You know from the wide coverage of last week’s AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, D.C., that there were several surprises in the statements delivered from the podium.
We expected some surprises. What I, for one, did not expect — given how the Jewish community has evolved in the past 30 years — was the astonishing fact that of the 77 speakers listed for the plenaries and on-the-record press schedule, only two were women. Two! You can see for yourself at www.aipac.org. And one of the two was Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.).
When I began to observe and report on the American Jewish scene more than 30 years ago, I was alert to how few women were asked to speak at national meetings and to express their opinions in the Jewish press (except on obvious gender-related issues).
I was struck in those days by the absence of women leading major American Jewish organizations — those big, coed “legacy” institutions. But this is 2009, for heaven’s sake.
For any conference organizer or program planner to claim that he or she doesn’t know of enough qualified speakers or presenters is absurd. Years ago, I would hear, “Just give me a list.”
Well, the lists have existed for a while now.
The organization Advancing Women Professionals in the Jewish Com-
munity, the Talent Bank that Lilith magazine has maintained for many years and the faculty roster of every university are logical places to start.
But there’s more fallout from this reluctance to reach out beyond the usual suspects. Young women working as professionals in the Jewish community, several of them likely to be rising stars, told Lilith recently in a frank roundtable conversation in our office that they want to see themselves mirrored back from the dais at Jewish events; they want to see women as featured experts; otherwise, they told us, they strongly suspect that there’s no room for them in the Jewish world, and that they’re tempted to take their talents elsewhere.
There are those reporters and conference planners who say, though, that when they turn to well-qualified people to write or to speak, women more than men turn down the opportunity to be quoted or to be featured. Of course, this reluctance can become part of a closed loop: People are asked to speak because someone has heard them in the past.
While there are certainly many women today doing significant work in all the areas of interest in the Jewish world, perhaps only a few can (or are willing to) commit the time away from their demanding day jobs to take on outside assignments, especially if they also have family responsibilities.
What follows from this demurral, whether triggered by modesty or by overwork, is that there are no women on the list from previous conferences to scan to when planners are trolling for “experts.” And few role models for other women to emulate.
In the olden days, when women were first invited to assume such communal roles as congregation president, the likeliest candidates often said no because, unlike their male counterparts with secretarial help at work or helpful spouses at home to share in congregational labors, the women asked to assume heavy volunteer responsibilities often knew they would be taking them on with little ancillary support.
Perhaps some of this overload is keeping women off the podium (though not off the bimah) today.
We glory in encountering outstanding Jews, all the more so when a national spotlight shines upon them. Cynthia Ozick examined this pride when she wrote in Lilith about the Jewish “half-genius,” referring to what happens when the female half of the Jewish talent pool has no chance to emerge.
It’s another way of saying that we are impoverished when women’s talents stay in the shadows, as they did at the AIPAC conference.
Susan Weidman Schneider is editor in chief of Lilith, the international Jewish feminist magazine (www.lilith.org).