January 22 will mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. My dear friend and fellow “WGL” (of Women, Girls, and Ladies traveling panel fame) Gloria Feldt, who is also a noted author/blogger, and one-time teen mom who rose to be the head of the world’s largest reproductive health provider and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood, has an article in the current issue of Democracy Journal in which she rethinks the most famous Supreme Court decision of recent time.

And another amazing mama and activist, Rebekah Spicuglia, writes about the first global consortium of motherhood organizations: the International Motherhood Network (IMN).

Great stuff, on both accounts. (And congrats, you two!)

I have a mysterious helper when I type these days. Sigh.

Do check out the latest forum at The REAL Deal (the blog of the Nat’l Council for Research on Women, where, full disclosure, I’m consulting!)  Kyla Bender-Baird took the lead on this one, and she’s pulled together a wonderful chorus of voices voicing hopes and dreams at this moment in history.  The posts comprising the forum include:

The Next Generation of Women Leaders Speak Out, by NCRW’s Kyla Bender-Baird

Big Dreams for Michelle Obama, by GWP’s own Courtney Martin

Turning from Fear to Hope in Politics and Leadership, by Julie Zeilinger, who lives in Pepper Pike, OH and is a sophomore at the Hawken School, and whose young woman’s feminist website, www.thefbomb.org will launch in February, 2009.

Bringing Marginalized Women to the Forefront of Politics, by Jeanie Adkins, Development Associate, The Mautner Project

Safe to be Idealistic Again, by Jaime Holmes, Graduate Assistant, The Institute for Teaching and Research on Women at Towson

Moving towards New Leadership and Opening New Possibilities, by GWP’s own Gwendolyn Beetham

Looking Past the U.S. Borders in the Next Four Years, by Emily Falk, Senior Associate, Brand Management Marketing, Catalyst

Feel free to speak YOUR mind and be part of the forum by posting comments at the site.  And if you like what you see over there, link love much appreciated, of course!

For those of you in NYC, there’s a great film in town, playing tomorrow night. Join the Girls Education and Mentoring Services (GEMS) for a screening! Writes the NYTimes’ critic:

Notwithstanding the coyly suggestive title, “Very Young Girls” is very far from exploitative. Adopting a confessional, direct-to-camera interview style for most of its running time, this unvarnished vérité documentary about teenage prostitutes in New York City resolutely resists the urge to dramatize. The heartbreaking stories are drama enough.

Ignoring underlying issues of upbringing, class or race (only one of the film’s victims is white), “Very Young Girls” is still an effective scratch on the surface of a serious social problem. However hard it is out there for a pimp, it’s not nearly hard enough.

For more info, click here!

(And thanks to GWP friend Patti Binder for the heads up.)

The other week I had the great fortune of meeting a fellow traveler, Gretchen Rubin, creator of The Happiness Project — my current favorite model for a blog that’s tied to the creation of a book. She interviewed me for her “True Rules” series, and here (dorky though I look) is what I said:

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it’d be far happier, of course, if so many human rights weren’t being violated around the world–including, ahem, by us. Condi’s speech on it, here.

This morning I heard the most inspiring talk from one of the most inspiring women I know, Miss Jacki Zehner. The talk was sponsored by 85 Broads, an organization of power women set up to educate, empower and connect talented women across industries, generations, and geographies, and the room was filled with said women — including author Leslie Bennetts, SheSpot guru Lisa Witter, and NCRW leader Linda Basch. When I got up to circulate, I heard three women say, “I wish I had given that speech.” It was just that kind of speech. The title? “Are YOU Ready for a Revolution?”

This here’s a pic of Jacki climbing a chair as she takes off her power jacket to unveil the Wonder Woman girl power t-shirt she’s wearing underneath. And that was only the start. I mean, that was the end of the striptease, but the beginning of a speech on making the personal political–a favorite theme of mine–in which she urged us all to push past our comfort zones. Jacki did, when she took on Goldman Sachs, where she was formerly a partner, in her ballsy (female anatomy equivalent here) post at HuffPo last month, called “Why Are Goldman’s Women Invisible?”.

Jacki blogs at 85 Broads, and at her own blog PursePundit, at HuffPo, and is soon to be a media star, I just know it. Look out world, cause Purse Pundit is on the LOOSE. The woman walks her talk, bringing the message to a sector where revolution is not exactly water cooler conversation: the corporate sphere.

So she got me thinking, where are the edges of my comfort zone? Where are yours?

Linda Hirshman’s excellent oped in today’s NYTimes, “Where Are the New Jobs for Women?”, brings light to a conversation I’ve been lurking on among feminist historians and economists, and I’m so glad to see that argument reaching the light of day. (There was a Boston Globe piece on it earlier, too, titled “Macho Stimulus Plan,” which we reported on here at GWP.)  The call is basically this: Let’s not repeat the mistakes of the New Deal, which failed to apply a gender lens.

As Hirshman notes,

[W]omen constitute about 46 percent of the labor force. And as the current downturn has worsened, their traditionally lower unemployment rate has actually risen just as fast as men’s. A just economic stimulus plan must include jobs in fields like social work and teaching, where large numbers of women work.

The bulk of the stimulus program will provide jobs for men, because building projects generate jobs in construction, where women make up only 9 percent of the work force.

…A public works program can provide needed economic stimulus and revive America’s concern for public property. The current proposal is simply too narrow. Women represent almost half the work force — not exactly a marginal special interest group. By adding a program for jobs in libraries, schools and children’s programs, the new administration can create jobs for them, too.

Amen to that.  And speaking of F.D.R., which makes me think of Eleanor, which makes me think in general of powerful Presidents’ wives, may the Obama team take up Abigail Adams’ cry to “remember the ladies”. For reals.

(And thanks to Elizabeth Curtis for the, er, correction that it was Abigail and not Eleanor who said that!)

The feminist blogosphere has been chewing over Gropegate these past few days (see the post with 364 comments over at Shakesville) and I just watched James Carville and some Republican strategist “analyze” the incident and the brouhaha on The Situation Room.  Carville, who I generally really like, acted like a total pig.  While the speechwriter apologized and Hillary accepted, Carville thought he had nothin to apologize for, he was just a 27-year old havin some fun, whohoo ye haw!  Amy Siskind, cofounder of The New Agenda, has a piece up today at The Daily Beast on it too.

I’m with Shakesville on this one, who asks “ why, pray tell, do so many people seem so compelled to make excuses for what is, at best, such puerile, obnoxious, and just plain disrespectful behavior?”

I mean, seriously?  Really boys?  Sigh.

I’m back from my talks in Iowa (thank you Astrid Henry! thank you Renee Kramer!), back in action, and wanted to follow Shira’s awesome inaugural post (welcome, Miss Shira!) with an updated plug for The Masculinity Project. This amazing project sponsored by Black Public Media “uses media to create a virtual community record of the true issues affecting black men and black community in America” and includes a blog, BLACKstream, film shorts, forums, and more.  The hope, according to the press release, is that it become a repository of work by the next generation of storytellers and filmmakers, fostering cross-cultural dialogue that “reaches our neighborhoods as well as our policymakers.”

Why now?  Because:

This year Barack Obama made history when he was elected as president of the United States on November 4, 2008. His candidacy has trained significant public and media attention to issues of race and the challenges facing black men in this country. While President Elect Obama ran for the highest office in the land, he also hails from Illinois, a state where the prison population is 63 percent African American—an incarceration rate nine times that of whites. But what does it all mean?

Check it out! www.masculinityproject.org