Women’s History Month Role Models: Historical and Modern Advocates for Justice

March 21, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History Month inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories: women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and historical and modern women in advocacy. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

Today, I’m focusing on real-life women in history or the larger culture who are advocates for social justice. In particular, I’m focusing both on women who inspired me personally and who may not be quite as well-known. This list tends to be focused on my areas of interest – poverty, environmental issues, food systems – and this is just but the shortest of lists, so there are a lot of issues missed. Nonetheless, I hope to raise awareness about some of these women who aren’t always (although sometimes) mentioned in the history books.

Vandana Shiva: Shiva is one of the most compelling and unique advocates in the sustainable food movement. While much of the sustainable food movement is white, upper to middle-class Americans concerned about their personal exposure to bioengineering, Shiva is Indian and focuses her work on how corporate control of the food system affects farmers in non-Western countries. She’s spoken out against corporations and governments patenting plant species that farmers have been cultivating for centuries. She’s also done a lot of work in seed saving, helping farmers access to alternatives to “terminator seeds” that only produce sterile seeds. Her organization, Navdanya, has set up more than 100 community seed banks throughout India and is working with the government of Bhutan to convert 100% of their agriculture to organic. Plus, her PhD thesis was on “Hidden Variables and Non-locality in Quantum Theory,” which is inherently hardcore.

Sister Dorothy Stang: If Sister Lucy is the most badass nun I’ve ever met, Sister Dorothy Stang is probably the most badass one I haven’t. (At least in modern times – some of those saints had some very interesting backstories.) As a young woman, she traveled to Brazil to educate farmers in the Amazon jungle about land tenure and avoiding deforestation. However, her work quickly became political as she learned more about the farmers’ situation. As loggers, ranchers, and real estate speculators moved into the rainforest, they threatened the livelihoods and lives of the people she was trying to serve. She collaborated with the local people to fight against the profiteers trying to kick them off their land. She lobbied the local government and sat in vigil to blockade logging trucks trying to get into the forest. Because of her advocacy, she was put on a “death list” and later murdered by the local crime group. As they approached her, she pulled a Bible from her bag and began to read from the Beatitudes. In college, I read about her story in Outside Magazine and hung their obituary on my door. Both her story and my experience with H.O.M.E. strongly influenced my passion for social justice, especially in tandem with environmental justice.

Nellie Bly, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells: When I aspired to be a high-flying journalist (ha) in high school, Nellie Bly was my gal. Perhaps most famous for faking severe mental illness to get admitted to an insane asylum, I admire how she put herself in serious danger to expose corrupt systems and inhumane treatment. She was in the asylum for 10 days, where the nurses fed them poorly, tied the “dangerous” patients up with ropes, didn’t clean up waste, forced the women to beat on hard wooden benches all day, and yelled at and beat the patients. The articles she published exposed the subhuman conditions that were common in the very broken mental health system, leading to reform. For bonus awesomeness, she also beat the world record for circumnavigating the globe. Similarly, besides both being named Ida, Ida Tarbell and Ida B. Wells also leveraged the power of the pen to sway people’s attitudes and actions. Ida Tarbell wrote a series of articles in McClure’s about the monopoly of Standard Oil and how it manipulated the economy. She pored over piles of public documents and interviewed people across the country. Her articles and the book that followed were the first examples of both investigative journalism and the corporate expose. Ida B. Wells was an early civil rights advocate. When forced to give up her seat in the first class cabin of a train because of her race, she refused, more than 70 years earlier than Rosa Parks did on a bus. She sued the railroad and at least initially, won her case. She was co-owner and editor of a black newspaper, where she wrote articles exposing the lies that white supremacists used to justify lynching, identifying as far more of a form of social control over the black community than anything related to punishment of individuals. All of these women show how fundamental communication is to social change and managed to do in a profession that has never been welcoming to females.

Ella Jo Baker: Baker was a key figure in the 1950s civil rights movement, but isn’t that well-known today. I actually hadn’t heard of her until recently. But she probably would have preferred it that way. Baker worked in the background of the movement, organizing people, mentoring new leaders, forging connections and building the foundation for the mass movement. She opposed the idea of charismatic leadership in advocacy and specifically rejected how the church was set up, with mostly male leadership over a female congregation. Instead, she embraced participatory democracy with a collective style of action rather than a hierarchical one. As someone who has only acted in an official leadership positions a few times, but dedicated many hours in the background, I highly appreciate this viewpoint. In addition, much of my learning curve of becoming a better ally and advocate has been about understanding how to listen, appreciate other people’s true needs and provide them the support they need. For me, leadership is much more about being a servant than having charisma. She’s such a great example of this philosophy.

There are so many more women around the world in the past and present who are making their communities stronger and the world a more just place. Oxfam America and ONE have been doing a number of profiles of women in non-Western countries that are both powerful and inspiring.

Who are your favorite female advocates for justice now or in the past?

Women’s History Month Role Models – Pop Culture

March 18, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

Picture: Pictures of Clara Oswald from Doctor Who, Agent Peggy Carter and Anna from Frozen; Text: "Female Role Models in Pop Culture / We'll Eat You Up, We Love You So"

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories – women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and historical or cultural women in advocacy. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

Today I’m focusing on female role models in pop culture, particularly action adventure and SF. In addition to being my favorite genres, they also have a historic under-representation of women, especially when compared to movies, TV shows, or books with a romantic or historical focus. Unfortunately, most women in these genres are either “The Girl” in a group made up of all men or Strong Female Characters who are physically capable but over-sexualized and emotionally flat. While the characters I describe are far from unproblematic – both if they were real people and in how their works choose to portray them – I find them to have a number of traits worth emulating.

Princess Elizabeth, The Paperbag Princess: One of the first children’s stories to subvert the traditional “Prince rescues Princess” plots, Princess Elizabeth was probably my first fictional feminist hero. After a dragon burns her clothes and kidnaps her betrothed, Princess Elizabeth sets off to rescue him. After she beats the dragon, she finds out her “practically perfect” fiancé tells her to come back when “she looks more like a princess.” Declaring him a bum, she leaves him in the dragon’s cave alone and skips off to pursue her own destiny. I love how even though she anticipated being a “normal” princess, she does what needs to be done when people are in danger. She also uses her wits to defend the dragon and of course, won’t stand for the Prince’s shallow crap. Too bad Sansa from Song of Fire and Ice didn’t read this book before moving to the castle. (Despite my previous hesitancy, I’m totally on a Game of Thrones kick now.)

Anna in Frozen: In many ways, Frozen is an update of the Paper Bag Princess, with Elsa both acting as the dragon putting others in danger and the prince to be rescued. While it’s an obvious one for the list, it’s important to highlight how Disney has finally given us a female protagonist who is brave, compassionate, smart, self-motivated and deeply flawed. The movie wouldn’t have been nearly as powerful if it didn’t show both Anna and Elsa making bad decisions in their process of recovering from a life-long traumatic situation. While Elsa is such an important symbol for so many people – especially through Let It Go – Anna is a better role model once she’s gotten past the “next day wedding” idea. She’s far more willing to ask for and appreciate help when needed, be emotionally open, and tackle problems rather than hide from them. Although I think these two are the best, other good Disney heroines include Belle (her smarts and compassion), Lilo (her adventurousness and willingness to love outsiders), Rapunzel (her ability to break off an abusive relationship) and Tiana (her independence and passion for her work).

Agent Peggy Carter in Agent Carter and Captain America: I love Peggy Carter and totally want to be her super-spy friend. Unfortunately for me, she’s a fictional character who had her heyday in the post-WW II era. Nonetheless, I definitely appreciate how Marvel took a character who have easily been written off as “the girlfriend” in a superhero movie and showed how she is a badass in her own right. She stands up for herself against historically accurate sexism, outsmarts her co-workers and the bad guys, and is willing to support other women. While she first pushes people away from her to protect them, she comes around and realizes that while she wants to save people, she needs relationships too. From a visual perspective, I like how she has a very straight-forward fighting style, similar to the men surrounding her. While she’s more flexible and a little quicker than them, she doesn’t have the gravity-defying acrobatic style that many women in action-adventure movies do. It shows that you can be as physically tough as a man without being superhuman.

Clara Oswald in Doctor Who: Clara has come under a lot of criticism from Doctor Who fans for being a bit flat and boring during her first season. While the show’s portrayal of her definitely had its problems, her character actually had a lot of subtlety from the beginning. Since then, she’s only gotten much deeper. She’s a control freak overachiever who just wants to help people – the grown-up version of the fairy-tale heroine who always saves the day. And on the show, she frequently does, often through the dual powers of cleverness and compassion. In fact, she even saved it once through a story and a leaf alone. Needless to say, Clara is a woman after my own heart. What I relate to the most is that saving the world isn’t even her day job – she’s constantly trying to balance her travels with being a full-time teacher in an inner-city school. She wants to do good so badly that it exhausts her. Besides depicting this struggle for balance, the show has also used her to poke at the question, “What does it mean to be a good person and a hero?” Her desire to have things be “right” sometimes drives her to despair and other times has lead to drastic abuses of power. So often, shows and books tell us that the people who fight the bad guys are obviously both heroes and automatically good people. I love that Clara tries so hard to be good and is so morally complex in her quest to be so. (Lots more analysis on Clara is available in this TARDIS Eruditorum post and the author’s Tumblr.)

This is by no means an exhaustive list. I know that the female characters in Avatar the Last Airbender are supposed to be excellent, but I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.

In addition to these laudable characters, a number of shows and movies have complex but far more morally ambiguous characters including Kima Greggs on the Wire; Catelyn Tully Stark, Arya Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen in A Song of Fire and Ice / Game of Thrones; President Laura Roslin, Starbuck, and Anastasia Dualla (Dee) in Battlestar Galactica; Black Widow in the Avengers and Captain America; Evey in V for Vendetta; and Micah Wilkins in Liar. As women come in all shapes, sizes and moralities, I appreciate this diversity.

Who are your favorite female role models in film, literature, and TV, especially in action-adventure and SF?

Women’s History Month Role Models – My Friends and Family

March 16, 2015 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Reading all of the wonderful stories of women being shared for Women’s History Month inspired me to think about the women who have influenced me. I realized that they fell into three categories: women I personally know, women (and girls) in pop culture, and women who have been major leaders in advocacy movements. This week, I’m going highlight my female role-models and hope you find someone to be inspired by!

What do you say when someone asks who inspires you? For me, it’s often the people I have a personal relationship with. Our greatest role models can be right in front of us.

My mom: My number one female role model in my life has always been my mom. As bonkers as we make each other – in that special way only mothers and daughters can – we love each other deeply. As a teacher in an inner-city school district, my mom instilled in me a dual love of learning and service. She was unrelenting in her dedication to her students, buying thousands of dollars in classroom supplies and more than once seriously considering fostering or adopting a student. She taught me what the word “privileged” meant before I ever heard the term, emphasizing that I was lucky to be both physically and emotionally taken care of. Reminding me that many children had neither of those – often, children she worked with every day – she taught me be grateful for what I have and help those who don’t. In her retirement, she’s volunteering at the local nature center and food bank. She’s also the one who inspired my love of cycling. While my family had always gone on short bike trips, her decision to bike 500 miles across New York State during my junior year of college motivated me to sign up for the AIDS Ride for Life. It was the first time I had ever done a major ride and made me a convert to cycling advocacy. In my family, my dad’s mom was the another major influence, whom I’ve written about before.

My friend Nancy, at the first Carl Henn Memorial Ride.

Nancy Breen: On the bike front, Nancy Breen, the chair of the Rockville Bicycle Advisory Committee, is another real inspiration to me. I know she’ll probably raise an eyebrow at her name being on the list, but she totally deserves it. She’s been the chair of our all-volunteer committee for several years now and it’s a pretty thankless job. Besides motivating us to get into gear, she’s spent endless hours with our city’s Mayor and City Council, whose meetings regularly run to midnight. She’s spoke in front of local policymakers on topics varying from police training to bike lanes. And she does all this in the very male-dominated field of bicycle advocacy. In fact, I think Nancy is a big part of why women are well-represented on RBAC and our concerns are heard. I’m also putting a major shout-out to my friend Sophie Chan-Wood, who does a lot of our group’s marketing and is the Rockville Roll Model for the Washington Area Bicyclists’ Association’s Women and Bikes program.

Sister Lucy Poulin: Lucy is the toughest nun I have ever met. Admittedly, I haven’t met that many nuns, but she is a total badass. She founded Homeworkers Organized for More Employment in the 1970s in very rural Maine and still runs it. (She had co-run it with fellow awesome nun Sister Marie Ahern until two years ago, when Marie passed away.) What started as a simple co-op for crafters expanded to a substantial network of services including multiple homeless shelters, a food bank, a soup kitchen, a land-trust program that helps people build their own houses, an alternative high school, and much more. In addition to the main campus, she’s the matriarch of a rambling farm property. Chris and I volunteered at HOME for about a month and stayed in a plumbing-free house next to a lake at the farm. We ran the summer day camp, which at that time was down to 3 girls. Two of the girls were sisters and came from an incredibly tough background – they lived in one of the homeless shelters and their mom was a user and seller of illegal prescription drugs. Living and working there was super-hard and rewarding. But we had the luxury of it being temporary. Lucy deals with some radically difficult people, both those seeking services and volunteers, day in and day out. I saw her frustrated and even angry, but never impatient or mean. Most importantly, she created an atmosphere of fundamental equality. If you were more than a short-time volunteer, no one made the distinction between you and someone who needed paid work. It was never said but widely acknowledged that we all needed to be there, even if it was for different reasons.

Sylvia Robinson: Sylvia is another local activist that is the heart, soul, and backbone of an essential community organization. Leaving her steady job, she sunk her entire life savings into pursuing her dream of establishing a community center for her neighborhood. Housed in a impressive and historical but crumbly brick building in the DC neighborhood of Pleasant Plains, the Emergence Community Arts Collective hosts dance classes, children’s summer programs, poetry open mics, swap meets, and support groups. Through the organization, Sylvia has also led several projects delving into the history of the neighborhood, with a particular focus of highlighting the contributions of black women. I had the pleasure of knowing Sylvia when I volunteered for Ecolocity, a Transition Towns group that focused on sustainable food. She gave us free space for meetings and events as well as use of the building’s yard for a community garden and mini-food forest. Despite the fact that running your own non-profit is relentless, she was always willing to give our group time and energy as well. I’ll also offer a shout-out to my friend and fellow Ecolocity volunteer Gerri Williams, who now lives in Duluth, MN and co-hosts a radio show.

All of these women are dedicated to their greater community without losing sight of the individual relationships that truly make up that community.

Who are the female role models in your life who have inspired you the most?

The Myth of the Real Adult

November 12, 2014July 16, 2017 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

The Myth of the Real Adult. Who is this real adult my mind keeps claiming I'm not anyway? (Picture: Woman talking to two kids at a kitchen table, dressed in a 1950s fashion)

When I look at our gross kitchen floor with bits of food that have been there for several days, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I put Sprout to bed at 8:45 PM for the third night in a row, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I look at the baskets of unfolded laundry, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I think about all of the friends I haven’t emailed in months, years, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I look at all of the unchecked items on my to-do list, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When the lawn is way too long and the garden is an overgrown mess, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When the dishes aren’t washed at 11:30 at night, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I only remember my mom’s birthday because of Facebook, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.

Continue reading →

Book Club: Ten Nine Eight and Diversity

June 2, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 7 Comments

Children’s literature is often not meant to represent reality – I love fantastical, imaginative works. But one place it really falls down is its failure to represent the vast diversity of children, in both the world and America. Considering half the population is female and there were more non-white babies born in the U.S. in 2011 than white babies, children’s literature (especially classic books like Dr. Seuss) is awfully male and white. Unfortunately, this lack of representation means that when female or minority kids read, they don’t see anyone like them. Similarly, when white, male kids read, they only see people like them as protagonists. Then, when books do have diverse characters, they often make a big deal about it, focusing on the ethnicity of the characters rather than allowing them to be characters in their own right. All of which is to say that Ten Nine Eight is refreshing to read.

Ten Nine Eight is a bedtime book, a simple genre that basically follows a character going to bed, who is meant to be a stand-in for the child being read to. The quintessential bedtime book is Goodnight Moon, but there’s also Night Night Little Pookie, Bedtime for Chickies, and the geographically based series Count to Sleep [City Name]. Ten Nine Eight follows a dad putting his little girl to bed. It counts the different things in her room, ranging from her “10 washed and warm little toes” to her fuzzy stuffed animals. The illustrations have just the right combination of realism and nostalgic childhood softness. The counting down is a gentle, quiet game perfect for helping little ones fall asleep. The little girl’s room is full of telling, relatable details, from the “7 shoes in a row” (the cat has the missing one) to the seashells making up a homemade mobile. The book earned a Caldecott Honor award, which it totally earned for its simple artistry.

What’s particularly unique is that story is not only about a dad with his daughter (who are usually absent, mean or at best incompetent in children’s entertainment) and they are both black. The story doesn’t mention either of these facts; they’re just presented as a part of everyday life, which they are for millions of families. But when a big deal is still made about a photo of a black dad braiding one daughter’s hair while holding another in a baby carrier in 2014, this book must have been radical in 1983.

So if you want a lovely bedtime story with some unassuming, welcome diversity, Ten Nine Eight is for you.

We'll Eat You Up – We Love You So

The Adventures of a Mom Just Trying to Make a Difference

feminism

Women’s History Month Role Models – Pop Culture

The Myth of the Real Adult