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Advancing Women In Leadership Journal » Book Review: Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women.

“Harvard graduate student, Paula Goldman, stumbled across an idea one morning – to send an Internet question out to the world “What defines your generation of women?” The idea gathered pace. Out of some 3,000 responses, the international editorial team picked 105 submissions from women living in 57 countries, including some well-known activists, artists, athletes, writers, musicians, photographers, and community organizers.

The resulting book, Imagining Ourselves‘ essential underlying communication platform is the Internet – the invitation to contribute to the book was sent out via the Internet, and the responses apparently were also compiled over the Internet – it is a collection of digital conversations. The book also complements a virtual web-based “living” conversation – as the International Museum of Women’s President invites readers, “The Imagining Ourselves project combines this inspiring anthology with an online exhibit and gathering place where you can participate in conversations about topics important to you … at the International Museum of Women’s website

The book’s contributors share a common profile. They are middle to upper middle class, and in some cases, members of the ruling elite. The latter include Queen Rania of Jordan, Karenna Gore Schiff (Al Gore’s daughter) and Nurual Izzah Anway, (daughter of Malaysia’s former Deputy Prime Minister). The majority of the contributors have had access to superior education, technology, and, by extension, the global market. These are women with a high degree of mobility, freedom to express, and ability to articulate their opinions and issues.

Reading through the contributions, it is apparent that the digital world is impacting women’s observations about and interactions with the world around them. Yee-Ming Tan, for instance, pursues a conventional corporate career following her studies in Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. After her travels in Tibet she reflects that the main difference between women of the Tibetan community and her is “the digital distance”. Unlike Tibetan women who operate within their immediate environs, her support network is “thousands of miles away, I am in contact via the telephone, the Internet – with my sister in Paris, my friend in New York and my Mum in Malaysia”, she writes, “we are connected to our wider support group digitally over a great distance”.

Jess Loseby – an English artist uses the Internet as her main medium. She works on both small intimate online installations and large-scale digital projections and video. Jess is wheel chair bound, a mother of three and the Internet is an important source of information and inspiration for her artistic work. Pireeni Sundaralingam, born in Sri Lanka, educated at Oxford and living in the US, says, in reference to the Sri Lankan civil war, “thanks to advances in communication technology – there has never been such a chance for us to grasp, at a grassroots level, the similarities of our respective struggles and to build bridges between all our struggling communities.”

The author of this book review, Nidhi Tandon, laments the clear disparity in incomes between those in the West and those in emerging nations.  The income disparity and the digital divide have a clear impact on which women’s stories come to be told. Also, and perhaps as a result, the author notes:

“I was missing any critical references to women and their relationships with earth, water, resources and energy. A couple of lone voices from Bolivia and Micronesia, celebrated community, traditional wisdom, seeds, plants, food and biological diversity itself. This may have been one of the downsides of relying entirely on the Internet as a source of “diversity” of women’s stories.

This book reminds me of Women in the Material World, a book published ten years ago by the Sierra Club, which portrayed media, culture and consciousness through the eyes of women in their contexts across the world. The 256-page photojournalist book captured the myriad lives of women around the world through unfiltered lens, displaying significant material disparities among women across the world. Ten years later, Imagining Ourselves is published, this time a direct expression by the contributors themselves – and through the particular lens of literate and digitally connected women.”

Paula Goldman, Director of Imagining Ourselves

For the full review go to Advancing Women In Leadership Journal » Book Review: Imagining Ourselves: Global Voices from a New Generation of Women.

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