Learned On | gender, consumer behavior and sustainability

Learned On...

The Poll: Women At Forefront of Sustainability

Updated: Noon, eastern time, 3/10/10 – this poll has closed.

Thanks to plentiful submissions, we now have a big list of incredible women who have made their mark in sustainability.  Because the polling widget I’m using limited us to 64, I left off some names that seemed to represent more regional sustainability work – but that doesn’t mean they won’t be known globally very soon (we can hope)!

Now, to the voting.  Though I have no way of enforcing it, please select only three names from this list who are at your top-of-mind whenever the topic of sustainability comes up.  The names are programmed to list themselves randomly each time the post loads, to help keep the top five from automatically getting lots of votes.  My agenda is to (admittedly) unscientifically measure “public awareness” of those women who are doing/have done (several of the nominees are deceased) the frontline work in the field.  In a follow-up post or two I’ll overlay and integrate what I know about gender in our business and consumer culture, and its implications for progress in sustainable development.

I will close the polling at noon (eastern time) on Wednesday, March 10th.

Thanks SO much for your interest and participation!  Much appreciation goes to WhatWomenMake who posed the initial question for me to ponder.

*Please note – this poll-in-a-post is a first-time experiment for me, so I apologize in advance if it seems clunky or otherwise doesn’t deliver the way it should.  I will learn from the experience, and appreciate your patience along the way.

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Friday, March 5th, 2010 in Green/Sustainable Marketing | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

  • laviniageneweissman
    This is also an area in which I would like us to collectively up the ante, join #csruptheante.

    When you vote decide can you measure impact this person has had and how wide range? What has changed in the social environment and why?

    I have become concerned about contests. I am giving this serious thought because Women are the bridge to social impact. If companies change the way they do business for women, I believe we will see much impact.

    This weekend, I took issue on a tweet from Elaine Cohen, because the fund created by Amy Domini is not filtering for CSR and had a decline in performance this year. Please see this investment report here http://jm.ly/jqm77vI adore Amy and have a lot of respect of her and my question I have is

    1. Is what these women done change the quality of life for some lasting social impact?

    2. What has changed to give our children a future?

    3. Did their courage result in running a company that created jobs an impacted the lives or other women?

    I feel these questions are critical to CSR now and for women to raise the consciousness beyond what has been done so we can up the ante.

    My friend Hazel Henderson helped create the Calvert Fund,

    Amy Domini created the Domini Fund

    Yet as my adviser, Cary Krosinsky of Trucost.com reminds me often, the field of investments has been the hardest to influence change.

    So applause to Amy and Hazel and who are the women changing the field or are they working as a team and their is no heroine?

    and when I go to sleep I have to ask if these companies are actually changing the lives of women (and what they stand for) and impacting the industry they are in for women.

    If you read my blog report here on Women, you will see a report where I had to agree to sign a confidentiality agreement and not identify this group of women in investments. In truth it is primarily a Wall Street, San Francisco, Boston group of women in the best firms who spoke here.

    http://bit.ly/csruptheantewomen

    I believe if we re to up the ante, we need to acknowledge and recognize the women who helped create the frontier, e.g. Hazel and Amy and the same time up the ante to new views and design new metrics that measure impact.

    I hope others will correspond here, dialogue is key to the change.
  • laviniageneweissman
    I would love to know what inspired most of these women to lead their work? I know Hazel Henderson's story. I actually just found the introduction I wrote for her for a conference where she broadcasted from her home to give the first EthicMark(r) award in 2008.

    I was at the conference and unfortunately, the time of my introduction was cut to 30 seconds. I am going to type it up this weekend and send it to her. I really wanted to give her this quality introduction.

    Over the course of friendship of 30 years, Hazel and I do not always agree and I am glad she had the opportunity to do her work the way she has.

    Now I think others are coming to the forefront in a different way and inspiring adoption and more practical application of CSR and Sustainability ideas into practice. I hope I am. I know I am in this work because of Rachel Carson, Donella Meadows. Anita Roddick, Hunter Lovinsand Hazel.

    And now I am so enjoying learning from other women who work along side many people in ordinary life to make a difference, e.g. Janine Beynus and Sara Sevins.

    I think Sara has a disadvantage on this list, because she has not written a book.

    I feel that there are many women now working in CSR who have a reach like Sara, Elaine Cohen, Ashley Orgain. These woman go about their work more quietly than the people who write books. Some of the are the woman behind corporte heroes, who are men.

    Hunter has been impacting industry now in ways most woman have not with her work in the forum created by Gil Friend with Sun Microsystems. The consumer audience and twitter crowd don't easily see these initiatives.

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