Netroots Nation: Building a Conversation Across Generations of Progressive Women

by Jen Nedeau

categories: Feminism, Politics

Published August 14, 2009 @ 10:24AM PT

Today I am speaking on a panel at Netroots Nation - a conference for progressive bloggers, activists and organizations - about what it means to be a young feminist in the progressive movement.

My panel will be featuring a range of women from different backgrounds and experiences, namely: Gloria Feldt, Joanne Bamberger, Emily McKhann, and Tracy Viselli.

Building a Conversation Across Generations of Progressive Women

Progressive women were the key to Barack Obama's victory in 2008, but not all progressive women saw eye to eye on the Democratic campaign. Some felt Hillary Clinton was not treated fairly in the campaign, yet others felt differently. Feelings still run deep over who was the better candidate for progressives. Now that the election’s over, how do progressive women come together to work toward common goals and issues? Women from their 20s to 60s will discuss differences of opinion and talk about how they find common ground moving forward to promote and preserve the progressive agenda.

For my part, I am basically going to answer the question: why didn't a 25 year old feminist activist vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 election and how can we alleviate the generational divide within the feminist movement?

I began to answer this question last night on Air America radio with Ron Reagan and I'm going to elaborate on it here for those who can't make it to the panel or want to discuss the topic further.

First off, as many of you may know, I voted for Obama. I wasn't a supporter right from the start, but around November 2007, I finally decided he would be the candidate I wanted to support in the Presidential election. I ended up volunteering for him in the South Carolina primaries and then again Florida during the general election.

And as much as I am dying to see a female president, there was a disconnect for me when it came to voting for Hillary.

During the 2008 election, Rebecca Walker of the Third Wave Foundation tried to address this disconnect saying that "the election friction is simply a consequence of mainstream feminist leaders and organizations not listening to critiques from younger women, women of color and grassroots activists about the exclusivity of thought within the movement."

To a large extent I think she is right. And so, when we decide to have conversation across generations of progressive women - we must think about the generational divide - and then how gender, race. class, sexual identity play into that.

Here are some interesting facts to help one understand why young women supported Obama instead of Clinton:

• Clinton lost young, female support early on. February 2008 data showed that Clinton's loss of support occurred disproportionately among Democratic women. While she was still supported by a higher percentage of Democratic women than men, Obama was able to increase his appeal to women - particularly among young, unmarried women - due to, in my opinion, his stance about the Iraq war. These unmarried female voters ultimately delivered a stunning 70 to 29 percent margin to Obama and delivered similarly strong margins in races for Congress and the U.S. Senate.

• When you consider that age was one of the most consistent indicators of how someone might vote - more than sex, more than income, more than education - and only race was a stronger predictor of voting than age, and then only if a voter was black - you begin to see why Hillary lost votes to young women.

• Additionally, many millennials see gender equality as a "fact" and think that women are not only equal in their experience, but frequently taking the lead.

• And they are not necessarily wrong in this thinking when girls tend to outperform boys in elementary and secondary school; more girls are attending college than boys. Therefore, a woman running for President didn't seem as stunning one might have imagined; many young women probably believe they can do it one day.

So if electing a female president isn't a priority, what does matter to young women?

Well, according to the YWCA 2008 survey, the domestic issues that are the "top priority" include health care reform, quality and cost of education, the housing crisis and HIV/AIDS. Additionally, one in three women of Generation Y say they are "very worried" about being a victim of or knowing someone who is a victim of domestic violence, compared with one in four older women.

But, if we look deeply at these priorities, one can understand that for many young women - the perception of equality is a dangerous thing and can be shaken up a bit when they enter the real world:

• 90 women who serve in the U.S. Congress. Seventeen in the Senate, and 73 in the House. The number of women in statewide elective executive posts is 72, while the proportion of women in state legislatures is 24.3%.

• 87% of all U.S. counties have no identifiable abortion provider. In non-metropolitan areas, the figure rises to 97%.1 As a result, many women must travel long distances to reach the nearest abortion provider.

• The median weekly earnings of women who were full-time wage are about 80 percent of men's. When comparing the median weekly earnings of person's aged 16 to 24, young women earned 91 percent of what young men earned.

In many ways, while young women may have a seemingly false sense of equality, many of them will soon discover that their priorities can come with a healthy dose of feminism.

This is why I consider myself a feminist. Because no matter my generation, I have learned that there are still battles to be fought when it comes to health care, sexism in the media, economic parity and equal representation in traditionally under served industries such as technology, business, politics and science. But also my vision for equality goes beyond the United States, as it does for many young women. Growing up I was largely concerned with those in poverty abroad, the implications of the U.S. war on drugs and I was very, very much against the war in Iraq (which is one of the major policy disagreements I had with Hillary Clinton when she ran for President).

All of those topics have a women's rights story in them. But I just had to find it. And much of that discovery process has been facilitated by women like the ones on this panel who reached across the generational divide and opened my eyes to so many important issues that still exist in the women's rights movement. They have helped to dissolve the "exclusivity of thought" that Rebecca Walker saw and open up more possibilities for young, active, political women to proudly say, "I am a feminist."