feminist blogs

This is a guest post of the presentation given by our incredible student panelist at the University of Iowa for our college tour, Conner Spinks. Just a freshman, Conner's insight, brilliance and general bad-assery absolutely blew us away.

To begin, I want to explain my own relationship to feminism. Personally, it has never been a word I shied away from. I was a loud mouth tom boy and I saw how my interest in tools and trucks over dolls was thought of as strange. I saw how confused my father was when I refused to put on a dress and if forced, would sit with my legs as wide as possible, which eventually led to pants anyway. My independent minded mother would try to calmly explain to aghast relatives that "No, she doesn't think she's boy, she just doesn't like dresses." Or her favorite, "No, she's just being Conner." Clearly, my mom doesn't subscribe to traditional gender norms. My name is Conner.

As I grew up and learned about the inequalities faced by marginalized populations, and discovered there was a word for the fight against those inequitable distributions of power, I was all over it! I was eager to claim the identity of feminist. That identity is something I still debate about labeling myself because that label to some is enough. There is no need to truly question your own relative privileges or power, you're a feminist. There's no need to listen to claims of struggle that you don't face, you're a feminist. Because of that label, you can't be ableist or transphobic, you're a feminist!

I am not calling in to question how a good a feminist someone is. I am questioning what feminism means to the students on this campus and that ambiguity is what causes me pause when it comes to applying the label to myself.

This campus especially has shown me these feminist in name only. People who have regressive views of gender are looked at like Neanderthals and openly argued against. But regressive views of race that are patently obvious to me, go unquestioned or even unnoticed. Sometimes, I have literally looked around and asked, "Am I the only who heard that?"

As a woman of color, it offends me more than anything to witness ridiculous displays of ignorance about race on this campus. Race is not talked about enough here because it's thought that we are post-racial because of all the progress made for communities of color. Even when there are obvious instances of racism, it is downplayed.

So the incidents where international students from China have racist graffiti written on their boards and people openly mock Chinese accents are treated as if cultural miscommunications. Ideas about English Only and mistaken ideas about America having an official language are not only condoned but widely held. Though this wasn't here on this campus, at ISU, a friend of mine who is both Asian American and lesbian was forced to break her housing contract and move out of the dorms because of the harassment she faced for being lesbian and Asian American. She had little recourse besides to leave.

There is some resentment of the largely black populations from larger cities that live in Iowa City. When searching for apartments, I saw multiple notices of "NO CHILDREN" or "NO SECTION 8." At the beginning of this school year, there was an editorial in our school paper, the Daily Iowan that noted how divisive Iowa City has become because of the North/South division, with the Southside being the largely black low income area. The talks surrounding the concentration of black people to the Southside never referenced the refusal on rental properties to rent to low income and/or people with families. Responses to the piece used euphemisms like "those people" and said everything but black. Even a highly racialized situation like that, there is a refusal to acknowledge race.

I have seen absolutely egregious displays of ignorance from women and men who claim the title of feminist. Within a gender studies classes, I have heard a young woman who claimed to be a feminist explain to me that a picture of a black woman dressed in jeans and a t-shirt was overly sexual. When I pressed for a reason why, she looked confused as if the answer were obvious. I sat staring at her in my own jeans and t-shirt, wondering how obscene my own body must be.

But my experiences with my fellow feminists are best summed up by an encounter with a young woman last semester. I just finished arguing with a friend of mine about the label of feminist because my friend believes in everything feminist oriented but the label. The young woman approached me to say that she proudly identified as feminist. We high-fived and after a beat, she did what a lot of black women fear. She raised her hand and asked me, "Can I touch your hair?"

That is not to say that my every experience with feminist on this campus was as offensive as someone trying to touch my hair, but it really is depictive of the state of feminism on this campus. There is a serious discrepancy between what it is in theory and how it is performed on this campus.

When I bring up issues of racism or nativism to some, they ask me how that relates to feminism. Feminism is especially for marginalized groups like POC and our struggles. Feminism is about explicitly fighting against the "-isms" that harass us POC on this campus. This is my feminism. I am a feminist.

Ronak Ghorbani video-interviewed me this past weekend about feminism and social media. Check out the original article here: How do you think has social media shaped the feminist movement? Filed under: Activism, Media Tagged: feminism, social media

Somehow, travelling in buses seems to offer one, possibly not a greater insight into the lives of people, but at least a much wider view of the lives of people than travelling by any other means of transport does in Delhi: the metro is too crowded to do anything other than try to stay alive by ensuring that one has enough space to breathe in it, and cars, along with other forms of private transport, for obvious reasons, make it next to impossible for one to see beyond the end of one’s nose (while travelling, anyway).

That being said, it isn’t always clear that the sights which travelling in a bus are sights which one would actually want to see, nor are the experiences which one has necessarily those which one would want to have.

In the last twelve hours, I’ve seen in buses, a man with an awful wound on his leg – his skin had peeled off and the wound was white in places. It seemed pretty clear that he hadn’t had access to good medical care, if at all any medical care; God knows, I’ve never seen a wound like that on a middle class person or anyone higher up on the socio-economic scale.

After that, I found that there was no place to sit down on the bus. There were some seats reserved for women, and I asked a man sitting in one of them to get up, and give me the seat. He wasn’t pleased and said so in no uncertain terms, on the top of his voice, to everyone within earshot. And there’s a part of me which sympathises with what his sentiments: he said that he had paid for a ticket too and that he shouldn’t have to get up just because the seat was reserved for women.

Ordinarily, I don’t think that I would have asked him to get up but I was feeling ill and tired, and I wanted to sit down. It seemed so much easier to tell the chap that he was sitting in a seat reserved for women, than to try explaining that I didn’t feel well especially considering that I didn’t look unwell at all. I wouldn’t want to try telling anyone that I wasn’t feeling unwell unless my being unwell was clearly visible for fear of encountering disbelieving looks and protestations pointing out that I didn’t in fact look unwell. If there was one stereotype that I would love to see changed, it is the stereotype that people who are not well or who are not abled-bodied for whatever reason must also look unwell or disabled at first glance.

Of course, it didn’t really help that the Women’s Reservation Bill has been in the news, and the very idea of reservations for women in any arena whether it be in law-making bodies or in buses is not something which many men (at least among those I know) are especially enthusiastic about.

Finally, I spent what felt like hours sitting next to a woman sobbing her heart out. She was holding a baby and I have no idea of what she was upset about – she didn’t respond when I asked her and I ultimately figured that it’d be kinder to give her what space she seemed to want. She seemed to be alone while she was sitting next to me, but when she got off the bus, it wasn’t alone. Some man, who I assumed was her husband, tapped her on the shoulder and the three of them – man, woman, and baby – got off the bus. I was left wondering why on earth he had left her entirely to her own devices all the time that she was crying.

I’m not entirely certain what to make of travelling in Delhi’s buses.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett's novel, Picking Bones from Ash, has just been published to great acclaim by Graywolf Press in October 2009.  At a reading at Greenlight Bookstore, curated by Ron Hogan, Lori Adelman from a local  New York Times blog had this to say about the author and her work:

Ms. Mockett, who was born in California to a Japanese mother and an American father, transported the mostly Brooklyn-based crowd into her literary world of Greek gods and geishas. Her debut novel isn’t easy to label, as the author herself conceded in a recent blog post, but can loosely be described as a multi-generational story of Asian women that doubles as a fairy tale, complete with “girl power and ghosts.”

Then I understood with perfect clarity why Ron Hogan wanted me to meet her.  Her voice seems to be  mapping a terrain similar to this book project--- venturing outside the enclosure, outside the safe confines of established narratives of fairy-tales and myth, and creating her own. She's just submitted her story, Luminous Beings, for this anthology, and I am so flattered and pleased.

After a couple of emails, I clicked on the link to her blog, and read with great delight a post about her reading at Greenlight, and how the discussion afterwards veered towards the dreaded "F" word, feminism.

"What did I think of the fact that reviewers complained that the men in the novel were not redeemed at the end, while the women were? (I pointed out that the Asian guys were all pretty nice. It was the Caucasian men who took a beating). How did I reconcile the fact that Francois celebrated his daughter's talents, even as he denigrated other women? (Lots of men-hell, people-are compartmentalized this way. Remember: Zeus' favorite child was Athena, a girl). And did I think I had written a feminist novel?

I've been wrestling with this concept ever since my novel was published. It's pretty hard to avoid that fact that the early adopters of my book have been self-identified feminists and that the book strikes a chord with them. Others-including an editor who became upset with my main character-become angry with the way the women in my book behave, and with one choice in particular. That "choice"--sorry to be vague but I'm trying to avoid spoilers--is something that Amanda told me was "very feminist."

I like to think I can define that word any way I choose. I think of it as empowerment and as the freedom as a writer to step outside proscribed gender roles, and still tell a good story.  However, until very recently, women writers had to choose from precious few narrative options--- the most popular, she who gets the man, or my favorite, she who goes crazy and kills herself.  Nothing like a good Sylvia Plath story.  Yes, indeed. 

Is it really that difficult to understand that a good writer, feminist or not, should have the choice to subvert the male paradigm and tell her own story?  Finally I really love the closing to Mockett's post:

"Don't get angry at a female writer when she "fails" to soothe you in the way you wanted her to. That is your problem."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

(Found via New York City Anarchoblogs.)

For those of you in and around the capital of capital, here’s an upcoming event at Left Forum at Pace University in New York.

WHAT: What Does the Left Need to Know about Prison? panel with Vikki Law, Asha Bandele, Cleo Silvers, and Laura Whitehorn, moderated by Susie Day.

WHEN: Sunday, March 21, 3pm-5pm

WHERE: Left Forum, Pace University, One Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038

What Does the Left Need to Know about Prison? (a panel at Left Forum)

Placated by TV-cop-show justice, worried about economic survival, most of the U.S. Left – like the U.S. mainstream – ignores the ongoing reality of prison in the lives of poor people and revolutionaries, alike. Yet prison in this country is the basis for the creation of new forms of increasing government/corporate control. The prison system has already played a critical role in ensuring that popular rebellions, like those of the mid-20th century, do not occur again. What do people who do support work for political and social prisoners have to teach us about building a more viable and oppositional Left?

Panelists: Vikki Law, Asha Bandele, Cleo Silvers, and Laura Whitehorn, moderated by Susie Day.

Asha Bandele: Journalist, editor-at-large of Essence magazine, mother, and author of The Prisoner’s Wife, her memoirs of her relationship with a New York State prisoner with whom she had a daughter. She is also the author of other books, including Daughter, a novel about the impact of police brutality. Asha continues her writing and work as a prison activist.

Laura Whitehorn: Political activist who was incarcerated for more than 14 years on political charges, Laura now does support work for U.S. political prisoners. At the request of Wonda Jones, daughter of former Panther, political prisoner, and prison activist Safiya Bukhari, Laura edited a compilation of Bukhari’s writings and speeches, just published by the Feminist Press.

Cleo Silvers: Former Black Panther Party member and South Bronx community worker, Cleo has worked for years as a union and labor organizer and has done extensive work on behalf of U.S. prisoners. She is currently a member of the Safiya Nuh Foundation for the Support of Political Prisoners.

Vikki Law: Writer, photographer, and mother. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars-New York City, an organization that sends free radical literature and books to prisoners nationwide; editor of the ‘zine Tenacious: Writings from Women in Prison, and author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009).

Susie Day: Assistant editor at Monthly Review, writes a regular satire column and has, since 1988, written about political prisoners and prisons.

at Left Forum

Pace University, One Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10038
Sunday, March 21st, 3 to 5 pm, W-504

—Vikki Law, Resistance Behind Bars (2010-03-08): What Does the Left Need to Know about Prison? (a panel at Left Forum)

I was having dinner with someone the other night and she talked about a class assignment she'd had at her Catholic high school to design her ideal wedding. Students--men and women alike, thank God--had to pick a budget out of a hat and then price all the things they would want at their hypothetical weddings. In any case, it got me thinking about the ways in which our imaginations are so shaped by socialization, and more importantly, how our dreams create our future realities.

So here's your chance Feministing readers. You have one million dollars. Design your ideal feminist party...

To get your juices flowing, I'll tell you that mine would include Alicia Keys, Tina Turner, and Mary J. Blige doing a badass collabo, an all-night dance party, and some sort of philanthropic arm because, yeah, I can't possibly spend that much money on a one-night affair.

What would yours be?

I’m thinking once again about the “myth of male weakness” this morning.

Jonah Goldberg has a piece this morning with the whoppingly patronizing title “Where Feminists Get it Right.” (Don’t get excited, folks. Hell remains unfrozen.) Jonah concludes his piece, which largely focuses on the now-familiar yet ever-depressing litany of abuses against women in the less-developed world, with this gem:

Women civilize men. As a general rule, men will only be as civilized as female expectations and demands will allow. “Liberate” men from those expectations, and “Lord of the Flies” logic kicks in. Liberate women from this barbarism, and male decency will soon follow.

Give Jonah credit. He’s not blaming women directly for their failure to civilize men. Rather, he’s blaming certain cultures that fail to give women sufficient authority with which to do their civilizing. But that doesn’t change the basic problem in his argument, based as it is on pseudo-science, Victorian sentimentality about women’s “nature”, and a William Golding novel about pre-pubescent boys.

As I sigh at Goldberg’s piece, I think about an email I got from my friend Emily. She recounts a Facebook exchange she had with a female friend of hers, a fellow Christian. Em’s friend posted on her status update that she was “really disappointed w/the female human species.” When Em inquired why, and whether her friend was also disappointed in men, she got this response:

It appears as if men are weaker when it comes to sex, money, power. With that I am realizing that it is the women that should be held at a higher standard because we need to set the tone for our weak counterparts. If women looked at themselves as holy temples and didn’t allow anything less than excellence this may force men to step up their integrity and priorities…

We could go through the gospels, pointing out over and over again the places where Jesus demands that men show self-restraint comparable to that demanded by women. But I’m not just interested in responding to a fellow Christian. Rather, what concerns me here is one of the most troubling aspects of the myth of male weakness: it creates an atmosphere in which both men and women feel justified in policing other women’s behavior.

If men cannot control themselves, and women can, then it is (as Emily’s friend suggests) women’s task to set the limits for men which men cannot set for themselves. All bad male behavior, it quickly follows, is invariably a woman’s fault. We’re all familiar with the loathsome notion that a cheating husband or boyfriend deserves less ire than the woman with whom he cheated. (The “he couldn’t help it, but she ought to have known better because she’s a woman” theory). The end result is a culture of mistrust and hostility among women.

A great many of the young women I work with claim to have trouble liking other women. Call it the “most of my good friends are guys” phenomenon, which is sufficiently common as to merit a word other than “phenomenon”. Many young women — even in feminist spaces — will list the countless ways in which they have felt judged, policed, or betrayed by other women. Many will say things like “I expect men to let me down. But when a woman hurts you, it’s worse because she doesn’t have an excuse.”

The point that feminists try and make in these discussions is that the myth of male weakness is at the very root of this internalized misogyny. The logic is inescapable. The less self-control women believe men have, the less they hold men responsible. The less they hold men responsible, the more responsibility they ascribe to themselves and to other women. The less they believe in men’s capacity to self-regulate, the more hostile they are trained to become to any woman who seems unwilling to engage in the rituals of female self-policing. At its most extreme, every mini-skirt becomes not only a threat to the fragile order women have established for mutual protection, it is perceived as an act of both betrayal and hostility towards one’s sisters. The hisses of “slut”, “whore”, and “bitch” soon follow. (more…)

There was a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald the other week you should have a read of, Don’t be rattled by the baby guilt trip by Nina Funnell.

Funnell was recently in attendance when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd gave a speech ‘about the ”crisis” of Australia’s ageing population and the various economic challenges we will face as a result.’ For context, Australia’s birth rate has been below the replacement rate of 2.1 since the 1970s and Australia is strict on immigration. After the talk, Rudd came to speak to some under-30s who had grouped together, including Funnell:

At that point one of my friends introduced me, dropping in that I am completing a PhD. At this, Rudd rolled his eyes and in a terse voice lacking any sense of irony remarked that is the “excuse” that “all” young women are using nowadays to avoid starting families. Since then I’ve come up with numerous one-line retorts, but in the moment I just froze in shock.

You should read the whole piece as Funnell takes this down beautifully. (‘Why do we assume it is the obligation of all women to reproduce? And why do we label them as selfish when they don’t? We never label career-driven men as selfish.’) I’m reluctant to tear apart Mr Rudd’s statement myself as, well, while the sentiment is pretty clear, what’s not clear from the article is what he said in full.

In any case, we can turn to the general sentiment. There are various harms in treating women as a monolith. I resent the assertion that not having children and at the “right time” is a bad thing. It holds women to be essentially baby makers who aren’t doing their duty to their country if they don’t follow the script – and this is something that needs an excuse. It also holds women responsible for the difficulties involved in pursuing higher academic study and starting a family at the same time. If Mr Rudd’s government, and governments worldwide, would be more supportive of those in that position, fewer people would have to face a choice between them. Until then, that some are put in this position is hardly their fault, hardly something for which women ought to be treated condescendingly.

What this script also does is assume that “avoiding” starting families (avoiding the right and inevitable thing, those naughty girlies!) is a choice for all women. Not every woman is able to reproduce or adopt or some such, or is able to keep their children if they do. Some women are actively forced into reproducing. And some women, rather than having this obligation to reproduce weighed on them, are considered to have quite the opposite obligation, to not reproduce at all. Disabled and poor women, for instance, are often discouraged – if not actively prevented – from having children. You know, supposedly for the good of society. Placing the emphasis on “avoiding” reproducing means adopting a monolithic view of women’s experience, erasing many. They’re written out of the script.

And, moving back to the idea that women who don’t reproduce according to the script owe excuses, I think it’s important to determine precisely to whom these women are supposed to be offering their justifications and apologies. Really, who? We’re autonomous human beings, we don’t need to go around with bowed heads and guilty expressions for doing as we please, or as we must, with our own bodies and lives. Women certainly don’t owe babies to society, or to politicians, or to those judging them, or to anyone at all.

Women’s reproductive choices should be ours alone. We ought to be accountable to our own desires in these matters, not those of onlookers who think they know better.

Next time, I’m going to return to Mr Rudd’s remark and some of its particular significance in Australia’s federal political context.

I wasn't able to see the speeches, but I did read them and I think everyone should, so I'm reposting in full here (the post continues after the break). (By the way, how cute are the Obamas as a couple?)

Remarks by the President and the First Lady at International Women's Day Reception
East Room

4:52 P.M. EST, March 8, 2010

MRS. OBAMA: Thank you so much. So I get to speak first while he stands and watches. I love this. (Laughter.) Look at me adoringly. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: I can do that.

MRS. OBAMA: With sincerity. (Laughter.) Anyway.

I’m thrilled to see everybody here. Welcome, welcome. This is a wonderful event as we celebrate Women’s History Month at the White House. It’s so exciting. (Applause.)

And let me start by recognizing all of the amazing leaders who have taken time out of their very busy days and schedules to be here with us today. We have our Cabinet Secretaries, congresswomen and other leaders who are serving as such powerful role models for the next generation.

But we have some of the members of the next generation here, as well, and I want to take a moment to acknowledge some of them, as well. We’ve got young people here from the Girl Scouts, from Mount Vernon. (Applause.) From Mount Vernon and Hayfield Secondary in Virginia. (Applause.) From High Point High School in Maryland. (Applause.) From Eastern High School. (Applause.) And Georgetown Visitation here in D.C. (Applause.) All of you stand. Everybody stand. (Applause.)

I had a chance to meet with each and every one of them, to get a hug and a picture, and we talked. They are beautiful, they are inquisitive -- yes, it was a hug, it was a good hug. (Laughter.) And what I told them is that they should make sure they take advantage of this evening by making sure that they take time out to meet all of you extraordinary women, right; that they come up and introduce themselves with confidence; and that you make sure you have a little fun, right? So you’re going to make that promise.

Make sure you get to meet everyone here today, because today all of you are joining the long line of incredible women who have graced these halls both as visitors and as residents, from admirals and actresses to civil rights pioneers -- my good friend, Dorothy Height, is here. (Applause.) Nobel Prize Winners -- you name it, this house has hosted some of the most accomplished women and some of the most accomplished Americans in the history of this country.

But we’re here today not just to pay tribute to leaders and icons and household names. During Women’s History Month we’re also here to honor the quiet heroes who’ve shaped this country from the very beginning. We honor the women who traveled those lonely roads to be the first ones in those courtrooms, to be the first ones in those boardrooms, to be the first ones on those playing fields, and to be the first ones on those battlefields.

We honor women who refused to listen to those who would say that you couldn’t or shouldn’t pursue your dreams. And we honor women who may not have had many opportunities in their own lives, and we all know women like that: Women who poured everything they had into making sure that their daughters and their granddaughters could pursue their dreams; women who, as the poet Alice Walker once wrote, “knew what we must know without knowing it themselves.”

All of us are here today because of women like these who came before us. And during this Women’s History Month, may we recommit ourselves to carrying on their work for our own daughters and granddaughters, and also for our sons and our grandsons too.

Now, speaking of sons, it is my pleasure to introduce one of the few men in the room -- (laughter and applause) -- my husband, and the President of the United States, Barack Obama. (Applause.)



THE PRESIDENT: That would be me. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Please, have a seat. Let me begin by just thanking some of the people who are participating here today. Michelle mentioned my outstanding Cabinet members, the extraordinary members of Congress and people who are in our senior White House team. I also want to thank Ms. Kerry Washington for emceeing today. Give Kerry a big round of applause. Where is she? There she is. (Applause.)

Ms. Katharine McPhee, who’s going to be performing a song in the program. Where’s Katharine? She’s around -- she’s practicing. (Applause.) She’s here, I just saw her.

Secretary Madeline Albright is here today. (Applause.) and Ms. Mozhdah Jamalzadah is also going to be here performing a song in the program, so we want to thank her, give her a big round of applause. (Applause.)

And then there’s this lady here. (Laughter.) FLOTUS, that’s what we call her -- FLOTUS. (Laughter.) She is -- I’m biased, I acknowledge; but I think she’s a pretty good First Lady. (Applause.) Don’t you think? She’s pretty good. (Applause.) And I’m very sincere when I look at you adoringly. (Laughter.)

The story of America over the past 200 years -- past 233 years is one of laws becoming more just, of a people becoming more equal, of a union being perfected. It’s a story of captives being set free and a movement to fulfill the promise of that freedom. It’s a story of waves of weary travelers reconsecrating America as a nation of immigrants. It’s a story of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters making the most of that most American of demands –- to be treated the same as everybody else. And it’s a story of women, from those on the Mayflower to the one I’m blessed to call my wife, who looked across the dinner table, and thought, I’m smarter than that guy. (Laughter.)

The story of America’s women, like the story of America itself, has had its peaks and valleys. But as one of our great American educators once said, if you drew a line through all the valleys and all the peaks, that line would be drawn with an upward curve. That upward curve –- what we call progress –- didn’t happen by accident.

It came about because of daring, indomitable women. Women like Abigail Adams, who brought on the ridicule of her husband John by advising him to “remember the ladies” in our founding documents. Women like the pioneers and settlers who, in the words of one, said, “I thought where he could go, I could go.” Women like Dorothy Height and Sylvia Mendez and Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and Sandra Day O’Connor and Madeline Albright, upending assumptions and changing laws and tearing down barriers. Women like Hillary Rodham Clinton, who, throughout her career, has put millions of cracks in America’s glass ceiling. (Applause.) It’s because of them –- and so many others, many who aren’t recorded in the history books –- that the story of America is, ultimately, one of hope and one of progress, of an upward journey.

But even as we reflect on the hope of our history, we must also face squarely the reality of the present -– a reality marked by unfairness, marked by hardship for too many women in America. The statistics of inequality are all too familiar to us -- how women just earn 77 cents for every dollar men make; how one in four women is the victim of domestic violence at some point in her life; how women are more than half the population, but make up only 17 percent of the seats in Congress, and less than 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.

These, and any number of other facts and figures, reflect the fundamental truth that in 2010, full gender equality has not yet been achieved; that the task of perfecting America goes on; and that all of us, men and women, have a part to play in bending the arc in America’s story upward in the 21st century.

I’m proud of the extraordinary women -- and the extraordinary Americans -- I’ve appointed to help take up this task. In addition to our outstanding Secretary of State, we’ve got Hilda Solis serving where the first female Cabinet Secretary, Frances Perkins, once served, at the Labor Department. (Applause.) We’ve got Kathleen Sebelius leading our Health and Human Services Department; Janet Napolitano running the Department of Homeland Security. Susan Rice is our ambassador to the United Nations. The chair of my Council of Economic Advisors is Christy Romer. We got Lisa Jackson, who’s doing great work at the EPA.

We have just extraordinary talent all across this administration. And from health insurance reform, to climate and energy, to matters of domestic policy, I’m seeking the counsel of brilliant women. And that list doesn’t include, by the way, the Justice I appointed to the Supreme Court –- Ms. Sonia Sotomayor. (Applause.)

So, yes, I’m very proud to have appointed so many brilliant women to so many essential posts in our government. But I’m even prouder of what each of them is doing –- and what all of us are doing –- to make life better in America and around the world, because lifting up the prospects of our daughters will require all of us doing our part. And that’s why we’ve established a new White House Council on Women and Girls, chaired by my friend and senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, that will help make sure that every part of our government is working to address the challenges faced by women and girls.

At a time when women are on the verge of making up the majority of America’s workforce, the very first bill I signed into law -– a bill named after Lilly Ledbetter -– was designed to help keep America’s promise: If you do the same work as a man, you ought to be paid the same wage as a man. (Applause.) To help parents balance work and family, we’re offering states more support for quality, affordable child care and paid family leave.

At a time when we are waging two wars and fighting a global network of hatred and violence, we need the service of all those patriotic Americans who are willing to do their part. And that’s why Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mullen and top Navy officers decided to end an old barrier against women, so our skilled and brave Navy women, as well as men, can serve on submarines.

At a time when it’s still legal for health insurance companies to discriminate against the victims of domestic violence in eight states plus the District of Columbia, we’re seeking health insurance reforms that would finally rein in the worst practices of the insurance industry. And I’m also proud to note that I’ve appointed the first White House Advisor on Violence against Women, Lynn Rosenthal. (Applause.)

At a time when the jobs of tomorrow will go to workers with the knowledge and skills to do them, we’re ramping up efforts to educate our young people in science and technology, engineering and math, and we’re making a special effort to recruit women to those fields -– because I want to see more teenage astronomers like Caroline Moore. In fact, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has launched a new partnership with Spelman College to train women engineers and help put them to work rebuilding our highways and our infrastructure.

And since today happens to be International Women’s Day, it’s also worth mentioning what Secretary Clinton, and Ambassador Rice, and this administration are doing on behalf of women around the globe. We lifted what’s called the global gag rule that restricted women’s access to family planning services abroad. (Applause.)

We’re pursuing a global health strategy that makes important investments in child and maternal health. We sponsored a U.N. resolution to increase protection for women and girls in conflict-torn countries –- to help make it possible for more women like Mozhdah, who traveled from Afghanistan to join us here today -- to reach for their dreams. We created the first Office of Global Women’s Issues at the State Department, and appointed Ambassador Melanne Verveer to run it. (Applause.) We’re investing $18 million -- we’re investing $18 million to combat the unconscionable cruelties being committed against girls and women in the Democratic Republic of Congo. And next month, I’ll host an entrepreneurship summit to help fulfill a commitment I made in Cairo; a summit that will focus, in part, on the challenges facing women entrepreneurs in Muslim communities around the world.

We’re doing all of this not only because promoting women’s empowerment is one of the best ways to promote economic development and economic success. We are doing it because it’s the right thing to do. I say that not only as a President, but also as the father of two daughters, as a son and a grandson, and as a husband.

Growing up, I saw my mother dedicate most of her life to promoting the rights and well-being of women overseas; to empowering them to take more control over their economic lives and be able to empower their families as well. I saw my grandmother work her way up to become vice president at a bank in Hawaii, starting as a secretary, never had more than a high school education. But I also saw how she hit a glass ceiling, and had to watch as men, no more qualified than she was, rise up the corporate ladder.

Before we got to the White House, where we are grateful for the extraordinary support that we receive from the White House staff, I’d see the challenges Michelle faced as a working mom. And as usual, she handled it with grace and skill, but she’d be the first one to tell you it wasn’t always easy balancing the responsibilities of being a hospital executive with those of being a mother, and sometimes worrying about the girls when she was at work, and sometimes worrying about work when she was with the girls.

And today, as I see Sasha and Malia getting older, I think about the world that they -– and all of America’s daughters -– will inherit. And I think about all of the opportunities that are still beyond reach for too many young women and too many of our brothers and sisters -- too many of our sisters and mothers and aunts -- all of the glass ceilings that have yet to be shattered.

We have so much more work to do, and that’s why we’re here today. I think about this because it reminds me of why I’m here. I didn’t run for President so that the dreams of our daughters could be deferred or denied. I didn’t run for President to see inequality and injustice persist in our time. I ran for President to put the same rights, the same opportunities, the same dreams within the reach for our daughters and our sons alike. I ran for President to put the American Dream within the reach of all of our people, no matter what their gender, or race, or faith, or station.

If we can stay true to that cause, if we can stay true to our founding ideals, then I’m absolutely confident that the line that runs through America’s story will, in the future, as it has in the past, be drawn with an upward curve. And I’m especially pleased that these young ladies are here today because they’re the ones who are going to help bend that curve towards justice and equality.

Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

END
5:11 P.M. EST

Hello global feminists, We know you’re in the middle of Blog for IWD, but wanted to take a few minutes to give you links to some interesting articles written last week. Be sure to check them out. Leave your links (i.e. what you’ve written last week) in the comments, we want to hear from you! Blog for [...]