I Am Platform

When I tell people that I am helping create a national conference for collegiate women to express their minds and opinions on policy issues affecting us, I am normally greeted with either questions asking why, or individuals telling me how daunting of a task it is that I am taking on. However, I know it is a daunting task—that is partially one of the reasons I am doing it. However, there is so much more to it, and that is what I tell people every time I get that “Why?” question.

Platform is not just a conference, it is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for a young woman who has strong opinions on policies affecting her, but feels silenced by society, to get a chance to voice those opinions. Platform is an opportunity to empower women to rise above that glass ceiling in politics, business and every other industry out there. It is an opportunity for women to fight, not only for themselves, but also for other women. Platform is an opportunity to give policy issues like sex education, family planning, further reproductive rights, equal pay and others that are always looked at as women’s issues—and as a result less important—validation and time in the spotlight.

That is what I tell people when they ask me why I am doing this. I am doing this so that my daughter lives in a world that treats her more as an equal than it has treated me. I am doing this because I live in a world where women’s conferences have to be created because we are not treated as peers naturally. I am doing this because Platform is not just a conference; Platform is an opportunity, and I will take that opportunity and give it to every young woman I can so that she, too, can see why she is just as important as any man in this world.