An administration where women count

The newest issue of Ms. Magazine is out, and it’s cover has created quite a stir. He’s one of the few men ever to grace its cover – with a Superman-esque pose, revealing a T-shirt proclaiming, “This is what a feminist looks like.”

In fact, according to Eleanor Smeal’s piece, “Visions of Change,” when she and the chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation, Peg Yorkin, met with Obama, he immediately offered, “I am a feminist.” What a refreshing change – for years, the F word has been so demonized that pundits would hurl it as an insult designed to damage reputations.

While I’m not happy about Pres. Obama selling poor women down the river to get his economic stimulus package passed, I understand that he still has four more years to correct that.

I’m also heartened to see the direction First Lady Michelle Obama is taking a more Hillary-Clinton style of advocacy and leadership. According to Politico, she’s taking up the banner for working women by specifically addressing the issues contributing to the work-family imbalance that plagues working parents. Let’s hope with her strong leadership, we can start seeing some basic rights, like living wages, quality affordable childcare (as eloquently stated in Cornelia Grumman’s piece “Beyond Babysitting”)  and paid sick days, soon.