Posts Tagged ‘women’s history’
She’s Done It for 40 Years: Ms. Magazine Honored for Auspicious Anniversary
When did you first see Ms. Magazine?
I can’t recall exactly the first time I saw it, but I do remember subscribing to it soon after it launched in 1972. I lived in Odessa TX, not exactly the bastion of feminism. But within the pages of Ms., I found women from all over the country saying what I’d been thinking. And I realized I wasn’t alone in feeling that something was terribly unfair about the way women were treated in society.
I also learned about the National Organization for Women from Ms. I joined as an at-large member and located the other five or six at-large members within a 100-mile radius.
Read MoreWill Equal Pay Make You Submissive in Bed?
I raise this question because today I experienced the disorienting juxtaposition of Equal Pay Day with the retro notion that women’s growing economic power makes us want to be dominated during sex.
Equal Pay Day marks the day in April when women wear red to signify we’re in the red, earning (by 2011 calculations) but 77.4 cents to men’s $1. And for African-American and Hispanic women the differential is significantly more extreme.
This marker of financial non-power came just after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker disappeared the state’s equal pay law. It also coincided with author and journalism professor Katie Roiphe’s implausible analysis of the S and M-loving novel Fifty Shades of Gray.
A paradox in her own mind, Roiphe opines:
“It is intriguing that huge numbers of women are eagerly consuming myriad and disparate fantasies of submission at a moment when women are ascendant in the workplace…when—in hard economic terms—women are less dependent or subjugated than before.
It is probably no coincidence that, as more books like The Richer Sex by Liza Mundy and Hanna Rosin’s forthcoming The End of Men appear, there is a renewed popular interest in the stylized theater of female powerlessness…We may then be especially drawn to this particular romanticized, erotically charged, semi-pornographic idea of female submission at a moment in history when male dominance is shakier than it has ever been.”
Really? And whose preferred narrative do we think this zero-sum “power-over” social model is?
Read MoreWhat Do Boomers Want? Here's Boomer, Babe, and No Excuses
I was in Arizona last week, and who knew that a national radio program I’d been asked to do emanated from just across the valley from my Scottsdale home, in Youngtown AZ?
Youngtown being a euphemism for older folks, which Baby Boomers are quickly becoming in the millions—a very important segment of America. It was great to talk with Pete and Debra who are “Boomer and the Babe”
Listen to the interview right here and chime in with your thoughts in comments.
Open the podcast in a separate window here or listen now by clicking the PLAY arrow above.
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Jamia Wilson Learns Resilience and Power of Inter-generational Bonds
I’m a little biased about Jamia Wilson having had the pleasure of knowing her and working with her as we both went through several career transitions during the last decade.
She’s an inspiration to me because of her seamless commitment to social justice and her positive way of putting her ideas into action.
Her responses to my questions continue the series in which I ask people I interviewed for No Excuses what they’ve learned since then. You can connect with Jamia on Facebook and Twitter.
Gloria Feldt: In No Excuses, I asked, “When did you know you had the power to _____?” What have you learned about your power to _____ during the past year or so?
Jamia Wilson: In the past year or so, I have learned so much about faith and perseverance. I have faced many triumphs and challenges during a transitional time in my life and have learned so much.
The rough edges and moments where I stared fear in the face taught me about the importance of courage and authenticity above all else. I have learned that I have the power to choose to be who I am authentically without apology and let that guide me towards realizing my dreams and my highest power.
As Janis Joplin said, “Don’t compromise yourself, you’re all you’ve got”. 2010-2011’s greatest gift to me was an appreciation for my own resilience and that to me is one of my most sacred superpowers.
GF: Was there a moment when you felt very powerful recently?
Read MoreSlutwalks and Such: Who's Making Women's History Today?
Big thanks and kudos to Catherine Engh for contributing some terrific posts this Women’s History Month. As we end WHM for 2012, here’s one more from Catherine that I know you’ll enjoy, and I hope you’ll think about and take a moment to share your comments. I’ve written a different take on Slutwalk but Catherine has almost persuaded me…
This last year, women around the world made history, protesting victim-blaming online as well as on foot. The Slutwalk movement began after a Toronto police officer told a group of college women that if they hoped to escape sexual assault, they should avoid dressing like “sluts.”
Victim-blaming last year was by no means isolated to this public incident. A young woman who pressed rape charges against two New York City police officers could not be believed, in part, because she was drunk. When an 11-year-old Texas girl was allegedly gang-raped by 19 men, The New York Times ran a story quoting neighbors saying that she habitually wore makeup and dressed in clothes more appropriate for a 20-year-old. The maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape has been discredited for being a liar, and The New York Post claimed she was a prostitute.
The women and men who marched in Slutwalks in more than 70 cities around the world last year were fed up with this kind of symbolic violence. The Slutwalk movement was organized around one central message:
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Kristal Brent Zook Defines Her Own Chaos
Continuing the series of asking women I interviewed when I was writing No Excuses “What have you learned about your relationship with power since we talked?” here is a beautiful essay from Kristal Brent Zook explaining her answer about a very personal choice.
How Gloria Feldt’s No Excuses Reminded Me of My Power
Not long ago, my friend Gloria Feldt, author of No Excuses, asked me to take another look at her 9 ways women can embrace power to see if any of the strategies had resonated lately, in the year or so since the initial release of her book.
Since we all know how political the personal will always be, I thought immediately about the upheavals of the past year in my home life.
Last February, my husband and I decided—on a whim, really—to relocate from Manhattan to the suburbs of Long Island.
“Why not leave the city?” we asked ourselves. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Get some fresh air. A yard. A real house. It would shorten my commute to Hofstra University; and of course, we would be saving all that money.
A charming, two-story 1923 Colonial about 30 miles east of the city caught our eye: it was more than 5,000 square feet, with two sun rooms and front and back yards. The rent was $1,200 less than our midtown high-rise, and ditching New York City taxes meant another $1,000 a month in savings.
“Let’s do it!” we agreed excitedly, handing over a check for the first month’s rent.
Read MoreWho Will the Woman of Tomorrow Be?
“What do you want to be?” we ask our daughters and sons when they are growing up.
It seems only right that as Women’s History Month draws to a close, we don’t just look backward but that we also focus forward to ask what we as women want to be and what women of the future might or should become.
This article on Canadian women’s economic power indicates economic parity is on the way. A new study published in the Harvard Business Review says women are better leaders than men on almost every measure of leadership. But does that translate to women moving from the current 18% to parity in top leadership positions?
Since the power to define the woman of tomorrow is to a large extent in our hands (See Power Tool #3) and based upon the history we make today (see power tool #1), I’m asking what you think:
Read MoreAre You Angry Enough to Embrace Your Power To Act? (3 Signs You Are)
In decades of experience as a women’s advocate, I’ve learned people can be inspired to action by one of two things: anger or aspiration.
A roiling, boiling anger is propelling women — even many who’ve never been activists before — to embrace their “power to” to take leadership and make change. They’re making their voices heard over the din of political rhetoric they might shun under other circumstances.
There was no one trigger, rather a succession of insults. I talked with Richard Lui about them this week on MSNBC’s Jansing & Co. Here’s a smattering:
- After 30-year-old Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke was denied the chance to speak about why contraceptives should be covered by insurance…
- After the stunning optics of an all-male “expert” panel pontificating on women’s reproductive health before a Senate committee (also all-male because the women on the committee were so incensed they walked out)…
- After shock jock Rush Limbaugh denigrated Fluke, calling her a slut and a prostitute (can one be both—don’t sluts give it away?) and demanding to see videos of her having sex…
- After bills like those in Texas and Virginia forcing women seeking abortions to submit to 10″ ultrasound “shaming wands” (as Doonesbury dubbed them), an AZ bill requiring women to bring notes to their employers verifying they take birth control for health reasons not pregnancy prevention or risk being fired, and a Tennessee bill that mandates public reporting of the doctors by name and the demographics of each patient…
Women are rightly furious.
Why is this happening?
Read More"Black Woman Novelist" -Toni Morrison Defines Her Own Terms
“I’ve just insisted – insisted! – upon being called a black woman novelist…And I decided what that meant, because I have claimed it. As a black and a woman, I have had access to a range of emotions and perceptions that were unavailable to people who were neither.”
It’s Women’s History Month and I can’t resist profiling Toni Morrison, a prolific writer who has worked to represent through fiction the experience of black people—particularly women–in America. Ms. Morrison’s novels focus on marginalized characters struggling to find their place in a society built upon the legacy of slavery and the violence of racial prejudice. Most known for her imaginative fiction, Morrison has also written essays, non-fiction, plays, a libretti, and children’s books.
Ms. Morrison developed her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), while raising two children and teaching at Howard University. She later took a job as an editor at Random House, where she played a vital role in bringing black literature into the mainstream, editing books by authors such as Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, and Gayl Jones.
Commercially successful and critically acclaimed, her 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel “Beloved” was chosen by a New York Times survey of prominent writers to be the best work of American fiction of the previous 25 years. In “Beloved”, Morrison imagines what it would have felt like to be Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave woman who chose to kill her infant daughter rather than see her grow up in slavery.
In an interview with the Paris Review, Morrison says about Margaret Garner:
Read MoreLesser-Known Women Often Make History
Today in the Women’s History Month series, let’s shine a light on lesser known women. 
In the spirit of the month, here are links to articles drawing attention to women you may not have heard of—and the awesome things they are doing today.
- Anna Clark has compiled a list of underrated women writers of novels, stories, poems, and graphic novels from around the globe.
- The BBC has profiled some of the women activists involved in Syria’s uprising.
- Bitch Flicks recommends 11 films about trailblazing women.
- Houston Press lists ten of their favorite Female Artists making music today. Rock on ladies!