Women As
Winners
Sherry Kirschner
How can women who want to make a difference make their mark on the
world? How can they use their talents, creative ability and female
wisdom to experience self fulfillment and effect a meaningful change
in their lives and in the world?
"We have got to start thinking like winners," says pro-choice
attorney Kathryn Kolbert. Naomi Wolf, author of the "Beauty Myth"
says, "If we stay hunkered down, defensive and angry at the ways
we've been victimized, we waste our energies.
 We act
effectively only if we learn to relax into our power, stand upright
and leave the beleaguered foxholes of defensiveness that we have
almost begun to consider a permanent home. We must abandon the
traditional dramatization of women as victim and stand in a new
posture, walking with a loving heart and an open mind.
Now is a time in which real change for women depends on an
enthusiastic willingness to engage - in a way that is new to women -
with power and all its seductions and responsibilities, democracy and
all its open conflicts, and money with all its pleasures and dangers.
I call this willingness "power feminism." It is feminism of
practical giant steps rather than ideologically pure baby steps; of
tolerance rather than of self-righteousness. It encourages us to
identify with one another through the shared pleasures and strengths
of femaleness rather than primarily through our shared weakness and
pain. It calls for alliance based on enlightened self interest and
economic giving back rather than on a sentimental unworkable fantasy
of cosmic sisterhood."
For women to understand how to come into their own power they need
to understand the difference between "power" and "empowerment."
In the book "The Empowered Woman" by Riki Robbins Jones, Ph.D.,
she says, "In our society today we are taught to seek power over
people. It is better to win than to compromise. Kindness, empathy and
sharing are devalued. The search for power over other people through
gaining material possessions, fame or authority is endless.
Empowered people, on the other hand, experience satisfaction
within. They may not own any real estate, or have any employees to
order around, but they know who they are and what they want from
their life. In their relationships they make decisions by mutual
discussion, not by one person telling the other what to do. Empowered
people don't speak in terms of winning and losing. Instead they talk
about working together for common goals."
How does one become empowered? The first step is to know and
accept yourself as you are, the good, the bad and the ugly. You are
unique. You have a special set of qualities, a game plan, given to
you and you alone. Before you can give of yourself to other people,
you have to have a self to give. When you do, you will experience a
certain sense of wholeness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "What lies behind us and what lies
before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
Who you are is your power! The search within is the greatest
search you'll ever go on. Find your identity and your following will
find you. Then your presence will begin to make a difference in the
world. n
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