When we talk about the agrarian crisis in India and the quarter of a million farmers who have committed suicide since 1995, we tend to think about the men and the physical act of suicide–swallowing the very pesticides that landed them in debt after addressing final letters to village heads and prime ministers. A staggering […]
Month: August 2011
San Francisco Stands Up to CPCs
The fight against crisis pregnancy centers’ (CPCs) false advertising continued in San Francisco this week. On August 2nd, a bill was introduced before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that would make it illegal for CPCs to falsely advertise pregnancy-related services as abortion services. CPCs are primarily religious or ideologically based anti-choice facilities that have […]
DNA Evidence CAN Stop Serial Rapists
It was an ordinary day in October, 2002. Julie Weil and her infant son were picking up Julie’s daughter, three-year-old Emily, from her Florida preschool at noon. As Julie buckled her daughter into her car seat, she felt a sudden blow to the head. That day, Julie was raped four times in front of her […]
Victory! Goodwill Removes Billboard
Denver’s branch of Goodwill Industries, the thrift-store chain that has always positioned itself as a helping hand to diverse communities across the U.S., recently launched a new series of advertisements with the slogan “The Goodwill Effect.” Riding my bike last week in the city, I came across the following billboard for the campaign: “She discovered […]
Feudals, Feminists and Foreign Ministers
On July 19, Hina Rabbani Khar was sworn in as Pakistan’s youngest and first-ever woman foreign minister. It seemed like welcome news from a beleaguered country whose name evokes visions of misogyny and repression: bearded Taliban burning girls’ schools, rape laws that punish victims instead of perpetrators and women killed by fathers and brothers in pursuit […]
Female Decision-Makers Set to Lose Out in Britain
The U.S. isn’t the only country in which harsh deficit-cutting measures have been proposed. Right now, Britain’s coalition government is laying out plans for an ambitious public services reform program in the name of cutting the UK’s deficit. The government is seeking to overhaul everything from police to pensions to the number of politicians in […]
Rep. Gwen Moore Weighs in on Birth Control Victory
Since the 1960s, when the birth control pill was approved by the FDA, a woman’s ability to access it has been uncertain and unstable. At one point, unmarried women couldn’t get it. Still today, pharmacists can refuse to fill a woman’s prescription. And earlier this year, Republicans in Congress tried to defund Planned Parenthood, which […]
Birth Control Pills … Or a Frappuccino?
As the Ms. Blog reported yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will require all health insurers to fully cover women’s preventative health services, including birth control. With birth control costing some women hundreds of dollars each year, this measure slightly reduces the financial burden of being a woman. It may surprise some […]
White Cowboys and Alien Indians
Given that the new film Cowboys and Aliens is the structural and symbolic equivalent of “Cowboys and Indians,” I went to see it in order to discover if this newfangled Western-Alien mash-up is marred by the same racial representations as the majority of its Western film predecessors. And yes, for the most part, it is. […]
Until We Reach Equality, We Won’t End “Chore Wars”
[Co-written with Helen Mederer] The latest cover story from Time magazine, “Chore Wars,” purports to “lay to rest” the notion of working women’s second shift, instructing them to “move on” from their feelings of inequity. The implication–a familiar one–is that wives should stop complaining and be more appreciative of their husbands. The article mainly focuses […]