Women, Power and Politics: A Rising Tide?

From a Senate race in New Hampshire to the Presidential palace in Chile; from a team of high school debaters in New York City competing to participate in the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute’s Citywide Debate Competition to the halls of Parliament in Rwanda, women are becoming empowered. What inspires them, drives them, and keeps them at the top? In this documentary, originally aired on PBS’s weekly news program “NOW,” Maria Hinojosa ’84 embarks on her own personal journey to discover the struggles women and girls face as they embrace power and seek to change the world. The film provides an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes risks, triumphs, and in some cases defeats, of being a woman leader today. A discussion with Hinojosa, a Barnard alum, will follow the screening.

Maria Hinojosa, an award-winning journalist and author, joined the PBS news show “NOW” as senior correspondent in 2005. Hinojosa, who formerly covered urban affairs for CNN, also serves as anchor and managing editor of National Public Radio’s “Latino USA,” a weekly national program reporting on news and culture in the Latino community. Hinojosa is the anchor of her own Emmy Award-winning talk show on WGBH in Boston, “One on One with Maria Hinojosa.” Hinojosa has garnered many awards and honors, including an Emmy in recognition for her work covering the September 11th attacks, a lifetime achievement award in media by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors, and a Robert F. Kennedy award in radio for her reporting on the disadvantaged. Her personal experiences as a Mexican-American career woman, wife and mother living in New York were published in 1999 in her critically acclaimed memoir, Raising Raul: An Adventure Raising Myself and My Son. In 1995 she published Crews: Gang Members Talk with Maria Hinojosa, a book based on her award-winning NPR report.