Tomorrow night, eyes will be glued to TV sets across the nation for the Biden-Palin political showdown. Though historic in its own right, the debate will not be a political first: in 1984, Geraldine Ferraro became the first woman candidate to hold her own in a vice presidential debate against...

This month, Rwanda made global history when it became the first nation where women outnumber men in parliament. And according to a newly-released UN study, there has been a marked increase in women's political participation worldwide.

Yet for all the advances women are making on the global front, women's political...

With yesterday's ouster of Sallie Krawcheck from Citi, the prostration of Wall Street's triad of powerful women was a mission completed. The announcement, amid a week of devastating shake-ups in the financial sector, hit a particular nerve: Krawcheck had asked that clients be paid back for Citi's defective investments -...

2008 will go down in the history books as a rollercoaster of an election season, one that has highlighted at times both the strong spirit of our democracy and the divisions among our nation's citizens.

Yet today, on the anniversary of 9/11, I'd like to remind our country of...

What's amazing about Senator John McCain's choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate on the Republican ticket has nothing to do with her family, with her possible membership in the Alaska Independence Party (a goal of which was to move the state toward secession from the U.S.), her...

A pregnant woman in Georgia mourns the death-by-airstrike of her husband on the front page of today's New York Times. Below the heartbreaking picture is the equally gut-wrenching story of unnecessary and painful death in the hands of U.S. immigration authorities. Both are tragic tales which most of us who...

Last week, the 2008 election brought us a far cry from headlines worthy of a presidential race -- say, proposed policy initiatives tackling the escalating deaths in Afghanistan or our rapidly declining economy -- and brought us instead to a shameful low: a thoughtless and disrespectful narrative on race. Amidst...

It's a tragic twist of fate to read a headline that begins "Women Are Now Equal" and follows with "As Victims of Poor Economy" -- especially when you've been an advocate for women's issues for more than thirty years. But yesterday's article in the New York Times is yet...

Citing his close personal and professional relationship with Tim Russert, veteran anchor Tom Brokaw has stepped up to lead Meet the Press through the 2008 election season. It's a good interim move to maintain the respect and high level of quality which the show has become famous for.

What...

As the second Sunday rolls around without Tim Russert, and while Brian Williams will be standing in this weekend, I am remembering the influence Meet the Press has had on the leadership of this country, due in part to the seriousness and poise with which Russert treated both his guests...

Back in the 1980's, I was on the NYC Human Rights Commission that held hearings on the pervasive problem of sexual harassment in the construction sector. The most moving story I heard during that period came from a male construction worker. He talked about what a typical day looked like,...

When Senator Clinton decided to suspend her candidacy after eighteen months of rigorous campaigning last Saturday, I just so happened to be in Ohio, among nearly 100 women who had come together to -- of all things -- learn how to run for political office. Imagine the odds; after so...

In this week's Gallup Poll, national Democratic voters continue to be evenly split, with Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each receiving 47% support for the party's nomination. Yet despite this neck-and-neck race to the partisan finish line, as Eric Boehlert recently surmised, the press has been pushing...

When Senator Obama called on our nation to create a more perfect union, his appeal resonated deeply with Americans of every race. His words spoke to the legacies of the grief and guilt, anger and apprehension that we bear as a nation, remnants of a history which has never been...

Recently, the financial gurus at Motley Fool ran a provocative piece on financial prowess. Their prime assertion: Warren Buffet invests like a girl. Indeed, author LouAnn DiCosmo attributes Buffet's monumental success to his gender-bending ability, doing what women investors have long been shown to do: trade less often, conduct...

Last week marked the 22nd anniversary of the glass ceiling's entrance into our vernacular -- a phrase which cleverly described the invisible but extensive impediments to women's ascent into positions of senior leadership. Over two decades have passed since we gave the problem a name, and while women's collective gains...

Like many of you, I listened to Senator Obama's tremendous speech last Tuesday with equal measures of pride and awe: pride at this relatively young man's attempt to bring race from the neglected sidelines of life to the center of our attention, and awe at his bravery in doing it....

I've traveled from Minnesota to New York, Georgia to Colorado, helping my team at The White House Project inspire, inform, and equip a diverse array of women to take the political lead. Of the nearly 1,500 women we have trained thus far, many invariably ask the above question, and...

I've written a great deal about how this historic election season has led to a number of political firsts, but I've never seen it expressed quite this way: in a recent column for Newsweek, Martin Linsky wrote, "This campaign will always be remembered for the emergence of the first...

There is a time when music becomes the best politics. From its lilting cadences and bursts of staccato to its heartrending twins of harmony and melody, music can be a truly transformative medium and a powerful instrument of human connection. Yesterday, The New York Philharmonic gave an unprecedented concert...