Category: Featured

Our Sons Are Changing Fatherhood, But Can Men Have It All?

The notion of “Having It All” has been with us since the early days of the women’s movement. It was maddening to us at Ms. magazine to see how the empowering-sounding phrase was used against us by the individuals and institutions that had a vested interest in the status quo. By highlighting the impossibility of having it all professionally and personally, the question distracted from the real issue — that women are entitled to have equal access to it all.

Is Encore the New Women’s Movement?

Suzanne Braun Levine
Encore.org

Last week I spent an exhilarating evening exploring the Encore message with Marci Alboher and close to 200 people who had come to the New York Public Library to find out more about her book The Encore Career Handbook. In our presentation, Marci covered the nuts and bolts of how to envision and find work that matters to you in the second half of life, and I tried to connect the Encore Movement with the Women’s Movement – in which I have spent both halves of my working life.

Celebrating Women’s History Month:
The Stories We Tell

Back in 1972, when I signed on at Ms. magazine, our mission was to document the history women were making every day. Early detractors, like newsman Harry Reasoner, dismissed those efforts by pronouncing the material too sparse to sustain a magazine for more than a few issues. But Ms. kept on filling its pages. It became the place to find out about women athletes, women scientists and executives as well as the brave rebels who were speaking truth to power — women who went unremarked in the rest of the media.

Also unremarked were women whose accomplishments had been lost to history, because no matter how awe-inspiring a woman’s story would have been if she were a man, it was rarely deemed worth including in the record of human accomplishments; if it had been suggested back in the seventies, the phrase “women’s history” would have been considered an oxymoron.

My MAKERS Hero:
Bella Abzug

Suzanne Braun Levine, MAKERS

She spoke truth to power – every day

Maybe it’s because she was loud and opinionated, and I was chronically afraid to make trouble; maybe it was her moral courage; maybe it was because she kept fighting way after others gave up. Or because she was very funny. Or because pushy and rough as she could be, she always spoke of her husband Martin and her daughters with great tenderness Maybe it was her omnipresent hats. Bella Abzug, who died in 1998 – too soon to be interviewed for MAKERS – is definitely my hero.

Celebrating You Gotta Have Girlfriends With My Post-Fifty Posse!

My Post-Fifty Posse

We are five former Ms. magazine colleagues who have been having dinner together once a month for over 20 years. We like to try new places, which is a good thing, since I am not sure we would be welcome back to a restaurant after a visit. We generally sit there for three or four hours, order an assortment of appetizers, laugh uproariously — and pay with five credit cards!

Each brings her own kind of support, encouragement, empathy and humor to the table. We tease each other about the very traits we cherish. There is the Do-Gooder; the Fierce One; the Peacemaker; the Pragmatic Midwesterner and me (“the Terminally Modest One,” according to the Fierce One, whom I consulted). Collectively we are more than the sum of our parts.

Meet Barbara Young: Purpose Prize Winner National Domestic Workers Alliance

Encore.org, second acts
for the greater good

When Barbara Young courageously transformed herself from immigrant nanny into passionate advocate, she launched an encore career with the power to change the lives of domestic workers across the United States.

In 2001, when Barbara Young signed up for a nanny training class in New York City, she didn’t realize how it would set her on the path for her encore career. She simply thought taking a certificate program could help her acquire extra skills, like CPR. She took pride in her work looking after a six-week-old baby round the clock, and was thirsty for knowledge. “I figured it would be really good for me,” Young says.

Meet Ysabel Duron, 66, and the other 2013 Purpose Prize Winners

by Marc Freedman
Founder and CEO
Encore.org

It’s a great honor to unveil the stories of our seven inspirational Purpose Prize winners for 2013. These individuals come from all walks of life, but hold one thing in common: each is changing the world in what was once seen as the ‘leftover’ years. Through this important work they are simultaneously transforming perceptions about what is possible when the power of social innovation is joined with the unique value of experience. These winners are at the vanguard of a large and growing movement of individuals in their encore years helping to solve many of the toughest problems facing our nation and the world today.

LAND THE JOB YOU LOVE: 10 Surefire Strategies for Jobseekers Over 50

Mary Eileen Williams,
M.A., NCCC
FeistySideofFifty.com

How well is your job search going? Not getting the results you’d like? If you’re a midlife jobseeker, you’re probably fed up with being passed over—watching the jobs go to younger, less experienced candidates. Yet what if you could learn a few simple, yet powerful job search techniques that would change all of that? What if you could get the skills to successfully navigate the market of today and maximize your chances for landing your next position—and, better yet, find work you will actually enjoy? If you think that’s unlikely to happen for you, think again. LAND THE JOB YOU LOVE will act as your very own career counselor/outplacement coach (minus the time and expense) and provide you with the critical tools and dynamic methods of approach that will help you land that job you’ve been looking for!