done to be successful. the reality is these people are the same people they were 10 years ago and are going to be. the person they are today may be frowned upon 10 years from now are was frowned upon 10 years earlier. it is critical as you great your company and your cultures that you absolutely internalize this fact. there are many different ways to be successful. i was having a conversation with the ceo of pinterest. ben said, all these women out there who are leaders, there is this superpower that has enabled them to do amazing things. they are all different. i thought that was an amazing insight. when i tell you and implore you

to find your own means of being successful and understand there are many different ways to be successful, i will frame it in his language. find your individual superpower and leverage that. be successful in your own way. if you manage by deep caring about your people while not worrying about what they think about you, you will be a successful -- as successful as you can possibly be. always remember when you are thinking about communicating clearly with people, you may think people are fooled if you're telling them what they want to hear -- they are looking at you all the time. if you try to lead in some way that is not true to who you are, they can see it. they will see through it.

you will lose the trust of the team. it is those simple pieces of advice of how to lead. have a great life. [applause] ♪ >> more from the techcrunch disrupt in san francisco with engineers and executives from silicon valley discussing the latest in jewelry and robotics. this is 25 minutes. >> we are going to talk about robots. but first we are going to do something a little bit fun. who here remembers

[indiscernible] the problem with talk o copter is that it doesn't exist. it's just a dream until today. are we getting video? here it comes. >> slightly terrified. [applause] now that the tough part is out of the way, what we are going to talk about, everybody probably has an idea in their head about a robot from science fiction

like cp30 the jetsons made. that's all we're going to talk about. we are going to talk about robots that don't look like your traditional robots. it might even be a thermostat. we will start with those science fiction robots and have you tell us your favorite. >> my favorite robot is kitt from "knight rider." >> mine is c3po. >> i have to go with wall-e. >> you came up with this idea for the panel. what do you think on the other side is the boundary between what makes a robot a robot versus a hardware? >> a lot of people think of robotics as humanoid robot that can move around.

the definition i think of and we think of is something that can sense your surroundings, but the device can be absolutely anything. think about an enchanted object and that's what i think about as a robot. >> that is good. with that definition in mind, we want the other 3 guys to convince us that what you are working on is a robot or has robot like qualities. >> robotics is about making his ill things come to life and using software to define them to do fascinating things. for us, we are starting with entertainment. to make physical characters understand their surrounding, they understand what they are doing and they come to life to make experiences possible in the

physical world that have never been possible before. that's our first incarnation of this in people's living room. >> for us, it's a little different because we have a different challenge. we build uav's and make them as close as possible to a helicopter without a pilot in it. software to make these guys smart. to go to certain locations, do things, come back. >> when you build a device that are that -- a device that is intelligent, where does that come from? from the beginning, we knew we had to build a machine that would learn from you. we built a team like we would have done, we hired a lot of our old colleagues from carnegie mellon, one of them being our old professor to build a

thermostat. >> when you realize these guys were experts in a robotics, was it a hard sell? >> it was a really easy sell. once you hear the idea like do a thermostat, first you think i'm nuts. then you realize how big the problem is. everyone has them. they haven't been replaced in 20 years. they are wasting energy, horrible design issues, it becomes pretty obvious. for robotists, there's fencers and environment changes. >> you have one or multiple thermometers at home? >> i do. >> to boil down what the value proposition is, how would you say that has changed your home life? >> i don't need to worry about what my home is doing when i'm away.

when i leave, i'm confident the temperature will turn down and not run my air conditioning all day. if i go out, it turns off automatically. in california, the weather is mild but for the rest of the country, that is a problem and a waste of time of energy that way. -- they waste a lot of time and energy that way. >> let's talk about drones. did you feel confident? >> 100%. >> that would have been really hard. >> you talked a little bit about what sky catch is doing. talk about how it is different from other drone companies. >> absolutely. we are working with really large companies and scaling them with a remote control, gathering information. we can deploy hundreds of

thousands of these and we do it all using very high tech technology for keeping a drone in the air. >> you are mostly building this for industrial reasons? >> that's correct. focusing on companies in the areas of construction, mining, agriculture, wind turbines, solar panels, that's the range we work with. >> a tougher question -- somebody tweeted at me and i would be interested in getting other people's take on this -- as we move into an industrial complex, are we going to put people out of work? >> personally, i think is going to augment our ability to make better decisions. not necessarily replace people,

but we did a test with uc davis and we had a farmer there was very skeptical about this. in fact, he said i'm not going to use this and when he finally got him to test it out, his reaction was like a little kid. we don't know anything about farming. he was able to make decisions right away. >> do you think that is universally true? do you think the existing world forces going to change? >> we have never had this data set before. just like we never had google maps. one of our team members said this is google map in real time and more high definition. for management, security, for fulfilling resources when you

run out of sand or panels. you can act really quickly. phone. using the >> i imagine the initial project is not competitive with human labor. i know that there is something we can talk about, but do you think there is potential for competition from a labor perspective? >> a lot of robotics are actually additive. people have been playing toys and games forever, it is just now we are making the first videogame but does not replace someone whose experiences are better. it just makes the overall efficiency that much higher. >> again, you talked a little

bit about the technology already, but you were on stage at their last event at apple. how many people saw that? the world of racecars? at first it was just like these guys are racecars, whatever, but in terms of what was actually happening? >> for us, it is the tip of the iceberg in consumer robotics. we have always been focused on agriculture and industrial defense space. this is the first time that people could expect the technology to come into their lives and have a big impact. all of our robots are engineered to think. they truly understand where they are and their environment. they have a personality. they behave in a way that you would not expect a physical character to behave. that was in some ways our trojan horse. the approach has carried over into almost every aspect of daily life.

>> cars, eventually? >> the funny thing is we do have self driving cars in our living rooms. a lot of the projects that we think of as the holy grail of robotics, human robot, that is a good 10, 15, 20 year goal. we are approaching from the bottom up. using it as a stepping stone to do more down the road. >> what about giving each of these devices personality? can you talk more about that? >> in the context of what they use on stage, each of those cars has a role. one of them was aggressive. something you take for granted in a videogame, but when it happens in front of you, it is

really surprising. another character might be more sneaky or defensive. another one might be trying to avoid the skirmish entirely. this gives us the ability to program personalities the same way that you would do with a videogame character. >> stepping back from the specific companies for a second, you have invested in companies that could be considered robotics companies. could you maybe talk about what connects them and what they are looking for? >> one of the things we look at is if there is something happening in the technology that enables a new set of capabilities that follows what could be more horsepower in the cpu.

it could be just more and more wireless and activity, etc., looking for things they get better with time. when you look at nests, all three of these companies, they push out software upgrades to their hardware regularly. what winds up happening is just like baseball gloves that we all had that got better the longer you had it. because of these updates, because of the machine learning, the device gets better with time. this is a new relationship and it is something that we look for when we think about robotics related companies. >> what does that do for planned obsolescence? will i never have to replace it? >> it could be a nest, take a look at the speakers in your house. what winds up happening is instead of going to a given customer and saying they will become a repeat customer, you start to think of customers as

people who advocate for your product. for the first time in history you have hardware robotics companies where products become higher net promoters over time. the longer someone has the thermostat drone, the more likely they are to advocate to their friends and colleagues to be purchased. >> matt? is that how you think about it? >> we think about it. we think about the relationship with our customer. we deliver software updates for free, an unknown thing, everything coming on the internet. it should get better with time, you should love it more and more as time goes on, and that propels us forward. that word-of-mouth is the most valuable thing.

as a growing company, we should have new services to get people to buy things they did not have before. >> i wanted to go back to talking about coming from an academic background, robotics. boris, one of the things you talked about before was the challenge of going from a university setting and being a for-profit company. can you talk about what you have learned, doing that? >> it is totally ok to use a half-million dollar robot with $80,000 sensors and quad cpu's in the back to navigate when you want to make a product in consumer robotics that people can afford and use. you have to be very clever on how you use the clever combinations of components, sensors, computations, doing

things at a much cooler price point than would be possible otherwise. >> is that something you have struggled with as well? >> we had to fit seven sensors, two wireless radios, a package that was like this big, it had to be able to run for years. that is something you have to do in research. >> it is all about performance. >> heavily constrained, ship it. >> people with an academic background, did you have to kind of yell at them for a while? >> the way that it is structured is we have the engineering team that implements those cool ideas. and then we have the guys that know how to ship it, ship it. >> graduate school is a very different problem.

the roots are actually the same. the algorithms only made sense years ago, but now they are finding a great place. >> same thing at dod. flying together, doing different figure eights, it was hundreds of thousands of dollars, you cannot really reprobate that into the commercial world. it can be completely autonomous. it can move into a small little board. >> have you succeeded in doing that? >> we have had different rhythms algorithms to keep it

autonomous. >> the goal is to make it autonomous. we had an experiment at the office of a drone following a laser, following a beacon within the port without any aid from the outside, which is really challenging. further finding the algorithms without too much sentencing guides, it is really challenging. >> talk about that same issue from the investor perspective. to what extent, when someone first comes in to pitch you, are you thinking about cost structure? >> one of the things that we can find when someone comes in is how much they loved the product and how much they understood the customer.

they want something expensive and reliable. we take a look and try to figure out pretty quickly if this is someone who understands the customer. i know that is not directly the question you are asking, but -- >> right. his cost one of the starters? >> particularly. for a consumer operation we look at the atlantic costly billing materials around $30 or $40. maybe it is higher value added. >> right now you mentioned enterprise and consumer. >> we look at both. if you look at the things going on around drones, those applications could be around monitoring or applying fertilizer with surveillance. those can support significantly higher price points.

>> one other thing i wanted to talk about was stuff breaking. people see that is symbolic of the broader movement where they have these nightmares of everything malfunctioning in their house. how do you think about that? >> in the context of robotics, it will do a lot of that for you. we have to keep you in control. automated demand response with peak energy times, we always have to give that control to them. counter to how the machine

usually works, we have to be transparent. >> maybe a more general way of looking at that is that these devices is to turn off the automation? >> exactly. what about the drone space and industrial space? are there crashes and stuff? >> when something goes wrong, you just go down. redundancy is one of the things you have to go down. motors. drivers for the it just gets more complex when you are up any air. >> what about you, boris? what about being on stage at apple? >> it was an amazing experience. that was our first coming-out party, we worked on that for four or five years. we have had a lot of the same challenges, where fundamentally

we sell hardware that is defined in a way that is robust and capable, giving you the capabilities that you will need for a long time. alternate flexibility on the software side to expand the experience over time. keeping it enjoyable and entertaining, a lot of that goes into the original design. being upfront where you cannot predict the things in the software, that becomes one of the most original parts of the process. >> i know that normally you work with standards and drones, the biggest issue in terms of the most obvious thing in the air? infrastructure needs to be regulated.

no one has stepped forward or put anything in place that allows us to regulate. i am working with an organization that separates the drone companies that do things for good and for bad. we are both working with highway.org, building the blueprints of what an intercity highway would look like, with pickups, stations, using that to lift up the economy and the city with registration, tall prices and all of that. >> where you see the dividing line, as a technology provider, how much will have that? >> a lot of it has to do with the infrastructure that is in place. they will be the ones who put the technology in place for them as well. every time something hooks up,

no one looks at it, it gets shut down. these are all things that you can do, at some point. >> we are basically running out of time, but one last lightning round question, 10 years from now, what is one thing that humans do that will be done primarily by robots? >> self driving cars. >> installing thermometers with drones. >> thermostats. >> entertainment will have much higher levels of intelligence than today. >> thank you guys for joining us. [applause] ♪ >> another segment from the

techcrunch disrupt conference in san francisco. a conversation with the ceo of snap chat. a brochure and application of value and more than $800 million. this is 20 minutes. >> hey. what's up? >> not too much. great to be here. >> great to have you, man. it has been a really long time since we talked a lot about six hours. how have things changed? >> a lot going on. do you want a snap chat update? >> last time we talked, it was like 200 million snaps a day. >> now we are seeing 350 million snaps every day. >> that's a big number. >> it is super cool. last month, we saw a 50% lift on android bases great it is starting to compete with the iphone crew which is very exciting. >> let's talk about the demographics.

it is a teen app, all about the teens, but parents are jumping on it. we were talking about how an older group is using it. what is that looking like? >> i was just snapping my mom this morning. we are growing across every demo. i see 16-year-olds using it at the mall and 30-year-olds using it at the airport. >> awesome. >> this idea of things that disappear and don't last forever on the internet, it is clearly working for you. do you think other apps or social services are going to pick up on this? >> i think the fundamental premise of snap chat is that it is better and more fun

if you delete everything except the things you want to save trade currently, the way a lot of technology works is that you save everything and delete things that make you feel uncomfortable. more companies will be interested in this philosophy. also, saving those things that are important. >> where will snapchat go? you guys do the photo thing and what is it, like 40 characters? >> the between 30 and 40. >> are you guys going to go into a different vertical? messages only? >> we spent a lot of time digging at the future of the product. we hired a sociologist and we have been thinking about what we want to build. nathan named the term digital dualism, thinking about the digital and analog world, saying it is separate.

trying to take experiences in the analog world and bring them into the digital with something like video chat. but it turns out that video chat is kind of lame because the connection breaks up. you could leverage all these aspects on the digital world. you never have to say goodbye. people acknowledge the hybridization of digital and analog area products will be billed in that vein. >> what will they look like? >> if i told you, i would have to kill you. [laughter] one of our latest thinking exercises has been around the social media feet. it was probably one of the

biggest innovations in social media as of late and supercharged the growth of a lot of these some bunnies. -- companies. but the interesting thing about a feed, the more content you consume, the more you look at, the farther away in time you get from your friends. we go to a social media site to catch up with your friends, you end up getting stuck back with one year ago. we have been putting a lot of time into thinking about the feed. >> you are one of the few social apps out there that does not have a feed. my phone is ringing.

without a feed, the way these companies are monetized is with a feed. is that -- are you going to introduce a feed? >> it is one we have to think about because we are a business and have to make money. >> really? >> the way we think about monetization has changed substantially. we look to a role model which is a big company in china that makes a vast majority of the revenue on inapt transactions. when they really had to make money, there was not a huge rent advertising market. they could not say we're going to be a big company. that's a scary challenge, rather than taking millions of dollars in display ads, we are going to take what people want. we are fortunate to have great long-term investors that believe

in our ability to do that. there'll be great innovation along those lines. >> we talked about that a few months ago. there has been a lot of floating around, maybe you had links or maybe you have more than 33 characters. any hints about what we might be buying from snap chat? >> stickers. >> ok, sexting. you and i have been sexting for a while. its out there. group can't understand

why young kids want to send messages that disappear other than to be doing dirty things. you have not had an opportunity to stand up and be like no, this is what's up. i'm giving you your podium right now. what's the deal with it? >> every time i get this, i have to remind people that snap chat is not a great way to share pictures you want to be secure because people can take a screen -- can take a screenshot or people could trade your trust trust.ay your my message is we cannot prevent people who are financially motivated with enough time to betray your trust, we cannot prevent that. it's not a great way to send inappropriate photos. >> i'm going to put this right in your mouth. you told me at one point if you really wanted to sext, why would you want it to disappear in 10 seconds? >> i

thought that was off the record. >> competition -- you own a space, you own ephemeral messaging. who do you consider your biggest competitor? >> gosh -- aww, man -- i think in general, we are going a totally different direct than traditional social media. so i'm not sure we view them as a direct competitor. if anything, we want to make sure people have those spaces to create and save really pretty photos, things they are proud of and i want to support the growth of those companies that like to do that. i think we are going a different direction.

>> instagram is the hot dang right now. there are 130 million active users on the site and it is the hot new thing. >> it's hard not to like something that makes you look pretty. maybe in terms of you open your phone, which app are you going to choose? it's really about making sure they look great. i don't think they are products that are directly competitive. if anything, they complement each other. >> facebook is big in social. are you a user? what do you think about facebook? >> i think i have an account. >> you think you have an account? that's not promising. >> we have a snap chat page, so my picture is the fish. i really respect mark. he's done an incredible job. they've done some great recent

innovation and they have shown they are going to be around for a long time. that's great for the industry and we think it is great for us. >> what about poke? they were clearly copying you there and released the product and it was number one for like a day and a half. i haven't heard anybody mention it and i haven't seen any updates. do you consider it a compliment? >> you are a small company for us and it really showed the snap chat community is special. it was fun to see all of the snap chatters around the world. that was great. we talked about it as the greatest christmas doesn't we ever got.

>> facebook built poke. did they push you for an acquisition before that? >> we have not received any formal acquisition offers great >> have you talked with him? >> i have talked to mark a few times. >> you are snapping with him? your last money round, you got 60 million. can you tell us about that experience? >> that's a good question. we tend to build those relationships over a long time to make sure investors understand and support the vision of the company. it is less of the pressure is on, get into the deal for us to bring you into our family and we feel fortunate to have an outstanding and thoughtful investment in our company. >> i'm sure your server bill is out of this world.

do you need funding soon? what's that going to look like? are we going to see revenue before your next round? >> hard to say, but i hope so. >> about revenue, i have another question. we talked about inapt purchases, but what about -- they are finding their own way to get on. taco bell was like follow us on snap chat. are you going to get an opportunity to market through the app? >> we like to support their effort. our team is interesting in supporting that, upcoming artists, people trying to be actors, that is a lot more exciting. people who don't have a social

marketing team, we've seen a lot of companies take initiative, like taco bell. they are not the ones i see as needing a lot of help -- i like to create a space or people who have lots of talent but not a lot of reach can get an awesome and informed audience. >> what would that help look like? >> i can't tell you that. >> it's like sending snaps up here. the lawsuit is happening. i'm sure you're not going to say a whole lot about it. is there anything that has come up with all of these court documents that you are upset about, you don't want up there? >> it would be inappropriate to comment about pending litigation. >> there is one thing i did want to know about the lawsuit before we cut away from it, there's a

text you sent to reggie that said i want to know how you came up with disappearing text messages. do you wish you had that snapchat then? >> the interesting thing is we look at a lot of competitors in this base. there's a company called stealth text focused on sharing secrets that would disappear because you want to cheat on your wife or something like that. we thought there was an opportunity to do something around self-expression. it's interesting to see that idea explored in many ways and i feel fortunate reggie shared that desire with me. [laughter] >> ok. snapchat micro is the new app coming out, your first foray off of the smartphone. are you excited about that?

it does not really go with snap chat in my mind. >> we think it totally does. we think part of that is reducing the amount of time between seeing something you want to share and really sharing it. maybe it takes a while to get something out of my pocket and get something out of that experience. playing with the prototype of the watch, it was easy to grab it and it will pop up on your phone or you can send it. there's a lot of delight around that with two seconds instead of seven. wearables are obviously interesting. i think they are very popular and we want to make sure we are playing around with them. >> what about google glass app? is that something you might consider? >> i don't think so.

>> and you would go for the watch but not the headset? why? >> i think it may just be our team's feeling about the product. i think the glasses tend to be more invasive. having technology melt away, i don't think that acknowledges the people standing around the person wearing glasses. you feel like you have a gun pointed at you and that does not fit into the snap chat experience or make snap chatters feel comfortable. that's not something we are willing to explore. it would be interesting to see these products incorporate a recording light so that you knew. that would be fun to see. >> even with the watch, snap chat is already this thing that has a ghost around it. people want to find something

that might be wrong or dirty just because these messages are disappearing. then you add the layer of you might not know when your photo is being taken. >> i think there is some concern but it's more in the vein of that being a late full experience like a james bond thing. that may be due to the fact that we like to have faith in people. we think people are generally not mean. >> what about sharing with friends? people want an explanation. why when the content i'm sending is private, why are you letting people know who i am talking to? >> at the great question and we get it all the time.

when we first built snap chat, there are questions around is this an app to cheat on my significant other? we wanted to show people that sign up for the service that this is friends talking to other friends. it has been helpful for people to share secrets. we are all about self-expression and having fun and communicating. >> if you type in so popular into a snap, with no space, you will get five best friend instead of three best friends. just for the user's sake? >> we found that even the three best friends who are sending out a message to our low group was not enough. we started playing around with the idea of having five. five.'re one of my >> i'm flattered. >> you have to send me one and then i will get all kinds of crazy stats. what is your favorite app other than snap chat? what can you not go through a day without?

>> i love tweet bought. i run that in twitter. it is indispensable. i really like uber. it's a great example of one of those hybrid services acknowledging all the power of the digital world. that's a signal of some of these to come. >> is there anyone in the space you want to learn from that is just doing things right and you just want to take some cues from them? >> i have been playing with front back app. i'm not sure we are going to take cues from them, but it's fun, the way they articulate the personalization of those. -- photos. it is exciting to me. >> we're just about out of time, but i appreciate you being out

here with me. >> thank you. >> thanks, guys. [applause] >> venture capitalists speaking at the techcrunch disruptor conference about the technological revolution he calls the data factory. his remark for 25 minutes. [applause] >> good morning. you can tell we are sitting right here in the center of the world technology because this little clicker doesn't work wirelessly. it is connected to a bell and then to a light and there's a gentleman that actually moves

the slides along, so here we are, right in the center of the technology universe. thank you very much for having sequoia here in the conference this morning. i want to spend the next bit of time sharing some work all of us at sequoia have done over the last year or so trying to distill our thoughts about where we are investing and how we are investing. and to share a few ideas with you that are a little rough around the edges, but i hope will give everyone the sense that right here between san francisco and san jose, something utterly remarkable has been going on, is going on and will go on -- something that has only occurred in one or two other places in the whole course of human history.

to begin, i would like to go back and give you a snapshot of life as it was in 1750 and take a close look at the slide for a couple of reasons. one, this farmer with his plow, his most important tool, in 1750, was not living all that differently from other farmers 2000 years before. he was aiming for self sustenance until his emily and a few close relatives and friends. he did not think much about selling his produce and was disconnected from consumers. the idea of going to an organized workplace would not have crossed his mind.

about that time in a very small portion, about as small as silicon valley is at the northwest of england, the first phase of the industrial revolution began. take a look at this slide. you will see a dramatic change in the organization of the workplace. the centralization of tools the evolution of the textile industry that changed everything. instead of the farmer working in the field, people for the very first time were organized in a workplace and in a factory. the factory had a set of suppliers and the products were made for consumers, and the

whole raft of communication and distribution facilities were installed to help these businesses come about. but the big, big change was the move to an organized workplace. the second phase of the industrial revolution occurred here in america. in a confined place. around detroit and largely around pittsburgh, and a confined geography much like silicon valley is today. if you look at the organization of the workplace, it did not change much with nearly textile mills and the growth of the steel mills and later, the growth of the automobile factories. again, what i suppose people

called lou collar workers went to work in those factories and over time, a lot of white-collar jobs were created in and around those factories. but the factory itself was also isolated from consumers. the feedback between consumers was to say the least very lengthy. that's as much history as i'm going to bore you with this morning, but i wanted to go down memory lane because i think it's going to accentuate something. we call it the data factory. i want to spend a couple of minutes explaining the powers that have enabled the enormous rise of the data factory in the last 10 years. so a few quick thoughts.

first, the explosion of bandwidth and the change here has been unlike anything anyone has ever seen before in any comparable time over the last 25 years. the second is in storage. it's hard for us to imagine today that about 14% of stored information existed believe it or not on vinyl records. then we all know what has happened with computers and computation. 25 years ago, most of the competing power in the universe -- computing power in the

universe was in a pocket jacket later. -- calculator. obviously, that has shifted dramatically as the years have gone by. the other thing that has helped change everything for consumers and workers everywhere and these data factories is the absolute massive explosion of applications in the last 40 years. hard for us to conceive today when we have as you see on the right, millions of apps available on a little device that just 40 years ago, there were barely 200 computer applications running on the most popular set of computers in the world. this is the final idea about what has happened. think back to the loom, the

assembly line, and the tools in the automobile factory. what has happened to the cost and dispersion and distribution of tools in the last two decades? there has never been anything like it ever in human history. imagine it is 1973. the samsung or apple iphone, the phone you hold in your hand, the equivalent cost of that computing power was about $33 million. bear in mind, those ibm computers did not have cameras, didn't have video, audio, they

didn't have accelerometers, they didn't have gps. never before have human beings been furnished with tools as powerful as the smartphones you are able to buy at the drop of a hat today. the other thing i would like to put into perspective is the enormous explosion in the size of these tools. the numbers you see on the slide illustrates the peak production anywhere in the u.s. of automobiles that peaked in the early 1990's at just over 15 million. washing machines that have changed lives over the last 100 years for everybody in homes and

apartments. a peak of 17 million. this year, around 700 million, $33 million computing facilities will be put in the hands of people all around the world. there has never been anything like it. the other thing that has changed, particularly if you are a small business, particularly if you're an individual looking to set up a small business is what has happened to the price of all the other tools that you need to operate your business. look at the left-hand side and imagine what all of these things cost 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago. today, most of these functions are free or very close to free

or can be rented by the sip. same goes for the different functions you need to operate, whether it's a big company or small company, the services that were unavailable or you paid an arm and leg for a decade ago again are verging to free. so you might well ask at this juncture, what does all this mean? i think the changes are extremely profound and it has given rise to something that -- for a lack of a better days -- lack of a better phrase, we call the data factory. let me explain the composition. you will look at the next few slides and you can think of other names that should be on the slides, but you are right.

there are companies that specialize in the matching of labor, linkedin obviously being the largest, but there are specialty companies that operate in the center matching demand and supply. there are a variety of companies that do the same for the movement and raising of money, ranging from a company like kick starter and companies like kick starter and indy go-go that have helped a lot with unconventional money raising to companies that are not on this slide like paypal and strike, but center, the largest and emerging category of companies in these data factories are the real low

bus data factories -- real global data factories. the range and the extent of tools -- think back to the loom and the auto factory, that they furnish tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of people around the world with. this has never happened before this has never happened before and it is changing the complexion of our entire lives, starting with the work place. this is a true representation of the data factory. it has far fewer employees and workers than some of the other examples i gave you earlier. you will also notice that here, and this is an attempt to characterize tools supplied by the data factory how a company like google and amazon and linkedin and others, tools that

allow people to contribute and enrich the data factory without the data factory having to pay for anything. the data factory sits in the middle, far more closely to connected to consumer then any auto factory ever was. who in turn provide immediate enriched feedback and it is all maneuvered and massaged by the central data factories. i will spend a moment explaining some of the implications of all of this.

here, i am trying to get across the notion that the data factory benefits from unpaid contribution from lots of people. here, to give a sense that the data factory is actually selling a whole bunch of services that, most importantly, allow the purchases of those services to make money for themselves. you can see now how powerful the position of these data factories is becoming. so here is one example. this is the only example i will give you of unpaid contributions think youtube, think yelp, think

and an awful bunch of other services and is the same precise thing. linkedin, about one year ago, started to beef up its content effort and invited people to contribute content. among the contributors are bill gates, and the president, people like jamie diamond, they are all contributing content to linkedin for free. the result has been linkedin now ranks among one of the biggest business sites online in the world and the result has been that traffic on linkedin today has multiplied eightfold thanks to a whole bunch of unpaid contributions. more interestingly, i would like to talk about what happens when tools are put in the hands of individuals and i'm going to

ripple through a whole bunch of slides quickly -- quickly, starting with three or so examples. i know you heard from the founder of lift earlier, of places really helping people who otherwise would be lost in the low-paid part of the american service economy. here is what goober has done for one fellow named sam taylor. this is a local shopping service where this college student is able to gain employment, make money, pay rent in a fashion you would not have been able to do. the same is evident as what i would think about as dollar per hour jobs. here are some examples of what the tools of the data factory

should it out to people all over the world. ebay, going to start with the bigger examples and work through to the smaller one. ebay has enabled 25 million sellers around the world, including people like those at the bottom of the slide that they could not have managed before ebay. same thing for google ad words which transformed a small business called king arthur flour thanks to the way in which it enabled a little company to get business area here is an example of youtube. gone from an unknown, but inc.'s to the power of youtube's data factory, they now have a thriving business and following of their own. but probably the biggest eta factory in the world is amazon. this fellow here has a sled business that was on its back before amazon came along.

14,000 sleds per year thanks to the amazon tools all over the world. kendall has put hands in the tools of authors that have transformed their business and allowed authors to get paid far more quickly than they would have done yesteryear. in the course of perhaps 60 months since the inception of kindle and kindle direct publishing, there have been a whole bunch of million titles sellers and people making far more income than they could have done in their previous life as normal writers. amazon web services, here's a slightly different example, but it's the same thing, taking

pinterest from this tiny little service to 17 million people with fewer than 12 people at the heart. a few other very quick examples, a lady called kerry uses a service and thanks to that, she distributes products all over the world. the tools did not exist 15 years ago. air bnb -- people were making a significant amount of money and they were helping put kids through school, etc.. again, the tools did not exist and this new data factory is enabling a lot of that. this lady had a very small real estate business in san diego before the advent of

the company and thanks to the services it provides her, it has allowed her not only to transform the business but to buy a business. this lady is in canada. this lady has business all over the world thanks to the services house provides. here is an example of square. they make bracelets and costa rica that employees college students or contracts with college students all over the country that can sell these bracelets and provide income for people in costa rica thanks to the square service. two final examples and then i will begin to wrap up really quickly. unity, there's something very similar for the whole ecosystem of video developers.

i expect you all to know about individuals who have been able to build businesses thanks to etsy. this means life is very tough for most people in america. it means life is very tough if you are poor, if you're middle class, it means you have to have the right education to go work at a place that has companies on the right side. 2.2 millionloys people. google employs 40,000 people. general motors used to employ

700,000 people. today, apple including retail employs 80,000 people. if you are not like us, it is tough. here's what the median household income is done at last 40 years. it is brutal. here is what happens to the memo wage in america over the last half-century. we are very lucky here, we are fortunate and we belong in a really small minority. despite this explosion of tools, it has not had much of an impact on gdp despite the fact that 20 million businesses in america are self-employed is business, despite the fact that those

americans now work in spite of the tools i just mentioned, hasn't had much of an effect on gross gdp for two reasons. one, because of the decline of the manufacturing in america and the second is because the difficulties we have had attracting talent to america and keeping them in america. 600 or so to people from spain where there are thousands of people who would be qualified to come work and help put the personal revolution on its way. but the most important thing and the reason it has yet to bring the benefits to america we have

talked about with those earlier revolutions is that this is the first shift in industrial and technology revolution that has occurred simultaneously around the world. technology centers are centered in the middle part of england. the internet, the explosion of these data factories is occurring all over the world. so i give you examples of these companies, the same thing is happening in different geographies, most noticeably in china. where companies like alibaba are doing very similar things that american companies are doing today. today, more than half of the most valuable internet companies in the world are not in the united states. that has never been true for the emergence of a huge, abrupt shift in the organization of human work, that has never occurred in human history before. i see my time is up. you now all have a caffeine

break and i appreciate very much being here on behalf of sequoia. thank you. [applause] >> on the next "washington journal", a look at what some advocacy groups have planned for oveon.org.uding m a look at the war on poverty. we will also take your phone calls, e-mails, and tweets. that is right here on c-span. obamacare is about help insurance, but it is about the final nail in the constitutional system. the purpose of the commerce clause is to promote commerce between the states, not to kill

commerce, not to kill competition. this is about private property rights, trade, and commerce. they're all blocking each other on the rivers and so forth. probe --rce clause was pro trade and pro-commerce. in particular, to force a person to enter into a private contract where thevate company private companies forced to offer policy does not want to offer and the individual is forced to pay for it, and they company is forced to provide it, that is so antithetical to our founding. that will be the end. then the government can force us to all kinds of things we don't

want to do. sunday, best-selling author, lawyer and radio personality mark levin will take your calls. that is on c-span-2. month's book tv book club read the book and join the conversation. " book club" to enter the conversation. >> we started looking at the census department data and something strange pops out. when you look at where the profits are you see germany, france, ireland, italy. italy,look at profits germany, ireland.

-- a hugely disproportionate amount of profit was in ireland. that was the first indication that something was going on. of tax news and analysis sunday night on c-span 's q&a. >> more on the techcrunch conference later this evening. first a little about the impact that conservative women are having in politics. this is one hour 15 minutes. >> there we go. ok. thank you so much for coming. i want to thank the berkeley center for right-wing studies

and the cosponsors, the graduate school of journalism. and the center for race and gender. christine, jerry, deirdre. i also want to thank john mccain. why would i want to thank john mccain? as most of you know, in 2008, john mccain surprise the united states by nominating alaska governor sarah palin to be his running mate in the presidential election. and i remember that moment. i was at a political science conference and my first book had just come out on conservative women. it was academic press. i'm sure a few people thought it might be interesting. then i saw sarah palin on the screen on national television and i thought john mccain is promoting my research agenda. so i always feel it's important to thank john mccain when i do talk about my research. speaking of research and i want to follow up on something that larry said. what i am presenting today is scholarly work and really

intended to create understanding of conservative women. i am a women of politics scholar and i saw a lack of attention to ideological diversity among women in the scholarship that was being published. so i became very interested myself and exploring questions about conservative women and also wanting to highlight their important contribution to politics. no matter where you stand politically, i think it is really important for us to understand the role that they play in politics. now back to palin -- references to palin's gender and maternal status influenced the campaign when she was running for president. this generated discussions of whether or not mothers of young children should seek elected office. of course, she played into these debates by bringing her children on stage for events and

referring to herself as a hockey mom. discussions of mothers in politics made their reappearance in 2010 when palin herself was advocating for and campaigning for mostly tea party candidates, women who were running for office, and calling them her mama grizzlies. june 5, 2011, and other mother of five, conservative, congresswoman michele bachmann announced her intention to run for president of the united states. as with palin, bachmann's bid generated a lot of debate over gender roles and women in politics from all sides. given that both women were running in high-profile races, these cases provide an excellent lens through which public deliberations about conservative women, motherhood and politics can be examined.

so i was very eager after the first book that i wrote, which was about two conservative women's organizations and i wanted to stop and felt compelled to keep going. but i was eager to explore the question about how you have conservative ideology, which promotes traditional gender roles, stereotypes, which i will get into, yet these organizations are promoting these mothers of five running for national office. so the research i am presenting today builds on my work in writing feminism. when i was presenting research and talking about the book afterwards, i got a lot of questions from people basically saying aren't those women hypocritical? they say women should stay home and be with her kids and yet there they are running for office. those of you who remember that anti era debates, this was posted to phyllis schlafly. she has children and she is out

there politically engaged and so on. so it was a frequent question. people said these women are hypocrites. that's basically what people said. that is too simplistic. if you stop at calling a group of people hypocrites and leave it at that, you lose out on a lot of information and understanding what role they actually play in politics. what i want to argue today is that -- i'm sorry there are valid reasons to say that potentially these women can be considered hypocrites, but there are also tensions and contradictions and it is not as cut. -- clear-cut. so let me explain. so some of the tensions, that conservatives are actually presented with. because they do promote gender rule conservativism. the other hand, they are also promoting mothers in politics.

so let's start with the tensions in the questions and the ideas about why is it that we would think it would be wrong for conservative women to promote people like palin and bachmann running for office. conservatives have promoted stay-at-home motherhood based on theological beliefs and male leadership in heterosexual families and about gender values about the primacy of women as caretakers, social conservatives have long argued that women should prioritize their roles as stay-at-home mothers. that is the first point that i sense that you should think it is odd to promote palin and bachmann. conservative women's groups in the u.s. themselves have been promoting these ideas for decades. i will give you two comments from women that run organizations or are active in conservative women's groups. they point to why we think conservative groups might actually be hypocritical and promoting palin and bachmann. the first is from a woman who works for concerned women of america. "women recognize that they cannot have it all at once.

they have to acknowledge that when they are blessed with children and it is important to give their needs top priority. another quote is from phyllis schlafly. encouraging wives and mothers to do their own thing has left children to bear burdens of loneliness, depression and an empty house. latchkey children are crying out for the love of mom who subordinate to their own career ambitions and desire for material things to the well-being of their children. so these do show there is some validity in positing that there may be some hypocrisy here. another tension for conservatives is that, in terms of promoting mothers in elected office, republicans -- if you are looking at studies, they are less likely than democrats in promoting mothers of young children for running for office. scholars have found that in states where there is a higher number of social conservatives, the lower number of women are in the state houses in so there is an inverse correlation and political life. conservative women's organizations have chastised feminists for promoting the notion that women can have it

all. that is that they can be super moms. you may remember the bring home the bacon and fried up in a pan. that was in the 1970's or 1980's. essentially, conservatives had chastised feminists for promoting the notion of the supermom. they alleged that they encourage mothers to participate in the workforce and that it generates feelings of guilt and so on. promoting palin a mother of five or bachmann, and other mother of five, and standing behind tea party mothers running for office, indeed, the promotion of these women appear to violate ideological and religious norms. ok. on the other hand, there are some reasons to think that this

makes perfect sense that conservative women are doing this. to use phyllis schlafly. despite the prevailing gender norms, women have had a long history of political participation in conservative movement politics. we know her from stop era. she ran for congress and worked on barry goldwater's campaign and so on. conservative women's activism has included, for example, organizing against the women's suffrage amendment. they have been actively involved in challenging laws having to do with federally funded day care or family leave. they have been actively involved in the opposition for legal abortion, same-sex marriage. so despite the conservative gender roles, they are actively involved in politics. secondly, when republicans do vote for women, they prefer to vote for mothers than women who do not have children. third, there are an increasing number of republican women running to -- running for

office. in the 2010 election, there were record numbers of republican women elected to office. the numbers are still pretty low. about 18% in congress, but only a quarter of them are republican women. but they are wanting to increase their numbers. the republican party wants them to succeed. in addition, conservative women's groups themselves to do this have found a political -- have founded political action committees and organizations to raise money and train women to run for office. they are working to meet the goal of getting more republican women elected. finally, republicans are well

aware there is a gender gap that favors -- generally, women favor democrats in presidential elections. they know they need to target women voters and promote more women in politics. here is the tension. historically, conservatives have grappled between ideology, the role of mothers and women, and political reality when it comes to trying to promote women in the public sphere, including in the realm of professional politics. given these tensions, i ask the following questions. how do conservative women advocates -- and i actually looked at conservative women's organizations themselves in the first part. how do they negotiate ideological beliefs about conservativism and gender roles with an interest in electing republican women, and in particular wanting to promote

, palin and bachmann when they were running for office? actually looking at how these organizations. with palin and bachmann during their campaign. how do they represent -- i interviewed women leaders and asked them how they negotiate tensions personally. they're all paid representatives of organizations. how do they negotiate tensions personally and how did their organizations talk about these tensions? and how might that affect public discourse and policy outcomes? finally, i look at what this tells us about gender and politics more broadly, especially in light of the fact that there are an increasing number of republican women who want to run for office, or are running for office and want to get elected. i see this as important not just and asking those questions. when conservative women are talking about gender roles and maternalism, it has implications broadly for how we understand motherhood, politics, in a broad sense. i want to make it clear that we need to think broadly and not just try to think someone is hypocritical, but what it actually means when people think this in the public sphere. i will not go into much detail about political theories of representation and so on. i'm happy to talk about it in the q and a. i want to talk about what guides my work.

i look at social and economic conservatives, and i'm happy to define that later on. the organizations i study are national and represent a range of conservative women's organizations and women political actors. i specifically look at how they talk about palin and bachmann when they were running for office. and i try to tease out how it is they -- what language they used to account for the tension. and i find that basically what they do is they have transformed the meaning of conservatism a little bit to basically take account for the fact that they are promoting mothers in office even though sometimes they say mothers should stay home. i look at their language. and i call that "framing."

when i use the term framing, i'm really talking about language and ideas used to communicate values, organizational goals, and perspective. then i went on and did interviews with women who represent national organizations. i have also interviewed feminist women for the bigger project i am working on. but for the talk today, i'm only talking about conservative interviews. and here, arguing about personal narratives and how they reflect the political actors understand mothers' interest and provide insight into basically, how they

themselves have negotiated these tensions. but also how their organizations are talking about them. and how these things shape public discourse about motherhood, conservatism, and gender in politics. it's a mouthful, but hopefully i'm making the argument in the long run. i will present my research in two parts. first, the organizations on palin and bachmann. second, i will give you highlights of the interviews i did and talk about how they work together and how there are contradictions between the two. here are the organizations i've studied. the concerned women for america. the oldest organization is eagle forum. phyllis schlafly founded that in 1972. all of these groups are not only national in scope, but i consider them to be women's organizations. what i mean is they are exclusively led by women and they make arguments that a are representing women. i think that is very important. you have now saying they represent women's interest and conservative groups saying they represent women's interest. there engaged in a public debate about the representation of interests. these are the organizations i've studied. the network of enlightened women is a college women's group. smart girl politics is more of a web-based organization, but there is a range. these are the groups that i looked at as far as how they talk about palin and bachmann. the interviews are here. i will go back to the slide when i go over the interviews. but as you can see, there is a range here. i will note again, this is not

the universe of conservative women. i studied what political scientists like to call elite women leaders of or representative of these organizations. this can range from phyllis schlafly to the national coordinator for the tea party. let me go back to the organizations rhetoric about palin and bachmann. basically, i found that they use two different frames. the first is called feminine toughness. those are indeed, barbie for president. i have them in my office and they are good conversation starters. i wanted to get a suit that matched, but it was nowhere to be found. i am kidding about that part. the first frame that organizations use is what i call feminine toughness. president.arbie for i am kidding about that part. the first part is what i call feminine toughness. basically, let's focus on the batch feminine a first. is someone who is supposed

to exude femininity. she is herald as a kind of leader who manages to successfully integrate political leadership with family responsibility. easton, from an exhibition called loose, said that palin holds her baby on stage because you was to publicly embrace being a woman in all of its assets. thedon't have to hold political viewpoints and cultural prejudices of the left to succeed as a woman. palin does it with grace and charm. she is feminine and fashionable and that is ok now. so happy to hear. [laughter] in these ways femininity refers

to the way that palin looks which is in part why put the barbie up here. it is in part about what you're wearing and your makeup and so on. it is also about your personal conviction that she emphasizes the centrality of her husband and children. similar generated result. auckland's feminine dress in --earance bash bachmann feminine dress and -- palin and bachmann are consistently praised not for being feminine but also for running for office for the right reasons. that is not to gain power or authority, but to help people. here, conservative women are now offering what i call a feminized account of the quest for national office.

one is actually consistent with traditional notions of mothering in general. i will as an aside note that this -- feminists have versions of this too. this is a particularly conservative interpretation of the feminized account of leadership. a conservative organization for college women praised palin's life goals. palin chose to marry her high school sweetheart. she said that they met in high school and two decades and five children later, she is still my guy. she chose to have children and focus her time on raising her children, pursuing public office to make her community better for children. bachmann was also touted as a role model in general for this but also as a role model for younger women due to her feminine leadership roles.

it is not about power title. people called her crazy for speaking up a younger conservative women really look up to her. come lamenting this commentary about what i'm calling femininity is discourse that also celebrates palin and bachmann's toughness. wrong slide. leave that there for a minute. palin, it is argued that she is not the kind of person who gives in to bullies but she is the kind of mother who protects her children. something that those who hate or do not seem to understand. palin herself invoke this narrative in her mama grizzly at. -- ad. if you never have seen it, go onto youtube and google it. it is a fascinating minute and a half advertisement. it is really well done.

she used that image to reconcile the difference between feminism and toughness. you thought the polls were taught? you don't want them mess with mama grizzly. they've invoke toughness themselves. as for bachmann, it is said about her and also her come servant counterparts that you have to have a very strong backbone and be a conservative woman running for office. bachmann is also described as as havingganization the strength and tenacity to lead this nation. you have interesting coupling -- coupling of a femininity and masculinity. they can be ladies but also counted on to run the country. i want to say that these complex descriptions are necessary for most women who run for office,

whether they are conservative or feminine. i think this is important to put out there. if you do studies and surveys of public opinion, people prefer women to be communal, warm, and kind. they expect men to be aggressive and self-directed. these characteristics are also the ones people expect in their leaders. of ayou have is a bit double bind for women who are running for office. should we be feminine, masculine, to scary? if so, people say nasty things about them. of hillary clips clinton which you ran for president. complexo satisfy this set of expectations is impossible. forn are penalized both deviating from the masculine -- masculine norm and appearing to be masculine. i think the feminine toughness is an interesting way for these

to navigates between cultural demands as well withrceptions in line conservative use of gender roles. the feminine toughness not only makes this candidate more appealing to conservative men and women, and also acts as a for these organizations to distinguish themselves from feminists. for these organizations to position themselves in opposition to feminists as a way to help counteract that effect. then give you some example. palin was praised because she exudes a can-do optimism without the usual feminist "it is tougher to be a woman" bitterness.

it is a little long, but there with me because it gets good at the m. sarah palin's feminine appearance and charm transform the dowdy image of female leadership all of janet reno or madeleine albright with her casual and humorous approach to speaking. her confident demeanor reflects -- sense of self as a is -- softly interior palin simply light up the room when she walks in. here is a way to talk about these organizations --

[laughter] -- i'm just reading the quote. it is really important for these organizations to do this. part of the mission is to represent women. they are in this public battle with feminist organizations to say women are pro-life. know, women are pro-choice. it fosters one of their goals. conservative women also argue that palin and bachmann's bid for office represents what feminists have long for, which is women's entrance into the higher -- women's entrance into higher-level office. but it argues that it feminists had really cared about women in office, they would have supported palin and bachmann. it is an interesting challenge for feminists, actually. i did some research on it.

they said, we did not mean women. women feminists. is a bit of challenge for feminists themselves but say no, we will not endorse sarah palin. conservative groups picked up on this. these debates helped further the goals. invoking the feminine toughness frame to describe these woman captures the desire of conservative women's groups to both reinscribe traditional gender roles, while also supporting these liberated women for disrupting them. it also serves to make feminist look out of touch. and reasserts that feminists are not feminine. and these women are seen as super moms, which helps to promote traditional gender role values and also wanting more woman to be professional and politically active. i have termed this conservative supermom.

as noted in the past, conservative women have chastised feminists for allegedly promoting the notion that women can have it all i seamlessly balancing child- rearing, holding a job in the paid workforce, and enjoying intimate relations with their partner. it is not really accurate that feminists have promoted that, but nonetheless, that is the rhetoric that comes from conservative women's groups. despite the critiques of supermom, which i alluded to earlier, conservative groups actually apply to palin and bachmann for finding ways to fit it all in and for framing what i'm calling the conservative supermom. they were praised for providing a model for how some women can manage motherhood and a professional career and appealing to women who want to have it all, including happily married to the love of their youth and bearing his children.

and for a woman who believes that it is possible for a woman to hold down a full-time ceo job overseeing a multibillion-dollar budget -- here you see an embracing of the supermom. you have that, but what you also see is that they praise the alleged supermom talent that palin and bachmann have, but supermom has some caveats. they also have to abide by personal political beliefs that are essential to economic and social conservatism, which is why i call them conservative supermom's. i will talk a little bit about that. first, these organizations say that palin and bachmann yield to their families, especially their husbands. it has been said about palin that she doesn't need feminist approval for her lifestyle. the only person she needs for her double career is her husband, and he seems very happy with her.

this doesn't mean, by the way, that women have no say or that couples don't negotiate with each other. but scholars have shown that conservative evangelicals, who are in important base for the republican party, adhere to the idea of male superiority in the family union. they talk here about the adherence to biblical submission, which also helps to solidify her social credentials. the meaning of this has been debated even among women who say they adhere to it. but it essentially comes from a biblical passage that says, wives, submit yourselves unto your husband as unto the lord. bachmann's acknowledgment that she believes in submission generated a lot of public debate and scrutiny.

it even got played out in the press pretty significantly. and it forced conservative women's groups to explain how it bachmann could biblically submit and also be president. it is important to note that biblical submission is about harmony and well-being within the home and the relationship between a husband and wife. it has nothing to do with leadership responsibilities, except that no one, even the president of the united states, should treat others with disrespect, or accept a subservient spirit from anyone or demand the total submission of another persons well. -- of another person's will. a woman who submits to her husband does not have a similar relationship with men at work.

a christian woman or man and leadership must meet and fulfill the responsibilities for which they are accountable to god and for which they are serving in leadership capacity. basically, bachmann can fulfill gender theological roles, but this does not translate into her political cell. that is how it is exciting by ash that is how it was explained by the concerned women for america. palin and bachmann are also opposed to legal abortion. it is central to the agenda of most social conservative groups. there was concern that mccain was not aggressive enough in antiabortion policies, so palin picked up on that when she was running as his running mate. given that republican voters think republican women are more liberal, they are promoting their pro-life perspective and that helped physicians show that women can be very conservative when they run for office. palin talked about her decision

to bear a child with down syndrome as a way to appeal to social conservatives. finally, they hinted that their values fall in line with republican voters. after decades of being targeted sexist, conservatives in the gop base are understandably proud to have women making their case in support of limited government and free market. these woman obviously do appeal to their fellow audience, particularly conservative women. these organizations employ what i call a conservative supermom frame. the language also speaks to conservatives by highlighting their beliefs about women and the family, but it appeals to a broader base and range of people. let me give you the

organizational interviews for a second. i'm only going to highlight some of the findings from here. some of this is still in the works. i want to connect a few of the comments i made earlier. basically, i interviewed these women and these -- and how they talked about these values when representing these organizations. i can talk more about who these women actually are. let me go over the interview highlights. in the interest of time, i will do some of the preliminary findings. the first is, the woman that i interviewed indicated that the new conservative woman is not constrained by traditional gender roles. when asked if it was contradictory for her and other conservative mothers to be workplace, one

conservative founder rejected the idea. she said to me, i think the press is wrong to start with. i don't think conservative women are pro-stay-at-home moms. we run the gamut, just as liberals do. there are plenty woman who want to have a family and a career as well. there is a misconception that we are stay-at-home moms and that is all we want to do. i do have my aspirations to be something outside of a mom myself erie -- myself. most of my friends within the organization feel that way. feel the way i do. i found this very interesting and i asked her why she got people believe this. why is it that there is this kind of public discourse, perhaps mid-from her perspective, that this is true. she said that liberals perpetuated it. there is this myth out there, but some of the conservative women are saying it is not accurate.

starting places that conservatism has been transformed. conservative ideology and politics has to be understood in this new light of wanting to transform the understanding of mother's roles. this has to do with the organizations and the interviewees themselves and the promotion of palin and bachmann. in reference to their professional goals, conservative women counter the responses in the language of choice. it is a personal choice between you and your family and nobody else should be telling you that one makes you a stronger woman than another one. and when i pushed on the policy solutions that might deal with the tensions of mothers in the workplace, mothers and national politics, interviewees responded that solutions should be privatized and not come from government social programs.

most conservative women and opposed federally funded daycare. one woman said she was philosophically opposed to child care. i said, why is that? and she said to me, honestly, babies are delicious. they are cute and sweet and soft. i think that babies need their mamas and babies need their daddies. that is what i was raised with and that is what i believe in. i don't think i can stand to drop off my kid to the lowest bidder, even if it means saving the world. she had a very visual account of this. most of the conservative women, if you look at activism and is groups that i study and so on, they are all opposed a federal opposed to federally funded -- opposed to federally funded childcare. they are all engaged in that activism, like against the family leave act and so on. but in contrast to the supermom image of palin and bachmann, the interviewees -- and i actually

push them on it personally as opposed to reading organizational stuff -- they actually used slightly different language, more complex and nuanced language. to talk about how women manage conflicting goals, to sum it up, tea party leader don wildman said to me, whoever thought you could have it all, it's crap. another leader like and these tensions to playing the harp. she said to me, someone gave me a great analogy. it is kind of like playing a harp to make it work. other times you have to shift to another place and you have to play these courts. a common complaint from conservatives was, you can have it all, but not at the same time. i would like to add that all of the feminists have said the same thing to me. there was one feminist who said to me that is actually true of men as well. that is something we may want to talk about later as well. but there is a more nuanced

account of the supermom. organizational rhetoric has to produce one thing. if you push people on it personally, you'll get something slightly different and more nuanced. finally, in explaining why working mothers may experience difficulties, many of these leaders referenced gender differences. that is, they argued that it is within women's nature to multitask and to juggle. the first thing you've got to realize is that god knows he's he's doing in sending babies to young woman and you're making a terrible mistake to think you can establish a career and then in your 40s decide to have a husband and kids. life doesn't work that way. you have a biological clock, even though feminists have often denied it. and the trouble with feminist studies and what feminist professors are teaching is that women should plot her career without any thought for husband or children. that me get to my conclusion.

-- let me get to my conclusion. the main question posed here is how conservative woman in negotiate tensions between traditional gender norms and the desire for mothers in politics. i would argue it is too simplistic to say conservative women are reinforcing and promoting recently articulated notions of gender roles. but it is also too simplistic to say they are not. as palin and bachmann, for example, reflect on their careers, they are reflecting the conservative ideological norms, but also transforming them. and they want to increase the number of women in the workforce and running for office. what can we make of this? from the perspective of conservative women, mothers can be supermoms if their identities is tantamount to professional goals. power for its own sake is considered on feminine but

running for office is not. running for office when you're the mother of five is acceptable, but best accomplish with your husband's blessing. and i want to note that in terms of constructing gender roles and maternal identities, the assertion that palin and bob and -- bachmann also need to be feminine and attentive to their families confront something feminists have lamented for some time. which is that for women who want to work outside the home, they have to be presented as exemplary mothers. the second point is that women must work things out personally with privatized solutions. the language of choice dismisses the role of power, institutions, resources, and so on. and within this articulation of choice, there is very little challenge to the role of state and economic policies, or structural factors. and of course, the language of choice and personal decision- making matches well with conservative ideology. it was no surprise for them to articulate this.

but i want to argue that the important thing about it is that it translates into public policy goals about how women and mothers, and parents -- but you know, i talk to them mostly about motherhood. how they advocate for public policy. as said earlier, they oppose the family leave act, among other things. there is no support for government sponsored social programs that address work and family balance. except for tax breaks for businesses that offer flextime and so on. there's also very little discussion of class differences among men and women and equal parenting. conservative women have recognized and they did say to me there is a change in family dynamics and ultimately, gender role ideology. conservative women themselves are actually expanding ideas about what legitimate gender roles are for conservatives, not in ways that are identical to what feminist do.

conservative women's groups -- conservative mothers are embraced if they fit within a particular idea of femininity. this rhetoric presents a new idea about motherhood that i think we need to pay attention to and it suggest that conservative actors are actually adapting to a changing environment. in the upcoming elections, we may see a subtle shift. and it might help to soften the image of the republican party. it has been shown to be much more masculinized, less friendly to women's interest, and so on. the way they talk about mothers in politics might affect the republican party in that way. conservative politics cannot be fully understood without paying attention to the women active in it. this seems like a no-brainer, but if you look at the amount of research on conservative women,

there is not a lot. with palin running for office, it started to boom a little bit but there has not been a lot of scholarship on that. and there is cultural significance. through an analysis of their activism, we gain a much fuller and nuanced understanding of the conservative movement politics. finally, i want to argue, maybe in a pollyannish way, there is an important message sent about the need to pay attention to women's rights and recognition of women's wide-ranging abilities. and of course, i also want to add that conservative women do not gesture to it is a feminist

idea. but nonetheless, feminists have clearly affected conservative goals about promoting women in politics. and these conservative woman so heartily promoting a woman's bid for vice president have validated the claim of feminists for a long time, that women belong in the public sphere. thank you. [applause] >> thank you very much. what we will do now is our respondent, deirdre english, will have a response and a bit of a conversation with ronnie schreiber. and for the last 15 minutes we will open up to the floor for questions.