For our first fieldwork, we went to a movie screening called Women’s Voices: The Gender Gap, which was about women’s rights. It took place on October 25, 2012. It showed a movie made during the Reagan era about women’s opinions on politics and related topics, and was followed by a panel presentation that talked about the current state of the same issues. On the panel was Jenny Rohrer, Nancy Meyer, Nicole Hollander, Faye Anderson, Page S. Gardener, Amy Richards and Lillian Jiménez. The panel discussed several things, including the tendencies for women to vote democratic because the democratic party has historically supported women’s rights more then the republican party. This still holds true today, with the republican party being against women having the choice to have an abortion, as well as several notable ones, including Paul Ryan, publicly stating that they support the Fair Pay Act being revoked. They also talked about several other interesting things, including differences in opinion of Obama and Romney based on marriage, progress in women’s rights that have been made, and ways to organize and communicate with women in general. The points raised at the presentation invoke some questions. Why do more women vote democratic, and why have they throughout history? What exactly is the fair pay act, and when was it passed? What would be a reason to repeal it?

In terms of organization, we didn’t have a lot of time to put it together, so it was all very improvised. We showed up, bought tickets, went in and sat back for the duration of the film. During the panel presentation Isabel took notes on her iPad. But this fieldwork was most important for the contacts we made afterwards. We have since called and are planning to call several of the people on the panel, and several of the organizations that were mentioned in the discussion. Still, for future fieldworks we should do more planning and try to be more organized in general. Determining things like pickup and drop off times, who’s getting us around and how, wearing more business esq. clothes, etc. Overall it was successful, and next time it should go more smoothly since we know what to do now.