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Weekend Reading on Women's Representation Thanksgiving Edition November 27, 2019

By Cynthia Richie Terrell on November 27, 2019

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Dear friends,
Thanksgiving dinner in 2018 featured Arabia china my mother brought back from Finland where she helped Finns rebuild their homes right after World War II, rolls, blueberry & pecan pie, and cranberries - some of which I grew in my very own garden.
I always feel conflicted about this holiday - I love spending time with family & friends and making time to reflect on things for which we are grateful, but I am also mindful of the troubling narrative around the early settlers - many of whom were my ancestors.
My father, Huntington Terrell, was a philosopher and an ethicist with a deep sense of our collective and individual moral obligation to others. He wrote this prayer for our interfaith Sunday school that thrived in rural upstate New York in the 1950s and 60s - here is the prayer in my mother's handwriting:

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Weekend Reading on Women's Representation November 8, 2019

By Cynthia Richie Terrell on November 13, 2019

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Dear friends,
This week's news was filled with the release of big reports from allies and elections results from contests around the country - a quick look at the reports:
Our friends at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation released a terrific report this week entitled Ready, Willing, and Electable: Women Running for Executive Office - the study, conducted jointly by Voto Latino, Higher Heights, APIA Vote, APAICS, the Victory Institute, CAWP, and Lake Research Partners, explores attitudes toward women candidates from a variety of demographic groups. Nicole Carlsburg, Executive director of the BLFF introduces the report on Gender on the Ballot which I recommend as a great source of news:

2018 was heralded as a “Year of the Woman,” with a record number of women elected to Congress and many historic firsts for individual women candidates. One record we didn’t break: the number of women serving as governor of their state. The number of women who are governor today ties a previous high first set in 2004 – before the iPhone came out, before Twitter was founded, and before Netflix launched its streaming service. So much has changed since 2004, so why aren’t we seeing progress with electing women governors?

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Weekend Reading on Women's Representation November 1, 2019

By Cynthia Richie Terrell on November 01, 2019

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(Women and children striking for equality in Iceland on October 24, 1975)
My dear friends,
In the midst of my busy days last week I forgot to celebrate the anniversary of the day in October, 1975 when over 90% of Icelandic women went on strike and refused to work. I love to imagine their camaraderie and passion for women's equality which drove them into the streets - as this story in Jacobin Magazine recounts - and triggered a transformation in the role that women play in politics and in business in Iceland. While there is still much work to be done in Iceland and around the world, I will join anyone who would like to try this approach in the US - just tell me where and when to meet:

"Women are waking up. They know that men have ruled the world since time immemorial. And how has that world been?” These words were first spoken by Aðalheiður Bjarnfreðsdóttir, a fifty-four-year-old domestic worker, on an unusually warm and dry afternoon in fall 1975. Her audience, in her speech in Reykjavík’s main square, included 25,000 women from all walks of life. They, along with 90 percent of Iceland’s female population, had refused to show up for work that day, in order to demonstrate how much they contributed to the country’s economy. It made no difference whether their work took place in a school, factory, office, or home. They were determined to show that they mattered.

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Communications Intern

By Laura Weiss on October 31, 2019

"During my time at RepresentWomen, I look forward to adding my passion as a feminist and my skills to help with the work started by the incredible people working here. Beyond this, I hope to learn more about the status of women's representation and leadership in my home country before taking what I have learned into the international realm."

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Weekend Reading on Women's Representation October 25, 2019

By Cynthia Richie Terrell on October 25, 2019

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(from the desk of RepresentWomen's artist in residence....)
Dear friends,
It's hard to adequately capture even a fraction of the stories about women's representation each week but it is especially hard on weeks that I am traveling and scrambling between events and meetings. Here are a few highlights from this week that caught my eye, as always, please share with me anything you would like shared with the larger group.

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The History of Indigenous Women's Leadership

By Maura Reilly on October 23, 2019

“My young men are to lay aside their weapons; they are to take up the work of women; they will plow the field and raise the crops; for them I see a future, but my women, they to whom we owe everything, what is there for them to do? I see nothing! You are a woman; have pity on my women when everything is taken from them.”

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