Practically speaking, 50% of our planet’s entrepreneurial, leadership, and innovation-capable “genius” capacity is not at the table or being prepared to be at the table: women.
Genius means personal ingenuity, ability to influence and impact the world around you, and the willingness to engage. Sadly, the stage for this gap is still being set from birth and largely reflected throughout all phases of life. While the education is now equal to or exceeds men and there are many more women in the workforce as a whole, roles and receptivity by others are still largely gender-biased. This is further compounded by the fact that women are still largely expected by social norms to carry the bulk of the workload at home and day-to-day responsibilities for raising a family.
Anne joined forces in 2014 with Singularity University serving as an Ambassador and writing contributor in a global consciousness-raising and call-to-action — Innovating Women: Past, Present, and Future. The call-to-action is that we must close our gender-aligned gap in the innovation capacity for our planet to ensure we are putting our best foot forward to solve humanity’s problems and shape the future of our civiliation. The result of this initiative was a book, Innovating Women: Changing the Face of Technology, that was written by contributors from all over the world to tell the story, using an innovative crowd-sourced model.
Closely related, Anne is pleased to promote Sheryl Sandberg’s book, LEAN IN, and the heightened sense of awareness that it has created (LeanIn.org) that amplifies the call-to-action for everyone (women and men) to “lean in”: pursue your passion, effectively integrate it into your life and support each other. Men must also “lean in” to share roles — professionally and at home — and not be penalized!
For more context, please visit this page and read this summarized overview (PDF format).