Women Gathering is Political: Embrace it.

How Women's Groups Change the World

For over a year, AMONG OTHER THINGS has hosted monthly women-only events for moms to discuss women’s issues, socialize, and support one another. These gatherings have fostered new friendships, recognized invisible labor, and illuminated problems with maternal health. If you’ve ever been a woman venting to another woman about personal challenges, you know the magic that happens when women come together.

Women’s gatherings like this have often been viewed by society as trite and just “preaching to the choir”. As if our common ground is the end of the conversation instead of a launching pad to solutions. That's why words like “gossip”, once a term to describe a supportive network of women helping new moms, has been twisted into meaning idle chatter or even betrayal. “Sewing circles” are defined as a bunch of old women “gossiping” but historically they were political discussions, particularly during the abolitionist movement.

It’s no accident these labels have been designed to make us seem smaller, less powerful, and more divided. After all, if we’re too busy fighting over “gossip” we’ll be too distracted to participate in policy. Like Jessica Knoll says in The Favorite Sister: “The patriarchy survives so long as women are pitted against one another.” Because when women unite, we stop settling for scraps and start questioning patriarchal structures that hold us all back.

Just look at the Progressive Era. Women’s clubs like AOT weren’t just an excuse for tea and cookies. These gatherings led to the 19th Amendment, child labor laws, and reforms that shaped modern America. In the 1960s and ‘70s, women gathered in bars and homes to discuss their rights and visibility. Consciousness-raising groups were critical in organizing second-wave feminism.

Research shows that just 3.5% of a population can bring about serious political change. So maybe when us moms in NYC gather, we are enacting the power to shake entire systems. After all, New York City has always been a beacon for cultural change and politics. Just recently NYC’s progressive politics and policies—like its embrace of LGBTQ+ rights and minimum wage increases—set trends that have rippled out to national platforms.

What if AMONG OTHER THINGS could reshape our current hostile political climate just by gathering, educating, and inspiring one another? What if we stopped thinking of our social events as a mere opportunity to vent and started treating them as think tanks for real equality? Or at least a better PTA, school board, and neighborhood.

Gathering as women to talk about issues that affect us personally and how we want to better our community isn't just bonding, it's a powerful act of civic engagement. Our conversations are the seeds of action, and we have the potential to shift the course of NYC and beyond by having them.

The truth is all politics are local. The decisions that impact our daily lives—how our children’s schools are run, the state of our local parks, and even the lack of affordable housing—are shaped by local officials. And in NYC these officials are often picked in primaries and special elections where very few people vote.

That’s why our next AOT event, In Pursuit Of: Civic Duties on October 16th, is so crucial. We’ll dive into the details of the upcoming local elections and discuss how every single one of us can make a difference with our educated vote. Change starts at the community level, and together, we can ensure our voices are heard where it counts the most. Because when we gather, we don’t just chat—we change the world.

RSVP here. Learn more about our writer, Tiffany Hodges, here.