Posts Tagged ‘ White House Project ’

Recommit on Women’s Equality Day

August 26, 2012
By
Recommit on Women’s Equality Day

Today is Women’s Equality Day, the day we mark the anniversary of the Constitution’s nineteenth amendment granting women the right to vote. President Obama wrote in this year’s proclamation honoring the day, “We owe that legacy of progress to our mothers and aunts, grandmothers and great-grandmothers — women who proved not only that opportunity and equality do not come without a fight, but also that they are possible. I call upon the people of the United States to celebrate the achievements of women and recommit to realizing gender equality in this country.” If there’s an upside to the anti-women craziness that’s been sweeping the conservative movement, it’s that most people now realize that while yes, women have made great gains, there is still a long way to go before we realize gender equality in this country. In recent months more than 1,000 bills related to reproductive rights were introduced including attempts to classify “forcible” rape. Wisconsin repealed equal pay and Congress voted down the Fair Pay Act. Republicans resisted the Violence Against Women Act. Radio personality Rush Limbaugh called a Georgetown law student a slut when she protested an all-male Congressional panel on contraception. A major women’s breast cancer organization pulled [...]

Read more »

Why We Can’t Agree: Is the Bachmann Newsweek Cover Sexist?

August 10, 2011
By
Why We Can’t Agree: Is the Bachmann Newsweek Cover Sexist?

Terry O’Neill from the National Organization for Women (NOW) says yes, it is. Salon’s Joan Walsh says no, it’s not. And feminist icon Gloria Steinem says it’s borderline. Pundits are split on whether or not Newsweek’s decision to run the unflattering (we can all agree on that, right?) picture of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was sexist. Why is it so hard to figure out? I think  it stems from the way the media has conditioned us to think about and view women. When so many young, female characters on television are sexualized, when even the most beautiful women in the world are airbrushed, when we see too few images of strong, athletic women and when so much of our news comes from the male point of view, we struggle with what is reality, what is media manipulation, how we view other women and what we’ve come to expect of how the media views us. And then add politics to the mix and things get even more distorted. With such small numbers of women participating in politics, the media turns the few women who do into Everywoman. Remember, for example, how a vote for Hillary Clinton was portrayed as a vagina vote, not a vote [...]

Read more »

Guest Post: Why 2012 Could Be a Banner Year for Women

July 15, 2011
By
Guest Post: Why 2012 Could Be a Banner Year for Women

The recent series of sex scandals involving male politicians has generated lots of discussion in the media about the need for more women in elected office. Would women be less likely than men to behave badly? It’s hard to say but also irrelevant. What the media failed to point out is that we need more women. Not because they might subject the public to fewer headlines regarding extramarital affairs, but because women are dramatically underrepresented in public office. Looking at the make-up of the 112th Congress, the numbers are staggeringly bad. Although 51 percent of the U.S. population is female, women hold 89, or 16.5 percent of the 535 seats — 17, or 17.0 percent, of the 100 seats in the Senate and 72, or 16.5 percent, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. That puts the US at 69th in the world for gender parity, according to the Inter Parliamentary Union. The problem, however, is not that women aren’t winning elections, it’s that they aren’t running for office. This is why political strategist Mary Hughes created The 2012 Project, a campaign of Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics. It’s a nonpartisan, national campaign to recruit record numbers [...]

Read more »

New Year’s Resolutions for Everywoman

December 27, 2010
By
New Year’s Resolutions for Everywoman

(This post first appeared on Care2.) According to Psychology Today, the most common New Year’s Resolutions are to lose weight, exercise more, quit smoking, manage debt and save money  – all worthy endeavors. But experts say that more than 75 percent of all people fail at meeting their goals. So why not scrap the traditional resolutions altogether? Instead, resolve to help improve the lives of women. Here are five resolutions you can make to help others. Support women candidates. Women bring a unique perspective and much-needed diversity to public office. Plus, recent studies show women politicians bring more money back to their districts than men do. But women with political ambition don’t always have access to the same resources men have. So  lose the phrase, “I want to support a woman candidate but….,” and back her if she’s qualified and supports women’s rights. Learn to negotiate. Women still earn less than men for comparable work. There are many factors that contribute to this inequity including plain, old sexism. Help mitigate these factors by learning to advocate for fair pay. With strong negotiation skills, you can at least ask for fair equitable compensation. With more women on the payroll then men, [...]

Read more »

We’re Giving Away Two Tickets to LUNAFEST Boston

November 7, 2010
By

Hello Ladies. LUNAFEST is coming to Boston Wednesday, Nov. 10 and we have two free tickets for you. Read more here.

Read more »

Women, We Need to Vote

November 1, 2010
By
Women, We Need to Vote

Ladies, I get the complacency. I do. I am mostly uninspired by my choices on the ballot. But I will vote. And I hope you do too. Vote because your grandmothers and great grandmothers could not. Women have only been allowed to vote in this country for 90 years. So I will exercise my right in honor of Nana. Vote for hope. Brazil just elected its first woman president and someday we will too? and someday we will too. Vote because you’re not giving up. Vote because you’re tired of others defining the “woman’s vote.” You can tell them how you feel, thank you. Vote because we are not going to allow sexist campaign tactics to sway our votes. Vote because women are losing ground in Washington and we are not okay with that. We are going for critical mass. Just vote. And next time around, why not run?

Read more »

Six Ways to Honor Women’s Equality Day

August 26, 2010
By
Six Ways to Honor Women’s Equality Day

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 [...]

Read more »

Kagan Approved; Brings Critical Mass to Supreme Court

August 5, 2010
By
Kagan Approved; Brings Critical Mass to Supreme Court

The Senate voted today to send Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. Kagan is only the fourth female justice, out of 111 total, in the history of the Supreme Court and is now one of three women currently on the bench joining Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotamayor. With Kagan’s appointment, women have now reached critical mass on the Supreme Court. Critical mass is explained in the White House Project Report “Benchmarking Women’s Leadership” as, “an idea that has moved from science and sociology to political science and into popular usage over the last 30 years. The concept is borrowed from nuclear physics:  it refers to the quantity needed to start a chain reaction, an irreversible propulsion into a new situation or process.” When women reach critical mass in senior leadership positions, many organizational experts believe the perception of those women shifts from token representation or special interest to fully integrated  members of the group. Kagan’s appointment could be a boost for female lawyers. The legal sector is far from reaching critical mass. Despite the fact more women than men are obtaining law degrees, men outnumber women partners in private firms significantly. According to a new report, “New Millennium, [...]

Read more »

Six Things We Need to Do to Send a Woman to the White House

July 9, 2010
By

Last week I posted a question at SkinnyScoop: Do you think a woman will be elected president in your lifetime? Most of the respondents (81 percent) said yes. No one answered definitely not. I sure hope the respondents are right, but getting there won’t be easy. One respondent at SkinnyScoop wrote, “We are ready and there are more of us than them, we just need to get out and vote ladies.” It seems simple. But it’s not. The sad truth is we haven’t moved past the misogyny and sexism we witnessed during Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Senate hopeful Martha Coakley didn’t do herself any favors when she made some bad campaign decisions last winter but the press didn’t do her many favors either. And the Republicans don’t seem to treat their women much better, as Newsweek recently pointed out. I remember during Clinton’s presidential run people groaning about the word misogyny. “I’m so sick of feminists talking about misogyny,” friends and coworkers would tell me when I was discussing things Tucker Carlson, Chris Matthews, Glen Beck and Keith Olbermann had said on television the night before. I challenge those same people to come up with a better explanation for Playboy’s recent [...]

Read more »

Missing: Women in Politics

May 21, 2010
By
Missing: Women in Politics

Check out the latest data from the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) on the number of women in government worldwide. Just 18.9 percent of all elected leaders in both upper and lower parliamentary branches combined (House and Senate for example) are women. That’s correct, less than twenty percent of the world leaders (where data is available) are women. The IPU’s mission is to establish representative democracy across the globe. One of its main areas of focus is women in politics.  In 1997, the IPU Council adopted a Universal Declaration on Democracy which states, “The achievement of democracy presupposes a genuine partnership between men and women in the conduct of the affairs of society in which they work in equality and complementarity, drawing mutual enrichment from their differences.” The IPU has also stated, “The concept of democracy will only assume true and dynamic significance when political policies and national legislation are decided upon jointly by men and women with equitable regard for the interests and aptitudes of both halves of the population.” Yet here we are in 2010 with a worse than 80/20 split of men and women in leadership.  And the United States is no role model.  Our percentages in the House [...]

Read more »

Get Adobe Flash player