www.masbakersfield.com

Hear las mujeres roar!

larger view

DELANO — For all of Dolores Huerta’s ties to the community of Delano, she admitted earlier this month that she had been invited to speak at a school there only three times.
Well, those ties to this northern Kern County town remain strong as about 200 people came to Robert F. Kennedy High School’s Lecture Hall to hear Huerta speak about “The Power of Women in the 20th Century.”
During those nearly four decades, she has often spoken elsewhere — even across the world.
Before she spoke on this scheduled topic, Huerta lauded the school’s namesake, Bobby Kennedy, saying he “was close to us, and helped get (farmworkers) attention.”
Then she began to talk on the subject, mentioning that women were indeed the majority in the United States and the world.
So, Huerta wondered aloud why that percentage wasn’t equal in more hallowed places like Congress, where women make up 17 percent, or the corporate world, there it is only 8 percent.
“We are way behind many other countries,” she said. America is No. 70 in women representation.
“At that rate,” Huerta paused, “it will take us 150 years to get gender equity.”
She didn’t blame just men or white people. She also blamed women and people of color for not being ready to take part.
“Women’s voices are very important in our world,” Huerta said. “And women have to be prepared to do work in our world,” although she concluded some women are not psychologically prepared for the task.
She said that comes with society’s philosophy of protecting and supporting women. She pointed to animator Walt Disney, who through his popular children’s films, told lots of little girls that “Prince Charming” will come. But in the real world, there are a lot of “pretender” princes out there, “kissing girls and then leaving.”
Leaving women to ask, “Where’s baby’s daddy at?”
“How can we change the way women are raised?” she said, “so, our women know they are strong.”
Huerta noted statistics that everywhere, women are getting beat, raped and murdered.
“Some men thought they owned women’s bodies.”
She stressed self-defense, and not just the physical kind.
“We can emotionally defend ourselves to be successful, too,” Huerta said.
Women need to get used to taking credit for successes, instead of taking a backseat to men.
She told the audience of her own mistakes, in which she literally “gave up a seat at the table” with the big boys.
After helping negotiate one of pacts between the farmworkers and the farmers in the area around Delano, Huerta remembers as they readied to take a photograph of the historic moment, she actually got up and gave her seat to one of the male labor leaders, which resulted in her not being in the picture.
She didn’t even realize she had done it until after looking at the photo some years later.
“At first, you are going to feel funny doing it,” Huerta said about women taking their rightful honor. “But you must stand up and take credit.”