New Palin ad

Please click on the title to find the link to the ad.

Sarah Palin's PAC released a video of her talking about a "mom awakening" in the past year and half; how Washington better watch out for all of the "mama grizzlies"; and trying to rally the troops for the 2010 elections. It is very Palin-esqe, in that it is not fancy and very down-to-earth. She is clearly trying to appeal to Joe-Mom.

I think this is an interesting approach for Palin. I wonder why she has decided to make this type of ad. Why is she reaching out to mothers specifically, as opposed to women in general? On FoxNews today, I saw a statistic that mothers make up approximately 20% of the voters in this country. Pretty sizable, indeed. But I don't think that tells the whole story.

Another issue: Is this the first time that a political ad has been so focused on mothers? None come to my mind. For example, the Willie Horton ad was directed more scaring the heck out of parents generally, as opposed to mothers specifically. Can you all think of any examples that I am missing?

More Women = More LGBT Candidates?

A few weeks back Sharon wrote the following question on the board:

"Will the focus on appearance such as hair, clothes, etc. become less significant & less of an focus for the press as more lesbians run for office?"

I think the majority of us agreed that a person's sexual orientation would not change the way the media treated them - but then Sharon brought up the case of Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin. I knew that I could not recall any coverage of Tammy Baldwin's appearance -- but thought I would check it out in some detail. Now I know this is not entirely scientific - but on an anecdotal level, it was pretty interesting.

First I decided to do a few Google searches: "Tammy Baldwin is wearing", "Tammy Baldwin appearance", "Tammy Baldwin clothes" and a few other iterations... I came up with no coverage relevant to her appearance. I opened it up and searched "Tammy Baldwin lesbian" but found not a single obvious reference to her appearance at all. I decided to take it a little more academic and pooled together some terms in with her name in LexisNexis searching for the past five years -- I found no article that mentioned her appearance in a positive, negative, sexual or any way. Granted -- my research methods for this were not incredibly sound, but I spent over an hour looking through articles and couldn't find a thing. On the one hand, I found this sort of heartening -- she was being examined for her standing not her appearance. But how interesting to think that the press has really spent so much time attacking other female figures for not looking feminine enough or looking like a lesbian, and then when we actually have a lesbian in an elected office the press won't touch her appearance.

I think some of this may be a function of the fact that despite the gains in openly LGBT candidates and elected officials, they still represent a small percentage of the current governing body -- far smaller than even women, and so therefore the press does not have a uniform means of covering them. This got me thinking about a few other things as well -- since more and more people who were minorities in elected office are making gains -- when one group makes more gains, does that mean that other groups will as well? Or, phrased another way, does more women in office mean more LGBT candidates too?

In the picture posted at the top of the post which I got from the Rutgers Center for American Women in Politics (http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/) you see states ranked by color for the amount of women they have in their state legislatures.

In addition to this I found a site that has all of the Out officials listed by state:
http://www.glli.org/out_officials

By clicking through all of the states here you can see that on the whole it appears as though states that have more women in office have more openly LGBT candidates. Now I am not saying that this is concrete evidence or anything -- but I think it is interesting to look at some of these trends. I wonder if as women really do make more gains, if more LGBT candidates will make it into office and then if after that appearance will not be as much of an issue. Again, not the most scientifically supported claim, but an interesting thing to look at nonetheless.

Networks for Women?

Both Emily and Wendy wrote very thoughtful and reflective posts this week which I think require some extra consideration. They both raised some crucial questions for our consideration:

- Have the authors of these books stood up for a reason?
- What does a woman have to stand up for?
- Why do some women make it to the top and others cannot?

On the surface I think it may seem as though these questions are only related through our course discussions, but if you dig deeper I think they are all interconnected in an important way. Specifically I think that one of the main issues and obstacles that women face is the lack of a good culturally condoned outlet for communicating. We talked about this before hand in class when we discussed women trying to get into "men's clubs" but I think it is actually something slightly different than that. While exclusive clubs do function to communicate and share vital ideas they are not necessarily resources of support.

To address Wendy's question about the authors of the books we read, I realized that none of the books we've read have addressed in too much specific detail if the author or subject had something that they felt they had to step up for, we kind of see how different events and experiences lead to their decision to lead or to pursue leadership careers - but, correct me if I am wrong, but none of the books really addressed why they felt they had to stand up, just how it came to be that they were there. I think the reason that has not been explained in any of the books is because it is not an easy thing to communicate. It is not natural to say "I chose to lead because I felt strongly about something" - or is that the wrong way of looking at things?

With Wendy's second question I decided to look back through my notes from class and back in May we discussed Five Reasons Women Make Better Candidates from Phil Van Treusen. At the time when we first discussed that idea I was not sure if I personally believed that their was something inherently biologically different about women that made us better leaders or more effective candidates, I just assumed it was something based more on how women are raised. I think since that class my opinion has really changed, I think now that their are tangible differences in the way that women naturally lead, as evidenced by all of the reading and discussion from class -- so what is their to stand up for? I think the encouragement of a diversity of approaches. I think every woman should feel empowered by the fact that they have that different biologically determined perspective.

So, when finally looking at Emily's very poignant question - I started to think about these things all together. I think Emily was spot on in saying that some women reach it to the top because they are able to balance life and work and goals and needs, but in addition to that I think that is a skill that has not really been integrated into everyone's upbringing. If only their were some way to educate every young girl to recognize their own capacity - if only their were some way to share tips on those balances to everyone.

I wonder if an early education leadership program would do the job? Or would creating actual networks for women to share and communicate help. I am a part of one such network here in D.C., but it is mainly focused on people who share my personal political beliefs (the Women's Information Network). That network functions as a sort of e-mail list serve with group meetings and different interest based networks - all designed to give women an outlet and a network of connections here in D.C. Do you all think something like that could work for all women and not just those who share similar political beliefs? I am leaning towards yes, but I wonder what the first steps could be.

First Female Secretary of Commerce Dies at 89

Juanita M. Kreps, a Duke University economist and administrator who became the first woman to serve as U.S. secretary of Commerce, died on July 5, 2010 in Durham, N.C., after a lengthy illness, as reported in a Duke University press release.

Kreps served as Commerce secretary from 1977 to 1979 during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. She is credited for directing the Commerce Department toward a more active role in promoting international trade. Further, she initiated a historic trade agreement between the United States and China in 1979.

Other than teaching economics at Duke, Kreps also was dean of the Women's College and assistant provost, from 1969 to 1972. In 1973, she was named vice president of the university.

Kreps was born on Jan. 11, 1921, in Lynch, Ky. Educational acheivements include a bachelor's degree from Berea College in Kentucky in 1942 and her master's degree (1944) and doctorate (1948) in economics from Duke.

Her funeral will be held on July 9, 2010 in Durham. Survivors include a daughter, a son and four grandchildren.

Ginni Thomas

This story touches on some of the issues that we've discussed in class. Most prominently, is how a husband's business plays a role in his wife's career. Here we have the example of Ginni Thomas, who in the headline is described as Justice Thomas's wife. As if she is no one without him as a reference point. Rather, she is the founder and president of a group called Liberty Central, which is a tea party think tank/advocacy group. The article cites people who say that her affiliation with Justice Thomas has helped her group gain prominence, or at least "gets you to open the email, if nothing else." Apparently though, Mrs. Thomas has made an effort not to ride on her husband's coattails, having been described as "not wearing it on her sleeve." In an interview with The Washington Examiner, she said, "My favorite times are when people who have worked for me for over 10 years come to understand only later than I am the wife of Justice Thomas.”

And of course, no article about a prominent successful female could be complete without a cookie reference! “And, in the run-up to the House’s passage of the Democratic health care overhaul in March, in the weeks before Liberty Central’s roll-out, Thomas baked homemade cookies for tea party leaders organizing activists’ visits to congressional offices to lobby against the bill, said Debbie Dooley, a national coordinator for the Tea Party Patriots.”

I find this very interesting, because here we have a case of a high educated, obviously very intelligent woman who has held a number of impressive Washington jobs, and practically the only thing that can be said about her is who her husband is. And it would be one thing if she wanted that to be the case, but she quite clearly has gone so out of her way to make sure that it isn’t. It is very frustrating. Personally, I want to avoid the same thing. I saw my mother go through her whole life being “Jack’s wife”, and it drive her nuts. My husband is obviously not a Supreme Court Justice, but he is excelling in the field that I want to be in. I don’t want to work anywhere when our paths will cross for exactly this reason. I went to the same schools as he did, got better grades for the same degrees, and will have an extra Master’s on top, but I will undoubtedly be, Aaron’s wife. No way.

Study on Gender Equality Shows that Men Still Dominate

The Pew Research Center recently conducted a poll of 22 countries. The results showed that equality between men and women is supported globally. However, men still get more favorable opportunities than women.

The study found that fewer women than men cheer on parity in Britain and Japan. In France, all women and 99 percent of men agreed on equal rights for the sexes. Egypt, Jordon, Indonesia, Kenya, and Nigeria are the nations found to least support gender equality.

In France, 75 percent of survey participants said "they had a better life there than women." Final poll results revealed that gender equality as an ideal is slowly becoming the norm for the majority of the world, but has not reached the level of reality.

ForbesWomen.com reports "But even in countries that said men and women should have equal job opportunties, most admitted that men still get better opportunities than women."

See below link to review the July 1, 2010 article posted on Forbes.com or see the write-up in the New York Times.

http://blogs.forbes.com/work-in-progress/2010/07/01/equal-rights-gender-men-women-jobs-pew-research/

A cause to stand up for…

I was thinking in our last class discussion about the motives to stand up for and I tried to find the answers in the books we have read.

Have the authors of these books stood up for a reason? I think they did. Each of them stood up at least for one women’s cause.

At this point, when I look through these women’s lives I distinguish their leadership. That is why to stand up for a cause was not just their choice. It was their obligation. After all the discussions we have had in class we still asking ourselves what do a woman have to stand up for?

I think everyone of us has principles and values that will make us fight to defend them. Nevertheless, we are going to be on the arena at some point. We are becoming political managers, leaders, and political communicators. Therefore, we should stand up not only for our causes, but also for the greater good. We should fight for other people’s rights. We should defend human rights.

This class gave us a lot of opportunities to learn not just women’s causes, rights, problems and dreams. It gave us examples of how wonderful women made a difference by standing up for our liberties. They did for us. We can do it for someone else. Don’t you think?