As a manager and a mom, I find that spring no longer brings only the promise of outdoors time. Instead, it’s a flurry of school and work events and summer planning for the family on the one hand and an office team on the other hand.
More than 20 years ago, I moved to America to attend college. I had been a top student in my high school in Central America, had started the high school newspaper, and traveled extensively around the world. I also spoke English fluently, but still, was surprised and intimidated by the level of input that my classmates contributed to discussions. Later, when I moved into the workplace, my surprise and intimidation gave way to irritation and impatience at the number of times people, men and women, felt they had to say something in meetings. As part of my Americanization process, I came to understand that this “participation,” normative in American classrooms and companies, encouraged people to say something even if they didn’t see something. This appears to be a key tip that Sheryl Sandberg and her collaborators offer to girls in the new Ban Bossy campaign, and I take issue with it as a manager and a mother.
In 1990, I was living in New York, volunteering at the Asia Society, stuffing envelopes and providing general office assistance. I was overqualified, with a master’s degree in education from Columbia University and two years of teaching experience in Belize, where I grew up. I was frustrated about not being able to get a challenging job and often hid in the bathroom and cried in between tasks. But I had recently entered the United States on a transit visa and overstayed. In today’s parlance, I was an undocumented immigrant.
History was made this week on many fronts, one of which was the election of an unprecedented number of women to the 113th US Congress. Notable among these newly elected women are Elizabeth Warren, whose high-profile campaign was a rallying cry for progressives around the country, and Tammy Baldwin, who will become the first openly gay Senator. But given that demographics were an important backstory to the 2012 elections, the history made by women from immigrant communities is also worth noting.
