Well, HRC’s days as a candidate in the 2008 race may be numbered, but not so the impact she’s had on the electorate. Weighing in here today is Kristen Loveland, offering an inter-gender, intra-generational conversation with her brother, Andrew. Kristen, an MPhil in Modern European History and a staffer at the Association for Jewish Studies, has a great blog called The Choice. While an undergrad at Columbia University, Kristen co-founded the university’s first progressive student magazine, Ad Hoc, and became its Editor-in-Chief. I am proud to call her my (very over-qualified) summer intern, and to introduce her as a new regular here on GWP. Welcome, Kristen! -GWP

An Inter-gender, Intra-generational Conversation
Kristen Loveland

Taking my view that it’s better to dialogue than snipe to the streets, I found someone even younger than me (age 24) to talk about Hillary’s candidacy. That person? My brother, Andrew, who’s 17 and one of the only Hillary supporters in his high school. As an Obama fan myself, I think it’s possible both to be a feminist and to not support this particular female candidate. But after speaking with Andrew about his classmates’ take on a woman president, I almost wanted to switch teams.

Kristen: So let’s cut to the chase: why don’t your classmates think Hillary should be prez?

Andrew: Well, a lot of them joke about her not having masculine characteristics and say her crying on TV proves she couldn’t run a country. They joke that she should be making sandwiches for the men instead.

K: Do girls in your class object to this sort of thing?

A: Well, they don’t say girls should just make sandwiches, but some don’t think a woman can run the country. They think it’s all about perception and that a woman leader wouldn’t be respected, especially when dealing with leaders of other countries where women are second-class citizens.

K: But what are they taught in history? Don’t they know about England’s Margaret Thatcher, or Israel’s Golda Meir, or Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto, who led a Muslim country?

A: They never talk about other women leaders. They just say women are generally too weak. But the guys are more vocal and use a lot of Family Guy jokes to put Hillary down.

K: Family Guy? But isn’t Peter (the husband) a complete idiot in the show and Lois (the wife) the smart one who always gets him out of scrapes and drunken stupors?

A: Yeah, but they ignore that and just think it’s funny that Peter always puts Lois down for standing up for women.

K: I feel like in my day, which was not so many days ago, girls were being told that they could be the first female president, and Murphy Brown was a high-powered news anchor, and Jessie Spano was class president and calling A.C. Slater a chauvinistic pig… What’s changed?

A: We learn in history about the 1950s “cult of domesticity” and it seems like nothing has changed. In business class we were trying to determine projected earnings and some of the kids said women would make less than men. When our teacher asked why, they said it was because the girls would have to stop working to stay home with the kids.

K: Do you think they assume this because their moms are stay-at-home?

A: Maybe, but it’s also TV shows, where you primarily see women home making dinner. Even in Arrested Development, which is an awesome show, all the women do is spend money while men solve the problems. And Laguna Beach is really bad: you have a lot of stuck-up girls, who don’t work, spending their husbands’ or fathers’ money. So the girls get into this idea and then guys think girls are weak because all they want is handbags.

K: So, why do you support Hillary?

A: I do like Obama and they share many of the same viewpoints, but for me it’s like picking out a car; sometimes one car just feels better than the other. Also, I think she’s a better public speaker, and her views on women’s rights are more progressive.

K: Would you consider yourself a feminist?

A: Well…I’m not much into protesting, and I do think Family Guy’s funny, but I guess I take it more seriously than others. Even if shows portray women in a certain light, we shouldn’t take that as the way it is in real life. Oh yeah, did I tell you how my “Bush’s last days” sticker got keyed off my car? And my Hillary sticker would have, but I pasted it on the inside of the window.

I think a few conclusions can be drawn from our convo. First, high school history curricula must be augmented with a critical supply of celebratory women’s history. The National History Women’s Project is a good place to start, but this must be implemented on an expansive basis—and not just during Women’s History Month. Second, role models are some of the most important factors influencing girls’ perceptions of their future selves—and we need better ones. Third, we need to continue the conversation. I hate to draw conclusions from afar. (I’m infuriated whenever writers condemn today’s college hookup culture without seeming to have ever spoken with the many women I knew who engaged with it on their own terms.) It’s vital to talk with young people so as to better understand the cultural and social factors that influence placid acceptance of patriarchy and misogyny in their generation. Oh, and finally, my brother’s kind of awesome, even if he does compare choosing a president to picking a car.

Alissa Quart–who I’m off to meet with this morning–has the cover story of the Columbia Journalism Review this month. (Go Q!) Do check out her piece, “Lost Media, Found Media: Snapshots from the Future of Writing.” A chronic bridger, I think I might actually fall somewhere in between. Alissa interviewed a range of old (lost) and new (found) media types, including feministing’s Jessica Valenti, of whom she writes the following:

The young found media types I spoke with tend to focus more on invention than destruction. They were, for the most part, unflaggingly upbeat. Jessica Valenti, for instance, the twenty-nine-year-old founder and editor in chief of the popular feminist blog Feministing, which aggregates news items ranging from feminist responses to the presidential campaign to condom manufacturers’ responses to a new study of young women and STDs. The news hits are all interspersed with tart, partisan, intelligent, and sometimes raw commentary and opinion. Whatever Feministing is—blog, think tank, digest, “women’s” pages, feminist magazine—it’s a fine example of the new media as an improvement over the old. Unlike the “Hers” sections of yore—women’s magazines, or even Ms. Magazine—Feministing is not shaped by the fear of being offensive or “unrelatable” for “the average female reader.” In this way, like some other feminist blogs, it is head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media. “I don’t see a lot of nostalgia from young feminists for the time when things were a lot worse,” said Valenti, who is tall with black Veronica bangs, and speaks a decibel or two louder than you do. “I studied journalism a bit but I didn’t find my voice until I had a completely open forum in the blogs.”

Like Valenti, my younger journalist friends and colleagues imagine a kaleidoscopic future where the hoarier codes of journalism are put to rest: goodbye inverted pyramid, hello a nearly reckless immediacy; goodbye measured commentary, hello pungent or radical or vulgar commentary. Yet beyond style, the new reality is that there is no clear, long-term career plan for Found Media-ites—or even for most of the rest of us. We’re in the sort of moment in history that some people will say they were glad to witness, but only twenty years hence.

Read the full article here.

It’s true, it’s true. Marco and I are getting married this summer. We’re doing a small wedding kind of thing, very DIY. And wouldn’t you know it, I just came across a site called IndieBride!

One of the site’s creators, Elise Mac Adams, published a book in February called Something New: Wedding Etiquette for Rule Breakers, Traditionalists, and Everyone in Between. I don’t think there’s a rule Marco and I aren’t in some way breaking, but hey. Of greater interest, there’s an interesting reading list posted over there. Thought I’d share highlights, with some additions of my own:

Marriage, A History by Stephanie Coontz

A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom

Wifework: What Marriage Really Means For Women by Susan Maushart

Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families Under the Law by Nancy Polikoff

Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique by Jaclyn Geller

In spite of it all, I’m still game. Other titles readers would recommend? I’m taking suggestions!

Strategic Blogging for Organizations, Women’s Research Centers, and Feminist Experts

JUNE 7 (time TBD)
Kimmel Center / New York University

Sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women, this session will take place during the Council’s annual conference this year (June 5-7).

In this 3-hour intensive, I’ll lead participants through the basics of blogging—both logistical and philosophical. Participants will leave with a sense of the ways in which blogging is changing the media landscape—especially for women!—and tools for starting one for your organization or improving one that’s already off the ground. Topics will include: young feminism and activism online, the momosphere, possibilities for personal voice, and how to publicize events and publications through blogs.

There is no separate registration required for the workshop. To register for the conference, click here. Questions? Please don’t hesitate to email me at girlwpen@gmail.com.

[Shameless self-promotion alert begins]
“I had just started my own blog when I attended Deborah’s workshop. Deborah opened my eyes to the vast world of feminist bloggers and got me excited about the number and kinds of people I could reach. She also exposed me to options – and vocabulary – that I just didn’t have. Blog carnivals? Springwidgets? A feminist bloggers conference? Who knew? Not me! Not until Deborah’s workshop, packed with inspiration and instruction.”
– Nancy D. Polikoff, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law, American University
[Shamelessness alert ends]

Lately I’ve heard the term “diversity fatigue” used to describe a) the genuine frustration that diversity programs at corporations haven’t made more progress, and b) the eye-rolling backlash against affirmative action.

Offering a fresher take, there’s a great post over at the NYTimes blog Shifting Careers called “Diversity at Work: More than Just Numbers” in which Marci Alboher interviews Natalie Holder-Winfield, an employment lawyer turned diversity consultant and author of Recruiting and Retaining a Diverse Workforce. The book, says Marci, is “a well-researched and eye-opening account of why minority employees flee workplaces even when employers have so-called diversity programs in place.”

Based on interviews with professionals from various backgrounds, Holder-Winfield seeks to provide managers, employees, and students with advice for navigating the overlay issues of cultural and generational diversity. The book looks great, but from a “making it pop” perspective, I kind of wish it had a catchier title. This one would be hard. I’m coming up dry. Which is probably why they went with the title they did?!

Read excerpts from the interview here.

Welcome back from the weekend! I’m psyched to start the week off with this next guest post from regular Courtney Martin. Here she is, with some quintessential Martin-style wisdom for individuals and orgs wishing to reach younger people through their writing and their work. -GWP

Reaching the Next Generation

One of the most interesting things, in my humble opinion, about the next generation is the way that it approaches altruism. Long gone are the days when writing a check or signing a petition were action enough for the socially conscious individual. And also long gone are the strict bifurcation between nonprofit and corporate, do gooder and go getter, giver and saver.

Through a variety of technological innovations like Facebook Causes and You Tube appeals, young people have changed the landscape on “doing good.” And it’s not just a technological shift, but a whole new paradigm that has been born thanks to the kids of the 80s and 90s.

Organizations like Drinking Liberally have spawned a whole new, very fun way of approaching public awareness and political community. And one of my favorite new sites is All Day Buffet, which calls itself “a social action brand for the cool kids.” It seems that everyone is striving to put the fun back in fundraising.

Including myself. Check out the piece I wrote for The American Prospect about my own little contribution called the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy.

And keep this in mind if you are trying to inspire young people to get involved in a cause. We like to feel engaged, but not drained. We like to kill many birds with one stone.

We like to get a little tipsy.

One more must-read, just in case you (like me, gulp) missed it: Susan Faludi’s recent oped at the NYTimes. Writes Faludi:

As Thelma, the housewife turned renegade, says to her friend in “Thelma & Louise” as the two women flee the law through the American West, “Something’s crossed over in me.”

Senator Clinton might well say the same. In the final stretch of the primary season, she seems to have stepped across an unstated gender divide, transforming herself from referee to contender.

What’s more, she seems to have taken to her new role with a Thelma-like relish. We are witnessing a female competitor delighting in the undomesticated fray. Her new no-holds-barred pugnacity and gleeful perseverance have revamped her image in the eyes of begrudging white male voters, who previously saw her as the sanctioning “sivilizer,” a political Aunt Polly whose goody-goody directives made them want to head for the hills.

I know it’s over. I imagine she knows it’s over. But I admit, I’m truly enjoying that glee in her eyes. That woman is one tough cookie, and I mean that in only the best of ways.

Marie Cocco has a poignant piece in yesterday’s Washington Post that’s well worth a read. In “Misogyny I Won’t Miss,” after cataloguing the range of sexist insults lobbed at Hillary Clinton from right and from left, Cocco concludes, “For all Clinton’s political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.”

Culture = Democrats included.

Writes Cocco,

I will not miss the deafening, depressing silence of Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean or other leading Democrats, who to my knowledge (with the exception of Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland) haven’t publicly uttered a word of outrage at the unrelenting, sex-based hate that has been hurled at a former first lady and two-term senator from New York. Among those holding their tongues are hundreds of Democrats for whom Clinton has campaigned and raised millions of dollars. Don Imus endured more public ire from the political class when he insulted the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

Depressing indeed.

As promised, my quick report on this week’s “Women and Ambition” panel co-sponsored by the National Council for Research on Women and PricewaterhouseCoopers:

The thing I love about corporate panels is that they start and finish on time. They are impeccably moderated. They serve food. This one delivered on all fronts, and went a step beyond. Every audience member was given a remote control devise by which to cast votes, enabling the moderator to poll us in real time and post the results on a big screen up front. It was cooler than Oprah, I swear.

There were some interesting results from the audience poll: 75% of the women in the crowd described themselves as “ambitious.” 94% of the men in attendance said the word “ambitious”, when used to describe someone, carried a positive connotation, but only 57% of the women agreed.

Women’s ambition is certainly a hot-button issue these days. Everyone agrees that we should be much further along in terms of our representation at the top tiers of corporate and political leadership than we are. How are ambitions born? What impedes then? What can companies do to help women nurture and realize theirs? Panelists–psychiatrist and author Anna Fels, the White House Project’s Marie Wilson, entrepreneurship scholar Myra Hart, law partner Marsha Simms, and economist Lise Vesterlund–sounded off on these issues, and more.

Some memorable quips:

Moderator Jennifer Allyn: “We’ve been talking about critical mass since the 1970s. There has to be more than 16% [the percent of women in Congress] before women can stop being seen as the ‘only’ and constitute more of a critical mass.”

Marie Wilson: “Anytime you have only one woman in a top position, all you see is their gender–hair, hemlines, and husbands.” “You cannot be what you cannot see. So we have to make the women who are in leadership more visible.”

Myra Hart: “Research shows that women straight out of Harvard Business School land the same kinds of jobs at the same compensation of men. But 5 years later, women’s career paths indicate a change. Much of it may be self-selection, but some of it is not.”

Lisa Vesterlund: “Research shows it’s not that women are under-confident about their ability to compete and win. It’s than men are actually over-confident about theirs.”

And my personal favorite:

Marie Wilson: “In the last 6 months of media coverage, Hillary Clinton’s ambition has been described as ‘unquenchable.’ John McCain’s ambition hasn’t been mentioned at all.”

For more on women’s leadership, consider joining me at the Council’s annual conference this year, titled “Hitting the Ground Running: Research, Activism, and Leadership for a New Era,” on June 5-7 at NYU. To register, contact Jessyca Dudley at jdudley@ncrw.org, 212/785-7335, x205 or visit www.ncrw.org.

For those in NYC looking to be inspired, come join me on Sunday afternoon for a reading by kid writers in Bryant Park!

Writers at Writopia Lab (pictured) have been arduously developing short stories, memoirs, op-eds, scripts, and poetry over the past six months under the tutelage of journalist Rebecca Segall and her team. They’ll be sharing them on Sunday, May 18th, from noon to 3:00pm. There will be a tent set up in case of rain. The youngest writers (ages 9-13) will read from noon to 1:30pm; the teens will read from 1:30-3:00pm. Folks can come and go as they wish.

This summer, I’m excited to be teaching a class for Writopia Lab. More about that, and more, in the e-newsletter I’ll be sending next week!