PUBLICATIONS & COMMENTARY

Called to Speak: Six Strategies That Encourage Women's Political Activism

Called to Speak outlines six successful strategies used by interfaith community groups to encourage women’s political activism and leadership. These programs provide women something both simple and profound: the resources and opportunities they need to claim a voice of political and religious authority. Successful strategies described in the report include providing role models for women’s political and religious leadership, creating space for women to address their discomfort with public voice, developing opportunities for women to cross lines of race, religion, and class, providing opportunities that ease women into leadership roles, developing mentoring programs, and making engagement easy and appealing based on the needs and concerns of women’s lives. The report includes in-depth examples of how organizations have used these strategies to successfully encourage women’s political activism.

April 2006 | IWPR No. I916| ISBN 1-933161-10-8 | 64 pages

• Purchase Online
• View Report
• View Research-in-Brief
• View the Press Release

The Ties That Bind: Women’s Public Vision for Politics, Religion, and Civil Society

This book describes the motivations, values, and experiences with public leadership of women working as activis ts and leaders of social justice-oriented religious organizations. Based on a series of interviews, it documents the passion and unique approaches that these women bring to their work, including a focus on shared responsibility and interconnectedness that redefines the language of morality and politics.

June 2004 | IWPR No. I914 | ISBN 1-933161-05-1 | 142 pages

• Purchase Online
• View Report
• View Research-in-Brief
• View the Press Release

Praise for The Ties that Bind

“This is a prophetic work that constitutes a force for good in our times.”
–Dr. Cornel West, University Professor of Religion, Princeton University

“Amy Caiazza makes an invaluable contribution to the current debate about the role of religion in public life. She has induced women to speak in their own voice for the least among us. Notably missing from this account is the anger and self-righteousness. This is a must-read for those who see that faith can open ourselves to the suffering of others.”
–Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

“It’s high time that progressives took seriously the role of religion in American history and Americans’ lives. Amy Caiazza has listened carefully to the views and experiences of religious women from many par ts of the political spectrum, and the thoughtful, nuanced volume that she has now produced is a significant contribution to the gathering debate about the relationship between religion and politics in contemporary America.”
–Robert D. Putnam, Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University

“Amy Caiazza has captured the passion women have for social justice work, the sense of faith which compels us to do it, and the language we are using that makes the work possible even among people who do not always agree.  Much of this is the gift women have to offer—either by nature or a little nurture—to this very fractured world at the moment.”
–Margaret Rose, Director for Women's Ministries, Episcopal Church

COMMENTARY:

March 2006, Women and the Politics of Morality. Dr. Amy Caiazza comments on the perspectives that women bring to the moral values debate (this op-ed was printed in several local papers).

November 2006, What Not To Wear?: Muslim Women Teach Us About American Values. Op-ed by Amy Caiazza, Ph.D., IWPR

October 2006, Our Ideas Matter: Young Women Demand a Voice. Dr. Amy Caiazza comments on the need for young religious women to participate in the fall elections in Cafe, an online magazine of women of the ELCA.

December 2005, Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock, member of IWPR's Working Group on Women's Public Vision, presented at the Women's Funding Network conference on Faith, Feminism, and Philanthropy. In her speech, Brock discusses the historical intertwining of faith and feminism and the struggle faced by feminists of faith due to right-wing secular funding of conservative religious thought and attempts to influence the activities and collaborative work in which mainline Protestant churches engage.
> Read Dr. Brock's presentation (PDF)

September 23, 2005, The Moral Crisis of Hurricane Katrina
Op-ed by Amy Caiazza, Ph.D., IWPR
Debates about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina may be most striking for the ideas that are largely missing from them: a language and symbolism of moral values. Katrina exposed a lack of concern among many political leaders for the values they could have articulated in her wake, including compassion, love, and a need to respect human dignity. While individual Americans have embraced these ideas in their reactions to the crisis, our leaders have fallen far short of them. They seem not to understand that values like compassion could help us face many of the challenges facing our country. Continued...

[ top ]

IWPR’s Working Group on Women’s Public Vision has developed a draft statement on women’s values for public life. The statement is designed to provide a new frame for thinking about and articulating policies and practices that respond to women’s needs and concerns. Click here to see the statement.

Read Amy Caiazza's Our Ideas Matter: Young Women Demand a Voice at BoldCafe or listen to the October 2006 Podcast here.

View Kathleen Hurty's Power, Leadership and Ministry Course Syllabus

LISTEN! Audio News Conference
Called to Speak Release-April 11, 2006

Contact: IWPR Study Director, Amy Caiazza, (202) 785-5100 or caiazza@iwpr.org

Media Contact: Erica Williams, williams@iwpr.org