Paul Gaudette dette
Inside this edition (Oct. 27) of the Dublin Citizen, you will find our annual women in business section, which we have been publishing for more than a decade.
This section is both one of my most loved and most hated.
Let’s start with the good. The section allows us to connect with prominent and noteworthy women in the Dublin business community and get to know them as we write a profile, asking about basic information, what goes into their day-to-day work and what led them into their career path.
These may be people we’ve known for years, but there is not a single time that I’ve sat down to do one of the profile stories that I haven’t walked away learning more about them and appreciating them even more as a person.
So many people, both men and women, work hard serving customers and their community and never getting noticed. It’s nice to be able to publish stories that gives their neighbors and clients insight into their daily tasks and their beliefs.
The section is timed to come out around National Business Women’s Week, so that’s why women are the focus.
It’s no longer that uncommon to see women in any workplace, but it’s foolish to think wage disparity or public perception doesn’t make at least some jobs more difficult for women. I’ve heard some say that women working has lost its “novelty,” but if we have the option to celebrate some of the people who make our community and businesses better, why wouldn’t we?
The bad comes in the selection process. We only have so much space to run stories and so much time to conduct interviews and arrange them into stories.
We had a long list and only enough resources for seven in the section. (There were also some we approached who weren’t comfortable with a profile. We hope they know how much they add to Dublin and are respected.)
We hope you enjoy getting to know the people we’ve profiled this year.
It’s likely you know someone who would be a good fit for this section. I encourage you to email me and suggest them for next year.
We can’t cover everybody, and we have so many wonderful women that make Dublin a better place to live.
Thank you to all of them.
—Paul Gaudette can be reached at publisher@dublin citizen.com