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2005 Women Who Make a Difference
Awards Dinner
March 1, 2005

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Afternoon Program
New York Society for Ethical Culture
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Event Transcript:

A Candid Conversation with
Noeleen Heyzer, Executive Director, UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women)
Jehmu Greene, President, Rock the Vote
Julianne Malveaux, economist, author, commentator and President, The Last Word Production

Moderated by
Linda Basch, President, The National Council for Research on Women

Linda Basch: I want to welcome you all to our afternoon program. I'm Linda Basch, President of the National Council for Research on Women.

Many of you are new friends and I hope you will soon become long-time friends. Our goal is to educate and elucidate issues through research so that social policies are based on the realities and facts of women's lives, rather than on myths and assumptions.

We also mobilize the power of our more than 100 member research and policy centers from across the nation. Together, we work to ensure that social and political dialogue includes women's lives and women's voices.

We are pleased that, since our founding more than 20 years ago, we have become a source that is tapped by top decision makers, educators, corporate leaders, elected officials, the media and the public. As part of our work, we also convene important conversations on timely issues.

And today is certainly one of those occasions. There are so many ruptures in the world today. Women's security and rights are being challenged and denied in so many parts of the globe. Economic disparities between rich and poor are growing. War and fighting are too often the first line of solution to problems.

The world, too often, seems to be turning a blind eye to genocide -- most recently, in Darfur in the Sudan. Is there a role for women's leadership addressing what seem like intractable problems? Well, we at the National Council for Research on Women think -- yes.

In fact, we think it's crucial for women to weigh in on these seemingly-intractable issues and to show the power of women's leadership, visions and activism. As retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Claudia Kennedy said -- women don't just see things differently, they see different things.

With us today, to discuss this premise are three extraordinary women -- all who are passionate about women's issues and all who have taken bold steps to translate their visions into action.

I do have some unfortunate news to convey, but I also have some good news. But first, the introductions.

Noeleen Heyzer is the first Executive Director of UNIFEM to head the United Nations Development Fund for Women from the global South. A noted social scientist from Singapore, Noeleen and UNIFEM increasingly seem ubiquitously present at the world's trouble spots. They are there for women in conflict situations, in situations of natural disasters. They are bringing women's visions and perspectives to the scene.

Jehmu Greene is actually very important and very impressive, and she is someone whose career we all need to pay attention to. She told me she feels that she's aged out at 32, but I said we still have a little space for her.

She is President of Rock the Vote. She not only helped turn out a record number of young voters in 2004, but she continues to mobilize their passion and power, so that young people continue to want to have a voice. She was also co-founder of the 2030 Center, an economic and public policy organization for young adults.

Now, for the unfortunate news. Teresa Heinz, who I know so many of you were looking forward to hearing today, cannot be with us, physically. Unhappily, she injured her back. But she is here in spirit and we have her chief of staff, Jeff Lewis, sitting in the back, who is here to represent her. And also Laura Schwartz, a member of her staff. So thank you, and we hope you will convey our good wishes to Teresa and say we look forward to hosting her again soon.

However, we also have another speaker with us today, and this is the good news -- we have Julianne Malveaux sitting here on the end.

Julianne is a noted economist, commentator and journalist. I'm sure that many of you have heard her speak on radio, on television, have read her books or her columns. She shares the Council's passion for pairing advocacy and research. She's been a guest speaker at our conferences very often, where she always brings critical issues to the front and center of agendas.

Her work appears regularly in USA Today, Black Issues in Higher Education, MS Magazine, Essence Magazine and others. I Just want to return to Noeleen for a minute because Noeleen finds herself working in very difficult situations. Not only the trouble spots of the world, but she is the one who is bringing women's voices and perspectives to the top of U.N. agendas.

And knowing that organization, we know that's not easy. So, Noeleen, a hand for you as well.

We realize how difficult it is at this moment, with the Commission on the Status of Women meetings going on, that you have joined us. So thank you very much. We are very appreciative.

Jehmu, Julianne and Noeleen -- each of you has had very special experiences and accomplishments to your credit. And as you talk today, we hope that you will also perhaps bring us into a little bit, what are some of the motivating personal experiences or significant moments of your lives that might have been a catalyst for some of the issues that you're taking on.

Because as feminists, these are issues that do concern us, motivates us, and keeps us going. We would like to begin the conversation with an issue that's been very much on the minds of us at the National Council for Research on Women, and that's economic security.

What do we mean by -- economic security? Well, essentially, economic security, as we begin to look at it, means that women's lives are quite different from men's. And the economy affects women differently than it affects men. We live longer. We usually get paid less than men. We have more interrupted career paths. We have more part-time jobs, short-term employment.

And we have primary responsibilities as caretakers -- for young ones, for our children, our families, our communities, elders. Also, we know that economic security means different things in different parts of the world.

To begin our questions on this topic -- Julianne, as an economist and author, you have written quite a bit about this. And you've been very concerned about economic issues for women, particularly since 9/11. What do you think are the most pressing issues that women need to be thinking about in terms of their economic security? And what are you hearing from women, whom you are interviewing?

Julianne Malveaux: I am the oldest daughter of a single mom, who was divorced when I was six. I have four siblings. My mom has now a Ph.D., but at the time she had a Masters Degree and she worked at the post office.

My friends who know me well know that I get up before day in the morning. That came from the fact that my mom had a 6 A.M. to 2 P.M. shift, so she could be home when we came home from school, which meant that I had to lock the door. I had to get up to lock the door.

It also encouraged my snooping . . . because I was up and nobody else was up. I could look through everything. I probably knew more than I needed to know about most things that affected our family.

But what I saw was my mom working very hard, not getting paid very well. She actually was on public assistance for six months when my parents first divorced, and insisted on paying the city and county of San Francisco back -- the money that we received on public assistance. Because she said -- I am not a welfare woman.

But as a social worker, which she eventually became, she would bring people home and she insisted that people had the right to a safety net. She just felt that she didn't like the way you are treated as a welfare woman.

So, issues of economic justice -- just coming from there -- were very central to me. The other thing I would personally share is that in the room that I write in, I keep a picture of my great grandmother. Addie Hawkins was a maid. And I always tell people -- she scrubbed floors so that I would not have to.

She was a maid who worked in Des Moines, Iowa for a white family and eventually owned a laundry and, it was like a little concession shop in Biloxi, Mississippi. So again, the issues of women's entrepreneurship sit very squarely there.

And then, I am a third-generation or fourth-generation college graduate in our family -- which is unusual, often, for African-American families. So education is a core value for us.

I don't think my family is atypical, but it may not be typical either. But I think that when you have a single mom and she raises four daughters, she raised us to be self-sufficient women. She always said -- you've got to have something to fall back on.

She was utterly disappointed that her marriage didn't work and she wanted her daughters not to be in a position to have to rely on someone else. And I think that when we look at many women, what we have to look at is the issue of women having something to fall back on.

But we also have to look at the valuation of women's work that is not remunerative work. We value other things that are non-remunerative but we don't value child care, child rearing and the other things. In fact, it's amazing to me that the child care job is one of the least well-paid jobs in the spectrum.

We pay people more money to wash cars than we pay them to take care of kids. We say that we believe that children are the future, but you would never believe that when you saw what people are paid. We have people taking care of our children who are on public assistance or food stamps because they don't make enough money.

We have people taking care of our seniors, who are making something near the minimum wage. In fact, my mom and I have a very bad joke that we go back and forth . . . my mother is extremely intrusive. Even though I am 51 years old, she still holds out the notion that one day my prince will come.

I mean, if she finds any reasonable-looking black man, she will send him to my house. I said -- you know, you need to cool that out. So one day she did this, actually. She called me and she said -- Julianne, what are you doing? I said -- I'm writing.

She said -- well, this man is going to ring your doorbell and he's very nice, and give him a glass of wine and get to know him.

I said -- you have lost your mind.

And so, sure enough, this man rings . . . and he was very good looking, but he was wearing white socks. Now, for the sisters in the house -- would you go out with a black man wearing white socks? No. Even if you have rashes on your feet, you don't go out with a brother wearing white socks.

So I went upstairs and I said to my mother -- you have really lost it this time. I'm going to send you to an old folks home. She said to me -- well, if you send me to one, don't send me to one where people are paid the minimum wage.

And I said -- what is your problem with it?

She said -- well, you've written about the minimum wage and you know what happens to minimum wage.

I said -- I'm sending you someplace where you cannot interfere in my personal life. And I said -- if it's a minimum wage place, then that's what you have to put up with.

She said -- well, Julianne Malveaux, if you earned the minimum wage, what would you have?

I said -- an attitude.

She says -- well, I don't want sisters with attitudes trying to move me from the bedpan to the bed.

We pay people so little that they've got to have attitudes, whether they're taking care of our seniors, they're taking care of our children. They're doing that kind of thing.

So when we talk about economic security, we have to talk about, first of all, the ability to earn a living. But secondly, the ability to have our work that is socially and societally valuable. To be valued in some way.

Thirdly -- we have to make sure that in our old age, women are properly taken care of. Today, more than 50 percent of African-American women rely solely on Social Security for their old age. 80 percent of them have 90 percent of their post-age 65 income coming from Social Security.

So the attack on Social Security, frankly, is an attack on older women's economic security. And then we can't believe this hype. I'm always confused when people who never cared about black people before -- suddenly do.

Like the Heritage Foundation. They are telling African Americans -- it's a good deal for you to get the private accounts because black men have a lower life expectancy. I tell women -- look, if you can get the brother to 30, you can get him to 80.

In other words, the reason why black men have low life expectancy is because of youth-related stuff. Shooting, car accidents. Past 30, life expectancy goes up. But in any case, this is the hype that's being put out there, and some people are buying it.

Social Security is very important to economic security. But so are a whole bunch of other things, Linda. We've not raised the minimum wage now in nine years. Everybody else has gotten their raise. Corporate CEO's got a 42 percent bonus raise last year -- 42 percent, on average.

But we still have a minimum wage that's $5.15 an hour. Who earns the minimum wage? Women. 80 percent of minimum wage earners are women. Half of them are women of color. Half of the women who earn the minimum age are supporting children. So people are supporting children at $10,600 a year.

And the same $10,600 a year, they were getting eight years ago. So, that's a big piece of it. Affordable housing -- we've done nothing with housing in a very long time. And our cities are now, this President would like to cut urban development block grants which essentially go to cities, to help them support affordable housing.

Economic security is about people's ability to thrive in an economy -- not just survive, but to thrive. The opportunity, basically -- to support themselves, the notion that there is something to fall back on.

But also, the notion that everything is not pecuniary. And that means that everything is not connected to money. That if you are doing something that's valuable in our society -- valuable because you're working in a library, valuable because you are doing volunteer work, valuable because you are raising children. That there is a way for you to survive; that somehow, the market recognizes that.

And as we move towards a so-called ownership society, which is what Mr. Bush claims he wants, the question first of all is --how does it feel to be disowned in an ownership society? Because a whole lot of people are going to be disowned.

But the second question is -- if you only look at ownership, how do you look at the rest of the society?

Linda Basch: Julianne, thank you very much. You've laid out some issues around economic security in this country. And you've also emphasized a safety net, which is very important. You talked about minimum wage, Social Security, issues of retirement. All issues that we need to be thinking about.

Jehmu, I'd like to turn to you now, because you've been traversing the country and talking with younger people. Are some of the issues that Julianne has just identified important to young people? Do they think about these issues? And are these issues that could galvanize them in any way into activism?

Jehmu Greene: Absolutely. I think that what is so encouraging about what young people did in the 2004 election is the fact that 70 percent of Rock the Vote's street teams, the majority of the people that we registered to vote, the majority of our activists on our website -- were young women, across the board.

And we saw their leadership come out in so many ways. When it comes to looking at issues of economic security, when I think you look at issues of economic justice -- that's where this generation is really concerned. And we are currently engaged in a Social Security fight. I'm so encouraged to see young women across the country sitting down with members of Congress, participating in the Social Security town halls.

What we are hearing is, if you're over 50, the fact that we are trying to institute private accounts, is not going to affect you. If you are under 50, this is the best thing in the world. You get to invest your own money; you get to cut benefits. You get to increase the national debt by trillions of dollars.

Those other two points are not what they are actually putting out there. But young women are really taking a leadership role in -- one, organizing their peers. Making sure that they are registered to vote. Making sure that they understand the issues.

And they are also taking a leadership role in being spokespeople, in being out there and saying -- we are not going to allow other people to speak for our generation. I actually had a chance to look at a poll that we did of 115,000 people that Rock the Vote registered to vote this morning.

I found myself chuckling because one of the points that came out in that poll is that women were much more likely than men to cast their ballot based on issues. And men were not likely to cast their ballot based on issues. I'm not sure what they were voting on, but you would think that it's issues about health care and Social Security and the possibility of a military draft; and the issues that affect these young people on a daily basis.

We saw young women actually casting a vote based on where the candidate stood on those issues, and young men doing it in a different way. And again, I'd be very interested to see what it was they were voting on.

I'm very encouraged that this generation is more engaged. They are more interested in participating, not just at the organizing level, but in a leadership position. And I think we have to credit the great work that the White House Project has been doing to engage young women around the country. We were very lucky to get to partner with them.

And I think that, again, if we can highlight the roles that young women are playing in those leadership positions across the country, they will really be the ones who carry this generation into the political process; and carry, hopefully, this generation into being successful in the fight against privatizing Social Security. And in making sure that young people have more health care access, to education and such.

Linda Basch: Jehmu, thank you. And thank you for mentioning the White House Project -- one of the member centers of the National Council for Research on Women. And what you say is very heartening for us, actually.

Noeleen, you have been working on these issues for a very long time, since before you even came to UNIFEM. I know that economic security has been uppermost on your radar screen. We'd like to hear from you, from a more global perspective, about the kinds of economic issues that you think are critical to women.

But I just want to say -- when President Bush's budget recently came out, I thought of you and UNIFEM, because you have done so much to talk about the importance of gender budgets. I'm not sure that in this country, women see the relevance of the budget to what we do.

So perhaps in your remarks, you might also say something based on your work in the global South, about how the budget process and economics are quite important for women to be aware of, and to be involved with.

Noeleen Heyzer: Let me start also by bringing some of the personal issues on board. And I grew up in a time when countries were trying to free themselves from colonialism.

And it's not by chance that countries fought so hard and so many people sacrificed their lives to bring countries out of colonialism. I grew up in a community that was extremely poor because it was a community that was made up of bonded labor, basically, that was then sent to the rest of Southeast Asia to man the plantations, the industries, the quarries and so on.

And what I saw when I was growing up, was the fact that people lived with so much dignity. They worked so hard and they were hardly paid. And they were able to find common solutions by creating communal networks to bury -- funeral mutual aid societies.

Not very different. In fact, after I came to New York, I realized that in fact, some of the things that I saw, that the first wave of migrants that came to this country did exactly that. And what struck me, I watched my grandmother; she was the one who brought me up because my mother never lived to be more than 26, precisely because of the difficult situations that people lived in.

But she had to put her daughters and her son in orphanages so that she could work. And I asked myself, growing up -- what kind of a world is this? That people who are so honest, who work so hard, who create so much -- are paid so little?

In other words, poverty is not a static condition that people are trying to get out of. It is created. And it is created through greed. It is created through the way in which wealth is inadequately generated. I think we need to put together and understand the processes of impoverishment, as well as the processes of wealth generation, and link them up together.

Because there is no reason why, in the 21st century, that we cannot, once and for all, close the wage gap between men and women everywhere, where companies work.

There is no reason, in the 21st century, why anyone should be working in sweat shop conditions and have the kind of child labor that I see everywhere I go. There is no reason why people can work so hard in the plantations, in the cash crop sector and then find that they can't get adequate pricing for their commodities, and the whole agriculture collapses.

Therefore, we cannot look at these issues without looking at what I call economic justice in the international system. And how countries are placed in that international economic order, and why countries fight themselves out and they try to renegotiate, be it for the trade regime, be it for better codes of conduct for the multinational companies, be it greater safety for home-based workers.

And even protection for migrant workers. I have worked so much with migrant workers because I feel that nobody else really is trying to make, or amplify their voices and their lives and their issues. And it's very sad to see so many young women at the age of 15, 16 and many of them with young children -- leaving their families to work in somebody else's home, so that they are able to support a whole network of extended families and their children.

Now, what kind of a world is this? When at the time of human history, we have the highest wealth; this world is at its richest materially. But we have not looked at the distribution, at the way we distribute within our national borders, but also, internationally across borders.

Therefore, the issue of economic inequalities and the systems that perpetuate that have got to be examined. The issue of the fact that, increasingly there is solidarity -- and I'm really happy with that. There is solidarity that realizes that we only have one world, or else we have no world.

And therefore, the way we have to survive would be to really look at how we bridge and close the inequalities gaps -- be it through the trade regime, be in terms of how we basically protect the rights of migrant workers. But also increasingly, I want to say that if we don't get our economics right, something else is going to happen.

People are giving up trying to work the way they have been working. Nobody is going to work the way these bonded labor of my youth were working. What they are going to do is to turn to crime, and they're going to turn to organized crime as the alternative.

And therefore, you are going to see more and more, increased violence in our world. Because if there is no stake for the common future, then you are going to see people wanting to also get rich quickly, not through work, but through crime. But equally, you are going to have what we are seeing today.

If people find it so hard to create a future for themselves and for their families, then they will put more value in dying than in living. And you will see, the people willing to become suicide bombers very easily. I think we have to make these linkages and really realize what is not just happening in our country, but what is happening in the world.

Because no where else, we are living at a time that's both good and bad, where the local and the global are so intertwined, that you can no longer disengage our lives without knowing what else is happening elsewhere.

You did ask me about the budget process and yes, we have worked tremendously because what is important to me is how we invest our wealth. How we invest our budgets, right? Because that's a part which we can channel.

And it's extremely important that we not only follow the money, but we make the money work. And we make the money work for people on the ground, in the realities in which they are living in. And so, we at UNIFEM, the women's fund of the United Nations, have followed the money and make sure it works.

Not just with such a degree with government budgets and ministers of finance and so on. But equally important is o to make budgets work at a local level. In the U.S., I think that many people have got it because I gave a talk in Chicago two years back.

And Jane Adams asked was a very important question. She said -- what kind of a world are we living in, when the military budget is so high and women have to raise their budgets through bake sales?

Can you imagine if we reversed that? And today, I think this is exactly what we need to do. We need to see where our wealth is going and we need to get out of the culture of fear. Because we invest in the weapons that are really weapons of mass destruction and we have used so much of our wealth over time from the time of the Cold War to now.

And now we are tracking them. We have created weapons and weapons of destruction. Why can't we support what it takes to support life in the true sense of the world? Really be for life, in the true sense of the term? And invest our wealth for life. Make sure we support our communities.

Make sure we support our schools. So we train women everywhere, when they enter the village council, where they enter parliament, to ask where the money is going and how the money is working. We want to see the schools. We want to see the communities. We want to see the health care. We want to see child care. We want to see care for the aging.

But that's where we need to put our money. And we can no longer accept the fact that in today's world, there are $870 billion spent on the military. That is not economic security. That is, in fact, a culture of insecurity. But let me stop there.

Julianne Malveaux: If the military had to raise their money on cake, the cake would taste very bad. Nobody would buy it. One of the things that Noeleen said that really moved me is when Bill Clinton spoke to Rainbow Push about a year ago, about the AIDS crisis in the African continent, and what kinds of consequences it would have for the AIDS crisis.

And the comments you made about people putting more value on death than on life really shows up there. In Lesotho, life expectancy is 37. In Zimbabwe, the life expectancy is 42. The probability of getting AIDS is something like 50 percent.

So here is a story that former President Clinton ran out, which I thought was fascinating. He said -- imagine someone who at 25, knows he has AIDS, and imagine that the legacy he can leave his family is $10,000. Why not be a suicide bomber? So literally, you have that going on.

And I'm not suggesting that anybody try that, but it's just clear that what Cornell West described about a decade ago, happening in African-American communities around nihilism, is happening at some level now, on the African continent and in other places, where 46 percent of the world's population survives on less than two dollars a day.

That literally means that wealth is not being shared. One other very brief caveat -- there is a piece of legislation that's working its way through the Senate now. It's the new Bankruptcy Act.

And I would encourage people to talk to their senators about not voting for that legislation. It's being put out there as a piece of so-called fiscal responsibility. The notion is that all these people who are irresponsible are just charging up their credit cards and going bankrupt.

The average bankrupt is a woman who is about 27 or 28 years old. She earns less than $30,000. She has two children, and she's likely to have used her credit card for health care. So, they are treating millionaires and poor women the same way. But the average bankruptcy, if you ran the data, is a young woman with children who doesn't have health care.

And when she goes to the hospital, it shouldn't turn her away. If she has a credit card, she will give it because you will give anything to get your child treated, if there is an emergency.

Linda Basch: We frequently talk about the presence of the global South in the global North, and the global North in the global South. And I do think, increasingly, we need to talk about this one world that we are living in, and the economic disparities and misallocations. And maybe this is something we will come back to.

Particularly in terms of the impact of some of what Noeleen and Julianne have been talking about, on the attitudes of young people. And the extent to which they see these as issues.

But I'd like now to look a little bit more directly at the world stage, and the potential for global women's activism -- which again, is something we've all been thinking about and talking about. Over the past three decades, women's activism in the United States, in the international community, has been huge -- the women's movements.

And just this week, women from around the world are converging in New York to assess the gains and continuing challenges around the Beijing Conference that took place ten years ago. How many people in the audience are here to attend that, or will be attending those meetings this week?

Some of you will be doing that. Well, I'd like to talk a little bit about where the connections are. And Noeleen, from your perspective, where are the links? What kinds of partnerships would women, particularly in the global South, like to see with women in the global North?

I know we have many activists who are part of international organizations that are working on issues of human rights. But they seem to be somewhat segmented. How do we get more women in this country concerned with these larger global issues?

Noeleen Heyzer: Let me start with colonialism. And I must say, that it was actually feminism that eventually changed me. And that started because I had friends from the North and that really made it . . . because at that stage, none of us had this, there were obviously people who were in political movements, and so on, in our countries.

But in a sense, there was not an international movement that put feminism up front. And it was a solidarity of both the North and the South, that did an analysis, not just from the positioning of countries in the international, economic system.

But this analysis went a lot further, by looking at women's lives across the globe, and across generations. And I thought that was so important. So what did the structures of inequality, power and powerlessness do to women's lives across? But also, in relationship to what they were doing to families and to men in various situations, as well?

And I found that extremely useful. So many of the friendships that I have created started from the '70s, based on this partnership, what I call solidarity in sisterhood. And there were differences. It's not like we all loved one another all the time -- that we all decided that at the end of the day, it was extremely important for us to create spaces so that each one could have a voice.

I think that what the women's movement did for me, was very good development practice. Because what it did was it recognized diversity of voice. It recognized diversity of experiences, of strategies that people could use. But it also put people in the driving seat.

In other words, you could shape, you become the change that you want to be and you can start from wherever you are. And I think that's so extremely empowering. In fact, the whole concept of empowerment started from there.

Now, today, what I see is that there is, unfortunately, almost like we're at a kind of a crossroads. But there is also a culture of fear that has come in. And what I see are fragmentations, so that together with globalization there are all kinds of different fragmentations.

And the whole idea of solidarity is not the same as I used to experience it. And this is extremely important because now, whilst we do have a movement, it is extremely important that we work in a local context.

And I'm looking at what is happening in the U.S. The U.S., whether you like it or not, is a superpower. It's an extremely important power. So whether you want to engage with that power or not, that power is having an impact on the world today.

And so, it is extremely important that the women's movement in this country addresses some of the issues there, so that the impact of the U.S. will be very positive, rather than to weaken many of the gains that have been made through the solidarity movements.

And I say this because, when did the Iraq War start? Two years ago? At the time when there was the debate in the Security Council, to whether to go to war or not. There was terrible weakening of the multilateral system. And the main reason was because the rule of law, in a way, was being threatened.

And I decided that there was so much criticism and there was so much depression that was going on in the U.N. system at that time. And I decided that maybe what we should do, is to show how we want the U.S. to be in a multilateral system. And I could not think of a better person and the role of the U.S. as a power, at the time of Eleanor Roosevelt.

I decided that what we could do was to really have an event to showcase her leadership and what it meant for U.S. leadership in a multilateral system. Because we would not have a declaration on human rights, that everybody talks about now, if it wasn't because of her.

And if she didn't push that. And therefore, the U.S. needs to realize that, whether you like it or not, you are a superpower. But at the same time, you can be a different kind of a superpower, using the multilateral system, to help to create more good and more rights in the world than wrongs.

Linda Basch: Julianne, given what Noeleen has said and given what many of us think and feel about the role of the U.S. in the world today -- what do you think U.S. women can do? What kinds of bridges? Where do you see the connections?

Julianne Malveaux: Well, I think Noeleen has stated it very, very powerfully. There are lots of connections, as she said, we are the 700-pound gorilla and basically the gorilla needs training. And who trains people better than women?

But we need to model all kinds of things around what our country should be doing. The stuff we tell our kids is what we should be telling our country. Be fair. Share. It's not all about you.

How many people haven't told that to their third grader? Well, someone needs to tell that to our country. We behave as if it's all about us. And I think that it's had a major deleterious effect.

Our cultural hegemony . . . when you go to Nigeria or to Ghana and Coca-Cola is there. And there's nothing wrong with Coca-Cola. But the way that our culture seeps itself into other places, without any kinds of restraints I think, is troubling.

But here is what is also troubling. When we look at women's empowerment over a continuum, I think about the fact that the International Women's Day was celebrated, first in 1903. Sweden lifted it up in 1911 and I believe that there was a celebration on March 18.

A week later, over 100 women, mostly immigrant Jewish and Italian women, died in the Triangle fire here in New York. Fast forward 80 years, and in North Carolina, 25 women -- mostly African-American -- died in a fire in a chicken manufacturing plant in 1988, I believe.

Now we see the same kinds of dangerous manufacturing conditions around the globe. I'm not aware of any large fires, but I am aware of conditions and differentials where our sisters in other parts of the country are manufacturing.

Well, what we've got to get past in this country, is a disproportion amount of privilege that we have. And the fact that our privilege is sitting on a foundation of other women's oppressions. In other words, when we feel like we have to buy this Wal-Mart model, which is very interesting.

Because on the one hand, they are pushing it as working class women need Wal-Mart. No -- working class women need to get paid. No one needs Wal-Mart. But the stuff that we buy, at some level, is connected to the oppression that people around the world are experiencing.

And I feel always very uncertain, Linda, when I talk about this. I think Mariam Chamberlain is here, she was at the same meeting when we were over in Norway. And we were talking about manufacturing in India and how little women were being paid.

And I remember the woman who got up and said -- how dare you women criticize this when this is giving us even a dollar a day, is more than we were earning? When AGOA -- the African Growth and Opportunity Act -- was being debated, I moderated a discussion with the African ambassadors and Edith Sympala from Uganda said the same thing to me.

She said -- we are happy to get those jobs from The Gap, even if they pay no money; because they pay more than we were getting.

But the fact is that we should be the ones who are advocates for our sisters, in other parts of the globe -- advocates for them to have reasonable working conditions and fair pay. Too often, unfortunately, we put ourselves in a competitive position, if I can borrow your term -- it would be that culture of fear.

So as opposed to looking at, for example, what's happening in India. They are producing more technical college graduates than we are right now. So poor Larry Summers, if I might just have an aside. I figure that that man loves the taste of shoe leather because his foot is so frequently placed in his mouth.

But it's kind of interesting -- he says that men's brains and women's brains work in different ways. Some brains don't work at all. Yo, Larry.

But you don't see this same gender gap in science and technology in India, that you are seeing here in the United States. So you have to wonder about that. It's really quite fascinating. As opposed to us being competitive with sisters and brothers in India, we have to ask why our country has so divested in education, that a country we don't consider our equivalent is producing more science and technology graduates now than we are.

So the things that I think U.S. women can do is basically raise issues around those things that we have in common. Raise issues around issues especially of pay. From a global perspective, women are being exploited everywhere. We earn 72 cents on the dollar, or 75, depending on whose data we use.

But in the developing world you have something that's far more harrowing, where women are actually earning, in some cases certainly you have manufacturing on the African continent -- women may be earning more than men do, but they are also taking care of everything in the family. And they have so few rights.

The AIDS crisis, of course, has exacerbated this because when women's spouses die because inheritance comes through the male families, when a woman's spouse dies, the dead man's brother comes and gets all the stuff. There is a more eloquent way of putting that, but -- the dead man's brother comes and takes all the stuff.

Linda Basch: And we've seen many of those photos in the media, television.

Julianne Malveaux: We have the obligation, it really is the obligation to be a conscience for our country. And I think that in the past, Eleanor Roosevelt is a great example. Dr. Dorothy Irene Height, is another -- of the National Council of Negro Women, who has always raised the issue of how we are connected.

But we have the obligation to be the conscience for our country. We can't just rely on our women elected officials. I think that we often feel like if Hillary Clinton raises it or whomever the elected official that you're closest to -- Barbara Lee raises it. And we love them, but the pressure on them is enormous.

We have to go to the men who represent us, as well, and make sure that they understand that we care not just about living conditions in the United States, but about living conditions around the world.

Linda Basch: Thanks so much, Julianne. Jehmu, tell us a little bit about young people now, and whether they share some of the ideas or thoughts that Julianne just talked about, or Noeleen talked about. You, yourself, have a very interesting background. Your family is from Liberia and left during very trying times. Are these issues that young people care about? And is there a way that they can be mobilized around these issues?

Jehmu Greene: I definitely would start by saying that I think that they already are mobilized around these issues. When you look at how engaged young women are, when it comes to economic justice. When it comes to looking at whether The Gap is providing the right type of payment to their workers around the country.

When it comes to sweat shops, when it comes to all of those issues, young women are already in those leadership positions. I think when you look at the 2004 election, there was a separation from where young women cast their ballots, and where potentially older women were.

There definitely were a large number of older women -- and I don't exactly know what that encompasses -- who voted out of fear, who voted to feel more secure. And I don't think that young women cast their ballots in that same way. But within the women's movement there is a real opportunity and I think an obligation that we have to continue that conversation and connect those dots.

That poverty is the worst type of violence and the more impoverished people are around the world, the more violence that is going to be brought onto this country. And using that same message that motivated them to vote in the name of security or vote out of fear, using those same messages -- whether it's an election year or not -- this is what is incumbent upon the women's community to learn from the young women who probably, I think, already see that and understand it.

And if we can have more young women teaching our older counterparts and connecting those dots, then I really think that they are in those positions. We just have to connect the dots and make sure that the women's movement is doing that as well.

Linda Basch: We've just taken some questions from the audience here, and Jehmu, I'd like to continue with you because one of the questions does focus on just what you are talking about. You said that young women vote on the issues. Can you tell us a little bit more about what issues were important to them? And have you noticed any differences along race, ethnic divides, along generational divides -- even amongst younger votes?

Jehmu Greene: I think that young people are under a lot of attack on a number of issues, whether it's looking at the fact that they graduate with $30,000 in debt. That the majority of young people coming out of school are having to move back in with their parents -- which is not that American dream that has been put down for so many years.

When you look at the young people fighting and dying on the front lines in Iraq. In so many ways, all of these issues was what created the record turnout we saw with young people. For the first time, it wasn't about trying to prove that this election is going to have an impact on you.

They were coming under attack -- whether it's the debt they're coming out of school with, the fact that they're twice as likely not to have health insurance, and feeling that in really, really strong ways. Whether it's the fact, again, that they are having to move back in with their parents.

All of these issues were front and center and not something that we had to beat them over the head with. It was very clear -- this is the most critical election that they could cast a ballot in. And they turned out in those record numbers. I think, when you look at 50 percent of young people turning out, that means only half of the young women in this room would have voted; and the other half didn't.

But we definitely still have a long ways to go, but it was really encouraging that the issues were front and center already for them.

Julianne Malveaux: You know what, Linda, it's important for us to understand what Jehmu and the other young people did because in the wake of the election, people like Bill O'Reilly said that the young vote didn't turn out. But they did. They turned out not only in historic numbers, but literally, young people were the only group of people who voted overwhelmingly for Kerry.

After you got past age 29, the vote started tipping Bush. So that is the divide there. Is that young people didn't like the war at all, by and large. They didn't like the fact that, they didn't bond with the values conversation that so many older people bonded with.

This whole notion of gay marriage and abortion being the key issues. Al Sharpton was the candidate that young people overwhelmingly, regardless of race, supported. While other people had . . . and I wouldn't follow Al to the corner, I promise you.

But that perhaps is age, it's perhaps pragmatism. I'm a Jesse girl and I remember that Jesse not only ran for office, but put footprints behind his running. So we are still reaping the benefit.

Sharpton didn't create anybody but himself, and that I've got issues with. But I think your point about young people supporting him was an important point.

The other issue, Linda, when you raise race is that -- African-American women are the Democratic Party's most reliable voters. We voted for Kerry at about 89 percent. Nobody else, no other group . . . white women voted for Bush by about a margin of three or four percent.

Latino women voted for Kerry, but by a much smaller margin. Men, of course, voted for Bush. I don't know what it is about men. You all got to talk to them.

But African-American women, and younger African-American women as well as. I worked every weekend for Kerry between Labor Day and the Election. And when you talk to people, race comes up a lot for African Americans. The Democratic Party did not get the vote that it should have gotten from African Americans, although it got the percentages, because this whole base state, swing state strategy writes off 12 states.

It writes off the whole South. You cannot tell folks that we're writing off the South and expect that we, who all have relatives in the South. Young people, I think, got it in ways that people who are over 29 didn't get it, aggregately.

And it's just something really important to know. You all did a good job and no one should ever make young people feel that they didn't do a good job in this election.

When Sean Combs said "Vote or die," people ridiculed that. But really, he meant, to me I interpreted it as if -- if you don't vote, our democracy will die. If we don't all participate, democracy dies.

Jehmu Greene: If I could just add, why they got it is because this is the most diverse generation that this country has ever seen. When you look at the issue of gay marriage, we have been in some struggles within the progressive community, really wanting to put this issue front and center, to drive young people to get involved.

Because this is an issue where young people will say -- this is none of our business; there does not need to be a constitutional amendment, there does not need to be these different ballot initiatives across the country. And there is that disconnect with older Americans who, when there is a ballot initiative, they turn out and it causes them to vote in certain ways.

But it's because this is the most diverse generation, it's because they are absolutely more tolerant and have grown up with people who are different than them and have different backgrounds and come from different races and ethnicities. And that's encouraging. The future is bright.

Linda Basch: That's a great point that you just made, Jehmu. That's really very interesting -- the diversity amongst young people. I think the challenge for many of us is how to keep supporting that kind of enthusiasm amongst young people, and to create spaces for them.

But I'm going to posit one of the questions that came forth because it's a question, I think, for you, Noeleen. And it's a question that we might all weigh in on.

I'm going to read it and then I'll paraphrase it too. But it's -- given the troubled history of the global women's movement, with racism, national inequalities, dominance of English . . . I suppose the English language, as well as English individuals or western perhaps . . . what key political, cultural and ethical principles should guide the women's movement in the future?

What does it mean for feminism in the present context of global inequalities? -- I suspect, is what the person was asking.

Noeleen Heyzer: A very interesting question. I do think that we need to think about movement in a very different way. In other words, it doesn't have to be identifiable, bounded movement. I think that what we need to understand is that there are people who are moving in the same direction.

And for me, that is really important. In other words, the feminist movement really is based on people who realize that the equality and the rights of women are very central to the solution of many of the problems that we see in the world today.

Having that as the direction and trying to protect the gains in the world that we have made on that front, and then trying to accelerate many of the changes so that we can assist with that movement -- doesn't mean that we all have to be in one happy family to see each other on a regular basis.

We can make this happen where we are, using our local languages, using local realities, working in our ethnic groups. At the same time, from whatever little local spaces we work from, we also know that we have global solidarity and therefore, it is really asking us to go beyond bounded entities to know that we can belong in small groups.

But we can also belong largely with our diversity. I think that this in fact has been one of the lessons for me, anyway, of what the women's practice is -- in the sense that there is diversity of voice. Women are the most diverse group. Diversity of class.

But each one, I think at one stage we were so antagonistic, differences meant the other. Rather than differences means that we have wider range of experience to draw from.

We are able to move to common agendas. That basically is really important -- common agendas for change. And common strategies sometimes. But what I want to say is that there is now, because the world is so complex, a push to move beyond just the women's movement.

I think we have to go to people's movement. Because there are all kinds of people's movements, including village movements. Movements of the elderly. Movement of women who are home, health caretakers. Moving for a particular kind of change. And we can do that, now, mainly because technologically it is possible to move across borders.

We have an information technology that can link us. Like someone was saying that it was very interesting that a number of old village women were engaged in a discussion on what is happening to the commodity prices; or with the issue of intellectual property rights; and because it was cast in a way that they can understand.

So I think that that is really important. How do they see these big issues affect their lives, and what is it they can do about it? And it's not that hard to do things. If we think of these issues as huge problems, nobody is going to act because we all feel so terribly helpless.

I think we need to break it down into doable pieces. It's not even the sharing of wealth because I think we can create a more economically secure and just place. If, for example, we are conscious about what it is we buy.

If we just become conscious of how we buy and make a political statement by saying that we are not going to wear clothes that are created from sweatshops, we make it a deal. And eventually the market will change and eventually that becomes power.

In the same way, if we are shareholders of companies or hold shares in certain things, we can actually have investment and can also make sure that companies from our countries, when they set up other companies, do not engage in differential wage incomes.

We are not asking you even to share what you have. It's asking to live in a slightly different way, in a way which is normal, but just make different choices.

And finally, I just want to say that what is extremely important to me is the media in this country. I was so shocked, when I came to the United States. I was so shocked that I could not get information about other parts of the world.

Linda Basch: Julianne, we're looking forward to you disrupting this pattern for us.

Noeleen Heyzer: No, because in many other countries, because their future depends on getting the right information, the media engages and you can actually get good information. And one very good example, even CNN, the international CNN is very different from the national CNN. There is no reason why it should be so.

And on the surface, it looks like you have democracy, on the surface, because you are thinking of so many media channels. And people can make choices. But when you turn from one channel after another, I have 79 channels to play around with -- they give the same kind of information. It's shocking. In other words, there's a monopoly somewhere and you need to deal with media monopoly, and to get away from understanding or pretending that if we don't crack that, you're going to get the same information, but disguised; and the facade that there is real choice.

So I would say that we are living in a world full of possibilities because there is information that is trading around the world. It's full of possibilities because people can connect in different ways, using new information technology. At the same time, I think there is also fragmentation happening -- that we should not be frightened of fragmentation.

Because in a sense, it allows people to be localized. But the most important thing is that that localization should not be the "us and the them." We have to try to create solidarity out of small spaces and globalization, so that the local and the global become more intertwined. Thank you, Linda.

Julianne Malveaux: Linda, I work with a group of African-American leaders and one of the things that we've been doing is the Black Leadership Retreat that's led by a women, Barbara Williams Skinner, who is kind of a Christian leader and Evangelical at some level.

But we've been working on an ethic, a notion of looking at the world as we would like to see it. And one of the terms that we use is something called -- an ethic of sharing. And many of us incorporate it into our work. In the piece that I did in my book, The Paradox of Loyalty, I talked about shared status as a global imperative.

And I just want to throw the concept of shared status out because I think that if women are willing to infuse that in the women's movement, then we have a very different kind of a women's movement. Shared status means that we are all equal. It means that a life is a life is a life.

It means that you don't, in The New York Times, run these pictures of the victims of the World Trade Center without also running pictures of the victims of people who have died in a drive-by shooting, or of AIDS. You don't know these people's names.

You've learned all this stuff about the World Trade Center. And I'm sorry those people died, and I honor their memories. But we learned all kind of trivia about them to try to make them come to life. I'd like to see us make the life of every person who died because of any tragedy come to life.

We had embassies bombed two years before -- we don't know those people's names. The people who we learned about, we learned about because they hustled for it. And you know that when you go to international conferences, many of us don't want to listen to the translation. You can see the impatience dripping off western women's faces when they translate. And you're sitting there and you have to wait another 20 minutes.

Well, hey, they had to wait for us forever. And so, if you have to wait 20 minutes, wait 20 minutes. That's how it is. We all have the notion and the ideology that we think, everyone mouths equality, but do we really mean it? Indeed, I'm thinking of this new book that has totally irritated me.

I call it the most recent chapter in the Whining White Women's Literature. This book called Perfect Mommy or perfect something. Perfect Baby, Perfect Mommy. Perfect something. Perfect Madness -- that's what the book is called. And these very privileged women -- I mean, they're all college graduates -- are complaining about how they can't raise perfect children.

And this has gotten a week, a full week on the "Today" show where Katie Couric interviewed the author; then she found some other women to interview. I even knew one of them. They even found a black women, who is a Vice President at Trans Africa. She said -- oh, my husband don't put the dishes in the dishwasher.

But meanwhile, I'm sitting here looking at the air time and wondering if the "Today" show has ever given that kind of air time to single moms who are working in manufacturing. To young women who've had children at age 16 or 17 and are trying to find out whether or not you can go back to some schools if you have been a mom; whether or not the schools have child care.

Have you ever seen any other class of mothers get so much attention as these privileged, articulate . . . they are articulate. They know how to say what they want. And the other people probably don't have a voice, but it literally is something, if we believe in shared status and we want to believe that every women's story is an important story. And that we just won't galvanize around these stories about the poor, pitiful MBA who somehow can't find child care.

The real story ought to be -- the child care woman she interviewed and how little she was prepared to pay her.

Linda Basch: Thank you, Julianne. We at the Council actually have been spending some time trying to demystify this whole myth of opting out and perfect mommyhood, and complexify it. So, yes, your points are very well taken there.

I'm looking out at this audience and I'm seeing college presidents in this audience. Leaders of non-profit organizations. Key academics. And I do want you to have the chance to raise your questions in your own voices. And one question that I would like us to be thinking about, though, are the kinds of partnerships that I think Noeleen was mentioning.

That much of our activism does not just have to be women-based. There are lots of borders that we want to think about crossing. What kinds of partnerships, what kinds of cross-sectoral partnerships, national partnerships -- where is labor in all of this? Do any of you have any comments or thoughts on this?

And while you're thinking, I'll raise a question. I noticed that there has been some questioning about the response of the National Council for Research on Women, to Larry Summers' comments. And I'm glad that you all remember our report, "Balancing The Equation: Where Are Women and Girls in Sciences, Math and Technology?"

And yes, that report is filled with evidence about what can happen when there are nurturing, supportive environments for women and their particular learning styles are taken into consideration. We see women achieving in a number of areas in the sciences.

We are very pleased that we had an Op-Ed in The San Francisco Chronicle challenging Larry Summers' assumptions about women's inabilities in these areas. We co-authored this with Jan Holmgren, who is the President of Mills College and the Chair of our board. And that's something we would certainly be willing to talk about at another point with all of you.

But given the kind of chatter coming from the bully pulpit of the college presidency and given the fact of the active women's movement that we've had over the past 30 years. The number of women's studies programs, gender studies programs around the country, around the world -- there really has been a sea change in cultural thinking about women and girls, in the opportunities that women and girls have had.

And then, we have the kind of comment that did come from Larry Summers, which was rather unfortunate. But given all the changes that we are talking about and given these kinds of comments, do you think the world and men are ready for women's leadership at this point? And to what extent are they ready? Which one of you wants to jump in and say something about that? And perhaps some of you in the audience would want to say something as well?

Julianne Malveaux: First of all, I don't think we've had such a sea change at all, Linda. I think that's why Larry Summers was able to make those comments and talk about the fact that . . . certainly in terms of science and math, Ph.D.'s and M.A.'s, we've seen the gap closing.

The science Ph.D.'s -- women are now up to about 20 percent. Twenty years ago they were at about 3 percent. Masters degrees -- I think women are at 36 percent. So we've seen a change.

But the challenge success model, which is a model of young professional success, which assumes that you basically bust your behind, working 80 hours a week until you are age 35. And then you get tenure or partnership or whatever, and you kind of halfway coast -- is a model that's incompatible with most women's childbearing and child rearing.

Some colleges, but not all, will stop the clock on tenure. Some law firms, not all, will stop the clock on partnership. But by and large, women are faced with these choices of -- do you want to be more like a man? Why can't the labor market be more humane?

That becomes the issue when you look at politics. Mary Landrieu was very instructive in talking about how, when running for Senator of Louisiana, people walked up to her and said -- well, who's going to take care of your children? Has anyone ever walked up to a man and said -- who is going to take care of your children?

We do have more women's participation, but we don't have 50/50. I don't think that men are prepared for women's leadership. I think that they see it as interesting and novel. Joe Biden was on "Meet the Press" this weekend and he talked about Hillary in very glowing and complimentary terms. But then went on to say with his plagiarizing, failed Presidential candidate self -- but I might run.

In other words, this woman is all that -- I can beat her. He literally put himself out there. How many people will vote for Joe Biden? Anybody? Oh, there's one. And I think he's okay, but he tried; he didn't make it. Was that '88? That was some time ago.

So, I don't think that men are ready, but I also think that we underestimate the changes that have taken place, or overestimate the changes that have taken place because the model really hasn't changed. We will have real gender equality when we change the models for professional participation.

When men and women feel that it's okay to work 50 hours, and not 80. An 80-hour work week is nearly inhumane. It requires that you have some form of a partner to go get your dry cleaning. And given patriarchy, who's going to go get the dry cleaning? In most cases, it's not the guy.

Now, we do see that Carly Fiorina's husband didn't work. I guess he'll be working now.

But you do have these house-husband types here and there. But by and large, women are the ones who do the home-making, even when they are high wage. And so, we have to change the labor market.

Linda Basch: Jehmu?

Jehmu Greene: I think that one of the encouraging things, again, about this next generation coming up is the question about -- are they ready? -- really doesn't apply because they are not going to wait and ask for permission. They are going to take hold of these positions and take hold of running for office.

And putting themselves in those leadership positions -- that's what is so encouraging about young women. They don't see their role as smoothing the course to make it easier to be accepted. They just see it as their God-given right and they are already taking those reins and they are going to continue to take those reins.

Linda Basch: Terrific.

Julianne Malveaux: I do hope you're right, but the data does suggest . . . I do hope you're right and I certainly value and respect your leadership and your connections with the young women. But when you are looking at women in the 25-to-35 age group in terms of labor market, you are seeing a whole lot of young professional women dropping out of the labor force, having to deal with those choices and challenges.

And when people interview them, the issue is that the labor market is not responsive to the fact that they want to have children, and they also want to professional contribute. I don't think that a woman should have to make the choice between whether she wants to have children, and whether she wants to contribute professionally. I just think it's ridiculous.

Linda Basch: Well, that's a huge question -- who is paying the social cost of social reproduction? That's a really big question. Thanks. Noeleen, tell us about the international arena.

Noeleen Heyzer: I would differentiate individual men and also from the institutions that men control. Because I work in the United Nations and so I know what it is to be engaged with bureaucracies, to be engaged with institutions that are hierarchical. I think the issue is not even the glass ceiling, because many women are able, through force of personality, to break through that glass ceiling.

But that shouldn't really take place, but still, we do have people who are able to break through that. I'm more concerned with the sticky floors -- how come so many people can't even move up to the middle level? And this is really a major concern. Even if you look at the organization that I'm heading -- The Women's Fund of the United Nations.

The way it is located in the multilateral system -- it is still way below what other executive directors are. Way below that. But then, it's not even at the right status to do its work. So in other words, you are expected, you have lots of mandates. You have tremendous expectations.

But the way things are created, it makes it so extremely difficult for you to implement the mandate. So that, if you are motivated, you compensate that with your life and you bring in very committed people who then work across time. You put in long hours of work.

You compensate institutional deficits. So what I'm saying is that we have to address the issue of institutional deficits in our system that are controlled through male power and change that. And not let that rule our lives. Because it's not all right.

I keep saying now to all my staff -- it is not all right that we put in 70-hour weeks. It is not all right that we work from a power position that is so weak. It is not all right that we are not at the right tables when decisions are made about war. It is not all right when women are not at the peace table, and you have warlords at the peace table.

We have to change all that. The issue of power is a big one. It is not all right that violence against women is used as a war crime. It's not addressed as a minor crime and you have a culture of impunity and I can say that justice is sacrificed at the peace table because it's the warlords who sit there. So that's not all right.

But at the same time, I do see changes. In the work that we have been doing on HIV AIDS. Increasingly, we have been able to get men engaged, young boys -- youth, basically -- to come in and talk about sexuality. We are able to get young men and boys addressing the issue of male violence against women.

We are able to get faith-based organizations to come in. So those are all very good signs. But it's slow. Progress is too slow. And this has been my concern -- progress has been uneven and it is too slow. And the issue of gender equality and women's human rights, and the issues that we talk about cannot just be spoken by women. It has to be spoken by men.

And we need to get the good men on board very quickly.

Linda Basch: What you say is very interesting, about young men actually, because there's research that shows that young men also are much more eager than older males, in becoming engaged in family life and in the home. And that many young men also are pressuring for changes in the institutional structures that kind of encase us.

So, Jehmu, we have a big challenge for your generation -- to change the institutional structures and also to bring more women to peace tables or important decision-making tables.

Jehmu Greene: Absolutely. I think that, again I talked about the White House Project and the work that they are doing. I think Julianne, you said that we can't rely on Hillary and Barbara Lee, but we definitely have to get them some more friends. We have to get them more allies within each one of the state houses and of course, inside the Beltway in D.C.

And I think that where we stand at Rock the Vote. We've got 1.6 million members that are part of our activism, that are part of our issue campaigns. 70 percent of those people are young women. When you look at our street team leaders, we have 15,000 street team leaders who are in leadership positions.

They organize their peers. 75 percent of those leaders are young women. I think, again, the women that are being trained by the White House Project and the leadership roles that we already see in this generation engaged in, and the fact that the young men who are their counterparts are also more tolerant and more open to being in these different roles is encouraging. I don't want to sound overly optimistic. I just think that this generation sees things in a different way, where it's not, again, about asking permission. It's about the reality that they have seen because of women leaders like Julianne Malveaux.

I was in my first position at the Center for Policy Alternatives in Washington D.C. many, many years ago. And one of the reasons I think I was able to keep pushing through the non-profit world was because Julianne Malveaux was on the board, and I had that role model and I had to have the opportunity to see her work, and play that leadership role.

So for me, it wasn't a question of trying to seek out -- who are those leaders and find them in those different places. They were there, and that's the reason why I think this generation sees things in a little different place, because of the leadership we've gotten from so many of the people who broke through those glass ceilings. I just don't think the glass ceiling exists for us, as young women.

Linda Basch: Okay, and we hope the sticky floor isn't there predominantly either. But Julianne, you're going to keep taking the temperature for us, in your economic role. Let's open the floor to the audience. Would anyone like to raise some questions? Yes?

And if you would say your name and if you want to list an institutional affiliation, that would be great.

Audience Member: I am an anthropologist. I work at NYU. I'm recently retired. And I want to ask the people up there, and to ask you as feminists whether we don't have a special responsibility to try to make the U.S. less powerful, so that it does not control the world in the way it does? And it seems to me, the key item that we have not been directly talking about is -- how to control and demilitarize the way it has militarized this country and the rest of the world?

The information on its military bases, the information and how it's recruiting people to fight for the way it defines its issues, is really an extreme life-threatening issue that the peace movement, that goes beyond just asking for peace.

So I wonder whether and how feminists globally, but especially feminists in the United States, can begin to target --not just through research, because that's been coming out -- the ways in which we can begin to target and attack the militarization of our society?

Not only the resources that are being spent for militarization, but in a way, to also undercut the sort of power that the United States uses when it uses its power for evil purposes?

Linda Basch: So how does U.S. women's activism begin to address military issues, foreign policy issues, in order to have an impact to shift that policy?

Julianne Malveaux: That is really such a heavy question. When you say, how do U.S. women . . . I'm thinking about Bella Abzug. I always think about her when questions like that come up because I remember when she was on Jimmy Carter's Commission on the Status of Women. I was an intern at the White House at the time.

And she wanted to talk about Iran. And he said -- that's not a women's issue. And her response was -- every issue is a women's issue. And so, this issue of militarization and the issues of related globalization belong to us as well.

We don't use our armies for the good that we could. If we have to have intervention, why not Darfur? If you saw the movie, "Hotel Rwanda," there was that line when the photographer said "people are going to watch this and they're going to go back to eating their dinner."

And that's pretty much what we did. It was one of the few things that Clinton has now apologized for -- that we didn't take more action there. As opposed to what you raised, what we have actually seen is the collapsing of gender differences in the military.

So that increasingly, we see young women, just like young men, being subject to an economic draft who can't find jobs; and therefore, go into the military. Shoshana Johnson, the young black woman who was in the same battalion with Jessica Lynch. She was 30 years old and had children. She had a child, but she couldn't find a job, so she went into the Reserves and as Noeleen said, we've looked at the glass ceiling, but not the sticky floor at home, never mind in the rest of the world. If we began to really calculate, and I don't mean do research. Calculate what our armies are costing us, not only in terms of actual dollars, but actual opportunity costs.

What would you do with this if you weren't using it in the military? Both in terms of nationally, and in terms of the world, I think that we'd illustrate much more. But I think the flip side of this is that you do have so much evil around the world.

You look at Darfur and you look at so many places where . . . Bosnia . . . that the rest of the world has become accustomed to expecting the United States to be the world police person. There is enormous resentment towards us, but also enormous reliance on us.

You look at who's in Iraq, and no one else has a military our size. So part of the issue is not only us changing our minds, but also having dialogues with people in other parts of the world about how they might change their minds about their dependence on the United States.

Because the world has a schizophrenic relationship with us. They hate us, and they should. And then they love us. But they want American stuff. If you find us so odious, why do you have McDonald's everywhere? Just a thought. So that schizophrenic relationship really does mean that it's difficult, not only for us, but for others in the world to visualize it a different way, that that force is being used.

Linda Basch: You wanted to say something?

Audience Member: We need to point out that exactly nearly half of our budget in the U.S. goes to the military and we need to point that out to everybody. We need to pull a little of our money back and hold it. I think the I.R.S. would be absolutely stunned if all women did that.

Linda Basch: That's a very interesting point. By the way, just to put in a plug for the Council, we are very soon coming out with a report on how taxes impact women, in particular. And how important it is to be looking at this issue, particularly with all the tax cuts on the horizon here, and the kinds of expenditures we have.

We have a question over there.

Audience Member: My name is Michelle Cruz. I will be attending law school in the fall, but I think this forum today is wonderful. But what could be done to educate and target the very females that we're talking about today -- the laborers, the caretakers, the workers that are being paid minimum wage? Besides taking out our checkbooks?

Don't get me wrong, I think this is fabulous but it's kind of, I feel like discussions like this are often speaking to the choir. I think everyone here already agrees with the comments that you're making, but does the panel have any suggestion as to how to really educate the very females that need to be hearing this?

Linda Basch: So, how to educate and mobilize service workers, some of the women who are the most disadvantaged?

Audience Member: Absolutely. For example, there are tons of public schools around where this could have been a field trip. I don't know the limitations of . . .

Linda Basch: And we even would have had space.

Audience Member: No, I understand. I don't mean to be disrespectful.

Linda Basch: Well, that's a question and I think it's a question for this country, but also globally as well. So Noeleen, do you want to start off and say something here?

Noeleen Heyzer: Luckily, we don't only sit at this table. We also do something else, so basically we have programs and we do have programs for migrant workers. And I'm sure if you look at a lot of the work that has been going on, it's precisely strengthening the voices of people who are affected so that they can reach the policy tables. That is what we specialize in.

So for example, if I am working on the issue of HIV AIDS, it's not my voice that is important. It is the voices of women who are living with HIV AIDS and the caregivers of those who are infected and affected by HIV AIDS, because they have to be care givers.

And in many countries, what that means is that they are pulled out of the agricultural sector. The agricultural sector collapses. Then they fall into a spiral of poverty. They become landless; they have no rights of land. There is the issue of food security.

So there's a whole variety of issues that they can put on the policy table where it matters much stronger than me. So what we do is to create the spaces to mobilize them so that their voices are strong and they do not feel isolated. And then what we do is use our power to see where are the spaces where they need to be heard.

How do we open these spaces? How do we make sure that we work with the power holders so that they are able to hear and then to act? So in other words, at this stage, all of us have something to give. And in a world that is so complex, there's a role for research. There is a role for activism. There is a role for different kinds of work that needs to move in the same direction.

But we constantly have to realize that it's bringing these different synergies together in different ways. And be very conscious that we share and we tell the stories and also be able to articulate our work in a way that people understand.

In today's world, no one actor is strong enough to make the world a better place. We need to be able to address the governments, the private sector, the civil groups and the people themselves. Because there are others who we will not be able to mobilize, and I worry more about those.

Those we can mobilize, we should get onto the common agenda.

Linda Basch: I appreciate your raising the question also about -- how to empower through information because that's very important as well. So perhaps, Julianne, you have something to say about that? And Jehmu as well, in terms of -- how to provide the knowledge for folks who are really very much on the bottom in many socio-economic situations? And how to help mobilize their activism?

Julianne Malveaux: Jehmu has had more recent experience than I have in mobilizing and working with the teams that you have. There's an element of door-to-door here that we have to look at. All organizing is not the sort of esoteric organizing. Really, we begin to raise issues, especially with grass roots women, we talk about door to door.

We talk about church groups and other groups. Organized labor does an excellent job with their constituents, so I wouldn't say that the service workers, if they're in SCIU, they're getting the education. SCIU is one of the unions that really does great work.

And I think many of the other unions do great work in making sure that their members know a lot about issues that affect women. But I think that if you're talking about neighborhoods or housing projects, or things like that -- these are women who are relatively isolated.

And so one of the things is the door-to-door method of organizing. And the other, of course, is the media. And Noeleen mentioned the media earlier. In terms of both the consolidation in media, which means you pretty much get the same thing. I think the basic gender bias and race bias in the media that we see now, as well as basically -- what would I call it?

The ideological bias. The myth is that the media is liberal and the fact is that the media is extraordinarily conservative. However, there are some pockets of possibility. Tom Joyner and Tavis Smiley, for example, do great work together in getting the word out.

I might say there are some gender biases there also, but in terms of some of the organizing and getting the word out, I think that they do a great job. I think that when you get some of these messages onto things like almost a bumper sticker, so people can talk about -- what about that law that's going to raise wages?

As opposed to some long dissertation about why people should get more than the minimum wage, you can begin to grab people. The black press in our community is also, represents a good place. And I know that there are some, there are very few -- there are some -- but very few women's newspapers kind of thing.

There used to be a lot more, but many of those have folded. But looking at the alternative media, I know that a lot of people think the Internet is a possibility, but there's a class bias in Internet use. And we need to be clear about that.

It is a possibility for some people, but not for all people. I think that's why when Maxine Waters and some others have proposed, free Internet in libraries, it was opposed by the folks who didn't want people to have information. But I think it's something that we have to constantly be creative about.

And also, I think the young lady's point about this room is interesting because I think that those of us who have forums really have to stretch ourselves from a diversity perspective to say -- can we invite young women? Should we try to put some fliers out? If five young women came, these would be young women who would go back and say -- oh, hey, I met the woman who headed Rock the Vote. And that will be exciting to them.

So it's more work, and we all probably do more work than we need to. And to say -- put one more task on the plate, is challenging. But at the same time, if we really want to have a mass movement, that at some level, is what we'll do.

Linda Basch: We have to get together on it. Jehmu, are there media reaching out to the kinds of young women that this young woman just raised a question about? Immigrant workers, service workers, people whose English may not be the top?

Jehmu Greene: I think that's why it's so critical that we do support those alternative media and independent media streams. Because if you look at, probably the biggest challenge to educating the community that you brought up in your question is the media consolidation issues that we're dealing with.

We, at Rock the Vote, did a campaign against media consolidation and I was walking into a Clear Channel station, I think, about two days after we sent out our campaign. And they kicked me out of the office and they said -- we're no longer going to partner with you because you are talking about supporting alternative and independent media streams, and you're going against our business model.

What is happening with media consolidation has to be something that all progressive individuals, organizations come together around and find a way of stopping this. Because if we are not able to win . . . and this fight is going to happen this year, in D.C.

They are going to come back, even though that Michael Powell is gone, they are going to come back with the FCC and try to give Viacom and NBC, GE, Universal -- these five different companies that have all of this power -- even more power. And it's not a women's issue.

It's not an African-American issue. It's not a Latino issue. It's not a labor issue. It's an issue that I think we, all of these communities have common ground on. And keeping it simple is the way that we do it. Definitely, the grass roots model of door-knocking, I think, works for some generations.

Not to create generational warfare, but for us it's text messaging. Yes, maybe the Internet may not be as widespread as we want it and does definitely have that class bias, but what doesn't have a class bias is the pagers that people have.

And the two-way messaging, and how you get very creative, very simple messages actually into the communities that you are trying to organize around. Not necessarily on a billboard or on a street sign. But how do you get it written on the streets in a very dynamic way?

How do you get it projected onto the side of a building in one of the project units? How do you really insert these messages to where you can interrupt that daily flow of 3,000 messages, I think that people get, media messages that we get on a daily basis?

We look at interrupting that flow and doing it in different ways.

Noeleen Heyzer: Can I just pick up on one point that I heard that I thought is very important. I don't want us to forget that, I think that the fact that each one of us can ask questions about what happens to our taxes, and what happens to the money that we give to our government.

And hold our government accountable to the use. Because you use your life to create your wealth, and you are giving part of your wealth to the government, to make sure that it's used for the common good. And therefore, how do you make sure that there is accountability in the use of your resources?

And in a sense, it's taking charge of the government budget. Because the government budget, at the end of the day, is your budget.

Linda Basch: Well, that is a very good point, I think, for us to end on. I want to thank you. It kind of pulls together some of the questions we are raising.

It kind of links the questions we are asking about economic security, but also global activism. Or to paraphrase Noeleen -- both global and local activism. Thank you so much for joining us today, and thank you -- our panels Jehmu Greene, Noeleen Heyzer and Julianne Malveaux.

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