This week on Full Frame: Women making strides

Full Frame

Carly Fiorina

This week’s Full Frame looks at the discrimination that women face today in their daily and professional lives. We will hear from the women who are stepping up to shatter “the glass ceiling” for good.

In-depth: Women in the Workplace

Women are an integral part of today’s workforce. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that women make up 46% of the total work force in the United States. Even though women make up a considerable portion of the work force, they still face discrimination in the work place. Experts say that although gender bias in the workplace is much more subtle than it was decades ago, it is still present. Today, women still make 78 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn and women executives earn less than 72% of what men in similar positions earn. However, women face more challenges in the workplace than just equal pay.

Women worldwide are finding that the corporate culture does not allow enough flexibility for them to raise a family while also pursuing a career. As Full Frame contributor Sandra Hughes reports, many women are becoming entrepreneurs out of necessity. But the challenges don’t stop at just more flexibility in the work day.

Newsmaker: Carly Fiorina, the post-glass ceiling era

Carly Fiorina is considered one of the most powerful women in business. Her career started at age 25 when she took a job as a sales representative at AT&T. By age 35, she was leading AT&T’s spin-off, Lucent. Her role as one of the most influential women in business was cemented when she was appointed chairwoman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard in 1999, becoming the first woman to lead a Fortune 20 company. With Fiorina at the helm, HP saw immense growth and the company even prevailed through the collapse of the dot com bubble. After her resignation from HP, Fiorina turned her eye to politics, serving as an advisor to Senator John McCain and running in the 2010 California senate election. Today, she is the founder of the One Woman Initiative and now serves as chairwoman of Good360, the world’s largest product philanthropy organization. Carly Fiorina

Fiorina says that women only make up 16% of all company board officers and that men perceive women as risks who are “pushy”, while their male counterparts are viewed as “assertive and decisive.”

Carly Fiorina joins Full Frame’s Mike Walter to discuss whether things have really changed for women in the workplace in recent years.

Panel: Yael Swerdlow and Patricia Dao are using technology to empower women on a global scale

Yael Swerdlow and  Patricia Dao

Yael Swerdlow, the co-founder of The Women’s Empowerment Foundation, and Patricia Dao, the managing director of Girls in Tech Los Angeles.

Social media is a powerful tool in the world today. It allows people worldwide to share their opinions with the click of a mouse. The tool can be used to discuss simple things like the best pizza place in town or it can be used can be used to impact change, including sparking a revolution or empowering people to take a stand. Whatever social media’s use may be, it is quite clear that women are putting it to good use on a daily basis. Women account 64% of Facebook Users, 58% of Twitter users, and 82% of Pinterest users, making them the majority of social media users worldwide.

Yael Swerdlow, the co-founder of The Women’s Empowerment Foundation, and Patricia Dao, the managing director of Girls in Tech Los Angeles, join Full Frame this week to discuss how social media and technology can be used to empower women on a global scale. Yael Swerdlow helps empower women and redefine feminist ideals and Patricia Dao works to empower, educate, and inspire women of all ages to pursue careers in the technology field.

They both believe that women need to change the way they think about themselves. They told Mike Walter that a woman shouldn’t feel guilty about taking the corner office and she should aspire to reach the top. One of the ways that they believe women are able to achieve this is to enter the booming tech industry. Technology today isn’t just a “boy’s club”, but a massive sector that also requires skills that women often excel at better than men.

Newsmaker: Saundra Pelletier, the world’s most pressing global health issue is being ignored  

Saundra Pelletier

Saundra Pelletier is an expert in women’s reproductive health technologies.

The number of women dying from childbirth is staggering. Every minute a woman somewhere in the world dies from giving birth. Every year this amounts to nearly one million children left without a mother. Without a mother to care for them, children are ten times more likely to die prematurely. There are currently more than 220 million women around the world who are in urgent need of modern contraceptives. Allowing women access to modern forms of reproductive healthcare can empower them to make their own choices about their own health. However, the impact of these choices is far more reaching than just family planning. A woman’s access to modern contraceptives can have lasting impacts on her family and her community as a whole.

Saundra Pelletier is an expert in women’s reproductive health technologies. For Saundra, women’s reproductive rights is more than just a women’s issue; it is a global health issue that needs to be prioritized.

Essay: Stop Telling Women to Smile – speaking out against street harassment with street art

Artist and activist, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Artist and activist, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh.

Constant street harassment is a reality for women worldwide. Artist and activist, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh is using her creativity and artistic acumen to speak out about harassment in public spaces. Her initiative, “Stop Telling Women to Smile”, shares the stories of women who have been the subjects of harassment.Artist and activist, Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Tatyana engages other victims in meaningful dialogue about what they’ve faced and what can be done to let people know that uninvited compliments, “cat calls” and unwanted attention are a form of harassment that is never acceptable. Full Frame visits Tatyana in her studio in New York City to see how the “Stop Telling Women to Smile” campaign unfolds.

Tune in to Full Frame on CCTV America at 7:00 pm EDT on October 18, 2014. Or watch the live stream of the program here.