Feminist Law Professors » Blog Archive » Inverview With Congressional Rep. Carolyn Maloney About Her New Book, “Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated”.

This is exactly the kind of coming together and collaboration of women’s communities of interest that AdvancingWomen.com has been talking about and, hopefully, encouraging.

Part one here. Part two here.

In this instance, Feminist Law Professors and The New Agenda are focusing on the same themes found in “Rumours of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated” and reflected in this Interview With Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney by MadamaBcloseAuthor: MadamaB Name: MadamaB
Email: madamab@gmail.com
Site: http://madamab.wordpress.com/
About: I am a liberal and a die-hard Clinton Democrat. Thanks to the rude awakenings of this election cycle, I am now a single-issue voter, devoted to the quick implementation of the 30 Percent Solution.See Authors Posts (2), Crossposted at The Confluence and MadamaB’s own blog

Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is described by author, MadamaBcloseAuthor: MadamaB Name: MadamaB
Email: madamab@gmail.com
Site: http://madamab.wordpress.com/
About: I am a liberal and a die-hard Clinton Democrat. Thanks to the rude awakenings of this election cycle, I am now a single-issue voter, devoted to the quick implementation of the 30 Percent Solution.See Authors Posts (2), as a “gracious, intelligent, fiery and fabulous feminist.” Among the many points Congressman Maloney makes is that real progress will come “when there is a critical mass of women in government. Once 30% of our representatives are women ( Ed. some say 50%) , women’s issues begin to be addressed. The United States is nowhere near that critical mass yet.”

What is important, in the context of women’s emerging communities on the Net, is not the specific point a women’s activist makes, but the fact that she is taking a pro-woman stand in a society where there is a systemic bias which diminishes women and results in limiting their progress.  What is significant in this instance is that Feminist Law Professors , The New Agenda, The Confluence and MadamaB’s own blog have all come together on the Net to reinforce each other’s perspective on the themes in Maloney’s book.

AdvancingWomen.com‘s position is that “it is important that a meaningful part of content on the Net be shaped and produced by women and offer new paradigms to support women’s advancement…. Our first task is to foster a sense of inclusive community among women’s groups with many different agendas and ideologies because that is the catalyst which will drive open communication among them and form the foundation for both networking, and its further evolution into a support system….
To achieve women’s advancement in many areas – business, law, politics, academia –  we need a critical mass of women and women’s organizations to share their knowledge and strategies.”

When AdvancingWomen.com sees women’s groups like Feminist Law Professors , The New Agenda, The Confluence and MadamaB come together to share their knowledge and strategy, we feel very encouraged that the first steps towards that synergistic nexus of women’s communities on the Net has been taken and its evolution in growth and influence has begun.

When we look at the tools women have created or managed on the Net, a common theme runs through them: “Tina Sharkey at Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ) BabyCenter ( networking and sharing information about child care and child raising); Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr (photo sharing); Mena Trott, co-founder and president of blogging powerhouse Six Apart ( connecting and communication through blogging); and Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, which lets users build their own social networks ( do it yourself, customized social networking)”.  In one way or another, all these women have addressed the technical “how to” part of the equation of women’s communicating and networking on the Net.  Other groups, many just now forming, are driven by the need to fill this new engine for thought and dialogue with their own passion, to level the playing field for themselves and other women.

In the beginning,  many purposeful and committed women may have found themselves a bit put off by the jarring disconnect of the techie culture, in contrast with their own more reflective styles. Very young men in tight T shirts with screaming logos or rebellious, clever or obscure quotations, slumped in bean bag chairs for an all night “hackathon” until some got leg burns from their lap tops, amid crumpled, empty pizza boxes, crushed Red Bull cans and blaring music pulsating through a giant open space, frequently a loft or run down office. Was there a flash of genius there?  Definitely, sometimes.  Mostly they could have produced the same work from 9 to 5 but the crazy hours and adrenalin high were all part of the exuberant experience for them.

For equally driven women, either in their corner office, having fought tooth and nail to get there, or who might have met at Starbucks for a latte or a caramel frappe, or be sipping oolong tea on their deck or multi-tasking in their home office, Blackberry in one hand, baby on a hip, stepping over the tennis shoes of their son, roughly the same age as the founders of some of the new Net companies like Facebook….there may have been a sense that they didn’t belong in this new Net frontier.  Not that the wonderboys were swinging open any doors for them.  But women have long ago learned no one is swinging open any doors for them.  If women want to walk into the tech scene and become powerhouses on the Net, we have to step up, open our own doors and “make the path by walking on it.”

AdvancingWomen.com has no doubt that women will go for it and stake our own claim to our sphere in the Networked world, particularly now that the social networking era with all of its new, automated tools is upon us. We have a hunch that “our” Net, the “women’s communities’ Net” will be different.  It will be less about technical wizardry…..not that we don’t appreciate every ounce of that as it makes our work easier….give us those WordPress plug ins by the barrel full; it will be more about solving deep rooted problems woman have faced.  It will be less about reaching out for new Net frontiers to conquer, than working together to reshape attitudes and stereotypes from the past that have prevented us from crossing old frontiers.

This time, we don’t have to ask permission to join the “old boys’ game”.  ( Many of the old boys got “kicked under the bus” by the wonderboys anyway.)  This time we have the tools and the ability to use the Net to route around the existing power structure, bypass the gate keepers, and ignore the often condescening “talking heads”  to speak directly to each other, each from our own community of interest reaching out to like-minded others.

Also see:

Community on the Net – The Platform To Network, The Power to Mentor

Don’t Cry for Us, Silicon Valley