Dear all,
As the holidays and the end of the year are approaching, we enter a time of reflection and appreciation. We at Librae are especially grateful for the wonderful Mentorship Programme’s seasoned professionals who support their mentees in exploring their ambitions.The Programme is in full swing, and we have decided to launch another edition for additional participants in 2021! If you’re considering joining or you would like to know what the experience is like, check out this interview with one of our mentees Marsha Goei, co-founder of a booming new dating app. We would love to hear about your experiences as well through our survey, so we can have more insight in the professional/academic challenges you face and how we could help.
Upcoming Events
Also keep an eye out for more information on our next event on the 16th of December, where we will host Wies Bratby, founder of Women in Negotiation. As a former top lawyer and HR director, she knows like no other how important it is that women know what they want, have the confidence to ask for it and the skills to actually get it. Another woman who has succeeded in breaking through to the top is Christine Darden, the first black woman at NASA. She is one of the speakers at VSV Leonardo Da Vinci’s Diversity Day Event on the 3rd of December. Check out the links to this event in the agenda above!
New president, New Congress: Now What?
US Election season has come and gone, the chips are down, but what does this all mean? A record-breaking 131 women were elected to Congress, including numerous women of color. However, the New York Times article linked in the In the News Section lays out a nuanced overview of how representative the House and Congress really are (spoiler alert: they still have a long way to go).
As Dutch Elections are also coming up in 2021, we may do well to consider not just the party or ideology we’re voting for, but also what the person on the list might contribute to our Parliament’s diversity and whether it reflects the makeup of our society. After all, advocating and negotiating for your own rights in a professional setting becomes much easier if you are backed up by legislation that supports your position in the workforce.
Women in the Workforce
For all the claims that the Netherlands is a progressive, emancipated country, we also have to face the fact that many women are not financially independent. In the majority of Dutch households, the male is still the main breadwinner, especially as many women choose to work parttime after having children. Check out the Documentary series “Waarom werken vrouwen niet”? in our Tips section and explore the labour participation debate from multiple angles.
Economic Reparations, Deliberations and Vaccinations
COVID-19 made its entrance over a year ago at this point, and has had devastating effects on communities worldwide. In the previous newsletter we discussed women as the primary victims of its indirect consequences, but according to Roberta Clarke and Chimimba David Phiri they are also at the heart of post-COVID recovery. UN Women offices in South- and Eastern African regions are adopting numerous strategies to support rural women in agricultural and entrepreurial pursuits, as well as their often unrecognized caretaking tasks. Why not use the “new normal” as an opportunity to reshape economic systems and make them more equitable? Find the article here.
Naturally, before economies can be rebuilt safely, multiple reliable vaccines are required. Sophie Rose explains how human challenge trials will be crucial to developing sufficient vaccines in a smaller timeframe. She explains why the risks are worth it ,why she chose to volunteer and why she helped launch non profit 1Day Sooner: To advocate for and encourage young people to volunteer in trials. Check out her 5-minute Ted Talk below!
Although the days are dark and we commemorate the anniversary of a global pandemic, we also have reasons to celebrate: Opportunities for growth and recovery, as rebuilding a system from the ground up offers us the chance to reconsider whether it still serves us. The same holds on a smaller, individual scale: let’s evaluate our habits and how we communicate our desires and intentions, so that we don’t sell ourselves short in a negotiation or in our personal lives again. A new year, a new president, and new resolutions are right around the corner, so let’s take a moment to reflect on the whirlwind that was 2020.
We wish you safe and happy holidays, and a less glittering but still valuable start of the new year!
Stay up to date with Librae and be notified of upcoming activities and opportunities, make sure to follow the Instagram and LinkedIn page. Don’t forget to add info@librae.network to your contacts so that future emails don’t end up in the spam.
All the best,
The Librae Team
