I suppose the NDP doesn;t really care about women and their issues.  Except... The board of the NDP has a lot of women on it.  One of its four staffers is a woman.  Three of its four research fellows are women.  Perhaps this fairly eclectic collection of people reached the reasonable conclusion that figuring out how to win elections is more important for the future of women's issues than having speakers that accurately reflect the demographics of America.  

"Perhaps this fairly eclectic collection of people reached the reasonable conclusion that figuring out how to win elections is more important for the future of women's issues than having speakers that accurately reflect the demographics of America."

If this (92 percent male) group can figure out how to win the next election, I for one will happily give them a pass on that pesky gender representation issue.    

I sincerely doubt that democracy can be revived in the absence of a serious and sustained appeal to, well, I guess we're talking about over half of the demos, otherwise known as the electorate.  But if it *can* be done, I'm all for doing it.  I will stay in the background, baking cookies or whatever, and I promise you won't hear a peep out of me on the question of whether a revival of democracy is even possible in the absence of a genuine commitment to democratic/demographic representation. 

Off to powder my nose.   I'll check back with you next November.

sincerely doubt that democracy can be revived in the absence of a serious and sustained appeal to, well, I guess we're talking about over half of the demos, otherwise known as the electorate.  

I see.  So a substantial number of the people behind the NDP are women, but because they didn't somehow establish gender balance in this conference, it means they don't care about the female vote.  Makes perfect sense.

Let's say for a moment that the NDP should have made gender balance a priority when choosing their speakers (here's one for tokenism over merit!).  Is the silly, whiny, over the top title of Graff's post: "Are women people"? the best way to point that out?  

There's a reason people like Rush Limbaugh became so prominent in this society by shouting nonsense about "feminazis."  My bet is if you look in the mirror while you're powdering your nose, you'll see one of those reasons.  

Things like this make me crazy. The white guys want to get together and decide what's best for the women and minorities, and if a woman asks to actually be included in the conversation, she's a "feminazi." How dare we presume to have a part in determining our own destiny? Just make the sandwiches and let the men go about their business - we'll get to your concerns later, girls. 
What horse shit. There's a lot of buzz in the feminist blogosphere about leaving the Democratic party en masse, and this is why. The Dems may or may not win an election with us, but they cannot win at all without us. If the Democrats won't act like an opposition party, we might as well look toward the future and start building the Green party. At least they put us in the platform - and on the ballot. 

Lyndon Johnson received your advice before signing the Civil Rights Act. I'm thankful that he went ahead and did the right thing instead.

What advice did I give again?  I seem to have forgotten, and when I re-read my post I didn't see any advice in it.  Perhaps you could point it out to me?  

Looks in part like overreliance on the staff of The Nation.  Among them, only the editor is a woman.  What's up with that?

About the title of the post: I haven't got the online tone thing down yet, I guess. You all can't see me laughing and rolling my eyes as I write that. Honestly, I think this sort of thing is hilarious. How is it possible that these folks do not know any female experts in this field, when women graduate, publish, get active, etc., in equal or greater numbers? It's just too funny a testament to the my-friends-and-me style of putting on a conference.

The only part that's not funny is that this sort of cluelessness means the resulting prescriptions for democracy-revival are then limited by the all-male point of view. Why would any movement want to be handicapped that way? We would be outraged if, say, the Iraqi constitution were written by a group that was 98% male... because we know that it would not give fair attention to women's lives.

Consider, for instance, the parking garage problem. Women know that parking garages are rape spots--not always, but definitely places you have to be quadruply alert. If you get an all-male group of security experts together, however, they are less likely to perceive parking garages as potential security problems. Bring some women into the building management team and, voila, ensuring that you can see into and out of the parking garage at all times is considered when it's being designed, built, and lit.

This is not to say that women are useful only on issues affecting women. Consider the roster of contributors to this blog, commenting on every possible topic. It's just to say that you can't have a serious democracy discussion with only half your population represented.

Re: Democrats don't appear to be any more female friendly than the current batch of republicans. sigh.-----------------------
Competition and control-orientedness mobilize these tendencies. They produce a heightened degree of adversarialness in society, which is just as apt to lead to tensions among women. Put another way, I think this is a broader phenomenon, toward which greater care should be shown in selecting the causal explanation for the effects.  

EJ's got it down.  

If these conferences were the least bit serious about winning elections, they'd include women.  Because, um, a majority of voters are women.  It's kind of like having a "conference on how to earn more money selling engagement rings" and not including anyone from the jewelery industry.  Don't be surprised when you fail to make a lot of money selling engagement rings.    

But even if they're not really about coming up with strategies to win elections but are about "me and my friends," their male bias is still not a good thing.  It's profoundly insulting to every woman who has ever been sent to stuff envelopes despite her policy expertise because all the girls are stuffing envelopes.  I'm sorry, but when women aren't on the "big smart thinkin' people" panel, other women think, "wait, I don't get to be one of the 'big smart thinkin' people' because I'm a girl?  Then, um, why the hell am I here?"

And then when women inevitably notice that when it comes to winning elections, we are the ones knocking on all the doors and manning the phone banks while the boys sit in the back room are making the big decisions and getting all the credit, it is sort of a frustratingly familiar situation.  And, shockingly, a lot of women who are attracted to the Democratic party are really really unattracted to the idea of doing all the work and getting none of the credit because they're a girl.  

I'm saying that women aren't entirely suckers, and a surprising number of us get pissed off when we're being screwed over.  Rubbing our noses in it, as these conference stats do, is the sort of thing that's going to make a number of us positively bitchy.  Which I'm starting to think wouldn't be a bad thing at all.  

So no women merit inclusion?  I say again, you boys have no clue how tone deaf you are on women's issues particularly on what motivates women to vote.

No, worrying more about how many women are on a panel as opposed to how many quality speakers smacks of tokenism.

Here's a little fact: more women voted for Bush last year than voted for Kerry.  Do you think the Republicans, when putting together their little think tank seminars and the like, wring their hands over how many women they have as speakers and how many men?  

This is all part of the brilliant New Dem strategy of "We don't like our voters, let's get rid of them."

The sad thing is you believe this.