The New Agenda, your organization, is proud to announce our first coalition press release.
This evening, The New Agenda, along with partner groups LA NOW, OR NOW, and Phoenix/Scottsdale NOW joined together to issue a joint press release titled Women’s Groups to Obama: Cabinet Numbers Don’t Add Up in which the groups urged President-elect Obama to select more qualified women.
Thus far, only two women (Sen. Clinton and Gov. Napolitano) are reportedly being given serious consideration for the 15 cabinet slots. President Clinton had 7 women …

A new kind of fireside chat.
In between stuffing herself with turkey and cranberry sauce, Ophelia sure has been one busy gal.
Tune in to this week’s Chewing the Fat with Ophelia to hear all about it.
Hear what your group is doing about:

Promoting the notion of parity for women in cabinet
Hillary’s potentially empty Senate Seat
Senate 2010 in Delaware and Pennsylvania
Women Heroines
Chris Matthews
Coalition Building
Starting our Grass Roots efforts

And we’re just getting warmed up.
Join the gals to chew some fat on Monday at 10 p.m. EST (click to listen).
Chewing the Fat with Ophelia is …

Voice of America is reporting that at press conference tomorrow in Chicago, President-elect Obama will announce three more important positions.
Here’s the good news (finally):  Hillary will be named Secretary of State.
Here’s the bad news:  Robert Gates will be named as Secretary of Defense AND Jim Jones will be named as National Security Advisor.
This continues the trend of Obama picking predominantly males for his cabinet and appointees.  Obama, the candidate of “change,” should pick a cabinet and appointees that reflect the diverse nature of our population.  That means 52% women!  Stay tuned members for action …

Wondering how the economy is REALLY doing?  Look no further than a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, New York — 20 miles East of Manhattan.
A worker was trampled to death yesterday in an early morning rush to get inside for a sale special.  According to the New York Times:
Tension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared. Someone taped up a crude poster: “Blitz Line Starts Here.”
By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged …

More women serve in governments today than ever before. In September 2008, Rwanda became the first country in the world to have a women majority in parliament. Yet women still lag far behind men, constituting just 18.4 percent of national assemblies worldwide. Of 189 countries, only eleven women serve at the head of government.
The UNIFEM report on the progress of women (which I previously wrote about here), recommends three affirmative actions to increase women’s political representation:

Political party and media codes of conduct
Campaign finance controls
Quota systems

Codes of conduct
Media …

A common refrain heard among women during the recent election was, “How can she call herself a feminist when___________?” (fill in the blank). This query was uttered by women of all ages and political stripes; I’m sure I said it at some point, and you probably did, too.
But how can all of us suddenly not be feminists? Surely some of us are still feminists, even if we don’t fit the criteria of those who have believed and acted differently from us? Who gets to say what feminism is, anyway?
We recently …

“If I have convinced one more woman today of her greatness and helped her believe in herself, then it has been a great day!!”
It is with this spirit that Mary Kay Ash, the founder of Mary Kay Inc., drove her company to be the preeminent skin care and cosmetic company in the world. I came into the orbit of this great woman 25 years ago as a hippie musician who never wore a lick of makeup. I had just had my first child and was looking for a business opportunity …

MSNBC’s resident sexist blowhard (okay, one of their resident sexist blowhards) Chris “Tingles” Matthews is weighing whether to leave his bully platform on cable news for new stomping grounds in the U.S. Senate. His target: Republican Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, who is up for reelection in 2010.
But Pennsylvania voters aren’t ready to simply wave him in. Numbers reported today by the respected Quinnipiac University Polling Institute show that in a hypothetical head to head match-up between the two men, socially moderate Specter beats “Tingles” by 12 percentage points.
In the study, …

So how do you define what is sexist? What examples do you give of sexism? This question has vexed me for months. It all started in mid-May when I became the voice for a lot of Hillary supporters in Columbus, OH revolting against what we saw as a sexist onslaught towards Hillary and a deafening silence on the part of the Democratic Party, the Obama campaign, and women’s groups. Ever since I opened my big mouth that day, that question has been posed to me over and over again.
My first …

We created this holiday card to wish all our dear readers and members a joyous Thanksgiving holiday. And since Wednesday is “bring a friend day,” we’d like to invite you to send this greeting card to someone special to tell her (or him!) about The New Agenda. Just click on the image and copy it, and then paste it into an email. Here’s the image file by itself:
Happy Thanksgiving from The New Agenda
And as our gift to you we’ve also made a blank version of …