SWAAY is a ground-breaking media and online publishing company that harnesses the style and glamour of today’s business-minded woman. SWAAY is dedicated to celebrating the stories of established and emerging entrepreneurs to advance more women into the forefronts of innovation and entrepreneurship through visually inspiring and intellectually engaging content.
If there's one community you'd expect to be all about the idea of beauty being a codified, standardized trait, it'd be the beauty pageant community. With so many movies and television shows mocking how allegedly similar all the pageant contestants are, one would expect most pageanteers to really focus on looks.
Some days, there is an almost tangible motivation that you can feel pulsing through your veins when you wake up in the morning. Other days…eh…not so much. With the new year here, it’s almost as if we are expected to feel some type of newness wash over us that guides us through the perfect business plan, social media strategy and works through the kinks of 2016. But things aren’t always this crystal clear. In fact, with that pressure, it can lead to a motivational struggle instead.
Rahama Wright, a first generation Ghanian, was no stranger to the difficulties that encumber women’s lives in Africa. Growing up, her mother would tell her stories of how different her childhood was versus Rahama’s in upstate New York. “She wasn’t allowed to got to school because she was a girl,” Wright reflects, “and her parents wanted her to marry very young.”
In 1994, at the age of nine, I received my first “serious” diary as a gift from my grandmother. Though I haven’t seen it in ages, I remember the look and feel of it quite well. It had a thick, puffy pink cover, canoodling teddy bears on the front, and an actual lock and key to keep my secrets safe and to myself. Admittedly, the contents were not compelling for anyone beyond grade school, as I primarily divulged current crushes, playground drama, and lunch line gossip.
Although burlesque may seem like an unexpected vehicle for making a statement on social issues, Earlecia Richelle believes the art of dance is an empowering way to convey powerful, unexpected messages to an audience.
Women’s body confidence. It’s a tough issue. There is no simple answer nor resolution to the fact that roughly every second woman in the world has self esteem issues. To counteract this stifling statistic, the U.N, working in conjunction with the Dove Self Esteem Project are hoping to reverse the effects of unrealistic body portrayals by the media, and the scrutiny women are under constantly to maintain a ‘shapely’ figure.
Breaking in like thunder, women across the globe are sending out messages that can no longer be easily dismissed. Once again we are entering a period in time where certain values and norms are being questioned, and 2016 has seen more light than ever shed on the importance of gender equality in the workforce, in order to promote gender equality in all aspects of life.
Being kind, charming and generous is easy for most of us when life is good. If time is abundant and there is plenty of money – if we’re loved, connected and have a purpose, most of us can bring our A-game. It’s not so easy when times are tough.
Whether you’re a man, woman, black, white, asian, gay, straight, transgender, disabled, unusual – you have probably experienced varying levels of discrimination throughout your life, and more specifically, in the workplace.
In today’s world there is no shortage of feminist-slanted marketing initiatives. Huge companies promise to “help women break the glass ceiling” with emotional campaigns that tug at the heart strings.
Though many people feel outraged by current events taking place on American soil and abroad, the hurdle between anger and action often seems too broad to jump. Though many are armed with information (and more than enough articles to fuel their fire), figuring out how to actually make a difference isn’t only a tricky situation for individuals to figure out, but companies as well. And knowing which cause to focus on, when there are so many worthy reasons to give back? That’s a whole other ballpark.
Where would we be without the inventions of the great men of the world? Apple – Steve Jobs, the telephone – Alexander Graham Bell, the atomic bomb – Albert Einstein, the gun – Richard Gatling. Nowhere – right? But what about those more practical inventions, the ones that are necessity – those that you use unthinkingly every day? Below are inventions by women that you could not live without – whether for sanity or vanity, everything below – from the dishwasher to the hairbrush, was invented by women for practicality and advantageous purposes. They go largely unrecognized now, because they are mostly objects or entities we take for granted, but SWAAY has decided to pause amidst the roaring tide of products and inventions that we could live without in 2017, to languish in the glory of those that we really couldn’t survive without.