When Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) started the Ultimate Women’s Power Lunch, her annual fundraiser, it was a small affair. Seven years later, nearly 1,800 high-powered women – and a few select men – gathered at McCormick Place in downtown Chicago to hear remarks by the event’s headliners, Michelle Obama and Valerie Plame Wilson.
“This event sure has grown,” Obama said, during her opening comments at the luncheon Friday.
The luncheon is a fundraiser for Schakowsky, who represents the 9th Congressional District, including Evanston. Attendees included several of Evanston’s aldermen: Steven Bernstein (4th), Anjana Hansen (9th), Ann Rainey (8th) and Cheryl Wollin (1st).
While Obama was invited to deliver the opening remarks, Wilson, an outspoken Clinton supporter, was the keynote speaker. Still, both Obama and Wilson largely avoided discussing the primaries in their planned remarks, opting instead to discuss the current political situation in broad strokes.
In her speech, Obama relayed a story about a woman she met at the North Carolina military base Fort Bragg. The woman’s husband had been deployed so many times that he had “missed two-thirds of their child’s six-year-old life,” Obama said.
“The spouses are serving our country too, but they’re not getting the respect they deserve,” Obama said. “Many feel that the policies of the last eight years are failing them.”
She continued, “The pressures women face are the same regardless of race, religion or politics … Many feel isolated in their struggle.”
Wilson, who spoke at Northwestern in November, spent the majority of her speech criticizing the current administration, describing the divulging of her secret identity as “treason.”
“It’s been nearly five years since the betrayal of my covert CIA identity,” she opened. “It was a career that I loved … and I did this as a woman, then as a wife, then as a mother.”
Although the event was inevitably political, it also sought to highlight women in leadership positions and inculcate the next generation of leaders. Members of the Young Women’s Leadership Institute in New York City and students from the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School in Chicago were in attendance.
“It was very exciting,” said Antavia Banner, 17, a senior at the charter school, about seeing Obama. “I haven’t seen her before.”
Many women starting out in leadership make the mistake of not stating their goals, Schakowsky said after the luncheon.
“If you’re interested, make your ambitions known,” she said. “I think women are reluctant to do that.”
She described how she launched into politics as a consumer advocate. In those days, she was far meeker.
“When I first got involved with consumer stuff, the thing I would not do was talk in public,” she said in an interview after the luncheon, but that changed with experience,.
“Women don’t think adequate is good enough – we want perfection,” she said. “Sometimes, you just do it – knees shaking, voice cracking.”
