Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo at World Economic Forum 2008

A couple of days ago I picked up the new Time magazine at Lunds (an impulse purchase I usually resist since I don’t even keep up with the magazines I subscribe to) because the cover story caught my eye—The State of the American Woman.

• In 1972, women earned fewer than 10% of law and medical degrees; today they are near parity.
• Women now get about half of the Ph.D.s (compared to 15% in 1972) and 60% of the Master’s degrees (up from about 40% in 1972).

That is a huge shift in a society in a relatively short period.

Towards the end I read this:

If male jobs keep vanishing, if physical strength loses its workplace value, if the premium shifts ever more to education, in which achievement is increasingly female, then we will soon be having parallel conversations: What needs to be done to free American men to realize their full potential?

My knee-jerk response is: Oh yes of course everything is once again about men! But. Think about that—it’s interesting. Men have lost more jobs than women in this recession—primarily in construction and manufacturing—and everyone is talking about the emerging and growing knowledge economy.

So where does that leave men? Men are, of course, still the vast majority of CEOs and world leaders. But the vast majority of men are not CEOs or world leaders. Most men, like most women, are in everyday relationships with people they love—partner, spouse, family (I refer to the broadest [and happiest, if I dare say] definitions of the aforementioned). Really, don’t we all just want to get along?

And don’t we all just want to reach our fullest potential—in all aspects of our lives?

I am looking forward to these conversations.

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