Gloria Romero is the author of JUST NOT THAT LIKABLE: The Price All Women Pay for Gender and retired California State Senator and Democratic majority leader of the California State Senate. Rejecting the notion that women should play “nice” and go along to get along, Romero instead urges women to confront and topple gender stereotypes head on. Yet, as she stresses, JUST NOT THAT LIKABLE is not one of those “how to fix this in ten quick steps” books. As she impresses on women, changing the status quo will take courage, commitment, and a lot of hard work.
In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that employers could no longer evaluate employees based on stereotypes. Over the successive decades, unequal pay for equal work has been outlawed and anti-discrimination laws have become common. Still, women in business, politics, and nearly every profession continue to struggle to achieve power and success equal to men. Here are just a few of the sobering statistics:
● 42% of women experience gender discrimination at work;
● Men are 30% more likely to obtain managerial roles than women; ● Women represent a third of MBA graduates, but only 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs;
● Both men and women are twice as likely to hire a male candidate.
Hear Gloria Romero discuss:
● Get over the need to be liked. Being the boss means sometimes being bossy, and if the people complain, who cares?
● Stop victim shaming. A strong, smart, ambitious woman doesn’t need to fix her supposed defects to be accepted by men and succeed.
● Challenge the “likability penalty.” Start by evaluating performance fairly, judging strong, assertive women by the same standards as strong, assertive men.
Eileen Koteles is an actor and choreographer. Raising her three sons, she realized the gift of teaching through the Arts. Now returning to the stage, Eileen performs as Dr. Ruth, an iconic sex therapist who lost her family in the Holocaust.
Silver Ambassador for Culture
Jed Mescon is a relationship builder, brand ambassador, dynamic speaker, creative thinker, persuasive communicator, veteran fundraiser, and community advocate. He is well known in Chattanooga having served as the host of the radio talk show Chewin the Chatt and as the morning news anchor for WRCB-TV.
LaTrice Currie is a native Tennessean who graduated from Hampton U. LaTrice joined Chattanooga’s Channel 3 Eyewitness News in 1995. She now co-anchors news at noon and 5:30 and also serves as Eye On Health Reporter and host of Trends on 3.
Ilene Gould is a photographer, writer, illustrator and full time news producer for NewsChannel9 in Chattanooga where she has produced every show from mornings, to dayside evening shows, to nightside. She also co-produced an hour long Town Hall called “Changing Chattanooga”. Ilene is a Michigan State Graduate with a degree in Media and Information, a concentration in Film and Video Production, and minors in Fiction Filmmaking and Music.
Rudy J. Ortega, Jr. is the Tribal President of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians. Rudy steers the continuing efforts of the Tribe’s missions of protecting the rights of Fernandeño Tataviam as Native American people and plays a supportive role with the Tribe’s non-profit, Pukúu Cultural Community Services (Pukúu) to provide community programs to Native Americans living in the Los Angeles County.
Dr. Nagwan R. Zahry is assistant professor of communication at U. of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC). Originally from Egypt where she was a Sr. Program Manager for U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and U.S. Midwest Universities Consortium, Nagwan got her PhD from Michigan State U. in media and information. After graduation, she became an assistant professor of communication and in 2018, she joined UTC where she teaches social media marketing, public relations, media and diversity. Her research focuses on science communication, health communication and persuasive messaging.