The Younger Women's Task Force (YWTF) is a project of the National Council of Women's Organizations. Founded in January of 2005, it is an American progressive non-profit advocacy organization centering on issues of importance to women ages 20-39. It consists of 12 chapters with a total claimed membership of 3500.
Its stated goals are to:
- Provide a stronger voice in the policy making process for women in their 20’s and 30’s;
- Increase the impact of younger women activists through the articulation of, and collaboration on, a common agenda;
- Create a culture of inclusion where decision-making and power are practiced collectively, and members from diverse backgrounds participate in all levels of YWTF;
- Define and develop the next generation of women leaders;
- Create a local and national network for peer mentoring, networking and sharing resources.
YWTF chapters have worked on a number of issues including increasing younger women's access to information about real estate, ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment and encouraging younger women to run for political office. YWTF recently announced a Media Democracy Project, a program intended to increase American young women’s ability to create their own media through alternative means.
Famous quotes containing the words younger, women, task and/or force:
“‘Tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age,
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we
Unburdened crawl toward death.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Working women today are trying to achieve in the work world what men have achieved all along—but men have always had the help of a woman at home who took care of all the other details of living! Today the working woman is also that woman at home, and without support services in the workplace and a respect for the work women do within and outside the home, the attempt to do both is taking its toll—on women, on men, and on our children.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“Like dreaming, reading performs the prodigious task of carrying us off to other worlds. But reading is not dreaming because books, unlike dreams, are subject to our will: they envelop us in alternative realities only because we give them explicit permission to do so. Books are the dreams we would most like to have, and, like dreams, they have the power to change consciousness, turning sadness to laughter and anxious introspection to the relaxed contemplation of some other time and place.”
—Victor Null, South African educator, psychologist. Lost in a Book: The Psychology of Reading for Pleasure, introduction, Yale University Press (1988)
“Misfortunes leave wounds which bleed drop by drop even in sleep; thus little by little they train man by force and dispose him to wisdom in spite of himself. Man must learn to think of himself as a limited and dependent being; and only suffering teaches him this.”
—Simone Weil (1909–1943)