Tag: Education Equity

Generation Roe: Have We Always Known Roe Was an Aberrance Only Two Generations Would Experience?

I was born in 1974, nearly 18 months to the day after Roe. The women of my generation, along with the following generation, have been shaped by access to legal abortion and the subsequent guarantee of full personhood. The birth control pill, first approved by the FDA in 1960, promised reproductive autonomy, but abortion rights helped make it true.

As we approach the overturning of Roe, the women of Generation Roe must continue to speak out and join forces with other generations of activists to ensure we will not be the only ones to have experienced full personhood, unencumbered by laws seeking to define all women as mothers whose interests are subsumed by their children, born and unborn.

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The One Good Thing About School Dress Codes

School dress codes are agents of slut-shaming, driven by the belief that girls who don’t cover up are deviant and distracting. But the one exciting upside is that students are so disgusted and outraged by these sexist, racist regulations that they are galvanized to become feminist activists.

“The administration had been looking at my photo, and what they saw was my chest. It was concerning to me that they were basically viewing us just as bodies that were distracting. They were sexualizing us even though we’re still children.”

Don't Fence Me In: Reproductive Freedom and Women Workers

Don’t Fence Me In: Reproductive Freedom and Women Workers

For centuries under common law, a daughter or a wife was the property of the family father or husband or, upon his death, the closest relative with a penis. Whatever was theirs was his, but most importantly the family patriarch oversaw her most valuable asset: her womb. In earliest medical thought, a womb was fertile ground in need of guarding and fences to make property rights clearer, and she to be plowed and planted with seed, quite literally semen.

We thought such laws and cultural metaphors were behind us. But now the cowboys of Texas have put a bounty on women’s wombs. The stakes are women’s civil rights as citizens, surely, but also financial ones.

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Keeping Score: NYC’s First Women-Majority Council Takes Office; Only 55% of Non-Parents Want Kids Someday; D.C. Students Get Free Period Products

This week: Nebraskans face one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the nation; New York City’s first women-majority city council takes office; Ahmaud Arbery’s murderers sentenced to life in prison; D.C. Council approved free menstrual products in all schools; the gender gap in higher education widens; and more.

The Repression of Women in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan: A Human Rights Issue

The Repression of Women in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan: A Human Rights Issue

Women are under threat from radical Islamist obscurantism in many countries, such as Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while the U.S. and the international community fail to defend them. Women are subject to a pattern of extremists that aims to repress women in the name of religion, but eventually devastate the rights of the entire population.

The control of women is tolerated in society, as it grants men the perks of preferential status, but this dominant control is seen in every aspect of life and weakens these countries at their core. Leaving them powerless and vulnerable, systematically leading to the loss of basic human rights and the suppression of everyone’s individual choices.

Daughters of Immigrants Lead the Way

Daughters of Immigrants Lead the Way

Michelle Wu is not the only daughter of immigrants to blow the doors open in Boston this election—so did her campaign manager, Mary Lou Akai-Ferguson.

Born in Japan, raised in East Atlanta and only five years out of college, Akai-Ferguson is far from the typical political consultant. But we shouldn’t be surprised: As daughters of immigrants, Akai-Ferguson and Wu fit a pattern of high achievers.