I am mostly a lurker on premies.com but appreciate all of the links and ideas and encouragement that change is possible.
I am very intrigued by this thread about women in permaculture. I am surprised that Paul didn’t come up with a few more names…Jenny Pell for instance….who I think hung the moon. And Jackie Cramer (I don’t think there would be a Beacon Hill Food Forest without her). And Jessi Bloom who just co-authored a book with Dave Boehnlein. Maybe you didn’t come up with them because they aren’t in the news enough…. But perhaps there is a more subtle force at work.
I think that when we discover that there is an imbalance, if we are really interested in balance, then we need to work harder at figuring out what redresses the balance. “Step-up” is a good encouragement. But there is a bigger reality that is often not visible to the dominant human. We experienced this in the 60s and 70s when working on women’s liberation. Men just didn’t view the world the way we did. And they often didn't even _see_ women or hear them when they were there. This became real for me when I began to work on issues related to racial equality….suddenly I began to see that I was the dominant human, and my view of reality was really really different from those people of color that I wanted to be colleagues with. I often didn't hear or see people of color. I don't know why it works this way but it is very very difficult for us to see the ways in which we select who we listen to and who we do not.
I would challenge you Paul, and any others who are the current leadership in this movement, to think of 20 ways that premies.com could encourage women in the field. What about posting an article at least once a week from a women…you might have to do some work to get them to write them. For that matter, maybe we also ought to figure out how to encourage the people of color as well. Women have unique gifts to offer permaculture.
I am not a big fan of having a “women only” permaculture gathering, which I understand is being planned or considered, but maybe that is what women need to figure out how to make their way in an arena that is currently dominated by men. But I am hoping that as many women as possible do find a way to “step up” and are encouraged by all of the male and female passionate permaculture enthusiasts in _practical_ ways to “step up”.
