Commentary: Building the Power Girls’ Network

Over the past year, as I have beaten the laundry of women’s equality against the rocks lining river banks, I have observed the old girls’ network holding fast. If the old boys’ network is Ivy League connections, corporate boardrooms, and bonding rituals that include hazings and sports, then the old girls’ network is humanitarian service organizations, not-for-profit meeting rooms, and bonding rituals based in shared nurturing. There are women, however, of all ages, who want to move away from the old girls’ network and merge the old boys and the old girls into a new power girls’ network. Hopefully we can drop the hazing rituals, though.

Volunteer work seems to have been replaced with e-mail petitions. All we have to do to make a difference anymore, it seems, is to type our name into a form provided by some organization funded by a financier and send it off into cyberspace. Meanwhile, local organizations and local chapters of national groups struggle to attract people to meetings, let alone to do all the work involved in maintaining and promoting an organization.

We are spread thin by daily demands. Our daily newspapers and other publications (broadband, broadcast, or broadsheet) seem only to leave us wanting more, or take so much time to sort through that we have no time left to volunteer. Yet, we are offered a multitude of choices for networking that seek to make our lives better.

As I rush out the door to attend yet another meaningless political talk about women and families, I hasten to finish this commentary. I keep waiting to see the presidential candidates talk about men and families. Heck, maybe someone can bring back the idea that men should receive wages when they marry and then when the first child is born. (By the way, November 25 was the United Nations International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.)

I am asking for readers’ input on two items. There is a survey to assess what a permanent edition of Leading Voices: Iowa might include. The survey will take only a few minutes to complete. I also have started to put together a list of women’s organizations and groups in Iowa. This is incomplete and in need of better online formatting, but it already is an impressively-long list. I know there are organizations and other items missing from it and would appreciate help completing the list. Thank you.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.