My name is India. I’m a native of Fayetteville, North Carolina. I’m 21 years old and a senior at Duke University majoring in Public Policy Studies and minoring in Economics. My academic interests are gendered and racial health disparities, discrimination against women and minorities and immigration/national borders. At Legal Momentum, I want to gain a better understanding of the cyclical nature of discrimination, education, income and health outcomes. For the past three days I have been exploring women in non-traditional employment.
My organization is Legal Momentum. LM is the oldest educational defense fund fighting for women’s social and economic security. LM is a non-profit whose origins are in the National Organization for Women.
Reading through its websites, my first impression of Legal Momentum was that the people there were serious (about their work and in personality) and passionate (and maybe a little wound up). My first impression was only partially correct. The women and three men there are passionate, very serious about their work and extremely spirited and charming in personality. Though most of these individuals are too busy for their own good, the office atmosphere is one of strong energy, harmony and productivity. Even the physical space of the office has its own synergy. Natural light from the city pours into the office which is lined with live green plants.
The attorneys and program coordinators there do vast amounts of information sharing and everyone is interested in everyone else’s endeavors. Furthermore, the employees at LM know everyone in NYC (or so I am convinced). It also seems as though everyone at LM has pioneered or spear headed some project dealing with social justice for women and has other minority-focused projects that are peripheral of LM.
In my group of closest girlfriends at Duke, I am the one that is the feminist. I’m always going on rants about how minority women disproportionately suffer from sicknesses and how egregious some socially accepted double standards are. However, I do not call myself a feminist around my family or around people I don’t know well. Nor have I proclaimed that I am a feminist at LM.
I have heard the terms feminist and feminism leave the mouths of several different people at LM and I do not believe the organization tries to mask its feminism. One of the attorneys today sent everyone the title of a book she’s been reading dealing with feminism (The New Feminist Agenda by Madeleine M. Kunin). Another replied that the author would be in the city discussing her views.
I think everyone at LM suspects that Anh, Colleen and I are feminists at heart. I doubt they will ever inquire from us though—too much pressure.
India,
It sounds like you are going to have a very exciting experience this summer. You describe yourself as “the feminist” in your group of friends and you explain that is because you are always “going on rants about how minority women disproportionately suffer from sicknesses and how egregious some socially accepted double standards are.” I wonder if this makes you a feminist or if this makes you a person who is not willing to tolerate these double standards and willing to change the status quo. Isn’t that what a “leader” is? I hope you have a great summer and wish you the best of luck.
Hi Nancy,
I never thought about it that way and thank you for suggesting I was leader (I think that’s what you were doing). Leadership is something I have been grappling with personally since being in NYC for several reasons, some of which are actually deeply personal. I think it’s hard to be a leader at Duke because you’re surrounded by freakishly accomplished people 24/7. My autonomy at work allows me to feel like a leader which in turn has given me a boost of confidence since being in the city. I do believe though, that I became a feminist around the end of my freshman year/beginning of my sophomore year when a lot of things were going on in my life, many of which had to do with me being a woman. I think that the women at LM are both feminists and leaders. And while I consider myself a feminists already, I think that my leadership skills are still developing and that that is a title I will wear more brazenly later in my life.
Thank you for reading and for your good wishes.