What Will It Take To Make A Woman President? How About Less Sexism?
In an excellent article by Marianne Schnall at CNN, asking a group of powerful women what can be done to get more women into the pipeline of political leadership, there was a shout out to Name It. Change It. by none other than Jane Fonda herself.
If the media shows women in a degrading, demeaning way, if violence is not taken seriously, if female candidates are covered in the context of how they look and what their hair is like and how they’re dressed as opposed to how the male candidates are referred to, this has an impact on women and girls. Not always conscious – but it can’t help but make us feel somehow we don’t count as much. It’s not a cognitive thing, it’s a visceral response, I think.
One of our mottos and one of our programs is ‘Name It, Change It’ – if you don’t know it exists and you don’t give it a name to it, you don’t do anything about it. Like in campaigns - we are going to see this a lot in the coming year. Women are treated differently than men when they’re running for office. And it becomes very sexist and misogynist. So we name it in order to change it.
Read the whole article featuring interviews with Gloria Steinem, Kirsten Gillibrand, Arianna Huffington, Nancy Pelosi and Sheryl Sandberg, the CEO of Facebook.
Published by Kate McCarthy on 12/15/2011