AAUW Action Fund Launches Get-out-the-Vote Effort to Mobilize Young Women

National Campaign to Inspire Millennials to Head to the Polls

WASHINGTON — Today, on what would have been the 192nd birthday of leading suffragist Susan B. Anthony, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) Action Fund launched It’s My Vote: I Will Be Heard, a nonpartisan voter education and turnout effort aimed at maximizing the electoral power of women in the 2012 election.

As the largest generation since the baby boomers, today’s 18- to 30-year-olds present the strongest opportunity to increase voter turnout among women. Millions of young women will be eligible to vote for the first time this year, and many others have yet to establish the habit of voting. As part of this national campaign, the AAUW Action Fund is providing grants to 15 target states to help them increase the influence of women in shaping public policy through grassroots outreach and voter registration.

“AAUW stands on a rich history of civic engagement and voter education,” said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. “We recognize the power of a single vote, and we will do everything we can to encourage all citizens to cast an informed ballot. Women must get involved in the political process to ensure that the issues they care about get the attention they deserve.”

In addition to mobilizing young women, the My Vote campaign will also focus on critical issues that affect women’s everyday lives, such as jobs, college affordability, and health care, including access to birth control.

“This campaign takes an approach that is unique to AAUW,” said Seth Chase, AAUW’s national field director. “We have hundreds of branches across the country with ties to their local communities and college campuses. Our members have the opportunity to establish lasting relationships with young women, to engage them on the issues, and to encourage them to vote and be heard.”

As part of the My Vote campaign, AAUW is also sponsoring “Every Four Years: Presidential Campaigns and the Press,” an interactive exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Opening on February 17, the exhibit will include historical information about the suffrage movement, particularly how candidates’ wives became more influential in elections after women won the right to vote in 1920. The exhibit will also feature campaign ads, artifacts used by the press and candidates on the campaign trail, and an interactive voting booth where visitors can cast “ballots” for the 2012 presidential election. The exhibit will be updated throughout the 2012 campaign and will run through Inauguration Day 2013.

The AAUW Action Fund advances equity for women and girls through member activism and voter mobilization. Since 1881, AAUW has been the nation’s leading voice promoting education and equity for women and girls. Both organizations have a nationwide network of 100,000 members and donors, 1,000 branches, and 600 college and university partners.

Jill Abramson

Over at Huffiginton Post Women, they had a post at the end of December detailing some of the greatest moments for women in 2011.

Here are some of the highlights! (Check out Number 6!):

1. 24-year-old Amelia Andersdotter of Sweden, who was 21 when she was elected to the European Parliament, finally takes her seat after years of delays. She’s representing the (no joke) Pirate party, whose platform involves reducing limits on file sharing and getting rid of patent laws.
2. TV producer Shonda Rhimes, the woman who created “Grey’s Anatomy,” successfully sells four television shows — “The Circle,” “Gilded Lillys,” “Wildwood,” and “Scandal.” Let’s hope other female producers have similar success in 2012. For instance, Amy Poehler could produce all of the shows she mentioned in her speech at the Power of Comedy Awards
3. Jill Abramson, 57, becomes the first female Executive Editor of the New York Times. According to a profile in the New Yorker, on Abramson’s first day in her new role (she was previously the Times‘ Managing Editor and has worked at TIME and the Wall Street Journal), a female editor left an old letter on her desk from a little girl named Alexandra Early “who wrote that she got mad when she watched television: ‘That’s because I’m a girl and there aren’t enough girl superheroes on TV.’ The cover note to Abramson said, ‘Wherever Alexandra Early ended up, I hope that she heard about your new job.’
4. Ryan Gosling Feminist Tumblr makes gentle fun of women’s studies — or at least academic jargon — while inspiring countless more Gosling-themed Tumblrs. The original gets straight to the message that matters: Every woman deserves a partner who thinks the way this guy (theoretically) does.
5. Rev. Dr. Mariann Edgar Budde is elected the first female bishop of the Washington, D.C. diocese of the Episcopal church, which makes her the first woman dean of the National Cathedral.
6. Jennifer Siebel Newsom‘s documentary makes everyone who’s thinks they’ve heard it before refocus on how badly the media depicts women — and how we can change that.
7. At 25, Obreht becomes the youngest winner ever of the Orange Prize for Fiction for her first novel “The Tiger’s Wife.” The mixed reviews the book received didn’t seem to faze the judges — further reason to believe in what you create — and not pay too much attention to what other people think.
8. When the announcer called the name of the first nominee for Best Actress in a Comedy at the 2011 Emmy Awards, Amy Poehler, instead of smiling at the camera from her seat, charged onto the stage … and every other nominee did, too. Before the winner was even announced, Poehler, Melissa McCarthy (the ultimate winner), Tina Fey, Edie Falco, Laura Linney and Martha Plimpton held hands tightly in beauty pageant fashion, making even an award for best comedian into a spoof — and proving their extraordinary talent (yet again) in the process.
9. 

   FBI redefines Rape

   After years of objections from women’s rights advocates, the FBI advisory board recommends a broader definition of rape. Currently defined by the agency as “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” — wording composed in 1929 — the board votes to change the terminology to “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim,” which notably doesn’t include the word “forcible.” It’s now up to FBI Director Robert Mueller to sign off on the decision.

10. Esperanza Spalding proves that the ability to make millions of tween girls scream does not a Best New Artist Grammy win, at least not when your competition is a classically trained musician of Spalding’s caliber.
11. Jennifer Egan, 49, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her ambitious novel “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” which she wrote as a series of vignettes that jump back and forth through the lives of musicians and record label execs. Entertainment Weekly calls the book “note-perfect.”
12. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s Barnard commencement speech about her own generation’s failure to get to the top went viral, but an equally,if not more riveting conversation occurs in September when the New Media maven hosts a live Facebook chat with Oprah, who in May concluded her 25-year reign as the queen of daytime TV. It’s peculiar to see Oprah as the interviewee, and suggests the juncture between two eras: Oprah was powerful enough to single-handedly influence how millions of women thought and talked about their lives. Sandberg’s company has helped make media so democratic that it’s nearly impossible for any one person to have that much control over any conversation again.
13. The comedy women and bridal attendants everywhere have been waiting for: “Bridesmaids” pulls no punches in portraying all of the regrettable situations a single woman can get herself into. Wiig’s script has her and the rest of the stellar cast (Maya Rudolph as the bride, Melissa McCarthy, Rose Byrne, Ellie Kemper and Wendi McLendon-Covey as fellow bridesmaids) vomiting and discussing other bodily functions in a way not usually seen in comedies starring women, and the result is brilliant and hilarious — the ultimate antidote to schlock like “27 Dresses.” As several critics pointed out, female comedians have been capable of making a movie like this all along — it’s only now that someone let them.
14. This one is actually a succession of moments. First, in May, 32-year-old engineer Manal al-Sharif breaks Saudi Arabia’s unwritten law banning women from driving a car. She’s imprisoned, but her driving inspires other Saudi women to get behind the wheel on June 17 as part of the Women2Drive campaign. Hillary Clinton speaks out on the issue, 14 female U.S. Senators petition King Abdullah to let women drive, and women continue to break the law. Later in the year, Abdullah grants women the right to vote in elections for the first time. Coincidence?
15. “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” the iconic and influential women’s health manual, celebrates its 40th birthday. First published in 1971 by the Boston Women’s Health Collective for 75 cents a copy, the publication went on to become the go-to resource for women’s health information.
16. This year, teen girls took all three spots in Google’s 2011 Global Science Fair: Lauren Hodge, 14, on how a marinade might prevent carcinogens from forming in grilled chicken; Naomi Shah, 16 on a possible link between airborne pollutants and lung disease; and Shree Bose, 17, on drug resistance in ovarian cancer.
17. Just seven months after being shot in the head, Gabrielle Giffords returns to Congress to vote on the debt-ceiling bill. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says she told Giffords not to show if she wasn’t feeling up to it. Giffords response? “I had to be here for this vote. I could not take the chance that my absence could crash our economy.”
18. The number of women starting companies has doubled since 2008, according to a survey conducted by Women 2.0, an organization to promote female entrereneurship.
19. After an Iowa town hall meeting in which Mitt Romney seemed not to understand a question about the Mississippi “personhood” amendment, which opponents feared could lead to a ban on oral contraceptives, Rachel Maddow spends a segment of her show explaining to Romney how the female reproductive system and birth control work — against a “man cave” background.
20. At the 2011 X Games, Kelly Clark becomes the first female snowboarder to land a 1080 degree turn in competition. Second best part? Her fellow competitors tackle her screaming congratulations at the bottom of the hill as she whoops, “I did it!”
21. Four out of five of the finalists for the 2011 National Book Award in Fiction are women, and a woman, Jesmyn Ward, ultimately wins. Her novel, “Salvage the Bones,” is based on her own experiences in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and continues Ward’s literary exploration of the lives and language of working-class black Southerners.
22. On January 1, Dilma Rousseff, a relatively unknown politician, is inaugurated president of Brazil. In the months that follow, Rousseff’s administration petitions for the removal of a lingerie ad campaign featuring Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen, saying the ads “reinforce the wrong stereotypes of the woman as a husband’s mere sex object and ignore the great advances we’ve achieved in deconstructing sexist thoughts and practices.” Meanwhile, an unprecedented number of women around the country run for municipal office.
23. Per the Affordable Care Act, all health insurance policies issued after January 1, 2013 must cover birth control — with no copays. The same provisions will cover breast pumps for nursing mothers, domestic violence counseling and a number of other women’s health services. What took them so long?
24. Amber Miller, 27, gives birth after running the Chicago marathon, taking multi-tasking to a new level. If that doesn’t give you new perspective when you think you can’t do another loop around the park, consider that this is the third time Miller has run a marathon pregnant.
25. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gwobee and Tawakul Karman share the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. Sirleaf,73, the current president of Liberia, played a huge role in extricating the country from civil war. Gwobee, 39, has campaigned for women’s rights and against rape in the same country. Karman, 32, a journalist and politician from Yemen who has crusaded for press freedom and an end to human rights violations there, is the youngest person ever to win the prize and the first Arab woman to win.