Independent Women's Forum - Research Areas > Women Who Make the World Better

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info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Check out this Politico profile of Karin Agness. Karin was a recipient of IWF's Women Who Make the World Better Award last summer.

Women Who Make the World Better

info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:24:00 EST

Wendy Shalit is IWF's latest member of that courageous band of women we call Women Who Make the World Better. Ms. Shalit had the courage to stand up and say some important things about the effects of the sexual revolution on young women. She knew a lot of people would think this wasn't cool. But she did it anyway. Her bestselling new book, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good, has been as controversial as her first, A Return to Modesty. As a result of being fearless, Wendy is one of the coolest Women Who Makes the World Better we've ever met. She sat down with IWF at the Caribou Coffee near our office and talked about her new book, her website (ModestlyYours.net) and what inspired her, before flying home to Canada, where she now lives. We thank her for her public advocacy of a more humane attitude towards sexual behavior on campus.

Check out our interview with Wendy here.

Women Who Make the World Better: Wendy Shalit

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 14:19:00 EST

Wendy Shalit is IWF's latest member of that courageous band of women we call Women Who Make the World Better. Ms. Shalit had the courage to stand up and say some important things about the effects of the sexual revolution on young women. She knew a lot of people would think this wasn't cool. But she did it anyway. Her bestselling new book, Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good, has been as controversial as her first, A Return to Modesty. As a result of being fearless, Wendy is one of the coolest Women Who Makes the World Better we've ever met. She sat down with IWF at the Caribou Coffee near our office and talked about her new book, her website (ModestlyYours.net) and what inspired her, before flying home to Canada, where she now lives. We thank her for her public advocacy of a more humane attitude towards sexual behavior on campus.

IWF: Our culture seems to encourage girls to be sexually active, whether they really want to or not. What has changed in our culture that makes it the norm for girls to behave in a fashion that once would have been considered "bad"?

SHALIT:Well, you know, in the '60s it was rebellious to be bad. There were always those who were "bad," and it was kind of counter-cultural. But now, these rebels of the '60s are in positions of authority, so the "badness" has become institutionalized, and it's coming from a lot of different places. It's coming from the college administrators, it's coming from the media, and it's coming, often, from parents who mean very well, but they associate happiness and maturity with racking up sexual experience and unfortunately, that's not usually the case.

IWF: In your new book, you talk about cuddle parties. What are they? Are they good for young women?

SHALIT: The cuddle party was one of the more interesting investigative things I did for the book. A cuddle party is a non-sexual environment where people can supposedly form bonds with others in a non-sexual way, and people pay admission to cuddle with strangers. And I was very suspicious that it was a non-sexual environment, but it really is not. I was expecting everyone to be very weird, to be honest, so what shocked me was how completely normal everyone was-with the exception of one guy I call "creepy married guy." Creepy married guy was just trying to cuddle everyone in ways that were perhaps more than friendly.

But all the people there seemed like nice people who just were not finding emotional connection in their own life; they were not finding real friendship, and I found that tremendously sad. We formed a circle at the end where we were told that emotions might surface after this event. Well, we're never going to see any of these people again, so to hug them and then leave-I experienced it as a very alienating and my friend who came with me said the same thing.

But to me the cuddle party represented something larger. On the one hand, casual sexual relationships are the popular thing and it's fashionable to pretend we don't have feelings, but clearly, we still do and we've got to deal with them. What I propose in my book is instead of advocating the bitch as the ideal and this pose of "being mean to other women is cool" and "committing adultery is a feminist act because we're not oppressed by these rules anymore," instead of advocating all of this nonsense which alienates women from one another, let's bring back female solidarity. Let's bring back the idea that, out of respect for you, I'm not going to flirt with your boyfriend or with your husband because he's taken.

I just got an email from someone whose marriage of many years has been shattered because her best friend is now sleeping with her husband. And it happens, unfortunately, a lot. This is not a feminist thing, this is a tragedy. So we've taken off the scarlet A and put up the scarlet M for modesty, and the girls who have more traditional values are now stigmatized. But it has not helped us, it's caused tremendous pain. I'm not advocating going back to the scarlet A, but certainly, let's end the scarlet M and the stigma against reticence. It makes a lot of sense to wait until you get to know someone before jumping into bed with him-and thinking twice before committing adultery for that matter.

IWF: Let's talk about repression. If you never repress anything sexually, don't you end up having to repress your emotions?

SHALIT: Absolutely. That's a whole chapter in my book because I'm extremely concerned. We talk about sexual repression, but no one talks about emotional repression, and that's what's being advocated by a lot of these "positive sexuality" organizations. If you look at their literature, they often observe that if you don't care in the first place, then you can never be disappointed. This is certainly true, and yet it's not a way to live life it seems to me-because it takes us away from our purpose as human beings. What they're advocating ends up becoming a jadedness contest, and for example they say that teens are "not ready" for sex until they've detached their emotions from sexuality.

You know, I've gotten a lot of flak for speaking out about it because these people are very organized, and of course the pornography industry is right there behind them. And there's no organization backing me; I'm just a lone voice. But I think it's really important to speak out because this advice is extremely damaging and girls should not take this advice. Actually, no one should: emotions are a wonderful part of us, that's what makes sex passionate-that you care-and emotionless sex is not good.

In fact, even the sex therapists are speaking out about this and they're admitting that if somebody doesn't give a hoot about you, they're not going to be giving you much attention in private either. Think about it, and it makes sense that casual sex should be so bad. That's why there's so much alcohol involved, because people are numbing their feelings. Show me a girl who says she's very happy with the hook-up scene; I challenge her to try it without alcohol and then get back to me.

IWF: One of the most charming things in your new book is how to tell your boomer parents you've decided to remain a virgin. Talk a little about that and boomer parents in general.

SHALIT: I think like all parents, they want the best for their daughters, and they've observed that those who are experienced "fit in more" since that's what's being promoted as our ideal of womanhood. They want their daughters to fit in, but unfortunately when parents say, "it's good to try the shoes on before you buy them," or they ask a daughter if she's a lesbian because she's still a virgin as a freshman in college-that's a lot of pressure. And the parents don't mean it that way, but that's unfortunately how the daughters experience it, that's what the daughters are telling me.

So there's a very interesting tension now, where the older generation, they're the ones organizing the co-ed sleepovers; they're the ones renting the hotel rooms for the prom; they're the ones buying the skanky clothing for their "prostitots."

And increasingly it's the younger generation that's saying: You know what? No, we don't want this; this is too much, and we want something more than this. I think that's encouraging; it's really encouraging.

IWF: Well, the name of your book is Girls Gone Mild. Is this because you detect that the tide is turning with the upcoming generation?

SHALIT: Oh, definitely. But the problem is the most outspoken people are always the exhibitionists, the ones who say the only way to be a feminist is to be crude about sexuality. There is a feminist slogan on T-shirts that goes, "My cooking sucks but fortunately so do I." So this idea of being casual about sex, swearing, being crude "just like a guy"- we run into it everywhere, but is it actually advancing any women in real life? I don't think so.

The first problem is: there are a lot of wonderful guys out there who are not like this. So really, we're only imitating the most adolescent male. And a lot of young women are saying, "This doesn't appeal to me," so they don't identify as feminists because they don't want to be like that. In my interviews with younger feminists-I mean the ones who do identify as feminists-they want to bring dignity back, not pile on the gross slogans.

That is what the Abercrombie controversy [when young women protested crude T-shirts sold by the apparel company] was about; the young women who didn't like the T-shirts wanted to bring the concept of self-respect back. And the company told them, "these shirts are ironic," and the girls retorted, "Well, you know what, it's not being taken that way in school." I was so encouraged in talking with these young women, because they are so much smarter-or maybe they're more intellectually honest-than all the ideologues combined.

IWF: Wendy, how did you get involved in these issues? It's not a crusade a young woman on a college campus who wants to be "cool" is going to embrace, so how did this happen back then?

SHALIT: Well, actually most of my support comes from high school and college students. A high school girl from Los Angeles started a Facebook group for Girls Gone Mild and we keep it a closed group so the discussions are productive but we have 400 active members. I think it's really important to remember that not everyone involved in promiscuous behaviors is necessarily thrilled-very often they're participating because everyone else is. They're just waiting to know that an alternative is viable.

In terms of myself, I regard myself as pretty fortunate because I had great friends in high school-and I grew up in the Midwest where you didn't necessarily have to drink to be cool, and I had a very nice social life, and I came to college pretty confident in who I was. And-no one talks about this-but I noticed when I got to Williams that it was actually the ones who didn't have as many social skills, the kids who were the most insecure in high school, who were the quickest to blend in with the hook-up scene and to agree to everything that the college and the most ridiculous groups on campus were promoting.

So when I saw situations that didn't seem right to me, I spoke up right away. I didn't understand the implications of doing this. I didn't understand that I would eventually have people who didn't know me following me and giving me "the finger"; I didn't know that I'd eventually have to move off-campus because I became such a pariah. I didn't care because I had been used to being myself and speaking out, so that's what I continued to do. But nowadays I think there is more support for the traditional-minded student-that wasn't the case when I was in college.

IWF: How do you take the vitriol your book has unleashed?

SHALIT: Well it's always someone who represents a special-interest group of some kind, and whenever such a person attacks me personally or feels the need to create a caricature and then attack me for something I never said, I just take it as a compliment and an admission of defeat. They don't have a counter-argument. And certainly if they didn't feel I was making a difference they wouldn't feel the need to vilify me. So I accept the compliment, and then I also keep a log and write the attack down-whether it's a death threat or some "prude" silliness. You'd be surprised how often it comes in handy when the same people start blathering on about how tolerant and liberal they are. It doesn't faze me anymore, but sometimes it's worth pointing out the limits of their type of "tolerance." I've been dealing with this type of reaction for a long time-ever since I opposed the coed bathrooms in college.

IWF: Wasn't that kind of the beginning of it all?

SHALIT: Most definitely. I wrote about that because I felt there was a connection between the lack of a dating scene, which many students complained about, and the lack of mystery, for example, in the bathrooms. I was told I was "not comfortable with [my] body" when I opposed the coed bathrooms. But when I wrote about it and Reader's Digest reprinted my piece [which originally appeared in Commentary] I got a ton of positive letters in response-from students on campus too-and that's really when my perspective began to change. I realized that there were so many people who actually did value the things that I valued, but they were afraid to speak up. They were intimidated because of what happens when someone stands up for modesty or privacy; they are always attacked, personally and viciously. People know that and so they decide it's not worth it.

But the funny thing is that after I graduated, I was invited back by a group of Williams students, about 200 students turned up, and many of them thanked me for changing the situation on campus. So I really wish that people would be less concerned with what other people think. You only have one life after all, and if more people would speak up about these situations that don't seem right for them instead of just going along with the herd, we would have a changed society.

There will always be smirkers, but if you realize that you can transcend them and have a hopeful message, you can reach so many people. What means more to me is the letters I get from girls who say that they were about to commit suicide, literally, and they read my book or they came to the website and they realized that they weren't alone. And why were they ready to end it? Because all the people attacking me are also attacking them for stepping outside the socially-acceptable bad-girl ideal.

So that's what motivates me to take the heat, because I feel like maybe I'm taking a bit of the heat off of them.

IWF: I understand you have launched a website to help young women who might need help navigating the sexual seas. Tell us about it.

SHALIT: Well, what motivated me was getting all these letters from girls saying that they felt so isolated at their schools and they thought there was something wrong with them because they just wanted to meet the right person and they didn't want to hook up. And I thought: Wouldn't it be great to organize these girls and have them form alliances and exchange ideas and know that they're not alone?

Way back in 1999, iVillage hosted a forum for me. I was really enjoying hearing from people, but then all of a sudden, this one person started writing all in capital letters and attacking a particular girl and saying that they were "outraged" that iVillage would even host this discussion on modesty. And eventually, because participants were being attacked, the discussion petered out; and finally iVillage had to take it down because it became just so unpleasant.

And I thought it was such a shame because these smirkers and exhibitionists are not even in the majority, yet they always dominate the conversation. And I thought: Wouldn't it be cool to have a space online that would be safe, where girls and women could come and exchange ideas, and we just won't publish the death threats and the attacks, and therefore they'll feel that they can come back and feel encouraged in their high standards?

And so that's the idea behind our group blog [ModestlyYours.Net] because unlike the herds of people who have nothing better to do than attack people all day, most people who believe in modesty and love, I find, have very full lives. So this way, busy moms & busy students can every once in awhile write a thoughtful blog and it's certainly been a very interesting conversation.

IWF: How has it affected your writing?

SHALIT:Well, my new book is about how the real rebels today are the good girls. And someone asked me why I quote so much material from the girls' lives instead of philosophers like Rousseau and Hume-whom they had preferred reading about in my first book. They regarded the philosophers as more "important." Well, when you become a mother you have such little time. And so you really have to ask yourself where you're going to devote your efforts. When I was younger, I was more concerned about seeming smart, and I guess that's just not important to me anymore. As a stay-at-home mom who writes during nap-time, I'm not really interested in impressing anyone; I'm just trying to use the time I have to help people in some way.

Sure, there is a certain type of person who cares about Rousseau's views on modesty and that's fine-I was a philosophy major so obviously I care about that stuff too. But in general, when a girl reads about another girl who stood up to her friends who were making fun of her, and she just went her own way, that has a much bigger impact. So that's what my second book is about: talking to these role models in person and finding out where they got that courage.

Women Who Make the World Better: Karin Agness

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EDT

At 23, Karin Agness has already made the world better. While still an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, Karin founded the Network of enlightened Women (NeW), an intellectual home for college women who don't blindly follow the herd. Described by TIME Magazine Online as "a small but fast-growing campus alternative to the Feminist Majority and the National Organization for Women, with a foothold in seven states," NeW started as a book club. Karin is a rising second-year law student at the University of Virginia. Karin is a native of Indianapolis and is considering a career in law or politics. She spoke to IWF's Charlotte Hays and Allison Kasic while interning at a law firm.

IWF: What inspired you to found the Network of enlightened Women?

AGNESS: I had the opportunity to intern in Washington, D.C. during the summer of 2004 for Senator Lugar and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It was a fabulous opportunity. I was surrounded by other conservative women and I loved it. Rather than just debating liberal versus conservative big picture ideas, we got into the nuances of some of the conservative arguments, which I really enjoyed.

When I returned to the University of Virginia that fall for my junior year, I sought out an environment like I had in D.C., where you had conservative women getting together and really talking about issues. I couldn't find anything. On college campuses, there are hundreds of clubs archery and belly dancing clubs, NOW chapters, and debating societies, anything and everything so I thought there would be something for conservative women. Nothing. Then I looked at colleges around the country and couldn't find anything.

Finally, I went to the U.Va. women's center to ask if they had an organization for conservative women. I set up an appointment with the woman who is now the director of diversity at the women's center. She gave me a nice tour and calendar, which showed me everything they did. At the end, I asked her if they'd be interested in co-sponsoring an organization for conservative women. We just wanted to meet in their spaces and use them as a resource. She looked at me as if I were crazy, chuckled, and replied, "Not here."

That's when I decided I was going to start something. I got together with a group of friends and we sat down and discussed what we wanted. I often had been frustrated with clubs that held meetings and didn't accomplish anything. That is not what I wanted. I wanted something with real substance. So we decided to set it up as a book club. That way we'd really be educating ourselves and it would give us a solid structure. The first book we read was Danielle Crittenden's What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman. And that's how NeW began.

IWF: NeW has grown by leaps and bounds. Tell us a little about this.

AGNESS: We had our first meeting at U.Va. on September 29, 2004, and the following spring I received an email from a student at the College of William & Mary. She had heard about NeW through friends at U.Va. and was wondering if it would be okay with me for her to start a chapter. Of course, I was thrilled. I emailed her back and started to correspond with her on how to start a chapter. I went down to her first meeting and gave a presentation. I recommended they start as a book club, and I became their mentor.

When the club did well at William & Mary, I realized that NeW had national potential, I began keeping track of documents to share with others and looking out for other women who might be good leaders of a chapter. I also made the decision that, rather than being an organization that focuses solely on growth, I was going to find women who had a lot of motivation and make sure we had strong chapters.

We've had a lot of growth, but it's been a manageable amount of growth.

IWF:Has there been much negative reaction on campus? I understand that there was a cartoon about you?

AGNESS: First to the cartoon, because I think that's a great story. We had our first meeting on September 29, and that was an interest meeting. For our next meeting, we had Professor Steven Rhoads, author of Taking Sex Differences Seriously, speak to us. The premise of his book is that men and women are different. For some reason, this idea shocks many on the left; they just don't understand it. After that meeting, the liberal newsmagazine on campus put a drawing of a woman on the cover who was connected to a machine that was popping out babies. She was also stirring batter and looking at her recipe book. The headline was "Manifest Domesticity." It was trying to mock our group and what we stood for, and that's the general reaction we had. What was funny about it was that a lot of people picked it up. And then they'd flip through, and our name was right there, so it helped generate some buzz about what we were doing, which actually ended up helping out the group.

IWF: Now you all had a conference recently, tell me about it.

AGNESS: There was an article about NeW on TIME Magazine Online last summer. Because of it, I was getting dozens of emails, so I decided to plan a national conference. With a conference, I could give information about the organization and it would fulfill our mission of being a network connecting women across the country.

We had our first conference last year, which was a huge success. I wanted to do it again this year. At last year's conference, I had everybody fill out surveys about what they liked and didn't like. One thing they all wanted was a keynote speaker. So I asked Carrie Lukas of IWF to be our keynote speaker. She had just written a book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism. Our University of Virginia chapter read it in the fall semester and thought it provided a great background on the failures of feminism.

I am a big proponent of NeW helping women to become better educated on conservative principles and also more aware of conservative women who have taken leadership roles on a lot of issues. I also think it's important to try to develop in our members an attitude of activism. You can make a difference, and, if you tackle an issue, you can effect change. I encourage members to write letters to the editor and develop public speaking skills. At both our conferences, I asked some of the successful presidents to give 10 minute speeches about what their organizations are doing. We had three of our chapter presidents (from Arizona State University, University of Virginia and Mary Washington University) talk about their clubs, what had been their successes, and what had been their challenges. This gave these three presidents a chance to speak publicly and push themselves in a new direction. They all did a tremendous job.

We ended with a brainstorming session. One of the things that I notice most about running this organization is that the women are facing a lot of the same challenges on different campuses. For instance, to start a club, oftentimes you have to have a faculty sponsor. That's more difficult when you want to create a conservative women's club because there's not that many conservative women faculty in colleges around the country. So then you face a choice: Do you try to find a liberal female professor who's open-minded and would be willing to put her name on this club, or do you try to find a male professor who would be willing to sponsor a female club? You would never think that finding a faculty sponsor would be a challenge, but it turns out to be a huge challenge in starting a NeW club.

IWF: What's the prevailing political attitude on campus among students?

AGNESS: A majority of the students and a huge majority of the professors are liberal in their political attitudes. There are also many apathetic folks. At the University of Virginia, probably because we're a southern school, there are a good number of conservatives, but they don't speak out on issues or challenge the liberal orthodoxy they hear in the classroom. That's why it's important to have organizations like NeW to bring people together so that students will be more likely to have the courage to speak out.

IWF: What do you think about women's studies as a major?

AGNESS: Women's studies should not be a major. One of the biggest problems I have with the department is there's not much academic accountability in it. These departments were created by leftwing women and all their academic work is judged by other leftwing women.

I've seen no need for women's studies departments. If you want to cover women's history, there is no reason why this can't be covered in regular history courses. And if you want to study trends and gender, these are studied in sociology. If you really want full equality in the academic world, why not discuss these issues in regular academic courses? When men have taken a leading role in society, we'll focus mostly on men, and that's okay. But when women take leading roles, we'll focus on women. I don't think you need to separate women's studies into its own world.

IWF: Why do you think that most people on campus support a liberal philosophy and political system? Is it because of the faculty, or is it simply path of least resistance?

AGNESS: I think it is partly because the faculty are teaching students with a bias. For example, a study came out last year that a huge majority of college faculty gave money to democrat as compared to republican candidates.

It's so much easier as a college student to be a liberal than it is to be a conservative because as a liberal you are "for" a lot more at least in terms of big government programs. For example, you're for raising the minimum wage and you're for socialized healthcare, without looking at broader consequences. As conservatives, we want to look at the bigger picture.

Also, college students often are looking for a way to justify their appetite for instant gratification and liberal policies readily provide that justification. Conservatives inject morality into politics.

IWF: Many campuses celebrate Valentine's Day with The Vagina Monologues. What about U.Va.?

AGNESS: The Vagina Monologues is a huge production at the University of Virginia, and as you said, it's on over 500 college campuses nationally. It was performed for two years while I was at U.Va., my freshman and sophomore years, and no one questioned it. In my junior year, after I had started NeW, the signs for The Vagina Monologues started going up in February, and we decided we wanted to challenge it. So we brought in Christina Hoff Sommers to give a speech entitled "Sex, Lies, and The Vagina Monologues." She exposed the play for what it is. It objectifies women, makes men look pitiful, and even glorifies rape. It's a ridiculous play.

This shows how an organization such as NeW can be valuable in making people think. Before we came along, this play was performed without any questions being raised. We had more than 200 people show up for Christina Hoff Sommers' talk. One of the things I'm most proud of is that this event sparked a two-week debate in the school newspaper. There were columns for us and columns against us. This led some of the women in NeW to write letters to the editor for the first time. We got people to think about The Vagina Monologues for the first time.

The next year, when it was time for The Vagina Monologues, we decided to host a debate. We wanted to have NeW versus the directors of The Vagina Monologues. We offered to do all the work, set it up, do all the publicity and make it easy for them to just show up and talk about it. Because they love this play, I was sure they would want to talk about it. So I emailed the directors of The Vagina Monologues and asked them if they would be willing to debate us. They said they were too busy to debate us even though we were going to do all the work. Then I approached the student-run local NOW chapter to see if they would debate us. They also declined, claiming they were not comfortable debating us about the play.

We still wanted to do a debate. The chair of the University Democrats that year was a woman, so I approached her and we decided to do a two-on-two debate, two women from NeW, and two women from the University Democrats. It was standing room only. This debate revealed a contradiction. These feminists who were too busy or uncomfortable to debate us all found time and were comfortable enough to come to the debate wearing "I Love The Vagina Monologues" t-shirts and platform for their cause under the guise of asking questions.

IWF: What advice do you have for conservative women on campus?

AGNESS: One of my favorite quotes is from Alexander Hamilton when he said, "If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for everything." I think that's the advice I like to give conservative women. If you don't stand up for what you believe, if you're not fighting for your principles, then no one else is going to. It's your role, if you really believe in these principles, to stand up and make a difference. Otherwise, you can't complain about what's going on. That's what I tell even non-conservative friends, if you're going to complain about something, then do something about it.

I think it's really important to get politically engaged young. If you start writing letters to your school newspaper when you're young, you'll continue doing that for the rest of your life because you learn how to do it. You see a lot of people get involved in campaigns in college and then continue on with that for a long time. It's important to get engaged now, when you're young and have a lot of energy.

IWF: What are some of the influences that shaped your views? Was it reading? Your family?

AGNESS: I think it was really a combination of my upbringing and then reading. As someone who has always wanted to go to law school, I've always been very analytical about things. Through reading and seeing the kind of life I want to live, conservative ideas just made more sense to me.

IWF: Karin, what is your future, you're in law school now, you're interning here in the summer, what are you planning to do?

AGNESS: I just finished my first year of law school at the University of Virginia, and I'm working at a firm. I'm giving the law firm path a shot this summer to see if that's something I like, which I've enjoyed thus far. But I've been bitten by the political bug. I'd love to stay involved and I think I always will.

In the News: Women Who Make the World Better

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST

December 29, 2006
Women Who Make the World Better
Marjorie Campbell

The Independent Women's Forum bestowed its first "Women Who Make the World Better Award" upon June Arunga, a 25 year old filmmaker/lawyer from Kenya whose fresh, bold observations about sources of poverty break the unworkable molds in current favor. Ms. Arunga challenges, for example, the role of financial aid to poor nations. "There is basic human dignity that comes from people being involved in the market and solving problems and making a living from being useful rather than receiving charity. I don't think charity is a way to wealth, and I never heard of one telling their children it is either."

To what does Ms. Arunga attribute her independent and creative approach?

"My upbringing was a huge influence on the way I think. I was raised in the Protestant Christian tradition where you were taught that you had to work hard and be responsible and that your talents were God-given, and you were expected to multiply them. We were taught you had to identify your talent and put it to use." Read the full interview.

And so she has! Congratulations to Ms. Arunga and thanks to IWF for introducing an upbeat, useful award recognizing the wonder work of women.

This blog post was published at Deal W. Hudson.

IWF Video: Women Who Make the World Better

info@iwf.org (Allison Kasic) — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 16:59:00 EST

Independent Women's Forum, www.iwf.org, is pleased to announce its first winner of IWF's Women Who Make the World Better Award. Our first recipient is June Arunga, a fascinating filmmaker. While growing up in Kenya, surrounded by poverty, June thought about how wealth is created and now promotes her ideas of a free market economy through her writing and films.

WOMEN WHO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER: June Arunga

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST

WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT JUNE ARUNGA IS FIRST WINNER OF IWF'S WOMEN WHO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER AWARD

Filmmaker June Arunga is a young woman who, while growing up in Kenya, thought deeply about the terrible poverty of her continent and pondered how wealth is created.

She could have embraced the hackneyed ideas of the aid establishment or the celebrities who drop into an African country for a photo-op and to pontificate on the sins of the developed West.

Because she didn't take this easy path, because she has the courage to grasp and then promote less popular ideas and because she has the talent to present her ideas compellingly in writing and film, June Arunga is making the world better. She has the impudence to say that what elite activists sneeringly call a sweatshop may actually be a factory that improves somebody's standard of living.

Ms. Arunga, 25, has a law degree from England's Buckingham University. She cooperated with the BBC to make "The Devil's Footpath," a film in which she traveled throughout Africa to probe the subject of poverty. Now in California, she plans a career as a filmmaker.

We wish we could get rock star Bono (you know, the sheltered assets fellow who wants more of your tax money to go to Africa) to read this interview.

We don't know about Bono. But we definitely urge you to read this compelling interview-it's original, will make lights go on in your head, and will, if you don't already know Ms. Arunga, introduce you to somebody who cares more about curing poverty than spouting trendy "philosophy."

The name of the award takes its name from Kate O'Beirne's book, Women Who Make the World Worse. We will from time to time bestow the award on a deserving woman. Please don't hesitate to make nominations.

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IWF: What we call sweatshops in developing countries are highly controversial right now. Could you comment on this?

ARUNGA: From my experience talking to people here, many have never been to what they call a sweatshop. I don't believe that people should be exploited by their employer or treated badly or not given due compensation or work under harmful conditions where their health is at risk. But what many people think of as sweatshops are basically factories or establishments that they judge by American standards. So, if they went to Vietnam where the Nike factories used to be attacked or to Kenya and found a factory where it was really smoky and people had to work under what would be considered dingy by American standards, they would feel it was unfair, that people are being exploited and that conditions should be improved.

One would have to look at it on a case-by-case basis. I don't speak for places that have exploitative tendencies but my experience is that people use standards that don't exist in these countries, when they've never been to poorer countries, to judge places of work. Now the typical sweatshop, for example, if you went to Kenya today and found a local manufacturer who had managed to start a business and become somewhat successful as an employer and can employ more than just his family you would think that it's pretty dingy. But the people who work there really value their jobs and the alternatives they have other than working in that factory are way worse. Often the conditions they are living in their own homes are what an American would think is dingy, too, but they love their homes and make improvements to them as and when resources are available. The person they are working for is an honest businessman who is doing the best he can. With the resources he has available to him, he puts up whatever kind of operation he has and is paying people as much as he can based on their productivity and on what a competitor would likely offer the same person. He has to have money left for a profit to feed his kids and reinvest in his business. Critics say he shouldn't be in business and that the place should be closed down because it is a sweatshop. [These critics] are basically leaving the entrepreneur with no choice, the workers with no job. Often times the worker is left with the option of going back to subsistence farming, where there is no surplus to sell so they can have money to pay for education and healthcare for their children, not to mention the consumers (some of whom are entrepreneurs themselves e.g. retailers) without the valuable goods and services the business was providing. Basically, these critics are proposing to ground these local economies to a halt.

QUESTION:Then are you making the argument that some of these controversial factories might actually be beneficial to the workers?

ARUNGA: I did a documentary called "Globalization Is Good" with a Swedish Economic Historian called Johan Norberg for Channel 4 in the UK, and we compared the effects of globalization in Kenya, Taiwan, Vietnam, and Sweden. And one of the things we covered in Vietnam was what people call sweatshops, and we interviewed people who worked in these places. The typical worker's experience was that when they first started working there they walked to work because they didn't have any skills or money and they lived in slums. All they wanted was a steady paycheck, a foot in the door, some experience and skills, so that they could be on the conveyor belt to higher wages. If you work on your small family farm, with rudimentary technology like a hoe or horse and plough, no money for fertilizers, or seeds and unreliable rainfall, you are at the mercy of the weather (so are you children's education and health), spend all day under the sun, you don't have a steady paycheck, can't afford running water, electricity or telephones and so your kids spend their days fetching fire wood from the forest, fetching water from streams, and working the farm with you all to just make three meals a day. You don't have money to buy things like cooking fat, shoes, clothes, coal, send your children to school, or have extra money for medicine if somebody falls ill. So having a paycheck is like moving a level up from being on these small inefficient farms that are characteristic of rural life in poor countries. In the meantime, the world is moving along, other humans are making money to buy all their basic needs, and acquiring ever increasing technology that makes them even more productive and makes them more money to invest in rest and recreation (something you will never have), and besides that forms of human organization get more sophisticated, as we have seen with modern corporations. If one does not get onto this band wagon at whatever level is available to them (and they have a right to, if they want to), then they will never catch up.

QUESTION: Thus the trend of rural to urban migration.

ARUNGA: Right. People are leaving the farms and going to try and acquire skills that increase their likelihood of making a living and making their dreams come true. But for me it goes beyond that. It averts the likelihood that they will take their talents and dreams to the grave, when they could have found fulfillment in exploring these during their lifetime. When they come all they can do is start with a menial job because they have no skills to offer anyone. They value opportunity to be exposed to the corporate culture, management systems quality control in the production process and the working of markets generally. They learn how to show up on time. They learn how to work under a supervisor-- things you take for granted when you have been to school and had a job all along. A Vietnamese woman on the documentary said that over time people bought bicycles to ride to work. So the company had to create a place for them to park their bicycles. But soon they bought scooters, and, now, if you look at the parking lot, most of them have cars because they have become valued, skilled workers and they have more money. None of them think of where they work as sweatshops with the connotation it has here. Their dignity is attached to the fact that they are progressing in life, becoming more sophisticated, providing for their families, and having fewer fears of death from hunger and disease.

QUESTION: Are you saying that lives are actually improved by these institutions denounced as exploitative sweatshops in the United States?

ARUNGA: One young woman who was in her mid-twenties and whom we interviewed for the documentary said that her family was really poor, but that she was glad to be in the process of building a house. It was halfway built, but she was already living in it because living in a half-built house was better than living in the slum where she had been living. She was so proud to be a property owner in the city, something her parents had never dreamed of. For the activists who talk about people being exploited in sweatshops, this is what I'd say: There's nothing wrong with sweat.

QUESTION: What is the better way to alleviate poverty in Africa-- more aid or free markets?

ARUNGA: Free markets are the only way for people to preserve their dignity. Imagine if you were born into a station in life where you could only receive charity and not be able to explore your talents, come up with ideas that you think could solve the problems around you, convince somebody of the merits of your idea, have somebody invest in your project and then actually see the problems around you being solved. What markets do basically is to attempt to solve problems, an imperfect and constantly evolving trial and error process to finding different approaches to meeting human demand for goods and services. If there is a need for something, anyone can decide to solve the problem for a fee. You find out what need matches your talent, knowledge or resources, then you take the risk by putting money on your proposed idea, if your solution is good and people find it valuable, they pay you the fee you are asking for in return. There is basic human dignity that comes from people being involved in the market and solving problems and making a living from being useful rather than receiving charity. I don't think charity is a way to wealth, and I never heard of one telling their children it is either.

QUESTION: So charity isn't helpful?

ARUNGA: There's nothing wrong with one-on-one charity or with groups identifying less fortunate people--we all get in trouble from time to time and may need relief. As a government policy, long term, however, it doesn't work. Furthermore, government to government charity, or aid, is what I really have a problem with where one government decides to give money to another government because the people in the country seem poor. If the people in the country seem poor, we need to ask the question: Why?

We know how wealth is created. Wealth is created by enterprise, by people taking a bit of money and putting it to productive use and expanding that money, making a profit. If that is not happening in the aggregate, if most of the population is poor, that is what needs to be addressed.

QUESTION: Why is Africa a poor continent?

ARUNGA: For somebody who is born in 1981, like myself, who is trying to make a living in Africa, the things that stand in their way of becoming successful is, one, just how hard it is to find capital. [In America] there is a central record of your credit worthiness and you can get small advances from banks. That does not exist in African countries, and, if it does, very few people have access to it. Most people in most African countries don't have their property registered at all. So you might be a diligent, hard-working person who always pays your debts but there is no method of keeping track of this, except for your friends and people who know you personally. The only people you can get credit from are your immediate family and friends. This makes it difficult to expand your business; there is no link to a larger pool of money that is stranger's savings, like you have in the US through the banking systems. There may be somebody on the other side of town who is sitting there with a bigger pool of money, but that money cannot be advanced to some good idea that you have because there is no credit card available to you to link you to that money.

QUESTION: What effect does that have on business?

ARUNGA: Many business ideas are born and they are underfinanced and so stagnate, that is why we have few local multinational companies, because these grow from small businesses. Another problem with the non-registration of property is that people don't have collateral. If you don't have title to property, you can't walk into a bank and mortgage your property for loans. You can't borrow against your property. You can build a house on it if you have the money, but you can't make the equity work for you on other ventures. Capital is a big problem for Africa. The irony is that there is so much capital seeking investment opportunities around the globe, and the countries that need it most, seem to be the ones that discourage its influx with poor policies that are hostile to investors (both local and foreign), have unreliable courts to enforce contracts, and protect the interests of entrepreneurs.

QUESTION: And, of course, there is the problem of corruption?

ARUNGA: Since African governments have been notorious for corruption and appropriation of investments, it has made foreign and local investors very shy about investing in Africa. If you are in America and you hear of a good venture in Zimbabwe that you might be able to put some money into, you might think twice because not too long ago the person who runs the country just basically kicked people off their property (both natives and Europeans) and took or destroyed their property. One is not assured of the integrity of the judicial system that one would turn to for legal redress in such a case. This is also a problem for local people. A vicious politician can see your land and like it and go to the registry and change the ownership because it is easy to corrupt officials. If you go to court [to try to regain your property], the courts are corrupt.

I know this from personal experience because my own father lost his whole business. He started a large-scale fishing business and the government just closed it with no explanation. He spent years in court trying to get his business back and some compensation for the boats they took. Just to have the files stay in the court, so that they don't disappear, he had to bribe everyone from the court clerk to the court janitor. This makes capital very shy about investing in Africa. Apart from that, there are very high taxes.

QUESTION: These are such serious impediments to improving African economies...

ARUNGA: There is undeniable evidence of something that would work. One of the biggest impediments to the growth of business is over-regulation, of already-established businesses or for businesses trying get off the ground. Sometimes it is almost impossible to get licenses necessary for entry into business, so there is no competition, and the existing monopolies offer limited services, at high prices, putting their services and the attendant benefits from those services out of reach for most people. There was the case of telecommunications in Kenya. Less than a decade ago, there was a big wave of liberalization where the government just decided with the stroke of a pen to stop being a monopoly. Kenya used to have 300,000 telephone lines. Most people thought they were just too poor to afford a phone. The truth is that phones were artificially expensive because the government insisted that there had to be only one telecoms provider, a corruption ridden and grossly inefficient government corporation with little incentive to create new technology or respond to customers' needs. There were so few telephones in Kenya that most small businessmen had to travel to close small deals or inefficiently use pay phones on either end. When they liberalized the phone industry, several foreign and domestic investors were waiting in the wings to get into the mobile phone market. Today, these companies can barely keep up with the swelling demand. Here is a case where you might have thought people were too poor to afford a service and the government needed to give them aid. But private money was able to supply this service. We went from 300,000 with telephones to over 3 million with phones. Business efficiency was increased across the board, from taxi drivers, to hairdressers to big business by the significant reduction of the cost of communication through allowing competition in telecoms.

QUESTION: You have arrived at decidedly different conclusions from many who want to solve Africa's economic problems with infusions of cash from the West. What and who are some of your intellectual influences?

ARUNGA: My upbringing was a huge influence on the way I think. I was raised in the Protestant Christian tradition where you were taught that you had to work hard and be responsible and that your talents were God-given, and you were expected to multiply them. We were taught you had to identify your talent and put it to use. That was an important influence, as well as being taught to respect other people's property. Beyond that, I watched movies. I got a glimpse of the way people lived in other countries where a child at fifteen could find a job. I had relatives with advanced degrees, and often for years they could not find work.

My biggest fear in life was ending up poor. I had a personal drive not to end up poor. I wanted to know: What is the origin of wealth? I went to the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in NY through sponsorship from the Staley Foundation in Seattle. At FEE some of the world's greatest economists go in and out the door, and they had an incredible library that I took advantage of to educate myself in economics and the working of markets. Some of the most important influences on my thinking were the works of Fredric Bastiat, Ludwig Von Mises, Milton Friedman, Hayek and Hernando De Soto's book, The Mystery of Capital. Poverty kills people. But I've seen that there are many instances when policies can change by the stroke of a pen.