Writing 'herstory'

By DANIELLE CAMILLI, Burlington County Times, March 8, 2005

Proponents of the women's movement agree the next generation of feminist activists should write their own chapter in "herstory" and should not be defined by stereotypical labels as they do it.

While theirs may not be a fight to open up the job market, eliminate laws that legalized gender discrimination or battle for fair funding of women's athletics in college, there are still battles to be won, they say.

"The message of young women activists is that they should be able to play out any gender role that makes sense to them and that they should be able to change that role when they want," said Terry O'Neill, vice president of membership for the National Organization for Women in Washington, D.C.

In recent years, some women have shied away from being labeled feminists at all, while still supporting women's rights.

It's the "I'm not a feminist, but …" mentality, scholars said.

"The media managed to make it a dirty word," said Mary Hartman, a professor at Rutgers University and director of the Women's Leadership Center there.

"It became associated with being a radical, man-hater and young women don't want to be all those things. While they may not call themselves feminist, many are living a feminist agenda."

Hartman said the future of the movement will include continuing battles on core issues of the past, as well as tackling new frontiers.

"There will be a number of gains that will be challenged, especially in reproductive rights," she said. "I also think a lot of gains will be revisited with the current conservative movement in the country."

But women like Jennifer Armiger, co-president of South Jersey NOW-Alice Paul chapter, will try to make room in the movement for new issues.

The Burlington County native, who lives in Woodbury, Gloucester County, founded the South Jersey Mothering NOW.

The group welcomes moms and fights for their rights. That's right -- babies are welcome at these monthly NOW meetings.

"There was this misconception that you couldn't be both a mom and a feminist," said Armiger, a young mother working on her doctorate in history.

"It was almost like mothers were left out of the movement, but the truth is most feminist are mothers."

PHOTO/MATT STANLEY

Judy Buckman of Mount Laurel holds a proclamation from the state Assembly recognizing the 25th anniversary of the Alice Paul Chapter of the National Organization for Women.

The group, believed to be only the second of its kind in the country, lobbies for mothers' economic rights, including Social Security credits for stay-at-home moms, affordable child care and paid family leave.

Armiger said she started the group when she noticed women activists would "disappear" after the birth of their children because they didn't feel comfortable bringing them to meetings and the meetings weren't addressing issues specific to them.

"Women today are very impatient of discrimination and are unaccepting of it," said O'Neill, adding the women's movement has room for all issues from mothers' rights to gay marriage.

In January, about 100 women from around the country gathered in Washington as the National Council of Women's Organizations' newly founded Young Women's Task Force held its first "meet-up" to establish its agenda.

Women from all walks of life, including a mother on welfare, a vice president at Merrill Lynch and graduate student, helped define the issues that will drive the next phase of the feminist movement.

"I realized that the (existing) movement was not reaching mainstream women and they were not identifying themselves with the movement," said Alison Stein, the 2003 University of Pennsylvania graduate who founded the task force.

"They aren't comfortable with the word feminism, but when you broke down the issues their issues were women's rights issues and they needed to be engaged," said the Connecticut native.

The task force's agenda includes preventing violence, promoting sexual and reproductive freedom, economic justice, accurate and diverse portrayals of women in the media, better access to educational and career opportunities and increased political representation.

Hartman said it is important for today's women to seek and obtain positions of leadership in both the corporate and political worlds.

"For all the advances women have made, they haven't achieved enough positions of leadership," she said. "We have spent a lot of time fixing things because women were not represented and were not part of the decision making."

Nationally, women represent less than 12 percent of the membership of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. New Jersey has never had a female senator.

Locally, seven of 40 Burlington County mayors are women. Less than 22 percent of those on municipal governing bodies are female.

While trying to break through in the corporate world, women are also trying to keep up with the home front.

In New Jersey, nearly 64 percent of women with children under 6 are in the labor force, according to 2001 NJ WomenCount survey by Rutgers University.

That's up about 13 percent from the early 1990s.

Hartman said she believes the women's rights movement will take center stage in the living rooms of America.

"Young men are different now and so many of them do share many of the ideas of feminism, but it hasn't shown up as 50-50 in the home," she said. "We haven't had a revolution in the home like we have in the workplace."

Judy Buckman of Mount Laurel, who became active with NOW in the early 1970s, said the challenges in the home won't abate until "mothers start raising feminist sons who see women as equal."

"It's a struggle to find the man who can handle the balance," she said.

"They think this is great. I can have a wife who brings home the bacon, cooks it up, loads the dishwasher and takes the kids to the doctor. No, it doesn't work that way."

The Alice Paul Institute in Mount Laurel works to instill the values of the women's rights movement in the next generation of women through its girls' leadership program.

"We try to be proactive and reach them early," said institute President Rhonda Carboni.

"We get them at an age when their confidence is not that high and their self-esteem is diminished.

Email: dcamilli@phillyBurbs.com