feminist history

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 feminist”). 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

Elizabeth Sackler Revs It Up

C. Nicole Mason Keynotes

Laura Flanders Emcees

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 Brings It Home

Here we are, at 92Y Tribeca.  From left to right: Courtney Martin, Elizabeth Hines, Gloria Feldt, and me.  Logo on screen done by Marco.  Thanks to everyone for coming out, props to the great staff at the Y, and endless gratitude to my fellow WGLs — of all the different things I do, doing this panel with them is hands down one of my FAVES.

For some recaps, check out:

Courtney’s reflections on our shared blog, WomenGirlsLadies, in which she summarizes a lot of what I’ve been thinking about of late: “There is an opportunity, this economic downturn, for all sorts of gender shake-up. When we’re forced to recognize that old styles of leadership and assumptions about gender roles are no longer valid, we can get even the most reluctant folks to try a more enlightened, equal approach. The media coverage of this phenomenon has been totally unsatisfying (dads who cook! women who work! what a revelation!), but in truth, there is something interesting going on.”

A meaty comment over at WomenGirlsLadies from audience member Sara: “I think the most exciting thing anyone said was that this is a moment the feminist movement can take advantage of the social chaos to effect broad change, but if we’re not looking beyond the division of work at home and our ability to balance family and work life, even just in the context of work we’re limiting ourselves.”

Elisabeth Garber-Paul’s review over at RH Reality Check, Feminism and the New Great Depression: What’s Next?, in which she writes: “However, the depression [sic] makes it a more volatile time for the discussion of gender roles—especially because 4 out of 5 laid-off workers are men, and that translates into a seeming crisis of masculinity. The image of the female breadwinner and the stay-at-home dad is increasingly common, and now that men don’t necessarily identify primarily through their title at work, how we define masculinity will need to change—just as the image of femininity has been changing over the past 40 years.”

BTW, I’m starting to develop a TALK on these themes of men, women, gender, and recession — I’ll be trying it out next week at Framingham State College and in April at Catalyst here in NYC.  More on all that soon….and potentially one day coming to a venue near you….stay tuned!

The deadline to propose panels for the 2009 National Women’s Studies Association conference in Atlanta is Feb 15, 2009 (my 40th birthday!)  And among the themes this year is this:

Theme 5: Women’s Studies 40 Years Later: Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been?
Because 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the first WS program in the U.S.  So this occasion marks a pivotal moment in which to reflect on the state of the field and its practices, past and present.  Some questions to start mulling over, from the call for proposals:

• How are the histories and origin stories of WS as a field and of feminist theory as a body of knowledge (differently) documented, narrated, and conceptualized?
• Who claims WS, presently and/or historically?  Who disclaims it, presently and/or historically?
• How has feminist theory been reconceptualized?  What ‘counts’ as feminist theory in WS?
• Has the feminist subject been adequately reconceived?
• What do we name ourselves and why?  (e.g., feminist studies, women’s studies, women’s & gender studies)
• What are some difficulties within WS cross-generationally?  What are some sites of connection across generations?
• How has the WS curriculum changed, and how does it still need to be transformed, particularly the introductory course (Intro. to WS) and the Feminist Theory course?
• Are there ways in which WS functions simultaneously as a site of social control as well as a site of resistance and transformation in the academy?

More: NWSA invites all of those interested to submit proposals for panels, papers, workshops, and performances that represent the wide rage of intersectional and transnational scholarship in the US and beyond.  Proposals must address one of their five themes.

Read about the other four themes, and download the complete CFP by going here.

First, thanks to Aviva over at Fourth Wave for posting a roundup of links to the Great Ms. Cover Debate of 2009 (“Super-Feminist Obama to the Rescue!“), and to Yondalla, who writes in reference to the image of Obama as Super-Feminist-Man in comments here at GWP, “A man who is a feminist would not be someone who would rescue us. It would be someone who walks beside us.”

Having read the critiques, I get it now.  And I respect the dissent.  But I stand behind my original praise of the cover.  I agree with Jill over at Feministe, who writes,

“Obama has reportedly self-identified as a feminist, and has the legislative record to back it up. Is he a perfect feminist, or a perfect progressive? Not by any stretch of the imagination. Is he going to disappoint us over and over? Yeah, he’s already started. But he’s still pretty damned good, especially for a mainstream, center-left politician elected to the highest office, and I don’t really see the point in kicking him out of the club just yet.”

The brouhaha over this cover is not generational, nor is it necessarily PUMA-related (as Megan at Jezebel snarkily and dismissively asserts). The controversy is over the rescue narrative, and how one reads visual imagery, which is often more polyglot than it seems.

Looking at the current cover next to the famous 1973 cover featuring Wonder Woman, a bunch of questions come up for me.  First, wasn’t this cover perhaps intended as satire?  Because next to the cartoonish Wonder Woman cover, the current one certainly strikes me as having an element of fantasy to it too.

Second, Ms. is a magazine that has tried to reinvent itself over and over again.  Its current readership skews older, and I imagine engaging younger readers is now key.  In putting Obama on the cover in this way, are the publishers sending a message that the feminism of Ms. is big-tent enough to encompass younger Obama-supporting feminists?  Was this a move to get beyond the stereotype of Ms. as “your mother’s magazine” that some younger women continue to hold?  If so, I laud the extending of this generational olive branch.

In the end, I get the critiques about how men can’t save feminism.  I really do.  But bottom line over here: I like the playful, subversive idea that inside the most prominent man in the world right nows lies a feminist ready to more publicly engage.  Time will tell whether or not it’s true.

(Paging Marco, my laid-off graphic designer husband who thinks a lot about superheros and blogs about the narratives behind images!  Weigh in, my dear Clark Kent?!)

On the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage in Britain, Observer reporter Rachel Cooke asks how far have we come in a thoughtful article titled “Post-feminist backlash – or new dawn for equal rights?” Read up on the latest around Amy Winehouse, Georgina Baillie, politics, wages, the sex industry, much more…

I’m quoted!

Check out this GORGEOUS collage over at the new collaborate blog Fourth Wave Feminism, which launched on the eve of the Democratic National Convention this year.  I just had to share:

While you’re at it, check out Fourth Wave’s mission statement, here.

As a chronicler of feminism, of course I’m fascinated by the term. Here’s Fourth Wave’s post on the third (wave, that is).  My basic position: I don’t care what we call it, let’s just keep on doing it.  Fourth, five, sixth, sixteenth….bring it on.

To veterans, these divisions get tiresome, and I have seen how they can keep us from coming together.  But IMHO, the rolling of waves and the recognition of intergenerational difference in any social movement is natural, and essential to its growth.  I’m not seeing the same tensions between the “new” and the “old” with this fourth as there seemed to be when the term “third wave” first came about in the early 1990s.  (Unless I’m missing something here?)  At the same time, as the savvy ladies over at the UK feminist blog, The F-Word, remind us, many of the aims of so-called second-wave feminism, both here and there, still haven’t been achieved.  So boo to generational in-fighting.  We’ve got far too much at stake.  And hence, a caveat: fourth, fifth, sixth, bring it on, but let’s all keep our eyes on the larger prize.

I write all about this waving of feminism (ah, the oceanography of it all…) in a book, of course, with a hot pink cover.  And the WomenGirlsLadies and I have been having a wonderful experience taking it all on the road.  Meanwhile, back in medialand, New York Magazine did a piece in April titled “The Feminist Reawakening: Hillary Clinton and the Fourth Wave” and there was an article in Utne Reader back in 2001 called “Feminism’s Fourth Wave.” Journalist Julie Leupold is doing a special project on “Fourth Wave Feminism” over at Porfolio at NYU.  And so the public conversation and feminism and its waves continues.

Once again, I’m curious…what do others think of the term?  Interesting conversation going on in comments, across the pond.

PS. Feminism, in some corners, has been known to eat its young. So to the Fourth Wave blog– “exploring feminism in the 21st century and grappling with the continued gender inequity in America and the world”–a hearty welcome again to the blogosphere! And speaking of exploring, do check out the 68th Carnival of Feminists, hosted at Fourth Wave.

Robin Morgan wrote recently about “faux feminists,” namely in the context of those who support Sarah Palin’s candidacy for vice president. While, as I have pointed out, I think a Palin vice presidency would prove detrimental for women’s status in America, particularly because of her fiercely narrow anti-choice position, to bisect women into “true” vs. “fake” feminists (sound familiar?) without any room for contingency is unworkable in a society where women are represented by a variety of identities. In this case, I think Morgan needed to make a distinction between political feminism and personal feminism.

Political feminism needs to promote policies which, at the fount, support the advancement of women from a variety of disparate backgrounds, including different ethnicities, economic situations, regional and religious experiences. It needs to fight for women in those areas of society where they experience distinct disadvantages and discrimination. But it especially needs to support female Choice, particularly in sexuality and reproduction, above and beyond all else: the Choice to marry whomever she wants and the Choice to have or not have a child contingent on her personal circumstances.

A politician who supports women’s economic and political advancement, but not their bodily sovereignty, is incapable of representing feminism on an American political stage. Palin refuses to look beyond a personal, religiously-motivated decision on her part to understand why an urban teenager with a bright college future ahead of her, or a college junior, or a woman with little economic support, or a mid-career woman for whom it’s just not the right time, or a rape victim, must have the Choice to end an unwanted pregnancy. The difference between a personal and political feminism hinges on the question of whom it affects–and while Palin’s views on abortion may be right for her, they are not right for the majority of women in this country. The personal may always be political, but the political should not always be personal.

On the other hand, despite what I would describe as a viscerally negative reaction to Palin’s candidacy, I don’t think we should delineate stringent standards for who is a “feminist.” “I am a feminist.” It’s an expression we don’t hear enough. Based on pure numbers, we should be encouraging as many women as possible to express this sentiment: “I am a feminist.” At base, it means that you are actively working for women’s advancement, independence, and equality, either in your own life or at large. Given how diverse our society is, that can take on any number of meanings.

My grandmother is a devout Catholic, anti-choice, and very pro-Palin (we’ve been studiously avoiding the topic for the past few months). At the same time, she pulled herself out of 1950s housewife-dom to go back to college at age 36 with two kids at home, became a first-time teacher at age 40, and through various family crises has shown herself to be a fiercely independent and modern woman who refused to cede ground to males in the family. Would I want her deciding American policy on women’s issues for the next four years? No way. Would I love it if she called herself a feminist and would I think it true? Absolutely. In fact, sometimes I call her a feminist and while she’ll sigh “Nooo,” you can hear pride in her voice. “Feminist” can be a very empowering term.

“Feminist” also demands context. The first-wave feminists were hardly pro-choicers, but they were extremely effective politically for their time. Radical and middle-class feminists in the second wave had radically different ideas on tactics and outcomes, but both groups were feminists in their own way. Which feminism was more effective for American women at the time is a different conversation. If we stick to a too-narrow version of “feminist” then we leave out a significant number of women who are trying to carve out how to be feminists on their own terms, in their own societies, in their own religious contexts even.

There are Jewish Orthodox feminists, who have made great strides in female education, grassroots religious practices, and tefillah (prayer) groups [You can read about it in: “Women in Orthodoxy: Conventional and Contentions” by Norma Baumel Joseph in Women Remaking American Judaism, ed. Riv-Ellen Prell, 2007: Wayne State University Press). While the headway may seem small to those who don’t adhere to Orthodox beliefs, why would we deny women who have sought to effect changes within the contexts of their religion the right to call themselves Feminist?

It’s a matter of semantics, but to prevent us from wasting time over accusatory, and sometimes riskily exclusive arguments of “Who’s a feminist? Are you a feminist? Am I a feminist? Is she? Is he?” We should take “Feminist” off the grand, binary scale and ask instead about American political feminism. Sarah Palin, through a mixture of savvy and chutzpah, has become a politically powerful woman and within her context, I can understand why she considers herself a feminist. But does she represent feminism in the same way Hillary does? Will she work effectively in political office for the betterment of the diverse body of American women? In short: hell no.

–Kristen Loveland

Just when you thought that with the interesting yet complicated angle Palin is injecting into red state feminism, we might onto something new, Christina Hoff Sommers is back fanning the flames of the mommy wars by arguing that in building her case, Betty Friedan made a fatal mistake that undermined her book’s appeal at the time and permanently weakened the movement it helped create.

According to Sommers in a New York Sun article titled Reconsiderations: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, Friedan not only attacked a postwar culture that aggressively consigned women to the domestic sphere, but she attacked the sphere itself – along with all the women who chose to live there.

I seriously can’t wait for Stephanie Coontz’s reconsideration of TFM (which is in the works). We need it, bad.

And while we’re at it, Newsweek reports that a new study finds that children of privileged families fare worse when the mother works outside the home–but what does the research really tell us? Read it and see.

(Thanks to Steve Mintz and the Council on Contemporary Families–on whose Board I now sit!–for the links.)

SOS from my friends at the fabulous magazine Bitch: Feminist Critique of Pop Culture:

The print publishing industry as a whole is staring into a void. Across the board, newsstand magazine sales are in a slump, subscriber numbers are down, and paper and postal costs continue to rise. But it’s not magazines like US Weekly or Vogue that you’ll see disappearing from the newsstands—they have the parent companies and the resources to weather industry ill winds. It’s the small, independent magazines like Bitch that will disappear, because the odds are already stacked high against us. And simply put: We need to raise $40,000 by October 15th in order to print the next issue of Bitch….

Read the rest.