By Tom Flanigan
http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wfsu/local-wfsu-968002.mp3
Tallahassee, FL – Tallahassee's Third Annual Downtown Book Fair took place Saturday at the city's Downtown Market. Many local authors were on hand. Tom Flanigan reports there was also an out-of-town writer who is much better known for her radio and TV work.
Katty Kay reports on American politics for the BBC. She's often heard on WFSU-FM when she fills in for Diane Rehm. Kay is known around the world and gets lots of fan mail.
"Dear Katty: I am a farmer near Dara Salaam in Tanzania. I like you. Will you marry me? I will pay 20 goats."
On Saturday, she was the Book Fair's featured speaker. Kay and B-C's Claire Shipman co-wrote a book in 2009 entitled: "Woman-omics: Write Your Own Rules for Success." It sets forth a cold, hard bottom-line rationale for workplace gender equality.
"Whether you are a big company, a small company, by any measure of profitability, equities, return to investors, profit, you will do better if you have more women in your corporation."
Kay say women's contributions are especially critical in executive suites and boardrooms.
"Women take longer-term decisions. We're more risk-adverse. Hedge funds run by women tend to run flatter. Hedge funds run by men spike, but they also collapse. Women just make decisions on the basis of what will happen to the corporation six years down the road, not based on what's going to happen to it six minutes down the road."
In their book, Kay and Shipman set forth a solid case for greater workplace flexibility and employee self-determination. And while most men don't hesitate to let their organizations know what they want, women are generally more timid. Kay thinks that needs to change.
"We sometimes think we're there by the grace and favor of our employer and that we can't ask for too much, whether it's time off or more money or higher status. And I think sometimes we need to have a little bit more self-belief and I hope that the numbers are there that show you that companies that employ more women simply do better, give all of you some of that confidence to do that."
Since Kay's beat is the U.S. political scene, she mentioned during her talk that Florida's politics had a bit of an international reputation. We couldn't resist asking her to clarify that later.
"From a foreign perspective, the experience of 2000 and the recount still colors what people think about Florida. Because that was an election that the rest of the world was watching very carefully and of course because President Bush was elected, and then there was September 11th and then there was the invasion of Afghanistan and then of Iraq, a whole load of events in foreign minds followed from that 2000 election."
Fortunately, it seems most of those folks don't bear a grudge. Overseas visitors to Florida reached nearly eight million last year, an all-time record.