As we all know, this Thursday, November 25 is Thanksgiving. Instead of just gorging on food and engaging in drunken arguments with your family about politics, you can go out and volunteer. Winter holidays are a hard time of year to be homeless, and homeless women face special difficulties. Women veterans are twice as likely […]
Global
Help Me Call On the Senate to Ratify CEDAW
Today, for the first time in eight years, the U.S. Senate held a hearing on the importance of ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). I was invited to submit my testimony; below is what I sent. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, in a letter released […]
‘Women for Sale’: An Israeli Campaign Against Trafficking
If you were in Tel Aviv a couple of weeks ago, chances are you might have done a double-take as you passed by a certain shopping center storefront. Instead of using mannequins to sell clothing items, there were live models on display–perhaps a more natural way to show off the attire. But then, if you […]
Nasrin Sotoudeh Needs our Screams
The Museum of Modern Art in New York is currently exhibiting Yoko Ono’s “living art.” One of the works is an instruction piece called Voice Piece for Soprano, made in 1961. This participatory artwork encourages visitors, in a subtle but attractive manner, to “Scream. 1. against the wind; 2. Against the wall; 3. Against the […]
When Isabel Met Kavita and Talked About Militarism
Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Global Fund for Women’s event “Resist, Reclaim, Restore,” which featured a conversation between Kavita Ramdas, the former president and CEO of the GFW, and Chilean-American author Isabel Allende. The GFW’s progressive approach to empowering women attracted a diverse set of women who gathered that evening in […]
Aung San Suu Kyi, Free at Last!
It’s taken seven years, but finally some good news: Nobel Peace Prize-winning human-rights activist and feminist hero Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma/Myanmar has been freed by the military junta that has been holding her under house arrest. Suu Kyi, now 65, has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest, unable to […]
Can a U.N. Resolution on Women and Peace Transform Our World?
Ten years ago the United Nations Security Council passed UNSCR 1325, the first-ever resolution on women, peace and security. 1325 sets a new standard for how conflicts are resolved: Women must participate fully in peace negotiations and post-conflict reconstruction. If this really works, it will transform our militarized world. The hard part is implementation. Patriarchal […]
Alert: Ashtiani Faces Imminent Execution
Never before has the cruelty of Iranian criminal justice system been more evident than now. The International Committee Against Stoning reported Monday that the Iranian government has given the go-ahead for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani to be executed for adultery. At the same time, Nasrin Sotoudeh–a prominent human rights lawyer incarcerated in Iran’s notorious Evin prison–has […]
Mapping Harassment in Cairo
After the call–hey pretty lady–comes that split-second in which you must decide how to respond. Reply sweetly? Duck for cover? Pull your coat tighter and walk faster, silently wishing you weren’t a woman alone in public–or, maybe, that the public wasn’t so hostile to women? Egyptian women activists are giving Cairo’s residents an alternative way […]