Ellen Goodman: Program Outlines

The XX Factor: Women as Leaders.
After a generation of change, women are stalled just below the glass ceiling, just outside the White House, just beyond the CEO office. We're half the medical students and only three percent of the heads of Fortune 500 corporations. We're half the law students and only 16 percent of Congress. We're doing the balancing act of work and family and bumping our heads against the llimits. It's time to talk again about women and leadership. What can we can bring to the table beyond the coffee? Let's talk about women's values as well as women's rights. What have we learned in this presidential campaign year about the old barriers and the new energy for change.

The "F" Word: Whatever happened to Feminism: Where we went right, where we went wrong, and what do women do now?
Your mother's generation traded depression for stress. Not such a bad bargain. But the glass ceiling is still in place, working mothers are overwhelmed, housewives are desperate and you want to have children somewhere between the graduate degree and menopause. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is swinging to the right and you're expected to pick up the cause. What's next for the next wave? Anybody want a life?

The Function of Media in a Free Society: Is The Personal (Too) Political?
A veteran journalist, Ellen takes us from a time when the press shielded the private lives of an FDR and a JFK to the time when the personal has become public with a vengeance. What do we make of cable TV food fights and scandals of the day? Ellen argues for the importance of balancing and deepening the media.

Women and Health
Women play many roles in the evolving story of health care in America. They are family caregivers, the intermediaries between children and doctors, husbands and doctors. They make most of the family decisions about medical care. At the same time, women are patients and research subjects, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

In the past decades we've seen enormous change in all these areas. We've seen women becoming half the medical students. We've seen nurses struggling to gain more respect for their roles. At the same time, we've seen women as patients coping with the research on hormones. The magic pill that was supposed to keep them young forever now appears to be a danger more than a help.

All of this fits into the pattern of social change that Ellen Goodman has expertly tracked.

Women and Friendship
Ellen and Patricia O'Brien, authors of the New York Times Best Seller, "I Know Just What you Mean: The Power of Friendship in Women's Lives" have treated audiences to a lively discussion of the importance of this under-rated relationship in women's lives. As a duet, they show as well as describe this connection.