10 Stories Of Inspiration & Enterprise At The WIE Symposium 2011

AsianScientist (Sep. 26, 2011) – Women across the world have made remarkable contributions in the year 2011.

In politics, Yingluck Shinawatra of Thailand and Julia Gillard of Australia have made history as the first female prime ministers of their countries.

Christine Lagarde of France has taken the helm at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as its new executive director, while Tu Youyou of China has won the 2011 Lasker Award for her discovery of the anti-malarial drug artemisinin.

The World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development and the World Bank’s Think Equal campaign launched in the past week has charted the progress – and lack thereof – toward gender equality.

The bad news: girls and women who are poor, live in remote areas, are disabled, or belong to minority groups continue to lag behind. Women are still dying in childhood and adulthood, and are still falling behind in earnings and productivity. In India, women earn 64 cents relative to $1 of male earnings; in Sri Lanka it is 50 cents, and in Bangladesh it is but a mere 12 cents.

The good news: women have the right to vote in Saudi Arabia, and with improvements to the delivery of maternal care, maternal mortality has fallen dramatically in Sri Lanka from about 1,000 for every 100,000 births in 1947, to 24 in 1994. In Malaysia, maternal mortality dropped from 534 deaths for every 100,000 births in 1950 to 19 in 1997.

Women are all too aware of these issues, which is why the Women: Inspiration & Enterprise 2011 Symposium (WIE2011) felt like an oasis in the desert, a place where women could find hope, inspiration, and opportunity.

In these truly inspiring two days, we heard women such as Arianna Huffington, Dr. Jill Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Tamara Mellon, Moira Forbes, Donna Karan, and Sarah Brown speak on topics such as healthcare, education, economics, politics, and technology.

Here, we bring you 10 inspirational stories from the WIE 2011 Symposium, representing the voices of women (and men) from all sectors of society who are changing our world.


“Let me tell you how I went from kitchen to congress,” Nancy Pelosi, first woman Speaker of the House.

Nancy Pelosi, first woman Speaker of the House.

When her fifth child was in her final year of college, Pelosi ran for congress.

“You have no idea, as first female speaker of the house. It isn’t a glass ceiling; it is a marble ceiling,” Pelosi said to laughter from the audience.

Describing the gender equity issues women face, Pelosi said that she made sure that “decisions we make favor women” under her watch.

She noted that helping small businesses was the way to economic recovery, and that there was a tremendous gender disparity in equity ownership.

Pelosi said that women stood to benefit from the Obama healthcare policies. “No longer is being a woman a pre-existing condition,” she said, which won great approval from the crowd.

Copyright: Asian Scientist Magazine.