In critical fields like agriculture, science, finance and technology, they have staked a claim with their pioneering work and are building a path for the next generation. Image

In the midst of #MeToo and a reckoning over racial injustice, people have begun to re-examine the art, music, monuments and characters on whom cultural significance has been placed. But this current wave revolves not around individuals so much as the machine that produced them: the journalists, the photographers, and the fans — who were reading, watching, buying.

"If there were one tiny, very tiny, silver lining to the reality that masks are a necessary component of our daily lives now, it is this: smiling on our own terms."

Teen girls have long been at the forefront of social progress. Think Malala Yousafzai, Emma González or Greta Thunberg. These four teenagers are stepping up to continue that legacy.

Politicians. Chief executives. Newscasters. In the pandemic, the old rules of who is allowed to cry in public are changing.

Pat Mitchell, the former president of PBS and CNN who is co-chair of the Women’s Media Center. “Stereotypes still continue about what authority looks like, what power looks like, what credibility looks like,” she said. But the sound is important too.

"I was recently asked if I could recommend a “likability coach” for a woman who’d received feedback at work that she was a bit too brusque. A likability coach, really?"

The women running for president are promising many things as they make their pitches to voters. They are being asked repeatedly how being women may affect their chances. But so far, none of them are emphasizing the “glass ceiling.” In this barrier-breaking field of female candidates, it is noticeably absent.

For a long time, women were taught to “act like men” to get ahead at work. But a new breed of women leaders is upending those old rules, embracing traits like empathy and collaboration to get things done, and refusing to suppress the qualities that make them who they are.

In 2016, the average life span of women in the United States was 81.1, compared with men’s 76.1. Nearly a third of women aged 65 to 69 are now working, up from 15 percent in the late 1980s, according to recent analyses by the Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz. Some 18 percent of women aged 70 to 74 work, up from 8 percent.