It seems women still need a lot of help

Several years ago I attended a meeting at church that mixed us all up so we weren't sitting with our friends.  I was at a table with a middle age father and his middle school daughter.  Making small talk I was asking her about her school subjects and interests.  Her father quickly jumped in.  She loved math and science--had been her great love from the beginning--but the way math was being taught was so confusing she dropped out of the component around 8th or 9th grade for something else (don't recall what that was).  Even back in the 80s I was helping with special summer workshops for high school girls to direct them toward STEM (through the veterinary and agriculture departments at OSU). It was hard to get their attention as they fussed with their hair and make up and squealed while in little cliches.

If you read her advice carefully, it is to treat women in STEM differently so that you can pour them into the pipeline so they don't leave by the time they are ready for the top positions. 

"I think that every individual brings a different perspective to the table. It doesn't matter whether it's men or women. The more diverse group you have at the table, the more diverse the perspectives and the viewpoints, and that really helps one build solutions and products that reach a broader group. You're able to build a product that's more connected to the real world, because the real world is very diverse. Your organization and your team have to look as diverse as the real world."

". . . Most tech companies don't have a gender-diverse leadership. Even if we increase the pipeline, we lose a lot of women when they reach a certain stage in their career, due to a number of reasons. Companies need to look deeply within their culture to understand why that happens, and provide the mechanisms needed to retain and grow a diverse leadership team.
Women deal with life events differently, and most organizations don't provide the support they need to deal with life events and keep growing in their careers. There should be a way to get them back and engaged in the workforce."

On the one hand she wants diversity and different perspectives, on the other hand she says gender doesn't matter.  Which is it? A diverse team in which women have been taught since toddlerhood that their biology doesn't matter?  You can cut it off, rebuild a vagina, pump in some hormones, and you'll have a woman created from a man--who will wear a wig and lots of make-up and pretend to be a victim?

http://www.technewsworld.com/edpick/84321.html

Succeeding While Black - 5 Ways to Avoid Altercations with the Police by Matthew R. Drayton, guest blogger

I have been in situations where I could have easily gotten into confrontations with police officers. Years ago, I regularly worked with local and state police officers in major cities throughout the U.S. I can tell you first hand that there are some police officers that are prejudiced or egotistical, and some that have their own agendas. I remember arriving in Texas to meet and work with local police there. When I reached out to shake one of the officer’s hands, he refused! Later during that same trip, I was almost arrested because the same police officer who wouldn’t shake my hand, failed to tell a group of his fellow officers who I was as I approached them.

On another trip to California, a police officer stood two feet in front of me and stared me down while I waited to meet with the Deputy Police Chief. I had never met this officer before, nor did I do anything to him to warrant the stare he was giving me. In both Texas and California, I was the only African American in the group; my co-workers were not subjected to the same treatment. In both cases, I had no choice but to work through whatever issues those police officers had with me. I did not respond to their behavior towards me, and worked more closely with the officers who reached out to me than the ones who didn’t. In the end, we successfully finished our work in both cities, and I made some new friends in law enforcement.
My experiences with the police were not all bad; in fact there were more positive experiences with them than negative ones. I realize some of my circumstances and encounters with the police were of a different nature than being pulled over for a routine traffic stop, but the two situations I mentioned above were intense and could have easily become confrontational. I have been stopped and pulled over by the police numerous times over the years, and I can honestly say, I have never been mistreated by a police officer. The following tips have worked for me when I have had encounters with police officers in the past. Hopefully they can help you too.

1. Obey the law: If you are breaking the law in any way; it’s only a matter of time before you have to deal with the police. Turn on your flashers, drive slowly and pull over to a well lit busy area if you are pulled over. Cooperate if you are being questioned or arrested to avoid any physical confrontation. 
2. Be polite and show respect: Greeting and treating a police officer with respect immediately de-escalates the situation. Regardless of how you feel about being pulled over or questioned, the police are authorized to do so. Mouthing off and becoming aggressive towards the police will make the situation worse.
3. Obey police officer orders: When a policeman asks you to do something reasonable, do it. Remember, these men and women are trying to do a job, and sometimes need to gather facts to do their job. Disobeying the police officer’s orders will again only make the situation worse. 
4. Make lifestyle changes: Most of the things that happen to us are a result of our decisions. Alcohol, outdated license plates, and erratic driving are a few contributors to police stops. If you are hanging out late at night with known offenders, or in places where there is a high probability of a crime, there will likely be a heavy police presence there. 
5. Educate your children: Teach your children at an early age about police brutality, and to be respectful when dealing with the police, and all adults for that matter.  Explain current events to them in an unbiased way, and make them aware of the dangers they face if they break the law, and what can happen to them at the hands of some police officers. 

It is not my intent to downplay police brutality incidents or to be insensitive to anyone who has suffered or died at the hands of the police. My purpose is to help African Americans understand that engaging an officer properly can de-escalate the situation, and possibly avoid a deadly altercation. I am a middle-aged, African American male who regrettably has had too many encounters with the police during my lifetime. I have never been arrested or beaten by a police officer, nor have I ever been disrespectful or mouthed off to one.

Retired Army Sergeant Major Matthew R. Drayton is a corporate speaker, life coach, consultant, leadership expert and author of Succeeding While Black. He has also been mentoring youth for over a decade and is currently the Executive Director of Great Oak Youth Development Center, a NC-based non-profit organization that mentors at risk youth. For more information, visit www.MattDrayton.com.

Government funded, non-profit After School Programs

If you’d like to develop an after school program in your community, there’s apparently a lot of money. Here’s the link for government grants. You can be the director and hire your out-of-work or underemployed friends and relatives to help you. A back ground in teaching or social work might be nice, but I don't see that anywhere as a requirement. If you don't like children, you might try a different non-profit area, like finding mold, or lead, or hazardous waste.

No one has ever been able to determine what exactly these after school programs do in the long run, but in the short run they keep children supervised and off the streets, and provide adult mentors. Maybe they reduce crime; maybe they just put good kids in the path of bad kids they normally wouldn't be spending time with.

In the 1950s, my after school program was called "working at Zickuhrs," the local pharmacy, and I also had one called "working at the public library." After school club activities were known in the old days as hanging out with my girls friends for parties, overnights and picnics. When I was in elementary school I think it was called Girl Scouts, 4-H, and church choir. I'm sure the adults were role models, although we probably didn't think of them that way, and I'm sure they weren't paid. Our parents, not the government, provided the snacks, and I actually earned college money with all that adult advice and supervision from the Mayor and his wife Alice.

This definitely isn’t new to Obamadmin; the government has been using non-profits to spread the wealth for years. Bush was a heavy user of religious organizations for this. In exchange for taking government money, they were not to get preachy, which is what the church is there for. This will probably get much more restrictive under Obama--that's one promise he'll probably keep.

Just glancing through the list; in FY 2006-2008 there was about $7 billion available in just one after school snack program called CACFP; if you can throw in a little supervisory training for job skills you can dip in a pool of about $36 million through CNCS; if you’d like to educate the children on environmental issues there are numerous grants through EPA, including $25,000 from an $8 million pocket (2006-2008 years). I’ve even seen grants for getting people into mortgages in this after school funding list, although I’m not sure how that benefits the children--putting their single mom into mortgage debt instead of subsidized rental housing.

One of the "crown jewels" of after school programs is located in Chicago, called "After School Matters," and it was started by Mayor Daley's wife about 20 years ago. That should be long enough to see if it really does matter, but the fly in the ointment in determining this is that the children in the program are hand picked, and they can't participate unless they have a good attendance record in public school. Reading through a 2008 report, it appears to me it is in direct competition with several other programs in Chicago which don't get the fat cats' contributions. They all use government money, of course. But how they name it is a bit clever. For instance ASM says in a report by Sengupta

"Researchers studying After School Matters at Chapin Hall have asserted that its funding stream depends on Maggie Daley’s leadership. According to After School Matters’ audited reports from FY 2005-2006, of the $22 million in revenue received, 30% came from in-kind contributions from Chicago’s public partners, such as school and park space, while 51% came from government contributions."

Call me crazy but 51% from government "contributions" and 30% from the school and park funding is all tax money, isn't it? And $22 million a year for an afterschool arts program is nothing to sneeze at. The children are paid to attend this, so the demand is high. Then that leaves three other programs, also government funded, to pick up the slack: Department of Children and Youth Services includes the Kid’s Start and recreational centers after school programs; PARK kids run by The Chicago Park District; and Community Schools Initiative run by Chicago Public Schools. Since the Park district and the schools also contribute to ASM, it would seem to me the lesser advantaged kids are contributing to the more advantaged.

This is definitely math Chicago style. Now we see where Obama gets it.