Only Child On the Air

A radio interview Daph and I did for the launch of the paperback of Only Child is now available online--the producer says it'll be there for perpetuity. Here tis.

Questionable Categories: SAHM v. "Working" Mom

Just a quickie this morning. This just came to me via Laura from Catalyst--thanks, L!

A nice summary of an interesting sounding article, "Locating Mothers: How Cultural Debates About Stay-at-Home Versus Working Mothers Define Women and Home" by Heather Dillaway (dillaway@wayne.edu) and Elizabeth Paré:

Most women must decide whether to work for pay while mothering or make mothering their sole social role. Often this decision is portrayed in terms of whether they will be "stay-at-home" and presumably "full-time" mothers, or "working mothers" and therefore ones who prioritize paid work over caregiving. Inferred within this construction is women's physical location as well—either women are at home or work, not both. In this article, the authors explore common conceptualizations of stay-at-home versus working motherhood, as evidenced by feminist family scholarship and recent media items. To keep in tune with contemporary media conversations, the authors begin to investigate what cultural discourse about these mothers also illustrates about our definitions of home, and the individuals and activities that exist within this space. In writing this conceptual piece, the authors' goal is to initiate further feminist research on motherhood and paid work, and women's locations while engaging in both.

Girl w/Pen on TV

Tonight! On WNBC (local NYC news station) sometime between 7-7:30pm, I'll be on talking about the new study from the Council on Contemporary Families that I blogged about this morning. I got the call this morning and (Courtney will appreciate this!), I dashed off to buy a cheap dress at The Gap near Rock Center because I was wearing ratty jeans and inappropriate boots. Fortunately, the producer promised me, you won't see my boots.

And on Sunday, March 16, I'll be appearing on WCBS (again, local news) in a segment on feminism as part of a women's history month special series. I hear Linda Gordon was interviewed too, and that Courtney Martin will be on it too. I feel so honored to be in their company. And grateful to the Women's Media Center for the use of their office for the shoot.

Men Change, But Workplaces Not So Much

I find it heartening to wake up to this news bit sent to me by CCF this morning: Men have more and more stepped up to the plate in sharing housework and childcare. The longer a wife works, the more housework her husband does. Hallelujah amen.

According to a briefing paper prepared in advance of the 11th Annual Conference of the Council on Contemporary Families, April 25-26, 2008 at the University of Illinois in Chicago, ("Men's Changing Contribution to Housework and Child Care," by researchers Oriel Sullivan and Scott Coltrane):

For thirty years, researchers studying the changes in family dynamics since the rise of the women's movement have concluded that, despite gains in the world of education, work, and politics, women face a "stalled revolution" at home. According to many studies, men's family work has barely budged in response to women's increased employment. The typical punch line of many news stories has been that even though women are working longer hours on the job and cutting back their own housework, men are not picking up the slack.

But new research suggests that these studies were based on unrealistic hopes for instant transformation. Such studies, explain Sullivan and Coltrane, underestimated the amount of change going on behind the scenes and "the growing willingness of men to adapt to their wives' new behaviors and values."

In fact, it turns out, more couples are sharing family tasks than ever before. The movement toward sharing has been especially significant full-time dual-earner
couples.

Interestingly, whatever a man's original resistance to sharing, men's contributions to family work increase over time. In other words, the longer their female partners have been in paid employment, the more family work they are likely to do.

Bottom line is this: "American couples have made remarkable progress in working out mutually satisfying arrangements to share the responsibilities of breadwinning and family care. And polls continue to show increasing approval of such arrangements. So the revolution in gender aspirations and behaviors has not stalled."

But lest we we women of the second and third shift get too excited, here's where things are stalled: getting employers to accommodate workers' desires. And high earners are forced to work ever longer hours. Less affluent earners face wage or benefit cuts and layoffs that often force them to work more than one job. Aside from winning paid parental leave laws in Washington and California (with similar bills being considered in Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York), families have made little headway in getting the kind of family friendly policies that are taken for granted in most other advanced industrial countries.

So even as American couples' beliefs and desires about gender equity have grown to be among the highest in the world, America's work policies and social support systems for working parents are among the lowest. Depressing, to say the least.

All in all, the "stalled revolution" in America is not taking place in families but in the highest circles of our economic and political elites.

For more information on this report, contact:

Scott Coltrane, Professor of Sociology, University of California
Riverside, (951) 827-2443; cell: (951) 858-1831 scott.coltrane@ucr.edu

Professor Oriel Sullivan, Department of Behavioral Sciences, Ben
Gurion University sullivan@bgu.ac.il, +972 86472056

(Image cred)

Progressive Women's Voices Is Changing My Life--Apply Now!

Are you sick of turning on the TV, tuning in the radio, or opening a newspaper and asking yourself, where are the women? The Women's Media Center created Progressive Women's Voices, an intensive training and support program to develop a new class of women to take on the media, and I've been a beneficiary by participating in the first class. Applications are now available to take part in the second class.

The WMC is looking for, in their words, "talented, informed, progressive women who are willing to speak out about the issues that matter; women who are interested in joining an amazing group of dynamic, engaged women who are interested in changing the world as we know it through the lens of the media." In case you're wondering, they've delivered, connecting their participants with decision makers in the news industry who can help make our voices heard - from the opinion pages of the nation's top newspapers to the producers an reporters at the national news networks.

So, whether your expertise is war or peace, leadership, health care, or technology, chances are you follow the news, and realize that progressive women's voices, like yours, are missing. Click here to learn more about the current class of Progressive Women's Voices and how you can apply (http://www.womensmediacenter.com/progressive_womens_voices.html).

And please pass it on. If everyone who reads this passes the application along to at least one other great woman whose voice we all should know, just think how things could change.

Ain't Over til It's Over!

But wait--is it a good thing that this is dragging out? I'm doing a little happy dance over here this morning, though Marco is down in the dumps. Ah, the joys of being a house divided. We both, however, have serious Election Fatigue Syndrome (EFS) and are more than ready to rally behind whoever becomes the nominee. That said, I'm still doing the happy dance and have regained hope for my girl.

Some great quips from other nail biters, all of us looking ahead, nervously, to the national election:

Lynn Harris at Broadsheet, "Women and Clinton: Damned If They Vote, Damned If They Don't?"--there's so much great stuff here you just gotta read it, but a favorite line: "We all know about 'shrill.' Which to me, for the record, describes John McCain."

Gloria Feldt quoted over at Women's ENews: For women, McCain would be "disaster in a nutshell."

Kavita Ramdas at The Nation: "The next President needs the ability to demonstrate the inner courage and conviction that comes from owning his or her 'otherness.' As a woman and a mother, Hillary Clinton could bring insights and perspectives no other President in US history could have brought to the negotiating table of war and peace. As the stepson of an Indonesian Muslim and the son of a Kenyan and a white woman from Kansas, Barack Obama manifests what it means to be a global citizen. What is at stake in this election is not merely the historic first that would be accomplished if either a black man or a woman became the next US President. What is at stake is the fragile future of our shared world.“

(Thanks to Purse Pundit for that last one!)

Women's History Month Bloggy Goodness

In celebration of Women's History Month, Women's Voices. Women Vote is honoring women in the blogosphere, through a Women's Voices Making History contest.

Nominate your favorite female bloggers through March 21, after which WVWV will list the top 10 female bloggers at www.wvwv.org and then they'll ask everyone to vote for their favorite.

Nominating form available here.

(Thank you, Catherine Morgan, for the heads up, and, well, for your know what!!)

GUEST POST: Gottlieb and the Single Girl

GUEST BLOGGER: Elline Lipkin PhD was recently a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Beatrice M. Bain Center for Research on Gender at UC Berkeley. Her first book, The Errant Thread, was published by Kore Press. She recently moved to Los Angeles and is in search of feminist community. I met Elline this summer at an NWSA conference and then again at Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley, where we discovered we had a dear dear connection in common. If you are in LA and are connected to feministy activity at large, you should contact her because she is AMAZING! Here's Elline! -GWP

Gottlieb and the Single Girl

For the past few days it’s been impossible to ignore the vitriol electrifying the e-waves over Lori Gottlieb’s article in the March issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Entitled “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” Gottlieb argues that a woman shouldn’t hold out for marriage based on a Big Romantic Connection, but instead should settle for Mr. Not So Bad, primarily so that she has a partner in the trenches, as she puts it, of homemaking and child-rearing. Instead of thinking of a partner as a soul mate or someone with whom to embark on a passionate adventure, she suggests, imagine him as a partner in a “small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit,” which is another way she characterizes running a household together. She gives more insight about her position in an Atlantic interview, this recent NPR piece, and on The Today Show.

Her evidence is anecdotal, her stress level as a new single mother sounds high, and her impatience with her friends’ complaints about husbands who don’t pull equal weight with parenting is worn out. There is much to take issue with in her argument, (as others who have done real research into these issues have), based as it is on her seemingly middle-class and often privileged friends. In my view, one of her serious missteps (and where she incurred the most wrath) is her first assumption that all women want to get married, as she writes, “To the outside world, of course, we call ourselves feminists and insist... that we’re independent and self-sufficient... but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family.” The piece continues on in its belief that a woman is always better off with the financial and physical help of a husband (never mind walking sperm bank on tap!), no matter how bland, boring, or eventually bald she might find him. Gottlieb even says that since one of her married friends’ chief complaints is that they never see their spouses, likeability shouldn’t really even be an issue. In today’s issue of the LA Times, columnist Meghan Daum takes Gottlieb roundly to task over her assumption that all women want children.

Yet, (and this is the tricky part), I think Gottlieb has a point. What troubles me is how her poorly chosen rhetoric is allowing her argument to be twisted into anti-feminist backlash and sounds suspiciously close to a regressive longing for the all-holy strictures of the nuclear family. As a woman of the same age, I see Gottlieb’s argument borne out of a pragmatism which doesn’t disavow romance as much as it asks women to drop the Hollywood-ending scales from their eyes. As a self-proclaimed quirkyalone whose motto was always “Never settle!” as well as a recent newlywed I think the Atlantic deliberately framed her message as one that only inflames the stereotype of single-woman-as-desperate and then lights it on fire.

Retitled something far more pragmatic such as “Your Priorities Will Change as You Get Older” her article wouldn’t have incited the blogosphere, yet could have carried across what I see as her essential message. Don’t count out that shy five-foot-six guy with a heart of gold hanging out in the corner at a party when you always said you would only date men who are at least five ten seems to be one way to sum up her core advice. Think about the qualities that make for a great life partner on all fronts, including the unromantic day to day, and don’t confuse superficial romance novel notions about passion with character and qualities that will last for the long run. She references the “motherly advice” we’ve all heard and disdained now coming back to haunt her — think about “the bigger picture” a potential spouse represents rather than his short-term libidinous appeal. Gottlieb admits that it’s a fine line between “settling” and “compromising” and that every woman has to determine where this wavers, and surprisingly, at the article’s end confesses that she will probably never will settle, although she wishes she had. In all of this, I think she is absolutely right.

Last year I wrote in Salon about my own travails in the dating world, and I know how hard it is to meet someone with whom you can simply carry on a decent conversation for an hour, never mind a lifetime. I had spent far too long in a long-distance relationship that went nowhere (except gathering frequent flier miles) and I had sworn I’d never do that again. At age 38, when I first met my now-spouse, who lived a short plane ride away, I remember saying, “I’m too old and too picky to count out someone who seems this good.” If I had been ten years younger, or for that matter even five, would I have made the effort? Probably not. I see Gottlieb as coming from a place the dating-weary often reach: a far shore of loneliness when you think meeting someone of substance is just never going to happen. That her values have changed as she entered her fourth decade, altered with the birth of her son, and sobered up to the reality that the dating pool shrinks substantially the farther one goes into one’s thirties, doesn’t seem so wrong.

Yet a moment I think Gottlieb misses the mark is when she assumes men don’t suffer from the choices they’ve made, only women do. As I wrote in Salon, I was amazed at how many men regretted not marrying younger and awoke to wanting children later in life, only to realize it probably wasn’t going to happen for them. For many men it wasn’t biology that would limit them, but a ticking social clock that counted them out past a certain age as well. What seems sad is that Gottlieb can only celebrate for a scant moment the choices she had the privilege to make, namely to have a child on her own, despite its hardships. Her hindsight (and lack of sleep it sounds like) is what drives her rear view mirror exhortation to younger women to avoid her path and take on a partner, not just any old partner, but one seen through the tempered vision maturity brings.

You can contact Elline at elline.lipkin@yahoo.com

Election: Biting My Nails Edition

That's all. Just biting going on over here. More in the AM, when we have some real info!

Go Science Go

I may late to this one, but just had to share this awesome takedown, complete with (surprise!) facts, of that awful backlash porn last month in The Atlantic called "Marry Him!", via Bella DePaulo recently at HuffPo. Writes Bella:

Gottlieb buys into just about all of the myths about singles that I debunk in my book, Singled Out. She believes, for example, that singles are interested in just one thing - getting married. She warns that even if they have great jobs, their jobs won't love them back. She thinks that if single women wait too long, the available men will all be "damaged goods." Most of all, she seems to believe that single people are miserable and lonely, and that the cure for what ails them is to get married.

Science demurs. A study in which thousands of people have been followed for 18 years (and counting) shows that people who get married enjoy, at best, a brief and tiny bubble of happiness around the time of the wedding (a honeymoon effect); then they go back to being as happy or as unhappy as they were when they were single. Moreover, only those who marry and stay married experience the early blip in happiness; those who marry and then divorce are already becoming less happy, not more so, as the day of the wedding draws near. (See Chapter 2 of Singled Out.)

The words "lonely" or "alone" occur a dozen times in "Marry Him." Gottlieb seems to be channeling Bridget Jones's fear of ending up "dying alone and found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian," only without the humor. I've studied the scientific research on loneliness in later life (Chapter 11 of Singled Out). It shows that no group is LESS likely to be lonely in their senior years than women who have always been single. Gottlieb also believes that mothers who settle, regret that they did, and then divorce, will still be better off financially than if they had never married. The science does not support that, either.

So there.

(Thanks as ever CCF for the heads up.)

EVENT: Beyond the Waves--Art!

Susan Bee and Mira Schor, along with Emma Bee Bernstein (Susan's daughter!), Carolee Schneemann, and Brynna Tucker will be on a March 30th Panel, 3:00 - 5:00 PM: "Beyond the Waves; Feminist Artists Talk Across Generations" at The Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. It's free & open to the public (with museum entry fee).

Emma (pictured left) is the twentysomething photographer who has teamed up with Nona Willis-Aronowitz (pictured right) for GIRLDrive, a project which is SO worth checking out if you don't know about it already.

A Letter from Feminists on the Election

For those who missed it, the following "letter" ran in The Nation on February 27, 2008:

Two days after the Texas debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, a group of old friends broke out the good china for a light breakfast of strong coffee, blueberry muffins and fresh-squeezed orange juice. We were there to hash out a split that threatened our friendship and the various movements with which we are affiliated. In some ways it was a kaffeeklatch like a million others across America early on a Saturday morning--but for the fact that this particular group included Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of the National Women's Political Caucus; Beverly Guy-Sheftall, director of the Women's Research and Resource Center at Spelman College; Johnnetta Cole, chair of the board of the JBC Global Diversity and Inclusion Institute; British-born radio journalist Laura Flanders; Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at Columbia and UCLA; Carol Jenkins, head of the Women's Media Center; Farah Griffin, professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia; Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority; author Mab Segrest; Kenyan anthropologist Achola Pala Okeyo; management consultant and policy strategist Janet Dewart Bell; and Patricia Williams, Columbia law professor and Nation columnist.

It was a casual gathering, but one that settled down to business quickly. We were all progressives but diverse nonetheless. We differed in our opinions of whether to vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama--our goal was not an endorsement. Rather, the concern that united us all was the "race-gender split" playing out nationally, in which the one is relentlessly pitted against the other. We did not want to see a repeat of the ugly history of the nineteenth century, when the failure of the women's movement to bring about universal adult suffrage metastasized into racial resentment and rift that weakened feminism throughout much of the twentieth century.

How, we wondered, did a historic breakthrough moment for which we have all longed and worked hard, suddenly risk becoming marred by having to choose between "race cards" and "gender cards"? By petty competitiveness about who endures more slings and arrows? By media depictions of white women as the sole inheritors of the feminist movement and black men as the sole beneficiaries of the civil rights movement? By renderings of black women as having to split themselves right down the center with Solomon's sword in order to vote for either candidate? What happened, we wondered, to the last four decades of discussion about tokenism and multiple identities and the complex intersections of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class?

We all worried that the feminist movement's real message is not being heard, and we thought about how to redirect attention to those coalitions that form the bedrock of feminist concern: that wide range of civil rights groups dedicated to fighting discrimination, domestic violence, the disruptions of war, international sex and labor trafficking, child poverty and a tattered economy that threatens to increase the number of homeless families significantly.

We thought of all that has happened in just seven short but disastrous years of the Bush Administration, and we asked: how might we position ourselves so we're not fighting one another? Our issues are greater than any disagreement about either candidate. We all know that there is simply too much at stake.

....As we gathered up the empty plates, we recommitted ourselves to further joint discussions about how to attain that collective better future, however many early mornings, late nights and urns of coffee into the future that may take. We hope women across America will choose to do the same.

Read the full letter here.

Who's In the Pipeline?

Sigh. Yes. It's a question many are starting to ask. In "Electing a Woman to the White House: Who’s on Deck?" NYTimes writer Susan Dominus notes that "There is...a good chance that if Mrs. Clinton falters, the feminist conversation will shift from what went wrong with her campaign to another pressing matter: who’s coming down the pipeline."

Also of interest over there recently is an article titled "Mining the Gender Gap for Answers," in which reporter Robin Toner concludes that answers are, well, few:

"Move beyond the tactical skirmishes in this campaign, and one of the most intriguing issues remains the influence of gender on Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy. The questions are fundamental and — even with modern polling technology — almost impossible to answer."

Well, let's see what the day brings. It's sure to be an interesting one at that.

(Thanks to CCF for the reminder.)

EVENT: Hit the Ground Running

From my dear friends over at the National Council for Research on Women comes this (cool graphic, ladies over there!):

Join Kimberle Crenshaw, Kim Gandy, Chandra Mohanty, Ellie Smeal and other leading scholars, researchers, advocates, and policy makers from across various disciplines and fields June 5-7, 2008 at the Kimmel Center at NYU for our Annual Conference. Share information and resources; learn about cutting edge and emerging research on women, gender, and girls; and strategize about ways to work across communities and fields of study.

This year’s conference themes will center around where women can have the most impact in the 2008 Presidential election and beyond, including research and policy issues that will need to be addressed with a new administration; challenges women in the academy confront—backlash, shrinking budgets, corporatization, conservative social pressures—and what can be done to counter them; and the implications of the intersections of race, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nation, generation and other markers of difference for feminist scholarship, leadership, and activism, nationally and globally.

Early registration starts now. For more info, contact ncrw@ncrw.org

TOUR NOTES: Womengirlsladies Coming Soon to CMU...

If anywhere near Central Michigan University, here's where to catch us on March 17 and 18! For more information, e-mail Jill Taft Kaufman at taftk1j@cmich.edu.

When Women Lead Like, Well, Women...

Last week I put a page out to women's leadership researchers. And my friend Laura Sabbatini over at Catalyst helpfully responded, reminding that their July 2007 report, Double Bind: Damned If You Do, Doomed If You Don't, covers many of these issues. Writes Laura, "Think about the think-leader-think-male stereotype and how men are perceived as 'natural' leaders by default. Because men don't have to prove that they can lead, any 'communal'/feminine behavior is considered positively (that is, as an add on) when performed by a man, or definitely more positively than when it is performed by a woman." The report is available online.

Laura also sent along a few research articles that have "some good supporting evidence in terms of the same behavior being perceived as different when performed by a man or a woman." For those seeking to dig deeper, check out:

-"Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice Toward Female Leaders" by Alice H. Eagly and Steven J. Karau
-"Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions to Men’s and Women’s Altruistic Citizenship Behavior" by Madeline E. Heilman and Julie J. Chen

J.K. Gayle sent along the following, to add to a discussion in which "feminized," when applied to Obama, becomes coded racially--and, suggests Dr. Helen, perhaps to mean socialism:

-Over at Rachel's Tavern - "Serious Question…for Everyone About Racial Double Standards"
-And at Dr. Helen - " Is Obama Feminized?"

I'd add that Patricia Williams has done some great writing on these topics in her column at The Nation. Def worth checking out.

(Thank you, as always, L and J.K.!)

News from Girl Sailor

Girl Sailor has had so many awesome posts lately, I don't know which to link to first. So I'm just going to point GWP readers over there, for fare like "A Woman of Amazon Proportions" (on guess who), "Reading Infidel in DC," and an email about the observance of Women's History Month sent by the Chief of Naval Operations via his administrative staff to all Navy Personnel.

In addition to being an active blogger, Girl Sailor is an ensign on active duty in the U.S. Navy.

Happy Women's History Month, GS, with love, and deep gratitude, from GWP.

GUEST POST: Obama v. Clinton--Back to the Future?

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH GUEST POST: With 1st-wave feminism on my mind this morning, I'm thrilled to bring you a guest post that connects current goings-on to the past, by May Sinclair PhD, author of Infamous Eve: A History. May asks, "Are Clinton and Obama giving us an opportunity to re-live a version of the events that surrounded the 14th and 15th Amendments?" A California Real Estate Broker, May earned her doctorate in the Philosophy of Metaphysics soon after her 50th birthday. She's an award-winning author, has written extensively about ancient disciplines connected with symbolism, and teaches private workshops on Dream Interpretation and Analysis from a Jungian perspective. She is someone I seriously hope to meet in real space one day! May blogs at My Thoughts on History. Here she is! - GWP

Back to the Future?

Is the grand Universe offering us an opportunity to deal with a lesson in our history not previously understood? Are we re-living a version of the events that surrounded the ratification of United States Constitution's 14th and 15th Amendments? Those events greatly concerned and involved two of our most important historical figures. Elizabeth Cady Stanton is the woman responsible for initiating women rights in this country and Frederick Douglass, who was born into slavery, is a major figure in the effort to release the United States of America from the horrors of slavery. They worked closely together, but in July, 1868 they had to face the fact that their primary objective of freedom for all did not survive when the legislators of the day banned together to block the powerful union of women and black people to only offer males the vote.

The 14th amendment said: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The idea was to make sure freed slaves were not prevented from voting, but it only gave franchise to males rather than all citizens.

But then the Supreme Court case of Minor vs. Happersett allowed the individual states to determine which males got to vote anyway.

The cause of the amendments failure:
-1. The rights of women were not included.
-1. The Federal government did not prevent the individual states from initiating voter qualification laws like literacy tests and pole taxes.

Are we being beguiled into allowing the seemingly towering objective of gaining the highest office in the land by either a black man or a woman to deflect away from the primary objective and divide us so that no one really gains anything and those of us in this country who love it and care about equality are again torn apart in an attempt to undermine the power women and blacks exhibit together?

May Sinclair can be reached at infamouseve@msn.com.

TOUR NOTES: Saturday with Alice Paul

It's always an immense pleasure to be invited by an organization to speak about Sisterhood, Interrupted, but when it's the Alice Paul Institute--located at Paulsdale, birthplace and farm home of 1st wave icon Alice Paul--the pleasure is double. (Thank you Kris, Dana, Rhonda, and Becky!)

The crowd was intergenerational to the nth degree, spanning at least six decades--14 to 74, I'd say. My host Kris Myers and I brushed up together on ERA history during the car ride to Paulsdale, as Alice was its original author back in 1923. The talk was held in the Double Parlor of the historic home, in front of the fireplace. Being there put the whole conversation in a context that went back to early 20th century. Kris talked about generational differences between Alice Paul's generation and Carrie Chapman Catt's. I talked about the recent ones. We talked A LOT about the election.

The audience included founders of the Institute, South Jersey NOW members, mothers and daughters--and the group discussion afterward just rocked my world. I think I managed to get the whole exchange on video (hope my fussing with my MacBook wasn't too distracting, to those of you who were there?!). I'm really interested in recording these intergen. convos this month whenever I can. I want them to have "legs," as we say, beyond my little talks. Stay tuned.

And hey, speaking of, if you know of any interesting additional footage of women across gens talking about feminism out there, I'd love to hear!

HAPPY WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH TODAY!

I'm kicking it off with a fireside chat at Paulsdale, in Southern New Jersey, the home of suffragist and feminist heroine Alice Paul. Rushing off....Will let you know how it goes!