Are These GOP Women Candidates Good for Women?
This Time Magazine article— “A Breakthrough for the GOP: More Women Running”– is prime proof of why the Democrats must prioritize recruiting and supporting progressive women candidates.
These “Mama Grizzly” GOP women candidates are co-opted into being just like their right-wing male counterparts–doing nothing to help women. Like Sarah Palin, most oppose the Fair Pay act and economic policies that would enable women to have equal opportunities in the workplace. They oppose a woman’s right to reproductive self-determination even as they claim their own. Women make up to 60% of the Democrats’ voter base. Will the Dems step up to the plate?
Watch this video of the panel I moderated at Netroots “Why Women are the Key to Progresive Electoral Victories” to see what panelists Joanne Bamberberger, Pam Spaulding, Barbara Lee, Roxanne Conlin, and Maria Teresa Kumar had to say on the topic.
Read MoreBlogher 2010 Conference
At the 2010 Blogher Conference, I was a keynote speaker on closing panel, called “How to Use Your Voice, Your Platform and Your Power.” Need to Know PBS anchor Alison Stewart moderated a powerhouse panel: Marie Wilson, Founder and President of The White House Project (and creator of Take Our Daughters to Work Day), and P. Simran Sethi, Emmy Award-winning journalist, blogger and environmentalist.
Empowerment is a constant theme at and on BlogHer. All signs point to others recognizing our power – as a group and as a demographic. How are we leveraging that power as individuals? How should we be?
Now that we know marketers and advertisers seek the opinions of women (who make over 80% of consumer purchases) and their blogs, how can we control what we are being sold? Now that we know having a unique presence online has turned us into “personal brands,” how can we use it to our best professional advantage? Now that we’re each part of the large BlogHer community and many sub-communities, how can we harness and strategically focus that collective power? How and when and for what can and should we turn on the power spigot?
Read MoreEagle Forum Leader Schlafly Calls Single Women “Welfare Queens” – Yes, She Really Did
Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly put her foot in it big time yesterday when she said single women are “welfare queens” and President Obama is trying to create more of them, just so they’ll be dependent on what Schlafly refers to as “big daddy” government. After blacks, she claimed, they’re his second biggest voting block. The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News invited me to share my thoughts on the matter. Read TPM’s news report and watch the video of her remarks here if you have the stomach for it.
She’s wrong on at least two counts.
Read MorePanel at Netroots Nation 2010 on Why Women Are Key to Victory
Netroots Nation is the premier conference for progressive bloggers. So I’m totally thrilled that they accepted my proposal to facilitate a panel on “Why Women Are the Key to the Future of Progressive Election Victories.”
As the GOP has garnered victories in Massachussetts, Virginia and New Jersey since the 2008 presidential election, progressives are looking for a new path to keep the seats they have and win back the ones they’ve lost. Standard playbook assumptions about where, how and why progressives can win campaigns have been turned on their head as increasing numbers of voters feel disaffected and Tea Partiers throw wild cards into many races. Progressive women can embrace this moment to help move the progressive agenda forward. But too often the Democratic Party fails to recruit and support the very women candidates who could be game changers for progressive politics. We’ll discuss how the growing numbers of activist women—and organizations devoted to helping them participate in politics and political leadership—can help reconnect voters with important progressive economic and gender issues. And we’ll analyze how to access the untapped power of women who want to make a difference for progressive issues and what it will take to get them elected.
Read MoreVideo of Leaders and Speakers at Passion Into Action Conference
Women–power–leadership; it’s all here in this short video summary of the SeeJaneDo Passion Into Action conference at which I spoke last winter, along with an inspiring lineup of women doing amazing things for and in the world.
Read MoreA Brief History of Women Becoming Powerful
Women’s Equality Day–celebrating the anniversary of women’s suffrage–is coming up next month, August 26 to be exact. Lynne Shapiro found this well-done historical retrospective video and posted it on Facebook. It’s prompting me to think about what I might want to write for the upcoming little-heralded day.
Maybe you’ll be inspired to use the power of your voice, pen, mouse, or video camera to increase public awareness of major milestones in women’s advancement, too, on August 26?
Read MoreHow Does Health Care Reform Affect You Now? (An Addendum)
As About.com‘s Linda Lowen reports, President Obama has now basically implemented the Stupak amendment banning the new insurance exchanges from covering abortion even if the premium is privately paid. I’m a little out of joint by the outraged protestations of pro-choice organizations. Because here’s the reality:
Outraged about Obama’s de facto implementation of the Stupak amendment? Well get this: They have also excluded birth control from the first iteration of the new health plan rules! It is incredibly naive to assume, as Dana Goldstein suggests in the Daily Beast, that these new rules will be amended to include birth control. That is unless very big and very smart campaign is mounted.
Women are 52% of the voters and up to 60% of voters who support Democrats. We have the power to rise up and hold Obama to his campaign promises. And now is the time to do it. No excuses and no fair complaining about the result if we fail to do so.
Read MoreCEDAW FORUM: The Unfinished Business of Ratification
My guest post today is about a very important topic I intended to write about–but my colleague Linda Tarr-Whelan has already said it all better in a post she wrote for the National Council for Research on Women’s “The Real Deal” blog. It’s embarrassing as well as just plain wrong that the U.S. is one of just seven nations that never signed onto the ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Want to know the six other nations? They are Iran, Nauru, Palau, Somalia, Sudan, and Tonga –overall not very good company!
This week has been declared a Week of Action by a coalition of U.S. organizations working to get our country to enter 21st century and sign CEDAW. So to the U.S. Congress: Sign already!
Read MoreHealth Care Reform (Mostly) Promising for Twenty-Somethings
Young adults ages 19 to 29 make up less than 15 percent of the total US population, yet they comprise a staggering 30 percent of the 46 million uninsured and have the highest rate of uninsurance among any age group. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the vast majority of this group—88 percent, according to a survey conducted by the Commonwealth Fund —support health care reform.
Read MoreSplitting the Health-Reform Baby: What Women Lost by Winning
Had I been a member of Congress, I would have pressed the “yes” lever for the health-reform bill when it came down to the vote for final passage. It was incredibly important that we start somewhere to make health care accessible and affordable to all Americans. And we can celebrate, as Ms. magazine recounts in “What the Health Care Bill Means for Women,” that contraceptives will be covered, gender rating that discriminates against women has been eliminated, and preventive services such as pap smears will be covered without co-pay under the new plan.
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