Date: Friday, March 12
Time: 10:30 a.m.
Place: Grand Central

To get more information on meeting place, you can email us here.

Yesterday, The New Agenda’s Vice President, Betty Cotton, attended Vital Voices Global Leadership Awards event in Washington DC. Betty reports from the conference: “Gender equity is THE major issue of this century.”

This weekend, I’ll be representing The New Agenda at The Daily’s Beast Women in the World summit. Tina Brown has put together an incredible rooster of women activists from around the world. Tina write today at her website: “The rights of women are to the 21st century what civil rights were to the 20th.”

So with all the attention being paid to women around the world, how about gender equity here at home? I wrote a piece yesterday for the Huffington Post Why I Still Stand With Blanche Lincoln. It was quite disappointing to see that with all the attention given to gender equity internationally, folks are at best antagonistic to that notion here at home. You can go over to Huffpost and read the comments, but suffice it to that the comments felt like a time warp back to 2008 and Hillary. We think our country — or in this case Democrats — would have moved forward, but apparently not.

I want to share a sampling – many of which could just as easily have been written if the title of the article were “Why I Stand With Hillary Clinton for President” in 2008:

Sure, we need more women in office –we’d all be better for it. But supporting someone because of the nature of their genitals is the definition of sexism.

I don’t think we should sacrifice the quality of our representatives purely to have a more diverse government.

Reverse racism/sexism is no better than racism/sexism.

I have absolutely no problem voting for a women, but I do have a problem voting for people I don’t agree with or think are unqualified.

I agree that we want women – but not any women – we want the right women.

We’ve come a long way baby?

When Esther Morris Headed West: Women, Wyoming and the Right to Vote by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge and illustrated by Jacqueline Rogers is a fascinating read for young and old alike. The beautifully illustrated book chronicles the political activism of Esther Morris, a frontier woman with chutzpah who helped change the course of women’s involvement in politics in the west.

At the age of 55, Esther Morris headed to the Wyoming Territory searching for gold. She was also hoping that Wyoming could offer her more than her former residences of New York and Illinois – she wanted the right to vote. In part due to Esther’s efforts, in 1869 Wyoming became the first place in the world that gave women the right to vote and hold office.

Achieving the right to vote was a great victory, but Morris knew that this was not enough. She wanted to prove that women could hold office as well. So she applied for the position of Justice of the Peace and shocked the Wyoming Territory that a woman could be so bold. Since the only man who challenged her failed to qualify she became a judge and thus the first woman in the United States to hold a public office.

Esther Morris didn’t have any fancy degrees and she (according to an illustration in the book) might have even been known to throw a wink. But she wanted to prove that women could not only vote but could also participate in the political process. She judged with keen common sense and even changed a few minds about a “woman’s place” along the way. Although she only stayed in office for a short while, her statement was clear. Women can and should participate as political leaders.

Now that’s a message that both girls and boys should grow up hearing!

You can read more about Esther Morris here in an article from Annabelle’s series “What Every Woman Should Know”.

Senator Blanche Lincoln finds herself in the political version of a perfect storm. Her home state of Arkansas is centrist. Predictably, Republicans are chastising her vote for Obama’s health care legislation. Progressive organizations, unexpectedly, are throwing millions of dollars behind a male Democrat to challenge Senator Lincoln in a primary. And shockingly, a women’s organization dedicated to getting women elected says she deserves it. Despite all the darts being thrown at Senator Lincoln from seemingly every direction, I’ll stand with her. And here’s why you should too.

Women’s representation in the U.S. Government is a national embarrassment. We rank 84th in the world in women’s representation in government — behind such “modern” countries as Pakistan, China and Venezuela. While the governing bodies in countries like France and India are working on legislation that would force gender equality in positions of power, here at home, even under a Democratic president and Congress, we have no such legislation even contemplated.

So what exactly do our organizations that consider themselves “progressive” stand for? Somehow in the rebranding from liberal to progressive, we left something behind: gender equality. How can an organization, or for that matter a political party, consider itself modern, progressive, advanced, or liberal if it does not prioritize gender representation? How can the organizations which are funding a primary challenge to Senator Lincoln ignore the fact that only 17% of our Senate is women? It would be progressive to get that down to 16%?

I know, I know, it’s not our culture, it’s just that Senator Lincoln is just not the “right woman.” She has her faults and that is why we simply cannot support her. We have to wait for the right woman. Well, who pray tell is this right woman? Because the right women wasn’t Hillary or Sarah or Martha. Could it be that this “right woman” phenomenon is just a socially acceptable byline for our internalized sexism?

If our country hopes to move forward, then we need to change the status quo. I won’t bore you with the numerous studies detailing why so few women run. Or why when women do run they are treated much more harshly than their male counterparts. But, I will proffer this: we start somewhere.

Here’s a thought: women’s organizations should support women. Does that mean that every women’s organization needs to support every woman? No. But as my dear, departed mother taught me: “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” That, at least, is a start.

Here’s another thought: having more women in positions of power for BOTH parties is good for women and women’s issues. Why wouldn’t we work towards getting more women elected in both parties? Don’t we see example after example after example of women crossing party lines to vote together for women’s issues? And since we’ll never be able to control the political headwinds, doesn’t it behoove us to have as many women as possible running on both tickets in each election?

True, not every woman candidate has the exact policy profile we desire. Does any male candidate? Perhaps in the short-term, we’ll have to be a bit more flexible and forgiving of our women. At least until we can get some semblance of gender equality. And, in the mean time, I’ll stand with Senator Blanche Lincoln and hope that you will too!

Harriet Tubman is one of our most celebrated American heroines and I was very pleased to learn that she has her own holiday. In 1990 President George H. W. Bush declared March 10 as Harriet Tubman Day and in 2003 Governor George Pataki of New York declared it a state holiday.

Tubman, who was born a slave in Maryland some time around 1820, escaped to freedom at the age of 29. Not content with just her own emancipation, Tubman helped more than 300 slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad, a secret route and network of abolitionists who aided runaway slaves to freedom in the north. She famously stated about her work as a conductor “I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.’ Tubman would often disguise herself as a man while helping slaves escape to freedom and she called herself “Moses”. This confused slave owners who did not think a woman could be capable of doing all that she did.

Tubman was also a spy for the Union during the Civil War and her adept knowledge of the land and her connections from the Underground Railroad helped her to do this work. After the war, Tubman continued her activism by aiding newly freed African Americans and speaking passionately in support of the Women’s Suffrage Movement.

Tubman died on March 10, 1913 at her home in Auburn, New York.

The Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Heritage Center in Kansas City, Missouri has a variety of events planned to celebrate Harriet Tubman Day.  The celebration kicked off on March 6th and includes theater, dancing, music and art. How wonderful! What is your community doing to celebrate Harriet Tubman Day?

I was a 22 year old young mother of a daughter when my eyes were opened to the subject of women’s history. I took a class in American women’s history in 1994 to fill a general education requirement at the community college I attended. When I started that class I had no idea that women did not have the right to vote until 1920, nor did I know anything about the long and arduous fight to get there. I was not even familiar with Abigail Adam’s famous plea to her husband to “remember the ladies.” I had never heard the term “Rosie the Riveter,” nor was I aware of the first or second wave of feminist progress. I knew that Susan B. Anthony had once been on the silver dollar, but I did not know what she had done to earn that brief honor. In short, I knew nothing of women’s history.

Dr. Anne Kearney, bless her beautiful heart, spent the semester catching up 29 adult females and one adult male on the history they’d missed out in elementary, middle, and high schools they attended, whether they were public or private. Over the course of four months we were introduced to Phillis Wheatley, Republican Mothers, Abigail Adams, Mercy Otis Warren, Eliza Pinckney, The Grimke’ sisters, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Lucy Stone, Amelia Jenks Bloomer, Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Rosie the Riveter, and many, many others. And I began to see over the course of those four months how my present and future had been paid for by the hard work of these incredible women.

It changed me. Forever. It gave me a perspective I will never forget or lose sight of. Suddenly I understood something about my place in the world, and suddenly I knew of women who had done incredible things. It made me feel that I could too. Learning about women from my own nation’s history made me determined to educate people on this topic, and join the struggle to continue to create that history. This is the power of writing women back into history. Changing perspectives and lives with knowledge inevitably alters the trajectory of our future. And as you can see from the links, people are writing women back into history.

Every effort at social change must include some way to educate people. If people don’t know there is a problem, they will not know to fix it. Furthermore, it takes incredible intelligence and character to strike out on your own, to buck trends and social conventions, to carve out a new path. Being the first person to take a risk is so daunting and scary that even Copernicus turned it down.  We love to talk to of trailblazing and individualism in our country, but precious few of us are actually able to realize that common value. There is often little need to. We already have plenty of role models for women in many areas of life; we just need to make girls and women aware of them. We are when we help build this movement, recognizing that women’s history is a persuasive way to educate all Americans about women and their accomplishments, as well as their current needs.

The greatest beneficiary of my education in women’s history has been my daughter. Her entire childhood has been steeped in these stories, and she is always reporting to me when she is exposed to the topic. At 16, she is well versed enough and unafraid enough to bring the subject up herself in class, and to ask her teachers what they are doing for women’s history month in the classroom. She is why I keep writing women back into history. What are you doing this month to help write women back into history?

Three Generations of Feminists meet with Amy Siskind in NYC, to initiate a symbolic intergenerational dialog.

I had to travel to NYC in March, and I had the illusion of having my daughter, who works in Wall Street, and her new born daughter (my first grand daughter!) meet Amy, president of The New Agenda. I wanted to introduce them to a new face of feminism that could become an attractive road in which they could find their interests as women reflected.

I had been following TNA since its beginnings, and Amy Siskind and the group of Hillary Clinton supporters for a while. The process through which Hillary was practically “eliminated” was a shock for many women, particularly for the complacency at best/complicity at worst of feminist
groups (especially NOW).   Even more shocking was then the reaction to Sarah Palin, and the abuse of her as a woman and of her children, and the utter distortion of her record and achievements with high misogynistic and classist overtones.

Official feminism had never spoken to me. Too dogmatic, too focused on abortion (even though I am 100% pro-choice). The need to be consistently defending this right to choice,  is the reflection of deeper, underlying problems women’s status in society face. Furthermore, it is not choice feminism defends, but abortion. If women do not chose abortion, they are dismissed when not demonized.  Abortion per se is an issue that does not speak to all women, even to many who are pro choice, and we have to find the intergenerational/cross-ideology link that speaks for all women.

The 2008 election proved feminism has lost its focus on women, and feminism needs to start speaking to All women. I have been continuously visiting many women’s/feminist blogs, and although I do not agree with all the issues, I have found in most of them much agreement and commonality of interests. In practice, I have interacted and seen wonderful strong conservative women support and mentor women in general, even liberal women.  The New Agenda focus on access to power (the 30% solution); violence against women; and education are issues that speak to me.  The courageous stand of The New Agenda members and bloggers to face the rigid and expired political geometry of feminism speaks to me.

Many of us see ourselves in them, as we do not want to be on one side or the other, and usually we are labeled and forced to identify with one side, thus working against each other when we could be working together on many issues.

Going back to the meeting, unfortunately, my daughter and her friend, both of whom are young women who work in Wall Street, could not come to the meeting as they had work. However, the previous night we had a chance to talk about the meeting and about feminism. They reiterated to me that feminism did not mean much to them, that it was too focused on reproductive and family issues, and that they were concerned with other topics.  Do we know what these young women’s concerns are? are we talking to our girls to let them know what our concerns are, and to learn about theirs (such as mentorship in the workplace)? Do we know what 28-35 year old women think and want from feminism, and what do they know about this?  Have we educated them to the fact that it hasn’t been 100 years since we had the right to vote (women in general, even though some women did have this right earlier?) and that we were considered property? Many of us were born with the right to vote, but how much have we advanced in the concept of women as property (not legally, but in practice)?

In the picture, Yadrisia Lamberty, an health Care professional, my beautiful grand daughter, Victoria Mascia,  the server (a wonderful girl), myself,  and Amy Siskind.  If you really focus, you can see The New Agenda Card !!!!Thank you for coming to the meeting Amy, and I hope my daughter and her girlfriends have the opportunity to meet you, and can also start getting interested and contribute to define feminist issues in the near future.  All of us should try to get young women (and men) involved.

Kathryn Bigelow has triumphed overseas. And just recently, she triumphed at home and became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director. “There’s no other way to describe it — it’s the moment of a lifetime,” “I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men of the military who risk their lives every day in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world,” she added. “May they come home safe.”

See Also: Oscar Win for International Women’s Day.

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Kathryn Bigelow was born in 1951 near San Francisco. Her mother was a librarian, and her father the manager of a paint factory. Her original goal was to become a painter when she attended the San Francisco Art Institute. After college, she received a scholarship to Whitney Studio Art Program and discovered a stronger interest in directing. She finished her higher education at Columbia University’s film school.

She is a purely independent filmmaker and has never worked for a studio company. Although all her films are full of adrenaline, her genres are eclectic. The Loveless was a biker film. Near Dark centered around vampires. Point Break was about a surfer who became involved with masked bank robbers.

She both wrote and directed her first film The Loveless in 1982. Prior to her big break into movies, she alternated between student, artist, filmmaker and Gap model. She was also the script supervisor for 1980 Union City. In the 90s while not making movies, she focused her talents on directing TV shows and commercials. She also wrote a screenplay.

She has an immense passion for her stories. She chose to film Hurt Locker in Jordon amid temperatures well above the century mark. The inspiration for her award-winning Hurt Locker described her passion:

“There were a lot of macho guys on the set, British SAS, not to mention all these young, studly actors, and all those guys were falling by the wayside,” says Mark Boal, who wrote and co-produced The Hurt Locker. “I’m not walking this hill, no way in hell. I drive past one of the crew who’s literally puking on the side of the road. People are dying on this hill. I drive up, and Kathryn is already at the top. She’s beaten everyone up there.”

She said about her great film Hurt Locker:

I see [soldiers] as extraordinary portraits, regardless of how you feel about the conflict. I think of the film, in a way, as non-partisan. It’s not commenting, as Mark said when he was working on the script. There’s that old saw about how there’s no politics in the trenches. And when [Mark Boal] went over there, sure enough, there’s nobody talking about politics. They’re talking about whether they’re gonna survive, or “What’s your favorite beer?”

Early in 2010, she became the first woman director to win the Directors Guild award for Hurt Locker. She also became the first female director to win at the BAFTA awards, which is the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. She hopes more women can follow her example: “Women’s struggle for equity is a constant struggle, so if this can be a beacon of light, then wonderful,”

Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt Locker was nominated for eight BAFTA awards and won six of them, best picture, director, original screenplay, editing, cinematography and sound. Hurt Locker’s success at the BAFTAs has proven that the combined talents of the movie team is superior to a movie centered mainly on technology and special effects. It is the quality of the people involved, not the quantity of money spent. Avatar was also nominated for eight BAFTAs and won a mere two, production design and special visual effects.

Kathryn Bigelow has some encouragement for aspiring female directors:

If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There should be more women directing; I think there’s just not the awareness that it’s really possible. It is.

Kathryn Bigelow has triumphed overseas. And just recently, she triumphed at home and became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director. “There’s no other way to describe it — it’s the moment of a lifetime,” “I’d just like to dedicate this to the women and men of the military who risk their lives every day in Iraq and Afghanistan and around the world,” she added. “May they come home safe.”
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See also…
Gone to Pot: Screenwriter on Natalie Portman’s New Stoner Road Trip Comedy
Show Me the Women in Hollywood

From March 20^th to June 1^st, the citizens of Ohio will have an opportunity to “vote” for a new statue in National Statuary Hall.     Here is an opportunity for citizens of Ohio to help our government move closer to gender parity! What’s unique about this “election” is that all citizens of Ohio can vote, regardless of their age.  Voting is done at one of the many Historical Sites around the state or Ohio residents can download a ballot at www.legacyforOhio.org and mail it in.

Out of the ten nominees, there are three women, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Judith Resnik and Harriet Taylor Upton.   So watch this short video, and then forward it to your friends in Ohio, and ask them to take all their friends, family and children to the nearest polling place and help “Put A Woman in National Statuary Hall.” The competition is stiff, but if we band together we can change the number of women in Statuary Hall from nine to ten.  For latest updates on what’s happening in Ohio, go to the FACEBOOK page Put a Woman in Statuary Hall.

International Women's Day rally, Melbourne, Australia (1975)

Happy International Women’s Day! IWD is the one day each year that women’s organizations and their supporters coordinate events to raise awareness for universal women’s rights. More attention is paid to women’s issue throughout the world on this day than any other day of the year. It is an opportunity to celebrate the political, economic, and social achievements of women, and to work to promote future achievements. A lot is going on this year, but first, since March is Women’s History Month, a brief history of this 99^th International Women’s Day.

History of IWD

International Women’s Day began with the efforts of Lorine S. Brown, a Chicago worker’s activist who organized the first meeting—reportedly attended by 1500 women— in 1908.  International Women’s Day was first nationally observed by the Socialist Party of America in 1909, and resulted from a tumultuous period of unfair labor practices and worker unrest in the U.S. The next year it was adopted at the Socialist International convention in Copenhagen by unanimous consent. The first official International Women’s Day was thus held in 1911, making next year (2011) the centennial anniversary. The first official IWD was observed in the United States, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, and Germany, among other nations. Millions of women and men attended conventions held in these countries to show their support, making IWD a success from the very beginning. (Sources: United Nations; AWID)

International Women’s Day has consistently provided a forum for women in many countries to have their voices heard. Beginning with female worker’s rights, the International Women’s movement soon adopted universal suffrage and political opportunity as its causes as well. Today International Women’s Day is a day to call attention to the problems of women around the world, and to celebrate their achievements.

Current Events

Today is the 99^th official International Women’s Day, and there is a lot going on to commemorate it. You can find out what may be going in your area by checking out the search feature at the International Women’s Day 2010 website. Here are a few of the more interesting events I have found:

Women for Women International is sponsoring several Join Me on the Bridge events throughout the world, featuring the central event on the border of Rwanda and Congo. Women from both countries will meet on a border bridge to promote the end of war and help build a bi-lateral bridge to peace. See if there’s a bridge event in your area here.

Reuters will offer International Women’s Day Live, a place to follow news on IWD throughout the day, as well as live-blogging by guest bloggers, and the opportunity to share your stories.

The United Nation’s theme this year is Equal Rights, Equal Opportunity: Progress for All. Here is U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s statement, posted on YouTube, for International Women’s Day 2010:

Future Events

Next year is the 100^th anniversary of the first official International Women’s Day. We should begin to think now about what we’ll do to commemorate it, and to further the cause of girls and women everywhere. What are your ideas for the next International Women’s Day? Post them in comments so we can start organizing!