This episode focuses on women and education globally and how creating opportunities for girls and women and ensuring equal access is directly linked to positive outcomes for societies. However, despite the significant progress for women over the past several decades, we find ourselves at an unfortunate point in time where women’s fundamental rights are under threat, and where huge gender gaps continue to exist. It is also apparent that for many women their daily experience is based on the intersection of factors such as their gender, their skin color, their accent and their economic status. This episode's guest is Gloria L. Blackwell, the President and CEO of the American Association of University Women (AAUW), and is someone who embodies what it means to be a champion for women’s rights, especially through the vehicle of education. Gloria is also AAUW’s main representative to the UN and has been the driving force behind AAUW’s signature programs, including its salary negotiation trainings. Most notably, she has significantly expanded AAUW’s outreach to girls and women of color. Among her many accomplishments is her 15-year management of AAUW’s highly esteemed fellowships and grants program—awarding more than $70 million in funding to women scholars and programs in the U.S. and overseas. Since its founding, AAUW has supported the work of scientists like Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and astronaut, Judith Resnick, the second woman to travel in space.
Episode Themes:
Gloria's leadership of AAUW as only the second woman of color in the organization's 144-year history to do so, and what this means for diversity and inclusion
Gloria's educational and professional journey and how early exposure to a foreign language sparked a lifelong commitment to women's issues globally, taking her from a Peace Corps experience in Africa, to a degree in international affairs, to working in the international education nonprofit sector
Since 1888, AAUW has provided over $115 million in fellowships, grants and awards to 13,000 women from 150 countries. Gloria discusses why scholarships remain such an important intervention for equality for women and how AAUW supports women globally
Barriers that women continue to face in higher education and the workforce and how AAUW contributes to the solution through its advocacy, education, and research.
How Gloria motivates and inspires the girls and women in her life, and her top three pieces of advice and guidance
The women that inspire Gloria each day.
Resources from this episode
Follow Gloria on LinkedIn and Twitter
Report: Women's power gap in higher education
Other Resources:
My book: America Calling: A Foreign Student in a Country of Possibility
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LinkedIn: @rajikabhandari
Twitter: @rajikabhandari
