"Starting from the Scratch," the new book by Susan M. Gilber-Collins will make you laugh at some parts and weep in others. It’s a quick read but definitely worth it (via Feminist Review).

Lori Freedman is a sociologist and she wrote the book "Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in Abortion Care." Through this book, she “primarily wanted to find out what keeps physicians who feel positive about providing abortion from doing so.”  (via Feminist Review).

Events

Join  the Women’s Media Center, Women’s Campaign Forum Foundation, Political Parity, and Lake Research Partners online this Tuesday at 11am for the livestream of Name It. Change It. A national campaign to ensure accountability through a "coordinated rapid response network to dramatically decrease incidences of media misogyny directed at women running for elected office" (more info here).

Do you want to show your personal story behind these global targets? ViewChangeFilmContest.org is launching an online competition to find powerful new stories about the progress being made in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Don’t forget that the deadline for submission is August 31st (more info @ Association for Women Rights).

Women’s Voices from the muslim world. Women’s Voices Now (WVN) organizes a short-film festival to give voice to women of all faiths living in Muslim-majority countries and Muslim women living as minorities around the globe (more info at Association for Women Rights). 

Got an event coming up or a tip to share? Let us know!  

Tweet This Post

Particularly relevant to the times: Eliza Griswold brings us "The Tenth Parallel," a book that describes “where Muslims and Christians drew lines in the sand" (via NY Time).

"The Gerbil Farmer’s Daughter" is a true story by Holly Robinson — one she didn’t always want to share. She emphasizes in the best way that “ there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ childhood.” (Feminist Review)

"Eat, Pray, Love" became a bestseller again (surprise!) for a second time since 2006. Of course, the movie based on the book explains this phenom. However, the book touches an interesting subject: how you can recover and try to rediscover your life after an "unsuccesful" marriage. Reviews of the book (and movie) have always been mixed, but we think it’s worth taking a read if you haven’t. If you’ve read it, what did you think? (via LA Times)

From Prem K. Bhandari: millions of women die each year from all kinds of deadly diseases. Learn what they are, how to spot them and how to best deal with the medical community about preventative and remedial treatments. (at Amazon)

Events:

On Thursday, August 26th, you can join the discussion, “Ain’t I a Woman: A Complicated Story of Women’s Suffrage in Black and White” at the William G. McGowan Theater at the National Archives. "To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, the Sewall-Belmont House & Museum has joined with the National Archives Experience and the National Park Service’s Mary McLeod Bethune Council House for a panel discussion on the women’s suffrage movement and its lasting impact on race and gender in the United States. The discussion will analyze the women’s rights movement through the unique, historic, and parallel perspectives of these historic houses and museums." Visit the Sewall-Belmont website for more details. (via the Younger Women’s Task Force).

One more interesting discussion and celebration for women. On Thursday August 26th, Women ‘s eNews invites you to Women’s Equality Day in New York City— the day in 1920 when women gained the right to vote in the United States—to talk about equality in politics and media. (more info at feministing.com)

Across the pond? Go and hang out the “Sidney Feminist Meet-Up." It’s a good chance for a good chat and picnic in the Victoria Park. (more info at feministing.com).

Got an event coming up or a tip to share? Let us know! 

Tweet This Post

Perhaps one of the biggest impediments to women’s equality in the United States is a pervasive, persistent and too-common myth: it’s all been done. It’s a cruel trick, as if the exhortation to girls that they can do anything is turned on its head into a "fait accompli" by mere affirmation and repetition. The struggle for women’s equality, we are somehow led to believe, is all but passé, as unnecessary as a typewriter, as "dead" as feminism, even when evidence to the contrary is right in front of us.

There is certainly still work to do. You’re still in a situation where women make 77 cents on the dollar, where any review of EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) charges or any scan through Westlaw (legal research service) would show you that there continues to be discrimination at work, at school. We still have work to be done to assure equality," said Fatima Goss Graves, vice president for education and employment at the National Women’s Law Center in Washington D.C. "Whether they are able to label it as discrimination or not, most people are able to identify inequities at school, at work."

Yet, the overt may be easier to pinpoint than the subtle. In testimony in July to support the nomination of Elena Kagan to the U. S. Supreme Court, Marcia D. Greenberger, co-president and co-founder of the National Women’s Law Center, recounted the case of a 13-year old girl who was strip searched at school to see if she was hiding ibuprofen, a matter that came before the Supreme Court in 2009: "At oral argument, Justice Ginsburg, then the sole woman on the Court, described the humiliation and indignity a teenaged girl would have suffered by being forced to strip and even shake out her underwear in front of school officials. A number of male Justices questioned why it was so traumatic — one thinking back, for example, to experiences in locker rooms as a 13-year-old male." The court ultimately ruled in favor of the girl, noted Greenberger, due "at least in part to the perspective that Justice Ginsburg brought."

Greenberger has been at this work of trying to secure women’s rights as long as the existence of Title IX, the 1972 law that said educational institutions could not discriminate by gender. As a young lawyer she accepted a short-term assignment with the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) in D.C. to analyze whether there would be enough work for a women’s rights lawyer. Yes, she reported, and soon, she was heading the Women’s Rights Project, which, in turn, evolved into the National Women’s Law Center. It now has a staff of 60, an annual budget of $7.5 million … and the calls keep coming in.

"Our intake volume is high. There is no way that we can represent all of the people. We’re not sitting around fiddling our thumbs," said Graves.

Staff members monitor government policy, testify to Congress, issue public alerts,
lobby and litigate for the advancement of women and girls and working families in four core areas — employment, education, family economic security, and health and reproductive rights. "There are a lot of laws in place, and the question is how they are applied," said Graves.

Bush Fights for 1930s

Unfortunately, the George W. Bush administration answered that
question by trying to squeeze the life out of women’s equality in a thousand shreddings and shroudings, refusing to enforce existing laws, failing to staff women’s policy programs, removing information from public access, selecting judges indifferent or hostile to women’s equal rights. Efforts to conceal the shifts were often obscured, as well: one slap down of women’s athletic opportunities was announced late on a Friday evening after the news cycle had slowed to a dribble for the weekend.

"We saw a pretty serious rollback on equality in the Bush administration. We slid back during those years. There was a series of steady attacks and they continued," said Graves.

After only four years of the Bush presidency, the organization released a 77-page 
 report: Slip-Sliding Away. It details some of the most egregious assaults on the laws meant to protect women against discrimination.

Such as? The Department of Education suddenly archived its guidelines on sexual harassment. The Department of Labor removed materials on narrowing the wage gap from its website. The Department of Justice dropped cases challenging sex discrimination in employment. The Labor Department repealed a rule to help employees obtain paid leave for childbirth or adoption. The Department of Education refused to investigate the exclusion of women from math and science programs. Women’s Educational Equity, which helped schools comply with equal opportunities, was eliminated, even though funded by Congress. Emergency contraception was shoved into a stalled approval process, despite support of scientific panels. Low and moderate-income women didn’t stand a chance of benefiting from tax cuts, but did felt the resulting slash of social service programs.

"Actions with harsh effects on women are occurring almost completely ‘under the
radar,’" the report said. "And their low profile is no accident: these initiatives and positions are so out of touch with the views and aspirations of most American women – and men – that they would never be tolerated if subjected to public scrutiny."

One debacle offers a vivid example of regulatory dirty tricks. In 2002, Bush’s Secretary of Education, Rod Page, set up a commission to reevaluate Title IX rules, with the seeming intention of weakening women’s athletic opportunities and shifting the funding to men’s sports. ("Since Title IX was passed in 1972, it has been a source of extraordinary opposition and resistance by many," said Greenberger.) The commission made damaging recommendations that could have resulted in annual losses of 50,000 athletic participation opportunities and $122 million in scholarships for women, according to the law center.

One devious recommendation was to change the way that women’s athletic
participation is measured in colleges so that instead of using the campus population as a guide to divide up sports programs, women’s sports opportunities would be determined by the number of women (but not men) who responded to an email survey. Women who failed to reply – and email response is generally low — would be deemed uninterested, and the funds could be shifted to men’s athletic programming. Objections by two commissioners who supported women’s opportunities, soccer star Julie Foudy and swimmer Donna DeVarona, were drowned out, and Page would not even include their protestations in a minority report.

Public objections still arose against this loopy loophole, stopping Page – but only temporarily. He backed down. Then, after the mid-term elections in 2005 the rule was quietly put into place by Page in form of a regulatory "clarification." The public and the media were blindsided. Not until April 2010 could the standard be returned to its pre-Bush formulation when the Obama administration finally reversed it.

The Girls Are Not All Right

The devil really is in the details, as the cliché goes. These fiddly regulations, arcane language, collection and analysis of statistics are boring compared to the energizing movement moments: marching side-by-side under banners for liberation or even zipping email petitions to some member of Congress. "The conversation about data might not be a very exciting part of civil rights. But it really matters. It determines who gets paid attention to," said Graves.

Or, more clearly, who does not get attention. This is precisely, she said, how the skewed idea that girls are doing better than boys has been allowed to gain currency.

"There is a misperception that all girls are doing fine in school," says Graves, "but the
data doesn’t support that — especially when you look at race and gender together. Forty-nine percent of Native American girls, 43 percent of African-American and 41 percent of Latinas fail to graduate with their peers. There are very high pregnancy rates. We know that the treatment of pregnant and parenting girls is inconsistent, that there are schools that refuse to allow them to participate. When an article says "boys only"or "girls only," it misses the point – that lots of girls are not succeeding. You need to take a more nuanced look at girls and subgroups of girls, and then success by gender is limited. You can’t buy into ‘girls are doing fine,’ and move on. You need to look at the data."

Looking at the data, women’s advocates are pursuing concrete changes. Some are successful. In 2009 "gender" was included in a new federal hate crimes law; in 2010 the White House announced a multi-agency equal pay task force. Graves hails a provision in the 2010 health care reform that, for the first time, prohibits sex discrimination in health insurance. Left out of the mix, however, is abortion, which was, for all practical purposes, nixed from the legislation by creating convoluted provisions about how consumers must pay for abortion coverage, and closing off aid for the economically strapped and, in July, for patients in high-risk pools.

EQUALITY UNDER THE LAW

No single law prohibits gender discrimination in the United Staes. Women were not mentioned at all in the U.S. Constitution by the founding fathers and first became part of it in 1920 when the 19th Amendment gave women suffrage. For the first century or two of the nation’s history, the all-male justices on the Supreme Court upheld laws and practices that flatly discriminated against women – and there were many, including laws preventing women from practicing law, using birth control, serving on juries and being the executor of an estate.

Nondiscrimination against women began to gain new currency in the 1960s. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically prohibiting sex discrimination in certain employment under Title VII. The Supreme Court began to apply the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to sex bias, striking down laws that discriminated against women without a reasonable basis, a lighter touch than the strict scrutiny applied to race-based challenges. The Supreme Court also recognized a zone of privacy in the Constitution and struck down laws that rendered contraception illegal and made abortion a crime in all circumstances.

An Equal Rights Amendment, while proposed, was never added to the U.S. Constitution. Instead, a patchwork of other laws was passed to address women’s equality, most notably, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, prohibiting sex discrimination in education, including in athletic opportunities. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 was passed after disastrous decisions from the Supreme Court, and Congress adopted Equal Credit, Fair Housing and Equal Pay laws, and states also passed laws, some more expansive, against gender discrimination. At the same time, Congress allowed loopholes – for example, limiting employment claims to firms of 15 employees or more, and excluding religious institutions from compliance with non-discrimination laws.

-Cindy Cooper

Just as there is no single law on gender discrimination in the U.S. (see sidebar), there is no single measure of success. Problems persist. Pregnancy discrimination claims continue to rise. There are issues about securing equal and equitable pay, ending sexual harassment on the job, stopping gender violence in homes and on the street, securing paid family leave, dealing with cyber-snooping and bullying, safeguarding the jobs of breast-feeding mothers, securing access to abortion and contraception, redressing changes that lead to unacceptable stereotyping in single-sex schooling, ending the poverty that disproportionately harms women.

Hard to envision is the opposition to women’s equality: "There is not one set of groups. There are those that have an interest in maintaining the status quo. But not one group," said Graves, adding lightly, "If so, it might make it easier."

For whatever reason, the U.S. is well behind other industrialized countries in policies that support parents and working families. And, Graves noted, while 185 nations have ratified CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women), the U.S. stands with Iran, Sudan and a small minority of countries that hasn’t.

The reality is that it may take another spate of 38 years, and others after that, to reach gender equality or to secure full human rights for women. Although the road to equality turned out to be longer than most imagined and the surfaces more rocky to navigate, it will take the constancy of pragmatists and strategists to make truisms of the mantras of girls and the dreams for a just society. "I don’t think ‘equality’ is separate or apart from ‘human rights,’" said Graves. "Language matters a lot less than the critical outcomes."

Cindy Cooper, managing editor, is an independent journalist in New York and has a background as a lawyer. 

Photo credits: By Marjorie Price 

Tweet This Post

In this interview we discuss how it’s possible for an educated and skilled woman to fear her husband, to lose her confidence or the right to discuss dysfunctional dynamics in their marriage and to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In hindsight, Patty has come to understand some of the warning signs of the cycle of abuse and the traps victims can fall into, such as believing that "I had let it happen to me."  Through therapy and self-education, she now knows she didn’t deserve the abuse she received.  Patty hopes that by speaking out she can help other victims realize that there is nothing they did to bring abuse upon themselves, nothing they can do to mollify a husband’s need to control them, keeping them fearful and dehumanized, why it’s hard to leave and how it’s possible to get help.

Go to Pickle Player or CyberEars to listen (41:50 min.).

Cross-posted with permission from Interview4Obama.

Tweet This Post

May 30th is Military Sexual Trauma Awareness Day.  The issue is starting to get more traction in terms of visibility, Congressional hearings, and acknowledgement from agencies that span a full range of alphabet soup.

On Thursday, May 20th, a morning hearing was held. Healing the Wounds: Evaluating Military Sexual Trauma Issues, was presided over by John Hall (D-NY), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs, and Michael Michaud (D-ME), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Health.  A series of speakers drawn from veterans’ organizations, networks devoted to women’s health and sexual abuse, and representatives from the Department of Defense and the Veterans Health Administration were present.  They each had five minutes to offer testimony.

Just three weeks prior on April 29th, Congresswoman Niki Tsongas (D-MA) and Senator John Kerry (D-MA) announced the introduction of the Defense Sexual Trauma Response, Oversight and Good Governance Act (The Defense STRONG Act), a bipartisan piece of legislation.  Hoping to attack Military Sexual Trauma (MST) from the front end of the problem, The Defense STRONG Act will work to strengthen the pre-existing systems to “prevent sexual assaults, and provide support and guidance for victims that do report an incident.”  This would enable those harmed to access a military lawyer in order to fully understand their legal options.  Equally important, it will standardize training guidelines around MST prevention and response across all branches of the services.  When I spoke with Rep. Tsongas by telephone she explained that the act would be part of the Defense Authorization Bill (H.R. 5136), and would put a “system in place patterned after the Equal Opportunity measures.”  She said, “If a victim speaks with a victim’s advocate, it will remain confidential.  It can’t be subpoenaed.”   Tsongas added, “I’m looking forward to making sure this language stays in the bill.”

Witnesses drilled down and pinpointed problems being faced by MST survivors as circumstances presently stand.  A wide range of symptoms, on the physical and emotional continuum, was referenced.  They included: mood disorders, depression, substance abuse, adjustment disorders, hypertension, eating disorders, sexually transferred infections (STI), unplanned pregnancy, self-destructive behaviors, and suicide.  It was noted that 75 percent of homeless female veterans have been sexually assaulted.

A sexual attack is a trigger for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  Susan McCutcheon, The Director of Family Services,Women’s Mental Health and Military Sexual Trauma, Veterans Health Administration (VHA) stated, “MST is an experience, not a diagnosis.  PTSD is the diagnosis.”

The FBI ranks rape as the second most violent crime after murder.  Repeatedly, those testifying underscored that rape is an act of violence, not sexual desire.  It was acknowledged that males in the military are casualties of MST as well as women.

For those assaulted, career goals are disrupted as they face “isolation, retribution, ostracism, and accusations.”  Their situation becomes untenable, as they must continue to live and work in close proximity with their attackers.  As Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, testified, “some 90 percent of victims never report assaults within the military because the culture is so hostile to them.”  She explained how the victim is treated like a perpetrator, and in addition to not being believed, “they are intimidated out of pursing justice.”

Phyllis Greenberger, President and CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research, told the committee that “women are the fastest growing sector of VA patients,” with “15 percent of women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan experiencing sexual assault or harassment.”  23 percent of the women using the VA services have reported MST, yet half of all cases go underreported. Jennifer Hunt, Project Coordinator, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, observed that the “majority of assailants are older and of a higher rank than their victims.” It is recognized that those who get immediate full care do the best.  Yet when women feel re-traumatized in their efforts to get help and in navigating the system, it makes moving forward problematic.

There was no lack of suggestions on how the situation could be improved. At the top of the list was the need to eliminate mixed-gender care settings. Creating separate facilities was put forth as the optimum goal. Using a civilian rape crisis model, which is not geared to a predetermined agenda, was another proposal.  Women report a dearth of properly trained personnel, with those in counseling positions resorting to what has been termed “pills and pep talks” (despite the fact that women are not responding well to commonly prescribed medications).

Benedict put forth promoting more women and distributing them across the forces to eliminate isolation, and rejecting recruits with a history of sexual violence. Greenberger dryly offered, “No victim should have to chase after their own care.”

Scott Berkowitz, President and Founder of RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network) sited a lack of “institutional support, leadership commitment and resources” to fix the problem and a commitment by base commanders and Pentagon Brass to “zero tolerance and routine prosecutions.”  He did, however, comment on the progress that has been moved forward under the auspices of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), which was established in 2005 by the Department of Defense “to function as a single point of accountability and oversight for sexual assault policy.”

Kay Whitley, the Director of SAPRO, addressed prevention through training, treatment, support of victims, and system accountability.  She related that during the past three years, reports of sexual assaults had increased by 10 percent annually.  Whitley broke the best-case protocol down into “care, reporting, response, and tracking.”

Getting appropriate and timely medical care is only part of the problem.  Steering PTSD claims through the system is formidable, and often exacerbates the original trauma.  Joy J. Ilem, Deputy National Legislative Director forDisabled American Veterans, was very clear about the obstacles. She informed those in attendance, “to receive disability compensation from an MST-related condition…the standard of evidence is stricter than for combat injuries, or even for military occupational injuries. She characterized veterans’ compensation claims for disabilities resulting from MST as “an uphill battle for VA Disability Compensation,” explaining that “if an assault is not reported by the victim during his or her military service, establishing service connection later on for disabling conditions related to MST can be daunting.”

The different aspects of reporting an attack and trying to receive benefits are complex at best. Bradley G. Mayes, Director, Compensation and Pension Service, Veterans Benefits Administration, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, offered that there was “room for improvement, but we have taken steps.”  However, many concerns have to be taken into account, particularly as confidentiality is a paramount concern.

I contacted Thom Wilborn, a spokesman for Disabled American Veterans, to speak further about the two options for filing an MST report, via a Victim Reporting Preference Statement DD FORM 2910. He clarified the two different types of reports that service members can file after an attack.

• Unrestricted Reporting – Reporting a Crime which is Investigated
• Restricted Reporting – Confidentially Reporting a Crime which is not Investigated

A restricted report allows the victim to receive health care services, but the paperwork does not enter the realm of an official charge – thereby protecting the privacy of the victim.  It does not involve the chain of command.  In an unrestricted report, all records become public.  The information goes out to the commanding officer and division commander for a formal investigation.

A problem arises when a service member, who wants to apply for PTSD benefits and has filed a restricted report, can not get their records from one department agency to another.  Wilborn told me, “There needs to be a way to report MST and be able to advance it to whatever point the service member wants.”  He made clear that the report should be able to remain confidential, while simultaneously recorded in a way to be available for disability claims. The DAV’s primary concern is that the Department of Veteran’s Affairs be able to access restricted Department of Defense Documents.
Following the testimony, I contacted two of the invited presenters.  Jennifer Hunt, Project Coordinator, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, believed that “good steps have been made, but more must be done.”  She specifically pointed to “inter-operability” encompassing improved communication between the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration.  She remarked on how many people were in attendance for the hearing, and lamented that that there was no time for follow up questions due to the President of Mexico’s visit.

When I spoke with Anuradha K. Bhagwati, Executive Director of Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN) and former Marine Captain, she was quite concise in her evaluation of how things stand and what needs to be done.  She said, “The Veteran’s Benefit Administration (VBA) simply does not understand how traumatic it is for an MST survivor to file a claim for compensation. The Veteran’s Administration (VA) is coming from a theoretical place.  Their system is great on paper. The VA has made overtures, but their claims officers are poorly trained.  The system is broken.  Even if victims submit evidence of trauma, it’s not enough. The VA has not been able to get up to speed.  Their services work for some people, but they are in the minority. We need people to come forward in order to prosecute offenders, but right now DOD cannot guarantee the safety of survivors. Most commanders do not handle complaints responsibly. The fact of the matter is that survivors are not sufficiently protected.

There seems like a giant abyss.  It doesn’t seem like VA is talking to MST survivors or MST advocates. MST is best understood by MST orgs (VETWOW, stopmilitaryrape.org, militarysexualtrauma.org). SWAN is advocating for third party oversight. We believe a long-term solution is to applyTitle VII of the Civil Rights Act to the military.  Service members need to have the option to sue the military, if the military doesn’t protect them. Without that, commanders have no incentive to protect survivors. The Defense STRONG Act deals with the current system as we have it. It will fix some really broken pieces of the SAPRO reporting system, but it only deals with part of the problem.”

At the conclusion of Bhagwati’s testimony, she paid homage to the women from previous generations who had “suffered at the hands of fellow servicemen decades ago” – with their ordeals still yet to be recognized.  She read into the record the request of a Vietnam-era veteran who had survived MST. The sentence was a clear but simple appeal.  “Please help me feel validated before I die.”

This article originally appeared on the website Women Make News.

Tweet This Post

From the press release:

“At the BP headquarters we will put our bodies on the line to hold BP accountable for the rape and plunder of our planet,” says Diane Wilson, a fourth generation fisherwoman from the Gulf who will join Monday’s action. “We call for stripping BP of its corporate charter and seizing its assets to pay the victims, clean up the Gulf and try to restore the devastated wildlife.”  We will also demand:

-there be no new permits on offshore drilling;

-instead, redirect that energy and financing into renewable fuels;

-expose the true costs of oil and the obvious disaster about to hit the coast in waves of oil, killing our fish and livelihoods;

-ensure that BP is held accountable for its rape, murder and profit on our backs.

Check out coverage across the web:

ABC, Protesters pose nearly naked at BP HQ

Reuters, Protesters bare nearly all at BP’s Houston office

Houston Chronicle, Protesters demand BP be shut down over oil spill

Houstin Press (slideshow), Boobs on Parade

Pinktank, The Naked Truth of It All…

Jezebel, There Will Be Blood

Feministe, Spill Baby Spill

Suburban Guerilla, Code Pink

Tweet This Post

Political feminism barely exists in corporate mainstream media. Shows like “Oprah” and “Tyra” – boasting female audiences in the tens of millions – owe their existence to space opened up by the feminist movement, but rarely, if ever, acknowledge that such a movement has existed and is responsible for vast changes in the lives of women. When this is referenced at all, it is usually in the context of a backlash attack against feminism — of the “Has Feminism Made It Harder to Find a Man?” variety. The lack of historical consciousness, sensationalism, the emphasis on “individual therapeutic solutions” to social problems and the continual channeling of women’s anxieties into the search for the “perfect look” make these shows in many ways worse than useless to women.

All of this underlines the case for feminist media of the non-corporate variety. Radio, especially with its low cost accessibility, can create a mass sense of “community” when large numbers of people tune to the same show at the same time.

Joy of Resistance: Multicultural Feminist Radio, which I co-host with Maretta Short, on WBAI in New York City (99.5 FM) has been airing for almost eight years with the mission to cover, as we describe it, “the ongoing and world-wide struggle for the full liberation of women as it continues to unfold dynamically in every country and culture on the planet." I describe our on-air feminism being “radical” in the sense of the original meaning of the word: “going to the root” of thing–which we try to do in all of our shows.

WBAI’s signal reaches three states–making it an important vehicle for bringing feminism to a large number of women, including those who the movement has not previously reached. Shows also reach audiences across the globe through Internet streaming and 90-day archiving. WBAI is part of Pacifica, a five-station network that is the largest non-commercial radio network in the U.S, and because it is funded by its listeners it does not have to dance to the tune of corporate commercial sponsors.

Sisters, Can You Hear Me?

My tale of being active in such media starts with a particular memory: I’m sitting alone in my apartment on the Lower East Side sometime in the 1970s, the radio is tuned to WBAI, and I’m hearing women talking passionately about their lives. It’s only a few years since the “big bang” of the beginning of the Women’s Liberation Movement (as it was then known) and the waves are still spreading outward at a fast rate. At that time there were at least five different shows on WBAI that could be described as feminist, lesbian-feminist or woman-identified.

The station had a “Women’s Department,” and “consciousness raising” was regularly broadcast live and uncensored. It felt like a cork had been popped and the anger women had suppressed for a very long time–anger at men and sexist institutions, anger at the demeaning ways that women were treated–was flowing freely.
I had not known that women were “allowed” to think these things,–much less say them on the public airwaves. These shows helped give me the courage and support to form a conceptual framework for thinking about and classifying the sexism I was experiencing as a young woman. To this day the exciting “shock” of these radio experiences inspires me to want to be that kind of voice for some woman “out there” who may be struggling and isolated and needs to know that there are other feminists around (and how she can find them).

Jump ahead from the ’70s to the ’90s. By this time I’m a “seasoned” feminist – and have become involved in saving my neighborhood from gentrification. I’m working in an anarchist-inspired “squatting” movement that is occupying and rehabilitating abandoned buildings to challenge an inadequate housing system. This movement is dominated by men with construction skills, and macho posturing abounds. Squatter women keep the homesteads going on a day-to-day basis, but stay in the background when it comes to making speeches, talking to press and other public aspects of the movement. (Sound familiar?) I am shocked that, after 30 years of feminism, young women “on the left” are still enduring the kind of sexism I had to put up with as a “hippie chick.” When squatter men start a “pirate” radio station, I get myself a program and fight back with a weekly feminist radio show.

The program was called: “Out of the Shadows: Radical Feminist Radio with Pirate Jenny” and aired on “Steal This Radio” from 1995-1999. Every week I was able to explore and express whatever was on my feminist mind – very little was off limits. Once a group of women came to the studio and talked about their experiences of rape – and “forgot” that they were on the air. Feelings and memories that were excruciatingly painful were aired without censorship. At other times we explored political topics such as women in post-revolutionary societies or women in Anarchist Spain. A regular feature was a faux "Science Report" satirizing sexism in the movement. For instance, annoyed by the tendency of squatter men to let their attention wander whenever women spoke at our weekly “soap-boxes,” I announced the discovery of a new “disease”: “Male Attention-to-Women Deficit Disorder” and described it in great detail to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.” With the signal covering only a few square miles, we had a small but dedicated audience – including some of the men who told me they learned a lot from the show.

The “pirate radio movement” was begun in the 1980s after activists spread information about how to build a radio transmitter for under $500. In short, other people throughout the country were setting up unlicensed stations and broadcasting to their immediate vicinities. This was a direct challenge to corporate ownership of the media. By the 1990s there were over 1,000 such stations.

In 1998 at an “East Coast Pirate Radio Conference” in Philadelphia more than 40 women attended a women-only workshop. In consciousness-raising style, the women shared information about the sexism they were experiencing at their respective stations. It became clear from their testimonies that “he” who controlled the technology controlled the radio. One woman told of a station shut down at the whim of the guy who had built the transmitter–and was the only one who knew how to operate it.

It was obvious that women needed to master this technology to be equal in pirate radio; we started planning apprenticeship programs where women with these skills could teach others. Unfortunately the plans never came to fruition because the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a systematic attack on the pirate radio movement in the late ’90s. By 1999 our station had been driven off the air by threats of huge fines and possible jail sentences (although it proved impossible to wipe out “pirates” completely and many still exist).

The creation by the FCC of a new class of legal low power radio station licenses (LPFM) in 2000 was a limited victory that took place because of the pirate radio movement; the government needed to make a concession to head off another grassroots radio uprising. Women had used this pirate technology in many creative ways; one group actually set up a mobile transmitter and toured the country jamming the signals of Christian Right radio stations with pro-abortion rights programming (while moving too fast for their location to be pinpointed by the FCC).

Meanwhile, in 2001, Pacifica underwent a major upheaval and the ensuing reorganization at WBAI brought with it openings for new programs. There had been no dedicated feminist program at WBAI for at least five years. The once flourishing feminist environment had collapsed in stages during the ’80s – in tandem with what the radical feminist group Redstockings described as “the liberal takeover of the feminist movement.”

Rocking New Air Waves

Building on four years of pirate radio broadcasting, I organized feminists Manijeh Saba and Byllye Avery to join me in proposing a weekly feminist show. We were given a once-a-month “tryout” slot. We took the name “Joy of Resistance,” inspired by Alice Walker’s Possessing the Secret of Joy, a novel in which the main character, when asked how there can be any joy in a world filled with oppression, replies: “The secret of joy is resistance.”

We began each show with a “worldwide feminist news” segment, providing a broader context for each featured topic. We covered the Bush Administration’s misuse of feminism to promote Middle East wars; the issues dividing Black and white feminists; secular feminists in the Middle East fighting both Islamic theocracy and U.S. occupation. We did consciousness-raising on the air, investigating “looks pressure” and “the real working conditions of motherhood.” We incorporated a wide array of feminist music, from folk (Sandy Rapp) to rock’n’roll (Anne Feeney) to grrrrlpunk (Le Tigre), as well as producing live theater, such as an in-studio production of Words of Choice, a pro-choice theater company.

We were determined to go beyond mere reporting. Taking seriously Santayana’s injunction to know your history, lest you be forced to repeat it, we wanted to place a historical “floor” under each issue so that its roots and underlying causes would be exposed. I had been influenced by Kathie Sarachild’s essay, “The Power of History,” originally published in Redstockings’ Feminist Revolution, which traced how the erasure of feminist history had been an intrinsic part of subduing the radical feminist movement.

The historical approach led to exciting radio of the kind that the corporate media with its a historical attitude was not going to provide. For instance, we interspersed actual recordings from the 1969 speakout where women risked arrest to speak publicly of their then-illegal abortions with reports from the front lines of contemporary abortion-rights struggles. In our coverage of the recent healthcare bill fight, we contextualized the Obama Administration’s bargaining away abortion access by looking at the Democratic Party’s 2004 decision to back anti-choice candidates, as well as the 1976 Hyde Amendment. In an oral history project we interviewed women who had been in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and found many of the roots of modern feminism in the Civil Rights Movement. More than anything, we wanted to cover events so that women listening would realize that feminist history was still unfolding – and that they, too, could be part of it.

We’ve gotten many gratifying responses from listeners: from appreciative phone calls after the show on “beauty pressures” to a report by a feminist group — New York Women’s Liberation — that it had gained active members because we announced their meetings.

Yet, even at WBAI – home of the political Left – all was not as we might have wished. Repeated attempts to gain more airtime were refused for years with the explanation that feminism was only a “specialty interest”of a small group and could not “build a large audience.” Only recently, after protracted struggle and a change of management, has our broadcast time doubled to twice a month.

In the early ’70s, feminist utopians dreamed of a day when we would control our own mass media a la the iconic woman-in-headphones in Lizzie Borden’s 1983 post-revolutionary fantasy Born in Flames. In today’s increasingly privatized neo-liberal environment, radical feminists must fight hard to maintain even the small amount of public media space that we have. Alternative networks such as Pacifica, imperfect as they are, can be platforms for feminist media, even as they also are endangered due to lack of financial resources.

The takeaway message is that the existence of feminist media is precarious, even on the left – and can be held hostage to a host of material conditions. It must be supported – including financially – by feminists if it is to continue to exist and to fulfill its function of helping to grow the movement.

Fran Luck is the founder and Executive Producer of Joy of Resistance: Multicultural Feminist Radio @ WBAI, which airs on 99.5 FM on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month, at 11am to noon (and streams live on the web at www/wbai.org. Fran can be reached at joyofresistance@wbai.org. She asks that feminists support Joy of Resistance by supporting WBAI during its fund drives and pledging during the show’s time slot. 

Tweet This Post

Betty White hosted Saturday Night Live this past weekend following a Facebook campaign for her to appear on the show. She was joined by female alums of the show’s cast Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, and Rachel Dratch.
White is the oldest person to ever host SNL. She also represents an important step toward gender parity on the show: men have hosted 482 episodes, while women have only hosted 194. The numbers are improving this season, with 12 men and 11 women hosting.

Anushay Hossain  at Ms. Blog tells us that after three years the United Nations Commission of Inquiry investigating the death of Benazir Bhutto released a report [PDF] which tells us nothing we did not already know.

The 2007 assassination of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Bhutto could have been prevented if the government of then-president Pervez Musharraf had provided her with “adequate security”. Thank you, U.N.! Only took you three years to make that obvious fact official. Where is Musharraf now, anyway? What is the point of pointing fingers so long after Bhutto’s death? A false attempt at garnering accountability is what this is. The truth is, too many men and too many politicians were only too happy to see this woman go. However, there is one good thing that this report does do. It makes us remember Benazir Bhutto.

Congresswoman Lois Capps talks about the importance of “Saving Mother’s Lives” at Majority Speaks.

As we celebrate Mother’s Day with our mothers, daughters, and sisters, it is important that we remember the mothers around the world we have lost.  Every single year several hundred thousand girls and women across the world die from pregnancy-related causes.  Ninety-nine percent of deaths associated with pregnancy and childbirth occur in the developing world, and the overwhelming majority is preventable.
I can think of no better way to honor the sacrifices made by mothers around the world than by investing in their health and working to ensure that no woman dies unnecessarily as a result of carrying her child. Safe motherhood should be a basic right for all women.  We have a moral obligation to make the right investments to ensure that all women, no matter where they live, have access to basic, life-saving care. 

Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check talks about the “Pill and the Fertility Control Revolution”

Last week, I interviewed Elaine Tyler May about her remarkable new history America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation.  One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is how May busts the myth that the pill created the sexual revolution, pointing out that this would require single women using the pill en masse in order to have sex, and that simply didn’t happen during the sexual revolution era of the 60s and early 70s.  The pill’s main appeal was to women who were already sexually active, and the pill was used not for a sexual revolution so much as a fertility control revolution, as a way for sexually active women to take advantage of all the new opportunities that feminism was opening up for them. In fact, May found that as late as 1972, “three-fourths of sexually active young single women rarely or never used contraception.”

What about the rest of the world? Artfullyaware wrote about grandmothers in Africa, Africa’s newest special interest group and their summit to put spotlight on Africa’s ‘forgotten victims’ of Aids.

Their collective wisdom is incalculable – and so is the collective burden they carry when families are torn apart by Aids.
Africa’s newest special interest group is that of grandmothers. They will attend their first special conference this week to share experiences and call for international recognition of their uniquely difficult circumstances.
A summit of grandparents in the west might prompt jokes about bingo and dentures, but the inaugural African Grandmothers’ Gathering, starting in Swaziland on Thursday, is a gravely serious affair.
More than 450 grandmothers from 12 African countries will meet to discuss the impact of losing adult children to Aids, becoming the head of a household and raising grief-stricken grandchildren as their own.
These forgotten victims hope to build a “solidarity movement” across Africa to make the case that grandmothers need targeted support from international donors and aid agencies.

Also, President Obama announced Solicitor General Elena Kagan as the Supreme Court nominee: “Three Women On The Supreme Court = Overthrow Of Patriarchy. Not.”(via Feminist Peace Network).

After a day of  omigawd how can our Socialist, Muslim non-American president appoint two women in a row to the Supreme Court because that amounts to discrimination against men,Ezra Klein says it all: But more subtly invidious is the simple fact that people are so unused to seeing women appointed to the court that it’s somehow a scandal to see two of them named in a row. Two women and we’re talking about systematic discrimination. And that reaction means that even though the coin says there’s an even chance that Obama’s next pick will be a woman also, there’s probably not an even chance of it, as he’ll have to prove that he’s not favoring women.
Of course, Happy Mother’s Day all you moms! We know how much you care about us! Hope you had a great Mother’s Day with your children.

You want more feminist links? Check back here next Tuesday! And, if you have links to share, please email them to us or leave them in the comments.
 

Tweet This Post

The debate occurred after an April 16 article at Newsweek made the declaration that young voters are not as involved in defending abortion rights as their older counterparts. It used data results from a study released exclusively to the magazine, which found that

"[m]ore than half (51 percent) of young voters (under 30) who opposed abortion rights considered it a "very important" voting issue, compared with just 26 percent of abortion-rights supporters; a similar but smaller gap existed among older voters, too. Worse still for NARAL, the millennials surveyed didn’t view abortion as an imperiled right in need of defenders."

These statistics didn’t match the reality on the ground for young women working for abortion rights. Erin Matson, VP of Action at NOW, led the charge, writing that she was "shaking with anger" that Newsweek chose not to interview any young women for the article and starting a Twitter petition aimed at Newsweek that asked them to correct their story to reflect the opinions of young women. Within days her actions led to blog posts and reactions around the web, including Meg’s recent post, "Where Are the Young Women? Right Here."

Newsweek responded — and Meg was asked to participate in a follow-up discussion with other young activists to discuss the article, the abortion rights movement of today and what the movement will look like in the future. Check out the full article and add your comments. In the meantime, here are some highlights:

Nancy Keenan, president, NARAL Pro-Choice America: …"That brings me to the question of how established groups can work with emerging groups. I think it’s essential. No one group or one person can do everything. We need political organizers (online and on the ground), more abortion providers, and the intellectual force of writers and commentators to accomplish what we seek to achieve for women. How we cultivate even more new leadership in all of these areas should spur new thinking, and I am open to hearing these ideas and sharing some examples of what I’ve heard in previous discussions on this topic.

Erin Matson, action vice president, National Organization for Women: [The NEWSWEEK] article was hardly the first time the media has made sweeping conclusions about the uncaring, unknowing young women who just have no idea they must defend Roe v. Wade—and the alleged failure of the women’s movement to connect with the millennial generation—without asking a single young woman for her opinion.

In its most simple, pure form, I am hopeful this conversation will serve as a loud lesson to the media: Young women are fully capable of speaking for ourselves. It’s irresponsible reporting to talk about us without talking to us. Due to the overwhelming frequency of this sloppy reporting, I believe after sharing their opinions about the future of the movement, older abortion rights leaders now must take responsibility to provide referrals to young leaders.

And who is Meg Massey? She’s a graduate student at Georgetown University, studying American Government. Meg has been blogging for us since November of 2009 (you can check out all her posts here) and we are thrilled to have such a talented new thinker on board.

 There’s room for a few more — we are always looking for new contributors. If you’re interested in blogging for Fem2.0, please email us at info@fem2pt0.com.
 

Tweet This Post

Closely connected to the feeling that young women aren’t grateful, it seems, is the feeling that young women today are so entitled. They’re ambitious and they speak their minds and sometimes it feels like they’re doing that before they’ve paid their dues, and that seemed to make the older women at the More event uncomfortable. But you know what? You’re the ones who fought for a world where ambitious, outspoken young women could speak their minds. You’re the ones who raised their daughters to believe that they could do and be anything they wanted, that it was their right not to be limited or defined by what society said is right. So if we’re entitled, it’s because feminism taught us to feel that being women didn’t make us inferior.

Also from Feministing, in the post "Action against Arizona anti-immigrant legislation continues," Miriam blogs about her Saturday night in DC.

I attended this vigil on Saturday night in DC to protest the Arizona anti-immigrant legislation and stand in solidarity with the people of Arizona. It was a beautiful event and I was blown away by the amazing folks gathered. Particularly inspirational were the number of young folks who shared their stories of being undocumented themselves after coming from Latin America with their parents as really young kids. Despite the fact that these young people were raised here, their opportunities are severely limited by their immigration status.

They spoke of the importance of the DREAM Act, which would give kids who were brought here before the age of 16 a path to citizenship.

Morra Aarons Mele at BlogHer explains why the pill is necessary to maintain a decent living standard and some semblance of work/life balance: "The Pill at 50: It’s about money not sex."

When you sit down with a financial planner and hear that if you want your baby to be able to attend private college in 17 years you’d best set aside half a million dollars, it can really change your thinking. People always ask me, do you plan to have more than two children? And I’ll crack, "Not unless we win the lottery." And a lot of the people look a bit offended, as if I’ve said something crass and taboo. You’re not supposed to measure babies by their cost. Perhaps. But the U.S birth rate has fallen during the Recession, for the first time since 2000. That’s not an accident.

The birth control Pill is now 50 years old. I was absorbed by Nancy Gibbs’ article in Time magazine that traced the history of the Pill since its introduction. What’s most clear in the article is that reliable contraception, more than any other single factor, enables women’s current status as breadwinners. 79% of married employees are part of a dual-earner couple (up from 66% in 1977).  In 2008, women contributed 44% of the annual dual-earner family income, up from 39% in 1997, according to Families and Work Institute.”

One more Equal Pay Day post — "Peaceful Revolution: Equal at Birth but Not at Work." Nanette Fondas at HuffPo explains the differences and the pay gap in the future between her two children, one boy and one girl.

Ten years ago I gave birth to two babies: one girl, one boy. Their birthday is today, Equal Pay Day. Right now they are neck-in-neck with their weekly allowance, but if they were fifteen years older, my daughter’s college degree, MBA, technological training, organizing and management experience, and even her Rhodes Scholarship would all probably be worth less than those of her brother. Why? Because there is a stubborn pay gap between males and females that persists even among those with equal credentials. On average American women earn 77 cents for every dollar American men earn.

Unequal pay persists for many reasons. Here are some important ones that I call “The Four P’s of Pay Inequality.”

According to a new study, federal guidelines on obesity should be revised so more women fit into the category of "obese." From Business Week: "More U.S. Women May Be Obese Than Thought"

U.S. guidelines determine who is obese based on body-mass index, a measurement of whether a person’s height and weight are proportional. The researchers found that about half the women of reproductive age considered obese under World Health Organization guidelines — which use body-fat analysis instead — were not obese under federal guidelines.

Under the international guidelines, about half of white women and more than two-thirds of Latino women are considered obese.

"It is especially important to accurately assess obesity in reproductive-age women, as they are more likely to be obese than similarly aged men," study author Dr. Mahbubur Rahman, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, said in a news release from the school. "These women are at risk for cardiovascular disease, diabetes andother obesity-related health conditions, and may forgo or be overlooked for needed tests and treatments."

What about the rest of the world? Rosemary Nchiny wrote on The Press Institute about the constitutional debate over abortion in Kenya, "Constitutional Debate Over Abortion Heats Up in Advance of July Vote."

NAIROBI, KENYA – The walk to Evelyn’s house is long and difficult. A half-mile hike through Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum, over trenches of raw sewage and huge garbage heaps, reveals a home made of scrap metal, browning with rust.

She sits outside her home in an old, dirty wheelchair. She is in her forties, but appears much older. Ill health, difficult living conditions and family tragedy have taken a toll. 

Evelyn, 45, is a widow, a mother of four and HIV positive. She is paralyzed. She is alone.

In early 2007, she was hospitalised at Kenyatta National Hospital for nearly two years with Tuberculosis. She suffered spinal damage and has since been confined to a wheelchair.  In May of 2008, her husband died from complications of AIDS and tuberculosis. When her husband died, Sarah, her eldest daughter, dropped out of school to help take care of her family.

Last but not least, this week’s post is In memory and honor of Dorothy Height’s and Carolyn Rodgers.

You want more feminist links? Check back here next Tuesday! And, if you have links to share, please email them to us or leave them in the comments.

Tweet This Post