“A lot of times, women will lead with, ‘I’m so sorry my email’s late,’ right? ‘I’m so sorry I was in your way.’ If you listen to how many times women say this, it’s way too much. Don’t apologize for taking up space,” Associate Professor and Associate Dean at George Mason University Bonnie Stabile commented while attending intersectional gender parity nonprofit Take the Lead’s 10th anniversary two-day conference, held in Washington DC’s Kennedy Center on Sunday, August 25 and DC’s National Housing Center on Monday, August 26, 2024. The latter also receives acknowledgement as Women’s Equality Day. 

The United States recently held the second presidential election to feature a female candidate on a major party ticket. The Democrat, Vice President Kamala Harris, lost to the Republican former President Donald Trump, a man with hush money felonies and multiple accusations of abusing women. The conference’s theme stressed the importance of how the world needs female leaders more than ever. 

 Montgomery College educates many innovative women who later in their careers may come across gender parity in various fields. Inequalities in fair pay, healthcare access, leadership positions and receiving respect continue to impact women and other marginalized groups.  

Take the Lead tackles all these issues, as these biases and discrepancies “often hit young women in the face,” according to Take the Lead co-founder and president, Gloria Feldt. 

Bonnie Stabile expressed, “Colleges should increasingly include the voices of their own students, listen to the people who are affected, and let young people know that they have power. Every time I step into a classroom, I feel like I’m learning as much as I’m teaching.  The ideas, the excitement, the knowledge of young people – they’re really putting it out there and creating evolutionary change.” 

 The educator emphasized that an important daily practice “is women not being self-deprecating,” and continued by noting habitually encouraging women to recognize their uniqueness and value has a positive impact on the world. “Just jump right into your email. You don’t need to get out of the way,” Stabile advised.  

Gloria Feldt discussed in an interview with the Advocate the organization’s mission to achieve intersectional gender parity in leadership. Established in 2014, the organization has witnessed women’s representation in top leadership roles rise from 18 percent to 28 percent, according to Feldt. 

 “The curriculum that I’ve developed helps women to thrive in the world as it is while we’re changing it. While I have been an advocate in many different levels: local, state, federal, even global, this is much more aimed at helping the individual woman to navigate her own path and to clarify and accelerate her own career development and whatever sector she wants to be in,” Feldt spoke of Take the Lead’s 9 Leadership Power Tools course. The tools include defining your own terms, knowing your history, using what you’ve got, embracing controversy, employing every medium, telling your story, carpe-ing the chaos, taking action by creating a movement, and wearing the shirt (of your convictions.) 

Regarding this knowledge in academia, Feldt explained, “I did teach this same curriculum for 10 years as an academic course, and I had about 25 percent men each time. I found that for the women, it was important to redefine power in their own minds, from an oppressive idea of power being the power over them, to a generative idea of having the power to define your own terms, the power to set your own agenda, the power to you. I found that men, at first, sometimes they were taking it because they thought it was an easy three hours and they needed another credit, and then they would get really fascinated with it by the statistics, and they would connect the fact that if there’s a gender pay gap, it affects me, because if my mother, my sister, my girlfriend, my wife, isn’t being paid fairly, that affects me.” 

 “A leader is somebody who gets stuff done,” Feldt declared. “The data is there – the companies with more women in their leadership are more profitable.” 

On intersectionality in feminism, Gloria Feldt stated, “I sort of cut my teeth in the civil rights movement, and for me, racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, all these things are joined at the head. They come from the same thought process of othering people, and that’s why I’ve always had a commitment in the work that I’ve done my whole life. When I was CEO of Planned Parenthood in Arizona, I started the first Multicultural Alliance board committee to advance diversity in the whole organization, because seriously, if you really want the best thinking, you must have diversity.” 

 “When I was the national president [of Planned Parenthood,] I turned it from reactive to proactive. Now it’s kind of gone back to being reactive. [Planned Parenthood] is a big, wealthy, powerful, much-loved organization that needs to get up on its high horse and be totally proactive with a big, forward-looking agenda, and just go for all the change that needs to happen in this world to truly make women equal citizens.” Gloria Feldt reflected. 

Many participants of the conference made a “commitment” of what to do going forward after the event. What Feldt described as a key takeaway from Take the Lead’s conference, getting the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) into the United States Constitution, received a mention in many of the commitments.  

 The ERA, introduced first in 1972, would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex if passed. The proposed 28th Amendment, as discussed by multiple conference speakers, currently needs four more votes in Congress to remove its time limit for becoming part of the United States Constitution. Requiring 38 states for ratification, in 2020, Virginia became the 38th and final state needed for ratification. President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration’s Justice Department blocked the ERA’s amendment with a memo stating the deadline for ratification had already passed, but efforts are ongoing to raise awareness and support, according to Take the Lead conference panelists. 

Conference speakers discussed the importance of social media, particularly TikTok, in reaching younger generations, and highlighted the importance of voter education and advocacy. One such speaker, author, women’s rights activist, and Emmy-winning former journalist Carol Jenkins, decided to transition from television news to the nonprofit sector after covering significant events for the television news like Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in South Africa.  

  “My position was that in those days, you had to be noncommittal on any issue. We’re not allowed to express your opinion, whether it was horrific or not. You just tell the story and move on,” Jenkins recalled. 

Jenkins continued, “I decided that I think that’s enough of being non-committal. I should do something, as Michelle Obama would say, right?” 

 The activist then went on to become president of the nonprofits the ERA Coalition, the Fund for Women’s Equality, and the Women’s Media Center. 

 “If you haven’t had the pep talk for the day, you just heard the best of the best,” Gloria Feldt exclaimed after the final panel of guest speakers completed their presentation.
“It just takes five minutes for you to [make] a commitment. What are you going to do with what you have learned today? “ 

Feldt expanded upon those questions, further asking the audience, “What are you going to do with the contact that you made today? What are you going to do to follow up on something that made you really think more deeply about an issue that has been a concern to you? What are you going to do to get the ERA fast? What are you going to do to advance women’s leadership?” 

 Additionally, Take the Lead offers an email newsletter providing information and news on women’s leadership, and the nonprofit opened new online courses this past October. “You can also bring me to speak on your campus, and to sit down and hear organizations, and have a conversation,” added Gloria Feldt. 

For more information on Take the Lead, including internship opportunities, visit their website at https://www.taketheleadwomen.com  

To read the proposed ERA, visit https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/STATUTE-86/pdf/STATUTE-86-Pg1523.pdf  

To read post-Dobbs decision Maryland’s new constitutional amendment regarding reproductive freedom, visit https://elections.maryland.gov/elections/2024/general_results/gen_qtext_2024_C_1.html