nurse,’” Anlauf recalls. “I’d had dreams of getting an MBA
after college, but women of my generation weren’t necessarily
encouraged to get an advanced degree. The boys went to
grad school; the girls didn’t.” Anlauf ’s master’s degree from
AULA helped her change careers and take a leadership role
in solving issues of inequity in her community. She is now
the director of Major Gifts at the education nonprofit Para
Los Niños, which provides education and other resources for
low-income children in Los Angeles.
parity at the top levels of leadership.”
In her recent book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will
to Lead,” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg offers up possible
solutions to the leadership gender gap, including the need
for women to support and mentor one another. The Women
and Leadership Certificate program reinforces that notion by
offering a professional network of like-minded women and
advisors to do just that.
Reaching Equality
Empowering Women
Antioch University Santa Barbara’s new Women and
Leadership Certificate program was designed to examine
issues of leadership and gender. The mission of the
10-month program is to empower women to break through
the “glass ceiling” and become leaders in the public, private,
and nonprofit sectors. As Director Judy Bruton explains,
“Even though we have had educational parity for 40 years,
where women have had access to the top educational
opportunities, for many reasons it has not translated into
Although women have a ways to go before they achieve
parity in their careers, they’ve made huge inroads over the
past few decades. Everyone, of any gender, would do well to
follow Sandberg’s advice to dream big, forge a path through
the obstacles, support others, and work to achieve their full
potential. -DS
Learn more about the Women and Leadership
Certificate program at AUSB at antiochsb.edu/women
As women in the U.S. fight for equal opportunities in the workplace,
their counterparts in developing nations face very different challenges.
“Here in Ethiopia, you have girls married at ages 10, 11, and 12 because
the families are so poor that they marry off their daughters so they can
receive the bride-price (dowry) and have one less mouth to feed. I am
hired as a technical specialist by nongovernmental organizations to design
different programs to help girls navigate their environment and avoid
situations that are harmful to them.
A major problem that women and girls face in Ethiopia is a lack of
education because of poverty. I was just in rural Ethiopia, and we were
interviewing girls and their parents. They were saying they couldn’t
send their daughters to school because they didn’t have money to buy a
notebook and pen.
In my opinion, lack of education and poverty are the biggest challenges
to equality for girls in Ethiopia. I think here it’s a lot about life skills, too.
Women have to learn to be assertive, to make decisions. When you are
a girl in rural Ethiopia, you spend half your time hauling water for your
family; you are not told to dream or think big.
”
Photo by Joel Carillet
-Ashley Lackovich-Van Gorp, a student in Antioch University’s PhD
in Leadership and Change program, is working and doing research in
Ethiopia on the practice of child marriage.
Learn how you can contribute to educational
and vocational opportunities for Ethiopian
girls and their families at CommonRiver.org
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