for #InternationalWomensDay ♀

As I hope you already know, today is International Women's Day, a day on which, more than others, we pay attention to "Celebrate women's achievement. Raise awareness against bias. Take action for equality." In addition to my mother, grandmother, aunts, wife, and daughter, there have been several women who have made major beneficial contributions to my life. Those who have visited here a few times may have discovered that one of my favorite writers is Donella (Dana) Meadows. I first encountered her work in the 1970's when I read Limits to Growth. Her web site has a wonderfully expanded, full version on her paper on

PLACES TO INTERVENE IN A SYSTEM

(in increasing order of effectiveness)

12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards).
11. The sizes of buffers and other stabilizing stocks, relative to their flows.
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport networks, population age structures).
9. The lengths of delays, relative to the rate of system change.
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the impacts they are trying to correct against.
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops.
6. The structure of information flows (who does and does not have access to information).
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishments, constraints).
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure.
3. The goals of the system.
2. The mindset or paradigm out of which the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises.
1. The power to transcend paradigms.

Another woman, whose work I must become more familiar with, is a Nobel Laureate who has researched and published on one of my favorite topics, our commons. Her book, Governing the Commons, The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, seems like a useful supplement to Meadows' dictums. I mention these two women in particular because of my belief that, for women to attain equity, the system must be changed and the system in question is one of the world's commons. Ostrum has proposed eight principles for managing the commons:

1. Boundaries of users and resource are clear
2. Congruence between benefits and costs
3. Users had procedures for making own rules
4. Regular monitoring of users and resource conditions
5. Graduated sanctions
6. Conflict resolution mechanisms
7. Minimal recognition of rights by government
8. Nested enterprises

The preceding eight principle and twelve places proposed by two women appear to offer a framework for changing the current system so that women share equity. However, I think it wise to conclude with another observation from Dana Meadows:

“An important function of almost every system is to ensure its own perpetuation.”
― Donella H. Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer

Although I've tried to avoid using it today, that quote brings us to one by Frederick Douglas that, I believe, must be taken into consideration to have an equitable system.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

How to Triumph Like a Girl

Ada Limón - 1976-

I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let's be honest, I like
that they're ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don't you want to believe it?
Don't you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it's going to come in first.

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