Here’s a roundup of stories impacting women for your weekend reading.
This one in The New York Times Magazine on parents expecting twins who chose to abort one fetus is sure to generate discussion.
You probably heard that Nafissatou Diallo, who has accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexual assault, has filed a civil lawsuit. Did you hear Law & Order plans to air an episode based on the case? Speaking of DSK, Bloomberg BusinessWeek has an article on whether the IMF looked the other way and ignored the former executive’s behavior toward women.
Cleveland.com reports on misogynist, serial killer Anthony Sowell who was sentenced to death for murdering 11 women.
TechCrunch reporting on the new Verizon Android phone targeted toward women, cites unofficial reports that the droid is “pretty”, has dangly charms and less functionality than the standard variety. Ugh.
And in case you were wondering if FOX moderators were being sexist when they asked Michele Bachmann during last night’s GOP debate if she would be a submissive wife as president, read this piece from RH Reality Check.
This post originally ran on TheMamaBee.com. We’ve since replaced some of the activities listed below for new ones, but our house remains dirty and we still don’t have any friends. With the movie version of “I Don’t Know How She Does It” opening next month, we’re wondering, how do you do it all? Here’s our story:
People always ask me, “How do you do it all?” I am a full time working mother –in fact I’m the family breadwinner. I am also president of the PTO, chair of a town committee, organizer of an annual event for 400 attendees, and I moonlight as a freelance writer. “It’s easy,” I tell them. “But my house is always dirty and I have no friends.” And then the person who asked the question always laughs. But I’m not joking.
My house is dirty. While my husband has the time to clean, he has no interest. And I have neither the time nor the interest. Type As like me thrive on checking things off a to-do list and cleaning never comes off the list; by the time you get through all of the rooms in the house, you need to start over. I don’t choose to spend my time cleaning. Nor do I choose to spend my time fighting with my husband trying to get him to clean.
We used to fight about it. Big, ugly hairy fights. But fighting wastes precious time and for a working mother, time is currency. The fighting just didn’t add up. Do the math:
Ask husband (three times) to remove unfolded piles of laundry from couch and put them away: 3 mins.
Yell at husband for not putting laundry away, disrespecting all of my wishes, being an insensitive lout, never listening, and not knowing the meaning of love: 20 mins.
Give husband silent treatment: 30 mins.
Apologize for slightly overreacting : 2 mins.
Simply push piles of laundry to the other end of the sofa so I have a place to sit down and snuggle with the kids: immediate and priceless.
As far as friends go, I do exaggerate, but just slightly. I actually have two and a half friends – two of them I’ve known for thirty years. I talk to one of them almost every day during my commute. And I go months without talking to the other one but our friendship is strong enough to withstand the long silences. And the half? Well that represents all the lovely acquaintances I make through my many activities. I would befriend them but then they’d expect me to call, email and socialize. And I don’t have the time.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed, like when I have too many deadlines, I’m tired and there are thirty-eight plastic dinosaurs on my living room rug. Just recently, one of my cousins stopped by on a weekend morning. Over coffee, I unloaded on her that I was exhausted and couldn’t manage everything.
“You need to lower your standards,” she said.
As I slid the previous night’s dirty dinner plates out of my way so I had a place to put my coffee mug, I said hopefully, “Really, do you think that’s the answer?”
My lifestyle is not for everyone. Like all working mothers, I make sacrifices. I will never go scrapbooking, for example, or host a book club meeting. Hell, I won’t even be invited to join the book club. But despite my busy schedule, I always have time to read a book to my child. Now if only I could find the damn book somewhere in this mess.
Eversave is running a fun survey asking women how they do it all. You can take it here.
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Pundits are split on whether or not Newsweek’s decision to run the unflattering (we can all agree on that, right?) picture of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann was sexist.
Why is it so hard to figure out? I think it stems from the way the media has conditioned us to think about and view women. When so many young, female characters on television are sexualized, when even the most beautiful women in the world are airbrushed, when we see too few images of strong, athletic women and when so much of our news comes from the male point of view, we struggle with what is reality, what is media manipulation, how we view other women and what we’ve come to expect of how the media views us.
And then add politics to the mix and things get even more distorted. With such small numbers of women participating in politics, the media turns the few women who do into Everywoman. Remember, for example, how a vote for Hillary Clinton was portrayed as a vagina vote, not a vote for a candidate? President Obama caught on camera calling someone a jackass was an on-air gaffe. But Carly Fiorina caught mocking her opponent’s hair was mean girl behavior. More than one man running for president from a political party is called a candidate pool. But more than one woman is a cat fight. So is it any wonder that determining whether Newsweek chose a crazy-eyed image to match a crazy candidate or whether the magazine chose to create an unstable portrait of a woman running for president, gives us pause?
What do you think? Is the Bachmann Newsweek cover sexist?
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More good news out of Washington (can you believe it?). The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) earlier this week announced new guidelines as part of the Affordable Care Act that require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services including breastfeeding support, domestic violence screening, and contraception – without charging a co-payment or a deductible.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement, “These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need.” In developing the guidelines, the HHS worked with the Institute of Medicine to do a review of women’s health needs and provide recommendations on preventive measures specifically for women.
According to the HHS website, women will have access to the following services without cost-sharing starting in August of next year:
well-woman visits;
screening for gestational diabetes;
human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing for women 30 years and older;
sexually-transmitted infection counseling;
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) screening and counseling;
FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling;
breastfeeding support, supplies, and counseling; and
domestic violence screening and counseling.
An amendment to the new regulation allows religious institutions that offer insurance to their employees a choice whether or not to cover contraception services.
Not only are these guidelines key to helping women get the medical services and treatments they require, they are key to women’s professional and financial security too. Giving women access to choice, support and tools makes the challenges of managing career and family that much easier.
Here’s some of the news affecting women from around the web:
The women who accused former head of the IMF Dominque Strauss Kahn of raping her in a New York hotel has taken her story direct to the media after weeks of scrutiny about her life and character. She has been accused of prostitution, had her credibility called in to question and been vilified in the comments sections of news outlets across the web. Nafissatou Diallo gave an in depth interview to Newsweek and an on camera interview to ABC News. While we don’t know how this decision to give interviews plays into her legal team’s strategy, we do know this is the second time in recent months a woman has gone on a major news program to talk about an attack. CBS reporter Lara Logan went on prime-time to discuss her attack in Egypt. While it is common practice to protect the identity of a defendant in a rape case, often to protect them from harassment, these interviews help advance the discussion about this horrible crime and help remove the stigma of shame and blame that is often placed on the victim.
The man behind the killings in Norway revealed a hatred of women, among other things, in the manifesto he left behind. Michelle Goldberg writes about it at The Daily Beast. For a compelling read on the media’s failure to report on the role of gender and misogyny in crime, read Jennifer Pozner’s article, “From Jonesboro to Virginia Tech – sexism is fatal, but media miss the story.” While it appears the Norway killer was fueled by a hatred of many things, it is important to note the role misogyny played in addition to his other motives.
A Georgia woman faces up to three years in jail for the death of her son who was struck by a car. The woman, however, wasn’t behind the wheel. Raquel Nelson was crossing the street with her children when a van hit her son and then fled the scene Nelson, was convicted of vehicular homicide for failure to cross in the crosswalk. The driver was sentenced to six months jail time. From anti abortion bills that could criminalize miscarriage, to Nelson’s conviction, the message, ladies, is be a perfect baby vessel and mother. Anything less is a crime.
And if in your attmept to be perfect, you choose breast over bottle, keep it to yourself. The breastfeeding baby doll is back in the news and deemed “creepy” by critics. It’s okay for young girls to play mom and feed their baby dolls a bottle. But if they pretend to nurse the baby, that’s a different story.
When Abby Wambach headed that incredible goal last Sunday to save the U.S. Women’s Soccer team’s chances in the World Cup Quarterfinals, did she shatter some kind of glass ceiling in sports? For too long we’ve heard women’s sports can’t attract the same audiences men’s events can. Some say that’s because women’s sports don’t draw the same number of eyeballs men’s sports do. Perhaps. But as we’ve asked before, how do we know if that’s because people don’t like watching women athletes or because women’s sports don’t get prime time slots or the same level of funding as men’s sports? A report published last year from the University of Southern California and Purdue University and titled, “Gender in Televised Sports,” revealed men’s sports received 96.3 percent of all sports coverage on the major networks evening programs. Airtime for women’s sports had declined from 6.3 percent in 2004 to 1.6 percent in 2009.
The truth is great games are great games regardless of gender. Don’t believe me? Watch this video.
Sunday’s game netted a television rating of 2.6 – very high for the sport, but not the highest. Yesterday’s win against France most likely rated lower given it was mid-morning, mid-week. The final match Sunday against Japan is expected to be a big hit. It will be interesting to see just how big.
Earlier this year, Maya Moore became the first female basketball player to sign an endorsement deal with Nike’s Jordan Brand. The WNBA has never gained major traction with viewers but the league’s president says all of the key metrics (attendance, sponsorship, tickets) are up.
Still, based on columns like this one, it’s more likely Wambach, Moore and their teammates have merely made some cracks in the glass, not quite shattered it. But, hey, that’s progress.
Funeral services begin today for former First Lady Betty Ford who passed away Friday at the age of 93. Here are three ways we can honor Ford’s incredible legacy.
The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1923 and took 49 years to pass Congress but it was never ratified because not enough states supported it and Congress sets a time limit for ratification. Last month Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Senator Robert Menendez re-introduced the Equal Rights Amendment. As Maloney said in a press release, “The Equal Rights Amendment is still needed because the only way for women to achieve permanent equality in the U.S. is to write it into the constitution. Making women’s equality a constitutional right—after Congress passes and 38 states ratify the ERA—would place the United States on record, albeit more than 200 years late, that women are fully equal in the eyes of the law.” Urge your representatives to support the bill.
2. Support the Paycheck Fairness Act. Ford was also a supporter of equal pay, an issue she said she became sensitive to while caring for and supporting her first husband, when he was unable to work.
The Paycheck Fairness Act was rejected by the Senate last fall but reintroduced this year by Senator Mikulski and Rep. DeLauro. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wrote in the Huffington Post that the Paycheck Fairness Act, “would prohibit employers from retaliating against workers for sharing salary information with their co-workers. The legislation would also establish training groups to help women strengthen their negotiation skills, enforce equal pay laws for federal contractors, and require the Department of Labor to work with employers to eliminate wage disparities through better outreach and training.” Contact your representatives and ask them to support the Paycheck Fairness Act.
3. Help remove the stigma of addiction and illness. Perhaps Ford’s greatest legacy was her founding of the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, California in 1982. She was a brave advocate for people suffering from drug and alcohol addiction after she was treated for chemical dependency and she recognized the need for gender-specific treatment programs.
Ford set an example for people suffering from addiction to seek help and made it safer for women, especially, to admit to having a problem. She was also one of the first women to discuss breast cancer openly. We can honor her life and her work by continuing the dialogue on issues affecting women.
This week’s Heroine of the Week is Afrykayn Moon who according to the Detroit Free Press held her ground when a SMART bus driver ordered her to either cover up or get off the bus because Moon was breastfeeding her child on the public transit. When Moon wouldn’t stop, the bus driver refused to drive and had security guards board the bus to question the mother.
Michigan is one of 28 states that protect breastfeeding women from public indecency laws. However, following last week’s incident State Representative Rashida Tlaib and State Senator Rebekah Warren introduced legislation to protect women from discrimination while breastfeeding in public. The legislation would amend the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act which prohibits discriminatory practices and policies based upon religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status, or marital status, to protect women who are breastfeeding in public. It would also prohibit businesses from denying a woman service or accommodation because she is breastfeeding.
Moon, who is a member of the Black Mother’s Breastfeeding Association, is holding a nurse-in today at SMART terminals in Michigan to raise awareness for the benefits of breastfeeding and the legality of doing it in public. Moon has given several interviews to news outlets this week and she took to YouTube to tell the whole story in her own words. Watch it here.
SMART issued a statement following the incident stating, “SMART supports a mothers right to breastfeed her child. It is our policy to permit this activity on all SMART buses.
“We have taken the recent complaint very seriously and are investigating the full incident. The driver involved in the situation has been taken out of service pending conclusion of our investigation.”
Here’s some news involving or affecting women from around the Web.
Christine Lagarde, France’s finance minister, has been named the new head of the International Monetary Fund. She is the first woman to ever hold the position and she is comfortable discussing her gender as an asset to her work. According to NPR, she told ABC’s Christine Christiane Amanpour in an interview, ”I think we inject less libido and less testosterone into the equation… It helps in the sense that we don’t necessarily project our egos into cutting a deal.” And according to the Associated Press, she said of her candidacy, “she’d ‘bring all my expertise as a lawyer, a minister, a manager and a woman’ to the job.”
Last week Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) re-introduced the Equal Rights Amendment. Maloney said in a press release, “The Equal Rights Amendment is still needed because the only way for women to achieve permanent equality in the U.S. is to write it into the constitution. While it’s been thrilling to see how far women have come in my lifetime, laws can change, government regulations can be weakened, and judicial opinions can shift. Making women’s equality a constitutional right—after Congress passes and 38 states ratify the ERA—would place the United States on record, albeit more than 200 years late, that women are fully equal in the eyes of the law.”
The ERA amendment simply states, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”
Betty Dukes, who sparked the gender discrimination suit against Wal-Mart will tesify before Congress today about the Supreme Court’s decision to block a class action suit against the retailer. Dukes has vowed to continue her suit against the company.
The war on women’s reproductive rights wages on. There are so many actions in so many states, it’s hard to keep track. Ohio just voted to ban abortions after the fetal heartbeat is heard. Kansas has passed new regulations which will force abortion clinic to close down leaving the state without a provider. Indiana has cut funding to Planned Parenthood. Texas is moving to do the same.RH Reality Check is a great resource for staying on top of reproductive rights information.
There was a time I couldn’t get enough basketball. I grew up in Boston watching Bird, Parrish, McHale, DJ and Ainge. But eventually, the NBA stopped interesting me. The players changed – they were younger than me all of a sudden, not older. The game changed – there were way too many fouls. I got busy. Now I don’t choose to spend my time watching more than one sport and baseball will always come first. (I mentioned I grew up in Boston, right?)
Having attended my fair share of Bruins games over the years, I was thrilled when they won the Stanley Cup. (And maybe I was once escorted from the Garden for being rowdy – I’ll never tell.) But deep down inside there was a part of me that felt conflicted about the win.
It’s difficult to get totally excited about a championship where only men compete. There is no Lady Stanley Cup. And there’s no equivalent World Series for women. As a feminist, I have to tune out a part of me and focus on the tradition and the history to truly enjoy watching my boys of summer.
As we’ve said before, women’s sports don’t typically get the same airtime, endorsements or respect that men’s sports get. Many say that’s because women’s sports don’t draw the same number of eyeballs. Perhaps. But how do we know if that’s because people don’t like watching women athletes or because women’s sports don’t get prime time slots or the same level of funding as men’s sports? What makes an NBA game more compelling than a WNBA game when you strip out all the media fanfare?
So Maya Moore just might make basketball interesting again, for me. I’m willing to watch a few games. Will you join me? And for more ways to support women’s sports:
Here’s a roundup of stories impacting women for your weekend reading.
