A Room of Our Own

Feminist author Viginia Woolf wrote in her famous essay, "A Room of One's Own" that in order to write fiction a "woman must have money and a room of her own."  Last Saturday, I sat in a room full of progressive women.  Being in a room where it was okay to talk about progressive issues, okay to talk about aspirations to lead and okay to be a woman who speaks her mind was potent.

Coming from a corporate background, letting your progressive feminist flag fly is a rare occurrence.  It's easy to apologize for pointing out that pregnant women shouldn't be passed over for promotions because "who knows what she'll want once the baby is here."  It's easy to seek the middle ground in conversations about national security, because you want to seem reasonable.  And where the "bottom line" is the rationale for nearly all decisions, it's easy to moderate your voice in the workplace just to get along.

And every day you do that, you feel the pull toward a "rational" free market perspective, with a hint of a moral center rather than a moral center which enables a vibrant and stable free market.  You do it because there's no room for progressive feminism there.  There's not a room where you sit across from 20 of your colleagues and talk about the need for your voices to be heard and acknowledged.  There's not a room where conversations about health care reform don't have to be nuanced or focus grouped.  And there's not a room where you can demand parity for women in leadership.

It's time for more women in America to have the chance to sit in a room like I did on Saturday - a room where we proudly declare that women shouldn't have to be asked to lead; where women don't downplay their qualifications and where progressive women of all backgrounds have a seat at the table. Indeed, for women to reach parity in political office, we need Emerge. We need a room of our own.

By Nova Newcomer, Emerge Oregon Class of 2010