Building Collective Power

For women's history month, I've focused on my own personal gratitude for the women in my life, the cognitive dissonance of the month's message juxtaposed with our societal reality, and the co-opting of social justice rhetoric (and its commoditization) by brands and marketers.

Today I want to focus on how those thoughts and feelings translate into meaningful work, especially as it pertains to women's rights.

Before I start, I want to describe what collective power means to me:

During the pandemic, myself and a few likeminded women (s/o Amanda Donenfeld and Karinna S. !) started hosting intergroup dialogues and open conversations on Clubhouse. The group was called Collective Power, and the conversations ranged from combatting misinformation about the (still pending at the time) COVID-19 vaccine, voting, how to become civically engaged, financial literacy, art, and much more.

Through the course of those early days of the pandemic, we connected with men and women all throughout the country (and the world), who sought connection and support during quarantine, and wanted to proactively engage with each other and with issues that mattered to them. Conversation became community, which then gave rise to actions with tangible outcomes.

Collective power is rooted in community and coalition building at the grassroots level, and co-creating spaces where people can speak freely and constructively.

Strength in Numbers

A strange idiosyncrasy that I've pointed out before is that - though women make up literally half the global population - our interests / ideas / history are often framed as niche or subjective, a minority perspective. E.g., one can study women's history or one can study History, women's literature or Literature.

This automatic exclusion of women from the mainstream extends beyond academic settings and into every aspect of life and society.

Medical studies have historically excluded female participants, and research data collected from males have been generalized to be representative of all humans (Merone, 2022), leading to negative outcomes for women's health; such is also the case with crash test dummies in the auto industry; the ergonomic design of gym equipment and power tools; AC levels in office buildings are biased towards men's internal resting body temperature (this is the root of the old joke about women being very cold at the office), and much more. In 2022, male speaking roles in U.S. domestic films outnumbering female speaking roles almost three to one.

Caroline Criado Perez sums this up very well in her book, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men:

The presumption that what is male is universal is a direct consequence of the gender data gap. Whiteness and maleness can only go without saying because most other identities never get said at all. But male universality is also a cause of the gender data gap: because women aren't seen and aren't remembered, because male data makes up the majority of what we know, what is male comes to be seen as universal. It leads to the positioning of women, half the global population, as a minority. With a niche identity and subjective point of view. In such a framing, women are set up to be forgettable. Ignorable. Dispensable - from culture, from history, and from data. And so, women become invisible.

This systemic invisibility and bias in data is being actively critiqued and dismantled through the tireless work of activists, policymakers, academics, and allies.

What is important to remember as well is that this quasi-minority status is ultimately an illusion: at the end of the day, women are still half the world. This is helpful to remember during conversations around "taking up space" at work, and struggles with imposter syndrome, or feeling unsupported.

The first step in building collective power, especially for the marginalized, is recognizing when our understanding of the world is being distorted by faulty data, as described above, and taking steps to proactively build community and engage in conversation to call attention to these distortions.

Help the Helpers

Building collective power, as the term implies, is the work of a collective, or coalition of groups and individuals with a shared goal. For women who care about other women and women's rights more broadly, this means looking for those organizations and leaders who are already fighting the good fight, and supporting their work.

You can do this by donating your time or money, but I've also found a lot of success by reaching out to organizations I admire and asking their leadership directly: "how can I be more involved?"

This is an opportunity to not only translate good intentions into direct action, it also gives you an opportunity to find likeminded people to build community and collective power with.

Oftentimes, it can be disheartening to acknowledge and confront systemic injustices and unfairness in the world. What helps is to help where you can, and surround yourself with other people who are doing the same.

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