Marriage and Pregnancy
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2008 - Seven Who Soar With Open Wings
Profiles of seven outstanding leaders dedicated to improving women"s lives: Sammie Moshenberg, Nguyen Van Anh, Susan Nickey, Rosita Romero, Anucha Browne Sanders, Lorraine Drammer Serena and Lekha Singh. Sammie Moshenberg, Energizer of Conscious Feminism Sammie Moshenberg left the United States in the late 1960s for her junior year at Oxford University and jumped into the women"s movement going full tilt on the British campus. She had grown up in Baltimore advocating for civil rights, racial equality and anti-war causes, partly motivated by her progressive Reform rabbi. Far from home and fighting for coeducational options at England"s fabled university, she realized how interrelated sexism was with other civil rights movements. After college, she spent several years teaching elementary school in Baltimore"s inner-city and working as a writer. A decade after her time at Oxford, she landed a job in communications in the New York office of the National Council of Jewish Women. "I was working for an organization that was not just predominantly female but consciously feminist, which works on women"s issues, with women and about women," Moshenberg says. Now in her third decade with the National Council of Jewish Women, Moshenberg"s work has expanded as the organization grew, from writing to lobbying and then to heading the Washington, D.C., office. Moshenberg says at this point in its history the National Council has become more oriented toward public policy and has made progressive social change integral to its activities. "I am constantly energized by the activism of members all over the country," she says. "They are a constant shot in the arm." Moshenberg now works on the National Council"s BenchMark initiative about the nomination of anti-choice federal judges. The campaign expands the reach of local members to other progressive organizations within their communities by offering training, educational materials and other support for public forums. A similar campaign, called Plan A, has as its goal to "secure and protect" women"s access to contraception. "Our battles aren"t over," she says. "There"s a need to remain proactive to protect our rights and ensure that all women are truly able to realize the full benefit of the rights for which so many of us have struggled." She adds that the other continuing need is for the U.S. women"s movement to embrace and include at its tables more young women, immigrants, women of color and women with disabilities. "I want to develop possibilities for a diverse multitude of women"s voices to be heard, speaking out for social justice," she says. Nguyen Van Anh, Builder of Vietnamese Gender Equity Before Nguyen Van Anh quit her job, abused women in northern Vietnam had no one to call for help. Domestic violence was not recognized as a problem; it was seen as a private, family matter. Nguyen had encountered woman after woman affected by violence while working as a radio reporter for the Voice of Vietnam station. But there was little in the way of assistance for them. She decided to take action and in 1997 she started the region"s first psychological and emotional counseling hotline. Services were in heavy demand from the get-go, and she saw that the women got a boost, "especially young women," she says. "Through the hotlines, I knew many victims of domestic violence, victims of tragedy." Eventually, Nguyen decided to quit her radio job and devote herself fulltime to helping women and children, "vulnerable people." The Hanoi-based Center for Studies in Applied Sciences in Gender was born. In addition to expanding the telephone hotline--which today operates in 22 cities and takes 5,000 calls a day--and offering online and in-person counseling services, Van Anh also started gender-equality training programs, hoping that alerting others on how to deal with issues of domestic violence will have a trickle-down effect. "We would like for change to start small," she says. "We work with police, women"s unions, hospital leaders. We provide knowledge about gender equality and domestic violence. After that we discuss their roles in their communities, so they can help victims in their communities." The training sessions incorporate creative exercises such as role-playing and encourage participants to practice their counseling and response skills in person, rather than on paper. Although their main focus is counseling victims of domestic violence, they also offer sessions on children"s rights, lobbying and conflict resolution. The center also actively works to end the stigma surrounding violence and sexual assault in Vietnamese culture: Victims can feel intense shame and family violence is rarely condemned publicly. They are teaching women that "nobody has a right to victimize them. Nobody has a right to abuse them," Nguyen says. "Sometimes for my staff and me we feel very tired, when women come in and cry. But we understand that we have to change their lives. We have to go outside, we have to talk about our lives. Then we feel stronger." Susan Nickey, Generator of Green Connections "For most of my career in this industry I"ve been the only woman in the room," says Susan Nickey, the chief financial officer of Acciona Energy North America, a renewable energy company based in Chicago, and a subsidiary of Acciona SA, headquartered in Madrid. "It"s an obstacle at times and an opportunity at times." One area where she feels gender helped her is in smoothly bringing diverse factions together to launch Nevada Solar One, the largest solar thermal energy plant built in the last 16 years and the third largest in the world. Nickey is a true believer that women can help power the clean-energy industry. She hopes her pioneering work can persuade women that the all-boys-club image of Big Coal and Big Oil is no longer accurate. "I hope to see more women in this field in particular," she says. "When women see their children, grandkids, nieces and nephews, they see the importance not only in making money, but in the right corporate objective and sustainable mission to devote oneself to." She spends much of her time speaking to female college students and women in business schools, trying to recruit and mentor them and encouraging them to take a stake in their environment. As the opportunity to usher the Nevada Solar One project came up, Nickey was seriously beginning to notice the effects of pollution and saw more and more otherwise healthy people in their 40s and 50s diagnosed with late-stage cancer. "I"ve been looking around me seeing it every other day and thinking we"ve got to do something about our environment." Although other firms had turned the project down, Nickey was convinced it could happen and helped secure financing. Strategies she"d learned as a woman in a male-dominated field came in handy as she ushered the project through the government permit process. "Having a woman can help bring all the personalities and teams together to work together," she said. "Being a team player and organizer can be a real positive force in getting things accomplished." Nickey is amazed by the change in attitude towards Nevada Solar One, which went from a pipe dream a few years ago to providing energy to 14,000 Nevada homes when it opened in June. There are so many visitors--students, businesses and federal officials--the company had to hire a tour guide. "We can start quickly moving in the right direction," Nickey says, "for us, and particularly for rest of the world which we have to lead." Rosita Romero, Lifter of Latinas to New Heights Rosita Romero has combined her passions for gender equality, housing and immigration advocacy into a unique space for Latinas that has been emulated by other women"s activists. As co-founder of the Dominican Women"s Development Center--started in 1988 in New York City"s Washington Heights neighborhood, the center of the Dominican immigrant community--Romero wanted to address the combination of sexism, racism and classism diminishing the lives of women in The Heights, as the area is known. "There was a lack of representation of women in positions of leadership within the Latino community and no organization to address the particular needs and interests of women," Romero says. She and several other women wanted to start a place to address those needs. Planning their launch, Romero and her colleagues asked 100 women in their community what their biggest priorities and needs were. The first was to learn English, followed by housing and employment. So the center launched three levels of English classes, along with basic Spanish literacy classes. They borrowed space from a church and provided free classes and child care so women could attend. That kind of holistic help has been a trademark of the Dominican Women"s Development Center. They created a program to help women build small businesses with their skills, such as daycare or catering. They began workshops on self-esteem and gender roles and offered reproductive health seminars. "For women, part of personal empowerment is taking control of our bodies and taking care of our health," says Romero. She hopes next to help the center, which now has an annual budget of $2 million and 40 employees, acquire a permanent home by purchasing a building. Whether fighting for the Latino community at large; for amnesty for undocumented workers, health care and immigrant rights; or lobbying on women-specific issues like domestic violence, reproductive justice and child care, the Center aims to combine a personal, community-based approach with an understanding of broader political truths. "We try to raise consciousness and raise awareness about society and community problems," Romero says. "Women can be educated about how to change these realities." Romero was born in the Dominican Republic, spent much of her youth in Puerto Rico and has lived in the United States for decades; her multicultural background is aPages: [1] 2