I am taking a break from writing next week to recharge at a lake in the Idaho mountains.

But these two reports from the Center from American Progress speak to the core issues I will discuss in my next book. How do we tap the great economic potential of women--in the case of these two reports women of color and unmarried women? And how do we move beyond our own economic insecurities to fully use the economic power that we have?

The two reports can by clicking here for the report on unmarried women. And clicking here for the report on women of color.

I've added a few paragraphs of statistics and information here as food for thought.

More when I return the week of Aug. 24.

(Read More)

Do we believe in equality for women in theory, but in reality think men still deserve better jobs and bigger salaries and more access to education? That appears to be the case from one global survey regarding our thoughts on female equality.

I'll dig into this survey more in a post tomorrow, but let me know what you think by clicking here to read the story.

Several media stories about women in Afghanistan caught my attention today. All of them reminded me of the unquestioning power of women--even if that power is only to get the conversation going about the continuing fight for the rights of women around the world.

First off was a Mother Jones article that discussed the Taliban's response to Time magazine's cover story that featured the disfigured face of Bibi Aisha. Her nose and ears were cut off by her husband, who is a member of the Taliban. The Taliban fired back a long response that included a condemnation of the way America treats its women.

Then today on WBUR's Here and Now program on NPR, there was a compelling interview with a young Afghan woman, Parnian Nazary, who grew up under Taliban rule, but still found a way to educate herself even though she was confined to her home for years. Now several years later, she just graduated from Wellesley College.

She was interviewed along with Patty Ward, whose daughter was killed by the Taliban while she was working in Afghanistan. The two women were are inspiring for their devotion to the cause of educating women as the most powerful way of moving countries forward. Ward has set up a program to bring Afghan women to the U.S. to be educated at Wellesley and has hired Nazary to be the program's cultural adviser.

But it was Patty Ward's statement about the power of women--even in a war-ravaged country--that was profound.

She said (and I paraphrase here so please listen to by clicking on the link above) that no matter what happens in Afghanistan, that she believes wholeheartedly in the power of women to find ways to be educated, to move their country forward, and fight for their rights.

That should be a call to action for all women to take action on the importance of educating a woman--whether it's here in America or Afghanistan. We know that that this act--sometimes simple, sometimes hard--is the fastest way to grow a country's economy.

Newsweek is out with a report on the importance of beauty in our society. It's a lengthy report...chock full of all kinds of information about how much we spend on beauty, the financial gains for pretty people, the dangers of plastic surgery, and on and on. Of course, while the magazine attempts to bring "handsome" men into the stories, most of the articles in the report focus on women.

It occurs to me that while all this is nice fodder for the virtual water cooler...where does it really take us as women? I would have preferred a deep analysis on the economic status of women around the world--not another take on why Heidi Montag both horrifies and captivates us.

Or we could have done with a special report about the true power of women in the workforce. But the reality is that beauty sells--both magazines and in society at large. And it occurs to me that this beauty fascination may be part of the repercussions of "civil death," which I wrote about yesterday. We are still bound to the cultural norms of our times just as Eunice Chapman was bound to ours. But where is our Ms. Chapman--the one who fights against those norms to take back her power?

Driving into Ann Arbor today, I heard a fascinating interview with an author of a new book called "The Great Divorce." It chronicles the life of Eunice Chapman, a woman who defied her husband, a powerful religious group, and the cultural mores of her times--the U.S. in the 19th century--to gain a divorce and control of her children. The interview is well worth a listen...if only to hear the author read from Chapman's powerful letters in which she states her rights emphatically.

What so captivated me as I listened to this woman's story was my sense of displacement and discouragement. My thoughts kept rollercoasting between "we have come so far" to "we haven't come very far at all." Certainly, we (by we I mean women of a certain socio-economic class in so-called first world countries) live in times where divorce is far more common--but not necessarily easier on us. A range of studies have shown that divorce has a negative impact on a woman's finances (although there are studies that show that there also is a negative impact on men as well.)

Without a doubt, women have gained far more control over their lives, their children, and their bodies in the past 200 years. But I still sense that both here in the U.S. and around the world that women continue to deal with the repercussions from a 19th century cultural and legal norm called "civil death." This term was used in the 19th century to describe what happens to a woman when she marries. When she marries, she becomes civilly dead, or non-existent in society.

I wondered what are the modern ramifications of this cultural and legal norm? How far do we have to go to put "civil death" behind us because I still perceive its hold on us some 200 years later. Despite all we have achieved, women in many countries become the property of their husbands when they wed. Even in countries where women have fought for independence, we continue to live with hangover of this "death." We still struggle to gain financial freedom and independence--whether it's fighting for higher pay or having that tough conversation with our partners about money.

So yes we have come very far from this 19th-century notion of being dead to our society because we were married. But I also realize that our path toward independence has been one that is tougher and far ore philosophically challenging than even I had imagined.

Today we celebrate mothers and by chance, the 50th anniversary of the Pill. The coincidence puts me in mind of an interview with Margaret Sanger for the "This I Believe" series more than 50 years ago. Unlike those who argued against planned pregnancies and contraception, Sanger pressed for such issues because she believed in the absolute importance of motherhood.

"I believed it was my duty to place motherhood on a higher level than enslavement and accident. I was convinced we must care about people; we must reach out to help them in their despair.
For these beliefs I was denounced, arrested. I was in and out of police courts and higher courts, and indictments hung over my life for several years. But nothing could alter my beliefs. Because I saw these as truths, and I stubbornly stuck to my convictions."

As we celebrate our mothers today, we also should celebrate that we now have the choice of motherhood and control over our bodies. As Sanger says, motherhood should not be about "accidents," but about choice.

My great friends at the Women's Fund of Central Ohio posted this today on their Facebook page:

Today is Equal Pay Day. Why today? It is the day in the year when women catch up to what men made last year. Women earn .77 cents on the $1 as compared to men. Think of it this way. Every week, women have to work Monday through Friday and then Monday and Tuesday again to equal what men make Monday through Friday.

How is that after decades of being in the workforce that women lag so far behind men in pay equity? There are historical and cultural reasons. Women's work history has been one of being paid nothing for work for centuries. As we progressed through the last century, women started from a much lower salary base so we have farther to rise. As I tell my students, when you take that first job--push for the highest wages you can get. It will set you up for the rest of your life to receive the pay you deserve for the work you do.

The cultural reasons are complex, but as one boss said to me: you don't have a family to support. Really? He didn't know all the family that I do support, but because my family doesn't look like his version of family he didn't understand. Moreover, this has nothing to do with equal pay for equal work.

So here's a task for all of us today. Take a look at your salary. Ask your boss: how do I stack up to the rest of the organization? You only get what you ask for. So ask for pay equity today.