As a member of the Board of a fast-growing Women’s Fund, it’s sometimes easy to forget that everyone doesn’t look at philanthropy through a gender lens, but Fern Portney’s post over on Philantopic caught my eye as i was catching up on my blog reading this weekend. She brings together several threads that are well known among a subset of those in the philanthropic sector, but not covered well by the mainstream philanthropy press. To excerpt the punchline:

As an advisor to the initiative, I’ve observed the following phenomena, which bode well for the future of philanthropy:

• Women donors are strategic. They understand, deeply, the wisdom of funding women and girls.
• They care about impact and know that women’s funds — which vet their grassroots grantees for effectiveness — are an effective way to be sure their dollars truly make a difference.
• They are relational. They want to give in community, to give together.
• They are egalitarian and recognize that their dollars are far less effective without “grantee partners,” the women on the front lines who know how to use the funding they provide. In the world of women’s funds, you will see donors and grantees working side by side, a Disney heiress collaborating with the director of a shelter in Harlem.
• Women are charging ahead even as the economy falters. Women Moving Millions has quickly surpassed $90 million toward its $150 million goal.

The upshot? Women are positioned to lead the way in shaping philanthropy’s future.

Today we are pleased to be powering a campaign that aims to harness the power of the women of the blogosphere to make good on the promise inherent in Fern’s post. BlogHer - the dominant women’s blogger portal - is reaching out to 8 million women who read blogs by and for women - and launching BlogHers Act. For the next month prominent women bloggers will be featuring stories on the subject of maternal health around the world, and encouraging readers (and anyone else) to support five projects via GlobalGiving. We are very psyched to be part of this effort, and to see the power of the BlogHer community in action.

Read the press release here.

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It’s Valentine’s Day. Or, for many people who are trying to end violence against women, it’s “V-Day.” 2008 marks the 10th Anniversary of V-Day, the brainchild of writer and performer, Eve Ensler. Who would have thought that a little play-ful of vignettes about women’s sexuality, called the Vagina Monologues, would turn into an international movement, with performances of the play taking place all over the world? Events are scheduled on college campuses, in churches, and in dozens of countries throughout 2008. They will attract thousands of people, make them more aware of the unconscionable violence that takes place against women and girls every day, and - we all hope - spur both men and women to become advocates for organizations working to change this dynamic.

Eve Ensler and Jane Fonda were on the Today Show today, talking about the anniversary. Aside from embarrassing Meredith Vieira by uttering a no-no word on network TV, they highlighted the work V-Day is doing in the Congo, where Today’s Ann Curry has been reporting for the last couple of days. Taking on rape and sexual violence again women in the Congo is truly God’s work, and it’s great to see mainstream media putting real faces and voices to the atrocities that continue. Go Ann!

We try to not be to “salesy” on this blog, but if you are interested in supporting some great organizations working to prevent and address this kind of gender violence, check out gender-based projects on GlobalGiving.

Happy V-day.

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As most of my friends and colleagues know, one of my favorite columns of my favorite online publication is The Dismal Science column on Slate. And I muse often–and out loud–about how women do (or do not) behave differently at work than men, or whether they have greater chances at happiness today than before, because I’ve come to a feminist consciousness late in life and I feel like I need to make up for lost time. And I love the science of economics, despite not having chosen it in college or in graduate school–again, making up for lost time.

So this latest article from Slate started talking about how when legislative mandates forced more women into leadership positions in village councils, the delivery of public goods increased (and the quality of such goods stayed as high as when men were in leadership positions) but residents of villages headed by women were actually less satisfied with the public goods, I thought I’d hit the trifecta. [Icing on the cake: the Slate article cited the work of Esther Duflo, whse work at the Poverty Action Lab at MIT I have really admired over the years.]

My trivial little delight at finding an article that was as relevant as any Google ad served up to me in my Gmail account using entirely analog searching techniques aside, this finding really makes me pause. Because the implications are startling. Either we have really not understood the nature of public goods (and they aren’t really good for people), or we have hardwired biases against being able to perceive objective reality (which means those biases are extremely difficult to overcome, or …

It’s something I actually often wonder about international development. There’s a small group of people in the world (and I hang out with them all the time, so my own perspective is warped) who have the privilege of knowing about, and participating in, the adventure that development can be. How we can communicate the drama and the incredible high that comes from hard-won success to people who don’t know about it–and perhaps even have a bias against learning more about it?

But I’m a liberal at heart–I do believe human nature can change. After all, if I can gain feminist consciousness and an appreciation of the dismal science late in life, why not?

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