Women in Audio

2  Outreach: Organizations and Current Initiatives

Pull

In her book, Pull, Dr. Pamela Laird describes how throughout history, the concept of “social capital” has determined the upward mobility of American citizens. She dispels the notion of the “self-made man,” showing that famous figures such as Ben Franklin and Andrew Carnegie each had help from networks that enabled them. “By the late 1980s,” she writes, “it became clear that nobody can penetrate a workplace ceiling without pull from above. That pull requires social capital” (Laird).

“Terms such as ‘glass ceiling,’ ‘networking,’ ‘mentor,’ ‘gatekeeper,’ ‘keeper,’ and ‘role model’ have become buzz words in the social capital lexicon over the past four decades,” she writes. As mentioned in ...