Posts Tagged ‘Women’s Media Center’
Gabourey Sidibe, Jane Fonda: Two Courageous Sisters Employ Every Medium
The Women’s Media Center Board and special guests. From left to right: Jodi Evans, Jewelle Bickford, Jane Fonda, Gabourey Sidibe, Julie Burton, me, Carol Jenkins, Robin Morgan, Marlo Thomas, Gloria Steinem, Jamia Wilson, Michaela Monaha.
Before she began her remarks at the podium, Jane Fonda pointed her digital camera at the 500 women and a few men packing the Paley Center auditorium on April 20th. We’d all paid somewhere between $50 and $5,000 to see D. A. Pennebaker’s 50-year old documentary Jane.
The film tracks Jane’s dismal flop in her first Broadway play at age 23. Afterward, we were to hear the actress discuss women’s self image with Precious star Gabourey Sidibe in a panel moderated by feminist star Gloria Steinem.
But first, Jane’s blog had to be fed, so she snapped her photo. She does her own blogging and a good bit of her own tweeting, and those social media are always hungry for content. I could relate. After posting at least daily during Women’s History Month, I have not been feeding my 9Ways blog properly. Today I begin anew with a promise to post at least twice a week so we can keep the conversation about women’s relationship with power that was started with the launch of No Excuses going.
But back to the evening’s program…Widely divergent in age and race, Jane and Gabourey found their key differences to be in their relationship with power, the locus of their power (inside versus looking outward for affirmation), and their concern about body image. Most notably, Gabby expressed love for herself whereas Jane still obsesses about her weight and appearance.
As Jane reported in her blog afterward: “Gabby was really amazing. I wish I had recorded some of the things she said. So wise and strong.”
The screening and panel discussion were a benefit for the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit dedicated to making women visible and powerful in the media. Women currently make up only 16 percent of the expert “talking heads” on news and public affairs shows, and 3 percent of the top level positions that decide what the stories will be. I’m honored to serve on the WMC board to support women employing every medium to get their messages out and change those dismal statistics to 50/50.
What stories about women do you see in the media you watch or read?
How has the prevailing media narrative affected your self-image and sense of power?
I’m interested in your thoughts. Please share them here.
Read MorePower Tool #7: Create a Movement
In this video, women wearing their virtual shirts put their convictions into action. But they didn’t do it alone.
In No Excuses, I show how to apply movement building principles to any area of life. Those principles can be described as Sister Courage: be a sister. Reach out and ask for help when you need it. give help when someone else needs it. Have the courage to raise issues. Put the two together with action and you have a movement.
Think about it. When you needed to plan Thanksgiving dinner, didn’t you call on your sisters to help you plan the menu and distribute the workload? Those same skills can be incorporated into the workplace and in politics.
Read MoreWas There a Moment When You Knew You Had the Power To?
Most high school debaters can tell you that the first person to set the terms of the debate usually wins. That’s because when we allow someone else to define the terms, we allow them to set the framework that constructs our thoughts. Just think about how power has typically been defined, as an oppressive power-over model. If we shift the definition of power to a power-to model, suddenly the discussion is about leadership, and the ability to get things done. As I say in No Excuses.
Almost anyone can employ power-over, but it takes skill to employ power-to. It takes a skill to lead others rather than to force, requires, coerce, or lord over them. Leadership power is much different from the use of force to gain acceptance of a goal.
Watch feminst icon Gloria Steinem, CODEPINK founder Jodie Evans, young feminist leader Shelby Knox, El Diario/La Prensa editor-in-chief Erica Gonzalez, and others talking about their power-to moments, both personal and interpersonal.
Was there a moment when you knew that you had the power to . . .(you fill in the blank)? What was it? And how did you feel? What did you do? If you didn’t have one moment, was there a process that led you to that awareness? What can you share with other women that might help them on their journey?
Read MoreHow Many Choices About Motherhood Are There?
Submit your Mother’s Day story to the Women’s Media Center here and help spread the word that there are many choices women make about pregnancy and childbearing over the course of their lives. As a mother, I celebrate our choices as we celebrate Mother’s Day. Gloria FeldtGLORIA FELDT is the New York Times bestselling author of several…
Read MoreThe Right to Choose: Family Lessons
This beautiful piece was written as an exclusive for the Women’s Media Center by Shruti Swamy a writer for India Currents Magazine, currently working toward her MFA in fiction at San Francisco State University. Thanks to the Women’s Media Center for permitting the republishing of this and other articles.Far from a generational divide, the author, as a young feminist, finds sustenance in the ways the women in her family handled their more limited life choices.
It’s hard for me to imagine what my grandmother’s youth was like, spent in rural and then urban India. At 16, she was arrange-married to a man she had met once years before, at 17 pregnant with her first child, by 21 the mother of three young children. There are few pictures of her from that time, so I’ve made them up for myself; Baa on her wedding day in hot, heavy clothes; Baa working in the green fields through her first pregnancy, chewing ginger for strength; Baa with another baby in her arms, cooking dinner for her family.
I had been thinking of her when I first read in the New York Times about a perceived generational divide in feminist responses to the Stupak amendment (“In Support of Abortion, it’s Personal v. Political”). Feminists who remembered a time when abortion was illegal expressed an urgency to take action that they felt was lacking in later generations. Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote that long-time feminists like NARAL Pro-Choice President Nancy Keenan tend to view reproductive choice “in stark political terms—as a right to be defended, like freedom of speech or freedom of religion.” A later blog post for Newsweek quoted University of Maryland assistant professor Kristy Maddux, who specializes in historical feminism, saying younger women “don’t have any reason to believe that it matters if they go out and protest. Instead, they talk about their positions to friends and neighbors.”
Read MoreMaking It Too Hot for Chili’s to Ignore Sexual Harassment
This is a story to warm your heart this holiday season. It’s a story of a sister who cared enough to combat injustice publicly. It’s a lesson in how to answer the question “So what are we going to do about it?” by giving those responsible for the injustice some serious heartburn. It’s a tale of hanging in there long enough to be effective in fomenting the change that’s needed to bring about fairness and justice.
Rebekah Spicuglia is media manager at the Women’s Media Center (full disclosure-I’m on the WMC board and that’s how I heard about this). Furious that her sister had been sexually harassed repeatedly, yet repeatedly disregarded by mangement when she reported it, Rebekah decided to tell the world about it in the Huffington Post Tuesday:
Read MoreTime for Women to Drive Our Own Health Care Bus
Check out this new video from new Women’s Media Center website notunderthebus.com. You can also follow @notunderthebus (or check out hashmark #underthebus) on Twitter, and please become a fan on Facebook. It’s going to be a long drive, but together we can turn this bus around starting today.
Read MoreTime for Women to Drive Our Own Health Care Bus
Check out this new video from new Women’s Media Center website notunderthebus.com. You can also follow @notunderthebus (or check out hashmark #underthebus) on Twitter, and please become a fan on Facebook. It’s going to be a long drive, but together we can turn this bus around starting today. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUtLTB6zKbo&feature=player_embedded[/youtube] The Senate passed its version…
Read MoreTime for Women to Drive Our Own Health Care Bus
Check out this new video from new Women’s Media Center website notunderthebus.com. You can also follow @notunderthebus (or check out hashmark #underthebus) on Twitter, and please become a fan on Facebook. It’s going to be a long drive, but together we can turn this bus around starting today.
Read MoreNot Under the Bus This Time
December 10 is Human Rights Day. Appropriately today, there’s a new campaign for women’s human rights that I want to share with you.
On the heels of the Senate’s defeat of anti-abortion measures, Bart Stupak published a defense of his amendment in the New York Times (“What My Amendment Won’t Do.” His aggressive protest clearly illustrates the crusade against women’s rights won’t stop any time soon.
The Women’s Media Center is proud to announce the launch of its new media campaign NotUnderTheBus.com, a platform that amplifies the voices of women and organizations devoted to a health care reform that is fair to women.
NotUnderTheBus.com’s first call to action is to stop the Stupak Amendment, the Hatch-Nelson Amendment, and others like them which are the most draconian restrictions on women since the 1977 Hyde Amendment that cut federal funding for abortions by Medicaid.
NotUnderTheBus.com will serve as an aggregator and media resource center in the fight to safeguard women’s reproductive rights in the national health care reform debate.
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