Here’s a roundup of news affecting women from around the web.
Following the tragic shooting at an Oakland, Calif. college earlier this week, few news outlets are reporting what the Los Angeles Times has reported, “Gunman killed mostly women.” Six of the seven victims were women. The seventh was a man the gunman apparently shot in order to use the victim’s car to get away from the crime scene. The AP quoted one of the victim’s husbands as saying, “My wife was afraid of him. She was afraid he would do something like he did. She knew the other victims, and they talked about it. They were afraid that he was going to come back and do what he did.” What we don’t know is whether the gunman bypassed men to shoot only women, or whether there were mostly women on site at the time of the shooting. Either way, we think the mainstream media should at least examine this angle.
Speaking of violence against women, some students working at the Boston University school newspaper, The Daily Free Press, ran an April Fools’s story about rape. Using a Disney theme for the issue, the story led with the news that seven frat dwarves allegedly drugged and raped a female student – the ‘‘fairest of them all.’’ The fictitious dwarves from the BRO fraternity were quoted in the article as saying, “No one drinks like the BROs, no one shoots like the BROs and definitely no one should rape like the BROs.” You can view a scan of the newspaper here. The story was offensive on its own. And in light of sexual assault charges facing some of the school’s hockey players, it was just baffling. Following an uproar from students and others, the editor of the paper resigned and the newspaper board issued an apology stating, “We know that even though the stories were meant to be jokes, simply writing them perpetuated rape culture.” Rape is never funny. How sad that anyone ever has to make that point.
Speaking of baffling, Nikki Haley, Republican governor of South Carolina shared her thoughts on women’s rights on “The View” the other day. She said, “Women don’t care about contraception. They care about jobs and their families…” Hello, Governor Haley, our access to contraception directly affects our jobs and our families.
And a little further to the south, golf lovers are focused on the Masters Tournament going on this weekend at the Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. Augusta has a strict no-woman policy and yet IBM, know for its diversity programs, sponsors the tournament. This year, things got complicated because IBM has a new CEO, Virginia Rometty, and she’s a she. IBM’s CEOs have always been given a membership but the club passed on Rometty, and sadly, she let the moment pass. Did Rometty decide she should save her political chips at IBM for other matters? Probably. But until we reach gender parity, our female leaders represent all women, not just themselves or their organizations.
Early in the week, a man firebombed a Planned Parenthood clinic in Wisconsin. The clinic was closed at the time, so thankfully, no one was injured. Francis Grady, who has been accused of the crime, told a reporter he did it because, “They’re killing babies in there.” Meanwhile, the chair of the Republic National Committee says the war on women is fiction made up by the Democrats.
