This week, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet is named new head of UN Women; maternal mortality has fallen for the first time in decades; the French Senate votes to ban face veils in public; a senior British cardinal says women can’t be ordained; and a woman purporting to be Sakineh Ashtiani, who was sentenced to […]
Author: Sarah Lohmann
Sarah Lohmann is a Ms. magazine intern from Germany via Scotland, where she’s studying for a joint degree in English Literature and Philosophy at the University of St Andrews.
No Comment, Vintage Edition: You Can’t Set Her Free
Is your patient trapped behind metaphorical bars of household cleaning equipment? Is she “anxious, tense and irritable,” “beset by the seemingly insurmountable problems of raising a young family,” and “confined to the home most of the time?” Clearly, there’s nothing you can do about her social predicament—but you can pump her full of drugs to […]
Global News Roundup: Morocco, France, Afghanistan, DRC, Japan
This week: Moroccan women banned from Mecca; Carla Bruni called a “prostitute” who “deserves to die”; Afghanistan woman MP’s aides found dead; suspicion of poison gas attacks in Afghanistan girls’ schools confirmed; U.N. denied protection to citizens before DRC mass rape; victim toll of mass rape now at over 240; and a new program for gender […]
Global News Roundup: Congo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Israel, Kenya
This week: reports of mass rape in Congo; poison gas at an Afghanistan girls’ school; desperate straits for Pakistani women who survived the floods; Indian women paid to delay pregnancy; Jerusalem’s gender-segregated trains; and a revolutionary constitution for Kenya. CONGO: Last Monday, the mass rape of almost 200 women in Congo was reported. The rapes were carried out systematically […]
Global News Roundup: China, Southern Europe, Japan, Bangladesh, Indonesia
This week, ‘fake virgins’ are the next big thing in China; gender equality becomes an economic necessity in Southern Europe; women suffer most from Japan’s economic recession; Bangladeshi prostitutes are given much-needed recognition; and Indonesia launches a women-only train line to fight sexual harassment. CHINA: A growing number of women in China are undergoing hymenoplasty, […]
From the Stacks: Follow the Leaders
This ad for Newsweek appeared in the pages of the April 1984 issue of Ms.: a roundup of “leaders of the world” without a woman in sight. It seems an unusual ad for a feminist magazine to take, but Ms. was going through a struggle concerning whether to accept paid advertisement (see Gloria Steinem’s article “Sex, […]
From The Stacks: More Miles Per Gal
Want “More Miles per Gal?” Look no further than this brilliant cart, “designed to allow your housekeeping system maximum efficiency and service.” Your two-legged housekeeping system, that is. This ridiculously offensive ad manages to demean and dehumanize women and people who provide cleaning services at the same time! It was reprinted in the No Comment […]
Anne Lister: Jane Austen’s Radical Lesbian Contemporary
Who knew that Jane Austen had a kick-ass lesbian contemporary? Well, she did, and her name was Anne Lister. What’s more, she kept four million words worth of diaries, about a sixth of which were written in a code that took a century to crack. Now, 170 years after her death, Anne Lister’s diaries have […]
From the Stacks: A Typical Operating Environment
“In a typical operating environment,” reads this 1983 organizational chart, “the system accepts data and inquiries from work stations…” And apparently, a “typical operating environment” meant that every “management” or “operator” position was held by a man. Leave it to the “girls” to deal with order entry, invoicing and accounts receivable. This ad was reprinted […]
First Ladies to Women’s Rescue
When 14 African first ladies traveled to Los Angeles last year for the first African First Ladies Health Summit, it looked like great things were afoot. In the course of their two-day conference, these feisty women helped raise awareness of the horrific maternal death rates in their countries and on how they’re interlinked with larger […]