How Many Choices About Motherhood Are There?
Submit your Mother’s Day story to the Women’s Media Center here and help spread the word that there are many choices women make about pregnancy and childbearing over the course of their lives. As a mother, I celebrate our choices as we celebrate Mother’s Day.
Read MoreDear Ohio, Why Jennifer Brunner Should Be Your Next Senator
This past week, I learned more about Ohio politics than I ever wanted to know, in particular next Tuesday’s (May 4) Democratic primary contest between Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner and Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher. The winner will go up against Republican Rob Portman in the November general election.
I suggest you read Kelley Bell’s Huffington Post column to get more facts and colorful descriptions of the intra-party machinations than I have bandwidth to recount here.
My involvement has been only peripheral. I happened to jump into a Facebook conversation begun by one of my favorite columnists, the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Connie Schultz, in which she bemoaned acrimony between women about the question of when (if ever) it’s incumbent on us to support our sisters who are running for office.
Read MoreWomenGirlsLadies on Ronnie Eldridge Show
Three of our WomenGirlsLadies inter-generational panel members, Deborah Siegel, Courtney Martin, and I (we were missing Kristal Brent Zook, who couldn’t change her teaching schedule to appear on the show) had a chance to talk with Eldridge and Co. host Ronnie Eldridge on her CUNY television show.
Click the photo above to see the video. We covered the inter-generational waterfront, from the state of the women’s movement, what happens when feminists disagree about political candidates, how we’re going to get work-life balance policies and actual practice, and what we all have in common to how the women’s movement has changed men too.
Our next public event will be Sept. 28 at the University of Missouri Kansas City. We’d love to come speak to your group too! Contact me and I’ll be delighted to give you more information.
Read MoreLeading Across Borders: Creating Women Entrepreneurs in Iraq
Regular Courageous Leadership contributor Anne Doyle sent me the link to this inspiring article by journalist Diane Tucker. Entitled “In Iraq, Women Entrepreneurs Staring a New Kind of Insurgency,” the piece is a good illustration of how financial resources underlie the capacity to achieve independence and elevate their status in society. It’s this kind of social change that also contributes to building a stronger democracy.
Tucker interviewed an American woman of Indian descent Amber Chand. Chand–who grew up in a wealthy family that lost everything when she was a child and later became an entrepreneur herself, is teaching Iraqi women, as well as women in Afghanistan and other countries in distress, how to become successful businesswomen. Here’s the story in her words.
Read MoreGo See Words of Choice and Support Women’s Access to Abortion
If you want to do good for women and see some good theater at the same time, here are some events you won’t want to miss this weekend!
Words of Choice, dynamic pro-choice theater company from New York, is bringing attention to choice this weekend where it is needed most: in the nation’s Capitol.
On Friday, April 23 at 7 pm, Words of Choice will appear in DC in partnership with the amazing DC Abortion Fund for an event that will raise funds to help women pay for abortions. The performance will be in DC at the Lankford Auditorium, 1200 U St., NW, in the True Reformer Building. A brief discussion follows the 70-minute performance.
The DC Abortion Fund (DCAF) is an all-volunteer, non-profit organization that makes grants and no-interest loans to DC women who cannot afford an abortion. “We hope to make choice a reality because we believe that a woman’s right to health care should not depend on her wallet,” it writes.
Read MoreWhy Equal Pay Day 2010 Is Equal Power Day
Pick a number between one and fifty-one
If you picked one, you’ve picked the District of Columbia, where the median earnings gap between all men and women over age 16, employed in full-time, year –round jobs is narrowest: women earn 88 cents to a man’s dollar. If you picked fifty-one, you’re in Wyoming, where women are paid just 64 cents to each smacker earned by a man.
If college education is factored in and you survey workers over 25, Wyoming leaps to first place at 88 cents, click image to take actionand Alaska slips to that 51st place at 64 cents for women to men’s dollar. Check out the AAUW’s information base on fair pay to find out where your state fits into the pecking order.
Read MoreDon’t Think Like an Elephant
Recently I was at the SeeJaneDo conference where I heard this story. I was so moved by it that I immediately had to include it in my forthcoming book about women’s relationship with power–No Excuses, to be published in October–despite having already having turned in what were supposed to be the last changes.
Read MoreIt’s said that when a baby elephant is being trained, she is tied to a post almost immediately after birth. During the first few weeks of life, she attempts to break free of her restraints, but she’s not strong enough. So she comes to believe she can’t get away from what is holding her back even after she has grown large and plenty powerful to uproot the post entirely. As a consequence, even as an adult, she remains tied to the post due to an internally motivated behavior that is no longer rooted in external reality.
Um Could This Possibly Be Why We Have Nuclear Weapons to Begin With?
The picture says it all. Thanks to Lucinda Marshall of Feminist Peace Network for calling it to my attention.
Read MoreThe Feministing Five Interview
Feministing.com’s Chloe Angyal asked me the five questions that the terrific online community puts to a different feminist every week. In case you have ever wondered what food, beverage, and feminist I’d take with me to a desert island, read on…
Gloria Feldt is a force to be reckoned with. Feldt is the former President and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Foundation of America and has devoted her entire working life to women’s rights. This week marked the conclusion of efforts to pass health care reform, and because abortion coverage was used, successfully, as a wedge issue in the debate over those efforts, it’s important to reflect on what went wrong, what we did right, and what our next steps should be. And who better to help us understand that than Feldt?
Read MoreIs Nancy Pelosi the Most Powerful Woman in American History?
That’s the question of the day and I hope you’ll share your answer to it.
Diane Sawyer asked Pelosi herself whether she agrees with that perception in her March 22 interview, the day after the health reform bill passed the House of Representatives. Pelosi seemed a little taken aback, as she often does, and demurely replied that she takes the idea as a compliment to all women.
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