Listen to the Women and Girls of Iran
It was gigantic and staring at me. Everyone around seemed as mesmerized by it as I was: an eye, wide open. It was staring at the sky, too, and it covered most of the steps of Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park at the far end of the oblong Roosevelt Island on the East River, an unlikely urban cable car stop away from Manhattan. In the background, lurking in the shadows, stood the 39-story United Nations building, proud and self-confident.
In that park, at the bottom of the steps that morning of November 28, 2022, every spoken word and every single stare were targeted at the United Nations, at the United Nations and Iran.
Tag: Christine Lagarde
The Vital Power of Youth and Words
The Vital Power of Youth and Words: 22-year-old Poetess Amanda Gorman to Perform at Joe Biden’s Inauguration
A Rock, a River, a Tree
Maya Angelou, On The Pulse of Morning
Hosts of species long departed
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
One Hundred Women to Inspire Us to Change
One Hundred Women to Inspire Us to Change
Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower (Assouline)
On September 6, 2020, French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter wrote an editorial in Le Journal du Dimanche, one of France’s main Sunday’s paper to denounce a dangerous post #metoo radical neo-feminism, which she says transforms all women into victims and all men into presumed aggressors. At the same moment in the United States, Assouline and the American foundation Vital Voices published a groundbreaking book with 100 portraits and texts of women ‘using their power to empower.’
Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exceptions.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lawyer and former Justice, United States Supreme Court
Their names are Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG passed away a few days after this article was published), Melinda Gates, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Bachelet, Geena Davis and Jacinda Ardern. Some have led countries, some head a foundation, one is a US Senator, while another is one of the most powerful judges in the United States. The book also features Panmela Castro, Xiye Bastida, Yin Myo Su, Hindu Oumarou Ibrahim, Andeisha Farid, Amani Ballour, and Tarana Burke. Less known in the Western media, they too run foundations, corporations, paint large murals, engage in politics, and transform the healthcare delivery landscape of their communities.
There are 100 of them in this book edited by Alyse Nelson, President and co-founder of Vital Voices Global Partnerships, along with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Melanne Verveer, and Madeleine Albright. This Washington-based non for-profit organization works with women in 182 countries to help them become professionally empowered, visible and heard. One hundred portraits painted by Gayle Kabaker, one of the greatest American illustrators, known especially for her New Yorker covers. One hundred women who share their visions, their ambitions, and raise their voices. They could be a thousand, a hundred thousand, millions. In fact, these 100 women leaders, activists, lawyers, politicians, entrepreneurs, diplomats, financiers, biologists, journalists, athletes and artists are de facto ambassadors of half of the world’s population.