Future of Feminism, Day Fourteen: Women in Green

Today's post features the organization Women in Green and, more generally, explores women's roles in the environmental sector:

Since yesterday’s post highlighted the need for women in the tech sector, it seems apropos to follow up with a further exploration of how women can and should make a difference in business and technology–in our present and for our future. Today, I’m featuring the Women in Green Forum, an annual conference that brings together entrepreneurs, environmental researchers, sustainability developers and other professional women in “green” fields.

Founded in 2010 by Jaime Nack, president of the environmental consulting firm three squares inc., the Women in Green Forum grew out of her all-too-common realization that women were sorely underrepresented at environmental conferences, in leadership positions at green businesses and as heads of eco-minded research projects. Designed to encourage collaboration, networking and innovation, the Forum has already attracted an international audience in its short tenure through in-person attendance and a series of YouTube videos chronicling some of its panels and speakers.

Click here for more.

Health Care Bills and Protests

The health care reform bill just passed, and there's a bunch of unhappy people all over the country.

I won't pretend to understand the issue completely (I got bored and stopped following it closely a long time ago). But if the summaries are correct, (and the CBO is accurate, which seems reasonable), we'll get a moderate reduction in the deficit, some new taxes for the rich and people who use tanning salons, some decent subsidy expansions for low-income people, and some mild tweaks to medicaid and medicare. All quite undramatic, really.

All of which makes the protests quite bewildering.

However you look at it, this is not a new health care system. It's certainly not a single-payer universal coverage system. It's not going to allow the government to regulate the industry tightly, and it's not abolishing medicare/caid.

For that matter, the bill barely even falls under the reform category. I daresay what most feminists wanted (behind expanded reproductive coverage, which we couldn't possibly have gotten) was to ensure that single mothers, children, etc. were guaranteed health care - we didn't really even get that. The improvements we did get still filtersthrough the current (read, insanely complicated) system, which is doing a mediocre job at best. Hardly a dramatic victory.

Is it better? Probably. Will it hurt anybody? Probably not. And yet, the protests continue - "the worst piece of legislation ever presented to Congress!" as one radio program I overheard recently trumpeted.

I know a young man - twenty-something years old - who is the stereotype of the teabagger. He's white, decently educated, from a middle class background, rather (if unconsciously) racist, slightly sexist (openly), and republican as they come. He hates health care reform. Thinks it's going to give medicine to all the damn illegals (what a tragedy....) And everyone else needs to earn their own health care, dammit!

Except - he doesn't have insurance worth speaking of. He doesn't make much, his employer doesn't provide a decent plan. And if his girlfriend gets pregnant, she be in the system with the rest of them. All of which seems entirely lost on the man in question.

This doesn't prove anything, of course, but I suspect that there are thousands more just like that. They're protesting, not because the health care reform will actually hurt them, or the economy, or anything else, but just to be protesting - their lack of continued dominance over society, perhaps. Or simple racism, sexism, obsession with traditional family values. Something.

I'm not sure what, exactly (general fear - probably). But it's very strange, and rather frightening.

(Crossposted at Constant Thoughts)

"The Streep Effect": Meryl Streep and Economics

In another of my series of posts wherein I throw short little tidbits at you to cover for the fact that I'm not really posting these days (it's a temporary hiatus, I promise!) due to my dissertation (oh, that old thing?), here's a great article from The Independent, which I found, as I often do, browsing Women and Hollywood.

The article, "The Streep effect: Why economists love her," expounds on Meryl Streep's recent "career renaissance," and then tracks the compelling economic effects her films have had, from increasing the sales of ABBA records (post-Mamma Mia) to pushing Virginia Woolfe's Mrs. Dalloway to number 1 on Amazon's best-seller list after her portrayal of Clarissa Vaughan in The Hours.

Streep, who turned 60 in June, has carried off a unique feat among contemporary Hollywood leading ladies: she has sustained a long, A-list career without a break, and moved into roles that have the authentic prestige of the grande dame without settling for matronly support slots. The achievement is all the more impressive considering how many of her best contemporaries have fallen by the wayside, suffered patchy careers, or bowed out, weary of sub-par roles...

Check it out.