 I'm Peter Bergen. I run an international security program here at New America that's my privilege to introduce a wonderful panel today about the question of women and their presence or lack thereof in the media in particular on the issues of national security. The panel being moderated by Amory Slaughter, of course, as the CEO and president of New America, former head of policy planning at the State Department, former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton, the author or editor of about to be seven books, because our most recent book will be on an issue that's related to which is the work Family Bounce, and to her immediate left to your right is Elmira Bay-Rasley, who is co-founder of Foreign Policy Interrupted, and this is really an event to highlight their work about trying to make women more prominent in the public space on the issue of foreign affairs and national security. Elmira's worked with a number of leading media outlets, including foreign affairs, Fareed Zakaria's program on CNN, GPS, and then immediately to her right is Lauren Bone, who's an independent journalist based in Istanbul. Thank you for coming all the way here for this. She is a colonist for Foreign Policy Magazine. Amongst many other things, she also was one of the founding editors of that excellent journal, The Kyra Review, which is sort of the Egyptian version of foreign affairs and is a Pulitzer Center grantee and an overseas press club fellow with the Associated Press in 2012. Next to her is Ben Pauker, who is a great friend of New America, the executive editor of ForeignPolicy.com. I've learned something about Ben, who I've known for many years today, which is he's the co-founder of the Grass Gastronauts, which is the world's largest adventurous eating club, which we'll have to get into in the Q&A. And finally we have Karen Finney, who's a political strategist and a well-known media contributor, a communications consultant. She hosted the show Disrupt with Karen Finney on MSNBC. She worked with Four Years as spokesman and director of communications at the DNC. She's written for The Hills, commentator for Politico, and at MSNBC and the Huffington Post. So turn it over to Karen. Great. Thank you. So, thank you. The first thing is just, I can't tell you how great it is to look out and see this audience. I would like to recruit all of you to be where we are on countless television shows and in every other setting where you can talk about foreign policy. And actually, I don't think I've ever been at a foreign policy event other than one that was explicitly on empowering women where we had anything like this ratio. So that's a great start. Very quick. We're sorry it took us so long to get started. We've been swapping Amtrak stories in the back room. We won't go there. So we're going to talk about the relative lack of women on foreign policy. We're going to start by talking about the fact, which we'll hear about in terms of the underrepresentation of women on important foreign policy subjects. This is not going to be news to any of you. Many of us have experienced it in multiple ways personally. We're going to talk about the fact of it. And then we're going to talk about why that matters. Is this just because we believe in diversity and it's great and there should be one of everything in any public forum? Or does this really make a difference in terms of what we are hearing and thinking about foreign policy issues, about global issues, about how we solve public problems in the global sphere? And then we're going to talk about, so what do we do about it? Aside from foreign policy interrupted, which is a huge, not aside from, that's a huge step. We're going to talk about how that makes a difference and what else we can do. So with that, let me begin by saying, I mean, when I said we've experienced it personally, I frequently speak on television and on radio, but particularly in television I was saying in the back, if I'm there, there's obviously some female representation, but there are all sorts of ways in which I'm pretty sure if you did a survey or a very careful monitoring of actual airtime, you would see that women are speaking considerably less than men even when women and men are equally represented or they're speaking less than they should be proportionally. So there are all sorts of ways in which female voices are either not there or less heard even when they are there. But I'm going to start with Elmyra and ask you to talk about, you and Lauren both, to talk about your sense of the lack and then we'll talk about, put that in context. Sure, well thank you so much Ann Marie for not only organizing this, but for being one of our founding board members and really getting behind us. And a regular Twitter. Yes, absolutely, a champion of ours. I'll start out and then I'll hand it over to Lauren. Essentially, you're right, I think that there is a disparity between the number of women that we see commenting on foreign policy issues and they'll call upon you and then they'll say, you know, we checked the box and that was it. And then they'll be, you know, I think about every six months there's kind of an uproar about where are the women. Recently, Mark Lynch and Tara Witz, they published a piece in The Washington Post that actually said, you know, among the six leading think tanks in Washington D.C. I think it was over the past year, there was not a single woman represented speaking about Middle Eastern issues. And then there's this uproar about where are the women. Well, I can tell you, we're right here. But the thing is, we sit and there's an uproar and there's lots of people getting angry about it and Lauren and I came together and we said, we don't want to be angry anymore, we just want to be at the table and we want to have a constructive discussion. We have things to say and we would like to contribute our voices to that. So we said, let's dissect the problem. What is the problem? And we looked at it and we said that there's two essential problems. There's an internal problem where I think we women, I think there's an element of where we do hesitate to volunteer and raise our hands until we're perfect. I will speak only for myself on that, where I feel that I've actually studied every single talking point and I've read every single article, will I raise my hand? Well, you know what, I needed to get over that. I know my issues, you know, progress not perfection and perfect is the enemy of good. And so, you know, that's one element of it and so how do we actually get over that internal barrier? The second element that Laura and I realized as we hit upon is, you know, the media's changed and while we complain about where are the women, the jobs of bookers and producers and editors today is really hard. It's a 24-7 news cycle and everybody is competing to get out good quality content and when you're facing that pressure, what you do is you need to rely on what you know and the reality is what bookers, producers and editors know is a rolodex of white men. And, you know, that needs to change but we also need to help them change that. We can't just blame, we can't assign blame to these organizations. We need to be in a position where we can help change them. And so we decided to create this platform that addresses both of those issues and I'll hand it over to Laura and talk about what we're doing. Great. Yeah, you know, real quick, and I just want to make this really clear, we're not saying we need women in the conversation for diversity's sake. We truly and honestly believe that when we have more women at the Tableau Pining and not just more women, we'll get to a slew of racial and ethnic disparities that we plan to address as well. But when you have more voices at the table, you have more, you're creating a more likely environment for solutions, more possible solutions. You're incubating not just voices, but you're incubating possible solutions. Look, foreign policy, gone are the days where it's one-dimensional, really hard issues of security and military and men talk word fast. And we love talking more. We can talk word from the next two hours. But what I'm saying is, so many of the issues now in foreign policy mandate a multi-dimensional, multifaceted approach. We need to talk education. We need to talk healthcare. We need to talk entrepreneurship. These are no longer soft issues. There's no hierarchy of issues. Look at the world around us. 2015, we're here to interrupt, not just by having women at the table, but more voices. We specifically don't have women in our name because beyond bringing more women to the table, we also want to interrupt foreign policy on the basis of new ideas that go beyond the Beltway, that challenge these paradigms that we've all clung to. This is a movement. We're really freaking excited to be here and want you to be excited. We're going to interrupt. It's time we move beyond this conversational, coldest act, this echo chamber where the women would have a quote, let's start doing something. And we'll get to in a little bit what we plan to do, but we're so excited to be here and you should be, too. Great. So, Karen, I'm going to ask you and then I'll come back to Ben on this moment. But we love that. We need to. We love it. That's also a wonderful editor. So, Karen, I want you to speak to the point about it isn't all the bookers. It's women not putting themselves forward. It's women not feeling much less secure about a finding. I have to say, when I first started being on TV, I was dumbfounded. I mean, suddenly people were calling me to speak about just about anything, right? Because I had spoken about... I mean, so I had spoken about Syria, I could speak about Siberia. What's the difference? Sure. And my reaction was immediately, whoa, I'm not an expert on that. I'd gotten over the idea that I wasn't an expert on anything. I was willing to say I was expert in this and this and this. But suddenly there was a lot of push and you've been on the other side, right? You've had your own show. You clearly believe you wanted female voices to talk to us about what that felt like. I'm going to touch on, I'm also a senior fellow at Media Matters and we have a forthcoming study that actually takes a look at really what are the disparities. And just a top line number, it's about 22% is about how many women you will see talking about whether it's... I also think we should clarify foreign policy these days. It's foreign policy, it's war, it's terrorism, it's diplomacy. I mean, what constitutes those conversations I think has actually broadened. So I will start by telling you my mother who is here wanted to be a Foreign Service Officer and was told, took the test, all of that, and was told in the 60s the natural order of women is to go have babies. Lucky for me that's what she did. But that's kind of where I think I start there only because when you then cut to, you know, in the early 2000s when I was actually at the DNC on the side of trying to get people booked, there weren't as many women, frankly. And part of that was because I think a lot of women got turned away at too young of an age. And so finding women was a real challenge. And then also saying to them, you can talk about this. Like you wrote a whole book about this. What do you mean you can't talk about this? And we were talking about this backstage. I mean, I love men, I really do, but they'll talk about anything. They don't care if they don't know. They'll just, they're happy to go on and talk. And as women, we do, it's the truth. I mean, and as women we, I mean, I joked the other night, I've seen plenty of panels with men talking about women and as a woman of color, white men talking about, you know, what people of color want. I mean, you know, so the disparities are everywhere. And on the booking side, so when I was at the DNC, trying to get, and I'm talking about Diane Feinstein, very senior women from, you know, the armed services and foreign affairs committees, getting them booked on some of the Sunday show roundtables was very tough. Why? Because they wanted John McCain or they wanted Lindsay Graham. Like they had their men, John Kerry. They're all great, but they had their men that they were so used to going to that it was much harder to say, I mean, literally it was a just give her a chance, just let's just try. And then having my own show several years later, the pressure to try to, I mean, it has to come from the host, it has to come from the producers, it has to be made a priority with the bookers, and I will add to this that one of the challenges is you don't have as many women in those positions, right? So sometimes the bias they don't even think about the fact that they're not unless it has made a very conscientious, you know, and what we used to do is we would look at the board and look at the segments and say, okay, that's not going to work, there's not enough diversity, I want women, we don't, you know, we need some people of color to, you know, build this out. But you have to have that kind of discipline. And then in a 24-hour news cycle, my show was on twice a week, so we had a little more time. When it's a day in and day out grind, bookers go for like, who do I know is going to say yes, and is going to, I know it's going to be good TV, and I know it's going to give me a quote for my story is a lot of what happens. And it is true that when women are on, and one of the things the study at Media Matters isn't quite show is, you know, there are plenty of times where there might be a woman on, and she gets to speak once, but technically she's still in the box. So she's still on the screen. And it's how do we also as women when we get that opportunity to be on, make sure that we get to say what it is we are there to say, and try to get over and I talked about this the other night, part of this is women we just got to get over it a little bit and get over, sort of, not wanting to interrupt or feeling like, you know, well, I'll let the guys have their chance and really having that confidence that you know, you're there as an expert. So be an expert and say what it is you're there to say. So Ben, I asked you to speak less not just to draw that funny contrast, but so I want to so women often don't want to, are worried they're not expert enough. They, it's often harder for them to project the kind of persona that makes for good TV. There are these various reasons, but there are other reasons too. So I was part of a group I think, you think you were part of sort of email group of foreign policy national security women in town, that pointed it did a study of how many female columnist foreign policy had and the number was not good, I think it was one at that point Rosa Brooks, and we were all up in arms. And then some of us started saying, well, you know actually, in my case, foreign policy has asked me to be a columnist, and I said no. And more and more people started acknowledging that in fact we had been approached, but we said no. So in our cases, so there are a couple things going on there. One is if you are a woman and they're not many women, boy are you deluged, right? I mean, it's like being a mentor or being anything, if they're not many of you, certainly the women of color in this audience will get that if you're anything that they're not a lot of, you have more invitations you can do anything with. There were also a bunch of us who said there's a weekly column that's so much to commit to, I've got kids, I've got too much to do already, I'm just not going to do it. So I wondered if you would talk a little bit about, you've made huge efforts and made a huge difference, and foreign policy is very committed to making this difference, but sort of how it looks from your vantage point. Yeah, well I mean it's not easy to write a weekly column. I mean in my role as an editor I find it very hard to actually find the time to write, and a lot of readers feel the same way. I can speak a little bit to what we at FP have done, and it actually started before there was this conversation. I think we realized our magazine was getting a little bit boring, a little bit. There was too many of the same voices. When you look at our magazine's readership, it's only 13% on a daily basis is a Washington readership. It's less than 50% US, and our mission has changed a lot from being readers of Washington and spicing them up and giving them a say about what US policy is to covering the world. I mean we are if not 24-7 pretty close to that in publishing 20-25 articles a day. And it was a lot of the same voices, and it started to feel a little bit stale. So a couple years ago, we really embarked on a project to make sure that we were finding new writers trying to tackle an issue of diversity, and reaching out to new voices, and a big portion of that was a gender issue. So we went from having one regular female columnist to now having 11, which is half of our regular roster of 22, our editorial staff and this wasn't even a conscious of it. Our editorial staff is roughly 50-50, and it could be 48-52, half of our senior editors and our senior positions are women, plus a better publication. There's no other way to say it. I think of this every day, we still fail in representing the big world we cover adequately, and a lot of that's just really tricky I'll say as an editor. It's not easy to find a Pakistani woman who can write eloquently and regularly about covering issues, and sometimes it's just the nature of the beast that it's easier to find someone who you've worked with before, who could be working here at Brookings Institution or a place like that, who has the chops, who's done it before, and can give you the thousand words you need when something happens. You're not to interrupt you, but you're male columnist interestingly publish more frequently than your female columnists. You track it, it's interesting you have equity, but the fact of the matter is the men publish more frequently. That's a function of some of them just being on a track and they're writing, they've been doing it more frequently. It's a function of I think this confidence gap as well, we're not confidence gap but women holding themselves to a higher threshold of certainty before they give their opinion and not just that as we talked about in New York City, it's also I mean the confidence gap doesn't necessarily exist in a vacuum one writer, Jessica Vlunti says that actually the confidence gap might just be a keen understanding of women of how little the conversation in society values them because women also know that if they do have gumption and if they do have confidence and if they publish regularly, there aren't going to be people who are like, who does she think she is? Well, so let me ask because the other way to look at this would be I could write much more than I do but it's not going to be very good. Exactly. So in other words it's not I just know it's going to be thin but it'll be okay, but it'll be thin and so which way do we want to go here? Do we want to say that the male columnist should publish less so the female columnist should publish more Some of our male columnists probably should publish a little bit less I'm not going to name any names I think we have a really good roster but we didn't we selected that roster by trying to find the best available people but also with an eye towards a gender balance you know it was like I want to find the best writer on global climate change issues and if that I tasked the editors with coming up with a list and then we waited to a certain extent women whose voices were underrepresented that was a goal but we don't spur people to write I think foreign policy used to be someone files on the Thursday someone files on the Friday now when you have 22 people and so much news and an in-house reporting team that's grown from being one person to 12 people there's a lot of content there's really so many editors and I don't need four people weighing in on the same subject the national security strategy is going to be released on Friday I'm going to interrupt you now I'm going to interrupt you but here's where here's also where I think women because they traditionally have been less underrepresented in the media they haven't had the experience with working with editors and editors and you're working with the same people you know their style, you know what they do and then you can work with them but here's where I found I pitched the New York Times last year I pitched them on a piece and it wasn't exactly right the male editor sat with me and he said let's work on this because there's really good stuff in here and he actually took the time because he said I really believe in your mission and I actually produced a piece and I got onto the pages of the New York Times but it was because he was actually very conscious and he recognized that there was something there he didn't reject me outright but he actually took a proactive stance on that and I think that that's also something that the media, I think that that's incumbent upon the editors and the bookers as well okay, hang up because Karen wants to jump in I just wanted to add to this sort of an economic perspective because part of the reality and we saw this frankly in the last elections in 2008 right in 2012 the increase in African Americans watching what was happening in politics because of the election of Barack Obama and his candidacy, plus you so you had the networks probably not so much Fox but MSNBC and CNN certainly both competing for those viewers particularly at a time when viewership and cable is going down across the board frankly television across the board and they're flipping out about it and women are a very important economic force in this country and a part of that and so part of what I also this is part of the like we gotta get over it is we do have economic power and we don't always take advantage of it it matters when people are looking at ratings right and they're looking at what's the key demographic of young people and women and people of color and where's our opportunity for growth women are an important constituency and part of what we as viewers and consumers of media have to make clear is we want to see more viewer more faces and voices that look like us or sound like us and again not just because I want to check a box and hear a woman but because I want to hear a broader perspective I want to hear more voices so that I can be more informed so let me ask you a question and I'm going to move us to the difference that it makes because but so do you think I'm asking all of you too that if there were a foreign policy show that were only women that women would watch it I have pitched for many years I would like to see I don't know just on foreign policy but look at how well the talk and the view and all these shows are doing right everybody's trying to get their all woman show now we did a thing right before the election at MSNBC it was all women and we talked everything from foreign policy to domestic policy the whole thing and it did better than a lot of the other shows so I actually think if you had an all woman show that was talking about a broad range of issues I do think women would watch that actually the reason I asked is the view absolutely because that's a talk show and women are good at talking we know that but there is this ingrained to what extent have women internalized that foreign policy is a serious subject and you need a certain amount of serious authoritative male voices and then mix it up but if it's all women is it as consequential I don't know so it's interesting that you have some data but I think there is this where I want to go now what difference does it make to have diverse voices because and I'll start off that foreign policy as I learned it was an entirely male preserve and it's still we've now had three women secretaries but that follows on some 70 male secretaries of state or however many and it was you know this is the oak paneled rooms this is the guy talking to the other guy about matters of state so the whole vision of what foreign policy is much more than domestic policy health policy education those are areas that touch on parts of women's lives in a way that I think foreign policy long didn't so then my question is but so what difference does it make that you have a woman do we think we're going to actually hear something different and here we're treading very close to the dangerous waters of essentialism as you and I have discussed we don't really want to say well she's going to say something different because she's a woman but so what are we interrupting or when we interrupt what are we hearing well I think that in terms of I think it is I'm all for women's programs I think everything helps I think everything contributes to it but at least from our perspective we don't want to segregate out women what we want to do is we want to bring women's voices and women to the table and I think as Lauren touched on as in the opening it's about actually finding solutions the 21st century is a different beast I mean you know yes foreign policy used to be done in oak paneled rooms with gray suited diplomats but it's not like that anymore it's very dynamic it's changing and so things like education healthcare entrepreneurship economics are no longer just soft issues and I know that you've talked about this extensively before foreign policy is not just war it's not just about defense and military it has all of those other things have to combine and come to it and I think when we're talking about expertise and we're talking about quality you know men can't be an expert in everything and that's why it's so important to bring the diverse voices whether they're women, whether they're a development worker in Somalia or whether they're on the ground in China we're not just talking also about Americans I think that we also need to bring actual people that's way too shocking you know we need to actually bring people who are on the ground who speak the local languages in these places and hear from their perspectives and that's what we're advocating for because the world it's dynamic and it's changing and we need dynamic solutions that can match that and when you're bringing diversity into it then you're actually widening the pool it's about adding value it's not about pointing fingers and it's not about trying to shame and blame anyone and then also I mean so Ben you bring up a good point you actually bring up a good point just one, just one but I want to segue this into solutions because we're talking a lot about the disparity which we all know and again this conversational cul-de-sac we just have to steer around and talk about solutions so you had mentioned you know sometimes it's difficult to get a Pakistani woman to write quickly or eloquently or I don't know if you use and I don't want to misquote you you're right and it isn't incumbent upon you to find it but we are acutely aware I'm a journalist the bandwidth, the little bandwidth that you're dealing with so foreign policy interrupted how many of you guys subscribe to our newsletter cool, do you like our GIFs? did you like the Beyonce GIF last week? how many of you subscribed to foreign policy? okay, alright we'll catch you, we'll catch you drop the mic just have some sign ups on the way no totally, alright we got you so we're a visibility platform right now and we're highlighting the women who are opining on you know China security issues on what's happening in Somalia happening in Argentina for the very purpose of interrupting your inbox and serving you brain food but also so producers and editors can't say I just couldn't find a woman to write on this, Charlie Rose only had five dudes on his panel because we just couldn't find a woman to be an expert on China besides Emory Slaughter I guess I'm so safe, of course I am yeah of course I am in addition to so what we're doing though beyond the visibility platform and trying to make your life easier as a talent agency we have a fellowship program that's going to open next week applications for it and what we're doing is we're picking it's a pilot program for now and we're going to be giving her expertise in one particular area and we're giving her one-on-one media training so that's the pain point finding that woman who's on the ground but maybe she doesn't have a lot of skills in writing and you don't have time to guide her so we have that part covered and we're pairing her with an editorial mentor at a major mainstream news outlet to introduce op-eds around her expertise and to really cultivate and develop her voice so what we envision foreign policy interrupted it as is a two-prong solution to a very complicated problem you have the external barriers you have the institutional barriers and then you also have this internal sort of lean-in-esque anthem that we need to work on but we also need to work on creating the environment that values these voices so that women get into an environment that values what they have to say which is why we need to have buy-in from editorial boards from the business side of things which all happen to be men, we need to have buy-in from men that not only is this disparity a problem but that we need to get innovative we have to create solutions around it so I think just going back to your initial question on what women bring to the table I think there's a couple of things to mention is I think we have more women in more where they've either worked on anti-terrorism efforts as Zero Dark 30 taught us some women were the ones who found Osama bin Laden let's not forget that right I think we have more women in these places but I think part of the problem it's the same problem that we face in the general economy which is women get to a certain age and you want to have a family and there's not the support to then that work family balance and then to be at those higher levels which is where that's where a lot of bookers or editors are sort of looking for those people I think one of the great things about the way media has changed is you can work from home you can write from home but the other side of it is I think we've expanded in this definition of foreign policy I think we understand now nations are more stable when women are part of the economy when people are educated when people have access to improving their lives and I would say that it was a lot of the women former secretaries of state who brought that really to the fore in the conversation and I will give a specific example of my former boss Hillary Clinton when she was first lady we did a lot of soft diplomacy went all over the world and flowers and all that kind of stuff we visited a lot of very cool programs women, particularly economic empowerment of women and girls because that's her thing and one of the things that she noticed everywhere we went was that the USAID people and programs were sort of over here as the like soft oh that's so cute what they do and then like the embassy staff and the diplomacy and the security people they were sort of over here and we would do sort of an event with them and she always said this doesn't make sense and when she was secretary of state and when she was campaigning one of the things she even talked about was a good stool, our foreign policy it's got to be diplomacy, it's got to be development and then it's also got to be defense and that is now the norm in how we're talking about these issues so in terms of why it's important to have women there it's because we might see something that the guys aren't picking up on or as a person of color I might see something that you just from your experience wouldn't pick up on and make it part of the conversation so Ben I want to ask you about how you you know you said well foreign policy was getting kind of tired and stale and you mixed it up and I want to talk about sort of what you see but let me just first respond on exactly Karen what you said I mean to me the first thing I would say is that Hillary Clinton was the first female secretary of state who could have done that right who could have focused on women and could have focused on development Madeleine Albright certainly cared a lot but if you're the first woman secretary of state you're doing guns and bombs and just being there though they're not going to shake her hand how are you going to deal with that but if she had come out of Madeleine Albright in 1996 it said okay we're going to focus on development and we female empowerment no chance she was the one who said to Colin Powell so what's that great army for and then of course Condoleezza Rice is the first woman of the first African American national security and I remember watching her go toe to toe with the guys in a seminar that Sam Huntington ran in the 1980s on arms control and she knew every weapon system every missile I mean she could just you know dish it and she did so Hillary Clinton was strong enough and she'd been on arms services and all of that that she could actually elevate this to me was the biggest thing I took away from working for her I went in as a national security person I came out as somebody who felt empowered to say development is just as important as diplomacy and that I do think there are more women in development I think there are women on the ground often who are bringing that perspective in so that is one place there are plenty of men who also do that but I think if you expand the number of women you will hear more of a bottom up focused on the realities of people's lives perspective in addition to the broader perspective but that's a hypothesis so I wanted to ask if as you've added women to the roster do you notice different perspectives yes I think we I think we do you know look again I'm speaking for one magazine and I'm just you know I'm an editor and I just move words around on a page and try and make people sound a little bit better no but we have you know look we are not the mouthpiece of the you know the wood paneled walled Washington world there are other magazines that do that we don't care to do that that is not what makes us a good and interesting place to read you know as Laura knows you know we've done a ton of stuff we have dispatches from all over the world I'd say you know we are pretty good in and I don't know the stats but I'd say we're pretty close to a fair representation in terms of who we're actually reaching out to to do stories I mean we've got Belle Tru writing from Egypt who does incredible stuff we have and all over the Middle East who are really impressive journalists who are working there in Asia as well and it's represented in our staff but yes I mean look I think at its root what I'm looking for is to make each article a great thing to read and to make the magazine as a whole a compelling glimpse of the world on any given day every month every year but there are stories you know so I guess at some point there are good writers and I think you know the Foreign Policy Interrupted Fellowship Program is actually a brilliant idea I think the mentoring aspect is really important and sometimes it does take a little bit more work to find a young voice and that's something we've done as well in terms of you know we've pushed away from the sort of old gray haired white men who say the same thing again and again to try and be more diverse in our coverage and when you find a young person who's on the ground to understand or a young woman who can write with some authority about Abe's economic reforms in Japan you do get a different perspective you do get it you know and functionally they have different sources they have different people they quote you find it in small little fine-grained ways that's not a woman writing or planting a flag and saying this is a story about gender and about women's role in foreign policy writ large because frankly that's only so interesting right we do them when we find those stories are important in the same way we do stories about war writ large we don't do a whole lot of those because I just don't need another think tanker telling me why we need to you know more fully support the campaign against ISIS there's only so much bandwidth I think our audience has for that so we do find you know the different voices bring different quality a different texture and different opinions so more women writing does not mean more writing about women you won't find that in our pages I mean when we recruit and use women writers it's not because they're writing about women it's because they're writing about the subjects we care about it's because I need someone to write about the Nisman case in Argentina and what that means for Kershner's government and so we're looking for people that's British because I'm asking a woman to write a story on gender I mean that's just as sexist as anything else Kim Barker she's a journalist at the New York Times she was with the Chicago Tribune she's got a fabulous book called The Taliban Shuffle and she's written about this in her book but she's also commented about how she had access when she was on the ground in Afghanistan how she had access not only to the women which was very difficult for the male correspondents to do but she also had unbelievable access to the male politicians in Afghanistan and in a way she said that they would not talk to her male counterparts that they actually there was a different dynamic going on and she actually got better scoops by just by the very nature of who she was and what she brought to the table and the things that she would discuss with them that's true and that's been true in terrorism I'm looking at Peter Bergen who in some way disproves this because he's got an extraordinary access to various people in terrorist networks but you know the reason there's so many great women in terrorism is in the 1990s it was not the cool and sexy thing to do lots of women who were getting pushed out of standard guns and bombs went into terrorism but they also found if you talk to Jessica Stern or something they got close to terrorist leaders and were able to interview them in ways it's very very hard to imagine to your point that a man could so let's talk more about the solutions I'm going to give all of you a chance to ask questions but so you've got a list you've got people writing so I will just say as somebody who does subscribe to Foreign Policy Interrupted I have found that when I want I'm going to be on television on the weekend I always read it and I do get I just get different perspectives I mean it's different women writing on different things but it is not the normal run of show that I could get so you've got this wonderful list and you can send it to bookers you've got fellows what else do we need in your ideal world Foreign Policy Interrupted is wildly successful what will that look like if we know we'll be successful if we don't exist in five years we don't want to exist we love to extend this to don't tell your investors that of course well then it should be non profit we've seen Interrupted needed quite frankly for every industry tech even cooking there are so many mail shops honestly we need to we need to interrupt a lot but we don't want to exist in five years and it's interesting because since soft launching this a year ago we started talking about this in Ernest two years ago we emailed you right off the bat we're like hi Annmarie we have an idea Annmarie is a perfect example of someone who has so much on her plate but you've just been absolutely wonderful so thank you and this gratitude but since soft launching with our visibility platform about a year ago we get emails all the time from women and not just young sort of millennials and we want to make it clear for our fellowship program we're not looking just to have 25 to 30 year olds because we get emails all the time from academics across the country at University of Montana one woman who's 50 years old is like I just don't have the editorial contacts I need how do I even go about pitching the New York Times I have this idea but I'm used to writing for academic journals and again back to the issue of editors not you know having the bandwidth to cultivate these voices so we need to do that and we need listen when you're talking about a field like foreign policy and there is low representation of women I think sometimes we all and I say we all women we visualize so small we sort of have to fight our way and you know there's a fair share of sororicide and sometimes it's very competitive sometimes it's very competitive and women just don't feel that they have you know a close network that they can say hey do you have this contact of the New York Times that I can pitch because you know the person they're asking probably is pitching the New York Times right now and she might visualize the pie is small but we're all about you know success not a zero sum game we're all about let's help each other yes let's lean in let's not shove other women and we're not this we're not about you know cheerleading on women and you know come by all let's bring each other's hair but what we're doing is you can bring my hair if you want but what we're doing is we're saying you know what if you have an expertise in something own it own it you know and celebrate other women celebrate other women help each other just to concrete things that people can do number one we're talking a lot about pitching the New York Times or the post given the way media is now just right you have something to say that's right you know start your own blog or go to Huffington Post and sign up for a blogging account or go to Bach there's so many outlets now and places where you can write and you would be a mate you write it tweet it send it to your friends tell them to do the same there are a lot of people who you see on television now talking about different things that's how they started and bookers and editors are always kind of looking around for okay who's writing on this and you know if your stuff comes up they'll call you and see if you're somebody who could speak on it the other thing which we we've talked about is when you get that opportunity and this is the sororicide if you can't do it recommend another woman recommend somebody else to do it and you know go and ask the same thing of the men that you know in the field who are on regularly and say to them hey if you can't do it you know you were great on that show just kidding if you but like if you can't do it next time you know I'd really love it if you'd recommend me right and that takes a little bit of going back to where we kind of started in terms of having the confidence okay but when you get that phone call you've got to go do it yeah yeah I actually now tell people if I can't do I say check out foreign policy interrupted it's such a great list of lots of lots of different people I think that your point about building a portfolio is incredibly important it is easier and easier to build a portfolio and frankly half of what we read is tweeted to us or emailed to us and you don't even know where it comes from the question is is it good and often you know you can publish in the New York Times but if you don't send it out it's not necessarily it'll be read by lots of people but not not everybody by a long shot so before we I'm going to turn it over but any more thoughts on what else we can do just nope all right yes let's do it if you'll wait for the microphone and introduce yourself please I'm the wood panel room has been mentioned a couple of times I'm the closest representative of that here I'm Steven Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations it's great it's great to see you all some of my favorite people on this panel first to Elmira and Lauren this is wonderful I'm hoping that in five years we won't need foreign policy interrupted you're both consumers of pictures of my six-year-old and nine-year-old daughters and that's why this is in particular very very important to me but you want to talk about solutions and something odd has happened to me in my career and I think it speaks to we've talked a lot about media and bookers and so on and so forth I started at the Council on Foreign Relations a decade ago I had done zero dissertation and by the luck of God was offered a position at the Council on day one I get a phone call from someone it's some whether it's CNN or MSNBC or ABC can I come on and talk about something I had done absolutely nothing and my my sense was I went home and I said to my wife I said anybody could have been sitting in that seat and so another part of this is this institutional thing so people like you and Marie who are on boards of these organizations need to exercise this influence in getting people who are not white and male into these seats because that really that's something once I was on TV once I could I proved I could talk on TV and write something people just came back to me I'm confident that all of the people in this room can absolutely do that yes you can but you had you had CFR and that's what they were calling right right and what I'm saying people in positions like and Marie and others need to who are in this place is can exercise influence the other thing the other problem it strikes me and Marie's doing you got to get Richard Haas to do it well we've got we have increased the number of senior fellows who are women at the Council on Foreign Relations our defense policy expert is actually but I'm not here to talk about and thinking about the future and future solutions and it's something that else that I think Karen mentioned it and and and and Lauren mentioned it about sororicide it there's also males who want to hog this stuff people called me to talk about Guinea-Bissab what do I know about Guinea-Bissab I won't go on but there are people who will they'll quickly do a Google search and go on so what I try to do and I invite all the 11 other males who are here when you get that call first of all don't take it if you're not an expert on it and if you know the woman who's an expert on it tell the booker to do that I feel like a lot of the bookers are just Google searching and the Council on Foreign Relations or Brookings or the Washington too comes up a lot of times that's what comes out I mean that's the reality thank you then they're here on the side does somebody want to I just want to say I just want to bring us back to you because I think those are all great points but we're also talking about the part that you were speaking to but then also and I think this is the piece where it's helpful to have a woman's perspective as women we have to have more confidence so that when you get the call I was going to say a lot of women would have said I can't do this I'm first day on the job and I just want to add I mean as a journalist as a journalist as a journalist in the Middle East for the past four years I know wherever I'm on the ground if I'm in Egypt if I'm in Syria Katie and Dada when the uprising is breaking out I call Mel, Steve, Steve is ready at all hours to give me great quote just brain food he's there he's on it I will call a woman not just because she's a woman but because she knows her stuff and I want her in my piece and the majority of the time I would and I still get I'm just not really ready on it give me a couple days girl my deadline is like in two hours I need it now so that's I mean that's yes where the confidence comes in but we also need to yes we need to get over it we need to be confident you need a little push so that's what we're doing here so there are a couple we're going to take a couple at a time so there are a couple so this woman here in black move forward okay that that woman in black too but this one okay thank you so much my name is okay my name is Courtney Raj I'm at the committee to protect journalists and I have two questions when you started to talk about the economic aspect I thought you were going to talk about the economic aspect of balancing a full-time job and trying to produce content I think that's a real issue because you know as someone who's gone to PhD and has a blog so I'm trying to kind of like hit both sides of that right I mean you only have so many hours in the day to write content and it's great to like do it on your blog or Huffington Post but it gets buried so how do you address that how do we shift the economics so that's also addressed and then I think hold that question one of you is going to answer that question quick second question let me give it to somebody okay thank you all right so hold that because we're going to catch three here yes blue and then we'll go back to Nicole and then we'll I'll take another second hi good afternoon my name is Nadia Khan I'm with AltMuslima magazine where I'm an associate editor there first of all I want to say thank you I feel so empowered this afternoon by hearing all this because so many words you guys said are in my mind the last decade I'm the mama for been at home the kind of elephant so you made me I'm here but I wouldn't have the confidence say just that until I heard the words the last 30 minutes but my comment was just say thank you I'm empowered by being here by being at home and working and writing editing the deadlines are so difficult to achieve and I feel that if I can put something else aside I can achieve that but doing it all is challenging and I appreciate that being acknowledged and recognized and I feel comfortable enough in this room to say all that and thank you very very much thank you one more and then we'll thanks thanks Henry great to see you my name is Nicole Golden I'm currently adjunct faculty at George Washington University and I'm affiliated with CSIS in the global movement around gender equality one of the biggest parts of that movement right now is he for she and engaging men in the fight for gender equality and so to your point that there's 11 men in the room I'm curious how is your building this movement your readership your subscribers how you're sort of expanding that to include men as obviously an important part of the process and also Karen you're asking the question about how many women would watch a show about all women I think an interesting question is how many men would watch a farm can I just tell you this is really quickly a lot because most of my viewers were men over 50 I'm trying a little lip gloss a little you know something something seriously I'm not kidding because what is Fox figured out it's not it doesn't hurt if what you're watching looks kind of nice I'm not kidding I mean right like how much attention did Connelisa Rice get when she walked in with those troops with those hot boots on I mean right it's like well yeah good balance yeah but you know to that point it would be ourselves I hear you okay so you there was the economic question and then the question of what are you doing for he per sheet I mean I think just on the economics of it in sort of balancing time I mean the deadlines are what they are right and so and I know for me part of the challenge is because I write weekly for media matters you know I was writing a piece about the what's really going on in the French the slums or the bannouille and I wrote 13 pages for a 700 word thing because I was so like over preparing so part of it is I think we have to check ourselves a little bit on that that's not to say you don't want to be you know proficient and accurate and all of that but I do think women tend to over prepare and over research I do it every week and I literally every week have a conversation with myself where I'm like okay you have to stop you have to just yeah yeah get over it right well and I would also say also respect the fact your editor can help you because you know a lot of us I send in a monthly column for project syndicate they're very good editors right and he's not going to write it for me but I can send in something that's you know a thousand words it's going to get no no no no no a good editor in other words a lot of guys send in things that then get the help I do think there's that sense that it's got to be really really good and honestly there's a point where the best is the enemy of the good and the editors exist in part to help you make your work better and they can they can help I mean I think just to your question I mean on the economics of it it is hard to balance it all frankly I mean that's just that's a reality and I think a lot of women end up feeling like something's going to have to drop in order for me to do these five other things because I can't do 20 things at once and I just think that's until we have better ways of supporting women and men frankly that's just going to be a reality I want to speak a little bit to the confidence issue I think a lot of people who have been young and starting out as writers face that problem and it's not a gender thing and yet there is a gender component but also to the zero sum game there's often that feeling and I think a lot of writers feel it that if somebody else has written on the same subject well they probably know it a little bit better they stole my idea as any editor will tell you especially in this online environment there's a constant need to feed the engine and I can't tell you how many pieces I've run on any number of subjects you name it it's 15 pieces in the last two months and things change you want a different voice, you want a different perspective you want to work with a different author and build something with a different person so I just encourage people to not be afraid to send that pitch I think getting over that hurdle certainly for me has been a big deal when I was a freelancer and a writer I think a lot of people feel that but just because somebody who may have more expertise or you see their name in Project Syndicate has written that same subject before it doesn't mean that your voice, your opinion or your particular take on it isn't valid and just sending a pitch even if it's killed even if someone says look this is really we're not going to work with this right now you have to stay at it a freelancer knows this, it's a grind and it's work getting it's work getting your name out there and work getting your words on all of us get rejected by the New York Times on a regular basis and you have to deal with that so the he for she point the he for she I mean this is definitely one of the things that when Lauren and I sat down we said we don't want to be just the girls club and so we actually proactively reached out to all of our male colleagues in our male counterparts who you know not only to discuss it with them but I know that I've had several discussions I mean Steve Cook is here and he's a dear friend of mine we both follow Turkey but you know he's part of the problem is also we assume that they understand the challenges we have they don't and so I would sit down I mean this may probably ten years ago you know and I would say to Steve you know I'm so frustrated and he was very proactive in listening to me and helping me out and so if I'm able to sit here today he is a large part of it you know Max Fisher is back there you know I've pitched Max Fisher and you know he took the time to sit and to listen and so it's not just about trying to get onto the pages of the New York Times it is about blogging but it's also about going to the male counterparts and saying you know what I have an idea and I'd like to sit down with you I'd like to have a cup of coffee and I'd like to share with you with my ideas because you know what they are open to it and they are receptive of it and you are building your audience and you are building your expertise because then they can go and they can speak to the bookers and the producers and the networks that they know and they can say you know what whether it's me or whether it's Lauren that person knows what she's talking about and they can be your advocate let's take another set here on the front good afternoon ladies and gentlemen my name is Rosemary Sekiro I'm the president of an organization called Hope for Tomorrow and I'm from Washington DC and I'm from Kenya thank you so much for your presentation thank you for meeting you again this was a wonderful conversation and I happened to invite several African women you know women empowerment and women policy was first started in Africa in Kenya 1985 when the women policy started and empowerment before China and before UN in New York Africans where the policy started and the empowerment started at the ones who are back again who don't understand what is going on what is happening apart from now women getting into politics into parliament like we have Rwanda 51% of women in politics as she said and she mentioned our organization has set up an ICT program in the rural areas I'm focusing on the rural area of Kenya in western Kenya where we are now going to be using cell phones to the rural area women to talk because everybody cannot write but with the young people listening to them and writing what they are talking about this is also media so we should not underestimate the rural women who have more powerful policy than just looking at the actual media who are out there to report their story you go to get the story from them and you report you get the credit out of their story when they are suffering they don't know what is happening so how do we get actually work together with African countries like where I'm going to do my projects in ICT in Nigeria and other countries like the lost girls of Nigeria the girl who has just pumped the people 2000 people in Nigeria and died and mostly women are victims when they are violent and conflict and nobody reports about that how do we work with you on social media and just writing so how do we connect that and work together to make this happen Hello my name is Joyce Rogers Halladay and I'm the Executive Director of International Association of African NGOs I'm also a member of the think tank on social accountability with the wall bank just to piggyback on what Rosemary just mentioned I'm from Nigeria and the typical African women is stripped of her self esteem from birth full of your brothers behind your thought to, you know, worship your husbands your thought to speak only when you're asked to speak so a lot of that internal stuff you know basically conflicts them they're crippled by the internal stuff that you mentioned and not only that I want to just encourage I'm so empowered by what you're doing here because we need that on the continent most of the consent of the decisions that were made and have resulted in war on the continent were made by men they were not women on the table they were just men and I am so excited now that in this century a lot of women are now speaking out and we need to encourage them to speak I don't care if you're speaking Latin you're speaking Russian if you're speaking you need to just get up and speak because particularly when it concerns war and peace the women at the end of the day bear the brunt of the war the women and children so I just want to encourage every woman you have something to say just speak thank you very much Hi, I'm Jenna Ben-Yehuda it's nice to see you I founded the women's foreign policy network over the summer I spent 12 years not to out panel your mahogany paneling but at the State Department where there's a lot of that State Department and the Council I win, we're close and I was struck as I just invited 15 of the most amazing women I knew from state to dinner at this hunger that existed for women just to connect just to connect have you seen this when I was in a negotiation you won't believe what they pulled with me do you know, oh I know somebody let me introduce you so I think the other piece of this besides the print the media element which is so critical is that there are lots of women who write who you don't get to read their stuff because it's classified cables or reporting cables but they're part of the decision making process too we'd love to read that stuff unfortunately now a lot of it you can but there is something to be said for the ability just to connect women because these women leave government or come and go and leave in various administrations and they're the next writers right or they're the next political appointees and you want to create that pipeline too but there needs to be some element of community and somebody to lift you up and there's a lot of hunger for that so one more before we go back to the panel there on the and then I'll turn to the back, yeah I see people far and the back hi my name is Samhar and it's a pleasure to meet Lauren in person and of course Ann Marie Slaughter and the rest of the panel very esteemed and it's a pleasure to be here I have a background in conflict and development and now teach at GW but I also run a diaspora African women's network and a lot of things you're saying about gender and access ring true at that racial and ethnic level but also what's been interesting is when it comes to discussions on very geopolitical hotspots, security areas, Horn of Africa is my area, Sudan and Horn of Africa where I've been and DC centric established conversation, you know the last the different spaces I've been in it's everything you've highlighted what I have found that has been really instrumental is social media and you've talked extensively about television but in my case and in the diasporas cases and in these regions like the Horn of Africa where access to information is so difficult to gain, to penetrate Twitter has decentralized the conversation of regularly work with journalists off the record sometimes on the record but in particular on issues of foreign policy that are more soft power which I think rounding out this conversation so I wanted to get your thoughts on the power of social media how it's served even for FP I'm subscribed to that and also a pleasure to meet some friends I see in the audience it's good, thank you so we have three minutes I've been remiss actually because we are supposed to end at 145 so I'm going to go down there were three questions there particularly on focusing on a broader set of women particularly African women rural women and everywhere women who are not heard from and I would particularly be interested in connecting that to the point that yes we know when women are on peace delegations different things happen we've got lots of research on that and yet we talk about broadening foreign policy so that it's more than war how about getting women into the core which is war so I'd like to hear your responses and thoughts in a final round and I'll go down this way well actually let me reverse it okay go this way let's go that way no no no you go first come on it's only fair really I'm all gang up on me now it is I think finding there are a lot of underserved communities you know African women and you can name there's lots of them it is a difficult thing as an editor to find a way to give voice to those people speaking practically it's hard to find people who can write but what we're looking for are journalists men and women who can tell these stories in a compelling way I mean really my job at the end of the day is to put good words on a page and to make readers and people out here feel like foreign policy is a place to come and get those stories and they are security stories they are development stories they are war stories too and you know what we've seen in places like Baga in Nigeria you know it's very difficult to tell those stories it's very difficult to get assets it's very difficult to get those voices but when you do it's extraordinarily compelling and so it's not just numbers on the page or you know satellite images from above or an analyst in Washington trying to tell those stories and that's I think what makes for good magazine journalism and quickly in the social media side I mean this is enormously important I just want to highlight my colleague over there Emma raise your hand Emma Emma is amazing my colleague who is really responsible and she's very shy but she is a fabulous twitter feed and enormously important in building the social media presence of our magazine and she speaks a lot on social media and gender component as well so I would encourage all of you to follow her and reach out and just really quick point I'm so sorry what is your name? Joyce so I was in Nigeria last spring I planned my reporting trip before Bring Back Our Girls and when I was on the ground I got a lot of emails from editors and producers and networks like can we have you on to talk about this and it wasn't just not knowing my stuff but it was my first trip to Nigeria and I'm like why do I just because I have a relatively high social media visibility whatever that means why am I being called upon I have five Nigerian colleagues around me also women give them the mic give them the mic so Myer which of you want I mean I think just on a broader level I think this is not just about interrupting foreign policy I think as Lauren pointed out I think a lot of industries need interrupting so I think it's a systemic issue and I think a lot of there was a couple of questions about balance I'm gonna say something about that right at the end this is a subject I know that's near and dear to you you know it's not the responsibility of a woman to take care of a family it's a responsibility that everyone has and I think now it's the 21st it's 2015 people it's time that we stop putting that burden on our shoulder and you know stop being so hard on ourselves you know I started practicing yoga about 10 years ago and the greatest lesson that I took away from yoga is it's about progress not perfection and so you know really take one step at a time and just know that you're good is good enough but just get out there because it's not just and this is something that my mother actually said to me when I said people are encouraging me to write a book and I said but I can't write a book you know what you know who am I and my mother said write a book write it for me because it you know you explain things in a way that I understand it so she said don't write it for yourself write it for me so when you're doing it ladies do it for other women and do it for the cause that's great um so a couple things one I think social media is incredibly important and I think the story of the lost girls is perfect in terms of social media helped make that a story right it was going on for a long time and people weren't really paying attention so I think social media is incredibly powerful um and I would say I don't mean to be a downer after such an inspiring thing unfortunately I think stories out of Africa just get less attention period I mean you know the best recent example you know what happened and I called my mother's flipping out a 10 year old girl bomb strapped her go has to go into a village she doesn't even know what's happening and yes what happened in Paris was horrendous but one got so much more attention than the other part of the challenge was they couldn't get the information out and part of when we started to find out the story was survivors had actually made it to places where they could and reporters finally made it to places where they could communicate but so this I would say would be the next wave it's women but also in terms of communities of color people of color and change in the way we think about um continents like Africa like the Middle East and the stories coming from there because most of what we see is death destruction and war and we don't get to see the other side from those other voices thank you so thanks to all of you I will say one last word imparting that uh you mentioned that foreign policy interrupted is not just about younger women and it shouldn't be the greatest untapped pool of talent out there are women in their late 40s early 50s 60s who took time out because they are raising families and yes it is all responsibility but let's face it those women still have the credentials still have the interest they may need a little help getting back in but that's those are women whose voices we should hear all over the world just as much as the millennial women you can't do it all at the same time but you can do it you just need people who are willing to let you try so with that uh thanks to all of you thanks to Peter uh and the international security program