Personally. Politically. Culturally.
Yep. All of it.
With the New Year our reckoning of where we are in time resets, clicks up a notch, and we tend to go along with this arbitrary date assignment. 2019. 5779. 4717. These are current descriptors of the now, or what will soon will soon be now in the last case.
TIME TRAVEL
This always seems really rather silly to me as we are always in the now. Changes in our now cannot be numerically categorized. This is one of the major problems with the hypothetical concept of time travel because even if we could uniquely identify other moments that have or will exist, everything in space is moving, expanding, rotating, not just our Earth, but our Sol’s solar system, our Galaxy, clusters of galaxies. There is no fixed point in space so even if we could travel in time, how would we describe the where at which a particular then took, or will take, place. I don’t believe we could.
FICTIONAL TIME
I brought in the New Year watching episodes of Doctor Who which streamed constantly on BBC America between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I’ve loyally watched Doctor Who since I was a teenager. I love to escape to speculative fictions. And the current version of The Doctor on the show is female,, played by Jodie Whittaker. About damn time for a female “regeneration.”
TIME FOR CHANGE
I like change. I grew up loving the idea that I lived in a country that was built on a new constitutional implementation of the relatively new to humanity concept of democracy. I am totally psyched that the House and Senate both have record numbers of women serving in the 116th Congress that begins tomorrow, January 3, 2019 and runs through January 3, 2021.
Of the 435 Congressional Representatives, 102 are women. Other fun facts: 317 members are white, 55 members are black, 44 are Hispanic, 15 are Asian, and 4 are Native American. 8 representatives identify as LGBTQ+. Both the youngest and oldest female freshman representatives in history will serve in this session.
25 Senators are women, the greatest female Senate representation to date. Both senators from six states are women, including California, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.
We are not at the apparently significant 30% women composition in leadership that has been identified as having these effects:
- Organizations that have at least 30%women in leadership roles are 12x more likely to excel financially. https://www.ddiworld.com/products/women-in-leadership
- A critical mass theory has been put forward that suggests an intricate linkage of “the relationship between the percentage of female legislators and the passage of legislation beneficial to women as a group.” Childs and Krook discuss this theory and call for more extensive research in the area. View or download a PDF of the article: http://www.mlkrook.org/pdf/childs_krook_2008.pdf
TIME TO SPEAK UP, STAND-UP
2019 is destined to be an active year, an engaged year. Just some, a very few, of the ways to be active are listed below
- Women’s March. The January Women’s March is now in it’s third year. The official website is here: https://www.womensmarch.com/2019/For those who have heard any bruhaha, falderall or fiddle-dee-dee about the march and sister marches, here is a current overview that seems to treat the concerns and the march in a balanced fashion. https://lifehacker.com/how-to-take-part-in-the-2019-womens-march-1831439231
- International Women’s Day. March 8th is International Women’s Day. Find out about it and celebrate. http://www.un.org/en/events/womensday/history.shtml
- Century of Suffrage. And speaking of celebrations, start planning for the 100th Anniversary of Women gaining the vote in the U.S. Equality Day is August 26. This year is the 99th anniversary. Start becoming conversant for next year’s anniversary and celebrations. This 24 page PDF from the National Women’s History Project is a great starting point: http://www.nwhp.org/wp-content/uploads/gazette_How-Women-Won-Vote-.pdf
Get to planning. It is time.