I am a Feminist

It's true, I claim the title of feminist proudly. I would also argue legitimately, unlike some conservative politicians of late, who shall for the moment remain unnamed. I find it frustrating that in many circles, feminism is a bad word. I have no idea when the smear campaign took place, but I'm willing to bet it was long before I had any concept of women's rights or any other crazy leftist idea. Whatever its origins I spend a reasonable amount of time explaining that no, I don't hate men, yes, I wear both bras and make-up on occasion, and that I do in fact enjoy sex (maybe even more than some of those repressed types out there). As this blog continues, it is a certainty that you will be exposed to some of my feminist opinions. I find it impossible to separate myself from them. Gender pervades everything in our daily life, often in the worst possible way. If feminism is your thing, let me know what you think, if feminism isn't you thing, let me know what you think.

All of this is a lead in for a post about my experience at the Got Equality? Women's Leadership Conference that I attended today. It was hosted by the Women's Leadership group here at UW. I attended a workshop on women in technology and entrepreneurship hosted by two women technology entrepreneurs and one on body image hosted interestingly by a former Miss Wyoming USA. I'm somewhat disappointed to report that I was not terribly satisfied by the entire experience. To some degree, I think it's because I want more than just pat answers and motivational speeches at this point in my academic career. It's not enough for me to simply listen to people encourage me. I want meaty discussion and real advice. I don't consider "follow your dreams" to be legit and helpful. If that's what I wanted to hear, I would have looked up my second grade teacher. What I want are discussion of what we can do as activists to change the screwed up gender dynamic in our society and what we as women can do to thrive in the professional world.

In both of the seminars I attended, the presenters came off as chock full of privilege without understanding that. We were told things like "as a woman in business, it's your attitude that holds you back." Sure, how you approach something and your frame of mind are important, but there are many challenges that women face that cannot simply be overcome by putting on their happy pants. Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps makes for great stories, but it makes for lousy advice and even lousier policy. To write off the experiences of women who struggle with a system that is heavily slanted in favor of men is counter productive. We were informed that only 9% of one type of government business grant is given to women. Considering that women are about, oh, half of the population, these discussion require more than a "do what you love" platitude and a casual dismissal of the real problems that women in business and technology face.

My second seminar was an even bigger let down. Body image is a topic that I find particularly important and personal. I was really happy to attend this talk and left feeling cheated. This presenter essentially said that all you need is positive self talk. That will get you over any body image issues that you face. No suggestions for real action, no comments on how to combat the pervasive false image that we are told to attain, nothing. So much dialog needs to happen on this and instead we get a beautiful women telling us to not let the haterz get us down and that if they do, we should just remind ourselves of our good qualities. Yep, a complete lack of depth here too.

I hope that in the future, the Women's Leadership Conference will focus on helping us learn to lead as well as finding speakers who are able to look at problems without minimizing them. Struggling women are not all there because they have a bad attitude and whistling a happy tune while parading across stage in a bikini is not going to solve body image problems. We are college women, it's time for college level solutions.