The New Agenda’s Amy Siskind is featured in this issue of Womenetics.
When Amy Siskind speaks in front of young women at colleges and universities throughout the country, she sometimes asks, “Who here understands the term ‘perfection’?” When she looks out at the audience, everyone has raised their hand. Siskind’s question to young female co-eds is not a vocabulary quiz. The former Wall Street executive and co-founder and president of The New Agenda, a national organization focused on women’s advancement, is acknowledging a trait that she believes is pervading younger generations. If you’ve heard Siskind in the news recently, she is clear and on message about one thing: Professional women have got to start supporting those following in their footsteps in a way that defies the drone of mainstream media.
“This is a result of the media messaging young women have been exposed to,” Siskind says of her audience surveys. “[Young women] are not able to take risks, are fearful of entering certain career fields.”
Correcting this trend is one of the many tall orders that Siskind says The New Agenda is taking on over the next 50 years.
“One of my biggest messages to young women is that we have to fail,” she goes on.
The rest of the article can be found here.
I like what she said about women being afraid to take risks and how we have to learn how to fail. Women are judged so harshly, especially in the media, that many of us are afraid to take risks, to face ridicule.
Recently somebody pointed out that one thing that makes the US such a land of opportunity was the way we don’t have a negative view of failure. It’s pretty common for people to start a business, file for bankruptcy a few years later, and try again. This climate of freedom, where we don’t have debtors prison, were you haven’t offended your government or your ancestors by failing, has a lot to do with our economic success as a nation. It’s also contributed to our ability to innovate, to create new things. The road to invention is paved with failures.
I am so thrilled that you have created a pro woman organization that is aimed at problems that affect all women and girls, economic independence, parity in political representation, sexist and oppressive Corporate Media, etc.
When orgs. focus on reproductive rights and abortion, like feminists have, you are focusing on a problem that only affects women for one third of their life, IF they are sexually active with men, and it is a topic that brings out religion which everyone passionately disagrees on. I read over and over that women can’t agree on anything and can’t get along enough to form a voting block. Well try picking a topic that isn’t religious and that affects all women and I think your voting block will emerge. I also am not sympathetic to feminists who prioritize gay and racial issues before women’s issues but since lesbians are not affected by reproductive rights and abortion discussion it is understandable that they would be asking “what about our needs” relative to feminists. Providing a focus for the issues which affect us all is such a breath of fresh air in the pro woman movement.