is that the value of the outdoors is really the experience, whether it is in Oklahoma, New Jersey or upstate New York.
The challenge, I think for us as a movement, is to have a dialogue about this that helps us all continue to explore all of our possibilities. As a council, we are just beginning to explore a range of ideas regarding properties and our fiduciary responsibilities to the girls and to the future of the council in general. While I understand that many feel very strongly about the camps that they have a personal memory and connection to, it is important that we keep the dialogue moving in a positive direction, posing constructive questions and supporting the outdoor education program. We all believe in the importance of a viable Girl Scout movement for girls. The best way is to nurture the movement and address some stark realities. All questions and comments that encourage the spirited dialogue will continued to be welcomed from all corners of the council. I hope that in the future, reasoned responses will prevail and more girls will come to Girl Scouts to experience not only outdoor education, but all the leadership programs available to girls today.

Daughters and Dads

Eight years ago in August I lost my father to cancer. One Saturday morning while waiting for my car to be finished at the tire store, I read a magazine article about a man who lost his somewhat abusive father to Alzheimer’s disease. The disease had transformed his father and so while he was lost in one way, he became connected in another.
As a child whose mother did not work outside the home until I was in my tween and teen years, my father represented the world outside to me. Every morning he left the house in a suit and tie, clean shaven and smelling of cologne until his alcoholism got the better of him and meaningful work. He was a personality, most comfortable and animated in a crowd or telling a story. He never met a stranger. He drove a company car, knew how to deal with money (to my girl self). Unlike my mother, he watched the news every evening and read the paper every day.
As a girl, he represented a world that I wondered about, a world that I wanted to be a part of and at an early age, vowed I would not have to give up just because I was a girl. He was the master of mixed messages to me. He often chided me to be the best I could be and reminded me that I “could do anything that you put your mind to.” He set the bar high for me, his oldest child and I am sure that some of his critical messages were echoes of the ones he continued to hear in his own head from his childhood. His demand of perfection pushed me out beyond the girl boundaries my mother set for me based upon her upbringing and beliefs about girls and women.
He loved to drive home a point, a skill I probably relish in myself to this day. His love of history, music and storytelling enabled me to be the public speaker I am. While he never espoused any feminist leanings, he was always proud of his daughters (I have three sisters) and never saw, as my mother did, our gender as an inhibitor of something we wanted to be or do. He was not always a nice man, conflicted as he was with his own abusive behaviors and habits, but time and forgiveness has allowed me to see all of the positive ways he influenced my life.
As women and girls, the men in our lives, particularly the fathers in our lives, often shape our perceptions of the outside world. While they may be flawed individuals, as most of us are, they often instill in us a view of the world different from the world our mothers are able to share. Their influence, may have much to bear upon our willingness as girls and women to step out of our proscribed gender roles. Happy Father's Day.

Images of Women: How Do We Continue to Tolerate?

In this morning’s paper, there is a syndicated cartoon of the Supreme Court Nominee, Judge Sonia Sotomayor on a rope suspended, a caricature of Obama with a bat outstretched to the GOP saying ”Who Wants To Be First?” The T.V. cameras drawn in the cartoon are poised to capture the spectator sport of misogyny. The caption on the cartoon reads “Fiesta Time at the Confirmation Hearing.” There is an Adrienne Rich poem in which she talks about the billboard-like images of women in the media, and she writes, “These images are so powerful and pure, we fail to ask, are they true for us?”
Anytime a woman is chosen for a position most often filled by men it seems that all of the images expose for me once again the underlying inability of us as a society to see woman as fully human, fully capable. After the last election, GSUSA Research Institute did focus groups with girls and boys around leadership and found that both groups, girls at a higher rate, believe it is harder for a woman to attain a leadership position than it is a man.
But what is even more disconcerting, more painful to see, with all of the violence against women in our society, is the image of the captive Sotomayor, about to be hit with a bat. I wonder if girls, little girls, will have the extra sense they will need to see the picture differently, to call out what is wrong, what is hateful. Images of a woman on a rope and men taking turns hitting her with a bat are too real, too every day to be played as a cartoon.
When did we, as a society, lose our ability to disagree honestly based on real merits of argument without resorting to out and out dehumanizing women? When will the collective civility of men and women say “enough!” When will fathers and brothers, husbands, grandfathers and uncles say “Stop. These images are insulting to me and my daughter, sister, wife, granddaughter and niece.” When?

The Role of Camp Properties To Girl Scout Future

The other night I read a letter to the editor on-line about the need for Girl Scouts to change. (It wasn’t from Oklahoma.) The letter ranted about the need to stop doing crafts and camping and address really meaty issues for girls like science, technology and environmentalism. (Her daughter was 7 so I imagine she hasn’t gotten into much of the GS experience yet.) As an organization, Girl Scouts relies on volunteers – they are the voice and the face of Girl Scouts to girls. We are in the process as an organization of changing the way we recruit, retain, train and retrain our volunteers. We have a new set of program activities which are focused on leadership experiences for girls. It seems as though, while it is changing, I know sometimes it just doesn’t seem fast enough. As the CEO of another Council suggested in a national meeting, it is hard to turn a big luxury liner out on the high seas around quickly.
One of our challenges is to become more nimble. As a smaller Council, we have an advantage, but we are still grappling with this same issue. The merger brought us four camp properties. With 14,000 girls and about 1000 campers, we need to let go of tools that are no longer serving the needs of our customers (girls). I saw an article in a fundraising journal recently from the CEO of a large Boys and Girls Club. She and their board had a strategy to purge themselves of properties as they were too costly. Their new focus was to be on collaborations in which they could address the needs of youth, without spending so much money on maintenance and the physical upkeep of aging buildings.
If the core of our business at Girl Scouts is leadership development for girls, what role does the outdoors play? We have a legacy for taking girls outside and connecting them with the land for the purposes of teaching them leadership skills. We know there are many ways to do that. Yet, we have yet to have a national discussion as Girl Scouts around the role of the physical environment. Our legacy volunteers would like us to keep our camp properties as they remind them of their wonderful youth experiences there. But our legacy volunteers don’t have deep pockets and for many residential camp properties across the country, the difference in what men make and what women make an hour is no more obvious than the physical condition of our camps.
Becoming more nimble, building collaborations, documenting and then sharing our outcome data, these to me seem to be important for us as a movement as we go forward. There are many ways to connect girls to the land. In order to achieve agility as an organization to keep up with the changing needs of girls, we may need to decide that camp properties are not critical to our overall mission and the future for girls, for Girl Scouts.

"Cooperative Breeding"

On the occasion of Mother’s Day, I was considering the role of nurturance in our lives and stumbled across sociobiologist, Sarah Blaffer, Hrdy’s new book, Mother’s and Others. Hrdy’s work is somewhat anthropological. Her premise is that human mothers and the species before us, needed “other mothers” to help raise the human infant. She points out that without additional nurturers, our ancestors were more likely to abandon their early offspring in the preservation of survival of the self.

This cooperative breeding culture in which parenting duties were spread out across a network of friends and relatives affected our development as a human species. Earlier anthropologists had believed that our cooperative nature was a response to an early, war-like nature, but according to Hrdy, it was more a function of us as humans, nurturing the infants in the community. This was true of both men and women. The somewhat primeval view of the nuclear family where the dad was out hunting while the mom stayed home in the cave with the children alone, may not have existed.

Hrdy’s work echoes psychiatrist, Allan Schore’s (http://www.thinkbody.co.uk/papers/interview-with-allan-s.htm) work as well in that both believe that this nurturing behavior helped to develop empathy and cooperation in humans. Schore, in one of his works, calls this “right mind” which helps to create persons capable of living in a more civilized society. By nurturing others and being nurtured, the human infant’s brain develops an ability to self-regulate. It is this ability to regulate emotions and feelings that forms the basis of our abilities to live together cooperatively.

It is what psychologists and psychiatrist’s call “attachment.” With it, we understand our effects on others; we develop a shared understanding of each other’s needs and wants. Children who lacks early bonding are said to have “attachment disorder” which leads to difficulties in self regulation as well as self-discipline. In severe cases, it leads to socially deviant and psychopathic behavior.

Emotional bonding and cooperation are touted today (Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence and others) as a “new” way of thinking in the workplace. Looking at works like Hrdy’s and Schore’s, makes me think these ideas have been closely held and maintained by the society’s nurturers. Given our current state of world affairs and violence, perhaps we should remember our ancestral heritage and perhaps remember as a species we are all, women and men, nurturers of our next generation.

What is Beauty?

The latest buzz regarding Susan Boyle’s stunning performance on Britain’s Got Talent, (stunning only to the people who stereotype what someone with a big voice should look like) has stirred up discussion around body image (see Ellen Goodman’s take on it: http://www.insidebayarea.com/columnists/ci_12292180) and whether or not Susan should have succumbed to the makeover given her after her initial introduction to fame.
An exercise girls do through the Uniquely Me program in Girl Scouts starts by giving girls mirrors in which they are to describe what they see. Initial comments are often negative: “a fat girl,” “a big nose,” etc. Through the program, girls have the opportunity to journal about how they feel about their looks, the messages they get from the media about how they look and ultimately are led around to a discussion and connection with their own inner beauty.
As we are often bombarded with messages, we often don’t distinguish what is our voice, from what is the voice of Madison Avenue, telling us what we should be, how we should look, what we should wear. The Uniquely Me program is designed to help girls find their own voices. The challenge of course, for all women, is to have the courage to choose differently from the popular fashion voice. I know as a grown up that there are choices I make about my appearance that have more to do with the cultural voice and standards than my own. (My staff at the battered women’s shelter in which I worked years ago would tease me that as our financial condition became increasingly dire my “fundraising skirt” became shorter!) I also know there are times that perhaps I am not clear as to what is my voice and what is the fashion standard voice I have unknowingly taken as my own.
Through sponsorship with Dove, Girl Scouts is helping girls get in touch with their own voice, their own standard for how they would like to look, what choices they want to make. Sometimes we may see the compromises we make to fit in and choose to compromise, other times, we might see the path that is clearly laid out for us and choose our own unique pathway. Through this program, girls learn to distinguish those voices, so that when other choices are laid out before them, they make the healthy one. I know that I can’t follow around my daughters (10 and 11) as they grow into their teen years, I can only hope through the Dove program and others, they have learned to discern when they are choosing to go along with the crowd, and when they are courageously forging a new path.

Catch a Green Idea

The other day my daughter, who is ten, was wide eyed, carrying an old lap top that I have rigged up for her. She plopped it in front of me and began to cry, “My computer has a virus!” (It didn’t, but the protection software was giving her a message about viruses). She then proceeded to ask me if she could catch a virus from her computer and “how did it get a virus??” (She was appalled when I told her that people actually created viruses!)
With the threat of a pandemic looming, I started thinking about how something passes from one person to another. It seems that every meeting I attend lately, someone is talking about viral marketing. I am pretty sure it is an old idea dressed up in new clothes. When I was a girl, many of my classmates were Girl Scouts. We had fun; it was a part of school and community. Girl Scouts marched in the town parade; they participated in the ceremonies for Memorial Day and helped when there was a paper drive or a food drive at church.
Today the explosion of online communities has replaced some in-the-flesh “real” life for virtual life. But we are all still seeking something similar: the sense of connection with others, a sense of belonging, a place to go (where everybody knows your name?). How do those communities spread? How does someone “catch” the idea? Marketing studies point out that people often try brands because of someone else’s personal testimony. I know that is a great deal of how I end up trying something, particularly something unfamiliar to me.
As a movement, Girl Scouts is a community of people who have an opportunity to spread the word about our experiences. We are working on not leaving that idea up to chance, but focusing on the key messages that we think are important for everyone to share about Girl Scouts.
1) Girls need Girl Scouts – have you thought about how hard it is to be a girl these days? There are a myriad of messages about what it means to be a girl, girls’ bodies are changing earlier and so childhood for girls is getting smaller, role models for girls are still few and far between (in our state, less than 13% of our elected officials are women!)
2) Girl Scouts has been teaching leadership to girls for close to 100 years! Juliette Low’s radical act of 1912 was to bring girls and women out into the community to do activities on their own – at a time before women could vote or own property.
3) The community we are creating by our inclusion; is a great place to raise a girl. Each time a new girl/woman joins Girl Scouts, our community is enriched. As a mom, the Girl Scout community, with its core values of courage, confidence and character, is a great place for my daughters.

Needed: A New Kind of Leadership

In a recent article regarding school achievement McKinsey and Company wrote: “The extent to which a society utilizes its human potential is among the chief determinants of its prosperity.” (April 2009) The article points out that school achievement gaps that exist between the U.S. and the rest of the world and within our own schools, students of color and white students costs us as a nation between 9 and 16 percent of our Gross Domestic Product. Individually, shortfalls in academic achievement result often in lower earnings, poorer health and higher rates of incarceration. In addition, the study points out that there is more of a variance between classrooms than there are between schools or between districts or states.
Graduation rates have been in the news lately as we try to decipher the real number here in Oklahoma. No matter, as a state that ranks in poorer health, with one of the worst incarceration rates and lower worker earnings than many other states, our prosperity has been tied to our ability to utilize our human potential. Sadly for Oklahomans, race, gender and economic status all have played a part in the avenues open to participation and utilization, but it does not have to be our destiny.
Hierarchical leadership and fragmented, narrow thinking is often at the root of our inability to effectively help our young people. America’s Promise points out that most kids don’t get the basics: a caring adult, safe places to live, healthy starts, education for marketable skills and an opportunity to give back. Instead, leadership is often fragmented and silo-ed, says the Forum for Youth Investment. Often educators focus on book/classroom learning, youth serving agencies focus on out of school time and parents just try to keep up with all of the competing activities.
Daniel Goleman, in his groundbreaking book, Emotional Intelligence, pointed out that leadership is best done not from a hierarchical perspective, but from a relationship building approach. Leadership based upon linkages is exactly what the Forum for Youth Investment advocates. Interestingly, last year’s study on leadership and young people by the Girl Scouts of the USA pointed out that young women see leadership from this very perspective, while young men see leadership from the top down approach. Young women expect that as a leader, they will be responsible for connecting others together. This shift in seeing a challenge from its relationships instead of its disconnections is exactly what is needed.
Experiential learning, cooperative education, service learning and self determination are components of education that many argue are missing from our educational system. These “soft skills” are necessary for success in and out of the classroom. This model, which the Girl Scouts calls its theory of change, has been a part of Girl Scouting from its inception more than 97 years.

Work Life Balance

Several times in the last few months, I have had significant conversations with staff members at Girl Scouts struggling with work/life/home balance. Sentiment always runs to how to find time to do it all, not sacrificing anything in our quest to “make the world a better place.” Judith Warner, a NY Times editorial writer in her column not too long ago writes about this achievement oriented woman of today: “I think this is partly why so many grown-up amazing girls with high-earning husbands find themselves having to quit work when they have kids. They simply can’t perform at work and at home at the high level that they demand of themselves.”
Inherent in Warner’s statement is that some women don’t have a choice, either because their spouses don’t make enough to support them all or they are unmarried. That high level demand of ourselves is like a noose around our necks. We want to be all things to all people, but it is emotionally and physically impossible. What’s a woman to do?
For me, I am realizing it has to come back to my own core values. I work at the Girl Scouts because I believe that girls need the support and informed community that the Girl Scout movement is. Courage, confidence and character are important tools for girls to develop in our world today. To me, it is essential for girls to be nurtured in this way. However, I also believe we are the microcosm of the macrocosm. If I am neglecting my children, I can’t be an effective CEO of a Girl Scout council. I can’t advocate for girls on the one hand and neglect my own on the other, it is out of integrity. But finding that balance and achieving it, in all aspects of my life, is a tricky path to negotiate. I am finding it takes vigilance.
Of late, it makes me realize that it is important to build into the Girl Scout community, time for moms/parents/caregivers to interact and support one another. In our busy world, when left to chance, this is the first item that drops out – self nurturance. As they say in the airplane…. “when traveling with a small child, put your oxygen mask on first.”

To Tell the Truth

When I was a girl my favorite story was the Emperor’s New Clothes. I believed everyone would want to know the truth about the king’s faux pas but alas, that is just not so. We sometimes like our myths and stories we tell one another. Pointing out what is readily available for others to see can upset the apple cart, too.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote once that: “people grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.” As Girl Scouts, we are about growing character and teaching girls to speak honestly. This is difficult sometimes, even though it seems it should be easy. My oldest daughter felt that her teachers this year were/are out of integrity when they are yelling at students in their classroom. My daughter’s response to that was to be uncooperative and not turn in homework. It created a D as a grade for her in one of her progress reports.

But it was a great lesson. Sometimes we work with or for people we may not like so much. It could be just our personalities or ways of seeing the world, or it could be something more. However, sometimes we have no choices and must learn how to be gracious even when we might not agree with someone. While my daughter resisted the lesson, I think she understood what I was saying and has conformed, learning to put aside what she doesn’t like about her teachers, and do what she needs to do to make the grades she wants to achieve.

Building a healthy community is hard work and requires each of us to step up to hear things we may not like to hear about ourselves or one another. It demands that each of us be present to the ways we behave with each other and the connections we have with one another. By being conscious of the ways we act and react, as well as the feelings it invokes in us and in others, we begin to create the kind of community that feels safe and nurturing for everyone. Sometimes, people may opt out of that effort, because they don’t want to change, others may be willing to try on different behaviors. While it may feel uncomfortable at times, the gift of commitment to one another is great.

The Care Voice in our World

Changing Our Perspectives

On the Anniversary of the Columbine shootings I read that all the gun control, metal detectors and police presence at schools are not making a difference. Articles on the sad event point out that teaching empathy, anger management and impulse control do have the ability to reduce the amount of these crimes. As a woman who believes strongly in that care* voice, I get that. How unfortunate it is that we still have people even in our state lobbying for college students to carry weapons on campus. Empowering students to share what they know has also had a positive effect. That culture of silence that sometimes accompanies the strong message of conformity (even if it is counter culture), can be stultifying and in some cases, deadly for those who maintain it.
Yesterday at our Gold Award Ceremony for Girl Scouts (a very prestigious and high honor) I mentioned a quote by Admiral Grace Hopper: “It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” As a woman in the military, I am sure Admiral Hopper many times had to inject the care perspective into the work she was doing, only later to be rewarded for her unique perspective. How wonderful if we could ground more women and men, girls and boys into that care voice? What kind of world might we create?

*Carol Gilligan’s work points out that we have both a “justice” voice in our world and a “care” voice. Both genders are capable of thinking from either perspective, but we often associate the “care” voice with more things “female” --- nurturing, making sure that everyone is taken care of, inclusion. Justice plays out in rule conformity and the sense of entitlement “I was here first.”

"Is Equality Important?"

Yesterday, we had Easter Brunch at the National Western Heritage Museum, previously called the “Cowboy Hall of Fame.” My daughters, 10 and 11 had been to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame in Fort Worth. When we walked around at the exhibits after brunch they said, “How come this place is so much bigger than the Cowgirl Hall of Fame?”
These questions have plagued me, “why 79 cents to a dollar?” (women’s earnings vs. men’s earnings); why are only 13% of elected officials women? Why has no U.S. president ever been female and most of the fortune 500 companies run by white men? It’s still United Way time and so I ask similar questions of their volunteers in regards to our allocation as Girl Scouts. Why?
When I was 12 I wanted to be a newspaper carrier. I had been reluctantly babysitting since 10, for my six brothers and sisters. I thought it would be more fun to earn money delivering papers. The rule then was that girls had to be 18. Boys could be twelve. I guess that started something for me.
In high school we didn’t have sports teams until Title IX passed my sophomore year. Our first year teams had no uniforms, we put our numbers on our shirts with tape every game. The boys’ locker room had a whirlpool and showers. The girls’ locker room didn’t have either. We could use the real gym on days that the boys weren’t using it, so we had an early Saturday morning practice (7:30am) so that we could at least have one day in the gym in which the games would be played, I guess so we could at least feel a little like we had a home court advantage.
Is equality important? I see the world through a woman’s eyes, which I believe gives me a different voice – a voice that is wanting more inclusion, eyes that see the people who are missing, the children not fed, the conversations about a problem that define the problem in a way that misses half of the world.

"Volunteers in a High Capacity Council"



Yesterday was a busy day in my world. Spring is a dozen plus United Way applications, all different, all wanting the same or similar information in different ways for our 39 counties in central and western Oklahoma. From the smallest to the largest, each volunteer committee panel takes their jobs very seriously, so each includes an opportunity to meet with members of a review committee all who have a lot of questions and are earnestly trying to understand what we do and what our program is all about. United Way, all 15 different and separate 501c3's with their own boards and own ways of work, make up 6% of the total budget of the Council. We are grateful for our own volunteers who join in the process of meeting with the panel and answering questions. We are grateful for the volunteers willing to spend an afternoon sharing the impact that Girl Scouts has made in their lives to people who make decisions about how money is allocated through United Way.



Since the merger (actually before it), we have been moving at warp speed. Everything needed to happen yesterday. The staff we have assembled is a conscientious bunch, all passionate about the importance of reaching more girls with the quality leadership program of Girl Scouts. We are hard on ourselves, as many successful women are, and sometimes, equally hard on each other. I dream some nights just about wanting to take a day off, but always in the dream something new lands on my desk or on my calendar. As a group, we each see the many opportunities for Girl Scouts to grow and connect to more girls and their families, but time and money are often barriers.



We are so incredibly grateful for our program volunteers. In the new high capacity Council, we are asking the questions of how to help our volunteers feel empowered to help us create this new high capacity council. Women in Oklahoma with even a tiny bit of consciousness, realize it is a man's world here and most of us are just stubborn enough to believe we can change it for ourselves, our daughters, our granddaughters. Oklahoma women have gone on to be strong role models in our country. We're currently looking for ways that volunteers can organize more effectively, is the Service Unit the right way? We are asking ourselves and volunteers: what do volunteers need? We are asking ourselves and volunteers, what creates a healthy community for girls and for ourselves? I've begun, with Susan Bohl, our Chief Operations Officer, some lunches and coffee meetings to ask our volunteers active in Service Units these questions. Let me know if you have some ideas.

It’s been 13 months since the merger of the two Girl Scout Councils in central and western Oklahoma was complete. “Strongly suggested” merger talks began sometime in April of 07 and the two member organizations voted on February 2 of 08 to merge on March 1, 2008.

My daughters were discussing my job in the car one day a couple months ago. The topic of merger came up. “What is a merger, mom?” said my oldest. Before I could answer, Mae, who is 10 said, “it is when two organizations are fighting and then they become one.” I guess I didn’t realize how much they were over hearing, the struggle, the clash really of cultures and ideas.

In the March 26th issue of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Peter Goldberg, CEO of Families International and the Alliance for Children and Families (two merged organizations), writes that with more challenging economic times, mergers may be on the horizon for more organizations. He points out that: “nonprofit mergers usually arise from a delicate and shifting blend of strategic and opportunistic components. Let’s remember that mergers are art, not science. Mergers need to be grounded in organizational strategy, but, without some appreciation for unanticipated opportunity, one might be left standing at the strategic starting gate for a very long time.”

Appreciating “unanticipated opportunity” was really all we had. While on any given day prior to April of 2007, if pressed, I would probably be able to list some values of merging the Girl Scout councils in Oklahoma – and probably all over the country. However, that wasn’t an idea whose time had arrived in the hearts and minds of many connected with a Girl Scout council here or anywhere else. Like children who didn’t want to go to bed, we dug in our collective heels and then realized we had no choice. Boards, staff and volunteers eventually made the journey.

Right away, it seemed clear that as Goldberg says “Risks are the same in nonprofit mergers as in business, but the rewards are much smaller and less tangible. Executives who lead successful for profit mergers or acquisitions are handsomely rewarded with compensation and stock benefits. Nonprofit executives who lead successful mergers or acquisitions are told ‘nice going.’”

The financial “attagirl’s” for the merged council really haven’t come yet, 13 months and a few days later. The transition from two to one council continues to slog on. As Goldberg points out “Foundations have talked about the value of mergers for a long time without making many grants to support them.” With a small deficit and a good cookie sale this year, we may be able to absorb our shifts sooner rather than later, making up the deficit in two years. We are fortunate to have enough reserves to address the shifts. We’re also grateful for a strong group of supporters in one of the two previous Councils, which have laid the groundwork for our continued success.

The work load is more than anyone anticipated. Because of the economic times and the deficit we didn’t add a lot of staff and we are shifting priorities as we practice a little post merger triage. (The squeaky wheels do get the grease!). We’re learning about each other – volunteers from either of the two legacy Councils who have always done it this way. In the metropolitan area of Oklahoma City, that is not much of a shift, primarily because there was sharing already occurring. For example: a woman who grew up as a girl in Sooner Council and then was a volunteer in Red Lands.

We still have a lot of issues to address, to transform ourselves into a high capacity Council. With a growing staff and a building in Oklahoma City that we grew out of several years ago as only one council, we face the daunting challenge of finding a suitable workspace. We also need to address the fact that we have four resident camp properties which challenge our budget disproportionately to the number of girls who camp. With the Girl Scout promise and the Law (be a sister to every Girl Scout), tucked safely under our arms, we will continue to muddle through, for girls in our state, for ourselves, for each other.