Feminist Detective: The Case of Body Positivity

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Is the body positivity movement a good thing or a bad thing for feminism? Ruth Whippman joins Lauren to discuss.

Take a listen and let us know what you think about the body positivity movement.. and anything else you want me and Ruth to uncover. Email us at info@inflectionpointradio.org. You can write OR record your question in a voice memo on your phone and send it.

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How A'shanti Gholar is Getting More Women of Color into Office

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A’shanti Gholar is the founder of the Brown Girl's Guide to Politics and the President of Emerge America--a national organization devoted to getting more democratic women into office. You'll hear how A’shanti went from watching CSPAN as a kid, with her mom, to working for President Barack Obama, the DNC and the NAACP before joining Emerge America as national political director. (She became their president in January, 2020 shortly after we produced this episode!)

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Toolkit: Read A’shanti’s Toolkit to get more women of color in elected office... and how to break through all the “isms.”

TRANSCRIPT: We do our best, please let us know any errors!

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada and I have a very interesting story about how I came to politics. I was just watching TV one day with my mom and she left the room and I changed the channel and I discovered C-SPAN. And I saw all of these people arguing and fighting about making the country better and that's when I actually developed my love for politics. But even at that young age of watching C-SPAN, I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me, a lot of women, a lot of women of power.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm Lauren Schiller and that is A'Shanti Gholar. She's the founder of the Brown Girls Guide to Politics and the national political director for Emerge, a national organization devoted to getting more democratic women into office.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I really got my serious interest in politics when I was in high school. I had that amazing government teacher that you hear about, she was super well connected and she had the candidates come in for a statewide Senate race. One of the candidates I actually loved, enjoyed everything that he said, his stances on the issues. The other candidate, I had an issue with the fact that he voted against raising the minimum wage. And for me it was a very important issue because I have lots of friends that work part time jobs either to make extra money to support being a teenager or to bring extra money home. And I thought they should make more money and that people in general should make more money.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I asked the candidate why he voted against raising the minimum wage. He said he didn't. I said, "Yes you did. I can look up your votes." And he argued with me just saying that he didn't raise the minimum wage. And after the class he called my government teacher and he said to her, "She was right. I didn't vote to raise it, I just didn't like the fact that she called me out." And it absolutely infuriated me and I thought, "Well, is it because I'm a girl? Is it because I can't vote? And I'm young." But even though I was young and I couldn't vote, and I was a girl, I was a young girl who couldn't vote but could volunteer.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So every moment that I had to spare, I volunteer for his opponent and his opponent ended up winning that race by less than 500 votes. So even at that young age in high school, I saw the power that people had in politics to really get involved and make a change. And when I got in college, that's when I started getting heavily involved with college Democrats, young Democrats, and really just being a volunteer has led me to the profession that I have today which back then being a young girl watching C-SPAN, I didn't even know it was possible. So I'm one of those people who actually gets to wake up every day and do the things that they love.

Lauren Schiller:                  Amazing. And that goes to show you, don't bald face lie to a room full of high school students who are going to one day rise up and fight against you.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Right. I think so many times when politicians go to speak to young people, they just think they can BS their way through or that we're not paying attention. But we are very much aware because we're not voters but the things that you do still do impact us because it's impacting our parents, it's impacting other key people that we care about and those things really stay with people. I've talked to so many young people who'll just be like, "Yeah, so-and-so came to talk to my class one time and I knew like, "Man, if I could vote, I definitely wasn't voting for them and now that I can vote I still don't vote for them." So it's also going to impact you down the road when you want to run for higher office or if you're running for reelection.

Lauren Schiller:                  Today we're going to hear how A'Shanti went from watching C-SPAN to working for president Barack Obama, when she was in the Department of Labor. She also worked for the DNC and the NAACP before joining Emerge and she'll tell us what it will take to get more women of color elected to office. This is Inflection Point, with stories of how women rise up. We'll be right back.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm back with A'Shanti Gholar who got inspired to get into politics by watching C-SPAN. So just out of curiosity, have you been on C-SPAN? Could someone have have spotted you at some point on C-SPAN?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 This is really funny. I spoke at the Truman National Security Project about two years ago now telling our story itself, and I talked about this C-SPAN story and C-SPAN was recording it. So I am actually on C-SPAN talking about my love of C-SPAN as a young girl.

Lauren Schiller:                  I love it. Wow, that's an amazing hall of years, in a good way.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It was really good to see that Tweet. I'm like, "Okay, but this is kind of cool."

Lauren Schiller:                  I mean, what's so great about that is that it's just a testament to young with a vision, imagining yourself as some... Wondering where the people are who look like you and then sparking your imagination that maybe you could be making that change and start to change the face of C-SPAN for starters but a lot of other things.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah. And I tell people all the time, it is has taken a while to get used to being in this role because even doing the work that I do at emerge, we say all the time, other women will be like, "Will you run for office, will you run for office, will you run for office." And for me it was always, "Oh so-and-so is doing this, so-and-so will do that. And you have to take your own advice and actually get out there, get comfortable and be the one to do what you really love and step up in this space and make change.

Lauren Schiller:                  I also, I'm always curious, I mean when you stood up to that politician in that classroom, was that just, you felt comfortable doing that? Was that something that you always felt comfortable doing or did someone have to kind of, I don't know, push you in that direction?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I definitely didn't feel comfortable. I was just angry. But that's what we see with women, when we get really angry, no matter what age we are, we push back. And when my government teacher actually told me he had called, I was just, "Oh Lord, I'm in so much trouble now because I was arguing with this man. We'll see what happens." But she actually said she was really proud of me for standing up and pushing back and she told the whole class the next day how he had called and apologized and I never knew what political party she was involved in. But when I ran for secretary of the Nevada State Democratic Party, she was there at the convention and she said, "I saw your name and that you were running and I had to show up and support you and I still tell my students about what you did to this day."

Lauren Schiller:                  Here for those kinds of teachers. Wow.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Just love her.

Lauren Schiller:                  So let's talk about the state of things right now. What are the statistics around women of color in office right now? I mean we talk a lot about, we need to balance the equation. We need to get to 50/50 in government between men and women, but specifically thinking about representation of women of color in office. Where do you think stand?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Well we want to start with the big picture. There's 520,000 elected offices in this country. Women most certainly don't occupy 50% of those offices we're somewhere between 20% to 25% and when you get to women of color, it's extremely low. In Congress, there are only 127 women serving, 47 of them are women of color. When you look at statewide executive offices, there are 91 women serving, only 17 of those are women of color. When you look at state legislators, 2,133 are women and only 543 of those are women of color. And when you look at women of color mayors, it's really less than 20 who are mayors of large cities. So we still have a very long way to go. And for me when we talk about parity, parity really would be 51% for women since we are 51% of the population, but even when we reached that parity, that doesn't mean we're going to have parity in every single state.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 That doesn't mean we're going to have parity in all of the elected offices. That doesn't mean women of color, LGBTQ women, women with disabilities are going to have parity. One of the things I always say is this work really has no end date. There's so much that we have to do. And even now when we talk about all the historic gains that women have made, it still won't be until 2085 that we get that parity. And that means that we still have to be at... Women have to be winning at the same rate as they are now. So there's still so much more work to be done.

Lauren Schiller:                  And when you say the year 2080 and parity, do you mean just simply 50/50 women and men?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay. And so again, not accounting for all the various iterations of women and men out there, right? Or looking across the gender spectrum or women of color, et cetera. So given that that's the case, I mean if you were to provide a perspective on where things stand right now in terms of our representation. If we're not at parity, how are you feeling about who we do have an office, taking into account the needs specifically for people of color? And I realize when I asked that question that it's like a really wide group of people, so I'm not even actually sure how to ask that question.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 When I think of the women that we have currently in elected office, I am just so proud of the representation that we have. At Emerge we have our trailblazers list and I tell people, "I love this list, but I also hate this list because it's the first woman, first woman of color, first LGBTQ woman." And it's fabulous because these are women who are breaking barriers at the same time why do I still have that list in 2019 because again, there's so much work to be done and I think of Congresswoman Lucy McBath, everything that she has done, given the fact that she lost her son to gun violence, she turned that into empowering herself to be a champion for all families who had been victims of gun violence. And now she's sitting in Congress fighting for them.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I think that Congresswoman Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids who are the first two indigenous women and they didn't get elected until 2018. Think of London Breed the mayor of San Francisco, the first black woman in that office. I think of Leslie Heron and Danica Roem, LGBTQ women who are breaking barriers. I feel an intense sense of pride when I think of these women and everything that they do and how in particular they are inspiring other women. Congresswoman Xochitl Torres Small in New Mexico, she's one of our Emerge alums. She flipped her seat and I was very fortunate enough to be at a dinner with her and she talked about how this woman came running up to her in the airport and just said to her, "I watched your race, it inspire me so much. Now I want to for office because I saw you do it." And that woman probably won't take the Emerge program but she was inspired by seeing these women.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And at the end of the day, that is what we need and that is what makes me get out of bed and do this work every day knowing that these women, the work that they are doing in their elected office is literally inspiring other women to step up and do the same.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, I love that virtuous circle. I mean, it's so important and so critical. So I mean in terms of having greater representation, I mean the issues that just keep bubbling up and I be like, I can't even believe, it's hard to believe... I'd like to believe that any of these issues could just be solved. But like you said, it's an ongoing process. But thinking about what's been happening in the news lately around police brutality, the unfairness in our criminal justice system, like racial disparities that are tied to all of those issues. Does it take getting more people of color, women of color into office to change the systems that perpetuate this?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 100%. You hit on a big issue for black women in particular, which is criminal justice reform. And when you look at prosecutors, 90% of prosecutors are white men. So when we talk about changing the criminal justice system that means that we have to change the face of criminal justice reform. And that means we need more women and women of color in these roles. And I'm a part of a group called the 2020 bipartisan justice coalition, which is made up of black Republicans, black Democrats who are dedicated to seeing the criminal justice system change. And we just had an event where we honored all of these great black women prosecutors who were literally doing amazing things and one of them was our Emerge alum, DA Rachel Rollins out of Massachusetts.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And the things that she is just doing in a short period of time to make this community actually feel that they can trust the person who is in this role. A lot of people don't know the power that district attorneys have. This is literally the person who can decide if a kid who has an ounce of marijuana gets off with a warning or it's going to go to jail for several years, they literally have that big of a impact on people's lives and we need people in those roles who look like us, who can relate to us and who really know our stories instead of the awful myths and stereotypes that exist about black and brown people. It's the same thing about having women at the table in general.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Nevada is the first female majority state legislature. And if you look at the bills that they pass, it runs the gamut. But everything is so women friendly because you had women who are making the decisions as Senate majority leader Nicole Cannizzaro is an Emerge alum. And even when we talk about women's issues, we still need to realize these are family issues, these are community issues, these are everyone issues. And we need women from different backgrounds, socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, to be helping draft those laws because when we're not helping draft them, then they have a very negative impact on us when they're implemented.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. And back to the DA, I mean that's a campaign the HCLU actually has had a campaign running for a while about get to know your DA that you as the voter have power in terms of who holds that position, how often does that person... This is just a fundamental question, but how often does that particular position come up for a vote? Isn't it different by area?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah, it is very different by area. But it can be every two to four years. And the reflective democracy campaign did a lot of work on this too, and they have some great statistics on who DA's are. But even when we're talking about DA's, it still has to be law enforcement in general. Sheriffs are elected, judges are elected. We need to be focusing on the entire gamut if we want to see the full change in the criminal justice system.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. And especially with what's happening with the federal level on the judges that are being placed.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Exactly.

Lauren Schiller:                  That do not get voted in. We need some counterpoints there.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:                  Just to put it lightly. (silent) I'm curious about the relationship between movements and politics. And in particular... I was reading about something that happened that you were involved in related to black lives matter and the democratic platform and just thinking... There was a DNC resolution that you championed endorsing black lives matter and then they responded that they don't endorse the DNC and actions speak louder than words. And it was a whole kerfuffle if again, understatement. I mean maybe you can talk about that a little bit more. I mean you were involved in that, but I just found it really interesting that in an attempt to support it kind of backfired and I feel like everything needs to work together so we can move forward. So I'm curious if you could kind of talk about that and specifically and more philosophically, if you will.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I have no regrets about that resolution. That resolution passed unanimously by the DNC and we had wanted to show our support for the movement and there's always going to be that tension between the movements and the institutions. Even if you look back to the civil rights movement, there was also that tension that existed and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that a lot of people in the black lives matter movement felt that the political party system was failing them. That a lot of their elected officials were failing them and they didn't want the resolution or they felt that it wasn't enough.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 But the DNC as a body that is how we support our work. And I continue to work with those people in the black lives matter movement who were interested in working with the DNC in figuring out how we could work together. And for me, those are the things that happen. I didn't take it too harshly or too personally, but at the end of the day it did spark conversations and that is what we need to happen. And I know other black women who I work with in this space, in the political space, they had conversations after the resolution paths, there are still conversations that happen and it's two different worlds that you're really trying to get to know each other. And even when we're around the table coming together, that tension exists. And I think it's just part of how it all works.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. What is at the heart of that tension?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I mean, I think when you think about it, black lives matter came out of police killings of young people and there were elected officials who were not holding people accountable, particularly police officers. In that case we're talking about people who are in the law enforcement system. So there's not going to be that sort of trust. You also have a lot of people who had never engaged in the political system at all with their political party. So there wasn't going to be that level of trust at all. These are all things that you have to build. I tell people all the time with the work that I do, being a political director and my background in community engagement, you have to show up, you just can't expect people to show up for you.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And for the black lives matter movement, they hadn't seen people in the democratic party showing up. And that is absolutely fair and in a lot of instances it is absolutely correct. So that's where a lot of the mistrust came from. And those are just things, relationships that you have to build over time.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, I mean in part I wonder, and not just specific to the black lives matter movement, but all movements and activist groups, like is it their job to just kind of never be satisfied? The goal is never quite achieved. There's always more that can be done and politicians by contrast are constrained by a number of things that movement makers and activists are not necessarily constrained, bureaucracy being one of them, who's going to give them money being another. Anyway, the dynamics seems really interesting particularly because these leaders of these activists movements and our voters kind of how you as someone who's in a position in an elected office navigate those waters. It's fascinating.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So for me when this comes up and people are like, "Oh, so-and-so is just never going to be satisfied." And even when they say these things to me, I tell them the only candidate who's going to 100% agree with you on any issue is you, literally, so you need to be running for office. If you want the perfect candidate in your eyes then you are the perfect candidate, you need to be stepping up and running and challenging people and making the change.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 But at the same time, there does need to be that level of accountability that we do need to hold our elected officials accountable because so many people are just getting reelected and reelected because no one ever runs against them. No one ever shows up to the city council meeting and the country evolves and people evolve and issues evolve. So I think that's why there's always going to be the conversations of wanting more and doing more, but I think that's healthy for democracy.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. Well, I was reading an article about AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and how she had to kind of tamp and down her fire in order to get things done. Now, this is one article and one newspaper that everyone's mad at right now, the New York Times, but that she came in hot and she still is arguably, but that she's had to kind of take a more tempered approach recognizing that there are other factors that she has to navigate. So anyway, but we're all like excited about what she's been doing yet we want our politicians to get things done. So do you have any thoughts on that dynamic?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 This is something that comes up 24:17all the time and we hear women talk about it where they say, "Okay, I'm literally moving from being an activist to being an elected official and oh my gosh, this is so different." And it really is when you are in that other person's shoes and you have the activists thinking on your door not wanting all of the change. And I think it's a new role and it's growth and I still think that you can accomplish things because I tell people all the time, the best elected officials that I see are those who started off as activists, those who really had an issue, something important in their community that they wanted to change and then they ran for office themselves and they learned the system, but they also learned how to make the system work for the things that they wanted to do.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I totally see that happening with the Congresswoman, I think a lot of people are saying, "Oh, she's tampered herself down. She's calmed down." "No, she's figured out where the bathrooms are. She's figured out how things work in committee and now she's making all of it work for her." And that's what you should do when you're a Congresswoman.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, and that is how you get things done ultimately, right, is you got to figure out who are the players and where's the bathroom.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I tell people all the time, if the Congresswoman, the other Congresswoman were just so horrible and terrible and rebels as everyone likes to say that they are then Speaker Pelosi wouldn't have put them on the committees that they are on because they are on some serious pretty impressive committees because she knew at the end of the day those are bad ass women that were going to get things done and that's why she puts them there.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, I actually, I heard... While we're on the topic of Nancy Pelosi who there are so many things to talk about related to her right now, but I heard her give a talk where she talked about what she looks for in a candidate, which is, I'm going to paraphrase, but that they've got vision, they have a plan to get it done, they have the ability to connect with the people who can help them get it done. And just kind of identifying what those three things are in there may have even been a fourth. And it just seemed, it was like, "Oh yeah, that seems pretty fundamental like what do you want to do? How are you going to get it done? And who are you going to get to help you?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Absolutely. One of the first things that I ask women all the time is, why are you running? You have to have your why especially as women, we know why we are running and going to say something about the men's right now that they normally don't like when I say, but women, we definitely want to know why we're running, this is what we want to get done, this is how we're going to do it. And for men, they'll wake up and they'll be, "Wow County commission sounds great. I'm just going to go ahead and do that." So as women we put all of this pressure on ourselves, but it is that thinking that makes us really great candidates.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And we put out amazing platforms and our platforms really do reflect the community because we're going around learning. We're not expecting that we know everything about every single issue. We go to the experts and speaker Pelosi is absolutely correct, those are the great things to look for in a candidate, particularly the vision, what are you going to do and how are you going to get it done?

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. And the whole... It is always a challenge to talk about what men do it this way and women do it that way, but there are patterns and that your point that you just made, which is that the way that women tend to approach things might be the better way, just leaping in without necessarily having the expertise that you might need, seems like foolhardy, but yet they're sort of first to the gate and they're first to raise their hands so that they're getting the positions. But I feel like this approach of thinking about what you can bring and why you want to do it and taking a minute, it seems like if I were to evaluate, which is better, that feels like the better way to say it.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 As women we like to be prepared, that's in our DNA.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yep. Is that really an... I'm going to ask a scientist about that.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I can say for the alums in the Emerge network, it is definitely in their DNA.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'll be right back with A'Shanti Gholar. Join our supporters and make a tax deductible donation towards our production at inflectionpointradio.org. Just click the support button. I'm back with A'Shanti Gholar. So back to my question, my sort of like two by four question about women of color. I mean can you talk about what... You've got the Brown Girl's Guide to politics, your podcast and your website. When you say brown girls, what and who do you mean?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 When I say brown girls, I mean women of color and women of color is not synonymous with black women. A lot of people when they hear women of color, they automatically think black women. But when I'm talking about black women, I say black women. So when talking about women of color, I'm talking about black women, I'm talking about Latinas, I'm talking about indigenous women, Asian women, women who identify with being black or brown. And I did the brown girls guide the way that it is focusing on all women of color is because despite the fact that even being women of color, we do have our differences. I know in politics we still face the same types of sexism, discrimination, racism. I get in a room with so many women and we just started sharing stories and a lot of them are the same from being the only brown girl in the room to doing more work, but being paid less to being the most credentialed, but having the lower role in the company.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 These are all things that women of color deal with, not only in politics but just in daily life. And for the BGG, I wanted it to be an outlet for us to openly talk about these things because I wanted us to give advice not only to women who are also in politics who are dealing with this, but aren't fortunate enough to have the circle that myself and other women have. But also for the young women who are coming up in politics like I was one day and wasn't able to see myself. I want them to be able to see all of us and know that there are women who are working in this space what are working to make it better for them. And that is something that I know my friends and I really concentrate on is after we leave an organization, a role, a company, we always ask ourselves, have I made this better for the young women of color who are coming after me? And we always want for that answer to be yes.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So for me, overall, the BGG is a love letter to all of these women just to know that even though you may not be feeling that you're seen and heard, that there are other women that do see you, hear you and value you.

Lauren Schiller:                  So What barriers are you seeing? I mean you just mentioned a whole bunch of barriers that women of color run into in politics and in the workplace and in life. What specifically might women of color face when running for office?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 The first thing is we talked about a little bit, women of color we are just such strong advocates, we're out there in our community, in public leadership. That needs to be translated into black women candidates and encouraging them to run for office. There's just so many stories out there. I'll give an example where a woman, she was a principal, she was considering running for school board and people told her she wasn't qualified over a white man who had no educational experience, who wanted to run for school board. Those are some of the things that women of color face. We need to make sure that we're also not thinking that people of color can only represent people of color. This is such an antiquated idea that we are only limited to representing people that look like us and we have to get out of that mindset because so many of the women of color who were elected to Congress, they do not represent districts where the people look exactly like them.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So we are capable of doing a lot more for entire communities. We don't only have to represent our specific communities and we also have to look at things such as gatekeepers and at the end of the day, gatekeepers, those are those people who want to keep other people in power because it protects their power. That absolutely prohibits so many women of color from entering politics and that leads to financial constraints or raising money. It's already harder for women to raise money, it's harder for women of color because they are just not seen as quote unquote viable, which is a word I really dislike because when you're saying viable, what you're really saying is straight white man.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And so that prohibits women from being able to raise a lot of resources initially. And then back to what we think about when we talk about viability, we just got to get over what we think a traditional candidate looks like. Because at the end of the day for women of color, we wake up every day and we're playing in a system that was not built for us, that never imagined our participation, politics was made for white land owning men, which we are definitely not. So even though we're almost in 2020, we still have to realize that our elected officials need to look like the people in this country.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yes. So the other thing that you told me when we were preparing for this conversation was that women of color can also run up against the other people of color saying, "Well hey, we got to cover it because we already got a black guy in that position."

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Absolutely. I hear from so many women of color who say, "Yeah, I was told not to run because there's already a man of color running." So this is what I say with women of color. We have to face the sexism and the racism that exists. And when people are doing that, no matter who they are, saying that we already have a person of color in the race, be it a man, be it a woman, we don't need anyone else. What you're saying is that you really think people of color are a monolith and we're all the same. And that is absolutely not true and that is people's implicit bias showing. That they think, "Oh, there's one, we're good. It's covered, we don't need any more." Just like we want to see multiple women running for positions. We also want to see multiple women of color running for that same position.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 These are the things that only make us better. And frankly that's what it should look like. We never say anything when there's multiple white men running for office, but the minute there's multiple people of color, hands up, we got a problem. We can't be doing that. We just need the one person to be the sole representative of the community and that's not how it works at all. So that does create additional barriers, not only for women of color, but just people of color in general, that when they are recruited to run or if they do decide to run on their own, they do get tokenized in this system.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. I mean, can you imagine what things would look like if that was what white people heard? "Oh, you don't need to run, there's already a white person running for that office."

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Exactly.

Lauren Schiller:                  It's like bizarre.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It goes back to what I said earlier is we don't say anything when white people want to represent a district that is majority people of color. But when a person of color wants to represent a district that is majority white people, there's a problem.

Lauren Schiller:                  What do you tell individuals like me that we can do to break down those barriers when we see them happening?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 You got to call it out, and I'm just going to be very honest right now is when it comes to the racism, the sexism, the homophobia, all of these things that exist, we as those people experiencing it, we cannot be the ones constantly calling it out. We need white people to be the ones calling it out and saying, "Hey, this is not right. I see what is happening. Do you see what is happening?" Because for us, the minute we normally say something, we get attacked and we're just being too sensitive and people get upset, "How can you call me that?" But when it's coming from people that look like them, it's totally different.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I see this happen all the time, people will stop, sit back, listen and say, "I actually didn't think about that. Thank you for enlightening me." That's what needs to happen. You all need to be the ones to speak out because it's not on us as the oppressed to constantly speak up and fix these problems.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, and also like let's lay our money down.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Absolutely.

Lauren Schiller:                  I mean fundraising is another thing that you mentioned as being a challenge.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It is. It is. And donate and that goes to when we just want to talk about donations, people always think that it has to be thousands of dollars because that's kind of how our political system is made right now where people think that you have to have millions of dollars to run for office. There are so many offices where people only need $10,000, $50,000, $100,000. That money is easily raised. So put an investment in those women, $5 $10 $15, those low dollar donors, they actually add up and that small amount of money can help fund canvassers, it can get people lit, it can do social media ads, it can even add up to being able to provide stipends for interns, which is something I'm really passionate about because I think that's an important way to get more young people of color involved in politics.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Don't think that any amount is too small and even if you're not able to do as much as you want financially, talk about the candidates on your social media account, when you're at an event, when you meet people who happen to be in their district, get their name out there, is these little small things that actually end up adding up over the long run and can help women of color.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay, so now we're about a year out from the next presidential election. We've got this big field, I mean we're recording in October of 2019 of democratic candidates for the president. We're presidential primary season. So what do black community leaders look for in a candidate? What should we be looking for as the priorities as we come up on this race and making big decisions?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yes. So I like to say we are already in 2020. I mean myself, just the number of emails I got from the presidential candidates today, I'm just thinking, "Oh my gosh, what is it going to look like in January? This is going to be insane." But we know that when it comes to women of color voters, in particular black women, they are the cream of the crop and when it comes to the democratic party, we are the base of the base of the democratic party and the black women's round table. In Essence magazine, they actually just did a survey of what the top life or death issues for black women are and as we talked about earlier, criminal justice and policing reform remains the number one.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And like you said, we're recording this in October, so we were just coming off of another shooting of a black woman who was playing video games with her nephew at her home and she's now dead. The second issue is the Affordable Care Act. Keeping healthcare basically affordable and if anyone is watching the debates, we know that the candidates have plenty to say about that. Then next you have the rise in hate crimes and racism and then you have equal rights and equal pay and then gun violence and gun safety.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 So those are the top issues that black women in particular are looking for out of these presidential candidates. How they are going to address them, but when it comes to issues overall, and I like to just say this, we do care about the same issues as everyone else, we just have a different perspective of how we're looking at them and we want the candidates to have enough sense to realize they can write this great plan on a college affordability, but you're also going to recognize that black women hold the most student loan debt in this country? When we want to talk about violence against women and girls, are they going to address how indigenous women, the rate at which they are dying and how VAWA, the Violence Against Women Act really protected them and other women and is still hasn't been authorized.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 When we talk about entrepreneurship and opportunity, are you going to talk about how to make capital more accessible for women of color to open small businesses. So we care about the issues that all Americans care about. We just need for it to be addressed with that lens of intersectionality and I think that's a reason why you see certain candidates who started very much at the bottom with calling, rising to the top because they have realized that they have to have that in their policy platforms. And that's why they're getting so much attention from women of color.

Lauren Schiller:                  And did you, I mean I didn't hear reproductive justice on that list.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It is. And so the full list, the other things, I mentioned some of them to quality public education, to reproductive choices, quality, affordable childcare, environmental justice and climate change.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yes. So they're on the list, they're just sort of more towards the bottom of the list.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah.

Lauren Schiller:                  Is that the survey's results?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Yeah. So I gave the top one but literally everything I just talked about was on the list.

Lauren Schiller:                  So what... I mean are you hearing more about the items at the top of the list from one candidate over another?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 I think we are and I do think Senator Warren is speaking to these issues very well. And I noticed back in March, lots of women of color, especially black women, were starting to talk about her a lot more and it's the fact that she just kept releasing all of these plans, all of these plans. And in April we had the sheet of people presidential forum, which is founded by Amy Alison and I'm fortunate enough to be on the steering committee. We held it in... She's in Texas and she won the forum. The way she spoke to that room, she definitely resonated and connected with those women in a way that none of the other candidates were able to. It was quite impressive to see.

Lauren Schiller:                  I mean the last thing that I'm thinking about on the topic of Elizabeth Warren is that I read a piece about her that it wasn't looking like she was getting the support of black community leaders and this is about a month ago.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lauren Schiller:                  What is your response to that in light of the facts?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 It's really interesting though because if you look really at the support that she is getting from black community leaders, especially these black women, it's really impressive people. I mean she just rolled out the endorsement from Roxane Gay, which is amazing.

Lauren Schiller:                  Nice.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Exactly. So in so many women, black women look up to her and then also who is meeting with her. And I think that is something a lot of people don't pay attention to. Just the fact who will even walk into the room with some of these candidates. And she has been really great at doing these black women round tables. And when I look, it's really the women in the community who are leading, who definitely have the ears of a lot of people who want to show up and they're not there to endorse her but just to hear what she has to say and question her on her plans is really fabulous.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 And I know Senator Booker, he's been doing a lot of those events as well. So the endorsements are important, but we still have to say... Who's even willing to show up to talk to some of these candidates because not everyone is.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay. One quick thing before we continue. We recorded this in October of 2019 when Kamala Harris, the one woman of color in the presidential primary was still in the race. Senator Harris has since suspended her campaign, but I still thought it was important to share what A'Shanti and I talked about. Also right around this point in our conversation we had a little problem with our connection so I hope you'll just bear with us on that.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 We're all excited to se a black woman on that stage. A woman of color on that stage absolutely representing, and I always equate this moment to, this is probably how black women felt when they saw Shirley Chisholm run, to be able to see Senator Harris run and she is also fabulous on all of these issues and there is always additional barriers and standards that are put on women of color and that really sucks because it distracts from her campaign and for her to be able to roll out all of these great policies. I remember when she rolled out her policy for teachers, it made me smile because it reminded me of my government teacher and I was like, "Yes, she was a great woman." I wanted her to make more money. She should make more money and here Senator Harris rolling out a great plan that speaks to teachers.

Lauren Schiller:                  So what is the best advice that you've ever been given about how to get more women of color into office?

A'Shanti Gholar:                 The best advice is to definitely ask them to consider it because so many women, especially women of color, they really haven't thought about running for office. I like to say all the time, we are just so great at getting other people elected, but I want for us to see our name on the ballot to be able to go into the voting booth and vote for ourselves. And one of the things that we do at Emerge is we are really intentional about making sure that we're talking to women of color about running for office. That includes everything from the organizations that we partner with, such as Higher Heights for America, which focuses on getting black women more civically and politically engaged too.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 We did a training at the NAACP in Michigan and saying, "Hey, where are Emerge. We want you to think about running for office." So making sure that we're working with the groups, we're going to where the groups are to talk to women of color, not expecting them to come to us. And then also being intentional about it in our training programs, making sure that we're out in the community, talking to women of color, making sure that they know that we want for them to run for office. And then also any trainings that we can do to specifically speak to women of color.

A'Shanti Gholar:                 Our Arizona affiliate did a training just for Latino women that was conducted in Spanish, so also being creative about the opportunities to really make the training more welcoming and encouraging for women of color as well.

Lauren Schiller:                  That was A'Shanti Gholar, national political director for Emerge and the founder of the Brown Girls Guide to Politics blog and podcast. You can find a link to her podcast and her blog on my website. A'Shanti also shared her toolkit for getting more women of color in office, which you can find on my website at inflectionpointradio.org. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point and this is how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:                  Today's episode was made possible by the generous support of the Harnisch Foundation and Eve Rodsky. That's our Inflection Point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple podcast, Radio Public, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review and subscribe to the podcast. Know a woman leading change we should talk to, let us know at inflectionpointradio.org. While you're there, support our production with a tax deductible monthly or one time contribution. When women rise up, we all rise up.

Lauren Schiller:                  Just go to inflectionpointradio.org. We're on Facebook and Instagram @inflectionpointradio. Follow us and join the Inflection Point society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions and follow me on Twitter @laschiller. To find out more about today's guest and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go, inflectionpointradio.org. Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and PRX. Our community manager is Alaura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Lane. I'm your host Lauren Schiller. Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

TOOLKIT

In this Inflection Point Toolkit A’shanti Gholar, tells us how to get more women of color in elected office... and how to break through all the “isms.”

Lauren Schiller: What is the first thing that people need to do to get more women of color elected?

A’shanti Gholar: The first thing is if you see a great woman of color that you know should run for office. If you know a great woman of color that should run for office, ask her to run for office. That is the most important thing. The second thing would be to support her when she does run for office. That means donating canvassing, phone making, being there for emotional support, helping spread the word. And then when you do see a woman of color who is experiencing any type of racism, sexism, call it out. Let people know that it is not okay because that's part of how we start to change the conversations in the country.        

LS: And what advice do you have for women who are running for office for how to handle it when they run into racism, sexism or other isms if especially if there's not someone standing by is going to call it out for them.

AG: The fact is they unfortunately, because as I say, it shouldn't be upon women, people of color to have to do this all the time, but we do have to call it out. We have to let people know when there is a discrepancy and how they're being talked about as a candidate versus the other people who are being talked about as a candidate and let people know. Also the things that they are saying about me are not true. It is based on stereotypes is based on myths. It is based on implicit bias and counter it with what is the truth about them as a candidate and stand up for themselves. Never let it slide.

LS: And, and just to tag onto that, if you know too, it should not be on them to have to call this out on top of doing the work of running for office. So if you have a potential ally who just isn't aware that they can be of help in alleviating these problems, is there a way to start that conversation with somebody who can be there for you?

AG: Absolutely. And it all starts with first being able to be honest with that person and also knowing that these are uncomfortable conversations, but if we want to make things better, we have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and you just have to do it because when it goes unsaid, that doesn't allow for anything to change and most certainly doesn't help the candidate. And it doesn't help the people in the community that if they're going to have this type of person representing them, that would just really go low to the standards of racism, sexism, homophobia. We have to be very honest, we are seeing play out every single day, the impact of that rhetoric at the national level and we especially need to be able to cut it down at the state and local level to make sure that those types of individuals are not getting elected to office.

We are seeing every day the impact that that type of language has play out at the national level. And we need to be doing everything that we can to make sure that that type of rhetoric is not represented at the local level. And that has to start with us.

LS: And so for, for people, let's just say, so for white people who are able to stand up for the women and other people of color in their lives we need to be open to hearing examples of what's going on if we are experiencing blind spots because it's not our everyday reality. Right. I mean, and, and to be able to then act on it when we witness it. I mean, I feel like sometimes we just need to be woken up.

AG: And there's something that my friends and I say all the time, there's allies. Who are those people who say, well, I support people of color. I support women, I support the LGBT community. That's a great, but at the end of the day, we really don't want allies. We want accomplices. We want people who are going to be down in the dirt, in the trenches fighting with us. So if you really, really want to be that person, you need to learn how to step out of your comfort zone and to learn how to be an accomplice and realize that may strain some of your relationships in means you may have to take a very hard look at things that you have said or done in the past, but if you want to truly be that person, that's what you have to do. And I really, really recommend the book White Fragility, which is a fabulous book. I mean, I've read it as a person of color, so have some of my other friends. I think it should be really required reading about how you go from being an ally to being an accomplice.

LS: Thank you. And it's really excellent to have the language to apply to the action. I really appreciate that. What are other tools that can level the playing field for women of color running for office?

AG: Some of the other tools just include making sure that we are looking for women of color when it comes to positions. If you have the opportunity, if you're in the room or if you're hearing people discuss how, Oh, so-and-so is a running anymore or this seat is going to become open and they start talking about candidates, be that person to throw out, Hey, how we thought about so-and-so, who's doing great work? Oh well you know, this person has actually done a great job running these campaigns. Maybe they need to be the one running for office. The first thing is to start the conversation that we actually need to be including women of color when we are thinking about candidates to run for office, but that also needs to extend to appointments, to boards and commissions, which I think so many people forget about. They are constantly looking for people to serve in these roles and I think it's a great opportunity to get more women of color involved in those types of positions, which is a great stepping stone for running for office. Then the other thing is just to make sure too, going back to fundraising, anything that you can give that definitely helps out, but also if there are women of color running, just talk about them, tweet about them, Facebook about them. Just letting people know that there are women of color running is definitely a way to start leveling the playing field.

LS:  What can voters do to ensure their voting rights are upheld?

AG: One of the things that we have to realize is we are going into another presidential election cycle where we don't have a full protection of the Voting Rights Act. And that impacts everybody. When we look at the states that Donald Trump won, he didn't win those states by that many boats. If you look at it in some states it was 10,000 votes. That's literally a few votes every precinct. And those were also States where people in charge, elected officials actively worked to suppress the vote. And when we talk about loader suppression, the people who are impacted the most mainly include young people, especially college students, senior citizens, and people of color. That means closing down voter registration sites, especially around early voting, college voting sites, closing down DMVs. So people can't get the proper ID changing what type of ID that you need to vote. These are all things that have a negative impact.

But even if we want to look at something that happened recently in Iowa, they did a huge purge of voters. And one of the people that got purge was actually the head of a local league of women voters who has actively voted in the past three election cycles. So even though we know who is disproportionately impacted by voting's voter suppression at this point, it's really all of us that are under attack. It can be anyone. So one of the first things that we need to do is actually check and make sure that we are still registered to vote. Is that that that is unfortunately a real thing. We need to check and make sure have the laws change in our state around what documentation that you need to vote to make sure that you have it all together and then making sure that your polling location hasn't changed so that you have that plan on election day.

One of the things that I'm really excited about is there are two organizations that have really started up over the past few months view years to tackle this, but to really make sure that people can get involved in helping protect their voting rights. So one of the newer organizations is fair by 2020 which was started by Stacey Abrams in Georgia, who I personally am a huge fan of, and she started this to staff on and train voter protection teams in States across the country. And they're going to be targeting 20 States and it's really going to be focusing on voter protection infrastructure very early before we even see who the Republican and democratic nominees are. And what they are looking for is volunteers, people in this state, people who want to actually be employed to help work on these efforts. And I think it's going to be really fabulous to see all the amazing things that they're doing.

Another organization is the national democratic redistricting committee, and they have their effort called All On The Line, which is a grassroots advocacy effort where they're going state by state to build networks of activists who will fight for an accurate census in 2020 because we also need to talk about how the senses will play into your redistricting and January and gerrymandering and gerrymandering is a another form of voter suppression. So those are two groups that I think are doing great work. So if people are really interested in getting involved in broader voter protection efforts, I would recommend those two groups.   

LS: Thank you for that. And could you just give a brief definition of gerrymandering? 

Yes. So redistricting, every 10 years we draw the maps. So that determines who your elected officials are from Congress and state house. And in the majority of States, whoever is in control, they get to draw those maps. So if you realize that for this part of the decade, you're on this district and then the next part of the decade, you're in this district that happened because of redistricting. And we have seen that Republicans really work to limit the representation of young people and people of color when it comes to redistricting. By creating these districts where people of color, young people aren't just huddled together or they will split them to make it extremely difficult. An example of that is in North Carolina, for one of the HBCUs there, North Carolina a. And, T, they actually literally cut the district in half. So half of the school is in one congressional district, and then the other half of the school is in another country, Garrison, all districts. And they did that to dilute the voting power of those students. So that's also gerrymandering. So redistricting is, when we're drawing the lines, drying the maps in gerrymandering is how we make it extremely difficult for people to get fair and accurate, accurate representation, which is a way to suppress the vote.

Definitely check out my in-depth conversation with A’shanti in the podcast feed right now. She shares how she went from watching politics unfold on CSPAN to influencing policy working for President Obama, the DNC, and the NAACP.

Feminist Detective: The Case of the Unfunny Women

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Today on this special segment, a new scientific study shows that men are funnier than women. Special guest, author and journalist, Ruth Whippman and Lauren get to the bottom of this finding and seize the means of humor production!

Gail Collins and the Adventures of Older Women in American History

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Jane Fonda. Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Nancy Pelosi. Elizabeth Warren. Maxine Waters. Are "older" women taking over? By 2034 there will be more people 65 and older than there are people under 18. And by and large, women are outliving men. So what might all these older women mean in terms of a possible power shift, historically speaking? Listen to my conversation with Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and the author of the new book, “No Stopping Us Now. The Adventures of Older Women in American History” We explore how attitudes toward older women have shifted in America over the centuries – from the Plymouth Colony view that women were marriageable if "civil and under fifty years of age," to quiet dismissal of post-reproductive females, to women’s role as perpetual caretaker (even when she might need caretaking herself), to the first female nominee for president.

Lauren spoke with Gail on stage for the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco in October of 2019.

TRANSCRIPT: We do our best, please let us know any errors!

Gail Collins:                          My first book about women, was about women in American history. And we could not think of a title for it. Finally we called it America's Women, but that was so pathetic. The subtitle was 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates, and Heroines, which is a desperate attempt to make America's Women sound like a better title. And while I was doing that one, when I just came across a bunch of stuff that I wanted to go back and look at again. And one that sometime at some point along the way I came across was this letter from one of the very early colonists when they were first here, they were all guys. And so they're writing back to England saying, please send us some women. Please, please, please. And they wrote down their description of an ideal wife, who was a woman who was civil and under 50 years of age.

Gail Collins:                          So I thought, wow. And then I was wondering through some other point, I guess when I was doing, When Everything Changed and I ran across that famous hair coloring is from the early, the early seventies that said, you're not getting older, you're getting better. And I looked at it and the copy within that said, these days any woman over 25 is old. And I thought, holy moly. Wow. And you look right now and there's Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the gym and then running the Supreme Court, and everybody's applauding. I thought, wow, what makes all this stuff go up and down like this? And it seemed like a fun thing to look into.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm Lauren Schiller, and that is Gail Collins, New York times columnist and author of a new book called No Stopping Us Now: The Adventures of Older Women in American History. We spoke on stage for the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, in October of 2019. By 2034 there will be more people 65 and older than there are people under 18, and by and large, women are outliving men. So what might all these older women mean in terms of a possible power shift, historically speaking? Well, look at Jane Fonda. Look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Look at Nancy Pelosi. My goodness, these women over 25, they're everywhere. And they're all in the book. This is Inflection Point. I'm Lauren Schiller with stories of how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:                  Gail's book covers American women from the 1600s to today, which is a lot of history to cover. So I started our conversation with a challenge. I asked Gail to give us the 60 second recap from the 1600s to today.

Gail Collins:                          May take two minutes, however.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay, you get two minutes.

Gail Collins:                          There were two things. One was scarcity, as we've just seen. If you were the only women coming into some town in the wild west, really you could be 95 and they would be throwing themselves at you, and make no difference whatsoever. But the other thing that seemed to me such a big pattern, once I looked at it, was whether they had an economic role. Women who have an economic role are judged the way men are judged, and women who are seen as only mothers are pretty much out to pasture once their children are grown. And that was the great, great cosmic difference that I saw. And it came and went and came and went. And I won't tell you any more right now, because that's my two minutes, but we'll get back to it.

Lauren Schiller:                  No, you've got more time. Keep going. You talk about that with World War II, how everything really shifted.

Gail Collins:                          It shifted. You start look... Two seconds to the colonies. In the colonies wives were all farm wives, and they're growing vegetables, making candles, making... One woman, I just wove 33,000 balls of yarn this year. Just went on and on, the stuff that they could do, creating wealth. And everybody knew that the housewife was creating all this wealth, and young women wanted to come and hang out with them so they could learn how to do it. So at that period, it was a great period for being an older woman, then when everybody moved to the cities. And middle-class women had a much shrunken role that had nothing to do with economics. That was suddenly when, if your kids are gone, why are you still here? But it was very cruel and mean.

Gail Collins:                          And then as you go back and forth in history, whenever there's an economic call for older women, then they become very popular. And during World War II was the absolute perfect example. You had all the guys are gone and young women with children really resisted the idea of going to work. So there was everybody, a clarion call, and every all eyes turned older women. Here they are, Oh my God. And you suddenly, not just had Rosie the Riveter stories, but you had these stories about Josephine the 80 year old riveter. My God, is she great. And I remember reading one in a magazine at the time that was going around during the war saying, we were so touched today, we went to a restaurant and saw a 65 year old woman carrying a tray of dishes with a gleam of happiness in her blue eyes. I'm not sure about the glass, but that was the moment when women, older women, nobody complained about them at all. They were the heroines because they were doing all the work.

Lauren Schiller:                  This is Inflection Point. I'm Lauren Schiller, with stories of how women rise up. I'll be right back with Gail Collins, who shares how economy shapes what men look for in a woman.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, you tell a story in the book is about some guys you're interviewing in Connecticut about what they were looking for in a woman.

Gail Collins:                          Yeah. This was the humongous discovery that I made, somewhere along the way. My greatest thought was about the economic participation of women, and during... After World War II, the economy exploded, and everybody thought they could become middle-class. Everybody's going to the suburbs, they're getting their own houses, their kids are going to go to college, we're going to go on vacations. It was a humongous explosion of expectation for family life. And then the '70s came and all that... The oil... You remember a lot of you, I'm sure the oil boycott, the awful, awful economy of the '70s, and suddenly many, many, many families could no longer support the life they thought they needed to live with one income.

Gail Collins:                          And that was really the absolute change, because suddenly all the women who had been consigned to the role of mom and nothing else, were drawn back into the workforce. And younger women started thinking about what their role would be. And my favorite story about that period is it was actually later, in the late seventies or the '80s, but I was at a college in New Britain, Connecticut. And for some reason I'm talking to an entire room full of guys, and I do not know how exactly I got there, I was doing a woman's book tour, but they were lovely guys. And I said to them, what do you look for in a wife? And nobody was going to say to me, a really hot woman who I... So they all said, a really good personality.

Gail Collins:                          And I said, oh, that's nice. And then one kid in the back said, and a good earner. And they all said yes, oh my God, yes, and a good earner. Got to be a good earner. And I thought then, wow, this is a whole new vision. Guys really need their wives to be good earners, and women are being integrated into the economy in the same way. And they're going to get old in a totally different way.

Lauren Schiller:                  What's so interesting to me about that is that, why does the gender wage gap still exist?

Gail Collins:                          Very, very, very good question. It goes on forever too. One of the great things, after the invention of the birth control pill, suddenly the number of women in graduate school, law school, medical school skyrocketed because you could suddenly control and make sure you were not going to be getting pregnant and having a baby while you were doing your preparation for your career. Stupendous numbers. Now there are more women in law school and medical school than there are men. And the income and average of doctors and lawyers has dropped. What does this mean? It's a pattern that goes on and on and on and on and on. I believe we will overcome it at some point.

Gail Collins:                          Another problem is that women often like to go into the helping professions, which instantly, when you hear the word helping, you know they're not going to be making very much money. It's just... And because of that, they want to teach, they want to go and do work. They want to help out in different ways. And those are their income from those professions are not as high, and good for them. So a little bit of booth going on there.

Lauren Schiller:                  And then, right. And then when there is a male profession professionally teaching that women started to take over, it just, it happens over and over again. I just think it's bizarre that they want good earners, but they only want them to make, I don't know, 72 cents for every dollar they make.

Gail Collins:                          Not the husbands. I do not know anybody who believes more in equality of pay opportunity than the husbands of working wives. They are really for it, 100% yeah.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. So, older women do better when they can generate more money. That's one of the things that you told us. And women's power seems to fluctuate depending on what's happening with the economy overall, how much we're needed, but also who's got political power. Are those the two main drivers of where a women do or do not have power, is who's who is in charge politically, and how much are they needed economically?

Gail Collins:                          And the political part is very interesting, because you can't quite figure out where it goes with women. Women got the vote in 1920, and they had a vision of a new society that would be created with the women's vote, in which there'd be clinics for poor women and their children, there'd be all of these things happening to make society better, kinder, more woman-like in orientation. And none of it happened at all. Women voted like their husbands. Warren Harding was elected president instantly, and we got prohibition. That was about it. And so, voting by itself is not nearly enough to make a difference. You have to be an aggressive voter, which we're seeing more and more among women, that the women are inclined to vote differently from their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, everybody else. Much more than they were, say 10, 20, 30 years ago. And that's a real lever of power, and we'll see where that takes everybody.

Lauren Schiller:                  So can we talk about prohibition, since you brought that up?

Gail Collins:                          Nobody has said, can you talk about prohibition for a long time? I really love this. Thank you.

Lauren Schiller:                  Who here wants to talk about prohibition? Show of hands? Okay, we got one. We got one person who, okay, so we're going to talk about for you. But you talk in the book about how prohibition, while it was pushed by older women, was actually really bad for all the women, because of what it meant is that their husbands were not going to these elicit nightclubs and hanging out with the flappers, who are generally in their 20s. I had a bad backlash.

Gail Collins:                          The whole liquor thing was very weird, because it really did separate men from women. Before prohibition, one of the reasons women were so antagonistic to it, well one was that, truly, important neighborhoods, the saloons desperately tried to drag men in on pay day and take away all their money. So it was a legitimate, legitimate crusade. But beyond that, middle-class women didn't drink. And after dinner, and sometimes on weekends and whatever, their husbands and the men would go away places and drink and leave them behind. And it was a real division between the sexes, and women resented it and thought it was bad. And so, that propelled the way to, right along the way.

Gail Collins:                          And then there we were, and nobody liked it once it came. It really did not work out well at all. And it's true that then men off... Women, middle aged women, housewives, mothers, are not going to be going off to the speakeasy used to be hanging out and drinking. So if the men go, they are going to be meeting a whole new group of young women who are hanging out there. And women got very paranoid, housewives at the time. What the hell is going on? Where are these men going? And even if they weren't going anywhere, they were still looking at their husbands, is this going to happen? What's happening here? So it didn't work out nearly the way people thought it would.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, there were, eventually, some good things that came out of women getting the vote, and women actually getting political power.

Gail Collins:                          I do not want to say this was not a good thing to do, by the way. But yeah, go ahead.

Lauren Schiller:                  That it was not a good thing to do-

Gail Collins:                          To give women the vote. No, it was really, really, really good idea.

Lauren Schiller:                  It was just a slow cook, right?

Gail Collins:                          It wasn't nearly the revolutionary moment that women thought it was going to be.

Lauren Schiller:                  But eventually, out of having women in power, we got social security, we got better labor laws.

Gail Collins:                          The New Deal. Eleanor Roosevelt. Oh my God.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. Let's talk about Eleanor Roosevelt.

Gail Collins:                          Eleanor Roosevelt I think had the greatest middle age of any woman in American history, by far. God help us, she's all over the place. She is visiting places that nobody else at the top of government has ever gone to, ever. To see poor black families, to see Appalachian families. She's going to see the troops overseas. She's driving around by herself. It was driving the Secret Service, so crazy that they taught her how to use a revolver. So there she's in her car with her revolver for going to see people in Appalachian. I just, Oh my God, what a woman. And because of her influence, and because of people who are hanging out with her and because of people who had begun to move into positions of power locally anyway, you got the New Deal women, like Francis Perkins, who was the person you most remember as being responsible for social security. So no badness at all in that development, I would say.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'd love to talk about the parallels in that moment in time, to the moment in time that we're experiencing now.

Gail Collins:                          Wow, okay.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, just in terms of-

Gail Collins:                          There's Franklin Roosevelt.

Lauren Schiller:                  Okay. Not those guys. The women. We have a historic number of women in Congress now, and they're in positions to make a lot of change. And I think we all tend to get frustrated. Clearly we've got an issue in the White House that is preventing a lot of things from happening, but that we get frustrated with the pace of change. That why does it take so... Now we've got all these women, so how can we see more things happen more quickly, around education and health care and the so called more feminine interests.

Gail Collins:                          You really wonder if we had a different president, what this last election would have brought forward. But things are so crazy now that, just the ability to get up in the morning is about everything they can accomplish. And I find Nancy Pelosi very interesting. People complain constantly. Why isn't she doing more? Why isn't she doing more? But she is handling this thing that's happening now. I can't imagine anybody else doing, any guy up there that I've watched doing it, cannot conceive of them doing it anywhere better. You see the committee chairman, the guys, it's just not, they were not going to do any better than Nancy Pelosi. She's really controlled this thing, handled Donald Trump as well as a human being possibly could. And I like to think that's part of the future.

Gail Collins:                          And once we get past this time, will be very interesting to see what these very large number of women moving into Congress, although still a minority, and hardly any women governors, there's still a long, long way to go. Still, see what happens next. It's going to be great.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, and they are, we were talking about this earlier, they are, the majority of women, are Democrats. There's very few female, Republicans.

Gail Collins:                          Very few. It's amazing how they could even manage to avoid having more women. It's just incredible. Gosh, darn.

Lauren Schiller:                  Imagine what could get done though if there were more women, Republican politicians?

Gail Collins:                          They do work until this recent unpleasantness of the last couple of years, the women in Congress worked together very well. They had their regular things they would do, they would do softball games together. They would go out to dinner together. They had their own special place where they would hang out, and they were capable of behaving in a much more bipartisan manner than the guys were. And if things had, I think the place where they did, I'd probably still, if they still get to do it, the place that they hung out was the Strom Thurmond Room. Which I just find so... The idea that Strom Thurmond gave his name to this, tickles me so. But once this passes, we'll see what happens. It's going to be a whole new thing for sure.

Lauren Schiller:                  I like the affirmative way that you just said, once this passes. All things must pass. Well actually, let's talk about you for a minute. You're a woman with power. You write this... You look at you, you're sitting on this stage in front of all these people.

Gail Collins:                          Thank you.

Lauren Schiller:                  I feel the glow of you right here. And you write your column every week for the New York Times, and you have the opportunity to sway a lot of public opinion. And do you, this is such a weird question to ask, but do you think in those terms, if I write this, and this happens? I have this power and how must I use it?

Gail Collins:                          Not exactly. My thing has been, I've been a columnist for a really long time, before the Times I was at the New York News Day and then the Daily News before that, and somewhere along the line in the Daily News period, I was writing a local column is about local government. And at that point, New York local government was so bad. Oh my God, it was terrible. And I'd write these columns every couple of days saying, oh my God, look what they did now. Oh my Lord, it's getting worse and worse and worse. And I would go on and on like that, trying to rile up indignation and fury.

Gail Collins:                          But after a while, I was thinking, oh my God, basically I'm causing people to get up and want to throw themselves out the window. There's got to be a different way to do this, where I can tell people what's happening, without depressing them mortally. So at that point, I tried to make the columns more fun to read. So that my goal has been, for a long time now, to just get people to know about stuff in a way that doesn't make them suicidal.

Lauren Schiller:                  It seems... So far so good. I chuckle every time I read one of your columns, even though what you're conveying is just so horrible underneath.

Gail Collins:                          We're getting the votes in now, we have a contest now named the worst cabinet member. Many, many votes are coming in, I've got to tell you.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, let's talk about what it means to be old. This is a question that's in question, right? This, a certain age-

Gail Collins:                          And not argue about your age, now. Lie about it, now that we have Wikipedia. You're just stuck. Whatever age you are, you really are for sure.

Lauren Schiller:                  I feel like there's no good answer to the question, how old are you? Or you look younger than I thought you were, or you look older than I thought you were. That used to be a compliment, but now not so much.

Gail Collins:                          No, I'm 73 by the way. The story of it.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, okay, so one of the things that you... That I found in the book is that in the 1950s only about 3% of the population was over 65.

Gail Collins:                          Very tiny bit. And then the amount has just, I trust your numbers because I've completely gone blank on them.

Lauren Schiller:                  I got them from somewhere.

Gail Collins:                          But it was tiny. And it's exploded. And one of the reasons I think it's so important to talk about women maintaining careers, and men too, in their later years, is because there's going to be so many of us very soon. This world is not going to be able to support us, unless we do more earning on the side to try to keep things going a bit because it's just... And the number of people over 90 is skyrocketing. Most of them are women. And it's going to get more and more and more so because thank you, the medical profession.

Gail Collins:                          Which by way, doing history, I have to say, teeth. I think back about history, oh my God, there were no teeth. Nobody had any teeth. They found the body of a woman at Jamestown just a few years ago when they were digging around, and she was about 30 years old, and she had five teeth. That was all. So when I think about history, I do wonder off, and I'm sorry, I just changed the subject completely. Every once in a while I think, my God, teeth. Oh my Lord in heaven. This is so amazing. We've all got our teeth.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well there's been a lot of medical advancements since-

Gail Collins:                          Even more profound than that, but I just-

Lauren Schiller:                  We'll get to plastic surgery, and all the other stuff in a few minutes. Hair dye. I know that's not a medical procedure, but. So is retirement passe now? Is that not a thing anymore? If people... If 65 was the retirement age-

Gail Collins:                          Well many people do retire at 65. And to be fair, many, many people look forward to retiring at 65. It's not like the entire world is out there saying, let me stay in this job for another 10 years, this is what I really want to do. But the vision that when you stop doing, if you stop doing what you were doing when you turn 65 or whenever, that you're then going to go home and sit around is, I think, really passe. There were just so many things people are doing now. There's so many people who are working as volunteers. There's so many people doing community service. There's so many people who are just going out and doing things they always wanted to do, take a boat around the world or whatever, that they couldn't do otherwise. But that's the vision. The thing is that you don't have that sense of, okay, we're done now, we're going to go home and it's all over.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah, because you get to be sticking around for another 30, 40 years.

Gail Collins:                          Damn straight.

Lauren Schiller:                  We've got to come up with a good routine. It's also in this time, it seems like a great opportunity to get involved in, say, some activism. Right? And thinking about women throughout history who have been involved in activism, and bridging that gap between the younger activists and the older activists, how those two worldviews might come together or push apart. And that's something that you talk about.

Gail Collins:                          Can I tell my Elizabeth Cady Stanton story?

Lauren Schiller:                  Yes.

Gail Collins:                          This is one of my favorite stories. This is before the civil war, and women in the North were the ones who were very, very conscious of the evils of slavery, I think, more than the men were there. They were very into the idea that it was a woman's issue, because you're talking about families being broken up, and young girls being at the mercy of slave owners, and became a very passionate issue. But you couldn't go out and talk about it in public, because the idea of women speaking out in public was just not accepted. They would throw stones at you, they would burn down your auditorium, they would call... They thought that you were all promiscuous if you were to speak out in public, you were a harlot. That was the thought that was going around, and so nobody did it. You really did not have any women getting out. Even African American women who wanted to speak out against slavery were really discouraged by their communities in many parts of the North.

Gail Collins:                          So Elizabeth Cady Stanton is right there in this point and she's dying to go out and talk about this stuff. So she suddenly announces, well, I'm going to come out, because I am a grandmother, gray hair, looking dumpy, wearing frumpy clothes here. I am a grandmother. I'm going to come and talk to you about grandmother things, our boys and our home. And I'll throw in a little bit about slavery, maybe, and a little bit about women's rights. And I've got ideas about divorce for forum that I made. And she got away with it. And she went around the country giving speeches all the time, sleeping over night in railroad stations when she couldn't get a train. Playing cards with soldiers on her way from one town to the other. She got away with it all because she presented herself as a grandmother, and her friends saw this going on and suddenly they started writing odes to menopause. Oh happy day we get to go out. This is all great. And it was a great liberation, and it was liberation through gray hair, basically.

Lauren Schiller:                  So the menopause thing comes up a lot, for obvious reasons, but that it either is going to make you sex crazy, or sex neutral or completely be the beginning of the end. Can you talk about some of the things that you learned about the change?

Gail Collins:                          Doctors didn't discover a menopause until the 1800s. Did not occur, and they didn't care. When they did discover it, they instantly decided that it was terrible and it led to your death, or insanity or something. It was just, it was never a popular. And when doctors did start to think about it, they started to think about ways to avoid it. They started with chimpanzee glands, allegedly at least, injecting women with a chimpanzee glands to save them from menopause and keep going. And of course that didn't work, but you did, as time went on, get to what led to a hormone replacement therapy, which for 20 years, it was the absolute thing that was going on in this country. Tons and tons and tons of women were doing it. And that was all about eliminating the evils of menopause.

Gail Collins:                          And it took all that time, really until they realized that hormone replacement therapy was bad for you, and you can't do it anymore for a long periods of time, before people were really willing to sit down and talk about, well, hey, this is a normal part of life. You can just do that and move on, and everything is fine. It was a bad moment for the medical profession that went on for a long period of time. But I think it's pretty well over now. It's been a long time since I've heard anybody say, oh my God, I'm going through menopause, my life is over. It's been forever.

Lauren Schiller:                  I just hear, oh my God, I'm going through menopause, I'm sweating all the time.

Gail Collins:                          That one does still come up, I've got to say. That's true.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, okay, so on that topic, the amount of work,

Gail Collins:                          I'm sorry, guys, whoever's out here, it's just-

Lauren Schiller:                  Hey, you know what? It's just, it's part of the package. There's also, I love all the stories about hair dye, and the reactions to women who dyed their hair, that the horrible dye that was actually available when it first came out. And even today, women of a certain age, or women who are going gray. Have to make this vital decision. It's a life, it's really a life altering decision. Am I going to dye my hair?

Gail Collins:                          Well my friend, Nora Ephron said, that the history of women superseding the limitations of age was not about feminism or about better life through exercise. It was all about hair dye. I was just totally into that idea, and I grabbed it. Because it really is in many ways true, that if you have the choice of deciding whether or not you're going to go gray, and either one is a perfectly logical choice. It does create an end to that whole idea that there's a particular point in life when all women go gray, and that's a marker, because clearly, two thirds of the women are not having that marker anymore.

Gail Collins:                          It was a 10 year period, I think it was from the beginning to the end of the '60s, but maybe the '70s, when the first time that women could, that was really easy to do hair coloring. You could do it at home. It was easy to go to a hair shop and get it done. 7% of women used hair coloring at the beginning of that decade, and by the end, they had to take hair color off American passports because you couldn't tell anymore. You had no idea what color people's hair really was. So it's just eliminated. It's a big thing.

Gail Collins:                          And in the early days, women, first of all was against the law in many States, allegedly, to dye your hair. Or at least they tried to pass a law. State legislatures will do anything, basically. And there was a long period of state legislatures talking about banning, or making it illegal to dye your hair, because the theory was, you could trick people into marrying you, trick men into marrying you by looking younger than you really were. A, the dyes were so terrible then that nobody would have been fooled anyway. And if you use them, your hair would fall out, or you get mercury poisoning. It just was not a reliable thing to do for anybody. But there was this paranoia on the part of state legislatures and people, guys in general, that somehow women would be able to trick you into thinking that they were much younger than they really were.

Lauren Schiller:                  There's got to be a politician who just had a terrible experience, and he was like, I am not letting this happen to any of my other male friends.

Gail Collins:                          State Senator, Fred. And he told everybody about it, it was horrible.

Lauren Schiller:                  I was also thinking about, I can't remember if this is in your book or not, but the quality of mirrors used to be not that good.

Gail Collins:                          Right.

Lauren Schiller:                  And if you've ever stayed in an old house or whatever, and you try and do your makeup, pluck your eyebrows, forget about it. So, but as the quality of mirrors got better, I'm guessing, that also intersected with the proliferation of magazines, and all of these different ways that you could beautify yourself, and all the makeup that was available to do it with.

Gail Collins:                          It's absolutely true and it was very fast, that suddenly this all turned over, and women went, hey, this could happen, that could happen. And then once it became possible, every magazine in the entire universe was warning you, if you don't use that, or that or blah, you are going to look like such a hag. You will never be able to go outside again. There was one ad I really loved. It was from I think the '40s maybe the '50s, in which a young girl is saying to her mother, mom, you're looking so young these days, because of blah, blah. And mom looked really young because she had exactly the same face as her daughter in the ad.

Lauren Schiller:                  In addition to the epiphany around the mirror. I was also just thinking about how much, these magazines, many of them, especially as the years went on, were run by women, and women perpetuating these beauty standards, which were, are, impossible for most real people who don't have Photoshop or a stylist and to make a person and a fitness trainer and yada, yada, yada to actually live up to. And that it has caused... And you can see I'm wearing lipstick, I get my hair cut just the other day, but that it has caused us women to spend so much time and money worrying about these things, and also being judged by them, and that it has been perpetuated, in a sense, by other women, women who had the possibility to change the way we think about ourselves.

Gail Collins:                          It's a great business. And I worry about cosmetic surgery, that the places at which it goes to. Crazy lengths, and you just see poor women cutting themselves up every year to try to look more and more young, and I find that very disturbing. But I have to say I've gotten used to the cosmetic thing. And I see a lot of guys who I just think, well, if you had the opportunity [crosstalk 00:32:21]. It's not my biggest worry, anyway, in the cosmic scheme of things.

Lauren Schiller:                  Coming up, Gail Collins tells us her adventure to becoming the first woman editor of the editorial page of the New York Times.

Lauren Schiller:                  Join our supporters by making a tax deductible donation at inflectionpoint.org, and clicking the support button.

Lauren Schiller:                  We're moving away from hair dye and makeup, and all of that, into the civil rights movement.

Gail Collins:                          Fantastic.

Lauren Schiller:                  Where women did, when they went to march, dress quite beautifully, and wear their hat and their lipstick and you even have a story about lipstick and suits.

Gail Collins:                          The Women's March for Peace, in particular. That was the first really anti war anti nuclear proliferation movement, that was created by middle-class housewives. And their idea was, that if you marched around wearing a shirtwaist dress, and maybe even a mink coat and high heels picketing the White House, that you would confuse people, and then they cause them to think, maybe mothers really do care about these issues, and it's not really the three crazy people down the street. And it worked, to some extent. And for a long time, younger women in the movement, were always being yelled at for not coming in with the right clothes on and stuff like that, because they thought that was a really important part of the story.

Gail Collins:                          Can I just tell one civil rights thing that-

Lauren Schiller:                  That proceeded, that was leading up to the civil rights... Yes, go.

Gail Collins:                          The thing about the civil rights movement that... I thought so much about the trajectory of African American women, which was different because they were working all the time, mostly as domestics. But when you got to the civil rights movement, when we think about the civil rights movement, we think about young people getting killed or risking their lives down South. And then we think about Martin Luther King, and all the other men who were leaders. But if you look at, say the beginning of the movement, the first person that most Americans heard about was Rosa Parks, who was a middle aged woman. And then that gave birth to, when she refused to go to the back of the bus, that gave birth to the Montgomery bus boycott, which was really the thing that caused America for the first time to think, what's going on? For the first time, really focus in on this.

Gail Collins:                          And the Montgomery bus boycott was organized by middle aged black women. They were the ones who had been out in the community forever doing social work, helping people, taking care of stuff that was going on, working on the schools, registering people to vote. And they were the ones that had those kinds of connections, who could go right in there and organize people very quickly. And nobody gave them any credit. And Andrew Young said that it was because it was, they were too much like their mothers, so they therefore it didn't want to do it. But nobody has celebrated the work of older black women in the civil rights movement nearly, nearly enough.

Lauren Schiller:                  And he specifically said that about Ella Baker.

Gail Collins:                          Yes. Ella Baker was my hero. Oh my God.

Lauren Schiller:                  Tell her story.

Gail Collins:                          Ella Baker was a great organizer in the civil rights movement, and she started out, and she spent her most heroic years working with young people, black and white in the South, trying to give them a vision of community organizing that didn't involve just having a big strike and that everybody goes away. But organizing the whole community so that people are able to take up the cause themselves, and set their own goals. And it was hard to do, because of course the kids wanted to come in and...

Gail Collins:                          But she spent her great years working on that kind of organization, and she would spend all of her nights on trains going from town to town, sitting, listening all night long to young people talking, trying to help them by listening to them think about ways to move forward. They called her their Gandhi. She did this when she had terrible asthma, and all these kids smoked the whole night long. She would sit there with respirators, listening to them with an oxygen mask on, listening for hours and hours and hours and hours, patiently, to these kids talking in order to help them to move forward. I think she's the great unsung heroine, hero, of the civil rights movement forever.

Lauren Schiller:                  Ella Baker was a middle aged woman who went and hung out with young people, and helped them rise up. But sometimes, the young people don't necessarily want the old people around.

Gail Collins:                          Don't trust anyone over 30.

Lauren Schiller:                  Exactly.

Gail Collins:                          I must admit, I was in college for that. We actually did trust many people over 30, people who are professors, men and women, and our lawyers. But it was just so cool to say that, that you just did for a while there.

Lauren Schiller:                  We would say in high school all the time to our parents. You wrote in your book, it was about the 1950s. In the 1950s, the Population Reference Bureau was a research book that warned that the country could be taken over by elderly women, since their numbers were increasing so much faster than that of the men in terms of voting power, ownership of land and corporate equities. The US could be seen on the road toward a geronto-matriarchy, control by aging females.

Gail Collins:                          Ready to go. Okay.

Lauren Schiller:                  What happened?

Gail Collins:                          Worse things could happen in the world. I can name one right now really fast. And part of it is, went with women's suffrage, and why it didn't work out the way you expected, is that women's interests are so intermingled with their husbands, their sons, their brothers, that it's very seldom that you see for any prolonged period of time women separating themselves from men and saying, we're just going to do this on our own. It's just not going to ever happen. And that was part of it. And the whole women, older women, taking over the world thing, which I'm looking forward to, has clearly been a lot slower than some people might've expected. But I think that's just paranoia. There's just a ton of that out there. People being, statisticians and poll takers, becoming paranoid about stuff that they didn't need to become paranoid about.

Lauren Schiller:                  Remember the statistic about people over 65 being such a small percentage of the population. So apparently, by 2034, there will be more people 65 and older than there are people under 18.

Gail Collins:                          The population is just exploding all the way up. And as, I think I said before, the answer to that, one of the answers is that older people are not going to be able to drop out anyway, even if they want to. They're going to have to chip in there, do stuff to help keep the rest of the country going. It's our responsibility, for heaven's sake. You just can't let these things slide and say, I've done mine. I'm gone. This is all you. That's one of the reasons I just see this incredible change, and what's going to be happening.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. You'll probably tell me that it's always been this way, but there is a movement around activism for mothers, and often, mothers in their forties whose kids are old enough, they're at school and they have time available to push forward things around ending gun violence. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is the first one that... Okay, ending gun violence. Yes, thank you. I'm thinking specifically of Shannon Watts for Moms Demand Action, and then Moms Clean Air Force is a great environmental group, but Mothers Against Drunk Driving is the first one that I have a memory of. And just thinking about these women who are old enough to have a skillset, and a focus and something that they want to see change, and not just go along with the status quo. That is such a huge asset to our country.

Gail Collins:                          It's always been this way No really. But there've been so many people like that who have talked about that throughout our history. Jane Adams was the famous leader of the first social work movement, really, among women in this country. And she worked until she really was almost ready to die, and wrote many articles as she got older about how older women were getting back in there and they were doing... It was all volunteer work, but it was very serious volunteer work in their communities. They were starting women's clubs that everybody thought were, oh my God, they're going to be writing papers about Julius Caesar and his wife's dresses or whatever, it's going to be really silly. And very fast, they went from, we're going to do study groups to, we are going to do prison reform. We're going to go and help working women in working class, working women. We're going to do stuff to pasteurized milk, for God's sake.

Gail Collins:                          So this, this has been a movement that comes and goes and comes and goes, but I think it's coming again now you. Do really see, although I talked to Anna Quinlan about that, who's been working for Planned Parenthood for a thousand years, just the rock of Planned Parenthood, and she said that she finds now that's so many older women are still working, that they're volunteers, more and more, tend to be younger women who are trying to get college credit for it or something like that. Which is a very weird and strange thought that never occurred to me before, but I'm just putting it out there. Because if Anna Quinlan says it, it's probably true.

Lauren Schiller:                  Yeah. And those interns should get paid. Well one of the things that I, the main thing that I explore on my show, is how women rise up. So since you've studied 400 years of women rising up, is there an answer out there? Could we just put a nail in it?

Gail Collins:                          There are many, but I can tell you one from your very own life. When people ask me a lot, how did you get to be the editorial page editor at the Times or whatever. And the answer is basically-

Lauren Schiller:                  First woman.

Gail Collins:                          First women, there were some before me, but they were all guys. There were many before me, but they were all guys. And I have to tell you this, as totally in passing, and I'm sorry I'm getting off the subject, but at the Times, there is a room where the editorial board meets and they do all their deliberations and discussions. And when I was around, there were pictures on the wall, it was in the old building, of Henry Raymond, who was the first editor and editorial page editor and a few of the other really famous editorial page editors. And of course they're all guys, and I used to, once in a while, if I was feeling really sassy, I just go in the middle of the day and I'd say, guys, I've got your job. It just knocked me out. I really just always enjoyed it, always enjoyed that.

Gail Collins:                          I wanted to tell a story that has, I was talking so much about how the economy changed what happened with women and everything else, but it was also the women who changed what happened with women. Women who filed lawsuits, and who went on strike for equal opportunity, and they were almost never the people who got the rewards. At the times, the women who, was before I got there, but the day that I think the publisher or the editor, it was while back, posted a thing saying we have three new openings for editors. Any guy that's interested should just come over here and apply or something like that. But whatever it was, it just drove the women crazy because they had all had desires. They had hopes and dreams of becoming, say foreign editor, or national editor or whatever. And they were all getting shunted away to assistant travel page editor or whatever.

Gail Collins:                          And they were so angry, and they fought, they started fighting and protesting and threatening lawsuits and terrifying the management, until all these changes were made. And I guarantee you right now, the New York times is the most diversity conscious place I have certainly ever worked. They're very, very conscious of that. But this change, when it happened, didn't help those women, because they had been spending so much of their lives fighting for this stuff that they were like... They'd been... She was the travel editor, or travel deputy for 15 years. What the hell? We're not. And they were older, and they'd gotten in everybody's face. So they were thought of as a pain. The people who got all the rewards for people like me, who walked in right after that. And we were the ones who got all of the opportunities.

Gail Collins:                          And I know so many of these women. And the thing about them that just knocks me out is that they weren't bitter about it. They were so happy that they had done something that had opened up these opportunities. When I got to be editorial page editor, they were thrilled. None of them ran around saying, I could have done that, for God's sake. I didn't have the chance. It's not fair. And that to me is the definition of a great heart. Somebody who takes joy in somebody else getting the thing they fought for that they didn't get. And that's what these women were like. And I never pass up a chance to talk them.

Lauren Schiller:                  That's it. That's the answer, right? We help each other step up.

Gail Collins:                          You help each other.

Lauren Schiller:                  So when I first got the book, I thought to myself, No Stopping Us Now, is that ironic or sincere? But I feel like by the end of reading the book and this conversation, I think it's our rallying cry.

Gail Collins:                          It is totally sincere. I just look at the history, and when I think that I got to live through the point in history that changed the entire way women survive in western civilization. That changed the role of women, the role of men relating to women that had gone on forever. It changed in my lifetime and I got to see it happen. How can you not be optimistic when you think about something like that?

Lauren Schiller:                  Could you feel it? Could you feel it as each change happened? Obviously as a little baby, you're maybe not feeling things, but as you as a tween, and then in your twenties thirties and so on?

Gail Collins:                          I was really completely out to lunch about it. I had gone mostly to all girls schools and so, and they were Catholic schools, so really the male thing did not enter the equation a whole lot at all as you were coming along. And then when I was in college, we were having the free speech movement, and it was a very open movement and I felt fine about that. So it really wasn't until I got to graduate school, and there were a lot of other women organizing around women's issues. And I had no idea, and there were, there were no women faculty members in the graduate school where I was at UMass at that time, but it had never occurred to me. I was so stupid, and so dumb and I'm just every day thankful that when I was there, I ran into all of these amazing women and on and on throughout my life. They were all always way ahead of me, and it was just a privilege to come up behind them and learn stuff from them.

Lauren Schiller:                  That was Gail Collins, New York Times columnist and author of No Stopping Us Now, speaking with me live on stage at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. I'll put a link to Gail's book on my website, inflectionpointradio.org, where you can also find future events by clicking on the events tab. I'm Lauren Schiller, this is Inflection Point, and this is how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:                  Today's program was produced, in part, by the generous donation of Ellen Olsen in honor of her late mother-in-law, Margaret Nicholson, a woman Ellen says, was way ahead of her time.

Lauren Schiller:                  That's our Inflection Point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple Podcasts, Radio Public, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review, and subscribe to the podcast.

Lauren Schiller:                  Know a woman leading change we should talk to? Let us know at inflectionpointradio.org. While you're there, support our production with a tax deductible, monthly, or one-time contribution, when women rise up, we all rise up, just go to inflectionpointradio.org.

Lauren Schiller:                  We're on Facebook and Instagram @inflectionpointradio. Follow us, and join the Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions. And follow me on Twitter @LASchiller.

Lauren Schiller:                  To find out more about today's guest, and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go, inflectionpointradio.org.

Lauren Schiller:                  Inflection point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco, and PRX. Our community manager is Laura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Wayne. I'm your host, Lauren Schiller.

Speaker 3:                              Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Feminist Detective--The Case of the Missing Apology

Journalist and author Ruth Whippman joins me to seek out sexism in all its tiny guises so we can make big changes. This week we dig into why women are dinged for apologizing too much.

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Feminist Detective - The Case of The Fleabag Crowdfunder

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Introducing a NEW Inflection Point segment “Feminist Detective” in which journalist and author Ruth Whippman joins me to seek out sexism in all its tiny guises so we can make big changes. This week we dig up the original crowdfunding page of the mega-hit show Fleabag from back in 2013, and discuss how the tone of it shows us the crazy lengths women have had to go to reassure and placate men that equality is not threatening.

This segment premiere is presented ad-free. Support Inflection Point with a tax deductible contribution and help fund production of more of them!

Lauren Schiller and Ruth Whippman

Candace Bushnell–Is There Still Sex in the City? Live On Stage

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Candace Bushnell gave us a reason to sit on our couch every week to soak in the stories of the women--and men--of the 90s television culture-changer "Sex and the City". Candace has written a number of books since then and her newest book is called "Is There Still Sex in the City?" This October I teamed up with Women Lit of the Bay Area Book Festival to have an on-stage conversation with Candace Bushnell, hosted by INFORUM at The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Bushnell kicked off the evening with an update about what she’s been up to lately and a reading, and then we got to sit down and talk--friendships, love, loss and dating over 50.

TRANSCRIPT: To err is human. If you find an error, let us know.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm Lauren Schiller and this is Inflection Point with stories of how women rise up. On today's episode, Candace Bushnell.

C Bushnell:                            Like Sex and the City, once I started dating again, I discovered that there were certain types of guys out there just like there were in Sex and the City. And there were some surprises. One of the things that seemed immediately clear was guys your age no longer find you attractive and it does go both ways. Yes it does.

Lauren Schiller:                  Now that's a driveway moment. Stick around.

C Bushnell:                            At one point, I had this idea for a TV series where the women were going to run, it was a brothel, but it was for other women and they were going to employ these younger guys because there were so many young guys who, I don't know. And I thought the idea was really kind of interesting, but everyone's like, "No." But you know, I had a lot of wacky ideas about what I was going to do with all these stories and this material. And I really went back to the structure that I used in Sex and the City which is, it's really fiction written as journalism as opposed to journalism written as fiction.

Lauren Schiller:                  This is Inflection Point. I'm Lauren Schiller with stories of how women rise up and that was Candace Bushnell. Yes, that Candace Bushnell who gave us a reason to sit on our couch every week and soak up the stories of the women and men of Sex and the City. She's written a number of books since then. She's a prolific writer and now she's out with a new book. This October I teamed up with Women Lit of the Bay Area Book Festival to have a conversation with Candace on stage hosted by the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Candace kicked off the evening with an update about what she's been up to lately and a reading, and then we got to sit down and talk. Here she is on her new book called Is There Still Sex in the City?

C Bushnell:                            Is there still sex in the city? Yes. Yes, but less. And everybody's having less, including the millennials. They're having the least of all. Well, we'll talk about that later. This is not a sequel to Sex and the City, but it has different characters. But the inspiration for writing it was the same feeling that I had when I started writing Sex and the City. And when I started writing Sex and the City, the feeling was really like, this is uncharted territory. Writing about single women's lives in the city and the mating and dating rituals. And at the time we thought, oh gosh, this only happens in New York city. But it turned out that it actually happened everywhere. Now back in the mid nineties, I was a woman in my mid thirties and I felt like being single was really like a feminist kind of statement and it meant that you were kind of willing to break the rules and pursue your own dreams instead of maybe necessarily pursuing finding a man.

C Bushnell:                            And what's so interesting to me is that 20, 25 years ago, if you were a single woman in your mid thirties, people really felt that there was something wrong with you. Now, and I think partly thanks to Sex and the City, people just think you're normal. And so I think that's a bit of a triumph. But when I was writing Sex and the City, I felt very much like an outsider. And like a lot of my Sex and the City friends, I did end up getting married and I guess I found my Mr bigger and also maybe my mister was a little bit younger. And most of my friends also ended up finding their Mr big, their Aiden, their Harry or maybe even their Steve. Now all you guys, you know Sex and the City, right? Okay. Because I don't want to be like, people are looking at me like who is she talking about?

C Bushnell:                            And then something happened and I personally ended up getting divorced when I was 52. And so that was kind of the end of my, what I thought would be happily ever after because I really didn't think about it that much. And my first instinct was to run away. So I ran away to Connecticut, I started riding horses and then I had two other girlfriends who they didn't have children and I decided to do what women are always saying that they're going to do when you're younger. We're all going to live together and we're all going to live close by and we will be like the golden girls. And honestly, for six months it worked.

C Bushnell:                            We went to the vegetable markets, farm stands, we made dinner, we had one friend of mine Sassy, she came up with any excuse to have a party and wear hats. And I sort of thought, okay, this is going to go on forever. But then a whole bunch of my other friends ended up getting divorced. And what happens when women become single again? You go to where the other single women are. So all of a sudden, all of these newly single women, all in their 50s came to Sag Harbor, which I call the village in this book. Now when I got divorced, I really thought I did not want to date at all. I really felt like I've already done this. I've already done the reproductive cycle where I got married, I was in love, this and that, and then it didn't work. Why am I going to attempt to do it again? Isn't there's something better than we as women can do now that we're in our fifties besides looking for men?

C Bushnell:                            Okay. The answer was pretty much no. Because all of my friends and women who I know wanted to start dating again. And once again, and it's not just dating, but it's also reinventing your lives. And so once again, it felt like this is really uncharted territory because they are women who are dating again, they haven't dated for 20, 25 years. And things have really changed. And the other thing that happens when you get somewhere in your fifties is that there can be a feeling of invisibility and there's a question of are you still relevant? Children leaving the nest, careers may end, all of that kind of stuff. So there's also that struggle. But like Sex and the City, once I started dating again, I discovered that there were certain types of guys out there just like there were in Sex and the City and there were some surprises.

C Bushnell:                            One of the things that seemed immediately clear was guys your age no longer find you attractive. Okay. So 50 something guys, and I know there are men in the audience like, "I'm not like that." We're not really brought up to think of somebody in their 50s or 60s as being attractive and being like a potential sex partner. And it does go both ways. Yes it does. And one of the things that one discovers is there are younger guys who are interested. That's another story. And then one of the things that you do is okay, guys your age aren't interested. They're interested in younger women. So why not try to beat the odds by going for guy who's older? Maybe dating a man who's 15, 20 or even 25 years older? Which is fine except that given the fact that you're now middle-aged yourself, that means that man who could be 70, 75 or even 80.

C Bushnell:                            You wouldn't think that there would be a large contingent of men out there at that age who are dating. But when you think about demographics and how so many of the boomers are now in their later years, it makes sense that there's a crop of 60, 70 and even 80 something men out there acting like they're 35. I personally encountered one of these men at a party given by a married couple in their early sixties, and they decided to just get it over with and invite all the newly 50 something single women. I don't know how many of you guys have been in that situation. And then they would invite a couple of eligible guys who they could dig up.

C Bushnell:                            So there were lots of 50 something single women there and two or three of these senior age players or SAPs. These are older single men of means, meaning they have enough money to add it to their list of attributes and are often still employed in a lesser version of the high powered career they once had. At some point during the evening, I must've talked to one of these men because a few days later, Ron, the host of the party contacted me to let me know that out of all the 50 something women there, and I was in my fifties then, now I'm 60, he wanted to let me know that a fellow named Arnold had picked me out of the bunch to ask me out. Now, Ron was very excited about this and he was suddenly very impressed with me that I could attract a guy like Arnold because Arnold, he said was a big deal and everybody really admired him.

C Bushnell:                            Arnold played Ivy league football and he was once an oil man and a newspaper magnet and all the Park Avenue hostesses were always inviting him to their parties. He was sought after. I thought I remembered the guy. A tall, thick battleax type who was definitely older, too old for me I decided. "How old is he?" I asked. "He's a little bit older than I am," Ron said. So that would make him like 68. The thing is these guys often lie about their ages. They fudge somehow forgetting about that truth revealing device called the internet. Sure enough, when I Googled him, Arnold turned out to be 78 and that made him much closer to my father's age than mine. My father was 83, Arnold was just five years younger, but they couldn't have been more different. My father is very conservative and Arnold apparently is not. According to Ron, Arnold used to be somewhat of a notorious wild man at Studio 54. And even to this day, Arnold still has much younger girlfriends. The last one being 42.

C Bushnell:                            "I don't know how he does it," Ron said. I wanted to tell Ron that I didn't want to be the one to find out. And so I tried to say no to this fix-up. Peer pressure however, is one of the things that I hadn't counted on in middle age, and when it came to dating, it turns out there was a lot of it. My friends kept reminding me that it was good to go out and it was really good that someone had finally asked me out, when was the last time that had happened? Of course I should go. What's the harm in it? And besides, you never know. Of course the problem with you never know is that so often you actually do know. I knew or I was convinced I knew that I was not going to date a 78 year old man, no matter how wonderful he was. What if he fell down? I didn't spend my life working this hard to end up taking care of a strange older person.

C Bushnell:                            But every time I tried to explain this to people, I realized how ageist and judgy and anti-love hopeful I sounded because I didn't know. Did I? I didn't know what was going to happen. What if I fell in love with him, in which case his age wouldn't matter, right? Plus, I didn't want to be that creature. And you know that shallow woman who cares more about practicality than the blind illusions of love. Plus, as Ron reminded me, I must feel so honored than a man as powerful as Arnold wanting to spend time with little old me. In preparation for the date I went to my friend's Sassy's house and we looked at photographs of Arnold on the internet. His photos would have back about 35 years. He'd been a big man and rather handsome. "Oh honey," Sassy said, "he could turn out to be absolutely wonderful. You must keep an open mind."

C Bushnell:                            And so arrangements for a date were negotiated. We could have gone to a restaurant in my town, but Arnold really wanted me to see his house, which was in another town about 30 minutes away. However, he offered to pick me up and take me to his town and then I can always spend the night at his house if I needed to. And he would be really willing to drive me back to my house in the morning. A sleepover with a 78 year old man I didn't know? I don't think so. Thank you.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point and that's Candace Bushnell reading from her new book, Is There Still Sex in the City? We'll take a quick break and when we come back, I get to ask her a few questions. Inflection Point is a listener powered independent production. I hope you'll consider supporting us with a tax deductible donation toward our fundraising goal at inflectionpointradio.org and clicking the support button.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm Lauren Schiller and this is Inflection Point. I'm talking with Candace Bushnell, whose new book is called, Is There Still Sex in the City? We spoke live on stage at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco for Women Lit, a program of the Bay Area Book Festival. Arnold. So-

C Bushnell:                            Yes. You know-

Lauren Schiller:                  You didn't spend the night I take it.

C Bushnell:                            I'm sorry?

Lauren Schiller:                  You didn't spend the night. He showed you his bed. He really tried hard.

C Bushnell:                            I mean, the thing about ... actually, I really made it funny and I worked hard to make it funny. He was really, really sexist, like shockingly so, and really quite oblivious and very entitled. Like one of the first things he showed me was his bed, which was 20 years old or older and he shipped it from California and he said, "I had a lot of really, I've had a really lot of good of sex on that bed and I expect to have a lot more." And I was like, this is just too much. He was, yeah. I mean it's-

Lauren Schiller:                  I want to know why your friends were so invested in you meeting with this guy.

C Bushnell:                            Well, I think it's something that we as women do, we want each other to be taken care of and it's still somewhere in the back of all of our minds, even though it really doesn't happen. That somehow the mail is going to be the protector and you'll be okay if you're partnered up. And I do, I think as human beings, we tend to feel that way. The problem is that they're looking for a relationship that's really just about fulfilling their needs.

Lauren Schiller:                  But it seems like from reading the book, what was so exciting to your friends about this guy is that he had a little bit of money and he had a little bit of power.

C Bushnell:                            Yes. Exactly.

Lauren Schiller:                  And so it seems like at this point in our cultural history in this moment that we're in right now, that maybe that would become less important, but yet it's still lingering on. What do you see happening with all that?

C Bushnell:                            I think it's still lingering on, but what's frustrating of course is that men like Arnold are not ... I don't know. I mean it's not what a lot of women are necessarily looking for and powerful men, they like to enjoy their power. And for powerful men, often part of that is a certain amount of sexual freedom. And that was Arnold.

Lauren Schiller:                  He was raring to go.

C Bushnell:                            He was raring to go. And I think, but that's the other thing that's very shocking, but it won't be shocking to any of the men here.

Lauren Schiller:                  Are there any men here?

C Bushnell:                            But when you start dating again ... there are men here, I saw them already and they're like, ah-

Lauren Schiller:                  Just checking. Okay.

C Bushnell:                            They're like, "We're going to kill her."

Lauren Schiller:                  Is Arnold here?

C Bushnell:                            They want sex immediately. It's like really? But I find though also when I talk to women who work in like old age homes and that kind of thing, they're like, "It's really a problem. These men, they want to kiss you, they want to do all of this and it's just not appropriate."

Lauren Schiller:                  Do you think it's just, you get into your seventies, I mean, neither of us are there yet, but like let's just cut through the crap. Let's just get to the sex. I mean is that maybe part of what's going on? Who knows?

C Bushnell:                            No, no, I don't think so. I think that this is somebody who that's how he operates. He has these certain things that he's going to tempt you with. Like he had this little pool and he was like, "You could come and swim in my pool any time." And I was like, "No." No. On the other hand, the thing that makes these situations so tricky is if the guy had been like incredibly attractive and all of that, that might've been something that I wanted to hear. So that's unfortunately human nature.

Lauren Schiller:                  Right. But what's interesting about, I mean we don't need to totally overanalyze Arnold for a guy but-

C Bushnell:                            No we don't. Because everyone's like, "We want to talk about this today." We don't even know who Arnold is and you probably won't even be in the TV series.

Lauren Schiller:                  But just that he expected that something would happen with sex and you, and like no matter what, like maybe, I mean I know he picked you out of the crowd at the party and everything, but that you maybe were more discerning.

C Bushnell:                            Well, one of the things that he said was that he asked how old I was, when I told him how old I was, and I think at the time I might've been 57 or 58. He was really shocked and he said that he had just upped his age group to maybe include 50, but he wasn't really thinking that that would be somebody who was like 58. And he made it very clear that ... because I think at a certain point I got so pissed off at him and I was like, "Why do you think women have sex with you?" And he said, "Because I buy them handbags."

Lauren Schiller:                  Oh my God.

C Bushnell:                            And this was a real thing. I mean this is another thing that I hear a lot from men is that they are hypersensitive, a lot of them and maybe rightfully so or they're incredibly aware of the power that money can have over women. And I do hear men complaining about things like women just want money from them and women just want them to buy things for them and this and that. And to a certain extent there are women like that. So that was Arnold's set up.

Lauren Schiller:                  Could you imagine a future where the power dynamic is totally reversed?

C Bushnell:                            Yes, I could. Although I don't know what makes me say that.

Lauren Schiller:                  And would that actually be better? I don't know.

C Bushnell:                            But you know power is it's about money really. But I know there's personal power, which is the power to get things done and make things happen on your own. But men, they exercise a lot of it's economic power over women. Economic and educational and access.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, it was really fun reading the book and I mean it just, I want to say it starts with a bang, but it actually it starts with a bang. I'm just going to put it there and I'm ... not like that kind of bang. Okay. It's an action packed to beginning. And anyway, I got about 10 pages in and then I was like, "Wait a second, is this a memoir? Is this fiction?" And then I looked and it says fiction. So, talk about how it's constructed.

C Bushnell:                            We're calling it auto fiction because it's a lot of autobiographical elements of my life in a fictionalized setting with fictional characters. But yes, I mean there are a lot of things that that did happen to me in the book and a lot of very poignant things because the other side of all of this is that your 50s is a very different time than your thirties. In your thirties, you are not generally, I mean you can be hit with all of these life altering events, but it's not the same as being in your 50s or 60s when you're hit with a certain amount of loss.

C Bushnell:                            And that's one of the things that's a big difference. In your thirties, you're looking up, up, up, and you know you're going to move forward. You're going to ... maybe you're already in a relationship and you're raising children and you're doing that into your forties and your career. Everything's going up. And then when you get into your 50s, things can kind of go ... And you know there, a parent will probably pass away. A friend will probably die unfortunately. And so while I was writing the book, my father actually did die while I was writing the book and one of my best friends took her life. So it's an interesting experience. And I talked a lot with my editors. Like originally I had one editor and he was like, "It's just supposed to be funny. We don't want death." But it's like that is such a part of people's lives at this time. And it's one of the things that shapes this period and it changes you psychically and psychologically. And because it does, it can be an opportunity for growth.

Lauren Schiller:                  We had a chance to talk before we sat in this room and one of the things that we were talking about is that, well, just like your editors were saying, "We want it to be funny. We don't want any death in the book." That there's not great role models out there for how to process the death of a parent or a friend or even prepare for it.

C Bushnell:                            That is true. And you know, I mean one of the things that's really different in the last 50 years, maybe the last 30 years, I think it was like in the mid 1960s or maybe even 1970 or 75, 76% of the population over 50 was married. So that was pretty much everybody was married unlike today where it's 50% of people are single, maybe even more people. So when these things happen to you, they happen to you in this in a sense, in the comfort of your own home. And it's happening and you tend to have like relatives and people who have dealt with this, people are there.

C Bushnell:                            You still have a partner, you've got a family, you're probably in the same house that you've lived in for a long time. Today when these things hit you, that is not necessarily true. You may be single again, chances are you may be living on your own, you may have moved, you may be getting divorced. There are a whole bunch of things that happen that don't really insulate you from these situations. And I think that's one of the things that that makes these things a little bit tricky.

Lauren Schiller:                  While you're writing the book, you lose your father, you lose your friend. How did you process those events and then, I mean, was writing the book a way of processing them or did you have to kind of go through it and then figure out how you were going to write about it?

C Bushnell:                            You know, I kind of had to figure out how I was going to write about it kind of while it was happening. Like I went to see my father, I knew he was going to go and I was like, "You know, the reality is if you're a writer, as Nora Ephron said, 'Everything's copy.'" I mean, I hate to say it, but I was just very, tried to be very aware of my feelings, et cetera, and tried to process them in an adult way, which means not having a breakdown and figuring out, I mean that's really what this time is about. You know what? At 50 you're an adult and you have to be. You kind of do.

Lauren Schiller:                  You kind of want to have the breakdown though.

C Bushnell:                            I just do. Being an adult is not necessarily being busy all the time. Being an adult is being able to stand back, assess the situation, take your ego out of it and figure out what is the best thing to do, how to move forward in a way that is the most humane and kind to everybody around. And it's a time when you have to kind of reach down and figure out how to move on. And it's hard. I mean there were a lot of times when I was writing this book when I was like, I was depressed writing the book. But as I was writing the book, I also felt something was lifting. And when I've looked at that U-shaped curve, the realities for most people, the bottom of that U-shaped curve, it is in your fifties and then things kind of start to go up again.

C Bushnell:                            So it was this personal journey for me through my fifties and it wasn't always easy. And I do, you know, I have friends who are ... I've seen people in a lot pain and I've ... this is also a time when you see that some people just, they can't get it together and they just can't make it. Men and women. So for me, this is something to explore and to write about.

Lauren Schiller:                  Well, in that, and one of the things that you've written about consistently is friendship and female friendships specifically. What role does friendship or has friendship played for you in coming through those kinds of hard times?

C Bushnell:                            I think it's what it always is. It's like people being there for you. I mean, I had like one friend who she just decided, she's like, "I never turned down a funeral." She's like, "I'm going to them all. I'm going to figure out ... I'm figuring out how to do this." And it's like you got to show up for your friends in a different way. At one time maybe you were showing up with dating advice. Now you're showing up with soup. I don't know. But yes, it's again, another time of finding it's for a lot of people it's like reconnecting with people who you were friends with before you got married and had kids. Because when you have children, your friends tend to be the parents of your children's friends. And if you end up getting divorced, all of these things are changed.

Lauren Schiller:                  This is Inflection Point. I'm Lauren Schiller talking with Candace Bushnell. When we come back, the Mona Lisa treatment. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point with a live on stage recording with Candace Bushnell for Women Lit, a program of the Bay Area Book Festival that we recorded the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. Do you want to talk about the Mona Lisa?

C Bushnell:                            Oh gosh, yes. Well, first of all, it's a laser that ... and I know some of you have heard of this and they use it to restore elasticity and et cetera into your vagina. So it's a laser, but it's for inside and it's ... yes, they put it in your vagina and it works like lasers work. I mean it's just, it's skin. Okay. So it makes sense that it might work, but I want to preface it by saying that it's something that it's so easy for us to make fun of. The idea of women pursuing something, I don't even think it's sexual dysfunction, but something to enhance their sexuality or whatever. And there are basically three things for women and there are 77 products for men. So let's start with that.

C Bushnell:                            So it's actually could be a good thing. But what happens was I was thinking about doing it and it costs $3,000, but I thought if I'm going to do it, I only can do a before and after. So I have to find someone to have sex with before, and get the treatment done, because how am I going to know? I don't know.

Lauren Schiller:                  You don't think you'd be able to tell?

C Bushnell:                            I don't know. I'm making that up, but I don't know. Probably yes, because-

Lauren Schiller:                  I would hope for a $3,000-

C Bushnell:                            Well, I first heard about it, I heard about it from my gynecologist and then I brought it up at lunch with this guy, like have you ever heard of this? And he literally went pale, but he said, "My wife got it." And he said, "She's divorcing me and she's gone off with a younger guy." And this, I was like, "Wow." I heard the story about 20 times from other people of the same thing. So I thought that was very interesting of women actually leaving their husbands when, and really just being rejuvenated or whatever and saying, "Hey, I'm going to go out there and I don't feel like giving this up." So-

Lauren Schiller:                  Well let's, while we're on the topic, let's talk Tinder because you did a whole event experiment with [crosstalk 00:38:29].

C Bushnell:                            I did a Tinder experiment and-

Lauren Schiller:                  Everyone know what Tinder is?

C Bushnell:                            Yes.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm just making sure.

C Bushnell:                            How many of you have gone on Tinder?

Lauren Schiller:                  Oh, show of hands.

C Bushnell:                            It's all the young women and it's a guy.

Lauren Schiller:                  Oh, you met on Tinder? No. Okay.

C Bushnell:                            You could meet on Tinder. I mean Tinder there are no filters or anything like that and people make their own choices. So, but I discovered an app like Tinder, it really is a game. It's designed like a card game and you know the app doesn't care if you meet somebody or not. It just wants you to be on it and stay on it. But what I found interestingly with Tinder, and this is something that I feel like I'm hearing it more and more out there from guys, and I think the thing that was most interesting about Tinder was how many men, first of all thought that the other men on it were absolutely horrible. And when men think like other men are bad, you really should pay attention because normally they cover up each other's bad behavior.

C Bushnell:                            And the other thing was how quite a few guys said how much they hated themselves when they were on Tinder and how it brought out like the worst sexist sides of their personality where they really just felt women were objects. And it was really interesting to talk to these guys and get their take on it and it's not heartening. And I ended up also talking to a lot of 25 year old women in their twenties who are on Tinder and they talked a lot about their frustrations and their biggest frustration seem to be with the quality of the men that they were meeting. So hello, maybe you shouldn't go on Tinder. And I thought, I mean I'd heard women complaining about dating before. Dating's never been easy, but it was really like the first piece I did for this book. And it was very eyeopening how much more negative women had become about dating and men.

C Bushnell:                            And I just heard like a lot more anger. I mean look, there are always women out there who are they're having a great time. It's all working out for them and they have it all together. But you know, a lot of women didn't and they insisted that the guys that I was going to meet on Tinder were going to be maybe not what they said, that they would have undiagnosed mental illnesses, and that a lot of them would use drugs, and that they were really unreliable and that this sort of thing. So I went on Tinder. The first thing that happened was Tinder set my age range for who I would be attracted to based on my age. I couldn't lie about my age because I didn't know I wasn't skilled enough on Tinder. And so it matched me up with, there were like two guys over the age of 58 and they were both like smokers.

C Bushnell:                            So I set the age, I was like, "What's going on?" I set the age range. I was like, "Okay, I will say 22 to 32 and see what happens." I got tons and tons of hits, so many hits and I really was like, "Wow." And people were writing really nice things. And I was like, "Those girls are so wrong." And then I matched with this guy who, he was 33 I think, and everyone kept saying, "Oh, he's a real man man." He had a beard and a lot of hair.

Lauren Schiller:                  Sure sign.

C Bushnell:                            And so we agreed to meet up, we met up and he told me a lot about like Tinder and how all the horrible guys were on it and this and that. And he was a vegetarian and the only place we could go, I could find to go was like a hamburger place. But he was like, "Don't worry, I'll deal. I'll just eat French fries." So I was like, "Okay." But it was interesting. It was fun. We kind of ... it was friendly and he seemed like a really nice guy. So then he asked me out again and we went to see this really cool downtown play and I was like, "Hey, this is like groovy. It's great. This guy's really cool." And then he asked me out again and I was like, "I really shouldn't do this, because I'm not going to date anybody for a story."

C Bushnell:                            And I wasn't really interested, but he asked me to go to this Shakespeare play in Brooklyn. So I thought, Well, why not? Am I doing anything else? I should go. So I was crossing the Brooklyn bridge and of course I couldn't help but think about that scene in Sex and the City when it's Miranda and Steve, they're going to meet on the bridge. And I was like, I'm crossing the bridge, maybe something's going to happen. Isn't this nice? Like I'm going to prove to everybody that you could meet a great guy on Tinder.

C Bushnell:                            And so I get there and everybody's pairing up and going into the theater, and then they're ringing the bell. And I didn't have the tickets, supposedly this guy had the tickets and he didn't show up. So it was an expensive taxi ride there and back. It was like $40 each way. And I was like, what's, you know. And so I texted him and I said, maybe we got the date wrong or something like that. And I didn't hear from him for two days. And then I got a really, really long text that said I am so, so sorry. I lost track of time. I took MDM PD do, some kind of new designer drug and I don't know what happened, but I tried to drive my car, I was arrested and then I was put in a 48 hour hold and it went on. And I was just like, he turned out to be exactly what the Tinderellas had said I would find. And I really thought Tinder, it's like Vegas, it's the house. It always wins.

C Bushnell:                            And then I was going to this black tie event and I saw this woman outside and she was really beautiful and she was smoking a cigarette. And I was like, "Wow, someone's still smoking a cigarette." I used to smoke. So I was like, I'm just going to go near the cigarette smell. And I just started talking to her and she was incredibly attractive. She was tall, blonde, she was maybe 32. She seemed like she had it all together. And so I decided to ask her about do you go on Tinder? Now I forgot to mention she was Russian.

C Bushnell:                            And she was like, "Yes, of course I go on Tinder." And I was like, "But why? You're so beautiful, you certainly don't need to be on Tinder." And she was like, "It's when you go on Tinder, you get more Instagram followers. It's all about Instagram." And I was like, "That's it." So there you go.

Lauren Schiller:                  And this is why millennials are not having as much sex obviously.

C Bushnell:                            Well, I don't know if anybody watched this. You know, there was that Lisa Ling thing about pornography and its effect on young men. And again, there were a lot of young men on there who were really very distressed about this constant use of porn and how they become addicted and how it affected them psychologically and how difficult it made them to find real women attractive and how it wasn't ... and how being around real women made them very nervous, very uncomfortable. They didn't know what to do. And again, like how they really, really did not like themselves.

C Bushnell:                            And I mean, I think that, and that's something that I hear. And I heard this when I was writing this Tinder pieces well from guys about how it's impossible for them to avoid pornography and how they get so much pornography, whether they want it or not, and how it's affects them in a negative way. And that's definitely, I don't know. I mean, I don't know, porn is such a big money making industry that we are never going to get a straight answer on it. I promise you. I'm not a fan of porn. I think I know too much about it.

Lauren Schiller:                  I'm just thinking about how women in their fifties and up are depicted in the media and in movies and in our culture in general. And how we can start to see a shift toward that being, we're not just irrelevant. It's-

C Bushnell:                            Yes. Well I think that is-

Lauren Schiller:                  New world.

C Bushnell:                            It's really, I mean, it's changing so much because I feel like the Sex and the City woman who to me, I mean, to me the Sex and the City woman is a woman who's my age. I'm 60, but it's about really it was a change that happened in the late seventies and the early eighties. And it really happened because of feminism, the pill. Also women's magazines at that time were really very important and they were just seminating information to regular women out there about things that you could have that you could never have before. And one of them was an orgasm and the other was a career. And-

Lauren Schiller:                  And that ladies and gentlemen is having it all.

C Bushnell:                            Exactly.

Lauren Schiller:                  Forget everything else.

C Bushnell:                            And in the late seventies and eighties, there was a huge influx of women into the workforce. This has happened a couple of times in the 1920s, for instance, but then it always, women end up going back to the home. And it happened at that time. And that really made for a lot of changes and it was a group of women who they were going to go out there and do something that their mothers hadn't done. They were going to try to have it all. It was really like the first generation of women that were encouraged, told that you could have it all, that you could have a family, you could have a career.

C Bushnell:                            So this is not a group of women who are shy violence. This tends to be a group of women who they're used to challenging the status quo and they're used to going out there and changing things and changing perspectives. And this is really the same group of women, but they're older. And they're not going to go away. So I do think-

Lauren Schiller:                  So now's the time to show up. They're showing up.

C Bushnell:                            Yes. Yeah. I mean I do think it's a different time.

Lauren Schiller:                  That was Candace Bushnell speaking with me live on stage at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco for Women Lit, a program of the Bay Area Book Festival. Candace's new book is called, Is There Still Sex in the City? I'll put a link to it on my website influctionpointradio.org, where by the way, you can find future events by clicking on the events tab there. I'd love to see you. I'm Lauren Schiller. This is Inflection Point and this is how women rise up.

Lauren Schiller:                  That's our Inflection Point for today. All of our episodes are on Apple podcasts, RadioPublic, Stitcher, Pandora, NPR One, all the places. Give us a five star review and subscribe to the podcast. Know a woman leading change we should talk to? Let us know at inflectionpointradio.org. While you're there, support our production with a tax deductible monthly or one time contribution. When women rise up, we all rise up. Just go to inflectionpointradio.org. We're on Facebook and Instagram at inflectionpointradio. Follow us and join the Inflection Point society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small daily actions. And follow me on Twitter at laschiller. To find out more about today's guest and to be in the loop with our email newsletter, you know where to go. inflectionpointradio.org. Inflection Point is produced in partnership with KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco and PRX. Our community manager is Alaura Weaver. Our engineer and producer is Eric Wayne. I'm your host. Lauren Schiller.

Paid Leave For All - Katie Bethell is Seizing the Moment to Fight for Radical Policy Change

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America is one of only two countries in the world where you can be fired for taking a day off in order to give birth (let that sink in for a moment). As it stands, paid leave policy varies from company to company, state to state, but on a national level, there is no policy in place, no minimum requirements or baseline standard that applies to everyone.

And it’s not just about moms—this lack of policy also has greater repercussions for how we define a family, in a political sense, and the relationship between the family and the workplace--men included. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand are both bringing attention to these issues, running on platforms of universal childcare, and paid medical and family leave.

Katie Bethell, founder and executive director of Paid Leave for the US (PLUS), joins us this week to give us the alarming stats, talk nerdy government logistics, and offer some extremely practical advice on how we can use this particularly potent moment to push for political change.

Join us this week on Inflection Point for a look at radical change in action, one decision at a time.

Inflection Point is independently produced and we rely on support from listeners like you! Make a tax deductible donation to support our production today at inflectionpointradio.org/contribute. Thank you!

Photo courtesy of Paid Leave for the US

The "Algorithms of Oppression" embedded in tech - Dr. Safiya Noble

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Dr. Safiya Noble was studying Library Science when an academic colleague suggested she google ”black girls.” The top search results were images that perpetuated negative stereotypes, misogyny and exploitation. That discovery was the beginning of an investigation that eventually became Safiya’s book, “Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism”.

Immediate access to powerful search engines is seen as an empowering force in this world, but what if our reliance on search engines is perpetuating oppressive ideas and hateful ideologies--even swaying elections?

And when you’re done, come on over to The Inflection Point Society, our Facebook group of everyday activists who seek to make extraordinary change through small, daily actions.

We rely on listener support, please contribute today to fund the transcript of this episode!

More recommended reading: The Googlization of Everything (and why we should worry), by Jesse Daniels

Do haters deserve our compassion? Sally Kohn, Author of "The Opposite of Hate"

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Can you find compassion in your heart for the haters in your life? CNN political commentator and first-time author Sally Kohn says if we keep on hating the haters, the cycle of hate will never end.  She’s believes compassion to be one of the keys to breaking the cycle of hatred that pervades our culture in today’s divisive world. 

The question is, how can compassion defeat a system fueled by hate? 

Listen in on my conversation with Sally Kohn, author of “The Opposite of Hate” on what she’s learned from her own missteps as a former school bully and, paradoxically, as a well-meaning liberal, breaking the cycle of hate, and cultivating compassion for her perceived enemies.
 

Photo by Paul Takeuchi