Politics
A Recap: The Economic Gender Gap
Wednesday night was the third session in Democracy for America's War For Women webinar training series. Jennifer Granholm, Jenifer Daniels and Jim Dean all chimed in to talk about our the current wage gap, and how we can start a conversation that will help change it.
- If you missed our last webinar, you missed out! The webinar opened with a video from Jennifer Granholm, who couldn't be live on the call, but she had a strong message for our viewers.
- Jennifer Granholm spoke about how desperately we need a President who will stand with women and support them fully and equally.
- There were a lot of enlightening statistics unveiled in last night's webinar. If women were paid equally it would have a hugely positive impact on our economy. The webinar viewers were asked to guess how exactly how much money would be added into our consumer economy if all women were paid equally. How much? Approximately half a trillion dollars.
- After Granholm's video we heard from our next speaker, Jenifer Daniels. Daniels is also known as the "friendraiser" on twitter and on her website. She has devoted her career to teaching people how to start a conversation and communicate a message effectively. As she says, simply, how to "keep it real."Jenifer Daniels spoke candidly about communicating and about the changes that progressives need to make in order to improve delivery of our messages. She opened by stressing that she is just like all of us. A regular, hard working, woman trying to communicate the things that matter to her.
I am just a regular person like you guys... a frustrated progressive who knows we need to get better at messaging. @thefriendraiser #DFAw4w- Daniels spoke about the Flesh-Kincaid reading level test. A tool that measures the approximate education level of a piece of writing. For example, USA Today is written on about a 6th or 7th grade reading level.This is not dumbing down, she stressed, its simply speaking to people at their level.There's no need to be overly antiquated when using simpler terms would get the message across much better. For example if you can choose the word "use", why would you instead pick "utilize"? It's important to keep it simple, concise and consistent.Daniels used various examples, many from Republican campaigns, to show why some of their messages are so much easier to follow and catch onto. They know how to use repetition and simplicity to get their message across and this is something that we need to improve upon.
- When communicating a message, the first thing to remember is simplicity. @thefriendraiser #DFAw4w
- "we've got a lot to say to a lot of different people, we've got to get better at saying it more than once." #consistency @thefriendraiser
- After explaining some big ideas about communicating, and specifically communicating politically, Jenifer Daniels opened up the conversation to the viewers. She asked for viewers to come up with some catchy, simple slogans to describe the fight for equal pay."It should be 27 words or less, Daniels said, 9 seconds... 3 points"
- "The best way to message anything is to stick with 27 words or less.... 9 seconds... 3 points." @thefriendraiser #DFAw4w
- The viewers got pretty involved, coming up with things such as "W-A-G-E: Women are getting even." And "your mother is worth more than 77 cents."
- The most important thing to take away from this webinar, is something that Jenifer Daniels said at the very end. "You already know what to say," she said, "you live this." These are issues that matter to us. These are things that we talk about and complain about every day. We know what we want to say, we just need a bit of help with how to say it.So remember, keep it simple, keep it concise, and repeat it.
- "Equal pay DOES make for a stronger economy for all." Repeat that message. @thefriendraiser #DFAw4w
