Women’s Independent Press

BY Author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin

The Women’s Media Center
151 West 25th Street, Suite 12F
New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 563-0680
Fax: (212) 563-0688

The 1984 Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro ticket

The bishop of New York showed up at the wake on Tuesday and kneeled before Geraldine Ferraro’s coffin.  Gerry would have been pleased.  The church owed her one for all the years when its establishment excoriated her for supporting abortion rights. Whether as a candidate, congresswoman, Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984, or in the decades since, whenever she spoke in public, Gerry never knew if she might have to face off against some priest threatening her with eternal damnation, hostile Catholics demanding her excommunication, or jeering catcalls of  “Baby Killer!”

Such vicious personal attacks would unnerve anyone.  For Gerry, a devout Catholic until the day she died, the vilification cut close to the bone. She was a church-going, family-loving, Italian-American wife and mother whose conscience would not allow her to choose abortion for herself, but whose sense of decency led her to defend other women’s right to do so in the privacy of their conscience.  Gerry’s empathy was rooted in her personal relationship with Jesus Christ and his relationship to human suffering.  Only after perceiving the depth of her devotion to the church did I fully appreciate how brave was her pro-choice advocacy. While other politicians and public feminists could blithely speechify on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, each time Gerry spoke out it was an act of courage, a spiritual risk-taking, a hard-won triumph of her secular sense of fairness over her deeply rooted religious faith.

Courage is a hackneyed term but no other word adequately describes the attitude with which she lived her life.  From the early 1970s on, I had occasion to witness it close-up after our families got to know each other in the tiny summer community of Saltaire, Fire Island, a narrow barrier beach wedged between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great South Bay about 50 miles from Manhattan.  Cars are banned in season on Fire Island; you arrive by passenger ferry and once there, travel on foot or by bike, and transport your luggage, children, and groceries by wagon. Saltaire boasts one food market, one playground, one doctor-on-duty, one club, but two churches.  The Zaccaros—Gerry, her husband John, and their three children—were regulars at Our Lady Star of the Sea, a white clapboard structure with Gothic windows, imposing by Fire Island standards, that rises out of the sand like a mirage and has stood firm against several hurricanes.

The church was a kind of metaphor for Gerry who was solid and strong, a lady in the way Marymount Manhattan girls like her were taught to be, and soon to become the star of our seaside community. But she started as a public school teacher, while attending Fordham Law School at night, where she was one of only two women in her 1960 graduating class.  She raised her three children while doing some legal work for her husband’s real estate firm.  Her career as we know it didn’t really take off until 1974 when she was appointed an assistant district attorney in Queens, a big deal back when few women were prosecutors.

Always a strong proponent of women’s legal, economic, and political equality, Gerry was uncomfortable with movement rhetoric of the day, words like “women’s lib,” “male supremacy,” or “patriarchy.”   She wasn’t into feminist theory or analysis; she was interested in facts and law.  I remember how shocked she was when she discovered that she was being paid less than her male colleagues, a discrepancy her superior defended on the grounds that she had a husband to support her.

In 1975, she was assigned to the Special Victims Bureau where she prosecuted cases of rape, domestic violence, and child abuse (she was made head of the unit two years later), and soon became a passionate advocate for women, children, and poor people. Exposure to these victims seemed to add to her gut-level understanding of gender inequities a more global perspective on women’s suffering.   Gerry was looking at life through the prism of the powerless.

During her first campaign for the United States Congress, she often talked about her humble beginnings in the South Bronx and how her values were shaped by her widowed mother, a hard-working seamstress.  But Gerry’s courage was all her own as she led on issues of child abuse and domestic violence, and withstood the personal ordeals yet to come.

In 1984, while she was running for vice president and her husband’s business dealings and the couple’s tax returns became a campaign issue, Gerry submitted to a grueling media interrogation with authority, assurance, and dignity. A few years later, their son’s youthful drug arrest again opened their private life to harsh public scrutiny.  Where other beleaguered families might have lashed out at one another behind the scenes, Gerry and John presented a united front and remained fiercely loyal, they never played the blame game.

For the past 13 years, an even deeper level of courage rose to the fore as she battled multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow, as if she were fighting it one cell at a time.  While undergoing countless drug treatments, steroid shots, a stem cell transplant, thalidomide therapy, repeated hospitalizations and surgical procedures, she continued, as best as she could, to work at her law firm, appear at fundraising events to help women candidates get elected, and make herself presentable for her stints on Fox News.  (“I don’t mind being their token liberal,” she’d say. “Someone’s got to do it.”)

Until a few months ago, nothing made her more animated than talking politics with her friends. She was pissed when Hillary lost the 2008 nomination.  She was  adamant about the urgent need for affordable health care and reasonably priced drugs for every American, not just people like herself who could pay for the best.  Sexism in the media made her furious.  Glen Beck drove her nuts.

In the last couple of years, she yo-yoed through good days and bad days, the bad days marked by excruciating back pain, cracked ribs, pinched nerves, and a swollen face. It was a shock to see her height shrink to under five feet and her weight plummet, to hear her quick, vigorous Queens accent turn sluggish with medication, to notice the black and blue marks on her arms and legs, or watch her make her way across the room on a walker, then in a wheel chair. Through it all, she actively pursued the latest cutting-edge treatment, the next experimental drug, anything that might keep her alive a few more months, maybe even years.   She never gave up.  Three days after she died, her husband told me that the doctors said 85 percent of her body was made up of cancer cells.

Her sheer physical fortitude, good humor, worldly engagement, and unbending will to survive were awe-inspiring to me and the other three friends who, with Gerry, had started a women’s group a few years ago to discuss our work, families, the state of the world, and the strange terrain of life over 60.  Our little cabal, which, in a burst of delayed adolescence, dubbed ourselves The Fab Five, met twice a year for weekend retreats, always with a full agenda, and between meetings, kept the conversation going by email. When Gerry became too sick to travel, she attended the retreats by speaker-phone.

As honest and self-disclosing as all of us were in those meetings, we never directly confronted the elephant in the room, the fact that one of us was dying.  But this January, Gerry and I finally had that conversation. She told me she had prepared her family for life without her, that she could finally relax because she’d taught John to make his own meals and told her kids which of her belongings she wanted each of them to have, and what sort of funeral and gravestone they should arrange for.

“Are you afraid of death?” I asked

She laughed.  “Letty, you’re Jewish. You don’t understand that I really believe I’m going to heaven. I’m going to be with my mom and Jesus. What have I got to be afraid of?

The U.N. designates March 22 as the day of the year when we spotlight the global safe water and sanitation issue and the collective efforts underway to get solutions to those struggling and in need

Together, We Are Solving the Global Water Crisis

In contrast to easy access to taps and toilets across the United States, today much of the world faces a global safe drinking water and sanitation crisis. One out of every eight people lacks safe drinking water and two out of every five people lack adequate sanitation.

World Water Day is March 22. Recognized by the United Nations and the global community, World Water Day reminds us that much of the world still faces a global water and sanitation crisis, and that it is our urgent obligation to act. This year, a coalition of diverse US-based groups is calling for increased commitments by the US government and private citizens to reduce poverty, disease and hunger by helping to improve sustainable access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation for many millions around the world.

Why Invest in Water and Sanitation?

Investing in safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene makes economic, social, and financial sense. Many key water and sanitation solutions are cost-effective: every $1 invested in water and sanitation improvements returns on average $8 in increased economic productivity and averted healthcare costs. In addition, these solutions have immediate impacts on health and education: preventing cases of diarrheal diseases among children - the leading cause of child death in Africa - can prevent deaths as well as improve cognitive development and nutritional status.

Americans support prioritizing water and sanitation in developing countries, creating a ripple effect making this investment one of the smartest in tight economic times. Recent UN Foundation polling shows enthusiasm among Americans for the US government to support clean water and sanitation in developing countries. Water and sanitation programs are important in their own right, and get results across multiple sectors. Communities with safe drinking water and sanitation also see tangible progress in children’s health, school attendance, and local economic development.

Investments in water and sanitation are working, but there is a long way to go. Significant progress has been made globally towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for water. The world is on track to meet the MDG targets for water, and in sub-Saharan Africa access to drinking water has improved 22% since 1990. .

However, many of the most vulnerable countries remain underserved. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is home to 40% of those without safe water, with at least 15 countries in the region not on track to meet the MDG target. Even more startling, nearly 40% of the world’s population lives without access to adequate sanitation and only a handful of developing countries are on track to meet the MDG target.

What Should Be Done?

Scale up the solutions that are already working. US support for water and sanitation has produced demonstrable results in thousands of communities around the world. Solutions include digging wells and boreholes, harvesting rainwater, protecting springs, water filtering and purification, and building safe and affordable latrines. Sustainability is key: programs must be implemented in a fashion that is sustainable on a local level, in technical, financial, social, and environmental terms. Integrating simple and cost-effective water and sanitation solutions into child survival, health, and nutrition programs can dramatically decrease both child mortality and long-term developmental problems caused by the most common child killers - diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition.

Encourage decision makers to target US funding to the countries and communities most in need of first-time access. The US government must ensure the funding it provides for international water and sanitation programs benefits the people who need it most. Most of those living without safe drinking water and improved sanitation are poor people in impoverished countries. Helping to provide first-time access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation in those communities will also ensure progress toward other related goals: improved health, poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, and increased educational opportunities.

Why now?

The needs are great, and solutions exist today. Today’s investments in global water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives are working. Around the world successful models for replication exist. While working towards long-term change in infrastructure, capacity building and health systems, we should prioritize funding and implementation for programs that can deliver packages of cost-effective, sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene interventions available today.

About the Coalition for World Water Day

A diverse coalition of water, sanitation, hygiene and health organizations has come together for World Water Day 2011. Its goal is to raise awareness and call for stronger commitments and more robust action to ensure universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The global safe drinking water crisis can be solved with solutions available today. The 2011 coalition includes Catholic Relief Services, CARE, charity: water, Church World Service, Food for the Hungry, Global Water Challenge, International Relief & Development, Lifewater, Living Water International, Millennium Water Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, PATH, Procter & Gamble, PSI, Save the Children, Tetra Tech, WASH Advocacy Initiative, WaterAid, Water For People, Water.org, World Vision, and Water and Sanitation Program.

By Heather Arnet, CEO, Women and Girls Foundation

412-434-4883 (office)
We “Will Work for Equality” – Will you?
Join us today by making a donation at www.wgfpa.org
When women and girls thrive communities prosper!

On Thursday, Feb 24, 2011, the Women and Girls Foundation co-hosted a press conference with the National Council of Jewish Women and Pennsylvania NOW at our offices at Station Square. We invited over a dozen social service agencies in our community to participate in this press conference to report on the impacts the proposed federal budget cuts, being suggested by the U.S. House of Representatives, will have on our local economy and the lives of millions of women and girls in Southwest Pennsylvania. We hosted this press conference because we were shocked by the drastic job cuts and service cuts being proposed by the United States House of Representatives. 

Representatives from the following organizations spoke at the press conference:  Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children, Fair Housing Partnership, Just Harvest, WQED Multimedia, Women’s Center & Shelter, PennFuture, Planned Parenthood, Adagio Health, The Arc of Greater Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Community Services, Action United, ACLU Pittsburgh, Women’s Law Project, New Voices Pittsburgh, National Council of Jewish Women, National Organization for Women, Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Health Care for America Now, and the YWCA.

Congress’s newest members arrived with a promise to focus on restarting the economy and creating jobs.  We are saddened to learn that the very first priority of this new Congress – H.R. 1 – is focused instead on eliminating millions of jobs in this country that will result in thousands of unemployed Pennsylvanians.

This job cutting bill will throw American families even further into debt and poverty and then as these families find themselves in a free fall – they will find that there is no longer any safety net.  

This bill cuts nutritional aide for infants, housing assistance for our elderly and veterans, early childhood education, community and family health care centers, and environmental protection of our water and the air we breathe. Some of these programs were enacted under Republican presidents and have long had bi-partisan support. And it does so while leaving billions of dollars of subsidies for millionaires, corporations, and foreign wars unscathed.

The phrase women and children first, used to mean, in an emergency these groups should be the ones first given the lifeboats to safety. It did not mean, in a crisis, throw the women and children overboard. But that is exactly what this US House budget does. It makes the most vulnerable in our community bear the brunt of the sacrifice.

The recession had a devastating impact on millions of Americans, especially women raising young children on their own. In 2009 single female headed households with children made up 74% of those living in poverty in Pittsburgh. Unemployment rates for single mothers have doubled since 2007 and are TWICE that of their married male counterparts. (11.3%)

These budget cuts will not only result in decreased social services for the poor. They also will cut millions of jobs. Jobs in the health care, education, and child care sectors. The majority of which are held by women, many of them raising children on their own. The National Women’s Law Center, recently reported that women lost 86 % of the jobs cut in the government sector during 2010. And so if these cuts are approved by Congress not only will the women and children currently served by these programs suffer. But more families will be moved from economic self-sufficiency to unemployment and poverty.

This is not a job creation strategy. This is not an economic recovery strategy. This is an attack on society’s most vulnerable. As we watch our brothers and sisters in Egypt struggle to achieve freedom and equal access to jobs, healthcare, food, and education, American women should not have to fight to retain their rights here at home. Pennsylvanians need to become informed as to the local impact this job cutting bill would have on our local economy and local working families. And we must speak out against the passage of this bill through the U.S. Senate. Congress can be fiscally prudent without being cruel.

Today’s water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access. More people in the world own cell phones than have access to a toilet. And as cities and slums grow at increasing rates, the situation worsens. Every day, lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills thousands, leaving others with reduced quality of life.

Glass ceilings aside, millions of women are prohibited from accomplishing little more than survival. Not because of a lack of ambition, or ability, but because of a lack of water. Millions of women and children in the developing world spend untold hours daily, collecting water from distant, often polluted sources, then return to their villages carrying their filled 40 pound jerry cans on their backs. And though women are responsible for the majority of food production in their villages, their productivity is severely limited by this constant struggle.

But the real tragedy is that the problem is so easy to solve. For just $25 www.water.org can provide clean, sustainable drinking water for one person for life, bringing opportunity, hope and possibilities to lives without them.

Women

• In just one day, more than 200 million hours of women’s time is consumed for the most basic of human needs — collecting water for domestic use.
• This lost productivity is greater than the combined number of hours worked in a week by employees at Wal*Mart, United Parcel Service, McDonald’s, IBM, Target, and Kroger, according to Gary White, co-founder of Water.org.

 

• Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources.
• A study by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) of community water and sanitation projects in 88 communities found that projects designed and run with the full participation of women are more sustainable and effective than those that do not. This supports an earlier World Bank study that found that women’s participation was strongly associated with water and sanitation project effectiveness.  

• 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people.

 

• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.  
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.  
• Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.  
• An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.

• Diarrhea remains in the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhea. It kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.  
• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.  
• Diarrhea is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status.

 

• Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.
• In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water.  
• 1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea each year.  

Disease

• At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.  
• The majority of the illness in the world is caused by fecal matter.
• Almost one-tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene and management of water resources. Such improvements reduce child mortality and improve health and nutritional status in a sustainable way.

 

• 88% of cases of diarrhea worldwide are attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation or insufficient hygiene. (9)
• 90% of all deaths caused by diarrheal diseases are children under 5 years of age, mostly in developing countries. (8)
• It is estimated that improved sanitation facilities could reduce diarrhea-related deaths in young children by more than one-third. If hygiene promotion is added, such as teaching proper hand washing, deaths could be reduced by two thirds. It would also help accelerate economic and social development in countries where sanitation is a major cause of lost work and school days because of illness. (6)

 

 

 

 

What Can You Do?

Join us as we combat the water crisis and work for the day when women are free from the all consuming search for water, making it possible for them to lead productive lives of hope and dignity in a world where everyone in the world can take a safe drink of water.

• Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter with our latest stories, projects, and ways you can help.
• Bring someone clean water for life: Donate.
• Get involved in your school, your community or go online and spread the word.
• Check out the Give Yourself section below for more ideas.

Water isn’t just a world crisis, it’s a women’s crisis. We can change the world, and we can do it one woman at a time if we have to.

Give Your Voice

We know you want to help, but we also know cash might not be that easy to come by. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.

You’re an influential person. No really. Whether your network includes thousands of dedicated followers or just a few close friends and family members, people listen to you. And getting our message out is worth plenty. While we can’t pay you to use your sway, we can make it easy and effective. We’ve created some social networking resources – avatars, signatures and the like — for you to use wherever and whenever you want, each with it’s own assigned virtual value. Using them is almost like making a cash donation, and best of all, they’ll make a difference. So use them everywhere and often.

Put your Facebook, Twitter or blog power to work for women around the world. If enough people spread the word, we figure that’s a donation worth millions in saved advertising dollars; money we can put to work providing water.

On the other hand, if you do happen to find a little something between the couch cushions, we happily accept cash donations

By Bonnie Hassan

 

As we move into 2011, many of us think about the changes we’d like to make in our lives in the upcoming year.  Some of us made New Year’s resolutions, and many more of us passed on this tradition because we knew from past experiences that we just don’t keep them, no matter how much we’d like to, no matter how much we promise ourselves that this time will be different. 

 

I’d like to invite you to move into the new year in a different way, by adopting an ‘attitude of  gratitude’ at the beginning and end of each day.  Angeles Arrien, a cultural anthropologist, author and educator, says this about the power of gratitude:

 

            “The practice of offering gratitude bestows many benefits.  It dissolves negative feelings.  Anger, arrogance, and jealousy melt in its embrace.  Fear and defensiveness dissolve.  Gratitude diminishes barriers to love and evokes happiness, which is itself a powerfully healing and beneficial emotion.  It establishes a foundation for the challenging work of forgiveness in relationships when we have experienced betrayal, loss, broken promises, deceptions and disappointments.  Gratitude keeps alive what has meaning for us and fosters our capacity to apologize and forgive.”

 

2011 will bring changes to all of us.  That is a certainty, because change is a constant and is needed if we are to grow and evolve.  Some of those changes will be immediately positive and easily recognized as such, and others will present themselves as challenges that may seem to suck the life right out of us. 

 

If I’ve learned anything in my journey in this lifetime it’s that there is always a blessing, gift or opportunity presented in every challenge, if I’m willing to look for it. Sometimes those are easily discernable, but most times I have to look deeply within myself at the changes that have occurred within and around me as a result of that challenge, to be able to see the positive outcome that the challenge provided.  And yes, I’ll  admit that sometimes I’m unable to see the positive because I’m so caught up in the ’suckiness’ of the moment. It’s only as time passes and I look back and see where that challenge took me, that I’m able to recognize the blessing, gift or opportunity.  But each time I look, I can see the positives that were generated by the challenge.

 

And so I start each day with a prayer of gratitude for all that the Universe will bring to me that day, trusting that each encounter, each experience, each moment, offers me an opportunity to grow, to evolve, to live, in an even bigger, more positive way.  And each evening, just before sleep,  I spend a few moments looking back over the day’s events to find the blessings, gifts and opportunities that have been given to me  in the experiences that have come to me.  I offer up a brief prayer of gratitude for each of them, and begin my night’s sleep with positive thoughts and a positive outlook, knowing and trusting that on some level, in some way, I have been blessed, and I am grateful.  I know that like attracts like, and what I send out will come back to me.  So I choose, very deliberately, to put out good energy so that good will come back.

 

Gratitude opens the door to love - loving yourself and loving others.  Express your gratitude to the Universe for all that it brings to you each day, and to all who have contributed to the life that you have, because when that door opens, miraculous changes can occur in ways beyond your imagination and expectations.

 

3 Reasons Why Most Women Entrepreneurs Fail To Attract Clients Using LinkedIn

By Kristina Jaramillo

There are over 80 million influential professionals from over 200 countries on LinkedIn that can become your woman-owned business’s potentials customers. In fact, LinkedIn’s membership is what Neilson Online is calling “The world’s largest audience of affluent, influential professionals” as you will find executives from all Fortune 500 companies there. Plus, you will find experienced professionals from large and small companies and every type of business and industry imaginable.

So, why aren’t you able to attract more clients?

You as a woman entrepreneur have courage, vision, intuition and persistence. You connect easily with others. You are passionate and enthusiastic. In fact, you cannot stop talking about what you. And, you don’t forget to emphasize the benefits of your services to your potential customers. You are a real pro at using your contacts – but you are just not connecting with anyone on LinkedIn.

Out of the 80 million professionals, there are only a few internet marketers and companies that are successfully getting more clients each and every single day from LinkedIn. Below, you will find out their secrets to attracting clients that are ready, willing and able to invest in their products or services.

 

3 Reasons Why You Are Not Attracting More Clients and Making More Money with LinkedIn

 

Reason #1 – You are waiting for prospects to come to you

Clients who are willing to pay for your products and services will not just fall into your lap.  As an entrepreneur you have to make it part of your job to go out and find them.

Think of it this way, who is the interested party in this situation: You or the person who doesn’t even know they know they need your services or products.

You have to be the one the take charge and find your prospects. Here are a few ways to easily engage with others on LinkedIn…

• Update your status message daily.
• Start a vigorous discussion in various groups that you belong to. This will enable you to prove your expertise in your given area.
• Answer questions on the Q & A Boards. This will show your experience and help you become a thought leader.

 

Reason #2 –You fail to take advantage of LinkedIn groups

LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups – where you can network, join conversations and show prospects that you have the answers to their problems. Yet, most small business owners and internet marketers do not actively seek groups that they should belong to.

If they do join groups they make these two mistakes:

• They become a member of a group – but they sit there like a lump on the log. How can you expect prospects to come to you if you do not take the time to make yourself heard?
• They join groups where there are like members. Let me put it to you this way, do you want to be a member of a group that is full of your competition or do you want to belong to a group that is full of people who could turn out to be your prospects. It sounds pretty obvious to me that you would want to be where your prospects are. But many entrepreneurs fail to think outside the box and strictly join groups based on their field of expertise.

 

Another way, to take advantage of LinkedIn groups is to create your own group. This is the absolute best way to create your own community of followers. You are the one who is in charge of the type of content that is posted. You can make sure what you have to say is heard and you have the power to control your own group.  From my experience, many group members religiously check out what is being discussed in the groups they find the most useful.  Why can’t your group be one of them?

Reason #3 – Failure to Create Content and Distribute it to the Different Groups

Eric Gruber (My Partner at GetLinkedInHelp.com and Founder of Article Marketing Experts) belongs to 50 different groups. Now, if each of the 50 groups has at least 1,000 members, then each time he submits content, he is getting his content in front of 50,000 potential clients – just with a couple clicks of the mouse.

So, you need to create content that…

• Proves your expertise
• Sparks controversy and debate
• Gets people talking
• Entices prospects to visit your blog and website
• Motivates prospects to take action (using your products or services of course)

 

If you need help creating content, check out these free article templates.

Just by avoiding these common LinkedIn mistakes, you will begin to build your list of connections and prospects. Continue the conversation – and you will turn these prospects into paying customers and clients.

Now the three mistakes I outlined in this article is part of a larger special report where I detail 14 LinkedIn mistakes and the opportunities you are missing. You can get it for free at www.GetLinkedInHelp.com.

 

About the Author:
LinkedIn Expert Kristina Jaramillo creates online marketplace opportunities for women entrepreneurs who want more website traffic, prospects and profits. Now, with her free special report, you can uncover how you can become “the trusted source for your industry on LinkedIn” and along with easy ways to gain more connections fast by avoiding the top 14 mistakes. Get this information for free at www.GetLinkedInHelp.com.

A “demonic musical mantra.” This was how a friend recently described the position of some popular music for large portions of America’s youth.

 

We were discussing women and their role in the world of music. In spite of a very real presence in music throughout history, music history books have, until very recently, ignored women composers and performers. If they haven’t been ignored, women in the world of classical music have been treated with tokenism.

 

From the Middle Ages all the way up until the late 1500s, Hildegard of Bingen and the Comtessa de Dia are the only two women whose music is known to survive. And of course, the low profile is merely reflective of women in society at large in those long-ago days. A prime reason for this is that education, and the advancement that education can provide, was not offered equally to women and men.

 

By the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries, more women’s voices are heard. The music of Maddalena Casulana, Francesca Caccini and Barbara Strozzi survives. As we move into the 18^th and 19^th century, many more women in music are known. Clara Schumann, wife of the more familiar Franz, and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, sister of the better known Felix Mendelssohn are among the most famous. These composers’ music holds its own when compared to similar works by the men of their time.

 

It is most amazing that these women were able to accomplish all they did in spite of the fact that, like most women in the western world, they had to constantly deal with difficult restrictions on their behavior and activities. Restrictions included travelling only in the company of a man, focusing most of their attention and energy on their home and family. They were to be their husband’s faithful and constant caregiver, as well as a mirror of his every opinion. Essentially, a woman’s horizons and accomplishments were limited to the home. To vary from the norm could lead to the destruction of a woman’s reputation, and sometimes her family’s reputation. Even up until the late 20^th century, women in the world of classical music still faced the stereotyping, the exclusionary practices, the sexism, not to mention the racism, that was prevalent in earlier centuries.

 

Still, regardless of their difficulties, women in the world of classical music did not fit the description of “demonic.”

 

When we turn to popular music, women have definitely had a much greater voice, but again one can’t really describe it as being demonic. From the early 20^th century on, blues greats such as Memphis Minnie, Ma Rainy, Bessie Smith and others set the stage for later performers such as Etta James, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee and too many others to mention. Talented women who were dedicated, hard-working, devoted, sometimes troubled, they still can’t really be called demonic.

 

Rock, Pop, and Indie music also have their female greats, as does Christian music. Women are well represented in Country music, as well as in Folk and its close cousin, Protest music. In most of these genres, women performers are constantly faced with the decision of whether or not to use or exploit their sexuality as a means of gaining attention. The jury is still out on whether women’s’ hyper sexualized performances speak to women’s strength, power and control or pander to the male (i.e., pornographic) gaze as filtered through the media and the music industry, as Sut Jhally’s Dreamworlds would have us understand.

 

Many issues dealing with women and popular music have been, and are still, problematic. But demonic? I couldn’t see it, except in one genre—Hip-Hop. My companion smiled at my understanding, and at my agreement. And rather than women causing this musical mantra, it is in their exploitation that the damage happens. It is in the misogynistic expressions of Hip-Hop music that the term “demonic musical mantra” begins to make sense.

 

Sadly for women, all women, misogyny is a part of mainstream American culture, whether acknowledged or not. And as we read in an article by Ayanna, Hip-Hop expresses the ideas of mainstream American culture. These ideas that have “now been internalized and embedded into the psyches of American people, especially people of color, over the past number of years” (Ayanna, 1).

 

The jury is not out on the wrongness of continually describing women or girls as ho’s, bitches and sluts, mantra like. However, there is no consensus on how to stop the misogyny. Some young friends suggested the following possibilities:

 

• “Show how sexist, misogynistic values are not correct. Every effort has to be made to teach girls, and boys, how to differentiate between what is right and what is wrong, especially as regards what they see in the media.”

 

Education is the key. Education can come from a teacher, a preacher or pastor, a relative. A good role model is useful too. Positive role models for boys and girls may be difficult to find within the world of Hip-Hop itself, as the bands with the more positive messages get less air time. Sex sells. Misogyny must too.

 

• “Boycott the music labels that sell objectionable stuff. Tell your friends. Spread the word.”

 

A boycott can be a powerful tool, but only if it is widespread. Wikipedia tells us that “most organized consumer boycotts today are focused on long-term change of buying habits,” which can only be successfully initiated and maintained through consumer commitment. Social networking sites could be a big help in spreading the news of a boycott of objectionable, exploitive music. Regardless, this will be a difficult thing to accomplish, because the outcry against misogyny is minuscule and the music industry is mighty.

 

• “Empower young women (and men). Don’t let them think that the lyrics are true or that they are the only truth. Social networking sites should promote knowing what you are dancing to. . . . getting everyone to talk about the lyrics will help young girls learn to recognize what they are hearing and what affect they have.”

 

So many girls just tune out the lyrics, ignore them, and just start dancing to the beat. The negativity expressed in the lyrics needs to be talked about so that girls can’t easily make this “disconnect” between what is being said and the sexy, seductive rhythm that accompanies it.

 

• It is critical to stop women from taking on the roles expressed in the lyrics by showing women in intellectual roles or other positions of empowerment. Show women that they can defy the stereotypes expressed in Hip-Hop music’s lyrics.

 

• Blog about women’s negative image in Rap and Hip-Hop—this will get more people involved.

 

The more people are aware of the negative effects on young girls and women caused by the exploitation of Hip-Hop music, and where the roots of that exploitation lie, the more discussion can be started in mainstream America. The sooner that happens, the sooner the exploitation of women can begin to be reduced in Hip-Hop culture.

 

After centuries of inequality, women can now pursue the same goals as men. It is ironic that though so much has changed, in Hip-Hop culture and elsewhere, that change is ignored, demeaned or undervalued. I look forward to the day when Ayanna or one of her girlfriends can write an article about the new trend of women’s empowerment in Hip-Hop culture instead of their exploitation. That will be the day when the demonic musical mantra will be laid to rest, with a new and positive mantra taking shape in the minds, hearts, and the dance music, of the youth of America.

 

Works Cited

Ayanna, “The Exploitation of Women in Hip-hop Culture.” http://www.mysistahs.org/features/hiphop.htm

 

“Hip-Hop and Misogyny Discussion.”

http://www.amplifyyourvoice.org/u/vanessaaishacoleman/2009/6/6/Hip-Hop-and-Misogyny

 

Sut Jhally, Dreamworlds 3: Desire, Sex and Power in Music Video. Media Education Foundation, 2007.

 

Wikipedia, “Boycott.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott