Statement: Proposal One – B

THESE PROPOSALS ARE TO DISCUSS CONCEPTS ONLY.  ACTUAL LANGUAGE WILL BE DRAFTED AT A LATER TIME.

Watch the webinar recording for Statement of NOW’s Purpose. 

We encourage you to use the PowerPoint presented at the webinar and the Structure Modernization Discussion Guide to help facilitate conversations in your networks.  

 Statement: Proposal One – B

  • To be used in NOW’s bylaws as the Statement of Purpose and as its Mission Statement:
    • “NOW’s purpose is to take action to ensure that women and girls are not silenced, underrepresented, or devalued through the promotion of feminist ideals, the elimination of discrimination, and the protection of equal rights and the responsibilities for all women and girls in all aspects of life.”

Posting Instructions

1. If you want to share your thoughts on a proposal (remember these are just concepts, the actual language will be developed later), write your reply in the text box below the words Leave Reply, and in the box “Enter your comment here…”

 

2. If you want to respond to a comment that another NOW member has left regarding a proposal, click the small blue link that says “Reply” underneath said comment. It is very important that you click this reply button and not start another comment so that the conversation is easily followed and clear!

3. You MUST put your full name and chapter affiliation before every comment you leave. If a comment does not have a name and chapter affiliation it will not be approved. This is to ensure that only NOW members are commenting.

4. Remember be respectful and friendly! All NOW members want to work to improve the organization and it takes collaboration and patience on our part as a grassroots organization to make sure that all of our members voices are heard – even those with whom we may disagree with.

5. Be creative and don’t be afraid to say what you think! It is vital that you share your opinions — in order to create the best proposals possible we need to know what all of the members think! This site is for YOU to have your voices heard.

7 thoughts on “Statement: Proposal One – B”

  1. Looks like the mission proposals have not been properly linked or double linked This is supposed to be a Money Proposal Three link…

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  2. I like the gist of this but would like to see it turned around to be more positive. Something like:

    “NOW’s purpose is to take action, through the promotion of feminist ideals, to ensure that all women’s and girls’ voices are heard and that they have equal representation in all walks of life. NOW advocates for the elimination of discrimination, and he securing of equal rights and responsibilities for all women and girls in all aspects of life.”

    I still think I prefer our current statement of purpose and am not sure it needs to be changed.

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  3. “secure” is much better than “protect”. “Protect” makes us sound as though we are on the defensive (and we sound like that way too much for reasons we all understand); we need to be proactive and sound proactive.

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  4. I agree with Judi, and also, rather than “protect” our rights, we need to “secure” them, since we don’t have many of them yet. .

    Liked by 1 person

  5. Judi Polson, NOW-NYC:

    Much great work done on a very tough job! I like the brevity of this Proposal.

    The first three lines of this proposal imply that women and girls need to be protected from feminism; also they are a bit negative. Someone on the call suggested something like the following, which I believe is much better:
    “…ensure that women and girls are heard, fully represented, and valued through the promotion of feminist ideals, the elimination of discrimination,…”. Or something like that.

    Liked by 2 people

    • I think changing the language for a more positive outlook is good (i.e., “heard,” “fully represented,” and “valued”) and would more likely inspire the person reading it.

      I also appreciated Liz’s suggestion on the webinar that we change “protection of equal rights” to “advancement of equal rights.” Using the word “responsibilities” in this phrase doesn’t exactly sound correct, but I’m sure we could wordsmith it to get the point across.

      I haven’t quite decided which statement of purpose proposal that I like the best yet, but I do support these changes in language to make this proposal better!

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  6. I think there’s something wrong with the punctuation or something — anyway, we don’t want to make it sound like it’s the promotion of feminist ideals that could devalue women and girls.

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