This election season, women have been treated to endless talk about themselves: women candidates, women voters, sexism in the media. But when it comes to the nitty-gritty policy choices that affect real women's lives, from daycare to immigration, there's been markedly less attention and far fewer headlines.

Last week, we published a list of questions that would describe what a "women's issues" debate might look like. The Center for New Words has been putting this idea in action, by hosting their own women's speakouts, each one preceding the actual presidential debates, in the same cities as those more publicized discussions of the issues.

This is What Women Want aims to broadcast the collective voices of women, highlighting video clips and quotations from the pre-debate speakouts as well as their website, to package and send to the candidates and the mainstream media.

The final speakout was held last night at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, New York. Speakers covered a vast range of issues, from racial and economic justice to equal pay in the professions.

Women at the event said they want the next president to...

Listen to compassionate voices.

Kate Bornstein, author, playwright and performance artists, spoke about the importance of the next president listening to voices that have been branded as the "radical left."

"As far as we've come, feminism is still perceived as radical and I want to know why that is?" she asked. "Why is it radical to think that no one's laws or violent hands belong anywhere on our bodies?"

Bornstein said the "compassionate" voices for social change on the left needed to be embraced by moderates, the same way strong voices on the right wing fuel the energy of moderate conservatives.

Be an inspirational leader.

New Media Director for La Raza Kety Esquivel said she longed for a president who would bring out Americans' best selves. "I'm inspired to ask for the visionary leadership and integrity that generations before me have known. In 32, 33 years of my life, I've yet to see a visionary leader I can follow with all my heart," she said. She mentioned JFK, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King and Ghandi as the kind of leaders young American women are longing to be inspired by.

Stand up for true racial equality.

Carmen Van Kerckhove, publisher and founder of Racialicious, spoke about the need for Americans to acknowledge the persistence of racism.

"I want to live in a country that doesn't pretend all racial problems have disappeared simply because we have a black man running for president," she said, and listed many of the double-standards regarding race that have become so apparent during this last election season.

"The same people who criticize rappers for the misogyny in lyrics and hip-hop videos fail to see the same sexism when they're shielding their VP candidate from reporters as though she's a delicate flower."

Advocate for reproductive justice.

Shelby Knox, activist and sex-education pioneer, gave an impassioned speech about reproductive justice.

"Young women want an end to reproductive oppression, " she said. "We want social economic political power to make responsible decisions." She asked the candidates to "stop stoking the culture wars with our bodies."

Knox spoke out in favor of a litany of reproductive justice goals, including lifting the global gag rule, comprehensive sex ed, and health insurance that would "cover the pill, and the ring, and the shot."

Heed the silenced voices of immigrants.

Meagan Ortiz, who blogs as "La Mamita Mala" spoke directly to Latina voters, urging them to go a step beyond pulling the lever, and use activism and their words to press their agenda, to make their voices heard in a nation that pushes them to the margins.

"There's a reason barrack Obama and John McCain have refused to talk about immigrants in any of the debates," she said.

Look out for working moms.

"The bar is just way way too low," in terms of improving the lives of working moms, said Besty Reed, executive editor at The Nation. Reed noted that American women get the rawest deal of moms in all industrial nations with no guaranteed paid maternity leave, and the idea of universal childcare not universally accepted as a goal.

"They will tell us get behind the bankers, I think we need to tell them to get behind us," she said.

Govern for, by, and of the people.

Feminist writer Amy Richards described the epiphany she had while registering voters one summer. "I'm underserved if I live in a democracy that's not living up to its promise," she said. "We want America to fulfill its promise to democracy. Democracy is government for the people, government by the people. We can agree that the American government belongs to the American people."

Pay attention to human rights violations at home.

Luz Marina Rodriguez, representing SisterSong, spoke about using a human rights framework to address the struggles of women of color in the US, and about her hopes that a new president would acknowledge the way intersectional oppressions weigh heavily on many Americans.

"The new president must pay homage to indigenous nations upon whose land we walk, and acknowledge that there are pockets of third world countries in the US, people living in destitute conditions, suffering human rights violations in our prisons, fosters care, homeless shelters, in the Lower Ninth Ward after Katrina," she said.

At the end of the speakout, women stood up to the Open Mic, and spoke about issues as varied as Puerto Rican independence, prisoners' rights, funding for public higher education, and equity for underrepresented minorities in the workforce.