The Woman Who Was Born Again
It’s been almost eight years now. The memory is still fresh in my mind. It was a rainy night of July 6, 2011, and my baby boy was only 5 months old. I was in the dining room of my parents’ house, watching the TV news...
The lost voices in the forest – The case of poor indigenous women in Guatemala
Sometimes, in the deep wild forests of Guatemala, weird inaudible noises appear. Noises that can’t be identified as wild birds or falling trees. These recurrent noises are different, they are not natural. Someone could say they resemble voices, but have become so normalized, that people...
Why International Development Needs Storytelling
I’ve always been interested in storytelling. A story is a time-tested way to pass experiences down from one person to another. A story is how wisdom is shared with the next generation, whether a historical text or a bedtime story, and it’s how we as...
Walking the talk: Think Tanks & Gender
Like all organizations, policy research organizations — also known as “think tanks” — reflect the gendered social norms of their societies. This means that think tanks themselves can either perpetuate gender inequalities or foster gender equality in their organizational structures and research processes....
why care is a political act
There are many ways to understand what care means. Here, we define it as looking after the physical, emotional, spiritual and mental wellbeing, safety and dignity of ourselves and others. Too often, the focus is on a narrow form of self-care, forgetting the essential, and...
Episode 11: Post Beijing
It’s almost 25 years since the landmark women’s conference held in Beijing in 1995. What did women achieve at Beijing and what are some of the key new and unfinished feminist agendas? In this podcast, Joanne Sandler, the former Deputy Director of Unifem and current...
Episode 10: Art as Activism
There is no greater time than now, when we are experiencing a tremendous pushback against women’s rights and women’s rights defenders, to search for new and powerful ways to express ourselves and advocate for change. In this episode, we meet three powerhouse artists and activists:...
the shell game of self-reflection
Just after my freshman year of college, I was sexually assaulted on the Washington, D.C., metro en route to a summer internship. I remember most of the details: I was wearing a knee-length khaki skirt, and a man standing behind me reached under my skirt...
Episode 09: Gender at Work Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations
In 2015, Gender at Work founders and podcast hosts Aruna Rao and David Kelleher, along with Gender at Work Senior Associate, Joanne Sandler and Knowledge Strategist, Carol Miller, collaborated to write a book that has proven to be a must-read for feminists. In this ninth...
how to look like you’re trying to end sexual harassment
As the leader of a large complex organization — like the Catholic Church, Fox News, the State of New York, or the United Nations — the pressure on you to take action to end sexual harassment is enormous. Especially with Ronan Farrow and the New...