Posts Tagged ‘ Feminists ’

Six Ways to Honor Women’s Equality Day

August 26, 2010
By Hello Ladies

Today is Women’s Equality Day marking the ninetieth anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. It’s not an easy day to honor. Do we celebrate the tremendous work of the suffragettes who fought long and hard for women? Or do we note the irony of an equality day when women still earn, on average, only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns; bang their heads against a glass ceiling; still do the majority of housework and haven’t reached critical mass in Washington?

I say we mark the day by taking action. If we exercise our power as women, we both honor the women who came before us and help advance those who will come after us. Here are six suggestions for celebrating Women’s Equality Day.

1. Vote. The suffragettes fought a long, hard battle in order for women to have the right to vote.  If you aren’t already registered, register to vote today, read up on the issues and cast a ballot in the midterm elections. Women are 51 percent of the population and we do make a difference on election day.

2. Run. Better yet, why not run for office? Ladies, it’s great to help candidates and cast a vote. But we are so much more powerful than just phone bankers and sign holders. We need a critical mass of women in elected positions both locally and nationally if we want equal representation. Visit She Should Run, Emerge and The White House Project to learn about campaigning.

3. Speak. At a minimum, let your elected officials know what you expect of them. Call your Senators and tell them we need them to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and the Healthy Families Act. Tell the White House it’s time to ratify CEDAW, The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Equal Rights Amendment. We’ve waited long enough.

4. Teach. Tell your children about suffragettes like Helen Gardener, Ida Husted Harper and Marjorie Shuler who aren’t in the text books, but should be. These women changed the course of history.

5. Thank the women who are fighting for equality today. Make sure they know their work is appreciated. My sincere thanks to so many women including Gloria Feldt and Jodi Jacobson who stand up for our reproductive rights; Zoe Nicholson who never stops fighting for equality; Marie Wilson, Jehmu Green and Katie Orenstein who teach other women how to use their power; CV Harquail and The Mama Bee who inspire me by how hard they work; Lea Webb and Jill Miller Zimon, who are modeling a new ideal for public servants; @rosiered23 and Cynthia Samuels for giving women a place to read, write and learn.

6. Notice the women who are quietly making a difference in your life (the coworker who negotiated maternity leave, the sole woman on the city council, the boss who stuck her neck out for you) and honor their work by following their lead.

Enjoy the day and feel free to leave a comment with the names of other women we should thank.

Do Men Cheat on Breadwinners?

August 17, 2010
By Hello Ladies

Here’s a scary story to send women back to the kitchen: the more economically dependent a man is on his female partner, the more likely he is to cheat on her. A new study from the American Sociological Association is generating lots of coverage. My favorite headlines for this story so far are:

 from Science2.0.com: “Kept Men More Likely To Cheat Than Bigger Breadwinners”

from the Toronto Sun: “She Pays the Bills, He Cheats”

and from the Winnipeg Free Press: “When She Pays, He Plays.”

 The study reveals men who are financially dependent on a female partner are five times more likely to cheat than men who contribute an equal amount of income to the partnership. It’s the demise of the American family, the American workforce, life as we know it. If only we women could just stay home, have babies, stop demanding paid maternity leave and stealing our men’s jobs. And, if we crazy feminists still insist on working, can’t we at least just take part time gigs? Because the study also reveals that men in relationships with women who make only three quarters of the men’s income were the least likely to cheat.

 But wait. There’s more. The study, “The Effect of Relative Income Disparity on Infidelity for Men and Women,” looked at 18- to 28-year-old married and cohabitating couples. That’s right: 18 to 28 year olds. Isn’t it possible that getting married in your teens and twenties comes with its own relationship stresses and challenges unrelated to who pays the bills? Christine L. Munsch, a PhD candidate in the department of sociology at Cornell University and author of the study, does some really interesting work on gender and I don’t want to dismiss her work. But I do want to caution the ladies, before you quit your jobs to save your marriage and your man’s ego, dig deeper into the study results and see if age, length of relationship, or any other factors may be in play. And, on your way home from work Friday, why don’t you stop and buy your guy some flowers and let him know just how much you love him? Unless of course, he’s cheating.

Sex and the City No Match for Dirty Dancing

May 27, 2010
By Hello Ladies

 There’s a lot going on in the world of chick flicks. It is opening weekend for “Sex and the City 2” and I am looking forward to seeing it even though I found the first movie to be a disappointment. Even with a sub par story line, I love those ladies — their clothes, their glamour, their friendship and their shoes. Oh, their shoes.

And Lionsgate has released the DVD/Blu-ray version of “Dirty Dancing” Limited Keepsake Edition. So many of my Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte-loving friends have equally strong feelings for Baby, the heroine of that 80s classic. With all due respect to writer and co-producer Eleanor Bergstein, and she’s due plenty of respect, I didn’t connect with Baby in that way.  Maybe I was just too much of an Irish Catholic, blue collar, Cape Cod cottage kind of girl to relate to a gutsy, privileged Jewish girl who spends her summers at a resort. But with age comes wisdom, perspective and the opportunity to speak directly with Ms. Bergstein about her hit film, which, by the way, is also a long-running stage production.

Bergstein says so many people want to know if the movie is the story of her seventeenth summer.  But it is so much more than that. Sure it’s about dancing. “I have always been crazy about dancing and 60s music.” But for Bergstein, the movie is about, “The last summer of liberalism; the summer everything changed. It is a feminist movie,” she says. “It is about integrity and politics and the class structure.”

The story takes place in 1963, the year Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” and ten years before Roe V. Wade prohibited many state and federal restrictions on abortion.  “I was concerned that Roe V. Wade was going to be overturned,” says Bergstein and so she wrote a back alley abortion into her plot. Bergstein’s fears were not unfounded. Congress passed the Hyde amendment in 1976 banning Medicaid funding for abortion unless a woman’s life was threatened by her pregnancy. Then in 1980 the Supreme Court upheld the Hyde Amendment in Harris v. McRae thereby helping to erode a woman’s right and access to full reproductive health services.

I may not have clicked with Baby, but I certainly clicked with Bergstein. She recalls that at first the studio execs barely noticed the abortion storyline. They just wanted her to make the dancing scenes sexier. “They thought (the movie) was a terrible piece of junk that was going right to video,” she says. But then the film got attention from a potential sponsor- an acne cream. Sponsorship would have meant a picture of the cream on the movie’s posters. “Please don’t do it,” Bergstein begged the studio. But in the end, it was the sponsor who pulled out because of the illegal abortion and Bergstein held her ground against a studio pressuring her for a major rewrite. “It was part of the story, making it impossible to remove,” she says

Bergstein finds it “very troubling” that so few movies address abortion in the same way “Dirty Dancing” did. More recent films like “Juno” and “Knocked Up” have their characters give birth and then resume or start a normal, happy life. Even SATC’s baby-averse Miranda ends up living the New York fairy tale as a mom in Brooklyn with  her prince Steve after her unplanned pregnancy. Hooray for these middle class heroines with the means to make choices. But life isn’t that easy for all women. And for many, a lack of access to the full spectrum of reproductive services, can be downright dangerous.

Reproductive rights are under attack here in the United States where nearly one-third of  American women have an abortion by the age of 45.  Groups like NARAL and Planned Parenthood are doing what they can to protect these rights but they are challenged by the fact that many young women today don’t remember the days of back alleys and coat hangers and therefore don’t fully appreciate what is at stake. These young women will be hard-pressed to find references in popular culture. “My biggest fear,” says Bergstein, “is women won’t know how hard it is until it’s too late.”

“Dirty Dancing” stands out as a brave film with a strong message. Brava to Eleanor Bergstein for writing this film. May other women follow her lead.

Click here to listen to “She’s Like the Wind.” (Don’t you just love this song?)

Confession: Sexual Harassment, I Dealt With It

May 6, 2010
By Hello Ladies

In the wake of Cindy Adams irresponsible New York Post column where she tells women who experience sexual harassment to “deal with it” I have a confession.

Several years ago I took a job where I was the only women on the management team and the first female vice president at the company. One month after I started, I was at a tradeshow with some of the sales team, and one of our vendors visiting from Germany, all men. When the exhibit hall closed, the event organizers hosted a cocktail party with a live band and dance floor. I decided to hang out for awhile – thinking it would be a good opportunity to bond with my new coworkers. But after a few drinks, the sales guys started morphing into pigs.

Our European guest was on the dance floor, extremely drunk and hitting on every woman he saw. The rest of the group decided it was time to move on to another bar. “We can’t just leave (our vendor) here. Someone needs to drive him back to his hotel,” I said.

Their responses varied from, “Why don’t you take him home? He’d like that,” to “If we leave him here he’ll have to go home with one of those women and he’ll thank us for it later.”

I didn’t say anything and stupidly I decided to go with them to the next bar. We left our German guest doing the Hustle on the dance floor. Things were worse at the next spot. While none of the guys hit on me or made inappropriate comments directed at me, they talked and joked about all the other women there and discussed who they wanted to go home with. Before I could finish my first drink, I left.

On the drive home, angry and frustrated, I cried. I felt as if I had only three choices:

1. Never go out socially with my coworkers again. This option angered me because I knew if I choose it, I would always be an outsider –never able to infiltrate the boy’s club.

2. Confront them on their inappropriate behavior. But I suspected that although that might get them to behave when I was in the room, they would most likely just stop including me in meetings and events.

3. Bite my tongue and just “deal with it” whenever I was out with the team. But this option would compromise my integrity too severely and I knew I couldn’t do it.

I choose the first option and for the next three years I avoided any work functions outside the office, except for command performances. Three years later, I was at one of those mandatory outings. The entire management team, ten men and three women, were away for a weekend of training and strategic planning.

It was a tough meeting for me. The week prior, our company had conducted anonymous 360 reviews and two of my peers had skewered me. Their feedback was so vicious, and so unfounded, that the CEO and HR director pulled it from my file, but not before they let me read it. The comments and writing style easily betrayed the authors – a salesmen who had recently been replaced as the head of his department, and a woman on the management team with whom he was having an affair. During the offsite, whenever I spoke up, the couple would lean in to each other, whisper and giggle. I couldn’t wait to get in my car on Sunday afternoon and go home. But first, I had to get through the kumbaya group dinner on Saturday night.

We carpooled from the conference center to the restaurant. I was in a car with the owner of the company, the new sales VP and the customer service director, all of with whom I had a great working relationship. Seated next to me in the back seat of the car was our star salesman. He wasn’t the top seller, but he was among the top three and was the model for all new hires. At a previous management offsite, we did an exercise where we listed this guy’s personal attributes, because to the owner and the CEO, he personified our perfect employee. Integrity was at the top of the list.

Even though I never socialized with my coworkers outside of the office, I was very tuned in to what went on.  I had a great relationship with my team and a as result, I heard all of the office gossip. I knew this sales guy, the model of integrity, cheated on his wife with coworkers whenever he got the chance.

I made it through the dinner even though I was seated next to the woman who had given me the negative review. The model employee was sitting across from me. After many drinks he took wagers from the other guys on whether or not he would go home with the waitress. When we stood up to leave, he made his move but was rejected.

Back in the car, same seats, everyone was joking and laughing. I tapped the customer service director, seated in the front, on his shoulder to get his attention. He jumped, startled. “Sorry,” I said, “I shouldn’t touch you.”

“You can touch me,” said Mr. Integrity. “Just cup your hand like this and touch me firm and steady.” He gestured to show me just what he meant. I was shocked. For a few seconds I wasn’t sure he had actually said that. And then, I was mortified and angry that my other coworkers had overheard it. Except they acted like they didn’t. I slapped the jerk.

The other guys in the car continued laughing and talking and made no mention of the crude exchange in the back. Why would they? It wasn’t in the best of interest of the owner or the VP of Sales to hear their top guy say something that could get him fired.

Back at the conference center, I went to my room while everyone else went to the bar. Later I learned Mr. Integrity had accidentally dialed his wife on his pocketed cell phone and she had heard him propositioning the waitress. It was small comfort.

I never reported the incident and never confronted my coworker. I was embarrassed, outraged and convinced it wouldn’t be handled well. I became even more withdrawn at work and my performance declined. Three months later I got my first and only legitimate bad review, from the CEO, and he and I planned my exit strategy. I left the company at the worst part of the recession with a small severance package. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to get out of there.

I’m not proud of my decision to do and say nothing and I don’t advocate it as a strategy for anyone else. But I have forgiven myself because I know I felt too weak at the time to confront the problem. For a long time after, I questioned the validity of my membership in the feminist club. Who was I to speak out for equality and women power when I let that kind of behavior slide? Even with hindsight, I don’t know if I would change what I did.

But I’ve come to the conclusion, who better than me? I have personally experienced sexism on the job (there are other tales to tell but this story is long enough). And now I can offer my experience, my perspective and my support to the next woman who goes through it. And if she chooses not to fight back, I can offer her my full understanding without judgment.

What’s Feminism Got To Do With It? UPDATED

April 26, 2010
By Hello Ladies

CNN's Carol Costelo

CNN recently aired a segment on “dirty girl” images in the media. They define dirty girls or bad girls as women who promote promiscuity and drinking, engage in “raunchy sex talk” and are sometimes violent.  You can view the clip here. CNN attempts to make the case that some women view this type of behavior as a form of women empowerment. How do they make that case? By simply stating it and quoting one woman who basically says, “Why yes. That’s it.”

The network even promos the piece as a story on feminism with this teaser: “CNN’s Carol Costello explores what could be the “third wave” of feminism, and why that’s troubling.”

Townhall.com, a conservative, Republican blog, jumps on the feminist angle with this commentary,  ”As if you needed further proof that woman’s “liberation” (aka feminism) has had less than stellar results.

“Since God’s distinct roles for men and women and the sanctity of marriage are considered quaint and beneath the enlightened intellect of today’s educated elite, some may see this as “progress,” and others see it as punishment.”

Wow. How do they even make that connection? Why is it that any woman who doesn’t fit a certain, safe stereotype is held up as an example of what’s wrong with feminism?

CNN could have produced an informative piece on the risks of alcohol or the media’s poor portrayal of women but instead turned it into a sensational tale about what happens to women who don’t “behave.”  To underscore their messages, the editors show feminist writer Jaclyn Freidman talking about the correlation between alcohol use and rape. Over the weekend, Friedman discussed the piece on Twitter and said her message was spliced. She happens to be a strong voice against victim-blaming and recently penned this op-ed on campus rape.

CNN does ask one smart question about the latest media portrayals of the so-called bad girls (Chelsea Lately and Kesha, for example): Is this just entertainment? No, CNN. When “news” outlets like yours, create “stories” like this, it’s never “just” entertainment.

UPDATE: Read Kate Harding’s interview with Jaclyn Friedman about her CNN experience over at Shapely Prose. And Jodi Jacobson has a great piece on the CNN segment at RH Reality Check.

Steinem Endorses Coakley and Other News of the Week

December 4, 2009
By Hello Ladies

suffragetteIt was another busy week and we are glad it is winding down. We’ve compiled some follow up reading for you on the topics we covered this week. But first, some news.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley announced today the endorsement of Gloria Steinem, founding editor and publisher of Ms. magazine, co-founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and long-time women’s rights activist.

What is exciting and significant about this endorsement is it is yet another example that Coakley is not afraid of gender. Other women candidates often feel pressure to downplay women’s rights for fear of being seen as “just” a woman’s candidate. On the flip side, if they talk tough or wear pantsuits instead of skirts, they are criticized for being a “woman acting like a man.” Coakley is simply running on her track record and the important issues, one of which is women’s rights. Her opponents aren’t trying to hide the fact they are men and she’s not hiding the fact she is a woman.

Speaking of the Massachusetts Senate race…

Sexism Alive and Well: Joan Vennochi at The Boston Globe had a great op-ed this week on the old boy’s network.  It talks about how the network protects the men’s club.  Read it here.

National Day of Action: For a round up of actions and articles on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment and the fight to protect women’s rights visit The Women’s Media Center.  And yes, Senator Nelson is still working on his Stupak-like Amendment.

World Aids Day: Another round up of blog posts this time on World Aids Day can be found here at Global Health Progress.

Turkeys: Roman Polanski made bail and moved to his ski chalet. The New York Times wrote a story about it and never used the word rape.  Not once.

Chris Brown will tell the world tonight he is “really sorry” about beating up Rhianna. As my daughter would say, “Whatever.”

And Tiger Woods, well, we still think his problems are personal and none of our business. This whole incident is however, a good reminder that sports stars are superb athletes, not heroes. Imagine if we found our role models and heroes in our own lives instead of on the television? After all, small, everyday acts of kindness impact our lives much more than the fame and wealth of strangers.

 

 

 

 

Welcome Ladies

October 1, 2009
By Hello Ladies

HL quoteI travel in two crowds. The first is a group of amazing women –feminists who are articulate, engaged and sometimes outraged by the status of women and women’s rights. They are activists, writers, and all around really cool chicks (although some of them might take offense at the term “chicks”).  I don’t really spend that much time with them outside of Facebook, Twitter, blogs and Google groups. But I admire, respect and relate to them and to many others. 

The second is another group of amazing women – my friends and neighbors – mothers who are committed to their families – especially their children, and are involved in the schools and their communities.  I do hang out with them, when our  schedules permit, and I also admire, respect and relate to them.  Unlike the first group of women, this group rarely mentions feminism and may not even self identify as feminists.

On paper, these two groups appear radically different. But I know there is plenty of common ground. Group one discusses equal pay, reproductive rights, violence against women, misogynistic media practices. Group two is more likely to talk about Drop Dead Diva, soccer practice and PTO. But their lives are impacted just as much by the first set of issues. And I think to myself, “Hello Ladies, you need to hear this.”

  • Hello Ladies: Did you know women earn, on average, .78 cents for every dollar a man earns? That’s means less  income for your family.
  • Hello Ladies: A pregnant women was recently jailed because she might harm her fetus. Are you a perfect mother? Watch out you could be incarcerated next.
  • Hello Ladies: Yes I love Real Housewives of New Jersey too, but did you know reality TV perpetuates sexist stereotypes?
  • Hello Ladies: You have a shoe addiction. No problem there actually. I do too.

I’m not asking you to burn your bra (although you can if you want to), or to march on Washington. All I ask is that you visit Hello Ladies from time to time to chat about the things that matter to women (and sign the occasional petition) whether that is feminism, politics, family, work, or my personal favorite, shoes.  Hello Ladies, this site is for you.

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