**Update: After posting this blog, Advocates for Youth was invited to join the HERvotes. We will keep folks updated on this new campaign, including the role of young women in this area.**

Yesterday, the Feminist Majority Foundation announced a new initiative spearheaded by 20 women’s organizations entitled HERvotes with the goal to “mobilize women voters in 2012 around preserving women’s Health and Economic Rights (HER rights).”

Citing 10 policy areas they consider most “at risk,” HERvotes is trying to raise awareness among women across the country of the specific issue areas they should keep in mind during the next election cycle.

This work and this campaign is much-needed. While women’s issues have been under attack for years, the particular vigor of members of various anti-choice and so-called “family values” organizations has been overwhelming. It is far past time for groups to join together to fight back against these efforts by encouraging women to bring the issues they care about to the ballot box.

But.

Yet again, women’s organizations missed the opportunity to involve young women and the organizations who work with them in the leadership and creation of a new campaign. We were not invited to the table in our own house.

Just take a look at the 10 issue areas of concern. While young women benefit from all areas outlined, they in particular are at the core of many advances listed. For example:
     • Title IX directly impacts what programs (sports, STEM, etc.) are available to young women while they are in school.
     • Over 50% of patients at Title X family planning clinics are young women between the ages of 15 and 24.
     • Young people have been at the center of many voting law battles on the state level, especially as it relates to college students voting where they go to school.
     • The Affordable Care Act allows young people to stay on their parent’s health insurance until their 26th birthday, will also expand Medicaid coverage in 2014 to allow more low-income young people to qualify for benefits, has resulted in no-copay birth control and STD counseling and screening (when 1 in 4 teen girls has a STD and the US has the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the developed world) and more.

To leave out (or forget about) young women and the organizations that advocate with them is short-sighted, especially as we go into a presidential election year when the last one showed young people voting more than the elderly for the first. time. ever.

Even organizations who analyze voter engagement are paying attention to us. According to a recent blog from the Women’s Voices Women Vote Action Fund, the Rising American Electorate (RAE) which includes unmarried women, people of color and younger voters “compromise a rapidly growing majority of the eligible voting population in this country.” But work needs to be done to engage them. They continue with “one in five voters in the RAE say they are extremely interested in elections and debates in Washington, compared to nearly one-third of non-RAE voters. The lack of engagement is even more pronounced among young voters and points to the need to provide a compelling narrative to engage these crucial voters.”

As my boss, Executive Director of Advocates for Youth, James Wagoner, likes to say, when it comes to sexual health issues, Millennials are the generation we’ve been waiting for. We are down on sex ed, family planning, and gender equality more than any other generation seen before. According to a recent study, we are just as pro-choice as our parent’s generation, despite the fact that so little work as been done to engage young people on abortion rights and access issues by the larger pro-choice movement (think of the progress that can be made if the movement invests in us!).

Involving young women and the organizations who work with them should be seen as an opportunity to share wisdom and start investing in the next generation of women leaders who sit at many other tables.

So who exactly am I talking about? I would start with progressive youth organizations that work on women’s issues. There are three in particular that come to mind. First, my own organization, Advocates for Youth, which focuses on the sexual health and rights of all young people. Second, Choice USA, a national organization that works with young people on advancing reproductive justice issues. Third, Campus Progress, the youth arm of the Center for American Progress, that advocates with college students on campuses across the country.

Want to know why else it’s important to involve these youth groups? They’re at the youth vote table. For some reason the progressive movement likes to segment themselves off into issues areas. People of color here. Women here. LGBT there. Environmentalists there. Immigration here…I love working in the youth movement because young people are at all these tables (and to be honest, are many of the ones knocking doors…). Involve us on women’s issues so we can make sure they are also part of the youth vote conversation.

Shocking, I know.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m really excited for this campaign. I look forward to young women’s organizations being invited to participate. I just hope that we as a larger movement stop having these oversights and invite us in at the beginning. There is far too much work to do.

To quote my own mother, “I’m TIRED. We can’t do it by ourselves anymore.”

So don’t. We’re here and ready.