America’s biggest race is just beginning. It’s the race to create equal opportunity in our nation once again and to restore the belief that the American Dream can still be achieved.

Disillusionment, despair and unemployment hold court these days in a country that was once thought of as a place where dreams could be turned into reality. But the reality right now, despite unemployment numbers dropping by a statistically insignificant .1% on Friday from 9.1% to 9%, is that job and life opportunities are dismal, even non-existent for many, in what once was thought of as the land of endless opportunity.

So what does opportunity look like these days in a country that’s barely recognizable anymore?

For Luis Ubinas, who came to New York as a child with his parents and lived in alphabet city on the Lower East Side, it is “the unshakable belief that the next day will be better.” Ubinas, who has gone on to become the president of the Ford Foundation, says that “opportunity is synonymous with what brought my family to this country.” In other words, hope. Hope of a better, richer, fuller life.

Watch live streaming video from opportunitynation at livestream.com

But hope has flown out the window for many in America. Which is why Opportunity Nation, an organization dedicated to creating more opportunity, jobs and social mobility in America, put on their first summit in New York last Friday at Columbia University. Under their parent organization, Be the Change, Opportunity Nation is developing a diverse, star-powered coalition from across all sectors that works in unison to help solve what’s ailing this great nation of ours. “Bi-partisanship is our sweet spot,” says Mark Edwards, the executive director of Opportunity Nation.

This comes just in time as Obama recently declared at a private fundraiser in Washington, D.C., that the biggest task for him is to fix the horribly extreme stifling, stagnate, and suffocating bipartisanship in U.S. politics.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) is out with its 6th annual Global Gender Gap report. The report measures how equitably countries are distributing their resources between women and men — regardless of their level of resources.

“By and large, the trends are positive,” one of the authors of the report Saadia Zahidi, who is the senior director at WEF, told correspondent Reuters Michelle Nichols. “85% of the 135 countries listed have made progress.”

Over the last six years, the gaps in health and education between men and women have been closed by 96% and 93%, respectively. However, the gaps in economic participation and political empowerment are much greater — 59% and 18%, respectively, over the last six years.

“While women are as healthy and educated as men, they’re clearly not being channeled into the economy or decision making structures,” Zahidi said.

Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Ireland are ranked as the top five countries while Saudi Arabia, Mali, Pakistan, Chad and Yemen are at the very bottom.

Why so many Nordic countries at the top? Zahidi says they have a long history of equality between women and men and, additionally, have removed the barriers to economic participation of women by making it possible to combine family and work. But gender equality doesn’t have to be a luxury good. In fact, if poor countries make it a part of their development they can actually grow faster, says Zahidi.

There are two stories about the corporate hijacking of #OccupyWallStreet on Reuters.com. One piece talks about how U.S. ice cream maker Ben & Jerry is making a laughing stock of the protestors by issuing a statement in support of the protest:

The directors of the board of ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s released a statement saying they were supporting the protest.

But this corporate alignment doesn’t seem to have had the desired effect. Instead of drumming up support for the protestors it has made them something of a laughing stock. Papers, blogs and TV reports are running competitions for the best flavour ice-cream Ben & Jerry’s could create to honour the protests (ocu-pie is gaining some traction). But all of this is distracting from promoting the protestors’ aims and message.

By the way, here is the link to Ben & Jerry’s official statement. I agree with Kathleen that having corporate support would doom the protest if the corporation were, say, Bank of America, for instance, but Ben & Jerry’s is no Bank of America.

All that Ben & Jerry’s board is saying is this: “We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent Occupy Wall Street Movement.” Besides, Ben & Jerry’s is not donating money to help fund the protests (at least not yet). So how exactly does a company that’s lobbied for a Constitutional amendment that would limit corporate spending in elections hijack a protest that would fight for that mission as well?

Yes, Ben & Jerry’s sold out to Unilever, a Dutch-British corporation with headquarters in Rotterdam, Netherlands. But Ben & Jerry’s was founded with a distinct social mission, which they’ve held on to despite the buy-out. And, despite being part of a global conglomerate now, Ben & Jerry’s is a company that’s long been associated with tie-die loving, beard rebelling, free loving Vermont hippies. The difference in their support is that the company isn’t out to rape people of their money.

Meanwhile, this piece claims the protests are shallow because how can the protestors be against corporations when so many of them love and use products by Apple, a huge U.S. corporation?

While the new movement is undoubtedly counter-cultural, corporate leaders and politicians have learned how to co-opt such incoherent anti-establishment sentiments. Apple, for example, has done brilliantly by combining high tech, high prices and a veneer of counter-culture. Occupy participants use more than their share of Apple products.

Indeed, the grief over the death of Apple’s founder, Steve Jobs, gives a more accurate cultural reading than Occupy. The college dropout who wandered to Asia looking for enlightenment became a hero for many of the 99 percent. They may feel oppressed by the state of the economy, but they sense they have more to lose than to gain from any substantial change in the system that has provided iPhones and iPads. So what does OWS signify? The shallowness of our discontent.

There seems to be a dearth of leadership these days. Even more so now that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is no longer with us.

Americans aren’t just worried about who might become the next Steve Jobs; there’s a lack of leaders across the board. No political “leader” — in the U.S., Europe and many other places — seems willing to step up to the plate. There’s a lack of leadership for the protest taking place on Wall Street. And there’s a lack of corporate leadership – banks seem unwilling to admit their mistakes, correct their wrongs and start down a fresh path.

It’s men who got us into this economic crisis and it’s been women who’ve been bailing us out of it. Author and columnist Michael Lewis aptly notes: “The Icelandic tycoons were a parody of Americans. The interesting thing is that they were all men.”

So where can we find new and necessary leaders? If you’re author Anne Doyle, you can find them in women.

Despite all the progress women have made there are still too few women leaders – especially in business, politics and technology. Out of the Fortune 500 companies 15 are run by women. Other top positions at corporations are also still dominated by men.

In U.S. politics, there are 93 women in Congress – 76 in the House and 17 in the Senate – out of a total of 535 members. On a more granular level, the National Journal counts 13 women who hold high-level White House positions. Worse, in his new book, “Confidence Men”, Ron Suskind recounts a senior female aid who said that the current White House is a difficult place for women to work. And senior adviser to the President Valerie Jarrett has admitted there is tension between the sexes.

Doyle isn’t on a “woe is woman” type of rant, as can easily be detected with the title of her recent book, “Powering Up! How America’s Women Achievers Become Leaders”. In it, Doyle talks about what it was like to spend her life making her way to the top in the male-dominated corporate worlds of sports media and the auto industry. Eventually, she became a sports broadcaster for CBS and the Director of North America Communications at Ford Motor Company. She relays stories of what it’s like to survive – and thrive – in such testosterone filled worlds, the lessons she has learned from it, and how women can navigate through it. But, Doyle’s main focus is on why there’s still a black hole of female leadership and, more importantly, how to fill it.

By Katharine Herrup The opinions expressed are her own.

Much has been written and said about September 11, 2001, on the occasion of its 10th anniversary, but one story much less known is the one about the band of boats that came together to rescue nearly 500,000 New Yorkers from the World Trade Center site on the day the towers collapsed.

It was the largest boatlift ever to have happened – greater than the one at Dunkirk during World War II. Yet somehow a story of such large scale became lost in all the rubble. But a new 10-minute documentary called Boatlift by Eddie Rosenstein captures the boat evacuations that happened on 9/11. The film is part of four new short documentaries that were created for the 9/11 Tenth Anniversary Summit in Washington, D.C.

“Boats, usually an afterthought in most New Yorkers minds, were, for the first time in over a century, the only way in or out of lower Manhattan,” says Tom Hanks, the narrator of the film.

New Yorkers don’t really think of Manhattan as an island since everything from the basics to beyond your wildest imagination is so accessible — not typically a feature associated with island life. But on September 11, 2001, those trapped below the World Trade Center site who could not escape without swimming or being rescued by a boat were acutely reminded of that fact.

“People were actually jumping into the river and swimming  out of Manhattan. Boats were very nearly running them over,” says NY Waterway Captain Rick Thornton in the film.

By Katharine Herrup The opinions expressed are her own.

This piece is part of a great debate we are having on Reuters around Steven Brill’s op-ed on the school reform deniers. Here are pieces by Diane Ravitch, Joel Klein, Deborah Meier among many others.

There is a debate, if that’s what you can even call it, raging in America about how to improve our public education system. While disparate groups rip each other apart, it would seem wise to look to our neighbors to the north. Americans love to casually pick on Canadians, but we should be seriously analyzing their public school system, which has emerged as one of the most successful school systems in the world.

Why? Because all constituents – teachers, teacher unions, school boards, the government — work together. At least, that is the explanation given by Canadian Teachers’ Federation President Paul Taillefer. It’s also because there is required rigorous training for teachers — not just before you can become a teacher, but throughout their entire career.

In Canada, there is a concurrent teacher training program for undergraduates who know that they want to be a teacher once they graduate or there are teacher colleges where you go for either a year or two of training, depending upon which Canadian province you live in, that Canadians must attend before they become a teacher.

“Good teacher development and ongoing development while you are a teacher is one of the key components in making our education system successful,” Taillefer said. “Making sure that teachers are well-prepared to face the challenges is very important.”

I spoke with David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff, today to get his take on what’s happening in the markets after Friday’s US credit rating downgrade by the S&P. Here are the highlights of our conversation.

What’s the biggest surprise of the S&P downgrade of the US’s credit rating? The timing of it. They already had stated their intention, but the timing of it was early.

Why did it come early? The budget agreement to get the debt ceiling raised is light.

What are the consequences of this? In a real economic sense, the impact is fairly small. We have to remember it’s a split rating. Moody’s and Fitch have not downgraded the U.S.

What are the global consequences of the US downgrade? If the U.S. isn’t AAA, it begs the question who is? The real consequences run a lot deeper than the U.S.

What will be more consequential is if France loses their AAA rating. If the U.S. isn’t AAA then I can’t see France having a AAA rating. And if France isn’t AAA you can kiss the European Stability Fund good-bye. Because the ball will then be in Germany’s court and I’m not so sure that the country will be able to bail out the entire euro zone.

So you’re more concerned about the economic situation in Europe than the U.S.? The crisis of confidence is stemming from the eurozone – not the U.S.

On Thursday, July 7 at 9am ET, CEO of PIMCO Mohamed El-Erian will be taking your questions live and answering them here. Please join us and leave your comments and questions for him below.

El-Erian’s previous columns have talked about the European debt crisis, how to make Egypt’s revolution successful, the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Christine Lagarde and what he learned from his recent visit to Tokyo, Japan.

You can also post your questions on the Reuters Facebook page or send them over Twitter using the hashtag #askmohamed or @kherrup.

On June 22, from Japan, Paul Ingrassia will interview live the legendary business executive Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Nissan and Renault.

The global map of the auto industry is in the midst of being redrawn, and in this Newsmaker, the two will discuss the strategy Ghosn has set for Nissan’s production recovery in the Japanese market and the critical role it will play in helping reset Japan’s economy.

In the wake of the recent tsunami and earthquake, Ingrassia also wants to know Ghosn’s critical thinking on:

• How does business play into Japan’s recovery?
• What is the future of nuclear power in a country that has limited natural resources?
• Will the current crisis help address the structural issues Japan has been facing for decades or will it further sink Japan?

If you have any questions for Ingrassia or Ghosn, please leave them in the comments section below or send them over Twitter at @trnewsmaker.

WATCH OUR LIVE COVERAGE STARTING AT 9 A.M. BST ON WEDNESDAY, MAY 25.