The problem with progressives ignoring women.....good read [View All]

[cally]

This is a quote from a letter about a progressive conference that includes few women speakers. The entire excerpt at the site is worth reading but I've included my favorite part:

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2006/01/index.html#008892


Now, as I said, this particular brand of controversy erupts all too frequently on the left, and I've watched too many male organizers and funders rolling their eyes from the backs of rooms as women raised similar concerns at other forums to think questions like this are unique to the New Democracy Project or this particular conference. (Most recently, I've seen similar criticism leveled by audience members at an NDN event, for example.)

And yet, it is a source of great perplexity to me that otherwise clear-headed men who are genuinely committed to promoting Democrats or "the progressive movement" should be so blind when it comes to understanding why the Democratic Party and the left even continue to exist. The Democratic Party and left exist because of female voters and volunteers. No ifs, ands, or buts.

As I noted in detail last summer, virtually every left organization that relies on volunteer labor succeeds because of the labor of female volunteers, who comprise the vast bulk of such low-level workers, and when Democrats have won at the national level in the past 40 years, it has been because of their appeal to female voters.

It's true that the progressive movement, such as it is, has not made great use of its human resources. But to the extent that the progressive base is about 60 percent female, according to research by The Breakthrough Institute, progressive conferences in 2006 that are 92 percent male would seem to suggest that something even more problematic than a lack of resources is undermining the left's ability to strategically invest in human capital