Four women who have either held elected office, studied women and leadership, worked as executive leaders or helped get women elected will discuss how gender plays out in politics, particularly in the presidential race.
The panel features former San Jose City Councilwoman Cindy Chavez; business executive and political fund-raiser Lorraine Hariton; Morgan Family Foundation President and former California Senator Rebecca Q. Morgan; and Stanford Law Professor and Ethics Center Director Deborah L. Rhode.
Panelists will explore such topics as whether the playbook is different for male and female politicians, why women are underrepresented in leadership positions and how the role of women in politics has evolved in the United States. Panelists also will respond to audience questions.
Foothill College History/Women's Studies Instructor Dolores Davison, M.A., who also serves as the Academic Senate president and Curriculum Committee chair, will moderate the discussion. The program is co-sponsored by the Commonwealth Club of Silicon Valley- Foothill College
Bio
Cindy Chavez
Cindy Chavez served as Vice Mayor of the City of San Jose. While a member of the San Jose City Council, she represented Council District Three (which includes the downtown area) on the San Jose City Council. Chavez was first elected to the Council in 1998 and re-elected in 2002.
In 2005, she was chosen by the San Jose Mayor and confirmed by her colleagues on the City Council to serve as Vice Mayor. She is currently working as a lecturer teaching Local Politics at her alma mater San Jose State University.
Dolores Davison
Dolores Davison is an associate professor at Foothill College in Los Altos, CA.
Lorraine Hariton
Lorraine Hariton has spent more than 25 years in the technology sector. As a former CEO and general manager, Hariton has also directed a number of executive functions, including business development and strategy, sales and marketing. Much of Hariton's career has allowed her to be affiliated with companies whose products reflect key milestones in the timeline of technology, including IBM's mainframes, Network Computing Devices' thin-client technology, Verifone's e-commerce financial infrastructure, Beatnik's Internet audio solutions and Apptera's speech applications.
From June 2003 to December 2004 Hariton was President and CEO of Apptera. During her tenure Apptera shipped its first commercial products, established marquee customers and channel partnerships and raised $8 million in venture capital from Alloy, Lighspeed and Walden International. Previously, Hariton was CEO of Beatnik, Inc., where she currently remains as Chairman. During her tenure with Beatnik, she raised more than $40 million in venture capital from Mayfield and others. Hariton grew the company from 10 to 125 employees and successfully re-positioned the company for profitability from a web based audio content company to the leading audio technology provider for wireless devices.
Rebecca Morgan
Rebecca Q. Morgan was born in Vermont. She holds a bachelor's degree from Cornell University and an MBA from Stanford University. Ms. Morgan has a long-standing commitment to community service as demonstrated by her career. She served as a member of the Palo Alto Board of Education from 1973 to 1978.
Chairing the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors for one year, she served as a Board Member there from 1981 to 1984. Ms. Morgan was a California State Senator from 1984 to 1993, and President/CEO of Joint Venture Silicon Valley from 1993-1998.
Deborah Rhode
Deborah L. Rhode is one of the nation's leading scholars in the fields of legal ethics and gender, law, and public policy. An author of 20 books, she is the most frequently cited scholar in legal ethics. She has headed Stanford Law School’s Keck Center on Legal Ethics and the Legal Profession, and is the founding director of Stanford University's Center on Ethics.
Professor Rhode has served as President of the Association of American Law Schools, Chair of the American Bar Association Commission on Women and the Profession, Director of Stanford University's Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and Special Counsel to the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives during the Clinton impeachment proceedings. She is a regular columnist for the National Law Journal. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, she was a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
A wonderful panel conversation, but I find it rather sad that we're still asking the same questions as in the 1970s.
I particularly appreciate Cindy Chavez's comments on trying to raise gender-blind children, and Deborah Rhode's suggestion that our emphasis on individualism is harmful.
member. 
