A Change We Can Believe In...?

In the words of our great current president, “ the State of the Union address has been a tradition for 220 years,” and the tradition continued last week amidst continued concerns surrounding the housing crisis, economic uncertainty, and exponential national debt. But don’t worry; our fair president assured us all that “the worst of the storm has passed.” Despite promises tax-credits for businesses, transparency in healthcare deliberations, and an end to the Iraq War. I don’t see why those broken promises should deter us from believing this one.

While this speech was probably first being written as early as November, I am almost positive it had to be changed substantially after the election of Scott Brown as the new Massachusetts senator. While I can speculate on the tone of the speech had a democrat been elected, the address Obama actually delivered went something like this: bipartisan corporation…republicans and democrats together…bother sides of the aisle…let’s come together, right now. (Well maybe that last one wasn’t quite how Barack said it, either way, the full text version can be found here.) Unfortunately, it seems the presidents’ aides did not finish editing the speech to, in fact, appeal to the left and the right, because his oh-so motivating speech ended on a bit of a sour note.

With regard to spending, according to Obama, cutting taxes and federal spending is “what helped lead to these deficits.” After which he makes a blatant reference to G-dub, which certainly didn’t function to foster a more bipartisan government.

He then proceeded to criticize the Supreme Courts’ decision to allow corporations to act as individuals. This order allows these private entities to advertise for particular candidates, and will lead to substantially increased campaign contributions by corporations. Perhaps the Prez forgot he was the one who appointed Sotomayor to the justice bench. Two responses to that: first, the Supreme Court actually doesn’t make decisions based on their own policy preferences (or they shouldn’t), but rather adheres to the constitution as closely as possible. Perhaps he should take that criticism up with Thomas Jefferson. Second, you, Barack Obama, received more support from private corporations than John McCain! You garnered more than twice the contributions than McCain—396,000,000 dollars give or take. So in my humble opinion, you should be the last to complain about such a decision.

In his final State of the Union address, Ronald Reagan said, “we're strong, prosperous, at peace, and we are free. This is the state of our Union…I believe we can give a future President and a future Congress the chance to make that prosperity, that peace, that freedom, not just the state of our Union, but the state of our world.” These words have been the inspiration and goal of many a president since 1988. Unfortunately, Barack Obama was not able to stand in front of the nation to which he is accountable and declare that we are the nation of strength, prosperity, peace, and freedom. Rather, according to Mr. President, “change has not come fast enough”. And despite the promises I have heard over and over throughout the past 3 years, I have to wonder if it ever will.

Bulletproof glass?

Is the glass ceiling bulletproof? Well I think that’s up to interpretation. In the last few decades’ women have certainly made leaps and bounds in the professional world. The number of female CEO’s of Fortune 1000 companies has increased 5%. The past 2 secretaries of state, presidential and vice presidential candidate, speaker of the house and 2 Supreme Court justices are all female. So why do men still make 20% more than women and despite identical education and ambition still reach higher levels in the corporate world? Well I have two theories about that—the first is the maternal dilemma; the second is the curse of ambition.

Although we are very logical in nature, we are also maternal. And as such, we often quit our jobs or put our careers on hold to start or care for our family. Our “better half” might claim they have to take a day or two off from the sheer exhaustion of the act of fulfilling our desire to have a child, but in the end we’re the one who have to take off from work to raise our families. Sure, there is the growing trend of “stay at home dads” and if that works for your family, then more power to you. But with our maternal instinct and the desire to have a child comes a desire to care for that child too. So what this whole problem essentially comes down to is deciding how to enable women to have children while having a successful career too.

Perhaps the answer is that you cannot have both at the same time. Postponing a career or childbearing are both very real, but sometimes, problematic possibilities. Taking a few years leave from the war zone known as the corporation can cause you to miss out on learning about new technologies and prevent valuable networking opportunities. Meanwhile having a baby later in life would cause you to end your career earlier and women who give birth later in life are much more likely to have complications at birth.

Another option that some companies are considering is on-site daycares. Business Software Firm SAS began its onsite childcare in 1981 when the founder learned of an employee’s intention to stay home with her newborn. Almost 30 years later the facility has expanded to include a day care, Montessori school, and bright horizon center located right next to SAS’s office building.

So now lets assume a women has made it into a powerful corporate position. Many then believe this woman must be a conniving bitch that has slithered her way up the food chain and into her current position—never mind that a man in the same role is simply termed ambitious, or skillful. Perhaps this is the reason so few women ever venture beyond a cubicle job. It seems to me that even if women were given an equal opportunity to pursue their career goals, they would yet again be put under the microscope to determine their ulterior motives.

This version of sex discrimination is the worst kind because it’s an imbedded belief and only causes exponential discrimination. To solve the problem of the glass ceiling, we must first begin with the fundamental idea that women and men can both be ambitious, and that a man is just as likely as a women to allow their emotions to get involved.

In the end, I like to think, no, the glass ceiling is not bulletproof, but perhaps we are just not using the right kind of bullets yet.