Posts Tagged ‘Women’s Media Center’
Images of Gender Equality Aspirations and Achievements
The UN Commission on the Status of Women has New York hopping with powerful and, yes, ambitious female leaders from around the world this week. Each is making women’s history in her own way.
Today, I share just a few images of events I’m attending.
Are you attending? If so, please share your impressions.
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Television anchor and entrepreneur Joya Dass and I celebrated the launch of IMPACT 21 Leadership with its founder Janet Salazar. Joy and I both participated in a lively panel discussion of women’s emerging power globally and locally.[/caption]
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She's Doing It: Jane Fonda Rocks the Power of Grandmothers at Women's Media Center Event
“Making women visible and powerful in the media,” the mission of the nonprofit New york and D.C. based Women’s Media Center http://www.womensmediacenter.com/, was on full display Monday night June 4. The evening’s centerpiece was the premiere of “Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding,” starring the incomparable Jane Fonda as a marijuana-growing and selling, tie-dye-wearing, sexuality-embracing, moon-howling grandmother who never left the 1960’s.
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She's doing It: Catherine Engh Wants More Female Characters Like Leslie Knopes
Catherine Engh is a feminist and an aspiring writer particularly interested in the ways that girls and women are represented in fiction and television. She wrote this piece for 9 Ways–it’s a great example of No Excuses Power Tool # 8: Employ Every Medium. Plus there are some useful tips on how to be a media activist.
Catherine also likes to do as much yoga as is possible–perhaps she’ll write about that next.
Why Television Needs more Leslie Knopes
Recently, I couldn’t help but notice that many of my favorite television shows are about men. Don Draper, Nucky Thompson, Walter White, Hank Moody and Vincent Chase are just a few male lead roles that come to mind.
It is not news that stories about the identity struggles of white men sell. Thus, they are more commonly aired than shows that explore women’s lives and choices. Though women are more likely to watch entertainment programming than men, the majority of those involved with television creation are male. Women’s Media Center reported that in the 2010-2011 year,
Read MoreShe's Doing It: Women's Media Center Honorees in the Spotlight
Honoree and CBS News Chief Foreign Corespondent Lara Logan talks courageously about being assaulted in Tehrir Square with WMC’s founding president Carol Jenkins.
Read More“Employ very medium” is No Excuses Power Tool #8, and the honorees of the Women’s Media Center first ever Media Awards gala fundraising event November 30 lead the way. I’ll post the video that event chair and filmmaker extraordinaire Donna Deitch created for the event when it’s available, so please check back for it. Meanwhile, here is Marianne Schnall’s first hand report about the evening, originally posted here on the WMC blog.
I’m proud to serve on the board of an organization that is tackling one of the most important issues of the day with the big vision of making women visible and powerful in the media.
Check out the WMC’s Facebook album if you’d like to see more pictures from the Media Awards, including Arianna Huffington, Sheryl Sandberg, Business Media Award Recipient Maggie Wilderotter, Carol Jenkins Young Journalist Award Recipient Yanique Richards, and many others!
Friday Round Up: Good News About Women and Power Edition
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jws-zl7q-0[/youtube]Yesterday afternoon I went to the Women’s Media Center office in New York to do a short video interview about the future of feminism. This set me to thinking once again about how much unused power women have in our hands, as I continue my search for the practical power tools and tips that can help us get past our resistance to power…
Read MoreFriday Round Up on Saturday: Women’s Equality Day Edition
“Men, their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.” ~ Susan B. Anthony, 19th Century Women’s Rights and Suffrage Leader
In celebration and in reflection of Women’s Equality Day, this week’s Round Up collects some wonderful reading about it. Not only about the time when women achieved the right to vote via the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on August 26th, 1920 but also frank and honest discussions about where women are today in this journey and about the work ahead. Here’s a great timeline from the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership, headed until her untimely death last week by my friend and dedicated leader for women’s equality, Nora Bredes.
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Panel at the University of Rochester’s Susan B. Anthony Center for Women’s Leadership. With Susan B. and Elizabeth Cady Stanton pictured in the background, and the late Nora Bredes at the podium moderating panelists Jennifer Lawless (Director of the American University Women and Politics Institute), Allida Black (Founder of the Eleanor Roosevelt Project) and me (in my Susan B Anthony costume–she always wore black with a red scarf) in October, 2010.
Make History With Your Media Activism on Women’s Equality Day
Note: This is posted today as a Women’s Media Center Exclusive
The invitation to today’s Phoenix-Scottsdale National Organization for Women (NOW) “Equality Day Feminist Convergence” depicts a quaint sepia photo of suffragists picketing the White House. It telegraphs “old.” After all, the event celebrates the 91st anniversary of the date in 1920 when women’s right to vote entered the U.S. Constitution.
But, remember, in the decades at the beginning of the 20th century those purple and white sashes and those picket signs wielded by (purposefully) demurely dressed women were new media in action.
Fittingly, attendees at the Arizona event will have a contemporary victory to celebrate, one involving media activism squarely in the suffragist tradition. But this one is powered by e-mail and concerns itself with very modern day attire. Tight jeans to be exact…
Read MoreFriday Round Up: 'Good Guys' No Longer Unusual Edition
PHOTO: NWPC CA President and National Vice President for Board Development Teray Stephens and I checking out the Good Guy Awards.
I had the honor of emceeing the National Women’s Political Caucus 40th anniversary convention Good Guys Gala July 30th in Washington DC.
The Caucus started giving “Good Guys” awards back in 1971 as a way of recognizing and encouraging the then-rare men who joined in efforts to get women elected and appointed to political positions. Later, the great feminist and late Congresswoman Bella Abzug (D-NY) created an award to memorialize her supportive spouse, Martin–the Martin Abzug Supportive Spouse Award. I’m proud to say that my husband Alex Barbanell received this award a decade ago. In his acceptance speech, he revealed that he is my chief cook, bottle washer, and sex slave…
Read MoreNO LESS THAN SIX — Take Action to Make “Super Committee” 50% Women
It is coming down to the wire and you voice needs to be heard! Republican Speaker John Boehner, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are making their choices to select a 12-person bipartisan “Super Committee” to decide upon critical issues that came to the forefront when the debt-ceiling measure was passed. DEMAND NO LESS THAN SIX!!
Friday Roundup: Splitting the World Open
In the newsletter I sent out this past week, I began with this quote from the late feminist poet, Muriel Rukeyser:
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”
This week’s Roundup links to a selection of articles, each of which represents a way that women are using their “power to” by simply telling the truth, which is so often the most difficult thing of all. And we are seeing the world split open as these women challenge millennia of gender-based oppression rooted in sexual abuse, assault, harassment, and even verbal disparagement of women. Check them out and share your thoughts. I’m especially interested to know whether you feel as I do that despite the pain of seeing and knowing these horrific acts, the fact that they are coming out in the open–the truth-telling–is splitting the world open in ways that ultimately are positive.
Statement/petition from Change.org to unite people around the world in support of the alleged rape victim of Dominique Strauss-Kahn. Sign on!
French feminists could care less that Strauss-Kahn is a fellow countryman, and are protesting his actions, loud enough for the entire world to hear. Please check out the great protest pictures in this Gotham article.
Join the Nobel Women’s Initiative today by going to the UN Action Stop Rape Now website and download the sample letter asking your elected official for increased action against sexual violence in conflict.
For more information on rape as a weapon of war, please read this great article by NYC writer Anna Louie Sussman.
The response of the Women’s Media Center and many feminists around the country to Ed Shultz and his sexist remarks is right on the money: men have no right to use sexist language to keep women in their place, regardless of their political affiliation.
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