Do we let ourselves off too easily?

There is a hidden cost to tweeting, texting, and other “convenient” ways of taking action to help others.

In her American Prospect piece, OEP Alum and Mentor-Editor, Courtney Martin writes about the nature of our response to the recent tragedy in Haiti.

The Missing Discomfort in Mourning for Haiti

As the saying goes: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” It shouldn’t take a natural disaster of this magnitude to get our attention. Just as Katrina shined an undeniable light on economic disparity and institutional racism in this country, Haiti’s most recent earthquake is illuminating a similarly inexcusable disparity on a global scale.  Read Full Article

Wow: Two OEP women make WaPo’s short list!

As many of you know, The Washington Post is holding a contest to find America’s Next Great Pundit. Almost 5000 people entered the contest, and ten finalists have been chosen. Over the next few weeks, they’ll all submit op-eds to the paper, and readers will have a chance to vote on who should advance to win the grand prize: a weekly column for thirteen weeks (the short list, for those who are wondering, is half men and half women).

We are incredibly proud to announce that an OEP alum and an OEP Mentor Editor have both made the short list.

The first is Zeba Khan, who attended our seminar with the organization Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow, is a social media expert whose writing and research interests are women in Islamic societies. Our second finalist is the wonderful Courtney E. Martin, Mentor Editor. Courtney is the author of Perfect Girls; Starving Daughters and the forthcoming Do it Anyway: Portraits of the Next Generation of Activists. She’s been with the OEP almost since its inception (and taught the first OEP session I ever attended!). You can read respective winning entries below.

If you want to see these wonderful thought leaders advance to the next round of competition, read their op-eds in WaPo throughout this week and then, this weekend, VOTE! Voting starts on Saturday, Nov. 7 at 8am ET and closes on Monday, Nov. 9 at 3pm ET.

The women of the web, by Zeba Khan

It may have been the youth that used the web to elect President Obama, but if the White House wants to mobilize its virtual army to push health-care reform, it might want to consider calling on the women of the web instead.

Women have always been leaders in using and understanding social networks. Sixty years ago, Brownie Wise, a single mother from Dearborn, Mich., saved the Tupperware brand by launching the first of what would become known as Tupperware parties. As Wise hosted these parties to introduce Tupperware to her friends, some of those friends became Tupperware sellers themselves, hosting parties for their friends and on it went. Within a decade, Wise and her exponentially growing cadre of hostesses sold millions of dollars’ worth of product every year through their networks.

Today, social networks have moved online with companies like Facebook, Ning and MySpace leading the way. And just like in the ’50s, women dominate the social networks of today. MySpace’s U.S. user base, for example, is 64 percent female, followed by Ning’s at 62 percent and Facebook at 59 percent.

Not only are there more women networking online than men, but the number of older women in particular is growing at a phenomenal rate. In the first quarter of 2009 on Facebook, women aged 35-44 experienced a 154 percent growth, women 45-54 grew by 165.3 percent and women 55-65 grew by an incredible 175.3 percent.

Recently, Team Obama used its online tools to organize a national phone banking drive resulting in over 300,000 commitments to call Congress demanding health-care reform. But considering that this same pool of supporters helped turn nine states from red to blue last November, this response is hardly reflective of the potential mobilizing power this groups has.

Health-care reform is not as sexy as a presidential election. The youth vote that put Obama in the White House is the healthiest demographic in the country. It is no surprise that the urgency of health-care reform has not struck a chord with them. Women, on the other hand, are the dominant drivers in the household when it comes to health-care and understand firsthand the problems with the current system.

Social networking appeals to women because they are relationship-driven, and the White House must capitalize on this connection. If it can figure out how to reach its female supporters, it just might get the backup it has been waiting for.

Between work and life, by Courtney E. Martin

Though my dad retired over five years ago now, his ankles are still hairless and skinny, as if they can’t quite get over the 40 years that he squeezed them into dress socks befitting a man going to the office. In fact, my father’s lawyer identity is like a phantom limb. Without his daily doses of e-mail and ego-boost that the firm provided, his self-image aches and spasms. He lies on the hammock for hours at a time, bicycles in embarrassing spandex outfits, drives my mother crazy.

My mother isn’t having the same trouble adjusting. Like most women of the supermom ’80s, she juggled her clinical practice with community activism, caretaking, and even founded a film festival. For my father, the line between work and the rest of life was always thick and black. For my mother it was porous — everything was life and work, some of it better compensated in dollars and hugs.

I thought of these two, bumping into one another in the kitchen, when I heard that women are now officially half of the workforce. Despite all the recent hogwash pitting the sexes against one another, the Center for American Progress reports that three-fourths of people see this new reality — women comprising 50 percent of American workers — positively.

The women of my generation — the entitled, earnest Millennials — are not “opting out” of the workforce, as claimed by Lisa Belkin and others. In fact, I don’t know a single one who isn’t committed to having a career. Perhaps even more important, I don’t know a single young man who isn’t committed to being an involved father someday. My guy friends, late in their 20s and starting to spend fewer nights on bar stools, talk about the struggle to balance their careers with their interests and relationships. They want to do meaningful work, have love, to measure success by passion, not paychecks.

It seems that the real revolution is not that women are working as much as men; it’s that both women and men are starting to crave the porous kind of life that my mom led, instead of the compartmentalized version that my father has left behind. That’s good news for everybody, even my dear old dad who has at least a decade or two left to figure out who, not what, he wants to be when he grows up.

Our marvelous Mentor Editors

As I mentioned last week, two of our Mentor Editors were contributors to the groundbreaking Shriver Report, A Woman’s Nation, which was released last Monday. Michael Kimmel and Courtney E. Martin both also sat on a panel at the conference that accompanied the release of the report; the panel was called “Men and Marriage,” and Kimmel and Martin were joined by Marcia Greenberger, the Co-President of the National Women’s Law Center and noted historian Stephanie Coontz. My spies at the Center for American Progress tell me that the panel was fascinating, and that all Coontz, Greenberger, Kimmel and Martin all offered fascinating insights into the discussion about the state of manhood and marriage in 2009.

Today in her regular column at The American Prospect, Martin continues her discussion of manhood and marriage, this time taking up the issue of “work/life balance,” a term that, she claims, has come to be code for “stressed working moms.” She argues that far from being a “women’s issue,” work/life balance is an issue in which men have a huge stake, too. She writes:

Anyone who hopes to be a balanced person with relationships and passions outside of work has a stake. Want to be an active part of making your neighborhood a more livable, communal place to live? Want to go on a trip with your friends every once in awhile? Want to have some job security even if you get sick or injured? All of these interests require a reasonable and consistent work schedule, a living wage, health care, vacation time, and sick days. And, of course, sons who have become caretakers of their aging parents, an increasingly common trend, also have to take these issues seriously.

In the same way, the fight to get more women’s voices onto the op-ed page isn’t just a “women’s issue.” It’s about changing the public discourse so that it’s more representative of a public that is over half women. It’s about making sure we’re hearing and debating the best ideas about how to make policy and make change, and recognizing that some of the best ideas will come from women. Like the work/life balance issue, getting more women onto op-ed pages is about equality and equity, but it’s also improving the quality of American life. And that’s something in which each and every one of us has a stake.