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Ms.
Women of the Year
Marleine Bastien
Jennifer Erikson +Robert Riley
Magda Escobar
Jane Fonda
Rebecca Gomperts
Naomi Klein
Barbara Lee
Yoko Ono
Sylvia Rhone
Venus + Serena Williams
The Women of Afghanistan
World Trade Center Heroes
Michelle Yeoh
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Women
Who Made A Difference
A few of the brave and tenacious women who left their
mark on this momentous year—and one enduring female
superhero. |
30
Years of Ms.
A few of our words—and yours—about the magazine
and its mission, and the roads we've traveled along the
way. |
Phantom
Towers
An excerpt by Rosalind P. Petchesky |
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Editor's
Page: Turning Point
|
Bold
Before Her Time
Edna St. Vincent Millay's reckless life by Le Anne Schreiber |
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Books:
Reviews
Special: An Excerpt from
Families As We Are by Perdita Houston
|
Back
Page
Inherit the War |
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Serena & Venus Williams
For serving up a discomfiting mix of sinew, grit, coal
black kink, and 'tude-and daring to call it woman |
Afghan Women
For pursuing acts of resistance in the face of brutal,
gender-based oppression |
Barbara Lee
For courageously standing up for peace and justice in
a time of terrorism and fear Jane Fonda For putting her
muscle and her money to work for girls' health and gender
studies |
Roberta Riley & Jennifer Erickson
For convincing a federal court that birth control is a
medical necessity and mobilizing a movement for prescription
coverage |
Rebecca Gomperts
For hatching a heroic and ingenious plan to provide reproductive
health services around the world |
Michelle Yeoh
For creating powerful images of Asian women and refusing
to be stereotyped |
Magda Escobar
For showing us how to build community programs that bridge
the digital divide |
Naomi Klein
For connecting activists around the world to help create
a new global movement
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Sylvia Rhone
For putting her ideals into action-both in and out of
the music business-on behalf of women and people of color
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Marleine Bastien
For working to make the dream of democracy a reality for
Florida's black voters |
Yoko Ono
For five decades (and counting) of unwavering commitment
to peace and feminism |
September 11 heroes
For giving their lives to save others in the Twin Towers
of the World Trade Center |
Michelle Yeoh
For creating powerful images of Asian women and refusing
to be stereotyped
Some say last year's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is
a feminist movie because it has three strong female leads. Others
rave about the martial arts feats performed by these women.
But what makes the movie truly empowering happens when a father
proudly holds up a baby girl and tells the swordswoman played
by Michelle Yeoh, "I'll be happy if she's half as strong as
you." That moment—like the movie—is a powerful rebuke
to China's patriarchal culture that still devalues girls and
treats female submissiveness as a virtue. Using her industry
clout, Yeoh has challenged traditionally sexist views of Asian
women by creating strong female roles—first as an action-movie
pioneer and now as the head of her own film company.
"There are women out there watching this and getting inspired.
Girls are taking up martial arts because of her," says Crouching
Tiger director Ang Lee, whose movie won four Oscars. "In
Asia, she has become an icon for the strong-willed woman."
Throughout her 17-year career in Hong Kong cinema, Yeoh (who
pronounces her name, she says, "like yo!") has chosen to portray
only women of strength because that is how she sees herself
and the women in her life: her mother, her friends.
"I believe movies reflect what's happening in society," she
says. "Why constantly portray Asian women as victims or sex
objects when that's not how things really are?"
Since 1984, the Malaysian-born actor has played a cop, a rebel,
a soldier of fortune, a superhero, a stuntwoman, even a superagent
opposite Pierce Brosnan's 007 in Tomorrow Never Dies
(1997). In the process, she has created a modern prototype instead
of reinforcing a Hollywood stereotype. Ever since Anna May Wong
played a prostitute opposite Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai
Express (1932), Asian women have been cast as sexual playthings
or silently suffering women—images as demeaning as the
mammy roles were for black women.
"I didn't want to play a damsel in distress," says Yeoh, who
initially faced a macho film culture that saw the former ballerina
as too girly for chop-socky cinema. Proving her critics wrong,
she performed her own stunts while most actors—male and
female—used doubles. She clung to speeding vehicles, jumped
from bridges, and even rode a motorcycle off a ramp and onto
a moving train.
While filming Crouching Tiger, Yeoh tore a knee ligament—among
the many injuries she's sustained in her career—but she
stubbornly went on shooting. "She is the bravest person I know,
a real daredevil," says Lee of Asia's highest paid female star.
"When I first started doing martial arts, I felt a sense of
power because I was beating down these guys and taking punches
myself. But you learn that martial arts is not about aggression.
It's about discipline and getting beyond the physical until
you reach a spiritual state," Yeoh says, reflecting on her career
and life at 39. "Now I define strength as experience. It's everything
you've ever learned. It's patience and understanding." Having
founded Hong Kong-based Mythical Films in 2000, Yeoh is looking
forward to producing her own projects. She turned down a part
in The Matrix sequel to focus on her own movie, The
Touch, a thriller about Chinese acrobats. The film, which
is slated for a 2002 summer release, marks the first time that
Yeoh will star in an English-language feature, an acknowledgement
of her crossover appeal.
"She carries herself with such independence, intelligence, and
confidence," says Risa Morimoto, director of the twenty-fourth
annual Asian American International Film Festival. "Who wouldn't
want to be Michelle Yeoh for a day?"
-Mai Hoang
Naomi Klein
For connecting activists around the world to help create
a new global movement
When trying to explain the anti-World Trade Organization protests
in Seattle in 1999, a New York Times writer declared,
"seemingly overnight, the trade group has become the target
of those opposed to what they consider the excesses of globalization."
"Overnight?" Naomi Klein laughs. "Only if you've been systematically
ignoring activism for the last fifteen years, like the Times
has." Klein, on the other hand, has been paying close attention.
She had been working on her groundbreaking book, No Logo:
Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Picador USA), for four
years, and it was published just weeks after the so-called Battle
of Seattle. No Logo details how corporations have taken
over our lives—from installing sneaker sweatshops in poor
nations to crushing free speech in the name of trademark protection
and brand identity—and what a generation of activists has
been doing to counter it.
But the mainstream media doesn't want to hear it. Publications
like The Economist constantly criticize and misrepresent
her book and her politics (even the label "anti-globalization"
is a misnomer, according to Klein, since what this movement
is really about is calling for a truly international, democratic
globe). "Some of the media coverage-of me and the movement-has
been ridiculous," says Klein. "I was approached by Vogue
in April. They called me in Quebec City—I was breathing
tear gas, and I get this call—and they say they want me
to come to New York and go shopping with them, and they said,
'We already know the headline: shopping with the enemy.' I asked,
'Who's the enemy?' And they said, 'You.'" Klein laughs. "I said,
'I thought you were the enemy.'"
But no amount of negative press can stop No Logo. Since
its initial publication, the book has traveled around the world,
making its way into 17 languages and onto numerous best-seller
lists. Klein has traveled along with the book, giving speeches
and readings, attending rallies and demonstrations, and meeting
with activists. But that doesn't make Klein the leader of this
movement, or the spokesperson, though the media continue to
try to cast her in that role. "What I do is identify the threads
that connect this web of activism," says Klein. "When I go to
Australia I can say, 'This small thing you are doing here is
part of a bigger movement; it connects to what's going on in
Italy and in other countries.' I'm not a leader in the traditional
sense."
But telling those stories and making those connections gives
Klein a power that can't be ignored. She has the rare ability
to be right there on the streets—directly involved in grassroots
activism—yet simultaneously be able to see the movement
from a distance, as a whole. Toss in her piercing intelligence,
ability to handle the media, and almost uncanny prescience,
and you have a beacon of hope and communication for the new
left, one that is desperately needed right now.
In a post-September 11 western world, everyone wants to know
what will come next for activists seeking a compassionate, sane
way to proceed. Who better to ask than Klein, who has always
seen where the movement is going before anyone else? "The task
at hand is to expand the compassion that we saw in the U.S.
after the attacks, the explosion of community, and the intuitive
sense that in a time of crisis, it's inappropriate to rely on
the rules of the market," Klein says. "This is what, as a movement,
we've been saying all along-that there are things that are too
important to be ruled by the market. And it's been a hard sell.
But now, people are waking up to that."
-Ann Marie Dobosz
Marleine Bastien
For working to make the dream of democracy a reality for
Florida's black voters
The beginning of 2001 saw a stunned United States questioning
its electoral process. The closing of the year saw terror and
destruction, and George W. Bush telling U.S. citizens, "This
is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance
and freedom." But there are those who continue to remind us
that we have not always won that "fight" on our own soil and
that as we move forward into greater instability throughout
the world, we must put our own house in order rather than dictate
to others. Marleine Bastien is one such person.
Since fleeing the "Baby Doc" Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti
in 1981, Bastien has dedicated her life to striving for freedom
and justice. Whether challenging racist U.S. immigration laws
or founding the nonprofit organization Haitian Women of Miami
(better known by its Creole acronym, FANM), Bastien agitates
for society's least powerful. As FANM's president, and now as
its executive director, Bastien has nurtured projects that help
prevent domestic violence and child abuse, provide micro-loans
for Haitian women to start small businesses, and teach Haitian
immigrants about the citizenship process.
Bastien spent most of 2000 motivating Florida's black citizens
to vote. For Bastien, as for thousands of her Haitian American
peers, the elections marked the first time in her life that
she would have the right to vote for president.
But on November 7, numerous obstacles for black voters shattered
the joy of that opportunity. Haitian Americans, for example,
arrived at polling places to discover that Creole-speaking volunteers
were blocked from providing language assistance and that legally
required ballots in Creole were nowhere to be found. "Voting
is a fundamental right," Bastien says. "We weren't killed by
bullets, as in countries run by dictators, but our souls were
wounded that day."
In the weeks that followed the botched election, hundreds of
disenfranchised voters, including many who were not Haitian,
called Bastien, knowing that she was one person who would stand
up for them. "People came to me saying they would never vote
again, that it was too painful. But that should be the fuel
that motivates us to make the system better, for us and for
our children." Bastien refused to allow the voices of black
voters to go unheard. She helped organize protests and spoke
at numerous rallies. She also testified for the NAACP and before
the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At this writing, Bastien
was working to prevent a similar breakdown in Florida's 2002
gubernatorial elections.
As the U.S. battles to "defend democracy," Bastien reminds us
that we need a democracy to defend. "People consider the U.S.
the champion of human rights," she says, "but during that election,
people's most sacred right was denied. We must make sure it
never happens again."
-Rebekah Nix
Barbara Lee
For courageously standing up for peace and justice in a time
of terrorism and fear Jane Fonda For putting her muscle and
her money to work for girls' health and gender studies
In July 16, 1946, a woman in labor was denied admission to a
hospital in El Paso, Texas, because she was black. Hospital
officials finally relented, but because of this delay, Barbara
Lee was born by cesarean, pulled into the world with forceps
that left a scar above her eye. "Every time I looked in the
mirror, I knew I wanted to make things better so that no woman
would have to go through what my mother did," she says.
Calling herself an activist "from birth," Lee has fought for
the rights of women, the poor and dismissed—first as a
psychiatric social worker and then as a respected member of
Congress. On September 14, 2001, this advocate for justice also
became a courageous voice for peace. In the days following the
terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., as a
traumatized nation demanded revenge, Representative Lee (D.-Calif.)
stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and urged
restraint instead of all-out war. "Some of us must say, let's
step back for a moment and think through the implications of
our action today so that it does not spiral out of control,"
she said. In the end, she stood alone. Out of the 421 votes
cast for a resolution granting George W. Bush unlimited use
of military force, hers was the one dissenting voice. Immediately,
some branded her a traitor. Capitol guards moved to protect
her around the clock after she received death threats. But in
the more than 20,000 e-mails and phone calls in response to
her vote, a majority applauded her act of conscience. To Lee,
it was simply her patriotic duty.
"I am as American as anyone," says Lee, whose father served
in the Army. "Now is the time when we should stand up and not
let a crisis erode the Constitution and the system of checks
and balances. We must continue raising issues, concerns, and
ideas. We have to keep America the great democracy that it is."
In the aftermath, she voted for funds to aid victims' families,
rebuild lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, shore up defenses,
and take military action if necessary. Like the rest of the
nation, she mourned the loss of an estimated 5,000 lives—among
them her Chief of Staff Sandre Swanson's cousin, a flight attendant
on the United jet that struck the Pentagon. But as the shock
and grief subsided, voices of reason demanded to be heard above
the shouts of "USA!" and "Bomb Afghanistan!" A peace movement
to counter the war effort soon emerged, with Lee as one of its
heroes. "People of conscience look up to her," says Gloria La
Riva, co-director of the International Action Center, which
organized rallies nationwide to raise awareness of how U.S.
foreign policy has led to anti-American hatred and acts of terrorism.
By late September, even before the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan,
polls showed that nearly half of the U.S. public had reservations
about military action, down from the high of 94 percent who
favored it right after the attacks. This is not the first time
Lee has taken a stance against militaristic solutions to complex
problems. In 1999, she was the only House member to vote against
authorizing President Clinton's bombing of Serbia.
"Other strategies that incorporate peace have to be on the table,"
says Lee, who helped fund the Martin Luther King Freedom Center
to teach conflict resolution in her district, which includes
Oakland and Berkeley. It was there—in those "leftist fever
swamps," as her critics call the Bay Area—that Lee got
her start in organized politics. In the early 1970s, while a
student at Mills College in Oakland, she became a campaign coordinator
for Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman to run for president.
After starting a community-based mental health program as a
social worker, she pursued policies to end the war in Vietnam
as an aide to Representative Ron Dellums (D.-Calif.). Lee served
in the state legislature for eight years before voters overwhelmingly
elected her to Congress in 1998, where she became a major figure
in domestic and global AIDS relief.
While national security is the number one priority these days,
Lee reminds us that many Americans still need health care, education,
housing, and jobs. "Domestic tranquility requires that we not
let our own people suffer as a result of unwise spending in
a crisis," she says. Ironically, just weeks before the terrorist
attacks, Lee and 37 colleagues called for the creation of a
Department of Peace—a Cabinet-level office on a par with
the Department of Defense—that would have made social justice
a national goal. "Peace is not the absence of war," The Honorable
Barbara Lee tells us. "It's the presence of justice."
-Mai Hoang
Afghan Women
For pursuing acts of resistance in the face of brutal, gender-based
oppression
Living in a state of siege has long been an ugly reality for
Afghan women. For the past 22 years they have endured relentless
warfare, droughts, deepening poverty, and, since the Taliban
seized control of most of the country five years ago, a brutally
misogynist government. As a result of the United States' war
on terrorism, the story of their oppression is finally being
widely aired.
Less discussed have been the everyday acts of thousands of Afghan
women who risk beatings, imprisonment, torture, and death to
defy their oppressors. In this, their hour of greatest need,
we salute them.
The Taliban have banned the education of girls and women; they
prohibit most women from working for pay and have decreed that
it is un-Islamic for women to make too much noise, wear lipstick,
show any skin in public, or leave their homes without a male
relative. Vans filled with "religious police" from the Ministry
for the Propagation of Virtue and the Suppression of Vice monitor
infractions and hand out punishment. Offenders risk being lashed
with sticks wrapped in leather, or imprisonment. According to
Farhat Bokhari, from Human Rights Watch, the "punishment the
religious police mete out is arbitrary. Some Talibs are more
brutal than others."
Despite the Taliban's edicts, women run hundreds of underground
schools and moneymaking projects, risking prison and death—this
in a country where women once made up 70 percent of the teachers.
It is also illegal for women to beg in the streets, yet they
do so and face brutal reprisals in order to support their families.
Although forced to shroud themselves in the burqa, women
have defied the order by flaunting polished fingernails, wearing
platform shoes, and organizing underground beauty salons. And
they boldly walk the streets of Kabul unaccompanied by a man.
"Women do this just to show their resistance and hatred of the
Taliban," says Tahmeena Faryal, of the Revolutionary Association
of the Women of Afghanistan. "One woman I know took off the
veil of her burqa and threw it at a young Talib who had insulted
her. She knew the potential consequences, but she'd had it."
And in the hundreds of refugee camps that line the country's
borders, Afghan women struggle to reinvent their society. Afghans,
the majority of them women and children, are the world's largest
population of refugees. Most live in camps in Pakistan where
hundreds of Afghan women work for organizations that offer much-needed
health care, teach new refugees—especially women—vocational
skills, and provide education for girls. By doing so, they provoke
the ire of fundamentalist extremists in the camps.
Other women have gone back to Afghanistan, in defiance of the
Taliban, to gather information on the treatment of women and
to smuggle in medical and school supplies-even computers. These
women have been forced to live with terrorism and war. They
worry that if the war continues to escalate in their country,
women will bear the brunt of the Taliban's reprisals—ranging
from rape to being forced into prostitution or marriage. They
worry about the danger refugee women face in Pakistan as the
extremists vent their fury. They worry that when the guns of
war have silenced women's voices and buried their issues, women
will not be part of the peace-building process.
"We speak out on the radio, on TV, and at community centers
about the situation of women in Afghanistan and Pakistan," says
activist Fatana Ishaq Gailani. "We promote another vision of
Islam; one of peace, love, women's rights, and human rights.
If we stayed quiet, we couldn't solve Afghan women's problems."
Women like Gailani are besieged, but they refuse to be vanquished.
-Anaga Dalal |
