Health and Fitness
Pages: 1 [2]
Seven Who Exert the Power of Their Voice
own rape in order to combat his stereotype that all women who are raped "ask for it." "She had the guts and the decency to expose herself, not because it benefited her, but because it would help him act better toward other women in the future," Mansbridge says, with emotion in her voice. "Now that is a feminist act and a feminist act of deep courage." --Courtney E. Martin. Jamie McCourt, Team Owner Jamie McCourt not only sings "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the shower but also has made it the theme song of her life. A self-described ex-tomboy with two younger brothers, Jamie McCourt was the kind of girl who tooled around her childhood neighborhood in Baltimore with baseball cards stuck in the spokes of her bicycle wheels. At 9, she told her mom she would one day buy a baseball team: a girlhood dream that came true when she and her husband, Frank, purchased the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2004. Today, McCourt, 53, is vice chair and president of the L.A. Dodgers and is the highest ranking female executive in baseball and one of the most powerful women in the business of sports. She came to the position after a lengthy legal career in New York and Boston. After moving to Los Angeles and taking her position with the Dodgers, McCourt devised a plan to develop and expand the team"s female audience. At a typical Dodgers game, about 40 percent of the fans are women. Over a season, women comprise more than 1.2 million of roughly 3 million attendees. Although often overlooked, women are a particularly attractive market for the business of sports because they tend to control family decisions about where and how to spend money, McCourt says. Women are especially interested in baseball because it allows them to spend relaxed, enjoyable time with their families, she adds. So in 2005, just before Mothers" Day weekend, McCourt launched the Women"s Initiative Network (WIN), a program in which women of all ages and backgrounds learn about and experience the game through activities such as baseball clinics and seminars featuring Dodger players, coaches and staff. "You"d be surprised at how many women really care about the beauty of baseball, the romance of baseball," McCourt says. Corporate sponsors are responding to the WIN program, she says. One indication of that came when Smashbox, a cosmetics company in Culver City, Calif., agreed to give away complimentary lip gloss to the first 50,000 attendants. Female ticket-holders that day knew what to do. "The best part was the occasional man who didn"t take it and got sent back by a woman," McCourt says. McCourt is also a visiting professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she teaches a course on female leadership. She has recently been honored by the Step-Up Women"s Network and the Los Angeles Rotary Club, where she is the second woman to be made an honorary member in the club"s 95-year history. --Allison Stevens. Dena Merriam, Peace Organizer Dena Merriam founded the New York-based Global Peace Initiative of Women in 2002 and is convinced that women have "a very important role in healing the world." Merriam herself has played an important role through her work organizing interfaith dialogues and developing youth leadership programs globally. She was the vice chair of the Millennium World Peace Summit which brought 2,000 of the world"s pre-eminent religious and spiritual leaders representing the many faith traditions to the General Assembly of the United Nations in August 2000. Not one to rest long, Merriam then organized the Global Peace Initiative in Geneva. More than 500 leading female figures in religion, business and politics from around the world gathered for three days in October 2002 and discussed the possibilities for peace. Since then she has continued her efforts to bring people, mostly women, from polarized countries and regions together for dialogue with one another and key religious figures, including Palestinians, Israelis, Iraqis and, most recently, young professionals from throughout Sudan. "I think of myself as creating opportunities for people to encounter spiritual leaders," says Merriam. "But I don"t think of myself as being a healer. It"s hard to see oneself in that light." Recently her group met in Lebanon with a male leader of the Shia community as part of a series of peace talks in the Middle East. She says members of her delegation from the Global Peace Initiative asked, "How can we work towards peace?" The Shia leader responded, "After there is peace, we"ll talk." The delegation determinedly responded, "But what can we do to help?" The Shia leader only repeated himself. Merriam says the incident shows the contrast between some male leaders and the female peace activists she has worked with all over the world. "I think women are more willing to take risks because we have less to lose and we feel the pain of these situations so deeply," Merriam says. "The first issue brought up in inter-religious dialogues among women is inevitably the suffering of the children. With men it just doesn"t come up." --Courtney E. Martin. Marisa Rivera-Albert, Latina Booster As president of the National Hispana Leadership Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit, Marisa Rivera-Albert helps Latinas, many of whom come from low-wage-earning families and are determined to become engineers, doctors and lawyers. Three years ago, she oversaw the development of the Latina Empowerment Conferences program, which invites young Latinas across the United States to gather and hear Hispanic women in prominent government and business positions share their strategies for success. In 2006, the institute trained 1,200 Latinas at conferences in seven cities. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Rivera-Albert left the island after her early high school graduation to attend college. She earned a bachelor"s degree at American University in Washington, D.C., and a master"s in education administration from Western Illinois University. As a graduate of Harvard University"s Kennedy School of Government Executive Program and the Gallup Leadership Institute, she calls herself "a product of student loans" and emphasizes the importance of education for others. "Unless you"re well-educated, the door of opportunity will narrow," Rivera-Albert, 46, says. "In 2006, things have changed, but they"re still telling Hispanic students that they"re not college material and that they should go ahead and work as cashiers or secretaries." Hispanic women often need a network to not only provide encouragement but also financial support, says Rivera-Albert. One protege was accepted to a top law school but almost abandoned her plans because of what it would cost. Rivera-Albert encouraged her to accept and connected her to someone to help her with financial aid. "One of the greatest satisfactions that I have with working at a Hispanic nonprofit is that you see women working at the grassroots level on issues that affect our community," says Rivera-Albert. "They"re leading from the trenches--and many of them are feeling lonely--but they are all working towards a fair and just America and they all inspire us." -- Irene Lew Irene Lew is the editorial intern at Women"s eNews; Allison Stevens is Washington bureau chief; Courtney Martin is a writer, filmmaker and teacher in Brooklyn, N.Y. For more information: Radio Al-Mahabba: http://www.radioalmahabba.com/ Jackson Katz: http://www.jacksonkatz.com/ The Education of Shelby Knox: http://www.shelbyknox.org/ Jane Mansbridge: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/ksgnews/KSGInsight/mansbridge.htm Los Angeles Dodgers Women"s Initiative Network: http://losangeles.dodgers.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/la/fan_forum/win.jsp Global Peace Initiative of Women: http://www.gpiw.org/ National Hispana Leadership Institute: http://www.nhli.org/ Note: Women"s eNews is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites and the contents of Web pages we link to may change without notice.Pages: 1 [2]