Cherie

Founder and Executive Editor of the Daily Femme

After more than 150 published interviews of fabulous women and 1,170 posts on issues including gender discrimination, racism, sexual harassment, homophobia, violence against women, sexism in the media and reproductive rights, The Daily Femme is coming to a close. While all of us at the DF are sad to see the journey end, we are also excited to have more time to pursue projects that are equally dear to our hearts, both on and offline.

Two years ago, when I decided to create The Daily Femme following the lead of initiatives such as the Women’s Media Center: Shesource.org, National Women’s Editorial Forum and Theopedproject.org, my goal was to provide another space for women’s perspectives to be expressed and contribute to the growth of progressive women’s presence online.  Given that women still hold less than 3% of decision-making positions in media and just 25% of all new media jobs created from 1990 to 2005, it is not a surprise that coverage of women’s issues and viewpoints leaves much to be desired. Furthermore, despite women’s successes as leaders and professionals, they remain significantly underrepresented throughout the media as experts and leading voices of authority on important issues.  For example, 97% of Op-Eds by scholars published in the Wall Street Journal were written by men in 2008 and only 26% of NPR’s sources were female from April 13, 2009 to Jan 9, 2010.

Through The Daily Femme, I wanted to share the stories of unconventional professional women from various backgrounds and at different stages in their career paths. Women such as Reigning World Ski Jumping Champion Lindsey Van who fought the Vancouver Olympic Committee in court for their decision not to allow women ski jumpers to compete in the 2010 Olympics and Emmy Award winner Ginny Reticker, to whom we owe the PBS series, Women, War & Peace, which is the most comprehensive global media initiative on the roles of women in war and peace. We also featured interviews of women who achieved firsts in the workplace like Patricia Galloway, the first woman President of the American Society of Civil Engineering and Jennifer Stockman, the first woman President of the Guggenheim board, CEOs and presidents of major organizations including Gloria Feldt, former CEO of Planned Parenthood, and Patricia Ireland, former President of The National Organization for Women, business women like the Founder and CEO of Carole’s Daughter, Lisa Stone and advocates such as Benita Miller, Executive Director at The Brooklyn Young Mother’s Collective. We also interviewed younger feminists including Steph Herold who encouraged women to “come out” and share their abortion experience on Twitter and beyond, Shelby Knox who is helping to promote the next generation of feminist activists known as the forth wave and Melody Moezzi, author of ‘War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims”, who is dedicated to fostering interfaith acceptance.  Subsequently, some fabulous young female writers joined the site and began to post some real badass pieces on a variety of topics that affect women in the US and across the globe.

Through it all, The Daily Femme has been for me an amazing opportunity and an experience that will leave its mark on me as I take a break from writing and editing in order to focus on other projects of mine such as serving on the board of Women’s eNews, playing an active role on the Women@Google team (check out one of our latest projects training women in media with Google’s Community Service group), and singing in the band The Aviation Orange.

Thank you to the kickass Daily Femme team who accompanied me on this journey and without whom this site would not have been possible: Laila, Cristen, Kate, Ashleigh, Sara, Annamarya and Meredith.  Ladies, I am beyond proud to have had the privilege to work with each one of you and will be forever grateful to you for your dedication, friendship, creativity, thoughtfulness and hard work.  Last but not least, thank you to all of you DF readers out there, who commented on the site, or through Facebook and Twitter, or simply read us, regularly or occasionally.  We had a blast; we hope you did too.

From Cristen

Writing and editing for The Daily Femme has been an incredible, empowering experience. When I first began posting almost two years ago, I had never vocalized my thoughts and opinions on the intersections of gender and feminism in a public forum before. And while it was daunting at first, the more I typed and posted and virtually spoke up, the more my fear gave away to strength. From that, the biggest lesson I’ve gleaned from contributing to The DF is the crucial importance of women remaining informed, active and participatory. As the feminist blogosphere continues to mature and expand, I hope to continue growing along with it and benefit from the rich gender-relevant discourse it fosters.

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From Sara

I don’t do goodbyes. I never really have. This hasn’t always been intentional– usually the next thing just comes on too fast. And I usually simply can’t accept that people and places that have been a part of my life will ever be relegated to being just a part of my past. For the past year, The Daily Femme has been an important part of my life. It has helped fill the gap—or what sometimes felt like a void—between my undergraduate and graduate careers. It became in many ways my new classroom. I learned that what I already knew at school also applied to the real world—you can never really understand something until you’ve engaged it. Since beginning with The Daily Femme, my weekly blogging has been my way of engaging with the world around me.

The only problem with that is that the world I mainly engaged with—the American world of politics and pop culture—wasn’t around me at all. Having lived in Berlin for just over a year now, the time has come for me to engage with the world immediately around me. It’s time I looked more closely at my new community here in Berlin. Time to engage more fully with the people and problems at my doorstep—from Islamophobia, to the sexualization of women, to the jarring disparities between East and West, North and South.

I’m looking forward to my new hometown adventure—an adventure that will include bilingual blogging, graduate school, and a healthy ration of Berliner beers.

So no. I won’t say goodbye. The future is coming on fast and it’s looking really good. I won’t say goodbye, but I’ll say hello again—hello to my next project(s) http://saramess.wordpress.com/ , hello to more transatlantic blogging http://www.genderacrossborders.com/about/contributing-writers/#saramesselaar , and hello to my new Berliner adventures https://twitter.com/#!/saramess .

And I’ll be saying hello to you again, if you come check me out on the sites above.

So, auf Wiedersehen!—Until we see each other again.

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From Annamarya

When I started writing for The Daily Femme, I used it as a vehicle to expand my portfolio beyond the music journalism that consumed it for the last 10 years. But over the last year and a half, it became much more than that. It became a place where I could make a difference with my words–where I could not only show support for vital human rights, but also bring lesser known or considered issues to the forefront. My proudest moment as a Daily Femme blogger is my piece on myths surrounding male victims of sexual violence and how we, as women and feminists, can provide help to such a vulnerable community. The overwhelming positive response to that piece humbles me and is proof of the power of the written word. The Daily Femme renewed a sense of urgency in me in advocating equality through journalism, and I will be eternally grateful for that. I wish I could say I am moving over to a new site or publication that will allow me to continue this work, but I am still in search of that transition in the human rights sector of my work.

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From Ashleigh

I’m sad that The Daily Femme is coming to an end; the blog has helped me grow as a writer and a person and has let me get to know, if remotely, some incredible women. Reading the other writers’ posts has helped me reflect on my own writing, as well as my own values, preconceived notions, and opinions on some pretty heavy – and some not so heavy- topics.

From a purely selfish perspective, writing for The DF has been extremely cathartic for me-growing up, I always seemed to be the girl that was the most outraged and worked up over issues concerning women’s rights. Often I concealed my true feelings because other girls could laugh it off or tune it out; I figured maybe I was overreacting. I did, for a while, fall victim to the “feminist stigma” that caring about women’s equality made you a nag, or a bitch, or something otherwise unpleasant. The DF provided an outlet for me to release some of that frustration in a constructive way, and get feedback from others who care about the things I do. Writing for the blog has opened my eyes to what is going on in women’s lives all over the world, to different ways of thinking, and to framing my thoughts and feelings in a way that I hope is helpful and entertaining for people.

As far as what I’m focusing on next, I’m currently half way through a Master of Arts in Professional Communication at Royal Roads University in Victoria, BC, Canada. In addition, I am a contributor for the online magazine The Beauty Bean and editor/writer with New York Moves magazine. I’m also working as a Marketing and Communications consultant for a North American engineering and architecture company, which allows me to travel and, to an extent, escape the dreaded cubicle. Life is good!

Thank you to Cherie, Laila, all the fantastic writers and everyone else who made The DF possible. Thank you for reading, for commenting, and for caring. It’s been a blast.

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From Meredith

One of the best parts of writing for the DF has been the other writers and editors of the site. Even though blogging is a pretty solitary pastime, I’ve enjoyed getting a sense of the other writers’ personalities through their unique voices and their passion for justice and equality. Everyone who wrote or edited for the site did so on top of full-time jobs/school/lives, and I find that pretty remarkable. I’d like to wish everyone the best of luck as they keep on being movers and shakers!

Contributed by Meridith

At the Daily Femme, plastic surgery is no stranger to our list of topics. And yet, this NPR article still makes me sit up and pay attention. The article summarizes new research from the medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The researchers found that “body dysmorphic disorder, or BDD, appears in about one-third of patients who’ve undergone plastic surgery to alter the look of their noses.” The main criterion of BDD is “an excessive concern about a perceived or minor defect in one’s appearance … to the extent that it disrupts daily life.”

Read more…

Contributed by Sara

What is power? Is it the same as influence? Is it about getting everything you want? How should you use it? How do you acquire it?

Last week Forbes magazine published its “100 Most Powerful Women” list and asked some of its power women to answer those questions. The interviews are amazing. Answers ranged from power is “the ability to set the agenda,” to power is a condition achieved after earning respect through hard work, to power is simply the power to influence people.

The list itself tells a lot about the role of women in the world today. As Caroline Howard at Forbes pointed out, while they control a collective $30 trillion and come from a wide range of backgrounds, among all the 100 power women only Oprah doesn’t have a boss.

Read more…

Contributed by Cristen

Women should support Michelle Bachmann’s presidential candidacy and see it as a good thing because we share the same gender identification. That’s at least the nutshell opinion of Angela Cummine, writing for the Guardian.

Ms. Cummine, allow me to respectfully disagree. While I get the argument that women should support women and that the dearth of high-profile female political candidates in the United States demands some sort of correction, a movement toward parity, I just can’t get on board with saying “Bachmann, you go (extremely conservative) girl!” because supporting someone solely on the basis of gender is misguided in my book. A similar debate arose last presidential election cycle when Hillary Clinton, who lines up far more closely with my political stances, was in the race. But even when it came to Clinton, the argument of “women gotta support women no matter what” got to me. In my opinion, smart women should subject any and all candidates to equal degrees of scrutiny.

Am I all for political parity? Yes. Am I all for getting a woman in the White House? Absolutely. But endorsing crazy-eyed Bachmann and her extremely evangelical principles that continually bleed into her political platforms feels like a foolhardy leap.

Read more…

Contributed by Meridith

Where’s the best place for women to work these days? According to an LA Times article, not in network television. The article covers a report out of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. The report shows that “the number of women working as writers and directors on prime-time broadcast programs decreased substantially in the 2010-11 season: Women made up just 15% of writers on  prime-time network TV and only 11% of directors. Women characters also dropped. “

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Contributed by Sara

What caused the earthquake that rattled the Northeast from Washington DC to New York on Tuesday? The Ramapo Fault Zone? The New York-Alabama Lineament? Perhaps. But Rabbi Yehuda Levin has another explanation: legalizing gay marriage in New York and Washington DC. You see, Levin says, this “homosexual legislation” has gotten God reallllly mad at us. “The Talmud states, ‘You have shaken your male member in a place where it doesn’t belong. I too, will shake the Earth.’”

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