V-DAY, MoveOn.Org and Planned Parenthood Launch Media Campaign Promoting Women and Voting
09/14/2004
**Celeb Partners Isabella Rossellini, Rosario Dawson, Gina Gershon and others join in
New York – Leading actors and musicians joined with women from all walks of life on Monday evening for an evening of entertainment designed to inspire and encourage women to vote in the upcoming presidential election. The evening kicked-off with an extraordinary photo shoot by renowned photographer Roxanne Lowit featuring 50 of these women in a group photograph to be used in a new media campaign called 50 Million Women Count!
The campaign will use the photo “50 Women Ask 50 Million More” in educational outreach and advertising designed to persuade women voters to take ten more women with them to the Polls on Election Day. MoveOn.org, V-Day and Planned Parenthood Action Fund partnered in the event, which was followed by a night of stirring performances at the Apollo Theater.
More than 50 million women were eligible to vote but did not cast ballots in 2000. Twenty-two million of these women are unmarried women. In 2000, if unmarried women voted at the same rate as married women, over six million more votes would have been counted and women would have been the deciding “x” factor in that very close election.
“Show us a woman without an opinion and we’ll show you a woman without a pulse,” said Laura Dawn, event and cultural director for MoveOn.org. “We want women and their opinions to count in the electoral process.”
According to V-Day founder/Playwright Eve Ensler, "Voting is a form of activism - we are here today to encourage all women to vote and to make ending the rampant violence against women which affects one in three women in the world a central focus of politics alongside jobs, healthcare, and security.”
Gloria Feldt President of Planned Parenthood said 50 Million Women Count! underscores the importance of women voters in 2004. “It’s more important than ever that women stand up for their rights, indeed their very lives, and participate fully in our democracy,” Feldt said. “Our fundamental freedom to make personal decisions about our health and our lives is profoundly influenced by whether we exercise our right to vote.”
Celebrity participants in the “50 Women Ask 50 Million More” photograph included Vanessa Carlton, Toni Childs, Kate Clinton, Rosario Dawson, Jane Fonda, Gina Gershon, Hazelle Goodman, Jehmu Greene, Miss Info, Joya, Charlotte Martin, Tony Pinkins, Shiva Rose, Isabella Rosellini, Gloria Steinem, Marie Wilson, and others.
For more information on 50 Million Women Count! visit