Charlotte Mangin and Sandra Rattley have launched a new production company together named Audacious Women Productions. This new company follows the success of UNLADYLIKE2020. This award winning series has reached over 6 million viewers to date.
Among projects in progress for Audacious Women Productions is Augusta Savage. (Image credit: Audacious Women Productions)
With a mission to uncover and elevate untold narratives of diverse changemakers in bold new ways, Audacious Women Productions extends the impact of its documentary films through the design of multimedia educational resources, and film screenings and events across the country in partnership with community and national organizations. Charlotte and Sandy are thrilled to continue working together to bring inspiring, innovative, and timely stories to intergenerational audiences.
At Philanthropy Women, we pride ourselves on being able to stay ahead of the curve in recognizing ideas, discovering significant trends, and identifying the people who make these things happen. We are pleased to note that the The New Yorker is now following our lead. Several years ago, PW ran an interview with Leah Hunt-Hendrix. As a reminder, Hunt-Hendrix is a scion of Hunt Oil, founded by her maternal grandfather.
Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s book, “#SayHerName: Black Women’s Stories of State Violence and Public Silence” was recently released. More details below. (Image credit: #SayHerName)
The August issue of The New Yorker ran a story that touches on many of the issues discussed on these pages. Attached below is a link to the interview with Leah that PW published previously. Our interview focused more on the hard news angle, discussing her foundation, Solidaire, and the work it does while the New Yorker article is a bit more chatty, with anecdotes of her family, social status, and the problems presented by being a progressive who happens to be the heir to an oil fortune.
Women and girls represent more than half of the population of the United States. Despite this, charitable giving to organizations serving them represents less than 2% of all philanthropic activity in the U.S. This is according to a new report published Wednesday, October 11 – the International Day of the Girl.
As a percentage of all giving, giving for women and girls decreased in 2020, despite much public discussion about the need to fund women and girls in COVID. (Image credit: WGI)
The Women & Girls Index (WGI), released by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, finds that while charitable giving to women’s and girls’ organizations in the U.S. increased by 9.2% in 2020, growth of support for women and girls was lower than the rate of growth in overall charitable giving in 2020 (11.3%), even though the COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted women and girls in myriad ways.
On September 5, Rhode Island held a special primary election to select the candidates to replace David Cicilline, who resigned as US Representative for USC District 1. The field for the Democratic candidate was crowded with 12 names on the ballot. Due to the deep Blue color of RI politics, the Democratic candidate, whoever was selected, was considered the odds-on favorite to win in the Special General Election in November.
Gabe Amo, Democratic Nominee for Congress (Image credit: Gabe for Congress)
As of June, Sabina Matos, the current Lt Governor, was leading comfortably with polling numbers surpassing 20% of the electorate. Matos is the first Dominican American elected to statewide office in the country and the first Black woman to hold statewide office in Rhode Island. She was supported by the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Ellen Burstyn has attained the pinnacle of success in the entertainment world. She has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a Tony Award, and two Primetime Emmy Awards. She is one of only 24 people who have won all three awards, known as the “Triple Crown” of acting.
Ellen Burstyn (Image credit: Marco Grub)
And Ellen Burstyn is also a philanthropist. Her most lasting legacy may not be so much about what awards what she has gotten, but what she has given back. Burstyn has been a member of the Actors Studio in New York City for most of her life and has been a co-president of the Actors Studio for over twenty years. She was instrumental in founding the Actors Studio Master’s program, an MFA degree track (currently hosted at Pace University) that offers tracks in Acting, Directing, and Playwriting for promising young artists.
To commemorate Black Philanthropy Month, let’s consider this: Of the $4.8 billion in philanthropic investments made in the south, less than one percent of that amount goes to Black women and girls. This is traditionally one of the most underserved populations in the south.
Southern Black Girls is an important philanthropic collective. (Image credit: Southern Black Girls)
This statistic is VERY disappointing. Southern Black Girls is a collective of Black women in philanthropy and they have made it their highest priority to disrupt the way philanthropy is done in the south. Their goal is to help change the status quo.
Southern Black Girls has been on a mission to raise $100 million over the next decade to financially empower the goals and dreams of Black girls and women across the south. Their signature giving vehicles – the Black Girl Dream Fund and the #BlackGirlJoyChallenge are starting to make those goals and dreams a reality.
As if you didn’t know, women face a steeper climb when seeking initial funding for business ventures. Cindy Gallop is doing a fantastic job in tracking this. In a series of Tweets, she linked to a number of articles on the subject.
Sabina Matos, candidate for Congress from Rhode Island, will be supported with a large advertising buy from Emily’s List and Elect Democratic Women. (Image credit: Sabina Matos for Congress)
The top link below discusses the types of questions potential investors ask founders. It turns out that, to no one’s surprise, women are asked different questions than men. The questions for women generally focus on potential losses, whereas men were asked about the potential for gain. The takeaway here is that, right from the get-go, men are seen as more likely to succeed, so they are asked about aspirations, hopes, and ideals. On the other hand, women are quizzed about strategies for minimizing losses.
Since July 21st, not a day has passed that I have not read about or discussed Barbie. Having finally seen it, I can say with certainty that I get the hype. Margot Robbie proves her incredible talent and range once again as stereotypical Barbie in the film. The sets and costumes lived up to every Barbie fantasy my 6-year-old self could have dreamed of. And the cherry on top was the use of the iconic Indigo Girls song, “Closer to Fine” as the anthem for Barbie’s journey from Barbieland to the real world.
Issa Rae plays the President of Barbieland, a world where Barbie’s promises for girls are realities. (Image Credit: Mattel)
Barbie as a product sold girls like me the dream that we could be anything, but as a 17-year-old woman, I now know the situation is a bit more complex. The Barbie movie plays with this contrast in ways that help us see the hollowness of American feminism, but the question remains what to do about this hollowness, and the movie doesn’t offer much help with that question.
The last couple of posts have had a focus on men and the difficulties they are supposedly facing. Let’s turn that around and focus on the success of women as leaders who stand up to their difficulties and manage to break out of the constraints they face and achieve some significant accomplishments. The first two below do just that.
Hypatia was the first great woman in science. (Image credit: Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution The Cosmic Companion)
One: Hypatia Capital
On the face of it, Hypatia Capital is an investment firm. However, the first two sentences of the mission statement very clearly indicate it is much more than that. It is an idea supported by concrete proof. Hypatia has created an ETF called WCEO. As the mission statement says:
During his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, now-Chief Justice John Roberts said the court’s role was to “call balls and strikes” and not engage in judicial activism. Oddly, SCOTUS has been judicially hyper-active of late. In the past weeks yet another precedent, bolstered by many decades of case law, was unceremoniously overturned. Affirmative Action (AA) in the college admission process has been the law of the land since the early 1970s, and passed its first Supreme Court challenge in 1977. Sadly, it is no more.
Protesters for the movement to defend diversity hold a sign outside the Supreme Court. (Image credit: Defend Diversity)
Per the ruling, colleges may not consider the applicant’s race as relevant for admission. Colleges are, however, allowed to consider–and give preferential treatment to–relatives of alumni. What’s wrong with this picture? Coming from a background of privilege entitles you to be, well, entitled. Coming from a background of slavery entitles you to get to the back of the line. But, they say, the students of color who are negatively affected by the ruling are actually from the upper middle class, so they will have lots of other choices of colleges. That might be true, but, they will be excluded from entrance into the ruling class. And note that five of the six members of the SCOTUS majority went to law school at either Harvard or Yale. This includes Clarence Thomas, who admits he was the beneficiary of AA, and he’s apparently still bitter about it.
