The Feministing Five: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) has represented the great state of New York in the US Senate since 2009. Gillibrand entered politics in 2006, running for Congress in upstate New York, and after two terms was appointed to fill Hillary Rodham Clinton’s vacated Senate seat.
Gillibrand is an outspoken supporter of reproductive rights and of LGBT rights. She has campaigned for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the extension of marriage rights to same sex couples, and in March of this year, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), she introduced a bill to repeal Defense of Marriage Act.
Recently, Gillibrand launched Off the Sidelines, a project that aims to get more women involved in politics. Gillibrand is dismayed not only by women’s underrepresentation in government and in other forms of leadership, but by what she perceives as the stalling of the women’s movement in the culture. Off the Sidelines is her attempt to inform women about the impact that political their engagement at all levels of the political process will have on issues like pay equity and affordable healthcare. Gillibrand believes that women respond when they’re told that they’re needed – she looks to the Rosie the Riveter campaign for evidence of this – and with Off the Sidelines, she hopes to tell women, “We need you now. We need you involved and we need you in leadership and we need you to take these risks.”
We took issue with Gillibrand’s assertion earlier this year that women’s voices aren’t being heard because “they don’t want their voices being heard,” – Feministing is just one of many pieces of evidence that that’s simply not true. With that in mind, it was great to be able to down with the Senator to talk more about why young women, especially, aren’t as politically engaged and as fired up about feminism as we might like them to be.
To continue reading: http://feministing.com/2011/07/23/the-feministing-five-senator-kirsten-gillibrand/
