I’ve been tossing this around in my mind: in one of my favorite movies the main character states that she must work harder, her output must be
over and above her male and white female peers in order to be taken seriously in the performance of her job. She called it “the black tax” and the white male she was confiding in couldn’t see it, not because he didn’t love and appreciate her effort and credentials but because he lacked awareness. 

Spiraling off this I believe that women, all women, have a similar tax, our glass wall, so to speak: our “menstrual (blood) tax” limiting, in the eyes of men, our potential in all we women do or aspire to do. 

Let us women reflect on our “menstrual tax”.

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After 70 Years of Men, Some Say It Is ‘High Time’ a Woman Led the U.N.(President Michelle Bachelet of Chile; Irina Bokova of Bulgaria, head of Unesco; Kristalina Georgieva of Bulgaria, a European Commission vice president; and Helen Clark of New Zealand, head of the United Nations Development Program, have been cited as possible nominees. as possible successors to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.) By SOMINI SENGUPTA published by The New York Times August 22, 2015

UNITED NATIONS — The bearded diplomat in a striped tie addressed a roomful of his peers the other morning on the subject of how the next United Nations secretary general should be chosen.

Among the suggestions offered by the diplomat, Margus Kolga of Estonia, was to finalize the selection as early as three months before the new term begins, in January 2017, “simply in order for him to prepare,” as he put it.

“Him?” piped up Mary Robinson, a former president of Ireland, so quietly that Mr. Kolga did not hear her at first. 

To read more, go to http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/23/world/after-70-years-of-men-some-say-it-is-high-time-a-woman-led-the-un.html?referrer=

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In the above article, female UN dignitaries are looking for that one quintessential woman that would not fail in her duty so as to bring up others and not fail, destroying future female selections as Secretary General of the UN. Can we not all understand/appreciate the awesome weight the search for this messiah, this quintessential woman, has? And once found, would she want to be sacrificed on the alter of male misogyny, her every move analyzed in harsher tones then Trump is capable of – a woman unfazed and humbled with her power to guide the world toward and peace. Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir would have been such women – we have her now in Winnie Byanyima, Kuniko Inoguchi, Madeleine Albright, to put just a few names forward, and in the future, Malala Yousafzai.