I’m thrilled to be participating: “The gathering will open with a review of past challenges faced by women and strides made to confront them over the past 15 years, with the goals of Beijing and the areas of progress, stalemate or retreat as a starting point. The remainder of the meeting will focus on strategies to address the most pressing challenges facing women across the globe. Participants at the meeting in Florence will ask: Why does inequality endure? What underlies all of these emerging problems? What is needed to turn this around? What has been missing? What will it take? How do we do it? In short, how does a much larger community of institutions and individuals see themselves as stakeholders so that this larger community will act as much out of self-interest as out of any abstract sense of justice?”

From Britt Bravo's interview with Lisa Witter: "And we found out that a lot of organizations would come in and they would talk about their target audience as a monolithic gender. We knew that the trends were showing that women give more, women are engaged more, women vote more, women are twice as likely to pass on information, and women make 83 percent of the consumer decisions. So,we just knew that if you wanted to make social change, you had to understand how to connect with women and how to motivate women. Yet, the NGOs that we were working with didn't understand that at all. They thought, men and women, sort of the same."

For all the bad news on Goldman Sachs, here's the good: "Goldman Sachs is supporting partnerships with universities and development organizations that will lead to 10,000 Women receiving a business and management education over five years. These partnerships are funding innovative business and management education programs in countries around the world. These certificate programs are pragmatic, flexible and shorter term and help open doors for thousands of women whose financial and practical circumstances prevent them from ever receiving a traditional business education."

"The Girl Effect is the powerful social and economic change brought about when girls have the opportunity to participate. It’s an untapped force in the fight against poverty, and it’s driven by champions around the globe…" including some corporate and philanthropic powerhouses.

Allison wrote about the women of Kuwait using their blackberries and cell phones to email the Kuwaiti legislation in favor of full women’s suffrage.

Women for Women International (WfWI) has worked with 200,000 women survivors of war, civil and political conflict and social strife around the world, distributing $79 million in direct aid, microcredit loans and other forms of assistance to women at the grassroots.

In our ongoing series on Mobile Myths and Realities: Deconstructing Mobile" we turn to how women are or are not benefitting from the ibiquity of mobile telephony.