Vision 2020: National Gender Equality Initiative
Chicago women business leaders unite for the national campaign
A number of prominent Chicago women business leaders are helping drive a national campaign to make gender equality a national priority. The campaign, called Vision 2020, is part of Drexel University College of Medicine’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership and is focused on revitalizing the national dialogue about women and leadership.
“At the heart of all social progress is discourse and understanding,” says Ruth Ann Gillis, executive vice president and chief diversity officer for Exelon Corporation, president of Exelon Business Services Company and Visionary Delegate for Illinois in Vision 2020. “This campaign is focused on giving women a greater voice in government, media, education, business and other realms where our influence is not always proportionate to the impact they have on our lives.” The Exelon Foundation is a Corporate Partner in Vision 2020 and is serving as a “Forger of the Future” in the initiative.
Vision 2020’s action agenda is focused on moving America toward equality by inspiring and engaging new generations of women and men to finish the work of the suffragists, who pursued women’s right to vote as fundamental to social and economic justice. The centennial of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution will be celebrated in 2020.
“Equality is a measure of our democracy,” explains Cynde Munzer, a partner with Arnstein & Lehr LLP. “Today women make up 51 percent of the population, but represent only 18 percent of top leaders in the U.S. Vision 2020 is about finding ways to improve these percentages.”
Other women from Illinois participating in Vision 2020 include: Connie Lindsey, executive vice president, The Northern Trust Company and national president, Girl Scouts of the USA; Nuria Fernandez, senior vice president, CH2M Hill; Deirdre Joy Smith, founder and president, POWER: Opening Doors for Women; and Laurel Bellows, founder and principal of the law firm of Bellows and Bellows, P.C. and president-elect of the American Bar Association.
At the initiative’s launch last October in Philadelphia, the Illinois delegation teamed with women leaders from around the country to discuss the key issues and generate ideas to advance women’s leadership and achieve equality by the year 2020. At the end of the meeting, leaders from all 50 states signed a Declaration of Equality, just two blocks from where 56 men signed the Declaration of Independence 234 years ago.
The women participating at the launch included former governors and mayors, nonprofit leaders and athletes, scientists and artists. Speakers included actresses Geena Davis and Jane Seymour, and astronaut Mae Jemison. Ms. Davis and Ms. Seymour are known for their portrayal of strong women characters in movies and television; Ms. Jemison was the first African-American woman in space.
Vision 2020 is in the process of using the ideas generated at the launch to develop and launch a decade-long specific action agenda. The women leaders from each state will be creating local action projects in an effort to break down barriers to leadership in their home states. They’ll gather again in 2011 to share ideas and successes in their advocacy.
Vision 2020 is also co-chaired by Lynn Yeakel, director of the Institute and Co-Chair of Vision 2020, who is also Director of the Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership at Drexel University’s College of Medicine.
“Like any movement, Vision 2020 will not be neat and it won’t be tidy,” Vision 2020 Co-Chair Rosemarie Greco told the gathering of women leaders. “But it will change the way women see themselves and the way the world sees them.”
Tagged as: Vision 2020, leadership and advocacy
