You KNOW I try to refrain from cat blogging over here, but I couldn’t resist this one: My 6 month old kitty Tallulah (aka Tula) sometimes forgets to stick her tongue back in her mouth. Marco caught her in the act in this shot.
As GWP readers know, we’re celebrating Women’s History Month this March. When my 8-year-old daughter came home from school with an assignment to write a biography about a woman from history, with the understanding that it could be a sports figure, a celebrity, a writer, a politician—any woman–I was at first dismayed. But I then grew excited about finding some strategies that can improve this month-long celebration of women’s history. I know we can do better, and I know girls deserve better!
For starters, the open-ended nature of the assignment overwhelmed my daughter. “Mom, how can I choose?†More important—from my perspective at least—how many women has her curriculum introduced as possible subjects for this assignment? The answer: not many. So while the field of choice was wide open in theory, having encountered few “important†women in school she really didn’t have many possibilities to consider.
Equally troubling to me: are a sports figure and a politician the same type of historical figure? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against athletes or politicians, but I do think that assignments signal educational values. Given the curriculum’s limited attention to women’s history, should my daughter be in the position to decide which life will define it?
But I’m writing to offer some suggestions for reinventing women’s history month, not to complain about it. In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about the balance between identifying problems versus creating solutions within feminism ever since I read Courtney Martin’s provocative analysis of a New York Times op-ed here.
So here goes:
Five Things You Can Do to Reinvent Women’s History Month
1. Volunteer to Talk in a School or Girl-Serving Group. Whether or not you have school-aged children, schools and nonprofits would welcome your expertise (and yes, if you are a GWP reader, I mean you). And I do mean welcome—with open arms! Most teachers love classroom guests, and kids love a break in the routine. You don’t have to give an academic talk, just a few highlights about an important woman you admire or about why women’s history matters. You still have time to make a difference this month, and if not, volunteer in April (or May, or September).
2. Share Your Ideas for Assignments with Teachers. Now I’m talking to the parents out there. If I have a casual moment with my daughter’s teacher (at pick up time one day, maybe) I will mention my thoughts about how she could make this assignment stronger (read: “more feministâ€). Having a short list of “important†women from which to choose, and talking with the whole class about all of them, for example, would teach the whole class a bit more women’s history.
3. Advocate for Curricular Reform. I know, this is a steep hill to climb, but I’m in this race for the long haul. We can make interventions like the ones I mention above right now, but we really need to find new, inclusive approaches to teaching history (and English, and math, etc.). That can only happen when we have some broader thinking about K-12 curricular reform.
4. Write Feminist Children’s Literature. Again, I’m dreaming big. The list of “women’s history month†books at my public library was bleak. It included books on pioneers, explorers, and aviators. Well, okay. But I can tell you that those topics seem pretty foreign and uninteresting in my daughter’s media-saturated world where she uses “text†as a verb even though she doesn’t have a cell phone. We need some better books, and we need some that make history seem lively, relevant, and fun.
5. Talk with Girls (and Boys) About Women’s History. This is not exactly the same as my first suggestion. When this assignment came up I was struck by the fact that my daughter and I rarely talk about the need to recognize—or even study!—women’s accomplishments. That seems a little crazy to me, especially given that my own background is in women’s studies. Yet it’s easy to go along with the status quo, and my daughter is proud of her success in school. What would it mean to suggest that school is leaving some important things out? Whether or not you have children, I’m sure you encounter school-aged children in your family or among your social network. I think we can all do more to talk about what gets left out, and why it matters.
What would you add to my list? And in case you’re wondering, my daughter wrote about Michelle Obama, definitely my kind of “important†woman who is making history every day.
As I wrap up this liveblogging session from the Brooklyn Museum, a gooey little confession about how the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art holds a special place in my heart:
This summer, the month before I married, instead of the traditional (cough cough) bachelorette party, friends organized a picnic accompanied by a private tour of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party, housed at the Center. What better way to mark the moment, we figured. And what an amazing opportunity this was to learn about this pivotal piece of feminist art, long buried, and to reconnect with it as members of a new generation.
So it is with extra special love that I wish the Center many happy returns–and TONS of future visitors–on this, its second birthday!
For those of you just joining, here, in chronological order, are 5 posts blogged live from “Women’s Visions for the Nation: What’s It Going to Take?”, a speakout held by the intergenerational feminist thinktank, Unfinished Business, celebrating the 2nd anniversary of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art on this sunny March afternoon. Quite a gathering of feminists and ideas. Enjoy.
Liveblogging Women’s Visions for the Nation @ Brooklyn Museum
Esther Broner and Ai-jen Poo Take the Stage
Let the Intergenerational Speakout Begin
What Will the Feminist New Deal Look Like?
Closing Thoughts from Esther Broner, Ai-jen Poo, and HipHop Artist Toni Blackman
Liz Abzug takes the podium to wrap up the wrap up, hitting on numerous themes:
“I tell my students, who don’t understand why we still need feminism: You/we have a lot of unfinished business. We have tools that we haven’t had — new technologies, all kinds of collective vehicles in art and music and song — and we can link this movement domestically and internationally.
We have to take the contexts that the second wave of feminism worked so hard to create and let a new genration use its own linguistics to create a new wave of feminisn.
There is energy — as you heard in this room — to move to the streets. We have to take the energy from the recent election of the current President, and the energy from the race of Hillary Clinton. We must leave no woman behind, across socioeconomic status, race, everything. We had some early mothers — Betty Shabazz — that gave birth to this new feminism.
We have to allow this catharsis, this transformation, and build on it through realistic measures like, yes, the stimulus pacakge. We need to make sure there are nontraditional jobs for women, childcare, etc in that package.
We have to use our creativity, connect through our actions, connect politics to art, connect women and power, poor women, rich women, everyone in between, of all races, nationalities, creeds, and backgrounds. We have to decide, each for ourselves, how we want to be heard.
We have to use the modern technologies to express and seize upon this moment, to create the Feminist New Deal — a movement where we spark, lead, and inspire.
We need to collectively build on our foremothers. We need to take the wisdom of the women who are older than us, and the wisdom of women who are younger than us. We need to take the men along.
Something my mother [Bella Abzug] really understood when she founded WEDO:Â Feminists internationally need to work on a common agenda.
There is quick movement in the new Obama Administration to work on women and girls rights.
We need to work together to finish the business of true equality, to create gender equity in the 21st century.”
Toni Blackman (pictured left) — the first ever hiphop artist to work in an official capacity with the Department of State — takes the stage, performing a song as she comes on. “A lot of young artists don’t realize that you can have a message and not be corny,” Toni says, and then goes on to prove her point through reciting a poignant poem, “Invisible Woman,” in which she ends:
I may not be SEEN, but I’ll be damned if I’m not heard: The feminine voice in hiphop.
Video rolls (MUST SEE! MUST SEE!):
Laura Flanders: Let’s talk about the stimulus. What infrastructural contribution would you all offer to the stimulus package?
Audience member: There’s no way you can think about success for anyone when you don’t think of children’s development, of women and their environment. You’ve got to look at issues of health and healthcare first.
Ai-jen Poo: We’ve got to demand childcare — all the things that have been on our shelf for the past 40 years. All that unfinished business needs to get done, and none of it is there.
Esther Broner: You know, I think back to when my students didn’t know what to do with their children during class, so we all brought the babies to class. There was childcare after that. Where is direct action now?
Melissa Silverstein (from the audience): I remember when the Women’s Action Coalition began (a group that started in 1991 by artists, in response to the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas hearings) and met at the Quaker Meeting House to do actions. When it died out, I felt a force depleted in me. I’ve lately been spending my time working on issues related to women and pop culture, movies, and tv. I’d like to ask people to think about how most people, not in NYC, only get to see big Hollywood blockbusters. Only nine percent of films are directed by women. Women’s visions are missing from mainstream America. I spend a lot of time online, in my little world. I feel very connected yet at the same time disconnected. So, how do we take our connectivity with each other, and our disconnectivity, as women? As Ai-jen was talking about domestic workers, I started thinking about freelancers — we need to connect to each other, too!
Ai-jen Poo: The work around the economy is a great way for women to connect. Women are the last hired and first fired. How do we see the economic stimulus as providing a chance for us to start connecting in new and broad ways around a common vision that is expansive? Because all of these issues are connected: There are the historic women’s issues — childcare, representations of women in popular culture — but then there are newer issues like job creation. Why don’t we demand 10,000 jobs for women in, for example, community organizing, or in nontraditional women’s fields like construction, where a lot of the new job creation is going to happen? We have to make the links.
Esther Broner: At the same time, if we don’t have strong labor unions, we will not have change. There has to be pressure for change.
Audience member: Let’s start another — intergenerational — WAC!
Laura Flanders: WAC itself was intergenerational, actually. But after President Clinton was elected, and after 1996, WAC waned. People got tired of going to meetings. There was a sense of “that was tiring, but we made it, we got Clinton elected, and now let’s leave it to them”. There’s a similar potential with the current moment. But we can’t leave it to them. We can’t stop. But what’s it going to take?
Esther Broner: We need to march again. I don’t want to be invisible anymore. I want my voice very loud, and heard.
Laura Flanders: Is it people in the streets again that we need? Ai-jen, what do you need?
Ai-jen Poo: We need a lot of things. We need a vehicle, we need a great communications infrastructure…
Esther Broner: We need another Bella Abzug.
[A long line of women stands at the microphone, ready to speak…Time is waning…Laura asks each one to speak, but speak quickly.]
Audience member: I don’t think we are where we need to be with women’s right to choose.
Gloria Feldt (from the audience): A movement needs to move. Power and energy comes from moving, not from standing still. I see some women who are incredible leaders here – what Esther did in her life, what Elizabeth has done, what Ai-jen has done. And yet I hear ‘We’re not here to lead, we’re here to spark.” Well, the hell with that! How do we as feminists get beyond wanting to be in a circle and sparking? How do we get to lead?
Mia Herndon (from the audience): When we’ve lead in the past, we left a lot of people behind. There are a lot of young women who don’t support feminism now because it’s left a bad taste in their mouth. When we’re talking about money and power, we lose sight. So we have to remember that.
Rita Henley Jensen: What we haven’t focused on enough is misogyny, and the end of welfare. The US has the highest maternal mortality rate among developed nation; African American women die in pregnancy 3,4,5 times more often than white women. We carry the hatred in this country across generations.
Audience member: Often we talk about academia as where we find our feminist ephiphanies. But often we forget that feminism also happens in the K-12 realm as well. As a feminist educator and activist, I often feel very alone at these kinds of events. Feminist teachers really work alone; we don’t have foundations that support us, or coalitions. Feminist teachers should make coalitions with each other. I’d like to see feminist organizations partner with feminist teachers to work on issues together. And I’d like to see curricular change.
Audience member (family court judge in Brooklyn, who worked with Barbara Seaman in early 1970s): The key going forward is to be able to communicate and build a structure of communications….
Audience member (from Mexico): One of the founders of the women’s movement in Brazil is in the audience; and I was one of the founders of the movement in Mexico. We had the first women’s studies conference, with 400 attending. In the 1970s and 1980s, we had a lot of international feminist communications. We have to again increase international communications among feminists. And I agree with Gloria Feldt, who said that leadership must lead. In recent years, we have deconstructed everything. We now need to CONSTRUCT. We need to ask ourselves: what kind of feminism do we have for a real, real new deal?
Audience member: We are at a time when the celebration of women’s power is exciting and fierce. I’ve been thinking of an idea: We should start a boat that goes in international waters and takes women’s art, lectures, and stories from country to country. We should come together and do an environmentally-sound lovecraft, make the ocean our mutual space, and use media to broadcast from there.
Laura Flanders: A real mothership.
Laura Flanders next opens it up to the audience for questions, speak outs, thoughts about the unfinished feminist business before us all. No hands go up yet, so Laura provokes us a bit, Laura-Flanders style: “Are we going to let people like Larry Summers set our future?!” While people are thinking of comments, Laura asks Esther what she thought might be different by now.
Says Esther Broner, “I was sure we’d have socialism at the least. Even now, I wonder what they’re waiting for. I never thought the rich would get richer and the poor poorer. That’s not what we were studying for. Women’s Studies is so egalitarian — you don’t see yourself as the final source. You evoke from the people around you. I thought that’s what our country would be like. So I have to draw a deep breath and get out there and work again. And that’s a little scary. I was born in 1927.  I’ll be 82.”
Laura Flanders notes that Esther Broner has been part of every social movement that has existed in her lifetime and asks Ai-jen Poo what she thinks of the current divisions between movements, and the historical silo-ing of movements, that sometimes takes place.
Says Ai-jen, “Each generation has built on previous ones. Now IS the moment for thinking big, and bold, and seizing the day like we haven’t for a few generations. All the groundwork that’s been laid by past generations will provide the seeds. But it’s now for us to reshape the economy, a new deal, a real deal for everyone. We’re going to have to have new coalitions, new alignments, breaking out of the idea that ‘this is the women’s movement’ and ‘that is the labor movement.’ All the pieces — the racial justice piece, the women’s rights piece, the labor piece — needs to build something greater than the sum of its parts.”
To “spark” the conversation, Esther Broner asks Ai-jen Poo to share her beginnings as a feminist. Says Ai-jen, in a moving intergenerational tribute: “I got started as a feminist through Women’s Studies, and Esther Broner, you actually started one of the early programs, so thank you very much!”
Laura Flanders: “And Esther, tell us more about your start in Women’s Studies?”
Esther Broner: “Anger is very important. I got my start in the house of academe, at a time when all the addresses there were men.”
Ai-jen Poo: “My activism focuses right now on The Domestic Violence Bill of Rights. There are over 200,000 women who are mostly women of color who do domestic work every day, supporting the families they take care of as well as their own families. Historically, domestic workers have been excluded from nearly every labor law. Their work isn’t considered ‘real’ work — it’s been thought of historically as ‘women’s work,’ and in particular, women of color’s work. Yet this work helps to make ALL the work possible in New York, and deserves to be respected and protected. The historic victories of the New Deal exclude domestic workers. We need a new new deal — a real deal — this times.”
Carol Jenkins of the Women’s Media Center introduces Laura Flanders. Here are snippets from Laura:
Laura Flanders: “The second anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art: Every word of that merits celebrating! How many institutions do we have in NYC with a woman’s name? (Applause)
You can learn a lot from women’s history. I did a column recently on obituaries. Did you read the one for Conchita Cintron. She was a bullfighter who died last week at age 86. She was once described as ‘a timid blue-eyed girl but she kills bulls without a cringe’. Lesson 1: Don’t cringe when there are 12,000 pounds of BULL coming at you! I was recently reading an article in The New Yorker by Ariel Levy about Lamar Van Dyke and the lesbian separatist movement. Van Dyke herself is a woman who is doing what she pleases for as long as she remembers. Now, that’s not easy to come by. But wasn’t that the idea?
In the rest of today’s program, we’ll talk about what we’ve learned, how far we’ve come, what are the challenges, and what is THE IDEA today. Two ‘sparkers’ will help set us off in this conversation: Esther Broner, and Ai-jen Poo….
Nicole Mason: “I was the first person in my family to go to high school, and definitely to go to college. About a year and a half later, one hot summer day, I was bored, and decided to volunteer at a local women’s center. That experience changed my life. It was there that I began to have language to help describe my growing up. I decided from that point, with that community, that I was going to be a social justice activist….Today, I’m a social justice researcher with radical roots. I tell this story because there’s something to be said about how we come to the work. It’s our perspective, our standpoint, our point of view.
Artists often create out of nothing. They take a blank canvas, raw materials, and even scraps. They interpret the world, and their interpretation is framed in their lived experiences, values, and beliefs. They draw on their experiences to create something new.
Like the artist, I want the social justice activist to draw on our experiences to create something new. The old is no more, and the new is not yet. We have an opportunity in this historical moment — the times are urgent — to create something new. The economic crisis has had a devastating effect on women and children….The socioeconomic cleavages between groups continue to deepen.
The problems are not new. But figuring out how we work across our differences is key. It’s about making my issues your issues. And the time is now.
In college, I had a zine called Give a Sister a Lift (some name I got from Berkeley, lol), and in every issue I included this quote: ‘Whether one chooses to label oneself a nationalist, a democrat, etc, the real test is whether one is dedicated to the liberation of all peoples, on all levels.'”
(Applause applause)
