Spectra, 30, is an award-winning Nigerian writer and women’s rights activist, and the voice behind Spectra Speaks, which publishes news, opinions and personal stories about gender, media and diversity as they pertain to Africa and the Diaspora. She is also founder and executive editor of Queer Women of Color Media Wire, a media advocacy and publishing organization that [...]
The Femisphere: African Feminist Bloggers, Part 2
July 11, 2012 by 5 Comments
Though it’s still seen as a peripheral movement in Africa, Afro-feminism communities are flourishing online. In the latest “Femisphere” series, Avital Norman Nathman speaks with three leading African feminist bloggers about the growth, triumphs and challenges of the movement—and why they refuse to be silenced. Lesley Agams, 46, is a feminist lawyer who was called to [...]
The Femisphere: African Feminist Bloggers, Part 1
July 9, 2012 by 1 Comment
Despite centuries of cultural practice that has routinely silenced the voices of African women, one of the most vibrant and vocal online global feminist communities comes from Africa. The online writers from the African feminist movement are nuanced and complex as they share their stories, their lives, their struggles and their triumphs. I had the [...]
Facebook “Likes” Sheryl Sandberg for Board of Directors
June 26, 2012 by 2 Comments
Of Facebook’s more than 900 million users, 58 percent are women. But until yesterday, the social media site’s board of directors was strictly a boy’s club stocked with wealthy white men. Sheryl Sandberg, who has served as chief operating officer of Facebook since signing on with the Silicon Valley-based company in 2008, was appointed to [...]
The Male Geek Is Not the Only Image of Success in the Tech World
June 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment
By Laura Sydell The image of the Silicon Valley innovation in the media—the young entrepreneur, computer programmer or engineer—is often a white male geek, the kind of guy made famous by The Social Network, a dramatic account of the founding of Facebook by Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg. In the film, women are decorative, fashionable and pretty, [...]
The Women and People of Color Who Invented the Internet
June 4, 2012 by 4 Comments
A Sunday New York Times article by David Streitfeld has the feminist and tech worlds up in arms. Reporting on a sexual harassment suit filed by a junior partner in a venture capital firm, Streitfeld begins by proclaiming that “MEN invented the Internet” (those CAPS are his). I came across Streitfeld’s article after a friend [...]
The Pinterest Problem
May 21, 2012 by 20 Comments
Recently, Pinterest, the newest billion-dollar social network, has been overwhelmingly characterized by online journalists and bloggers as a women-centered social media platform. While there have been discussions, most notably by Johanna Blakely, which suggest that social media neutralizes gender when it comes to marketing demographics, some of us, like my friend Goddessjaz, still wonder if/how [...]
The Femisphere: Reproductive Rights Bloggers
May 12, 2012 by 6 Comments
Sites such as RH Reality Check and Abortion Gang have long comprised a thriving reproductive-rights blogosphere. In the past year, their numbers have swelled, as legions of pissed-off feminists take to the Internet to oppose the growing war on women’s reproductive rights. One of the new kids on the repro-rights block is Keep your Boehner [...]
5 Reasons To Be Cheerful
April 10, 2012 by 4 Comments
Going online can be a fraught experience for any feminist–you never know when you’re going to stumble across sexist trolls or more depressing news from the war on women. So we would be shirking our duty as a feminist media outlet if we didn’t share some sites we’ve come across recently that make us smile. [...]
Tell Facebook to Bring Women To The Table
April 6, 2012 by 7 Comments
Fifty-eight percent of Facebook users are women. Sixty-two percent of shares on Facebook are done by female users. How many women are on Facebook’s board of directors? Zero. For such an innovative brand, Facebook is distinctly behind the times when it comes to gender equity. Only 11.3 percent of Fortune 500 companies had male-only boards [...]
