intergenerational

Tis the season of awesome events here in NYC, if you’re into next-generation feminism that is.

On THURSDAY, the National Council for Research on Women will hold a special session as part of their Annual Conference on Igniting Change, called “Youth: Opportunities and Challenges for Building Leadership Pipelines”. The session takes place from 9:00 am – 10:30 am in Room 9205 at CUNY Graduate Center. Here’s the descript: As tomorrow’s voters and leaders, young women need to be vital partners in advancing the movement for social justice. This means working in partnership with young women, recognizing and valuing their diversity, to understand their perspectives and concerns and foster programs that emphasize both their rights and civic responsibilities. The panel will highlight current issues facing young women and address structural and cultural factors that support or hinder their empowerment. Attention will also be given to strategies for working across generational and cultural differences to build a viable movement.” Speakers include Rosalina Diaz-Miranda, Medgar Evers College, CUNY; Supriya Pillai, Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing; Kim Salmond, Girl Scouts of the USA; Ellen Silber, Graduate School of Social Service, Fordham University; Sally Stevens, Southwest Institute for Research on Women, University of Arizona; and Liz Abzug, Bella Abzug Leadership Institute.

On FRIDAY, the blog of all blogs, Feministing, is throwing a 5th anniversary fundraising bash. Even if you can’t go, you can still contribute!

On SUNDAY, Girls Write Now will hold their Annual Spring Reading from 4-6pm at The New School, Tishman Auditorium, 66 W. 12th Street. Some of NYC’s best teen writers will showcase original work, and keynote speaker Amy Robach and featured reader National Book Award Nominee Jean Thompson will be there too. The event is FREE and open to the public.

And that’s just this week!

Check out our own Miss Courtney Martin’s fearsome post at American Prospect last week and tell us what you think!  I’m sensing this is gonna be fodder for our next Women, Girls, and Ladies event –which, by the way, is at the very same Sackler Center for Feminist Art (June 20 – Save the Date!) where the event Courtney writes about here took place:

The End of the Women’s Movement

(For liveblogging of the event she refers to — by moi — go here.)

So I loves me a campus visit, but my visit to Framingham State College on Monday — though exhausting! — took the cake. Heartfelt thanks to superorganizer Virginia Rutter and her amazing crew: Lisa Eck, Bridgette Sheridan, the Gender Interest Group, English, History, Psychology, Sociology, Academic Affairs, President’s Office, Wellness Center, and Women’s Empowerment, with special kudos to students Chelsea Hastbacka and Ashley Barry.

The day started with a first-run lecture/discussion called “Gender Shakeup at the Recession,” in which I got to play professor once again.  I talked a bit about my personal experience with layoff, and national trends, and then had students go through two media pieces chock full of gender stereotypes (that DABA article from the New York Times from January and my dear co-blogger Joe the Trader’s piece at Recessionwire called “Gendernomics”).  The students really got it, and I learned from the things they noticed as well.  We talked about why the return to these traditional notions and self-presentations of gender now, and it’s something I sense I’ll be writing about more and more…

Then, a Sisterhood, Interrupted talk in a church — I got to say words like “ass” and “bitch” in a church!  Hey, they’re in the section of my book that I read from; not like I planned it or anything.

Next up, a blogging workshop.  And finally, a wrap-up with the faculty Gender Interest Group and the kind of discussion that made me really miss academia.  As a freelancer out here who straddles academic and non-academic worlds, it was grounding and re-energizing to be among engaged students and engaging faculty for a whirlwind day of thinking, discussing, and mulling.

The feminist group on campus — who call themselves “Women’s Empowerment” — played a big role in getting me there, and they, together with the faculty I met, are the lifeblood of feminist consciousness on this campus.  As always, the sight of young people coming to — and questioning — their feminism inspires me to no end.  Thank you, FSC, for reminding me why I do what I do!  You keep me going, you really do.

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!

Intergenerational convo–my fave subject, as you know!–currently going on over at RH Reality Check:

The Feminist Blame Game

Lighting Our Own Torches

And for more, join me on Weds at the 92Y Tribeca of course 🙂

(Thanks to Gloria Feldt for the heads up…)

…what of the youth shaped by what some are already calling the Great Recession? Will a publication looking back from 2030 damn them with such faint praise? Will they marry younger, be satisfied with stable but less exciting jobs? Will their children mock them for reusing tea bags and counting pennies as if this paycheck were the last? At the very least, they will reckon with tremendous instability, just as their Depression forebears did.

This is an excerpt from a piece by Kate Zernike in Sunday’s Week in Review (always my favorite section!) about how these economic times will shape the generation just coming of age. In short, there were plenty of comparisons made to the tight-lipped, nose-to-the-grindstone depression-era babies—the grandparents who reuse tea bags and never buy lottery tickets. The author and her experts wondered, will the kids of today become stingy, safe, and square tomorrow?

I’m skeptical. As I research my new book, a collection of ten profiles of people under 35 doing interesting social change work, I’m coming across a very different trend. Tough economic times seems to have made young people creative and very practical—a stunning and hopeful combination. It’s not that they aren’t feeling the burn. It’s harder than it has been in decades to start a non-profit and get funding, for example. But here’s the thing: today’s youngest and most cutting edge thinkers aren’t really starting non-profits or trending towards traditional methods of making the world more just. They’re creating hybrid media companies, public-private ventures, drinking clubs, and secret societies. They’re rejecting charity models and trying to figure out how to get folks to align their own self-interests with altruistic causes. They’re thinking locally and globally simultaneously.

They’re not taking huge financial risks—either personally or with the funding they bring in, but that’s not keeping their philosophies or experiments “safe,” as the NYT predicts. It’s just motivating them to be incredibly creative, really resourceful, and organic in their interventions. What a silver lining, heh?

I’m THRILLED to announce that my nationally touring (whohoo!) intergenerational panel, “Women, Girls, and Ladies” will be appearing on MARCH 18 at the 92nd Street Y in Tribeca.

For a taste, you can check out the piece up today in honor of International Women’s Day over at the Women’s Media Center site, where Gloria Feldt (67), Courtney Martin (29), Elizabeth Hines (33) and I (40 + 3 weeks) each share personal reflections on the economic crisis from our generational vantage point and comment on some of the unfinished feminist business of economic recovery.  Hint: It’s a lot about work and life, life and work, work and life….

For more on the March 18th panel, see our WGLs blog or the 92nd Street Y.

I spent the last weekend with an extraordinary group of young people at an international high school called The United World College-USA . It is a magical place–the manifestation of global peace educators, activists, and philanthropists dreams. There are eleven such colleges (actually 11th and 12th grade in American parlance) across the world, and each houses and educated about 200 students from over 80 different countries. The only one in the U.S. is in Montezuma, New Mexico, of all places, and was originally founded in 1982 and largely funded by Dr. Armand Hammer.

I’ve done work with the school off and on, thanks to a serendipitous meeting I had with one of its great teachers, Selena Sermeno . This weekend I created and taught a storytelling workshop for a small group of enthusiastic students (largely based off of community organizer Herbert Ganz’ work on Public Narratives ). The students originated from countries as far-ranging as Iraq, Poland, Singapore, Spain, South Africa, Chile, Vietnam, India etc. etc.

One of the things that was so striking to me was the amazing paradox that these diverse teenagers inhabit. On the one hand, they are extraordinary. They tell stories of war, political upheaval, loss, and death that will make your stomach literally burn with outrage at the state of our world and the way that children suffer as a result of adult violence. The image of one young woman from Iraq talking about how she lost 200 fellow students when her college was bombed will never leave me.

On the other hand, many of the stories these students tell–even the ones from war-ravaged regions–are about parents fighting, first love, the loss of a grandparent. They could not be more ordinary. And these stories, too, will stick with me. The image of a bright-eyed boy from Poland talked about taking the train for 40 hours to see about a girl will also never leave me, for very different reasons, of course.

These kids have experienced unparalleled lives, but they are also–ultimately–just kids. They are self-focused and ambitious and fearful and in love and admire their mothers and wish their fathers would show more emotion and crave to be understood. Nothing could be more universal, perhaps, than the ache of adolescent searching.

GWP’s Gwendolyn Beetham (coauthor with Tonni Brodber of our Global Exchange column) attended the Association for Women in Development Forum this month, in Cape Town.  Here’s her report.  And do note the contrast between Gwen’s sentiment and the findings of the Daily Beast report this week.  Feminism, alive and well. Not dead. Copy that, America?  -Deborah

November 20, 2008

I just got back from Cape Town, South Africa, where I was lucky enough to attend the 2008 AWID Forum, aptly titled The Power of Movements. While networking, learning and listening to fabulous feminists from around the world, I was inspired, moved, and most of all energized by the power of feminists! Do check out the website, they are in the process of posting summaries of the panel discussions, as well as videos and photos from the conference. I’ve listed some personal highlights below.

One of my favorite videos was done by the Young Women’s Caucus, younger feminists who also went around the conference passing around pink scarves to conference-goers to symbolize intergenerational collaboration among feminists and asking people how they define feminism. Although the video isn’t available online yet, I can tell you that many participants said that feminism is a way of life – love it!  For more on young feminist action at the conference, you can check out the Young Feminists at the AWID Forum blog, as well as AWID’s Feminist Tech Exchange (I must admit however, that some of the comments from the younger feminists really saddened me – it seems as if much of the “intergenerational” discussion hasn’t changed much from the point where it was five years ago when I was heavily involved in the young feminist movement here in the States.)

One of the best panels that I attended was hosted by the Third Wave Foundation, Ms. Foundation, and the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, along with some of their partner organizations. During the discussion, Rickke Mananzala, of the NYC-based organization Fierce, raised a really important point on the success of Prop 8 in California and similar bills in Arkansas and Florida.  He suggested that not only do these victories (for the right) point to the amount of funding that went into the promotion of these bills, but to the lack of an intersectional perspective in our own social justice movements. Makes me wonder what would have happened if youth organizations, children’s organizations and LGBT organizations would have come together to oppose the ban on unmarried couples adopting in Arkansas, or if organizations working for people of color and other marginalized groups would have come together to oppose Prop 8 in California. Don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of great organizations (including Fierce!) who do a great job of working collaboratively. But I do think that may organizations – especially those in the women’s movement, with which I’m most familiar – have really had problems incorporating both perspectives and actions which truly recognize the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, religion and age.

I would be happy to chat with folks in comments about the rest of the conference. And kudos to AWID for organizing such an amazing event!

And stay tuned for next week, when Tonni & I resume our Global Exchange. This time we’ll be talking about the impact of the global financial crisis on women internationally.  Stay tuned!

–Gwendolyn Beetham