Republicans are doing everything in their power to make sure more babies are born, but, frankly, no one seems to want them around.

For the last eighteen months, Republican legislators have been proposing dozens of laws to restrict access to abortion and birth control and defund Planned Parenthood with the aim to stamp out abortion so more babies will be born. Yet, once they’re here, our country doesn’t have many programs in place to support families and there is a wave of public sentiment that wants children to not be seen or heard.

U.S. Maternity Policies Are Ridiculously Inadequate

America calls itself family friendly, yet in our current climate, that hardly seems true. A 2011 report by the Human Rights Watch, Failing its Families, shows that 178 countries guarantee national paid maternity leave for mothers and 50 countries have it for fathers, and the U.S. is not among them. The U.S. does have a national policy in place for unpaid leave for up to 12 weeks, but it only applies to companies with more than 50 employees, and with the increase in small business growth and freelance work, it helps fewer and fewer workers. Janet Walsh, deputy director of the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch told David Crary of Huffington Post:

“Despite its enthusiasm about ‘family values,’ the U.S. is decades behind other countries in ensuring the well-being of working families. Being an outlier is nothing to be proud of in a case like this.”

The report found that other countries’ maternity leaves were much more generous, even though they were paid. Malta gives 14 weeks, while Sweden gives mothers 16 months and allocates at least two months exclusively for fathers. In the U.S., only California and New Jersey have paid leave programs (Washington state does as well, but it was never implemented because there is no funding), and although both states have severe budget problems, the leave programs are thriving. They are financed wholly by small payroll tax contributions by workers and offer six weeks of paid leave for parents to bond with a new child or workers to care for a seriously ill child, spouse or parent.

On the other hand, the report, compiled after interviews with dozens of parents, stated that lack of paid leave has many harmful consequences, including exacerbating postpartum depression, early breastfeeding cessation, and causing some families to incur debt or go on welfare.

A 2012 report, the 13th annual State of the World’s Mothers report by the Save the Children foundation, agrees with the Human Rights Watch in its assessment of U.S. maternity policies, ranking our nation near the bottom of developed countries and last in breastfeeding support. This report also found that mothers in the U.S. faced the highest risk of maternal death of any industrialized nation at one-in- 2,100. The U.S. mortality rate for children under 5 is eight per 1,000 births, comparable to Bosnia and Herzegovina. An American child is four times more likely to die before age five than a child in Iceland. The U.S. ranked below 40 other countries on that score. In addition, USA Today reported that U.S. birthrates have fallen along with the economy, to a 25-year low (from 2.12 in 2007 to an expected 1.87 this year), and is not expected to recover for at least a couple of years.

No Children Allowed

There has also been an enormous backlash against parents and their children in public places, with businesses quick to show them the door and the general public disdainful of their presence. #youngchildrenshouldbebannedfrom was even trending on Twitter.

Restaurants, movie theaters and airplanes seem to be the main venues of discontent. JetBlue ejected a family from a flight home from vacation when the pilot decided that their two-year-old’s crying was too disruptive, and airlines claim that passengers have asked for adults-only designated flights and “family areas” of the plane, citing crying and ill-behaved children as their number one complaint.

Restaurants in Atlanta, Pennsylvania and North Carolina have enacted various limits and bans on small children. The Olde Salty restaurant in Carolina Beach and Grant Central Pizza in Atlanta have both posted signs warning parents to take their crying children outside. Olde Salty’s sign shouts, “Screaming children will NOT be tolerated!” and the restaurant told its local NBC affiliate that not only has it not hurt business, patronage has increased. McDain’s Restaurant, in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, recently banned children altogether.

These policies by the restaurants have generated a lot of attention with the majority of the comments negatively against children and what people consider to be their rude, clueless, and entitled parents. In hundreds, even thousands of comments (the airline story has over 10,000), the majority of them were anti-children by not only baby boomer and childless adults, but other parents as well, who claim that they aren’t part of the problem since their children are always perfectly well-behaved, but it must be those OTHER bad parents with the out-of-control children who are the problem. Many expressed vitriolic comments about the children themselves and were roundly applauded.

The recent shooting in Aurora, Colorado at the Batman premiere even turned into a criticism of parenting once it was reported that some small children were injured and one was killed. The judgments were fairly evenly split between those who thought it was poor parenting to a) bring a small child to the midnight showing of anything, much less a violent PG-13 action film, and b) those who didn’t care what time or content was playing, but just thought they shouldn’t have brought the kids at all because it was disruptive to other viewers.

The outcry has swelled such that the few let’s-all-learn-to-get-along comments like this one that appeared were shouted down.

So America, with its politicians who preach about family values, is inhospitable to children financially, professionally and socially, and doesn’t really like kids much at all, unless they stay home with their too-big strollers, sticky fingers, germs and tantrums.

image: telmah.hamlet, Mari Rose Moretti 

The post America Make Up Your Mind: Do You Want Kids or Not? appeared first on EcoSalon.

In mainstream media stories about women’s issues, men are quoted much more than women or even relevant organizations.

The past year has been a politically turbulent one for women’s issues with restrictive legislation over women’s health being proposed and passed in many states. The presidential election is heating up and print and online media is filled with news about all of these changes. With all of the debate, it would seem important to get women’s perspective on issues related to abortion, birth control and Planned Parenthood, yet a recent study shows that men are dominating the conversation in the mainstream media, with very little input from women or even the impacted organizations.

The 4th Estate studied the 2012 election coverage from November 1, 2011 to May 1, 2012, for a total of 2,750 print articles and TV segments that contained 50,754 quotes. And the numbers show that women’s voices are very, very faint, if they’re heard at all. The study reviewed 35 major national publications, including USA Today and the New York Times, and when talking about abortion, men owned 81 percent of the quotes, with women at 12 percent and organizations at 7 percent.

The numbers are only slightly better for stories about birth control (men 75, women 19, orgs 6), Planned Parenthood (men 67, women 26, orgs 7) and women’s rights (men 52, women 31, orgs 17), but overall women are extremely underrepresented in national media on issues about women. From this, it’s easy to see how so many of these measures are being not only proposed, but pushed through.

In Michigan, where some of the most restrictive birth control/abortion legislation is making its way through the legislative process, many women and organizations that came to the legislative session to ask questions and participate were not allowed to speak or ask anything. Two female Democrat Representatives were banned from speaking after they protested the bill and Rep. Lisa Brown said, ““I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.”

Although women are all but missing from those venues, there have been a few victories. In February, during the time the 4th Estate was studying election coverage, women did manage to make themselves heard when the Susan G. Komen Foundation tried to quietly sever ties with Planned Parenthood. The resulting uproar caused the charity to quickly reverse itself. While an overwhelming number of new legislative measures impacting women have passed in many states, some have been defeated.

Since men clearly control the conversation about women’s issues in the media, it’s no surprise that they control the conversation about other election topics, as well, including the economy and foreign policy. On general topics, men had 76 percent of the quotes in USA Today, 67 percent in the Washington Post and 65 percent in the New York Times. Major media has similar ratios and top TV news shows snubbed women even more with Hardball listening to men talk 81 percent of the time and Fox News, 77 percent.

Another study, The OpEd Project, found that out of 7,000 columns it reviewed from September 15, 2011 to December 7, 2011, women penned 33 percent of online opinion columns, 20 percent of print columns and 38 percent of college publication columns. The good news is that female authors are gaining ground. The study reports, “Overall we have seen approximately a 6 percentage point increase in some of the nation’s top commentary outlets in traditional media. This represents a 40 percent increase for women compared to women’s representation six years ago.”

If women aren’t represented in national media and our female lawmakers are punished like schoolchildren, what chance do women have? Brands understand that social media is a formidable tool for expressing opinions, and have learned to listen to consumers (which include women). Maybe politicians (especially those who use new media tools) will learn to listen, too. When the government ground to a halt over Planned Parenthood funding, women took to Twitter. And, while they don’t have a traditional national media platform, independent female bloggers/writers, especially mothers, are a huge presence on the internet.

In this election year, with so much at stake, women must be heard not only on women’s issues, but all issues to present all sides. Women make the majority of household purchasing decisions, we are more than half of college graduates and are half the workforce. We’ve shown that we do have an opinion (Komen), but now we need to work harder than ever to be heard through smaller channels, social media, and any other method at our disposal. Only then can the conversation include everyone, and decisions be made with the input of all citizens.

 The 4th Estate

Image: UMWomen, SMirk, Leader Nancy Pelosi

The post Can You Hear That? It’s the Distant Echo of Women’s Voices in Mainstream Media appeared first on EcoSalon.

Don’t make this about working mothers – we need a workplace change for everyone.

When Anne-Marie Slaughter’s The Atlantic cover story appeared, it sparked a firestorm of criticism ranging from accusations of setting women in business back by telling her story of leaving her dream job in the high ranks of government to step back in her career to be there for her children; to stomping on feminism; to boohooing about her elitist stature and the choices she’s made when many women have none. Although it’s not surprising that her story caused so much backlash, thankfully it has also generated great discussion around some important issues. And, despite the furor, they aren’t just about working mothers, or even just women – but the need for our work culture to change for everyone.

The story, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All,” is poorly titled, but still spoke to many who appreciated that Slaughter had the courage to tell her story of stepping back and wanting to be home for her children. Many women are used to feeling inadequate after reading stories of other women who made it to the top of their demanding professions, raised exceptional children and saved the world.

A Focus on Women
I first saw Sheryl Sandberg speak at the 2011 Women in the World Summit and she wowed the audience. We are contemporaries, and she is clearly a superwoman. Afterward I followed many of her talks and speeches and while I admired her mission to motivate and support women in business in their quest to be leaders, she also made me feel a bit resentful (something Slaughter alludes to in her article). As she motivates, she also expresses disappointment in our (hers and mine) generation in our failure to become leaders and places the blame squarely on our shoulders.

I was not alone in wishing she also championed the large number of women who occupy the middle ground – who don’t necessarily want to lead multinational corporations but want to sit at the table, who want to be heard, be recognized, and be equally compensated, but who still think it’s important to spend a significant amount of time with their families or pursue interests outside the office. These are the women, and a growing number of men, who are leaning back or on the fence about opting out of the workforce or into another career (if they have that choice) because that situation is so hard to find.

Does much of the blame falls on our American work culture? To hear Slaughter put exactly those feelings into words is tremendously satisfying. Can women be both leaders and great moms? Absolutely, but as Sandberg points out, you don’t see many of them, and it’s not completely due to a lack of ambition, but some very real workplace barriers.

Since Slaughter’s article came out, a large body of work has sprung up debating the issues that she raised. You might say that she isn’t covering any new ground as a “we all need balance” piece, but she has started an important discussion. Framing her argument around working mothers got many people’s backs up, but once you step back from that (as she does late in the article and in subsequent discussions), her argument and proposed changes should apply to everyone – meaning fathers, single parents and childfree women and men.

Toxic environment
It’s no secret that our work culture is, frankly, unsustainable and unhealthy. The U.S. has been a workaholic society for years, but the recession has exacerbated the weaknesses in our work culture. CNN calls the U.S. the no-vacation nation, highlighting the fact that most companies give employees only a few weeks off a year, and most expect employees to keep in touch with the office while on vacation. The U.S. lags far behind many European nations that employ liberal vacation policies and encourage their employees to use their time off.

Mother Jones reported that many businesses are posting double-digit profit growth while continuing the current employee workload and declining to hire more workers. “Americans now put in an average of 122 more hours per year than Brits, and 378 hours (nearly 10 weeks!) more than Germans.”

A full-time job used to require around 50 hours a week (allowing for lunch and a moderate commute). Now, for most, that number is low since we put more hours in at the office and can, and do, remain connected to the office nearly every waking moment with mobile technology. As our work culture continues to wring more and more work out of us, is there really time for much else?

In Glass Ceilings and 100 Hour Couples – What the Opt-Out Phenomenon Can Teach Us About Work and Family, authors Karine Moe and Dianna Shandy dissect the growing trend of highly educated women who are turning their backs on leadership and leaving the workplace – the same trend that Sandberg is lobbying against. Moe and Shandy report that dual-income families (the 100+ hour couples), show the most stress and damage from our current work climate. They conclude that an ideal arrangement involves one parent working part-time, yet meaningful part-time work is extremely hard to find.

However, concessions just for working parents can breed resentment in childfree women and men who might have their own, less recognized commitments outside of work like elder care, volunteering, hobbies or a sick spouse. That’s why change should apply to all employees, beginning with a fundamental shift in our work culture veering away from constant work obsession.

Flexibility Plays a Role
Slaughter admits that her regular full-time job as a professor is flexible and it was a shock when she entered government service to have to be on someone else’s timetable. This is where many who have spent their entire professional lives at someone else’s beck and call booed and hissed at her “complaining” which really came off more like a realization of what other professionals deal with. She quotes Mary Matalin, who spent two years as an assistant to Bush and the counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney before stepping down to spend more time with her daughters, as saying, “Having control over your schedule is the only way that women who want to have a career and a family can make it work.” I would amend that to say that flexibility is the only way to accommodate the myriad of personal situations people have outside of work, and children is just one of them.

Slaughter talks about being open about being a parent and having to tend to parental duties outside of work – not to bore her co-workers, but to set the tone of her work environment as family-flexible. Many women know this to be a potential minefield. When I worked in corporate America, I saw family commitments and subsequent time away from work used as a club in both salary raise negotiations and promotion discussions for several coworkers. Supervisors couched it as the employee being “not available” and “missing meetings,” and so on. It’s easy to point to other employees who have not missed work for these reasons as examples of promotion, so there is a reason many parents feel penalized when trying to balance both. It’s also something Sandberg fails to realize when telling women it’s entirely within their control to become leaders, despite having children.

What About the Men?
Slaughter writes, “Men are still socialized to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the breadwinner; women, to believe that their primary family obligation is to be the caregiver.” Men believe they have to be the primary breadwinner, because most workplaces refuse to see them as anything else. When men leave work or miss a meeting to tend to one of their children, more often than not, they feel the need to offer up an explanation, because the underlying thought is, “Why doesn’t their mother go?” (This is not necessarily true for single dads, of course.)

In this work climate, job stability often hinges on a worker appearing to be constantly available for every meeting and task. Where women bend or step back in their careers to care for children, men become more rigid to ensure their job security. I know a man who lost his job of seven years last week, one where he worked partly at home and commuted a long distance to work since his wife worked in another town, because the company terminated all flexible work arrangements. Other employees had asked to also have flex arrangements, and rather than accommodate them, they told all current flex workers they had to be in the office daily or find another job.

All Talk and No Change?
Now that a high-profile figure has raised the issue in such a public forum and it has clearly struck a chord – will anything change? Immediately and on a large scale, probably not. But companies that are ripe to consider flexible work arrangements might be persuaded by this discussion, and those that already offer it can see how important it is for employee attraction, retention and overall happiness. And, as long as we keep the discussion open, we might make progress not just for parents, but for everyone.

Images: Victor1558, Victor1558, Ed Yourdon, Mirimcfly

The post Not a Mommy War – This is About Our Unsustainable Workaholic Culture appeared first on EcoSalon.

Do little girls need an annual National Princess Week?

April 22, 2012 marked the start of the first annual National Princess Week, as declared by Julie Andrews, Target, and, of course, Disney. Target and Disney have teamed up to push their princess-related marketing items even harder this week and Mary Poppins is blessing it with her sweet smile and graceful benevolence. Andrews even lists 30 ways to celebrate princess week, including learning to wave properly, curtsy and exit a vehicle with grace.

What Could Anyone Have Against Pink?

In 2000, Disney stumbled onto the idea of marketing its princesses with all manner of gear (dresses, tiaras, makeup, etc.) and after a decade, the total has reached over 26,000 items and is a $4 billion a year business. But all that pink frothiness has sparked a princess war amongst parents.

Many parents see the Disney stories as harmless fairy tales that ultimately see good triumph over evil, celebrate romance and spotlight the moral goodness in the heroine. Others point out the beauty stereotype, where the heroine is impossibly beautiful and thin and many times battles an older woman who is wrinkled and mean (age = horror). Rapunzel’s mother/kidnapper was so jealous and obsessed with beauty that she held Rapunzel prisoner all her life, Snow White’s stepmother wanted her killed just because she was prettier, Ursula the sea witch (a demented, overweight character) wanted power over the ocean, Cinderella’s stepmother wanted her daughters to be admired rather than Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty was cursed by a snubbed fairy.

Parents who defend princess mania argue that it’s all make-believe, and the caricature of flawless women is part of it, as is the huge dividing line between the sexes, where the man usually plays rescuer. Can adults see past the imagery and pick out the positive message? Usually. Can young children? Some experts say no.

Peggy Orenstein is a nationally acclaimed writer about women and girls’ issues. When her previously un-media-tainted daughter went off to preschool in striped overalls carrying a Thomas the Tank Engine lunch box and transformed into a pink-obsessed princess inside of a month, she was stunned. Orenstein began seeing princess references everywhere – from the woman who gave her daughter a pink balloon (without asking if she wanted another color), to the dentist who told her to hop up into the “princess chair” so she could “sparkle her teeth.”

It’s Not About the Moral of the Story, But Who Looks the Prettiest

Orenstein’s investigation into princess mania was the basis for her book Cinderella Ate My Daughter. She visited Disney, Pottery Barn Kids and American Girl, and delved into the world of child beauty pageants and the international toy fair, and soon saw the peril behind the pink. She told The Daily Beast’s Jessica Bennett:

“’It’s not that princesses can’t expand girls’ imaginations,’ Orenstein explains. ‘But in today’s culture, princess starts to turn into something else. It’s not just being the fairest of them all, it’s being the hottest of them all, the most Paris Hilton of them all, the most Kim Kardashian of them all.’ Translation: shallow, narcissistic, slutty.”

Orenstein and others argue that the calculation-of-worth-based-on-appearance beast lurks underneath all those frills and the pop music track for preschoolers, and Disney starts the ball rolling way too early for young girls (and boys) to get the right message. Orenstein told NPR that an expert she consulted for her book told her that little brains are very malleable at those young ages, and soon, little gender differences become big gaps as they grow older.

Author Barbara Ehrenreich and educational consultant Lori Day have also excoriated princess marketing culture as the gateway to appearance becoming the dominant worry for girls at too young of an age, leading to depression and the skyrocketing rate of eating disorders in the U.S.

Miss Representation’s Jennifer Siebel Newsom points to early princess indoctrination as the start of media’s message to girls to value looks above substance and leads to media dismissal of women as people of worth. “Disney is now selling to kids as early as newborns.” Newsom adds, “your pink little onesie… reinforces gender.”

Most girls will outgrow the princess phase, but the worry is that after the princess dresses and tiaras, come more marketing products that send the same superficial message with more emphasis on body image and sexiness too early. Is Disney entirely to blame? Should parents ban Ariel from their homes? No, but Orenstein believes that awareness of the dangers will help parents strike a balance between tea parties and tee ball, between looking healthy and building confidence in abilities, not appearance. Day agrees, saying, “To all of the parents reading this who say, ‘My daughter loves to wear her Jasmine costume while she’s running around playing sports and collecting bugs,’ bravo! Moderation and balance are awesome.”

In her book, Orenstein writes,

“As with all of us, what I want for my daughter seems so simple: for her to grow up healthy, happy, and confident, with a clear sense of her own potential and the opportunity to fulfill it. Yet she lives in a world that tells her, whether she is three or thirty-three, that the surest way to get there is to look, well, like Cinderella.”

Image: Andrea Newell

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What will the future hold? It’s hard to say, but here are ten entities, industries, or trends that will impact it in various ways. 

In the past several years, we have all felt out of control of our lives. We have been hit by economic hardship, rising cost of living, plummeting home values, stagnant salaries, and waves of layoffs. Even as things slowly rebound, there are still many factors that affect our lives that we might not be able to control, but we have found ways to communicate our opinions and, in some cases, make a change. Our society is tackling new and old problems, setting new trends and following a new path, and in many ways, this is a tipping point where the decisions we make now will have a ripple effect far into the future.

Who are the people making these major life decisions for us? You might be surprised.

1. Pharmaceutical Industry

Although prescription prices went up in 2011, Americans are veering away from both doctor visits and excessive prescription use. At the same time, new government healthcare regulations over prescriptions that some women do want to take stirred up debate and crossed boundaries into local government, religious and business realms.

2. Oil & Gas

After the BP spill and the continuing aftermath, no one could fail to see the impact the oil and gas industry has on our lives. Prices have continued to rise and all indications are that they will not go down again for any significant length of time. Car companies have even come to the realization that we need transportation improvements and new higher mileage, hybrid and electric vehicles are emerging onto the market. Unfortunately, they only account for a small percentage of the vehicles on the road but they are gaining in popularity. Alternative energy solutions have become the next big thing, but we are still teetering on the edge of a precipice where we are consuming more energy than these solutions can meet, so oil and gas are still necessary evils. For how long, no one knows. While they still dominate, consumers will not only bear the financial costs, but environmental, political, and health costs as well.

3. Banks

Even before our economy hit a wall in 2008, many mistrusted banks and lenders and feelings deteriorated even further as the situation worsened. The financial landscape is changing. People are becoming more aware of the benefits and pitfalls and are speaking up. When Bank of America saw fit to tack on an arbitrary fee, account holders noticed and protested. After a storm of bad press, Bank of America canceled that fee scheme, but now they are looking to impose more.

The recently passed JOBS Act will also affect small businesses financially in ways we can’t see yet. Now that the gates have opened for people to crowdfund small businesses, this could enable organizations who might not have been able to get traditional or angel funding. Small businesses currently account for 65 percent of new jobs. Perhaps it took a major fall in order to make a change.

4. Supreme Court

We don’t think of many Supreme Court decisions as affecting our day-to-day lives, but recently the Court has weighed in on some pertinent issues. The justices pushed back against physical GPS tracking of a suspect, but the argument exposed the bigger issue of individual privacy. Justice Sotomayor articulated the future concern of eroding personal privacy, pointing out that “physical intrusion is now unnecessary to many forms of surveillance,” which puts into question freedom of expression online, information sent in email and data stored in the cloud. The laws as written by our founding fathers cannot keep pace with the speed of our technological innovations and our society’s increasing dependence on virtual communication, so this issue is sure to come up again.

5. State Government

While the Supreme Court makes decisions felt across the nation, state governments have been flexing their power lately. States have passed a number of measures chipping away at Roe v. Wade and imposing limitations and requirements on abortion that vary state to state.

Arizona went further and crafted legislation that would allow employers to opt out of covering birth control as part of their benefits package. If women wanted reimbursement for prescription costs, it then proposed to compel them to justify to their employers that if they are using birth control, they were using it for reasons other than preventing pregnancy. Using birth control for its intended purpose could be grounds for dismissal.

The legislation (in that form) failed, but this trend of state interference in personal and medical privacy seems to be gaining momentum.

6. Work

The job landscape has been a tough one. The last few years have seen layoffs, stagnant salaries, and overworked employees who had to take on the tasks of vacated roles. New opportunities lean toward freelance or contract work and fewer permanent positions with benefits, while our nation is still known for its culture of overwork.

However, mobile tools are giving rise to more work-at-home arrangements to cut down on commuting, eliminate the need for expensive, wasteful office space, and encourage more work/life balance. Will work weeks get shorter? Will more people without location-based jobs (doctors, teachers, etc.) work remotely? The current tide is toward leaner work infrastructure and roles, so expect remote work arrangements to continue to be popular, but as for Americans working fewer hours? It’s a future hope, but not likely to become a reality soon.

7. Utilities

The utility bill is a growing part of monthly budgets, factoring in landlines, smart phones, tablets, cable, internet, as well as basic heating/cooling and water. We use more energy and spend more money, while the big utility fish are gobbling up the smaller ones, so we have fewer choices. If that wasn’t troubling enough, Verizon recently decided to follow in Bank of America’s footsteps and have added an additional fee onto their customers bills. And again, people noticed and protested. Will the future improve people’s abilities to read and comprehend their cell phone bills? Probably not, but hopefully conservation and alternative energy solutions will lessen our utilities’ control over our energy, and impact on our budgets and our planet.

8. Food

Hundreds of emerging books and blogs examine the content of food on the supermarket shelves and have found much of it full of unsavory ingredients. Despite the higher prices, organic food is gaining popularity and gardening has become cool again. Consumers are more food savvy than ever before and are scrutinizing their fare. The demand for healthier food is a positive trend, but it may come at a price, putting it out of reach for many that are still recovering economically or live in a food desert. How consumers shape this industry now will set the tone for the future.

9. Water

It’s easy to forget that water is precious. For most of us, it comes out of the tap when we need it and goes down the drain when we don’t, but water shortage is fast becoming one of the biggest issues of this century. Businesses are realizing how much water impacts their daily manufacturing processes and their profits. Lack of water can shut down a factory for days, while floods can impact crops and cause materials shortages and price hikes.

The price of water varies by region and abundance, but even here in the U.S., wars over water are becoming more intense. In the future we may see prices rise or simply see availability fall. CDP Water Disclosure Project’s Chris Hedemann believes that people will only start to care about conserving water when a water crisis hits.

10. Consumption

As our economy slowly recovers, many facets have changed. Consumer consumption and excessive waste have fallen out of favor, and frugality has spawned a new, sharing economy, also called the access economy. Companies like Zipcar and Airbnb promote swapping and lending, while anti-waste crusader Annie Leonard is seeing her dream of community and sharing start to come true. We’re replacing shopping bags with reusable cloth totes and borrowing from our neighbors rather than buying an item we may only use once or twice a year. Our economy has been hit before during the Great Depression, inspiring a generation of savers. Perhaps this economic disaster will inspire future generations of savers, lenders and borrowers.

Images: Bethan, Frederic Poirot, Julie Falk, Gisela Giardino, Garry Wilmore, Wally Gobetz, Blake Patterson, Chuck Schneider, Evan Leeson, Wester, aamy.

The post 10 Industries and Trends That Will Shape Our Future appeared first on EcoSalon.

We are embracing social media as a medium to voice our opinions. But are we protesting injustice or promoting hate speech?

A few weeks ago, a small internal announcement by a nonprofit turned into a firestorm, when Susan G. Komen decided to sever ties to Planned Parenthood. When the news broke, the social media response was stunning. The cacophony of online voices overwhelmed the Komen foundation and we all know what happened next – they reversed themselves (to a point), to stem the criticism to popular opinion.

The strength of our voices on social media continues to grow, as we see the effect of ordinary people coming together online from different locations, different situations and different walks of life to protest or champion an issue that speaks to them. Brands have been burned by disapproval and Change.org launches new causes people can rally behind every day. This trend, more than any other, gives amazing insight into how (social media-savvy) members of society think and feel about products, policies, politicians and pundits.

For Good

In many ways, it’s heartening to see people protest fees by Bank of America and support women’s access to affordable health care, go against big corporations and the current political tide. However, it was surprising to see people react so strongly to Komen’s decision, given the landslide of measures limiting women’s reproductive rights passed in 2011. If you went strictly by the political climate, you would think an announcement like that would be greeted with cheers.

GOOD’s Nona Willis Aronowitz commented that in many cases high-profile politicians’ beliefs and agendas were not at all an accurate portrayal of how the majority of America feels. She laments that “When politicians do something that ticks us off, we have a hard time harnessing the kind of public protest we’ve seen this week. Usually, we don’t even try. Politicians, in turn, have noticed. Whereas Komen’s image is everything, politicians assume that, unless you’re giving millions, they can get away with almost anything.”

The latest backlash was against Rush Limbaugh after he called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying in favor of employer-supplied health insurance covering birth control. He followed up by saying that if she and other women wanted affordable birth control, they should have to post videos of themselves having sex on YouTube to justify the expense and “pay back” those who are (ostensibly) footing the bill for their raging sex life.

This exchange is double-edged. At a time when words like “slut” and “bitch” are so common and overused and women like the Kardashians and female members of the Jersey Shore cast are more recognizable, and more powerful role models than Sheryl Sandberg or Tina Brown, it seems like just one more assault on women’s health, image, and character.

It was more of what Rush gets paid millions to do – be insulting, ignorant, and incite misogynist or (insert offensive –ist word here – racist, sexist. etc.) crowd mentality and fan the flames of listeners’ fears, hatreds and insecurities. The Daily Beast’s Kirsten Powers points out that plenty of pundits on the other side of the aisle are just as guilty of taking tacky personal potshots at high-profile women in the past. And nothing happened then.

So when people actually rose up and protested, it was gratifying. On the other hand, it means that as a society, we’ve become so accustomed to this attitude and language, that Limbaugh probably thought nothing of spouting these sentiments on air. Fortunately, the power the everyday person has (women and men) is still financial. Brands and corporations have learned to take social media opinion seriously, and now there are consequences. Translated, Limbaugh has lost a landslide of advertisers.

For Evil

About a year ago we noted that people, cloaked in internet anonymity, felt free to express vicious and callous sentiments even in the wake of natural disasters, and so goes it today. After these two surprising uprisings, the pendulum swung back. A small, spoiled but vocal subset of our next generation of leaders threw a tantrum, stomping their feet and spewing more hatred online because President Obama declined to speak at Columbia for commencement.

When President Obama chose to speak at Barnard instead, several Columbia students (a university affiliated with Barnard) went online to attack their sister school for being chosen. And this time, the attacks were just as vicious, if not more, from female Columbia students toward the all-women Barnard, and went far beyond “slut.”

“Try using your Daddy’s hard-earned cash in a respectable way if you want to be an ACTUAL role model for women,” wrote one female Columbia student. “Unlike Barnyard financial leeches, I have NO intention of pursuing a Mrs. Degree. I came here to make myself successful, not try to plead at the knees of a Columbia boy to marry her.”

The post Our (Social Media) Voices Have Power: But for Good or Evil? appeared first on EcoSalon.

Hard work and long(er) hours alone won’t get you there. Sponsors are crucial if you want to move up the ladder.

You are one of the majority of women graduating from college and graduate schools, and you know that women comprise more than half the workforce and make more than 80 percent of household buying decisions. You’ve landed a good job and your hard work has led to some recognition and added responsibilities, but your upward trajectory has stalled. You want to lead and your goal is to make it all the way to the top. If you think that even longer hours and more hard work is the path to leadership, you’re in good company – but you’d be wrong.

Many say women are achieving parity and the CEO of Coca Cola says this century should go to women, yet still, few women have made it to the upper echelons of management. Theories for the dearth of women at the top range from a lack of ambition, to the interference of family obligations to gender bias.

Two recent studies (The Sponsor Effect: Breaking Through the Last Glass Ceiling, by the Center for Work-Life Policy and Catalyst’s Sponsoring Women to Success) claim that hard work alone won’t get you to the top, but who you know will. Catalyst reports that 77 percent of women believe that hard work and long hours alone will pay off, but most men know better. Sponsorship is crucial for both men and women to move into leadership positions, but it is especially important for women, and they are the ones who receive it the least.

Sponsors vs. Mentors

Many women have mentors, but while mentors are a valuable part of navigating the workplace landscape, a mentor’s role is usually that of a passive advice-giver. A sponsor takes an active role in your career. According to the Catalyst report, a sponsor’s role is predicated on power. A highly placed sponsor champions you in leadership meetings that you can’t attend, recommends you for high-profile assignments and highlights your accomplishments to the other leaders in your organization.

Many times it’s women themselves who sabotage their own advancement by a lack of assertiveness or inability to negotiate for themselves. Women actually learn at an early age not to champion themselves. Having someone else endorse a woman applicant lends them credibility and makes a much bigger statement than if the woman does it herself. It happens all the time in politics, but isn’t as formal in business.

Everyone Who Enjoys Success Gets a Helping Hand From Someone

Sheryl Sandberg’s excellence in her economics class at Harvard caught the attention of her professor, Larry Summers. When Summers became U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, he appointed her as his chief of staff. From there, her career only rocketed upward to Google and finally to COO of Facebook. Mika Brzezinski’s Morning Joe co-host, Joe Scarborough, went to bat for her at NBC over the disparity in their salaries (he was making fourteen times what she was), even paying her out of his own compensation until they finally offered her a better contract.

Colleen Plimpton, a garden columnist, described how another garden writer, Lorraine Ballato, took an interest in her career. Ballato opened up her personal contact list to Plimpton in order for her to contact people who might hire her as a speaker or writer, and gave her the names of garden radio show hosts who had interviewed her and might interview Plimpton. Ballato even went the extra mile and drove Plimpton to trade shows, and demonstrated how to sell a book and create an effective presentation. “Every time I get to a sticky wicket in my career, I have but to ask Lorraine, and she comes through for me,” Plimpton said.

When Susan Bender Phelps switched careers to marketing, the first company she called granted her an interview. After that initial meeting, they asked her to come back in a week and pitch them on how she would market their company. Phelps had no idea how to go about pitching a plan, so she called her friend Bob, who had volunteered at her former organization. Bob opened up his own firm’s marketing plans to her, taught her what comprised a successful proposal and discussed local market conditions and the roles of different well-known players.

Bob then introduced her to his colleague Tina, who took Phelps to a two-hour lunch and briefed her on the personalities of all the members of the firm where she would be pitching. Both she and Bob offered to be references for Phelps. Phelps got that job and went on to do marketing for several engineering firms. In three years, she helped them bring in more than fifty million dollars in construction projects, and more than 130 employees kept their jobs and saw their careers grow. “Bob and Tina remained friends and resources over the following five years. They continuously shared their networks with me, and introduced me to people and organizations that could help me,” Phelps said.

Workplace Fairy Godmothers

So where can you find such a person that will take hours out of his or her own schedule to help you in your career? Good question. Unfortunately, sponsors are hard to come by these days. A tough job market and the current competitive work climate we’re presently in doesn’t help, although sponsorships are valuable relationships for organizations. Companies who rely on an existing, overworked workforce are making the problem worse.

Mean boys and girls make more money, but it’s a short-sighted tactic. Networking and building relationships is extremely important. If you step on the wrong person in your haste to climb the ladder, that just might be the person who later becomes an important client or works at a company you want to move to. Burning bridges can have consequences.

Let’s be clear – It’s a Partnership

Sponsors put their own reputations on the line when vouching for sponsorees, but the payoff can also be significant. Sponsors put a large amount of trust in the people they help and recommend, so it’s imperative that if you are fortunate enough to be sponsored, you reciprocate by living up to that faith and working hard. However, sponsors also gain insight into the organization and look good by recognizing and promoting talented individuals, and many report feeling good about helping other employees achieve their goals. Retaining workers is becoming more and more important, especially if the economy ever bounces back and employees feel more empowered to switch jobs. Employees who had sponsors reported feeling supported and valued,  and stayed with their companies longer.

Generosity and Diversity Required

While women and men can move up on the lower rungs of the ladder, the higher level jobs are fewer and farther between, so having someone champion you for these positions helps you have an edge. The reason that men have had this advantage until now, is that men tended to sponsor other men like themselves, and with many more men in power sponsoring men, women were at a disadvantage. Several companies like American Express, Cisco, Citi, Deloitte, and Time Warner are putting formal sponsorship programs in place, and for many the first criteria is: you must sponsor someone different from you (whether by gender or race or both).

Many sponsors in the Catalyst study said that they unconsciously gravitated toward sponsoring people like themselves, but when it became a mandate to start looking at other employees with fresh eyes, they discovered a lot about colleagues they had never been in contact with before.

Previously men in power were (understandably) leery of sponsoring a younger woman inside their organization for fear of being accused of a sexual relationship. And, in some cases, women who fought their way up aren’t as willing to help other women advance, especially past their own position. Since there is such a shortage of top spots awarded to women, there can be a feeling that there isn’t enough to go around. But with the rise of women’s business groups and networking, that feeling is subsiding. Women who worked hard to climb the ladder certainly can be an infinite help to other women on their way up, but the key is for more men to advocate for women to move into higher positions.

Repeated studies have shown that having multiple women on corporate boards and in leadership positions result in a better financial performance for organizations. And to get women, women of color, and minorities into leadership positions requires sponsors and advocates who have already walked the challenging road.

image: Alvaro Canivell, mnsc, lumaxart, BinaryApe, vokakvklim and Nicholas_T via Flickr cc (some rights reserved)

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In ever-increasing numbers, women are starting fulfilling businesses that also impact communities.

Female-founded, women-run businesses are on the rise. The numbers of women rising to the corporate c-suite are slowly increasing, but women are redirecting their ambition, and most importantly, their creativity and drive, toward starting and nurturing companies that fulfill them. The reasons for women to strike out on their own range from millennials that burn out from corporate life and look for something more, to women who have hit the glass ceiling, to those, overwhelmingly, who want to be in control of their own future, define their own work/life balance, assert their independence and fulfill the need they see in their own and other communities.

Here are eight inspiring companies and their founders.

Drop the Chalk (Kickboard)

Founder Jennifer Schnidman Medbery studied computer science at Columbia, but joined Teach for America after graduation. While she was teaching, she realized how much time teachers spent recording data, and how little time they had to analyze and act on it. Kickboard allows teachers to enter student data, analyze trends and customize learning for students. Medbery piloted the software in several New Orleans schools and more schools are adopting the system by leaps and bounds.

Style Seat

Style Seat‘s business allure is its two-pronged approach: it boosts local businesses and taps the lucrative hair salon industry. CEO Melody McCloskey got the idea when she was looking for someone who specialized in cutting curly hair. Hair salons are extremely individualized local businesses, so when you move to a new town it’s hard to find a stylist other than through word of mouth. Hair salons are also slow to adopt online tools to grow their businesses, so Style Seat provides a unique set of options, including online profiles, price ranges, and stylist’s schedules so clients can see who is available in a certain timeframe. On the other side, stylists can track trends like which days they traditionally have fewer clients and then have the option to run a promotion. Growing local economies has been touted as one of the ways our society can recover from this slump, so Style Seat is imminently sustainable and infinitely scalable. Since its start in May 2011, hundreds of thousands of stylists and clients have found their matches.

Solar Sister

When Katherine Lucey was an energy executive, she noticed that the large-scale energy projects she was helping implement in Uganda, weren’t reaching the rural population. She conceived and started Solar Sister, an Avon-type business model where women can start their own businesses for a nominal fee, bringing solar lamps to homes and communities. Before solar lighting, many families spent the evening in the dark, or used unsafe and expensive kerosene lamps. Solar Sister is expanding its operations from Uganda into other communities in rural Africa.

Nom Nom Truck

The food truck industry is booming recently. Co-founders Jennifer Green and Misa Chien met as undergraduates at UCLA, and after graduation they took $25,000 of family money and life savings and rented their first Nom Nom truck. The pair launched their Vietnamese cuisine on the LA scene to a waiting Twitter following. An appearance on The Great Food Truck Race introduced their unique menu to the nation. Nom Nom uses healthy, local ingredients, and eco-friendly products while serving banh mi cuisine to more than 800 people a day in both LA and San Francisco.

Gianna 

Gianna Driver spent part of her childhood living in a women’s shelter with her Filipino mother. At 16, she was the first in her family to go to college (later attending Wharton) which led to a career in commercial insurance. She left the business world behind when she realized that she wanted to empower women like the ones she saw in the shelter growing up. Gianna employs women in India, Laos, Thailand and the Philippines to handcraft accessories and items for home decor. Gianna focuses on fair trade for the severely disadvantaged in rural villages or urban slums. First, she identifies a group that already produces a craft and constructs a business support system aimed at empowering the women and allowing them to achieve independence. Gianna works to preserve both the cultural heritage and the environment, using organic and recycled materials.

Code for America

“Fundamentally, it’s all about helping American cities use web technology to do a better job of providing services to citizens.” Founder Jen Pahlka patterned Code for America after Teach for America, aiming to tackle municipal issues by recruiting the best and brightest coders to focus on specific city issues. Each year the organization accepts applications from both cities and web developers to participate. Teams are matched with cities and specific problems are identified and scoped. The projects run for 11 months, and the goal is to develop web applications that enable cities to engage their residents in ways that reduce administrative costs, move toward transparency and collaboration, and are shareable – which means that an application built for one city can be used by any other city. In a time when city government budgets are being slashed, yet communities need local government to implement important measures to help cities grow, Code for America can be instrumental in helping municipalities move forward.

Alabama Chanin

Yes, we love Natalie Chanin, but she belongs here due to her sustainable focus and benefit to her surrounding communities. Alabama Chanin crafts limited-edition, handmade products for individuals and the home, focusing on slow design and sustainability. Talented artisans from and around Florence, Alabama use new, organic and recycled materials to create unique items.

Women 2.0

Finally, we give a nod to Women 2.0, a new media company that supports and champions women-founded businesses. Founders Shaherose Charania and Angie Chang work to “Inform, inspire and educate a new generation of females that are entrepreneurial and successful.” The business incorporates a blog to give women a voice, events to bring female entrepreneurs together and “enables entrepreneurs with a network, resources and knowledge to take your startup from idea to launch.”

Images: Victor1558, Solar Sister, Alabama Chanin, ThinkPublic, Flavia Brandi, Jek in the box, Gianna, Trey Ratcliff, Tara Hunt

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Susan G Komen cuts off Planned Parenthood using a lame excuse and tries to claim it’s not political.

Shame on the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The organization blankets this country with all manner of pink marketing baubles proclaiming to care about women’s health, yet on January 31, SGK announced that it will cease future grant funding to Planned Parenthood, an organization that arguably does more for women’s health than any other by serving women without health care.

For SGK to claim that their focus is women’s health education and prevention and then to cease to support an organization dedicated to it is completely hypocritical, especially since it has a long history of funding Planned Parenthood. The LA Times reports that “over the last five years, Planned Parenthood has provided about 4 million breast exams and referrals for 70,000 mammograms nationwide. Funding from Komen covers about 170,000 of the breast exams and 6,400 mammogram referrals. Although mammograms and biopsies are referred out, Planned Parenthood doctors manage their patients’ cases.”

SGK tried to wriggle out of it by saying that they recently adopted criteria that prohibits the organization from funding any other that is under federal investigation, and conveniently, Planned Parenthood is the subject of a witch hunt launched by Cliff Stearns (R-Fla). To hide behind this technicality only highlights the fact that they are buckling to pro-life pressure. It shows that their concern is not women’s breast health in its entirety, but aligning itself politically behind a single issue that has nothing to do with breast cancer.

And that, Kivi Leroux Miller points out, is a giant branding mistake for which there is no going back now, ever. Before this, SGK managed to occupy neutral ground in the abortion debate, allowing them to appeal to women and sponsors on both sides of the issue, but now they have taken sides and unleashed “an entirely avoidable and deeply regrettable controversy.”

It started when SGK hired Karen Handel, an anti-Planned Parenthood, pro-life advocate, as VP for public policy in April 2011. Then Stearns launched an investigation into PP in September 2011, and soon after there was a new policy in place that conveniently cut funding to PP. Three sources within SGK told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that SGK manufactured that policy specifically to exclude PP, who seemed to be caught completely off guard by this decision.

After Susan G. Komen’s death, her sister, Nancy Brinker, vowed to do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever. Funding Planned Parenthood and its education and prevention services is within SGK’s power, and by ceasing funding, it just took a big step backward in the fight.

Planned Parenthood has taken all of this abuse and funding cuts, and for what? Because they provide a legal service that makes up 3 percent of their services? (And no federal or SGK funds go toward abortions, by the way.) All this does is punish millions of women who rely on Planned Parenthood – the vast majority of whom are not there for an abortion.

What will happen if funding continues to decline for Planned Parenthood and the organization is finally forced to close its doors? Will pro-life advocates calling for the demise of PP feel righteous when all the low-income or unemployed women and men, uninsured adolescents, recent college grads and freelance and contract employees who can’t afford full health care coverage have nowhere to go for competent health care?

As the numbers of the uninsured grow to not only encompass the poor, but creep into the middle class, this attack on PP demonstrates an extreme lack of compassion for a large number of people in this country. Boiling all these arguments down to one issue and mounting a relentless assault on an organization because they provide one service is to be willingly blind to all the other facets of women’s health care. For SGK to place its own political agenda above its stated mission is selfish, especially knowing full well how much PP relies on their funding.

SGK should really rework those marketing materials to say: “We race for the cure for women who can afford not to go to Planned Parenthood.” In big pink letters.

image: ladybugbkt via Flickr cc (some rights reserved)

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How many offensive ad campaigns could companies create this year? Plenty.

Many businesses are realizing that consumers are looking for brands that care, brands that engage in dialogue, and brands that understand current trends. These companies are adapting to these new sensibilities and their businesses are thriving. Other companies have launched sexist ad campaigns, derided green actions, squelched customer’s comments and complaints, and mounted a merciless attack on local businesses, and consumers have spoken out.

Green is popular. Therefore, shaming green initiatives shows you are not only clueless, but part of the problem.

Despite the rising popularity (and wide media coverage) of bike sharing programs in cities and the number of cities looking to institute more bike lanes and encourage bicycle commuting, GM decided to run an ad campaign designed to make bicyclists feel ashamed of biking. The campaign, run in college magazines and aimed at current students and recent grads, shows a guy riding his bike and covering his face as a girl rides by in her (presumably GM) car. The tag line reads: Stop pedaling…start driving, and shows a picture of a smaller car, and a … truck.

There was an immediate outcry. Bicycling organizations, students and even professors condemned the ad and everything it stood for. GM backpedaled so fast that it immediately yanked the ads and began apologizing via Facebook and through every other type of social media it could find. The company responded to many of the negative comments and apologized.

Why do companies never tire of spitting on women and girls to sell stuff?

Dr. Pepper was tired of selling diet soda only to women. Who really wants to appeal to the demographic that makes over 80 percent of household buying decisions anyway? So they decided the way to appeal to men was to make a point of excluding women. On their Facebook page they even encouraged male-only users (it is off-limits to women) to play games where they shoot high heels, unicorns and rainbows.

Surprising no one but Dr. Pepper, the campaign didn’t appeal to most men (which is somewhat reassuring) and since it went out of its way to alienate women, no one was left to buy it.

Some companies still think it’s a good idea to sell items by sexualizing girls or promoting sexist stereotypes (or both at the same time). Abercrombie and Fitch has been a repeat offender, and this past year, family-oriented retailers Kmart and JCPenney joined the club. JCPenney quickly took this t-shirt out of inventory after being flooded with complaints, and a Kmart located in Australia took these thongs off the shelves for the same reason. The thongs are made by Kmart’s inhouse brand, Girl Xpress and the perception was that they were marketing them toward young girls. Kmart denied it, but wouldn’t state the customer age range Girl Xpress was targeting.

To be honest, it’s hard to tell what the point of this campaign was supposed to be, but whatever it was, everyone quickly lost sight of it. One blogger complained on Chapstick’s Facebook page about the use of this tacky, unattractive picture of a woman’s derriere in tight jeans. The company promptly deleted her comment (an irony many have pointed out considering the company’s invitation to be heard on their page). Ditto the negative comments that came after it. However, comments like, “after looking at this pic i know right where i wanna hide my chapstick,” were not deleted by the company.

Soon it was a battle to see who was faster, the commenters or the censors. Everyone forgot about the ad that sparked the war in the first place and directed their fury at the company who tried to control the conversation. That is something you just don’t do in social media and Chapstick came out of what could have been a minor embarrassment looking like an exceedingly foolish, 800-pound gorilla.

When you are Goliath, recruiting bystanders to pound David into dust makes you look like an even bigger bully.

It’s not enough that Amazon undercuts the prices of most local bookstores, but now they are encouraging consumers to go into local businesses, scan items and compare the price with the same item on Amazon. Since in many instances, Amazon doesn’t charge sales tax, the savings can be significant, causing many shoppers to not buy the item at the local business and buy the item online.

When promoting this new price check app, Amazon offered customers $5 for each item they bought using it (up to a total of $15). Forbes calls it the future of business, but in the face of Small Business Saturday and all the evidence that communities need to patronize and support local businesses to help local economies, Amazon’s campaign is as brazen as it is mercenary and cold-hearted.

Sometimes when you do everything right, it still goes wrong because your consumers can’t be bothered to read the label.

Coca-Cola thought it would be such a terrific holiday-cause marketing campaign to support polar bears, a species in dire need of help as well as animals that have been prominently featured in nostalgic Coke holiday ads in years past. They designed an eye-catching white can and prepared to watch awareness and profits grow. What happened? No one bothered to read the label, so Diet Coke (which is sold in a silver can) drinkers bought the white regular Coke by accident and then screamed about it.

Of course it is serious when diabetics or others with dietary restrictions consume something they shouldn’t due to a purchasing mistake, but many companies have very slight label differences that distinguish their products, but no one goes after them with the viciousness that Coke faced for simply offering the same drink in a special issue white can instead of a red one.

Many see this as a failed campaign by Coke, but did they really do anything wrong? Faced with an ugly public backlash, they have halted the manufacture of the white cans and are introducing a red polar bear can for the rest of the campaign. Now people can go back to not paying attention to what they buy again.

SEE ALSO:

2011 In Review: The 10 Stories That Defined Shelter in 2011

2011 in Review: How Small Spaces Trumped McMansions

images: bitzcelt, BikePortland, YouTube, Huffington Post, lovelyish.com, The Real Time Report, iTunes, the rocketeer (via Flickr cc)

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