"Every 90 seconds a mother dies due to pregnancy related complications." reads the description for a new video from the Half the Sky Movement, an effort tied to the book by Nick Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. The sobering video looks at the reality of maternal mortality around the world. In Africa, a narrator says, women often die of preventable causes -- anemia, fistula, and the like. And there aren't nearly enough medically trained midwives in many of these countries. You can donate to the cause at www.crowdrise.com/halfthesky.
There’s a big secret about the bill to address the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, introduced by Representative Sandy Adams (R-FL), that’s no longer so secret: it’s racist, elitist, homophobic and anti-victim. The bill, which purports to support “true victims” of domestic and sexual violence while excluding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) survivors, forcing immigrants to tell their abusive partners where they are and gutting protections for Native women. So, using my secret decoder ring, I have to assume that “true victims” equals heterosexual, non-transgender, non-immigrant, non Tribal, non-people of color victims. Or, to remove the negatives, “true victims” equals straight, white women.
A new infographic from the Daily Dot, designed by Matthew Sisson, looks at how money in the "pro" camp stacked up against internet petition signatures and Facebook shares in the "anti" camp in the battles over SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, and CISPA this year. In the SOPA fight, for instance, the bill's sponsor, Lamar Smith, received $411,349 from interest groups that support the bill, while petitions launched by anti-SOPA activists garnered some 3.46 million signatures. View the infographic after the jump.
Highly educated women are increasingly choosing to have children, a new report from the June Current Population Survey, co-authored by University at Buffalo economist Bruce A. Weinberg. Published in the Journal of Population Economics, the report found that, at least according to early indications, fertility trends among highly educated women may be reversing. Indeed, according to the researchers' analysis, childlessness declined by roughly 5 percentage between 1998 and 2008. Earlier studies had come to conflicting conclusions.
On April 26th Canada’s Parliament debated M-312, a motion that calls for the formation of a special committee of Parliament to review whether the definition of a “human being” as described in the Canadian criminal code can be extended to unborn fetuses. Stephan Woodworth, a Member of Parliament with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, proposed the motion, after an extensive media campaign that began in December 2011. The campaign propagated his view that the definition of a “human being” in Section 223(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada is 400 years old (Canada became a country in 1867) and should be revisited.
In March of this year, 16-year-old Moroccan Amina Filali committed suicide after she was forced to marry her rapist, and Moroccans expressed their outrage at the incident. Now Jordanians are speaking up about a 15-year-old rape victim who has been married off to the man convicted of raping her, whose death sentence has been dropped as a consequence. The sentence was dropped thanks to Article 308 of the Jordanian Penal Code that allows convicted rapists to walk free if they marry their victims. A campaign has now been launched to get the law abolished.
It's difficult to find books with strong girl characters. Harry Potter and Percy Jackson have only recently been supplanted by Catniss Everdeen. To make sure your daughters can read their role models, there's a new website called "A Mighty Girl" It's a "repository of books and movies with girl empowerment themes." They don't even have kids, but Carolyn Danckaert and Aaron Smith who started the website do have a bunch of nieces.
"Marketers have always used women to sell products, but spokeswomen have lately veered away from the standard model of a well-endowed blonde in a mini. A different type is emerging, one who has a unique character and does more than seductively drape herself over merchandise. This woman has a story; she may dream, ride motorcycles or provide advice in a fantasy world we glimpse for just seconds." Ad Age's Sara Friedlander and Matthew Siegel write. They give two examples: Flo from the Progressive Insurance commercials and the "T-Mobile girl."
Fans of the NBC comedy Parks and Recreation were dismayed last week to hear the rumors that NBC will not renew the show after one more truncated season. Viewers love the show not only because it's hilarious, but because it features one of the more diverse casts on network TV, in terms of race and gender. Two of the show's fans, the female comedy duo Steph Garcia and Danielle Tolley, took the matter into their own hands and started a petition on Change.org urging NBC to keep the show on the air.
"This year, for the first time, women will be allowed to box at the Olympics, and Britain has three contenders hoping to make history. They are currently in China at the World Championships, fighting for their places in the Olympic team," the Telegraph reports. The paper printed essays by the three women, 27-year-old lightweight Natasha Jonas, 29-year-old flyweight Nicola Adams, and 20-year-old middleweight Savannah Marshall, nickname the Silent Assassin, who writes, "My ultimate dream is to fight in every Olympics until I retire."
Back in 2008, the Gender Equality Principles Initiative, a partnership between the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women, the Calvert Group, and Verité, released a set of gender equality principles to help organizations assess how well they are doing on the gender equality front. The principles are organized into seven key areas, including employment and compensation, work-life balance and career development, management and governance, and business, supply chain, and marketing practices.
"We don’t normally consider playing video games to be the best things for our kids," writes Meghan Harvey at SheHeroes, who then cites the somewhat surprising results of a recent study from Brigham Young University. "Initial results showed that the time kids spent playing video games alone was associated with a number of negative behaviors.... But when the kids were playing video games with their parents, or co-playing they found decreased levels of internalizing and aggressive behaviors, and heightened prosocial behavior, but only in the girls."
Last week, Lifetime premiered a new show called 7 Days of Sex, which promised to get couples out of a sex rut and fix their marriage in a quick commercial-filled hour by having them commit to having sex every day for a week. While I think 7 Days of Sex is fun, it lacks three main components that could help these couples (and viewers): An expert coaching the couple to clearly identify their core issues that will resurface, guidance on refining the tools necessary for relationship success, and a process of redrawing the blueprint to make for a solid foundation going forward.
"Evelyn Bryan Johnson last flew a plane in 2005. Two years later, she remained eager to get back behind the controls," the New York Times reports. "But the loss of a leg and glaucoma conspired to end the flying career of the woman who at her death at 102, on Thursday in Jefferson City, Tenn., had piloted an airplane more hours than anybody else alive — 57,635.4 hours, or more than 6 1/2 years. No woman has flown more and only one man has. Neither have aeronautical giants like Chuck Yeager and John Glenn."
For her senior thesis project at Tyler School of Art, Allison Kerek created an animation set to a recording from Tina Fey's "Bossypants," in which Fey reads her poem, "A Mother's Prayer for its Daughter." "May she be beautiful but not damaged," the poem goes, continuing, "When the crystal meth is offered, may she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half and stick with beer....Lead her away from acting but not all the way to finance." Watch all of Kerek's video, and Fey's poem, after the jump.
