GenderAvenger Joins Forces with The Female Quotient to Advocate for Gender Equality

Glantz (pictured at top) had a long career in business and politics and was teaching at the Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge in 2012 after completing her fellowship. The school was conducting their quadrennial review of presidential politics, an event where campaign leaders and press attend to dig deeper into each campaign with 20/20 hindsight. The program culminated on the school's forum stage, "a place where heads of states, CEOs and global leaders took the helm of the discussion in what should have been a place for modeling good behavior."

There were five white men set to speak (and this was after the election of Barack Obama) and that sent Glantz on a tailspin. "Skipping the review, tired of all white men, all the time," she vented on the school's Facebook page. That night there was a blackout, the event was cancelled and she posted another message: "God heard our plaintive cry, she turned off the lights."

She woke up to find her post had resonated with others -- there were hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. She reached out to a friend with the idea of starting a movement to bring visibility to women and GenderAvenger (GA) was born. Glantz describes it as "an advocacy nonprofit dedicated to building a community that will ensure that women are always part of the public dialogue, whether that's on public stages, 'best of' lists, on stages where there are musicians or wherever there is a public presence." The mission is to ensure that women are always there, because presence is power.

Glantz had about 200 people on the GA e-mail list when they zoned in on the Peterson Fiscal Summit, logging the tally of men and women on stage, "and of course there were no women. Next thing I knew, they blocked us on Twitter ... shows a lot of power for 200 people to make that happen, and from there I understand we were on to something."

In GA's first few years, they would call out an organization that had poor gender balance on stage and the reaction would be: "Who cares? Or, there are only 23% of women in Tech, so having 23% of women on stage is really good."

That has changed. The reaction today is more likely to be, "We'll fix it," Glantz said. "There has been a positive shift to people understanding both the value intrinsically to women's voices in the public eye and also to their reputation."

I always say you can't treasure what you can't measure. There needs to be accountability. GA's success is rooted in its simplicity. The GA Tally is an app that can be used at an event to count and record the number of women on stage and how much time they're given to speak. It can also be sent anonymously if that's someone's preference. GA's action alerts celebrate good gender balance, and companies that are leading by example can be nominated for a stamp of approval.

Last week, we officially announced that Glantz will be passing the baton to me and that together, GenderAvenger and the Female Quotient (FQ) will accelerate equality in the workplace, continuing to amplify the voices of women. The GA Tally will be added to the The FQ Toolkit, which includes the Speaker Equity Assessor, Advancing Equality Calculator and The FQ Equity Index. The toolkit takes a data-driven approach to empower people and organizations to investigate and assess levels of inequality, and then act to change the equation and close the gaps.

"I hope the community will grow, the larger the community, the greater the opportunity for impact…and the more tools that will be developed that go beyond our borders," said Glantz.

She doesn't see herself as an equality trailblazer, but more as a "gender inequality survivor." Referring to retiring/maybe not retiring, she shared, "I am 78, I have been through many decades of not being on stage and watching this happen and it's very unlikely I'm going to stop. I can't imagine I won't find ways to continue to take my experience and turn it into even greater advocacy. I have three grandsons and I want them to grow up in a world where their expectation is they will share the stage with women."

Glantz is unstoppable and ageless, and I'm ready to take the baton. I firmly believe in women supporting other women and empowering the next generation. This is what she is doing for me. We are building a network of networks, of women supporting other women, sharing the mic and giving back with generosity. We will create many, many GenderAvengers all over the world. It will be a global phenomenon. We will keep going until one day we will not need GenderAvengers because we will live in an equitable world with representation.

Photo courtesy of The FQ. Photo credit: Melissa Lea Photography.

Click the social buttons above or below to share this content with your friends and colleagues.

The opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author and/or subject(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet, Inc. management or associated writers.