Big Think’s Women and Power Series

Both in the U.S. and abroad, women’s progress has been cast as a struggle toward equality between genders. Yet now, in certain key power areas women are outpacing and outperforming men. Including top leaders and academics, and rich multimedia elements, today Big Think begins a two-week series on Women and Power that examines the roots and consequences of this cultural change, and what it means for the persistent, still-pervasive problems ranging from wages to rights.

This series features new research on why women excel in finance, in business and in government, even while they still have not achieved parity with their male colleagues. Top experts take up issues such if the “glass ceiling” era has ended and if a male-led economic “He-cession” will be turned around by a women-led “Fem-covery.” The first post in the series, live today, examines some of the reasons why women make better political leaders than men do.

As part of the series, Big Think will also look at parts of the world where women have little or no power, from Afghanistan to the Congo, and will unveil an exclusive Global Women’s Power Index (presented in association with the Barnard Center for Research on Women) which shows which nations are the best for women and which are the worst.

Experts in this series include:

Nora Ephron, filmmaker

Sonia Nassery Cole, Afghani Film Director

Margot Wallstrom, U.N. Special Representative of the Secretary-General

Saadia Zahidi, head of the World Economic Forum’s Women Leaders and Gender Parity program

Cordelia Fine, academic psychologist and author of “Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference”

Michele Swers, Professor of Government at Georgetown University and author of “The Difference Women Make: The Policy Impact of Women in Congress”

Alice Eagly, Professor at Northwestern and author of “Through the Labyrinth: The Truth About How Women Become Leaders”

Lori Gottlieb, author of “Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough”

Among many more…