| The day started with some background on the women's movement - of how it took 72 years from the time of the first conference in 1848 to women gaining the right to vote. The internet's tailor made for women - it allows us to find each other and share ideas without prejudice. Apparently, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would have loved blogging for the freedom it allows women in this exchange of ideas and the advocacy it helps facilitate.
The morning plenary session included some powerhouse women - Kim Gandy of NOW, Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority / MS, Elisa Camahort Page of Blog Her, Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner of MomsRising, and Veronica Arreola of Women in Media and News. Ellie Smeal talked a bit about her early ventures into setting up blogs at her group, and of how they're working with campus organizations and groups all around the world. It was actually fun to watch her as others spoke - they had a laptop on the table where they fed twitter posts up on to a screen behind the panel, and you could tell she was really interested in what was being posted as people watched the live feed of the conference. She seems very tech savvy and is ready made to link the Fem 1.0 folks with today's generation of feminist activists and bloggers.
Kim Gandy spoke a bit about the work NOW's been doing on the Hill in developing a working relationship with the new leadership - doing their homework - that sort of thing. She reminded us that groups like NOW are self-funded and they don't have a big staff. One person maintains their 6-7,000 page website and their membership database etc. I heard the same things from the staff of the Feminist Majority at one of the breakout sessions later. We think of these groups as having big offices in DC full of full-time staff and that's just not the case. So they have to pick and choose where to put their resources - state coordinators - lobbying on the Hill - outreach on the net. That last one doesn't take a high priority now but maybe - just maybe if they started to trust some of the feminist bloggers out on the net, they might be able to get talking points out to us and let us lend a hand in getting out their message (more on that later).
I'd heard of BlogHer and I'm even signed up with the group but I don't use it as much as I should. The more I listened to Elisa Camahort Page, the more I realized this would be a great place to reach out to other women who might not think of themselves as progressives or even as feminists - but with whom I might find common ground on things like health care, improving our schools and working to prevent unplanned pregnancies (thereby reducing the number of abortions). We sometimes run the danger of becoming echo chambers if we fail to reach out to other audiences . She reminded us that it's time we stopped thinking of how to draw more people to our site, and went out looking for them on other sites - using different medium. She told us to share content with each other, set up reciprocal links to each other's sites. Include widgets and rss feeds so our message goes out to others when we put it up.
Kristen from MomsRising had some eye-opening stats for us. She said that women without kids made about .90 to every dollar a man makes. Women with kids make about .73. And single mothers make about .60 to each dollar. Eighty percent of women are mothers by the time they reach the age of 44. And this next one floored me... if two women go up for the same job with identical resumes and qualifications, the women with kids is 79% less likely to get that job vs a woman without kids. Seventy nine percent!
When a woman becomes a mother she's offered $11,000 less in high paying jobs. When a man becomes a father - he sees a $6,000 jump in what he's offered.
We broke things up into workshops or breakout sessions after a bit of Q & A, and I went to the one about Media and Culture / Feminists and the Media - Speaking Out. Another great panel with Glennda Testone of the Women's Media Center, Veronica Arreola, Sarah Granger of Future Campaigns / Momcrats (?) and Joanne Bamberger from PunditMom. We talked about the need to integrate as many forms of media as possible - blogs, email, twitter - and to cross post to each others' sites. Guest blog on other sites.
Glennda Testone works with the Women's Media Center and spoke about their training program for progressive women's voices. It helps women become spokespeople and get more women's voices out there into the mix by giving them the tools, practice, and confidence they need to go before the media and get their point across effectively and forcefully. It takes women's involvement to a whole new level. We can't ignore the traditional media - but we have got to use the new outlets as they emerge and develop.
Someone from Moms Rising reminded us that women are less likely to engage in anything seen as self-promotion. The trick is to figure out how to get women past that reluctance - to become as someone referred to herself as a media whore. We have to ask ourselves - if I were a man, would I worry about being seen as having a big ego?
Since people were talking about using new avenues to get our message out, I asked about something a friend of mine had started doing over the summer - a blog talk radio show. I wondered if anyone had used that and what their experiences had been. I saw a lot of heads nodding - they were familiar with it but most agreed it was a new tech. with lots of possible glitches on the tech side - it's a lot of work but it can be worth it at the end of the day. It gives you practice in talking with other media outlets and if you think of it as chatting with a friend on the phone, it's pretty cool.
We broke for lunch and I got the chance to visit with Pat Bakalian and my friend Callie. Then it was off to the next round of workshops / breakout sessions. I went to the one called Bloggers and Advocates - An Intimate and Frank Conversation. Bit of an eye opener for me as I'd always thought of myself as an activist / advocate for women's rights etc. but now that I'm more of a blogger that seems to put me in another camp altogether. Here's what the moderator said as she kicked off the session...
After asking for a show of hands re who's a blogger and who's an advocate (who's both?) she said she'd always thought of the blogosphere as the "wild wild west", whereas those in the advocacy world work to build momentum. To do that, advocates have to control their message. As most of you know, trying to do that with a group of bloggers is a lot like trying to herd cats. Not so easy in practice. We all have our own ideas and we're quick to put them out there on our blogs. This panel was made up of three women - Kim Gandy (NOW), Tedra Osell (Bitch Ph.D.) and Liza Sabater (Culture Kitchen).
Not only was Gandy on the panel, but we had about 4 or 5 women from the Feminist Majority (including the political director) sitting in the row behind me. And there were a lot of bloggers sitting in the room next to me.
When the moderator promised a frank discussion she wasn't kidding.
Gandy brought up the whole cock-up (not her words - mine) with the stimulus bill and Medicaid funding last week, and tried to explain in more detail what happened. So I saw that as the perfect opportunity to ask her (and everyone else) how we work with the new (and friendlier) administration but STILL challenge them when they fall short or let us down (or sell us out - though I didn't exactly say that bit). I noted that the language would still be in the package if it hadn't been for the request from the White House, and Henry Waxman cutting the language from the House bill in committee. Gandy went to Waxman and Pelosi's defense and said they couldn't exactly tell the WH to go to hell (my words - not hers) and that Pelosi's very committed to getting this passed as a bill in its own right. The bloggers on the panel though were very clear in their feelings about what happened - not happy.
The discussion got rolling and I stopped taking notes for the most part, but the main take-away is that the bloggers wanted the advocacy groups to use us as the bad cops. We can say things that NOW can't but if they get talking points to writers like us, we can push the envelope (or that all-important Overton Window). Now I know the advocacy groups try like hell to control the message, but as we get to know each other and trust that we're going to do right by one another, we may be able to get past that reluctance - at least that's my hope. As long as bloggers make it clear that we're speaking only for ourselves and that we're not connected with the groups working the phones and walking the halls on Capitol Hill, this might work.
After all, it's nuts to NOT network and use every outlet at our disposal to get our message out. At least that's what people were saying earlier in the day. So why not use the blogs?
The information during these sessions is great, but I enjoyed the networking that took place as things broke up. I spoke with some of the women from the Feminist Majority, and chatted briefly with Gandy. I also ran into someone who helped get me in to hear Hillary for the first time in July or August of 2007 - and who'd gone on to work with Hillary's campaign team. She's now working with Emily's list and we caught up with what each other's been up to, and exchanged cards so we could keep in touch. (This conference was worth attending if only for that renewed friendship.)
After the workshops we all regrouped for one more plenary session called From Individual Voice to Law of the Land: Continuum for Change. That's a mouthful I know, but the long and the short of this is that there's a real feeling that we don't have a common agenda - that's there's little or no leadership happening right now when it comes to women's voices and our rights.
Kristina Wilfore (Exec. Dir. Of the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center) had everyone nearly on our feet when she noted that of the 25 anti-choice efforts in states all around the country - they were able to defeat all but three. That we have the people and the voters behind us on this issue because America is a pro-choice nation dammit. So why are we always on the defensive? How did the right manage to frame the way this issue's discussed? We need to craft a plan and fight smarter. We're the majority - we need to ACT LIKE IT. Engage locally where the issues are on the ballots. Keep our boot on their throats - define our enemies and go after them!
Throughout the day we were reminded of how few women there are out there on the blogs. That it's really difficult to convince women to jump in and start writing. I was reminded of this when someone asked a question about classes she could take before she started blogging during one of the breakout sessions (which ties in with what Nancy Floreen said at that legislative briefing last weekend - that women want to study up before running for office whereas the men jump in with both feet and get the experience). I talked with more than a few people about joining other blogs - comment - work your way up to posting your own diaries and then maybe setting out on your own by starting up your own site. A bit of practice and you're good to go right?
I heard something referenced today that I hadn't heard before - that people in advocacy groups tend to focus on their own issue to the exclusion of all others. This was called siloing (?) or working inside your own silo. It leads to focus sure, but at what cost? If you keep your head down and drown out the other issues, you lose a golden opportunity to build coalitions and network - find common ground with others who might help you achieve your goals.
The recent victory re the Lilly Ledbetter law is a great example. Women's groups fought for this sure, but so did unions like the AFL-CIO. If you poll your group's membership they'll identify certain issues, but if someone send them a petition on say stopping global warming they'll most likely sign it - help out because they usually tune in to a lot of the progressive issues.
At any rate - it was a great conference and we all got the chance to meet face to face and do a bit of networking. And when you're trying to build a coalition of folks to work together toward a common goal... well I guess we can't do that often enough right.
For more information on what we discussed today you can check out some of these sites. And watch for updates to our blogroll on this site. The more we support each other, the stronger our coalition and network will be.
This conference was put on by:
Fem 2.0 - Society's Issues - Women's Voices.
Some of the groups behind this event are:
American Association of University Women (AAUW)
BlogHer
Care2
Culture Kitchen
Feminist Majority
Feminist.com
Feministe
Momsrising
National Council of Negro Women
National Council of Women's Organizations (NCWO)
National Organization for Women (NOW)
VivirLatino
Women in Media and News (WIMN)
Women's Media Center
Blogs of some of the folks at today's conference - and I'm sure I left more than a couple out (in no particular order)...
Bitch Ph.D.
Campaign for Gender Equality
Momocrats
Pundit Mom
Global Voices
And hey, if you know of any great feminist sites, please post them in the comments here. Give them a plug and we'll try to add them to the blogroll as well. Thanks! |
