A Message From The Creator
Inspirational Woman Of The Day: Audrey Hepburn
Women’s News: More Than Half Of American Women Are Breadwinners, Study Finds
A Message From The Creator
Climb ‘Til Your Dream Comes True
Often your tasks will be many,
And more than you think you can do.
Often the road will be rugged
And the hills insurmountable, too.
But always remember,
The hills ahead
Are never as steep as they seem,
And with Faith in your heart
Start upward
And climb ’til you reach your dream.
For nothing in life that is worthy
Is ever too hard to achieve
If you have the courage to try it,
And you have the faith to believe.
For faith is a force that is greater
Than knowledge or power or skill,
And many defeats turn to triumph
If you trust in God’s wisdom and will.
For faith is a mover of mountains,
There’s nothing that God cannot do,
So, start out today with faith in your heart,
And climb ’til your dream comes true!
by: Helen Steiner Rice
Inspirational Woman Of The Day: Audrey Hepburn
Actress, fashion icon, and philanthropist Audrey Hepburn was born on May 4, 1929, in Brussels, Belgium. At age 22, she starred in the Broadway production of Gigi. Two years later, she starred in the film Roman Holiday (1953) with Gregory Peck. In 1961, she set new fashion standards as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Hepburn is one of the few actresses to win an Emmy, Tony, Grammy, and Academy Award. In her later years, acting took a back seat to her work on behalf of children.
Profile
Actress, philanthropist. Born on May 4, 1929, in Brussels, Belgium. A talented performer, Audrey Hepburn was known for her beauty, elegance, and grace. Often imitated, she remains one of Hollywood’s greatest style icons. A native of Brussels, Hepburn spent part of her youth in England at a boarding school there. During much of World War II, she studied at the Arnhem Conservatory in The Netherlands. After the Nazis invaded the country, Hepburn and her mother struggled to survive. She reportedly helped the resistance movement by delivering messages, according to an article in The New York Times.
After the war, Hepburn continued to pursue an interest in dance. She studied ballet in Amsterdam and later in London. In 1948, Hepburn made her stage debut as a chorus girl in the musicalHigh Button Shoes in London. More small parts on the British stage followed. She was a chorus girl in Sauce Tartare (1949), but was moved to a featured player in Sauce Piquante (1950).
That same year, Hepburn made her feature film debut in 1951’sOne Wild Oat in an uncredited role. She went on to parts in such films as Young Wives’ Tales (1951) and The Lavender Hill Mob(1951) starring Alec Guiness. Her next project on the New York stage introduced her to American audiences.
On Broadway
At the age of 22, Audrey Hepburn went to New York to star in the Broadway production of Gigi, based on the book by the French writer Colette. Set in Paris around 1900, the comedy focuses on the title character, a young teenage girl on the brink of adulthood. Her relatives try to teach her ways of being a courtesan, to enjoy the benefits of being with a wealthy man without having to marry. They try to get a friend of the family, Gaston, to become her patron, but the young couple has other ideas.
Only a few weeks after the play premiered, news reports indicated that Hepburn was being wooed by Hollywood. Only two years later, she took the world by storm in the film Roman Holiday(1953) with Gregory Peck. Audiences and critics alike were wowed by her portrayal of Princess Ann, the royal who escapes the constrictions of her title for a short time. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for this performance.
The next year Hepburn returned to the Broadway stage to star inOndine with Mel Ferrer. A fantasy, the play told the story of a water nymph who falls in love with a human played by Ferrer. With her lithe and lean frame, Hepburn made a convincing sprite in this sad story about love found and lost. She won the 1954 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance. While the leading characters in the play grew apart, the actors found themselves becoming closer. The two also made a dynamic pair off stage and Hepburn and Ferrer got married on September 25, 1954, in Switzerland.
Film Star
Back on the big screen, Hepburn made another award worthy performance in Sabrina (1954) as the title character, the daughter of a wealthy family’s driver. Sabrina returned home after spending time in Paris as a beautiful and sophisticated woman. The family’s two sons, Linus and David, played by Humphrey Bogart and William Holden, never paid her much mind until her transformation. Pursuing her onetime crush David, Sabrina unexpectedly found happiness with his older brother Linus. Hepburn earned her an Academy Award nomination for her work on this bittersweet romantic comedy.
Showcasing her dancing abilities, Hepburn starred opposite Fred Astaire in the musical Funny Face (1957). This film featured Hepburn undergoing another transformation. This time, she played a beatnik bookstore clerk who gets discovered by a fashion photographer played by Astaire. Lured by a free trip to Paris, the clerk becomes a beautiful model. Hepburn’s clothes for the film were designed by Hubert de Givenchy, one of her close friends.
Stepping away from lighthearted fare, Hepburn co-starred in the film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy‘s War and Peace with her husband, Mel Ferrer, and Henry Fonda in 1956. Three years later, she played Sister Luke in The Nun’s Story (1959), which earned her an Academy Award nomination. The film focused on her character’s struggle to succeed as a nun. A review
in Variety said “Audrey Hepburn has her most demanding film role, and she gives her finest performance.” Following that stellar performance, she went on to star in the John Huston-directed western The Unforgiven (1960) with Burt Lancaster. That same year, her first child, a son named Sean, was born.
Returning to her glamorous roots,
Hepburn set new fashion standards as Holly Golightly inBreakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), which was based on a novella by Truman Capote. She played a seemingly lighthearted, but ultimately troubled New York City party girl who gets involved with a struggling writer played by George Peppard. Hepburn received her fourth Academy Award nomination for her work on the film.
Later Work
For the rest of the 1960s, Hepburn took on a variety of roles. She starred with Cary Grant in the romantic thriller Charade (1963). Playing the lead in the film version of the popular musical My Fair Lady (1964), she went through one of the most famous metamorphoses of all time. As Eliza Doolittle, she played an English flower girl who becomes a high society lady. Taking on more dramatic fare, she starred a blind woman in the suspenseful tale Wait Until Dark (1967) opposite Alan Arkin. Her character used her wits to overcome the criminals that were harassing her. This film brought her a fifth Academy Award nomination. That same year, Hepburn and her husband separated and later divorced. She married Italian psychiatrist Andrea Dotti in 1969, and the couple had a son, Luca, in 1970.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Hepburn worked sporadically. She starred opposite Sean Connery in Robin and Marian (1976), a look at the central figures of the Robin Hood saga in their later years. In 1979, Hepburn co-starred with Ben Gazzara in the crime thrillerBloodline. Hepburn and Gazzara teamed up again for the 1981 comedy They All Laughed, directed by Peter Bogdanovich. Her last screen role was in Always (1989) directed by Steven Spielberg.
Legacy
In her later years, acting took a back seat to her work on behalf of children. She became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF in the late 1980s. Traveling the world, Hepburn tried to raise awareness about children in need. She understood too well what it was like to go hungry from her days in The Netherlands during the German Occupation. Making more than 50 trips, Hepburn visited UNICEF projects in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. She won a special Academy Award for her humanitarian work in 1993, but she did not live long enough to receive it. Hepburn died on January 20, 1993, at her home in Tolochenaz, Switzerland after a battle with colon cancer.
Her work to help children around the world continues. Her sons, Sean Ferrer and Luca Dotti, along with her companion Robert Wolders, established the Audrey Hepburn Memorial Fund to continue Hepburn’s humanitarian work in 1994. It is now known as the Audrey Hepburn Children’s Fund.
Women’s Health: Breast cancer surgery women ‘risk more operations’
BBC News Health
One in five women with breast cancer who has part of the breast removed, rather than the whole breast, ends up having another operation, a BMJ study suggests.
The reoperation rate increases to one in three for women whose early-stage cancer is difficult to detect.
In England, 58% of women with breast cancer have breast-conserving surgery.
Women should be told of the risk of further operations when choosing surgery, researchers say.
The study, led by researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and published in the British Medical Journal, looked at data collected on 55,297 women with breast cancer in England.
They all underwent breast-conserving surgery, rather than a mastectomy, on the NHS between 2005 and 2008. All the women were aged 16 or over.
They then looked at procedures carried out in the three months following the first breast operation.
The researchers took tumour type, age, socio-economic deprivation and other health problems into account.
When combined with radiotherapy, the study says that breast-conserving surgery is as effective as mastectomy, particularly for patients with an obvious, invasive tumour.
‘Emotional distress’
However, because some pre-invasive cancers called ‘carcinoma in situ’ are difficult to detect, because they don’t form a lump, breast conserving-surgery may not remove the cancer completely.
This could result in another operation.
The study says that additional operations put women’s lives on hold while they wait for more surgery. It can delay their return to work, cause emotional distress and result in the need for reconstructive surgery to the breast.
Out of the 55,297 women who underwent breast-conserving surgery, 45,793 (82%) were suffering from isolated invasive cancer, 6,622 (12%) had isolated carcinoma in situ (pre-cancerous disease), and 2,882 (6%) had both types of cancer.
Another operation was more likely among women with pre-cancerous disease (29.5%) compared with those with isolated invasive disease (18%).
Around 40% of women who had a reoperation underwent a mastectomy.
Further results suggest that a repeat operation is less likely in older women and women from more deprived areas.
‘Empowering patients’
Prof Jerome Pereira, study author and consultant breast surgeon at James Paget University Hospitals in Great Yarmouth, said the findings would help women to make decisions about their treatment.
“Patients should feel reassured that clinicians can now advise them more clearly.
“We all have a different attitude to risk but this is empowering patients to make the right decision for themselves.”
Prof Pereira said the study results would help surgeons too.
“This research focuses surgeons and challenges us to try and reduce reoperation rates.
“We need to refine imaging techniques to make this happen – and this opens up more areas for more research.”
‘Increase survival’
Ramsey Cutress, Cancer Research UK breast cancer surgeon at the University of Southampton, said it was standard practice to discuss the possibility of further surgery with patients.
“It’s important for patients to fully understand the pros and cons of surgery. The ultimate aim of these repeat operations after breast-conserving surgery is to reduce the chance that breast cancer will return in the breast, and increase survival from the disease.
“Rates of breast cancer recurrence are also reduced by other treatments such as radiotherapy, hormone therapy and chemotherapy where appropriate.
“There’s an ongoing need to better identify those at high risk of breast cancer recurrence, and to carefully select those who would benefit the most from further surgery.”
Women’s News: More Than Half Of American Women Are Breadwinners, Study Finds
The Huffington Post | By Khadeeja Safdar
The majority of American women are now breadwinners in their households,according to a survey conducted by Prudential Financial.
Of the more than 1,400 women surveyed — 40 percent of whom were single or divorced — 53 percent were the breadwinners in their households. Nearly a quarter of married women surveyed said they earned more money than their husbands. (Hat tip: Wall Street Journal)
In the past decade the income gap between women and men has narrowed, a topic that was explored in Washington Post reporter Liza Mundy’s recent book “The Richer Sex,” which forecasted that women are on track to outearn their husbands.
Mundy’s prediction stems from a number of other gender-related shifts that have taken place in recent years: Colleges are graduating more women than men; women under 30 earn more than their male counterparts in most of America’s largest cities; and women now comprise about half of the workforce.
Though women are making gains, the Prudential Financial study found they still lag behind men when it comes to financial literacy and confidence: Only 23 percent of female breadwinners said they felt equipped to make financial decisions, much lower than the 45 percent of their male counterparts who said they did.
Confidence in money matters has a number of repercussions, from saving forretirement to salary negotiation. Many women won’t reassess their earning potential to make sure they’re getting what they deserve without being pushed to do so,financial advisors told the New York Times in 2010.
Even though wage inequality has become less significant for younger women, the gender pay gap still exists and reportedly becomes wider with age. On average,women still get paid just 77 cents for every dollar a man earns doing the same work.
The pay divide is even greater in finance jobs. A woman financial manager earns 66 cents for every dollar a man earns to do the same job. And while women are gaining ground in obtaining degrees, a 40 percent salary gap exists between men and women with MBAs, 10 to 15 years into their careers.
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