omen today have more opportunities in the workplace
than ever before, but the picture is far from perfect.
By 1990, U.S. women’s labor force participation had climbed
to 74 percent, but 20 years later it had barely risen, according
to a 2013 report from the National Bureau of Economic
Research. Conflicting ideas about what accounts for this
stagnation range from stingy maternity-leave benefits to
sexism in the workplace. In a country where women in
leadership positions caps out at 20 percent and women are
still fighting for equal pay for equal work, women can feel
devalued and internalize society’s perceptions of them as
“less than.” A lack of confidence and assertiveness means
W
Baron was inspired to create GRSB! after thinking about
her own life and goals. “I was in a place of self-reflection. I
had just wrapped my first studio record and kept coming up
against this internal voice asking me, ‘Why did it take you
30 years to record an album when you have been writing
music since you were nine?’ At the time, there were only a
handful of people who actually even knew I played music,”
recalls Baron. “The answer became more and more clear to
me: I honestly didn’t believe I was good enough.”
As part of her coursework at AUSB, Baron began an
independent study with Dr. Dawn Osborn, who was her
advisor and professor, to try and tackle this issue. “I wanted
“Even though we have had educational
parity for 40 years, for many reasons,
it has not translated into parity at the
top levels of leadership.”
women may be passed over for professional opportunities,
exacerbating the problem. So the struggle toward gender
equality continues.
Antioch University has been an active part of this fight
from the start. Antioch College, its founding institution, was
the first college in the United States to educate women on
equal terms with men and to hire female faculty on an equal
basis with mal H