Join Us for a Fresh Conversation

Many of the young female students in my classes seem to think empowerment means short skirts and high heels! Even young women who say they are feminists often don’t know what’s still at stake—from pay equity to Title 9 to reproductive justice-- and they are unwilling to put in the hard work necessary to fight for change!

Older female professors act like it’s a crime against the Goddess to have a little fun!  Women’s Studies classes are just too PC. I’m not a feminist but I totally believe in equality. Doesn’t everybody? And by the way, weren’t those battles already won by our mothers, so why do we have to fight them again? 

Do these complaints sound familiar?

With all the injustices yet to be challenged, it is time that women of all ages talked and listened to one another.  It is time to reopen a dialogue about women’s lives: our power, our entitlement, and our futures -- the future of feminism.

Kristal Brent Zook, Gloria Feldt, Courtney E. Martin, and Deborah Siegel—four diverse, feminist authors representing women from Generation Y to pre-Baby Boomer decades—will take to the road this March to conspire, inspire, and collaborate with you in an ongoing dialogue. We will address issues like these, and we want to hear your voices:

• Power and Parity: What do power and empowerment look like to women of different generations, and to women of different races and cultural backgrounds?  What can we envision achieving together for women in the future? What might a powerful woman look and act like twenty years down the road?
  
  
• Unfinished Business: What are the major loose (or lost) ends of the feminist movement today?  And how can we get what we need now?
  
  
• The F-word:  Why are so many younger women afraid of being identified as feminists? Do older women secretly resent the entitlement of their younger, female employees and students?
  
  
• A Stripping Pole in Every Living Room:  Does liberated sexuality equal lap dances?  Free love?  Bisexuality?  Are Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan good role models for sexual empowerment?  Were Madonna or Lil’ Kim?
  
  
• The “Opting Out” Fiasco:  How has the media slashed and distorted real women’s choices about balancing work and family? Could listening to popular myths about your options in the workplace and the home topple your career choices?
  
  
• Passing the Torch without Extinguishing the Flame:  How can younger women learn from older women while speaking in their own language about the issues that matter most to them?