Director Statement

    With Nancy Pelosi assuming the role of Speaker of the House, Oprah Winfrey dedicating her biggest philanthropic effort to date to an academy for women's leadership and Hillary Clinton in full pursuit of the White House,
2007 is the time for women and leadership.   

    The legislative track record has shown that when women are elected to office, they sponsor more legislation that benefits women and children than men do  -- whether they are Republican or Democrat.   As a matter of fact, families wouldn’t even have a benefit as basic as Social Security if not for a woman named Frances Perkins who authored it during her tenure as Secretary of Labor under F.D.R..    We can also thank her for the Fair Labor Standards Act that established a minimum wage and outlawed child labor.   (A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Frances was also the first woman to ever hold a cabinet position in the United States.)

    Women have been the majority of the population in the United States since the 1950s and could take over the political agenda (and government) any given November if they chose.   Instead, women remained vastly sidelined when it comes to both running for office and supporting women running.   As a result, women are underrepresented; they are only sixteen percent of the Congress and make up only twenty-two percent of local elected officials nationwide.   

    During the interviews I conducted while making this film, a general difference in thinking between men and women came up more than once:   In general, men define masculine power as power over themselves and others.    Women define feminine power as power over themselves only. 

    Until women fully shift their notion of femininity to include governance, leadership and power over others, they will remain out of power and underrepresented in their own government.   

Yet today women do realize on some level that the 21st century is about women ascending to leadership roles and changing the course of history.   The only question is how quickly they can do this, what stands in women's way and what can be done about it.  

Now is the time.

Maryann Breschard
New York City 2007