She Is Me by Lori Sokol PhD

Author:Lori Sokol, PhD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2020-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

photo © Lynn Savarese

SWANEE HUNT

“Women will do everything they can to prevent war.”

—SWANEE HUNT, author, activist and former US ambassador to Austria (1993–1997)

The first time I walked into Swanee Hunt’s Washington, DC, home in May 2019, I felt like I was standing in a museum. Sculptures, paintings, and illustrations of various kinds were scattered throughout her home. A silk tapestry made from Indian wedding dresses hung on the wall alongside a proclamation naming Swanee ambassador to Austria signed by then President William Jefferson Clinton.

I traveled there from New York City to attend a symposium on the status of human trafficking in the US. As the founder and chair of Demand Abolition, an activist organization committed to eradicating the illegal commercial sex industry, Hunt had sponsored the event. “The solution to end sex trafficking is to end sex buying,” Swanee told the audience as she stood at the podium. “Men who buy sex create the demand that fuels the illegal sex trade. Without buyers, prostitution and sex trafficking would cease to exist.”

Her goal to end the illegal sex trade is an arduous one, but advancing feminism in the US and around the world is Swanee’s calling. From 1993 to 1997, when she served as ambassador to Austria, she hosted negotiations and international symposia and met with grassroots women leaders to help establish peace in the neighboring Balkan states. As the founder of the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School, she urged present and future leaders to create a more gender-equal world. Swanee consults with government officials and civil society leaders across the globe. She is most known for her work in increasing the participation and inclusion of women in peace processes around the world.

She greeted me at the door wearing casual, loose-fitting black pants with a matching shirt. She was barefoot. As I followed her through the long walkway to the kitchen, she introduced me to her two home companions, a spoiled snow-white cat named Zhivago and a small green parrot with a yellow beak named Mellow. “His name is very appropriate; he calms me,” she said as she fed him peanut butter with a tiny spoon. “It’s his favorite food,” she added, shooting me a grin. Swanee has been very much the gracious hostess on two occasions, and on this visit, like the last one, she invited me to stay overnight in her guest room.

Her passion to create social change is reflected in her extensive writing, mostly on the topic of gender. Some of her many commentaries have been published in Women’s eNews, including her September 2009 article, “She Speaks Serious Change, Carries Big Purse,” in which she explained how her determination to right society’s wrongs first developed.

She wrote, “When you grow up as I did with a father zealously committed to political change, it gets into your blood.” Swanee’s father, a famously conservative Texas oil tycoon, passed away when she was only twenty-four years old, but she carried on his passion for activism even as she made a hard left turn politically.

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