Some Leaders Are Born Women, Edition 1

Tags

activism, Antigone Magazine, feminism, Political Mavens, politics, power, women in politics, women world leaders

I have started a new blog and a new Antigone series about my attempts to write a book of interviews with female world leaders! Check it out at http://www.someleadersarebornwomen.wordpress.com!

Some Leaders are Born Women: What Young Women Should Know, is a project that I have been working on for over two and a half years. The idea first came to me when I contacted the Right Honourable Kim Campbell, Canada’s first female Prime Minister for an interview for Antigone Magazine, the magazine about women, politics, and the politics of being a woman that I founded and edit.  That night, lying awake unable to sleep (I am a recovering insomniac!) I thought about how remarkable it would be to interview female world leaders about their experiences in politics and their advice to young women today and collect those interviews into one book that could inspire a generation of young female politicians.

I was 22 at the time, and the type of person who is often swept away by the excitement of an idea. Of course, I would do this! It was a great idea! And, as a young woman myself, I was in a great position to be able to ask the type of questions that young women would want answers and advice on! The next morning I woke up and e-mailed a number of organizations working with women world leaders to ask them if any of them were interested in collaborating with me on the book. I did not get very many responses.

The ones that I got were encouraging but apologetic, they could not get involved with the project but wished me the best.  This is, of course, very typical. I get carried away with my own ideas and assume that other people will get swept away by them as well. But that is not always the case. I have been very lucky at certain points in my life to find the right person to help me nurture the right idea, but usually I have faced an uphill battle, obstacles, or even outright opposition.  Like everyone, I find it hard sometimes to keep going in the face of that opposition.  After a certain point, you begin to question yourself and wonder whether you are doing the right thing, whether you are capable of making your idea into reality. That is always the most difficult part of the journey.

This time, I want to invite the world along on my journey. In setting out to interview 14 women world leaders, I know that there will be some difficult and trying times along the way. There will be language barriers, emails that get unanswered, meetings that get rescheduled and politicians that are just unreachable. And in setting out to find publishers that will bring these interviews and the advice of these women to young women around the world, I know that there will likewise be setbacks. I will get rejections, I will be asked to change the scope or focus of the book, and I will have my emails or queries ignored.  But I will not give up.

That was, after all, how I finally got my interview with the Right Honourable Kim Campbell. It took about 8 months from when I sent the first request to when I actually interviewed the former Prime Minister. First, my email was sent to the wrong address, and then I finally found the right address and it turned out they had already responded to me… and I hadn’t received it. Even on the day of the interview, things were constantly changing as the Right Honourable Kim Campbell’s schedule was in flux. There was even the suggestion that I try interviewing her while chauffeuring her between two other interviews, a scenario which was shot down given that I did not have a car. But just as I finally found my 30 minutes to an hour with Ms. Campbell, I will most likely finally be able to interview the women on my list if I remain persistent and strategic!

And it is worth it that I do remain persistent because I truly believe that this book will be an important addition to the libraries of young women around the world. We all need people to look up to. Research shows that young women display greater interest in politics when they see women running or leading. I truly believe that we need more young women involved in politics. If I can help spark the interest of one young women by writing this book, so much the better!

So, join me for the ride. Subscribe to the blog. Register for my mailing list. The more people who come here and support this project, the more likely I will be able to get the attention of the women politicians and the publishing industry. Or people who know how to get in touch with the women themselves!

We can do this together.

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UBC AMS Endorsements!

Another round of endorsements for this year’s election. As we have been busy, we weren’t able to send the candidates questions like we did last year, but we did inspect their platforms and ask around to determine who cared the most about the issues we hold dear: namely child care, equity issues, tuition and sustainability. We give you our endorsements!

President:

Natalie swift:

We heart her. First of all, it is nice to see a woman running for President of the AMS. But, obviously, her gender isn`t the only reason why we like her. We sat down with her last week and discussed child care, equity and tuition and found the majority of her positions on these subjects to be encouraging and definitely closer to our views about the importance of taking action on these issues than any of her opponents. Natalie was very enthusiastic about the Child Care Conference that we are helping to organize and takes child care seriously. She is also a supporter of UBC Farm, and she feels like the AMS needs to bring in equity experts to deal with the problems regarding equity issues and find a way for students from marginalized groups to have representation. VOTE! VOTE! VOTE for her!

Bijan Ahmadian:

We don`t trust that Bijan has student`s best interests at heart.  He seems to be in student politics as a means to propel him to greater things, and we don`t really think that is the kind of politician that UBC needs. There are also concerns regarding his opinion that AMS services like SASC (the Sexual Assault Support Center) be cut back in order to save money. Views like that are not acceptable. He gets a definitely NOT from us!

Sean Kim:

We think this is a two pony race and haven`t seen anything in Kim that would make us hopeful of what he could bring to the position in support of the issues that we care about. Since we`ve already endorsed our Pony, we are passing on rating the other candidates (including joke candidate Pak Ho Leung).

VP Administration:

Michael Haack:

We like Haack`s emphasis on sustainability and working with clubs to streamline processes.

Ekaterina Dovjenko:

We like Ekaterina`s attempts to create more inter-club networking.

We can’t choose!

Vice President External:

Tim Chu

While this might be our most controversial endorsement, we endorse Chu. We have worked with Chu in the last year and can testify to his passion for issues like child care and equity issues. We think he has done a great job and sticking up for the issues he ran on and was elected for. We do know that everyone does not agree with this. We therefore encourage those who appreciate what Chu has done to vote Chu as a protest vote. He probably won`t win, but we love him. He`s so cute and supportive of equity issues.

Jeremy McElroy

We like Jeremy but not as much as we like Chu.  Still, we think he would work well and effectively with Natalie if she were elected as their goals of creating a provincial lobbying group of post-secondary groups are in alignment.

Stas Pavlov and Aaron Palm

They seem like decent guys, but they haven`t really given us anything substantial that we like. Sorry!

VP Academic and University Affairs:

Rodrigo Ferrari –Nunes

Nunes has a lot of experience at UBC, having spent 7 years here.  Nunes is extremely dedicated to social justice and we really like that about him. We think he would be a very sympathetic force on equity issues and be a great advocate within the university for attention to these issues. We would vote for him.

Ben Capellacci

While Ben seems earnest, his platform gives us feminist, child care advocates, minority rights activists nothing to really sink our teeth into. The thing he seems most excited about seems to be the ability to improve communication between the University Neighbourhood Association and the Greek system. That`s not really on our priorities list.

The Feminist Freethinker: The Ecofeminism Edition

Global warming. Pollution. Deforestation. Species extinction. We are in environmental crisis right now. But how is this a women’s issue?

Well, for starters, women and nature share the same historical origins of oppression. The Great Chain of Being—the hierarchical ordering of beings from greater to lesser value—has always placed man at the top, and women, animals and nature at the bottom. This belief has been integral in the development of Western philosophy. There is a logic of domination at work here: men are associated with reason and women are associated with emotion. Reason is thought to be greater then emotion. Therefore men are thought better then women. Animals are subordinated according to the same logic. They are thought to be incapable of rational thought, and are therefore of little value.

Val Plumwood writes that she sees more and more people stepping outside the influences of this philosophy and recognizing the logic of domination. In “Women, Humanity and Nature” she observes “a growing awareness that the Western philosophical tradition which has identified, on the one hand, maleness with the sphere of rationality, and on the other hand, femaleness with the sphere of nature, has provided one of the main intellectual bases for the domination of women in Western culture.” (qtd. in Warren)

The ecofeminist has many objections to this hierarchical ordering of beings. Why is there are hierarchy at all? Why can’t there just be a diversity of beings? Are women emotional? Do animals have a strictly physical existence? If this is all true, why do we look down upon the emotional and the physical? Why the historical subordination of the physical to the intellectual, the emotional to the logical in the first place?

Ecofeminism is a highly relevant theoretical answer to our culture’s tendency to subordinate the other- both woman and nature. The Great Chain of Being is the philosophy that underlies much of what we do. It is at work in the way we value nature only as “resources.” It is at work in the way that we care not about the preservation of nature as an end in and of itself—but only for the sustained provision of resources for culture. It is at work in the way we treat our women. In our slang we equate women to animals while simultaneously subordinating both: Bitch. Pussy. Beaver. Cow. Yes, these words are artefacts of the Great Chain of Being. So are the words wo-man, and fe-male: through these words we regard woman literally as subsets of the male, in keeping with the hierarchy. Our culture is ripe with artefacts of the Great Chain of Being.

So ecofeminists object to this conceptual, philosophical subordination of women and nature. But ecofeminism is also grounded on the very real way that women and the cultural other are affected by irresponsible development. In “The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism,” Karen J Warren talks about how the domination of Aboriginal land in the Americas has destroyed the mode of living for Aboriginal people. In “Development, Ecology and Women”. Vandana Shiva talks about how Western development in third world countries “destroys wholesome and sustainable lifestyles and creates real material poverty, or misery” with the colonial domination of, or the resource exploitation of their environments. “The needs of the Amazonian tribes are more than satisfied by the rich rainforest; their poverty begins with its destruction” (qtd. in Warren). The key here is that feminists, who deny the logic of domination behind sexism, cannot deny the logic of domination that is ripe beneath naturism. The feminist who premises her ideology on a criticism of oppressive logic and systems cannot be indifferent to the exploitation and subordination of ecosystems and the societies that depend on them.

In “In and Out of Harm’s Way: Arrogance and Love,” Feminist Marilyn Frye writes: “the loving eye is a contrary of the arrogant eye. The loving eye knows the independence of the other.” This view proposes that there are two ways to perceive—to see—the other. First, there is the arrogant eye, which is quick to subordinate and dominate the other. Alternatively, there is the loving eye, which recognises and appreciates the other’s differences and does not seek to control the other. The loving eye is the ecofeminist alternative to the Great Chain of Being.

Ecocritic Don MacKay defines ethics as “the calling-into-question of our freedom to control, process, or reduce the other.” Ecofeminism employs this ethic in matters of culture, the environment, and gender relations.

Calendar celebrates female athletes’ dreams for change

One day, saying someone plays like a girl will be a compliment,” reads the cover of the 2010 Dreams for Women calendar.

Inside, each month features a “postcard” of a different world-class female athlete and her dreams for change — on everything from the environment to body image and double standards.

Amanda Reaume, the 25-year-old Vancouver woman behind the Dreams for Women calendar, said her goal was to challenge people. “We’re just trying to get people to think,” she said.

Your 2010 Athletes now on YouTube

Tags

2010, Antigone Foundation, calendar, Dreams for women, female athletes, Olympics, postcards, Vancouver

We’ve uploaded two new videos about the calendar. Feel free to distribute them to help spread the word or show your support for all 2010 Women Athletes!