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:
“I know not what the younger dreams—
Some vague Utopia—and she seems,
When withered old and skeleton-gaunt,
An image of such politics.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I had heard so much about how hard it was supposed to be that, when they were little, I thought it would be horrible when they got married and left. But that’s silly you know. . . . By the time they grow up, they change and you change. Eventually, they’re not the same little kids and you’re not the same mother. It’s as if everything just falls into a pattern and you’re ready.”
—Anonymous Mother. As quoted in Women of a Certain Age, by Lillian B. Rubin, ch. 2 (1979)
“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, not to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new—but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.”
—Hannah Arendt (20th century)
“Collective guilt is borne by what is conventionally called the scapegoat. Now the scapegoat for white society—which is based on myths of progress, civilization, liberalism, education, enlightenment, refinement—will be precisely the force that opposes the expansion and the triumph of these myths. This brutal opposing force is supplied by the Negro.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)