Letter from the President
Transforming the Landscape in 2008: Prioritizing What Matters

Dear all,

I hope you are enjoying your summer despite rising uncertainty about the economy and a number of negative trends in critical indicators: unemployment, mortgage foreclosures and slowing growth, among others.

The highlight for me so far, after our Annual Conference, of course, was the Aspen Ideas Festival, a marvelous gathering of innovative thinkers and change makers who provided insights into some of today’s most pressing issues: sustainability and climate change, the future of technology and medicine, geopolitics, and the role of religion. It was a meeting of movers and shakers, such as Tom Friedman, Sam Nunn, Majora Carter, Congresswoman Jane Harman,  Newark Mayor Cory Booker, John Podesta and former President Bill Clinton. What was missing, however, was a gender lens, one that looks at societal and economic imbalances and disparities by gender, race and class.

The intersectionality of these issues was a central theme running throughout our 2008 Annual Conference. Held at the Kimmel Center at NYU (June 5-7), like the Aspen Festival, it served as a Think Tank and offered rich opportunities to brainstorm, network, and strategize about new collaborative projects.

At our Conference we also assessed the latest data and research on what we at the Council are calling The Big Five, the issues that matter most to women and girls this election year: economic security, health, immigration, violence and education. We heard about women’s economic insecurity and the urgency of taking steps towards building an economy that works for all: decent wages, high quality and affordable child care and health care, and investments in housing and education. We pointed to the “elephants in the room:” the war in Iraq and the Bush tax cuts that have decimated the federal budget and undermined our ability to invest in more productive and sound policies and programs.

We welcomed special guests, such as author Paula Giddings, Carol Jenkins and Patricia Williams. We also had a special visit by the Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee who was featured in the award-winning documentary film Pray the Devil Back to Hell. Leymah shared her journey from hopeless war victim to empowered peace activist urging U.S. women’s groups to exhibit leadership in protesting armed conflict and protecting human rights.

Our conference sessions looked at women’s leadership in academia, business and philanthropy and strategies for increasing the numbers of women entering the ranks of decision-making. We found that leadership also requires investment. Our panel on strategic philanthropy highlighted that investments in women’s organizations by women accounted for only 7 percent of giving. We looked at diversity in the corporate and academic arenas, where less than 3% of senior managers and corporate officials today are people of color. Altogether we offered more than 50 panels, roundtables and research action groups in three days of productive strategizing and networking.

We were also able to offer our member centers hands-on workshops from stellar experts in fundraising, blogging, op-ed writing and strategic messaging. We want to thank our member centers, supporters and special guests for making this an unforgettable experience.

As we prepare for the next round of The Big Five campaign, we ask that you help us make a difference in the upcoming elections: to get out the vote and to have an impact on the national policy debate. We intend to aim a spotlight on the issues that matter most to women and girls: economic security, accessible and affordable health care and child care, immigration reform and education. Look for our fact sheets and policy briefs in the weeks and months ahead.  Together, we can make a difference and challenge politics as usual by moving towards a new set of priorities that will lead the way to a more healthy, inclusive and equitable society.

Enjoy the rest of the summer!
Best regards,

Linda Basch, PhD
President

It was standing room only in the conference room at the Kimmel Center during the opening program Stir it Up: Women’s Activism Reframing Political Debates. Punctuated by frequent applause, the event featured Kathy Bonk from the Communications Consortium, Kim Gandy from the National Organization for Women, Barbara Lee of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, Diana Salas from the Women of Color Policy Network at NYU and Marie Wilson, President of The White House Project. Ruth Mandel, Director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics moderated the discussion of strategies for pushing a women’s agenda during the 2008 elections.

“At the Council this year, we have launched a campaign we are calling The Big Five, focused on -- economic security, health care, immigration, violence and education. These issues will be laced throughout our Conference and will form the basis of a progressive agenda with a women's perspective that can be brought before political candidates over the coming months, and a new administration in November,” said NCRW President Linda Basch.

Barbara Lee of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation pointed to undercurrents of sexism in perceptions about all women candidates running for office. “Ann Richards, the former Governor of Texas, put it this way -- if you're single, you couldn't get a man; if you're divorced, you couldn't keep your man; if you're married, you've abandoned your man; and if you're a widow, you killed your man,” she said. The myriad obstacles faced by women candidates provided motivation for her helping to create The White House Project ten years ago.

Kathy Bonk of the Communications Consortium recommended defusing politically explosive language and neutralizing terms that have been hijacked for political ends. “I think I'm a values voter.  The values that I care about are things like equality, fairness, justice, the environment, human rights, war and peace. I think we should begin to shift the debate so that we do not just perceive Evangelicals as values voters,” she said.

Bonk suggested reframing the issues and positioning them in the “checkerboard center.” Using the issue of child care as an example, she said it was more effective to frame it instead as an early education issue. “Most voters see child care as a program aimed at helping parents, at helping mom, helping a woman get a job but if you can broaden it to focus on kids – get kids ready for school – you get the centrist voters behind you,” she said adding that public opinion polls showed dramatic increases in support [40 percent or more] for child care programs when they are linked with early education.

Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women expanded on the theme of a 16 percent ceiling on women’s leadership in business and politics. She said that women nationwide represented not only 16 percent of legislators and corporate officers but also 16 percent of the military and 16 percent of police and fire departments as well as 16 percent of law firm partners.

“If you were a conspiracy theorist, this [16 percent ceiling] would start to seem really, really strange,” she said adding that although women had a long way to go before reaching parity with men, tremendous progress had been made since women first began entering decision-making and non-traditional fields thirty years ago.

Both Kim Gandy and Kathy Bonk spoke in favor of intensifying localized organizing and networking specifically targeting women voters in the upcoming elections. Candidates needed to focus more on the bread and butter issues of the current economic slowdown that matter to women: gas prices, jobs, health care and their long-term economic security.

Diana Salas of the Women of Color Policy Network at the Wagner School of Public Service at NYU said that most mainstream political candidates neglected the issues that mattered most to women of color, immigrants and those living in poverty. She stressed the importance of community-based research and activism. “I love the term ‘research advocates.’ We are turning research into action so that when our students go to the City Council, they bring research that's based on their actual experiences,” she said adding that more efforts need to be focused on younger women.

Marie Wilson of The White House Project emphasized the uniqueness of this particular moment in time. “We are in ‘the’ time.  I mean, we are at a time when things have changed permanently. And so, we'll never have to do that poll again -- will you ever vote for a woman President?  Yeah, they did.  Are there women out there who are competent to be the President?  Can they lead, are they tough? Thanks to Hillary’s campaign, we will never have to answer those questions again,” she said.

Although the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama broke new ground, the candidates faced the additional pressure of being the only candidate of one race or gender. Just as Obama was never quite black enough or white enough, Clinton was either too feminine or not feminine enough. “So our goal, by the way, the next Presidential race should have three women, have women of color, have men of color -- I mean, so we can get over it, and really get to the point,” she said.

Ruth Mandel provided anecdotal evidence that despite Hillary’s Presidential bid, young men university students were imbued with sexist views about women’s competency for leadership. “The girls were reporting their guy friends saying why would I vote for a woman?  Women aren't leaders, women can't be President…and so on and so forth,” she said. Mandel wondered if the Clinton campaign had been a beacon for women running for office or a warning, “man or woman, you have to be crazy to run for the Presidency of the United States, just in terms of the incredible brutality of the experience.”

Panelists agreed that there had been a lot of racism and sexism both blatant and nuanced during the primary campaigning. Nevertheless there was general consensus that the landscape had been irreversibly changed to allow for more women and men of color to run for office.

“My daughters will grow up never knowing a time when only white men could be considered serious candidates for President.  And that is truly ground-breaking.  That is historic in so, so many ways for all of us,” said Kim Gandy adding that sexism and misogyny were more readily tolerated than racism.

“We also saw sexism in the population, but also in the mainstream media. Right out there, on the nightly news where we had a candidate who was called a bitch on CNN, by a paid CNN commentator.  Was called a scolding mother -- a she-devil, a bitch, compared to a crazed murderer, hated ex-wife and a scolding mother…by paid commentators on national television,” she said.

Kathy Bonk warned that the Republicans would be more systematic about recruiting women voters. “We have been told by Republican party organizers that they designated one, two, three, four, five captains per precinct in every precinct in the United States, whose job it was to get out the women's vote. The Democrats don't invest much at all in worrying about the women's vote and the gender gap. The Republics are light years ahead of the Democratic side.  They know values.  They know that, to get folks to vote, it's not going to be an air war of who's got the best commercials.  It's circles of communications that start with your college, your friends, your family,” she said.

On the heels of a lively opening session about women, politics and the most exciting electoral campaign in recent history, historian/writer Paula J. Giddings presented her latest work on pioneering suffragist and anti-lynching campaigner, Ida B. Wells.

“We know a good deal about Ida.  She began the nation's first anti-lynching campaign in 1892. And she would have been so excited about this campaign…because Ida Wells was a quintessential reformer, in the age of reform in the progressive period.  She was very involved in labor. She was very involved in women's suffrage,” said Paula Giddings.

Born to slaves in Mississippi, Ida Wells began her formal resistance to white supremacy by refusing to leave a first-class ladies’ car on a Memphis railway. For Wells, the key to the rise in lynchings was linked with a deeper understanding of racism and sexism. She was an active campaigner for women’s rights and equal rights for all Americans.

“Wells understood that black women were being set aside and marginalized in this period -- supposedly for the good of all. And yet Ida was very close to many white suffragists.  And one of the things that we don't really hear about in this period is how much interracial cooperation there was,” she said.

Giddings placed Barack Obama in the black reform tradition and said that Ida Wells would recognize many features of the recent primary campaign. 

“One of the things that Ida had to grapple with, and one of the things that we are still grappling with today, is the perception that progress regarding race somehow takes away from the progress regarding gender. And somehow we've got to figure this out.  We cannot go into the 21st century with this idea,” she said.

Wells eventually married Ferdinand Barnett, a progressive lawyer and settled in the city of Chicago where they raised their four children. A lecturer and journalist, Wells worked to help elect the first woman to statewide office in Illinois -- Lucy Flower, who was elected to the Board of Trustees at the University of Illinois in 1894.  She helped to canvas the state of Illinois for Republican women and she created an organization called The Alpha Suffrage Club, which was the first black women's suffrage organization in Illinois.  And although it was a black women's organization, it also helped white women candidates get elected. The Alpha Suffrage Club was also responsible for getting the first black city councilman elected in Chicago.

Wells befriended many of the social changers of her times from Frederick Douglass to Susan B. Anthony. In 1913, there was a great women's suffrage parade in Washington D.C., in which thousands of protesters dressed in white, walked down Pennsylvania Avenue in the cause of women's suffrage.

Ida Wells traveled to Washington to represent her organization but just as they were rehearsing how to walk three-by-three down the avenue, a messenger appeared and said that the National Office had ordered that the contingent be all white; that no black person was to march.  “They didn’t want to upset national organizers, and southern women,” Giddings said.

After heated debate, Wells fled the room. Her fellow suffragists assumed that she had decided against participating.  Once the march got under way, Wells suddenly appeared in the crowd and took her place in the middle of the parade.  Two of her friends, two white allies, who also helped with the Alpha Suffrage Club, broke ranks to march beside her.

“They succeeded that day, to make a statement. We have got to figure out, as Ida Wells began to, how we can look at race and gender at the same time, moving upward at the same time, not in opposition to one another,” Giddings concluded.

Paula J. Giddings is Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College. Her previous books include When and Where I Enter:  The Impact on Black Women of Race and Sex in America and In Search of Sisterhood:  Delta Sigma Theta, and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement. 

As part of its Big Five Campaign, the National Council for Research on Women centered three of its annual conference sessions on women’s health issues. One panel entitled, Putting the Lens on Women’s Health Issues: Critical Challenges, focused not only on challenges faced by women and girls with HIV and AIDS and other autoimmune diseases, but also examined how gender, race, and class are linked with health outcomes.

Moderator Patricia Antoniello of the Shirley Chisolm Center at Brooklyn College spoke about her work with HIV-positive women in Brooklyn, which has the highest population of infected women in the United States. She stated that women comprised 7% of HIV infections in the 1980s, but that today, they represent more than one-quarter of new HIV infections.    

“On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are not as many HIV cases for men now as there were at the onset of the crisis. A closer look at the situation reveals that up until 1993—more than ten years into the epidemic—the diagnostic categories for HIV and AIDS were based on men’s physiology, behavior, and symptoms. Without a diagnosis, women were ineligible for housing, medications and other important support. It was, in other words, a singular policy,” said Antoniello.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised the diagnosis for women after 1993, the medications for AIDS continued to be tested on men. As a result, many female AIDS patients had reactions to the medications and the mortality rates for infected women continued to rise. Pharmaceuticals, such as AZT were detrimental to women’s health but doctors continued using the medication to avoid perinatal transmission.

The HIV epidemic disproportionately affects women of color. AIDS is the number one cause of death for African American women aged 25-34.  Of the 126,964 women living with HIV/AIDS in 2004, 64% were black, 19% were white, and 15% were Latina.

 “As Jonathan Mann once said, ‘it doesn’t matter the group via which AIDS enters a country, where it will always settle is in those groups that are most oppressed and have the least control over their rights,” said Linda Moran of Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences.

She further stated that the secondary status of women and the unique position of women of color severely impact their risk of contracting HIV. In her research, Moran has found that the social stress deriving from gender, race, and ethnicity often leads to feelings of depression and low self-esteem, which in turn causes women to engage in substance abuse and sexual risk-taking.

“Most of us are familiar with what I call the ‘proximal risk factors’—lack of knowledge, lower perceived risk, drug use, and high-risk sexual practices, but there are also the ‘why’ or ‘distal factors,’ the social and environment factors related to their unequal position in society as women and women of color and also as poor people.  These factors are the best predictors of health outcomes in the US,” Moran said.

Isabel Matenje, a development specialist and social development worker based in Africa, discussed the specific challenges faced by women in Malawi. Although men and women AIDS victims are about 50/50 and the HIV rates have leveled off at 14.1%, traditional practices continue to put women at risk for contracting the disease.  

“Polygamy, extramarital affairs, wife inheritance, and death cleansing—the custom whereby a woman must sleep with another man before they bury her husband— increase her chances of becoming HIV-positive. Because of the stigma and shame associated with AIDS, they do not seek medical help so their well-being continues to be compromised,” said Matenje.

Without access to medical services, women put themselves at risk for contracting other serious illnesses: 70% of women with AIDS in Malawi currently have tuberculosis. Because women play an important role in supporting their families, when they become sick and are unable to work, their families become poorer.

Although NGO and government programs have helped spread awareness about HIV and AIDS, they have fallen short of meeting women’s needs because they have overlooked the gender dimension. Mantenje recommended closer collaboration with women’s and home-based care groups, but also with men’s networks.

Ludmilla Wikkeling-Scott of the National Minority AIDS Council further emphasized the necessity for women to become involved in the political process. “If we want to understand why our leaders choose the policies that they do, it is because they have never touched the ground. Our government lacks an outstanding health committee and although there is a subcommittee on health, it lacks a woman representative – even the House [of Representatives] has just one female doctor,” Wikkeling-Scott said.

Brenda Ross, a professor of chemistry at Cottey College further stated that chronic illnesses are not taken seriously because leaders have not addressed the gender dimension. Women are disproportionately affected by autoimmune disease, and chronic illness is largely understudied in the U.S. Ross hopes to raise awareness through her longitudinal study on rheumatoid arthritis.

All of the panelists agreed that health is a political issue and emphasized the need to educate policy makers. “Health is a statement of power and future. The key to AIDS and illness prevention is through empowering women to engage in politics and social activism projects that will protect their health,” Moran said.

What is Immigration Reform Today? Implications for Women, Families, and Public Policy

Although immigrants make up a substantial part of the labor force in the United States, they do not have adequate protection under federal law. The session on immigration at this year’s annual conference not only focused on ways that immigration policies need to be changed, but also the need to reframe the immigration debate into a language of integration and multiculturalism.

“Historically, there is a legacy of struggle for immigrant workers but it is especially difficult when it comes to women. Today, global outsourcing has decimated employment and has put downward pressures on wages making it harder for immigrant women to organize and lobby for change,” said Katie Quan of University of California at Berkeley.

She noted that many women garment workers were impacted by the termination of the Multifiber Agreement (MFA) in January of 2005 which mandated an international free trade policy. In her study of Latina and Chinese immigrant women workers, 50% of Latina women reported less work after MFA, 75% had to change jobs more often and their wages declined by 12%. Because they were undocumented, they were ineligible for unemployment and were forced to seek jobs in lower-wage sectors, such as child care and street vending, or had to return to their native countries.  

Although Chinese women seemed to fare better under the new policy with 56% more women working and earning 14% more, they were paid piece rates for 16-hour days in unsafe and unhealthy conditions with only two days off per month. “A push-and-pull dynamic developed in which staying at home meant living in poverty so there was a push out of the lower areas and a pull of opportunity into these economic zones where they were still making only 40 cents per garment. This [push-pull] is fundamentally disempowering,” Quan said.

Dina Refki of SUNY Albany further discussed the need for immigrant women to participate in the political sphere and the current challenges to their civic engagement. “Forces of racism, sexism, classism, and nativism intersect in the lives of women. If we want to understand immigrants, we need to understand these interlocking vectors—we cannot separate them, especially since 75% of immigrant women are women of color,” Refki said.

Immigrants often abstain from the political process because they are confused by the system or fear they will “bite the hand that feeds them” and lose their tax exempt status—an important concern for most immigrants who have limited financial resources.

Another important issue is the infringement of immigrants’ rights. Immigrants frequently work in conditions that violate health and safety laws but they are outside the protection of labor laws. Because employers often deny them the right to organize, many immigrants refrain from standing up for their rights. “Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act, it’s illegal for this person to be reemployed. We need to fix this policy so that workers can organize without fear of losing their jobs or being sent back to their home countries,” Refki said.

Seth Wessler of the Applied Research Center presented the detrimental outcomes for immigrant families under current policies. There have been many cases of immigrant women losing their children to foster care because they were forcibly separated during enforcement campaigns.

“We need to build in contingencies for family ties under deportation proceedings. Certain measures, such as the Child Citizens Protection Act that the organization Families for Freedom is now pushing, could help keep families together,” Wessler said.

Current policies have fallen short of meeting immigrants’ needs because there is a lack of research on immigrants. Several panelists recommended that agencies not only collect more statistics but that they also collect data by race, gender, and nationality.

“The ambivalence on immigration has a lot to do with fears that immigrants are stealing jobs. Because there is no research on whether they actually are crowding out existing groups of workers, it is difficult for labor advocates to counter prevailing attitudes,” said moderator Carol Hardy-Fanta, Director for Center for Women and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.   

Dina Refki pointed to Irene Bloemraad’s comparative analysis of immigration policy in Canada and the United States which found that U.S. policies on law enforcement and border control often had broader negative impacts on society. Canada, which views immigrants as a nation-building tool, allocates more funding to integration-related programs including community-based organizations, employment counseling, and language services.

“In the United States, immigrants are viewed from a civil rights and racial perspective as an oppressed minority, which means that they will remain as minorities, unique and separate…nativist rhetoric is reactive and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that immigrants will continue to be separate from the fabric of the nation,” Refki said.

Carol Hardy-Fanta suggested the European Union as another model of more successful integration. “It would be instructive to look at the EU in the past ten years and the agreements made amongst countries in terms of sharing economic arrangements, flows, and collective bargaining across borders—letting go of the idea of borders has enabled global integration of our economies.”

Another strategy for action included working at the state level to reform current immigration policies. Several audience members suggested that there are limitations to this approach, however, and suggested that efforts should be organized at the local level while pushing for federal reforms.

“There are obviously a lot of policy changes that need to happen in terms of pushing for better working conditions for immigrants and teaching greater awareness at the national level but if we really want to empower immigrants and enable them to have a voice, it is even more important that they have the right to stand up for themselves and speak out,” said Hardy-Fanta.

The conference session Transforming Higher Education: Access, Inclusion, and Diversity took a reading of the status of diversity efforts across college campuses. Moderated by NCRW Board Member Donna Shavlik (the Timberline Group), it featured Evelyn Hu-deHart of Brown University, Caryn McTighe Musil and Kathryn Peltier Campbell from the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and Gloria Thomas of the American Council on Education.

Panelists agreed that despite recent progress, levels of diversity across campuses and among faculty continue to fall short of expectations. They said that lack of racial and cultural diversity continues to undermine excellence and women administrators and faculty have a vital role to play in improving the situation for women and underrepresented groups.

Evelyn Hu-deHart stressed the complexity of diversity issues on campuses today citing the example of the Duke Lacrosse team scandal which elicited a backlash against African American women faculty who had tried to raise awareness about privilege, race and sexuality. She said that power in the university resides with chief academic officers who are usually men. “We need to test diversity and leadership and fully examine the power and practice of diversity,” she said.

Caryn McTighe Musil called education a high stakes issue pointing to the direct correlation between educational attainment and economic security. She said that higher education should not be viewed as a private concern but as a public good and warned against the impact of privatization on the programs and policies of colleges and universities.

Kathryn Peltier Campbell said that women make up 39% of full-time faculty and that greater numbers of women were being appointed to lead institutions of higher learning. She shared details of a research project on women’s achievement in academia that she was conducting with McTighe Musil. Their data traces women from high school graduation through subsequent degrees and occupational levels. A clear gender difference emerged in terms of family formation. Citing a study by Goulden and Mason, McTighe and Peltier also found that women have more difficulty than men in climbing the academic career ladder while forming families.

Gloria Thomas agreed with the analysis but added that although women were increasing their numbers, they were less likely to obtain full professorships. White men had fewer barriers to balancing careers with family, but younger men were more interested in increasing the time spent with their families to a much greater extent than previous generations.

All agreed on the need for disseminating data to a wider audience in order to increase the impact of diversity research. More attention needs to be paid to the resource crisis in public academic institutions and how this affects expectations of diversity. Community colleges also require increased support since they serve as critical channels that can lead more diverse students towards doctoral degrees. Finally, academia also needs to develop a more cooperative culture between institutions and faculty including policies that foster greater work:life balance.

As globalization, neoliberal economic policies, and religious fundamentalism become more entrenched across societies, women’s activism is facing a new set of issues and challenges. During the session Critical Global Feminist Projects Today, panelists not only offered a feminist perspective on the current situation but also proposed ways of working across cultural differences in order to build a global feminist agenda.

  “The concept of global alliances emerged at the 1985 World Conference on Women in Nairobi. The core of our work is to exchange experiences and to build coalitions … we start with an assumption of difference and diversity and from there we can find the similarities,” said moderator Charlotte Bunch from the Center for Global Women’s Leadership at Rutgers University.

Citing Adrienne Rich’s theory of “politics rooted in the body,” Ros Petchesky of Hunter College underlined the importance of geopolitical positioning. “Is there a connection between the ‘ascendancy of whiteness’ and the victimization of women? In this election, Hillary’s whiteness was erased and she simply became ‘woman’,” she said.

Feminist theories place sexual rights in their social context. Many of the panelists deconstructed neoliberal ideas of democracy and women’s empowerment to show how they can fall short of human rights goals and sometimes perpetuate gender inequalities. The case of Iraq was cited as an example of a democratically elected government that is male-dominated and tolerates unjust customary practices, such as honor killings.

“We need to redefine democracy – how can a country be considered democratic when fifty percent of the population is ignored? We need to ask ourselves if democracy is really working for women,” said Andrea Friedman of the Global Justice Center.

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 requires the Council to take action against widespread sexual violence but women and women’s organizations are often excluded from peace negotiations and demilitarization and reconstruction efforts. “Real power is in the law and it needs to be reflected in a society through a government that is representative – women judges are also integral to promoting global equality,” Friedman said.

Carol Cohn of the Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights said that times of political transition are strategically critical for achieving human rights goals. “We need to end women’s exclusion from the processes during and after war and build sustainable peace. [Resolution 1325] tries to cross many divides—international, national, and local … we can bridge these divides by presenting the information in a way that makes people want to change,” Cohn said.

One strategy proposed by Radhika Balakrishnan of Marymount College was to apply human rights principles to macroeconomic policies. She said it is critical that governments develop fiscal policies that include an analysis of their impact on society.

“If 4% of households are malnourished, we have to ask ourselves if there is discrimination at work. Has the state used its maximum available resources? In the U.S. today, the rich pay fewer taxes than the poor which splits further into gender and other disparities,” Balakrishnan said.

Although there was wide agreement that women’s rights need to be embedded in the law and supported by government and economic policies, some audience members raised concern over a lack of publicly available information on gender inequality. Strategies for action included enlisting non-governmental organizations to produce documentaries along the lines of the film on climate change, An Inconvenient Truth, in order to raise public awareness about gender disparities worldwide.

“We need more and better research on what works for women globally. We need to form collaborations with the North, South, East and West to bring together knowledge needs and research issues and to form an agenda for action,” Charlotte Bunch concluded.

At a heavily attended luncheon plenary, Carol Jenkins, President of the Women’s Media Center sat down to interview Patricia Williams, Columbia University law professor and columnist for The Nation. Their conversation traced how identity politics played a leading role in the Democratic primaries.

During the battle for the Party nomination, race and gender were often pitted against each other instead of being viewed as complementary possibilities, according to Williams. She pointed to radio host Don Imus’s “nappy-headed hos” comment as a classic case of racism and sexism casually colliding on the mainstream airwaves.

“Hillary missed out on an opportunity to talk about gender in the same way that Obama addressed race. I wish that she had been the one to draw attention to the way in which sexism against her was also being directed against Michelle Obama,” said Williams.

The conversation also touched on the role of class in the primaries. The media often portrayed Hillary as an advocate for the poor and working class while Obama was painted as an elitist.

Williams contrasted Obama with other leaders of color saying that he represented a new model of masculinity. While Bill Cosby often relied on “chiding and finger-shaking” when he admonished black youth to “get off the streets and study,” Obama avoided setting himself up in a hierarchical position of authority, she said.

Williams also brought up affirmative action and the crisis in U.S. education. “To say that this is about a black/white educational gap is to completely divorce it from the fact that it is an American educational gap in which we are failing all of our children. If we blame poor performance on faulty intelligence or cultural failure, we will be ignoring the largely white population who are saying they also can’t relate to Obama because he’s ‘too literate,’” said Williams.

Although Williams lauded Obama as the first black presidential candidate, she said that race is not always a good indicator of a candidate’s progressiveness. She pointed to disappointment over various political appointees, such as Clarence Thomas, Condoleezza Rice and Alberto Gonzales and warned against the pitfalls of tokenism.
Williams also spotlighted the Patriot Act and said that if Obama were elected President his first task on Day One would be to restore civil rights and due process of law.

“The Bush administration has created a whole new vocabulary of dividing lines and dehumanization. Whoever is President is going to be challenged in ways that are going to call for superhuman skills,” Williams concluded.

NCRW’s Diversifying the Leadership of Women’s Research, Policy and Advocacy Centers, is a two-year Ford-funded project aimed at promoting the leadership of women from historically underrepresented groups within the Council and across its network of member centers. Five of the project’s six grantees attended a special panel session at the NCRW annual conference in which they shared their vision for moving forward. While the grantees are in the early stages of implementing their strategies, they exchanged ideas about how to increase and extend support to maximize the project’s impact.

“It was a great opportunity for the grantees to get to know one another, to define their priorities for the project and to lay out a road map for moving forward,” said Delores Walters, Director of Research for Institutional Diversity at NCRW who coordinates the project.

• Jane Wishner, director of the Southwest Women’s Law Center discussed plans for trainings to enhance the cultural competence of her center’s staff and board members.
• Sangita Gopal of the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon, described bringing together junior and senior scholars from throughout the university and providing them with leadership development as well as research and mentoring support.
• Donna Stewartson at the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, University of Massachusetts, Boston, will implement a Research Fellows Program whereby both junior and senior women of color will conceptualize and coordinate a Skills Workshop, Mentoring Program, Policy Conference and Resource List of women of color faculty, researchers and staff to be posted on the university website.
• Cheryl Johnson, outgoing director of the Women’s Studies Program at Miami of Ohio University, said there would be a total of three research stipends for a Latina, African American and a Native American coordinator in the Women’s Studies Program. She outlined the steps she undertook to build her own leadership capacity and that of her students. Her experience may become the basis for setting up a cultural preservation archive for future leaders.
• Jessica Fields, director of the Center for Research on Gender & Sexuality, San Francisco State University and Amy Sueyoshi, one of the project directors, will assess the participation of women of color in the center and attempt to increase the center’s collaboration with the College of Ethnic Studies during a one-year mini-grant self-assessment.
• Patricia Deyton, director of the Center for Gender in Organizations (CGO), at the Simmons School of Management in Boston, was unable to attend the conference but confirmed that the CGO plans to institutionalize a Steering Committee of women of color who will determine new directions for programs, research and publications.

In recognition of the importance of mentorship, grantees have been matched with members of the project’s Advisory Committee: Beverly Guy-Sheftall of Spelman College, Angela Ginorio from the University of Washington, Seattle, Yolanda Broyles-Gonzalez of the University of Arizona, Sandra Morgen from the University of Oregon, Damary Bonilla of Girls Incorporated and Inés Hernández Ávila from the University of California, Davis. 

The session highlighted that diversity and inclusion efforts did not need to focus exclusively on increasing the numbers of staff members from underrepresented groups. It was important to look also at curricula and programmatic initiatives, such as visiting scholar programs, to improve cultural competency throughout institutions and organizations.

A critical challenge to emerge from the diversity project is the issue of tenure. Several center directors said that administrators often failed to recognize the achievements as well as the scholarly interests of women of color. The lack of access to tenure has a direct impact on eligibility for leadership positions.

Finally, the project has made obvious that the definition of what constitutes diversity varies widely from institution to institution.

“There is a diversity in how we approach diversity,” said Jane Wishner from the Southwest Women’s Law Center.

A survey form was distributed at the NCRW conference to gather more extensive data. It aims not only to gather information about definitions and levels of racial and ethnic diversity across the NCRW network, but also identify any problems related to promotions or tenure as well as situations in which race or racism may have played a role in negative decision-making. The Council is also hosting an on-line forum to collect additional information. To join the forum, click here.

As stipulated by Ford, the project also features a partnership with the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) which will help disseminate the project’s findings.  Delores M. Walters, the NCRW project director, organized a panel during the NWSA’s recent annual conference in Cincinnati, Ohio (see article in this newsletter).

All of the grantees said they would seek to continue their initiatives beyond the Ford grant and suggested that the Council and other strategic partners help with fundraising. In the event of the project’s extension, grantees offered to serve as peer mentors for a new cohort of grant recipients.

Working at the Intersections of Faith, Gender, and Religion explored how women’s social status is sometimes tied to religious beliefs and practices. Ranging from grassroots organizations to seminarians, panelists agreed on the importance of identifying misogynistic customs in religion and building collaborations between secular and faith-based feminist groups.

“The Sister Fund has identified four main strategies that inform faith and feminism,” said moderator Lilyane Glamben, Deputy Director of The Sister Fund. “First, is naming and validating historical and contemporary examples of faith-fueled feminism, second, is building bridges between faith-based and secular feminisms, third, is nurturing women’s leadership in all sectors of society, especially in faith-based institutions, and finally, transforming secular and religious institutions toward equity.”

Constance Buchanan, a consultant formerly with the Ford Foundation, emphasized the need for a distinction to be made between faith and religion in scholarship and public debates. “Faith is something we need to look at carefully, its presuppositions, its use of language, its privileges, and its resistance to criticism … religion is a public force, always – it is one of the main expressions of culture, one of the most powerful shapers of social values and institutions,” Buchanan said

She added that religion played an important role during this year’s Democratic primaries. The media portrayed Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the “black church” in a negative way, forcing Barack Obama to distance himself from his spiritual base.

Janet Jakobsen of the Barnard Center for Research on Women warned against the “secular trick.” “At particular times, when it comes down to it, we invoke religion without a problem ... we have to be critical of religion and critical about secularism and what set of assumptions are invoked when we make claims about them,” Jakobsen said.

She further noted that the current U.S. government not only privileges Christian secularism but also that this did not reflect the views of the U.S. population. Currently, there are 535 members of Congress, 514 of whom identify themselves as Christians. She added that if the U.S. government were more representative of the population in terms of both religion and race, it would better meet the needs of its citizens.

Zainah Anwar of Sisters In Islam also discussed the need for a diversity of opinions within religion, Islam in particular. Although many interpreted the koranic verse on polygamy to mean that a Muslim man should have as many wives as he wants, a closer look at the text reveals an additional passage stating that he should marry only one woman if he feels that he cannot love all of them equally.

She also noted how misogynistic customs are often overlooked in the law. In Malaysia, sixty percent of the population identifies itself as Muslim and 40% as non-Muslim, but the government will only apply reform laws that discriminate against women to non-Muslim women.

“Non-Muslim women are gaining rights to equality and Muslim women are regressing ... we need alternative interpretations of religion and we need to educate policy makers on the diversity of opinions within the community. Why is it that when it comes to women we always choose the most regressive, discriminating policy? This is not authentic Islam,” Anwar said.

Katharine Henderson of Auburn Theological Seminary emphasized the need for coalitions to be fortified between faith-based and secular feminisms. She described the Auburn Center’s Face to Face, Faith to Faith program which brings together Muslim, Jewish, and Christian youth from around the world to understand how their own religious traditions and those of others intersect and can be used to unite instead of divide.

Many panelists proposed gender as a useful tool for unmasking the “morally blind spaces” embedded in religious language. Some strategies for action included implementing a more comprehensive understanding of all religions within the mainstream curriculum, educating policy makers on alternative views in both faith-based and secular religions, and gathering women of different religious backgrounds together to articulate their views and increase mutual understanding.

“I wouldn’t make a distinction between power and faith,” said Buchanan. “Secularism is itself a truth claim, it is itself an ideology—it has no Buddha or Koran but it is as surely an ideology. Our next step is to look at the multiple forms of thinking because both secularism and religious traditions have a kind of connection to American exceptionalism which privileges this culture.”

The 2008 annual conference reached a crescendo of innovative and provocative analysis during its final plenary session: a dynamic triumvirate of thought leaders composed of Kimberle Crenshaw, Chandra Talpade Mohanty and Bonnie Thorton Dill.

They provided insights into women’s economic, geopolitical, cultural and social status and the deeply imbedded prejudices and disparities in all systems of power from the familial to the global.

“Making it real means for something to occur in fact and in actuality—to move away from the imaginary, the alleged, or the ideal.  In terms of our feminist politics, we are talking about a politics that is rooted in the actual complex and intersecting lived experiences of women and girls, both domestically and globally,” said C. Nicole Mason, the Council’s Senior Research Scholar who organized the panel.

Bonnie Thornton Dill, Chair and Professor in the Department of Women's Studies at the University of Maryland in College Park, emphasized the need for a transformation in feminist politics. She gave a brief history of intersectional scholarship which began as a merger of women's studies and race and ethnic studies, fields that grew out of the civil and women's rights movements of the '60s and '70s.

Although there have been great analytical strides from intersectional analysis, Thornton Dill underlined that there are also challenges to the approach. “Intersectionality, if I can quote one of my panel members, ‘is more than a car crash at the nexus of a set of separate roads.’ Instead, it is well understood that these systems of power are mutually constituted and that there is no point at which race is not simultaneously classed and gendered nor where gender is not simultaneously raced and classed.  How to capture this complexity in a single term or image has been an on-going conversation,” said Dill.

Another important aspect of feminist scholarship has been unveiling the dynamics of power. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Professor of Women’s Studies and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities from Syracuse University, shared her experiences growing up in India where the high school curriculum taught her more about British imperial history than it did national history or that of her own local community.

“In my work, the question of how power functions, what it hides, what it makes visible, what it makes natural, and what it makes normative was critical but decolonization also had to be a collective process, anchored in indigenous histories of struggle,” said Mohanty.

She emphasized that an anti-capitalist critique is not limited to a discussion of globalization alone but also entails an in-depth look at the discourse and values of the economic system.

Another concern was the privatization of war and prisons as well as the detention centers along the Texas border. Mohanty cautioned against this system and said that citizenship is directly connected to wealth and status.

Kimberle Crenshaw, citing Critical Race Theory, said that discussions of race were often encoded in a “colorblind language.” She gave examples of how race was pitted against gender both in the Democratic primaries and in academic scholarship and warned against the limitations of analyzing a phenomenon through the lens of racism or sexism alone.

“When one person makes the argument that black men are relatively advantaged over women and cites the military as an example while ignoring the prison industrial complex, or when one person references access to CEO and corporate leadership while omitting mention of access to wealth and education, there is a serious problem in the analysis,” said Crenshaw.

Audience members mentioned other critical lenses such as post-modernism as effective frameworks for uncovering social injustices. There was wide agreement that feminist scholarship and research should continue to analyze the dynamics of power and the interlocking vectors of race, class, and gender.

“There is no single category—race, class, ethnicity, gender, nation or sexuality—that can explain human experience without reference to other categories.  Thus we have, and will need to continue to develop, more nuanced and complex understandings of identity and more fluid notions of gender, race, sexuality and class,” said Dill.

Friends and well-wishers filled the paneled room at the Harvard Club on June 4th to celebrate the 90th birthday of the Council’s founding President and Resident Scholar, Mariam Chamberlain.

“Your influence on the women’s research and advocacy movement has been monumental and you exemplify grace under fire with your ability to rise above adversity,” said Council President, Linda Basch.

Mariam Chamberlain contributed to the growth of the women’s studies movement in the 1960’s while she was a program officer at the Ford Foundation by extending small grants and seed money to the budding research centers. She saw the need for a national network that would strengthen the women’s research and advocacy movement and provide the centers with support and solidarity, leading to the creation of the National Council for Research on Women.

Women leaders from different arenas and generations provided moving testimony of their affection and admiration for Mariam’s generosity of spirit, probing intelligence and empowering mentorship. Many underlined her special affinity for young scholars, further evidenced by the number of younger women who participated in the birthday tribute.

The daughter of immigrants, Mariam Chamberlain first gained public notoriety as a child champion marble player. Like her marble playing, Mariam consistently proved her mettle by crashing the gates of various boys’s clubs from the Department of Economics at Harvard (Mariam earned her PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1950) to the faculty spaces at Yale and Columbia University. During World War II, she worked for the Office of Special Services, precursor to the CIA, as an economic analyst.

Messages of congratulations poured in from across the country and were presented to Mariam in a keepsake album.

“Your quiet wisdom, steady engagement, and deep commitment are and will always be a profound inspiration to all.  With gratitude, affection, and a loud cheer of thanks,” wrote Judith R. Saidel, Director of the Center for Women in Government & Civil Society at SUNY, Albany.

Conversations between Mariam and Linda Basch were recently recorded as part of the Story Corps oral history project. Excerpts from the interviews and other information about Mariam Chamberlain will be posted soon at www.ncrw.org.

The Council would like to thank the Feminist Press, the Institute for Women’s Policy Research and Ann Snitow for their support of this special event.

The Council congratulates Navanethem Pillay on her new position as UN High Commissioner on Human Rights. An outstanding jurist and internationally recognized human rights leader, the Council honored Pillay in 2006 with its Making a Difference for Women award for her groundbreaking work at the International Criminal Court in the Hague and for her leadership at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. A South African, she was the first woman to start a law practice in Natal Province, defending opponents of apartheid. A fearless trailblazer, Pillay has established herself as a defender of women’s human rights and has addressed the systematic use of rape as genocide in armed conflicts. Her appointment has received wide support from human rights organizations around the globe.

Subha receiving the award from NY1 Anchor Cheryl Wills

NCRW Board of Directors Member Subha Barry was honored by the New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women with its 2008 Women of Power & Influence Award. A stellar gala at the Grand Hyatt Grand Central on June 24th brought together some of New York City’s leading movers and shakers to recognize women who have made a difference in their respective fields of work. Council President Linda Basch was among the guests who came to show their pride and support. Subha Barry, Managing Director and Head of Global Diversity and Inclusion at Merrill Lynch, has been a tireless advocate for women’s advancement in business and corporations as well as a mentor for diversified talent in her own company. “Diversity is hand-to-hand combat. True inclusion and advancement for women comes only when each of us takes an active and personal interest in making it happen,” Subha said on accepting her award. For the occasion, her sister flew in from California and her husband, Jim, daughter Tara and son Jay were also in attendance. Past NOW awardees include Nicole Miller, Mary Jo White, Alexandra Lebenthal, Joy Behar, Gloria Steinem, Honorable Elizabeth Holtzman and Ruth Whitney. The New York City Chapter of NOW, founded in 1966, is the largest chapter in the country with 7,000 members locally and 35,000 statewide. Congratulations Subha!

The Council is pleased to announce that Board Member Melinda Wolfe, formerly of American Express, recently moved to Bloomberg to become the company’s head of Professional Development. In this role, she will be responsible for global Human Resources at Bloomberg.

"Melinda has a strong background in human resources and diversity management, and her experience in the financial markets provides a deep understanding of our business," said Peter T. Grauer, Chairman of Bloomberg.

As head of Professional Development, Melinda will oversee all facets of human resources management including recruiting, learning, leadership development and succession planning, as well as diversity and inclusion.

Prior to joining Bloomberg, Melinda served as a Senior Vice President, Executive Talent and Chief Diversity Officer at American Express where she led executive talent acquisition and development, and the company's diversity and inclusion strategy.

Previously, Melinda was at Goldman Sachs where she headed the Office of Global Leadership and Diversity after a position directing Staffing and Development in the Investment Management Division. She also directed the Office of Global Recruiting and Training at Credit Suisse Group. At Merrill Lynch, she led and managed billions of dollars of municipal utility and project finance transactions in the Fixed Income Division.

Melinda received her undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis and an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Diversifying the Leadership of Women’s Research Centers, a Ford Foundation-funded project was showcased in a Critical Issues session during the recent National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) annual conference in Cincinnati, OH (June 19-22). The session, Racial Justice in the Academy and Related Institutions, was organized by the project director, NCRW’s Delores M. Walters, along with NWSA’s Pat Washington and Aimee Carrillo Rowe of NWSA’s Women of Color Caucus.

The session drew representatives from academic, policy and advocacy circles. A lively and interactive format included an overview by Delores Walters, an exploration of strategies by grantee Mary E. Frederickson of the Women’s Studies Program at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and commentary from Angela Ginorio, one of the project’s Advisory Committee members.

The Ford Foundation grant mandates that NCRW partner with NWSA to disseminate findings from the project. NWSA, an NCRW member center that reaches hundreds of women’s studies programs and departments, shares the Council’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. The ultimate aim is to develop strategies that will become models to be replicated within the Council and throughout its member network. The Council is currently seeking additional funding to extend this two-year initiative.

Pat Washington, co-chair of the Women of Color Caucus discussed the NSWA’s efforts to include the historical, social, cultural, political and economical perspectives of racialized women in the United States (and globally): a women of color essay contest, the “Stop Dreaming” workshops on anti-white supremacy, anti-racism initiatives, building coalitions and making workplace environments more collegial. [Aimee Carrillo-Rowe, the other Caucus co-chair, was unable to attend the conference due to flooding in Idaho.]

The session confronted the complexities of white privilege and its invisible features and collusions. It explored strategies to expand diversity on college campuses and efforts to integrate women of color into women’s studies and other programs. It addressed advancing, not only women of color but other marginalized women as well, such as the disabled and poor. It asked participants to imagine what a more inclusive program and institution or organization would look like.

One participant encouraged looking beyond the mere appearance of diversity, i.e. increasing numbers of administrators, staff and students, to transforming the campus environment and culture.

Excerpts from the film Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible by Shakti Butler (50 min.) were shown. The film features stories by white activists who are engaged in an ongoing effort to transform themselves: from their beginnings as children in experiencing or observing racist and white supremacist behavior to various stages of becoming aware of what is required to overcome “the sickness within.” It traces the difficult labyrinth that is involved in developing multicultural relationships and identified steps in the last section of the film called The Life I Would Lead.

NCRW Director of Research for Institutional Diversity Delores Walters joined another session as a panelist at the NWSA conference: Envisioning Racial and Gender Equality and Inclusion in Women’s Studies Research and Programs

She joined Mary E. Frederickson, a History professor from Miami University at Oxford, Ohio and Sally Roesch Wagner, Executive Director, The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation for a panel that focused on pioneering feminists  –  some of whom were challenged by racism – and the lessons that are still relevant for today’s movements for racial and gender equality.

The historical context was the struggle over the 15th Amendment which provided suffrage for black men, but for no women of any race. Some women suffragists also took up the cause of racial equality, but not the most well-known. The exceptions were leaders such as Lucy Stone and Matilda Joslyn Gage who were influenced by Native American feminists and who provide important models for collaboration to achieve racial and gender equality and inclusion in today’s politically-charged environment. 

The panel appropriately preceded an interview by Beverly Guy Sheftall with Paula J. Giddings whose latest work (IDA, A Sword among Lions) focuses on a visionary leader who fostered collaboration between Black and White women to abolish slavery and lobby for voting rights. Historic leaders discussed during the panel included:

• Elizabeth Clark Gaines, the matriarch of an African-American family in Cincinnati, Ohio, schemed and negotiated to free herself and her children.  Her resistance and passage from slavery to freedom almost two hundred years ago, is an example that may echo the story of many thousands of other enslaved American women who skillfully leveraged bondage, sex and motherhood in order to obtain freedom.