New York City Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen Is Set On Making Her Hometown The Best Place On Earth For Women
New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and urban development, Alicia Glen, is surrounded by women. Some are full-grown women in suits and sneakers or heels or nurse’s uniforms or smocks with CVS name tags pinned on. Others are of the junior variety—collegians with long, flowing hair and cutoff shorts the size of underpants. Still others are women of the future: Girl Scouts in green uniforms with French braids and no makeup and campfire badges sewn on their vests. All of them are clustered around Glen in New York’s Bryant Park on this sweltering June day because Glen is sick of seeing statues of nothing but white men all over New York City.
“Give me a break. Enough is enough,” says Glen—a cheerful, hard-charging 52-year-old former Goldman Sachs exec with the dry, wisecracking style of Veep’s Selina Meyer and the sturdy, bright-eyed appeal of a college field-hockey captain. “Today is the day we finally start putting women where they belong: on pedestals,” she continues as she and New York City’s first lady, Chirlane McCray, announce the launch of She Built NYC—an initiative “to honor the women who’ve built this town” and correct the fact that 90 percent of New York’s current monuments honor men. “There are 22 monuments in Central Park and only one of them is of a woman, and it’s Alice in Wonderland. She’s not even a real person.”
Glen’s announcement is met with whooping and cheering and applause—along with suggestions from several Girl Scouts who feel strongly that Eleanor Roosevelt should be among the first memorialized. But really, the launch is just the latest step in Glen’s larger mission, which is to turn New York City into the greatest place in the world to be a woman.
This story is from the November 2018 edition of Marie Claire - US.
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This story is from the November 2018 edition of Marie Claire - US.
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