The Progressive Mind

Transgender Violence Is a #YesAllWomen Issue

LIBertea — Thu, 10 Jul 2014 15:30:38 GMT

Transgender Violence Is a #YesAllWomen Issue

By failing to connect the plight of trans women to the struggles of all women, feminists overlook the same culture of male entitlement they seek to combat.

On May 23, Elliot Rodger shot and killed six people in Isla Vista, California, stating in a video manifesto that the spree was intended to punish women for rejecting his sexual advances. The event captured the nation's attention, with front page coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and in women's outlets from Ms. to Jezebel. On social media, it sparked the #YesAllWomen campaign, in which millions of Twitter users employed the hashtag to share experiences that have caused them to feel unsafe, spotlighting a culture that entitles men to exert dominance over women.

On June 26 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Tiffany Edwards became the fourth transgender woman of color to be murdered in the U.S. in that month alone. Coverage of her murder, like the hate-fueled homicides that preceded it, was consigned to local news and LGBT-specific venues. None triggered the same outcry on social media as Elliot Rodger’s killing spree, nor have they been widely linked to the #YesAllWomen movement.

Yet these two instances of violence are part of the same story. In both cases, men targeted women for defying their expectations about gender. Both stem from a culture that encourages men to feel they have the right to control women's bodies. The failure to make the connection—to see the plight of cisgender and transgender women as one and the same—sends a clear message: Trans women are not real women. To frame violence against trans women only as an LGBT issue is itself a form of transphobia, depriving women like Tiffany Edwards of the very identity they fought and died for.

Though for supporters of the #YesAllWomen campaign, the silence is especially egregious—and ironic. The #YesAllWomen movement was a response to the argument, following the Rodger killings, that “Not all men are prone to violence against women.” Feminists of many varieties pointed out that while this is true, Rodger’s actions did not happen in a vacuum; the killings were an extension of a culture of male entitlement that affects all women. To fail to include trans women is to exhibit the same myopia the campaign was meant to combat. In the case of trans women's murders, we need to recognize that it is this same sense of privilege over women's bodies that has led to the same outcome: the loss of multiple lives. Not doing so only serves to deprive both the trans and women's movements of vital ways of relating to each other.

All women are subject to the threat of violence when they exert agency over their own bodies, defying the expectations of men. For trans women, this agency also takes the form of choosing to express their true gender in public. They act against society's expectations, especially those of men who feel they are entitled to define trans women's gender. When trans women attract men, they anger those same men who cannot accept their attraction to a woman who was assigned male at birth. Because of this, trans women become the targets of violence.

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Like women who are held responsible for being raped because of their dress or demeanor, trans women are also blamed for presenting themselves according to their true gender. Like other women, trans women are accused of deceiving men, and their histories are used to justify violence against them. In a news report about the Edwards case, the perpetrator’s uncle claimed that Edwards deceived his nephew because she hit on him then the nephew found out "the boy was gay." "My nephew gets an attitude about that now,” the uncle said, but maintains that the crime was “never a hate thing.” Another report highlights court documents that reveal “a lengthy record of public indecency and solicitation,” implying that such a history made her murder more acceptable. Not only does Edwards' record not have anything to do with whether she deserved to be killed, but there’s also a long and documented history of police targeting trans women of color, and the arrest of such women simply for being in public.

Understanding trans violence as a women's issue benefits both the trans and women's movements. It allows trans women to connect their struggles with a broader and more extensive history. But more important, it also deepens our understanding of the struggles of all women, highlighting the lengths men are willing to go in order to preserve their control over our bodies. It is only when women achieve equality, successfully battling against male entitlement, that trans women will no longer pose a threat to this social system. Trans women's rights therefore serve as an ideal barometer for women's rights in general.

When we treat violence against trans women only as a trans issue rather than also a women’s issue, we deny the victims the womanhood they fought and died for. We extend the vantage point of the murderers who considered trans women offensive enough to warrant their death, and play a role in propagating a culture where men refuse to accept trans women as women. Supporters of the #YesAllWomen movement must therefore treat the murders of trans women with the same urgency as they do the murders of any other woman, not only because they spring from the same source, but also because they make an even stronger case for stopping the culture of male violence that the movement itself is founded on. It is for these reasons that violence against trans women should not only be a trans issue, but a #YesAllWomen's issue.

Harris and Hobby Lobby Spell Disaster for Working Women

LIBertea — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 13:37:16 GMT

Retail sales and home health care work are two of the three fastest-growing jobs in this country. That’s an important consideration when looking at the decisions the Supreme Court handed down today in Harris v. Quinn and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby: If you are not affected by these rulings yet, you well could be in the future.

Both 5-4 decisions were written by Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative Catholic from New Jersey appointed by George W. Bush, and both rested on narrowly tailored legal arguments that just happen to cut wide enough to impact groups of workers who are almost exclusively female. Harris creates the special designation of “partial public employees” for publicly-funded home health-care aides who work both for the client and for the state — who are 90 percent female, most of them poor, immigrants and people of color. Hobby Lobby, meanwhile, in deciding whether an employer with religious beliefs can be required to provide health insurance that covers contraception, singles out women by targeting its arguments towards workers who use birth control — but not any other form of health care.

As Sheila Bapat, author of Part of the Family? Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers and the Battle for Domestic Workers’ Rights, tweeted, “These decisions speak squarely to the value of women’s labor.”

The Harris case was brought in 2010 by Pamela Harris, an Illinois home-care worker who received Medicaid money as wages for caring for her son, who has a disability. An executive order issued by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn the previous year had designated personal assistants caring for disabled adults as state employees, allowing them to be represented by a collective-bargaining agent. Harris and the other plaintiffs were backed in the suit by the well-heeled anti-union group National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, and argued that she and other workers should not have to pay the costs of representing her to SEIU Health Care Illinois & Indiana (SEIU–HCII), the union that represents home-care workers who are paid by the state for their work. The suit claimed that paying representation costs amounted to a forced association that is unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

But Harris’ attorneys also made an emotional appeal about state interference in personal, family matters, despite the fact that many home health-care workers actually do not care for their own family members.

Home-care and other domestic employees have been long excluded from labor protections given to other workers, and this line of argument taps into a history of failing to see them as “real” workers. According to the ruling, unions will still be able to assess representation fees to workers who are represented by their collective bargaining units but choose not to join the union, provided that they work outside of a private home. But as Bapat noted, the Supreme Court “bought the right to work movement’s claim that ‘the home is not a union workplace’ hook, line and sinker.”

The majority in Harris stopped short of overturning the Supreme Court’s prior decision Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Ed. (1977), which would have reversed the ruling that public-sector workers can be required to pay representation fees to the union that represents them, thereby affecting all public sector workers. Alito did strongly criticize that decision, calling it “questionable on several grounds” and inviting speculation that the Right to Work Foundation could pursue another lawsuit with even broader impact on public sector unions. For now, though, the Court instead chose to single out the home health care aides as “partial” workers — a not-quite-as-serious type of worker perhaps, who is once again excluded from rules that apply to others.

The home is indeed a different kind of workplace than most others: It is far more difficult to organize a large group of workers who do not share a common shop floor. While it is always a challenge for a union to sign up a large number of workers to pay dues voluntarily when they can get the benefits of union representation without it, it is nearly impossible to do so when that would entail going home by home, individual workplace by individual workplace. The particular union in question, SEIU–HCII, currently represents more than 50,000 home-care aides; imagine having to visit 50,000 individual workplaces to collect dues each month.

One effect of the decision, therefore, may be that unions make it less of a priority to organize home-care workers than other workers from whom they can more easily collect dues. In that event, the raises and improvements in conditions won by unionizing will be harder and harder to achieve for home-care workers.

Harris and Hobby Lobby are both cases about health care and how it will be provided and paid for… In each case, the ultimate decision of the court is that health care is an individual, not a social, responsibility.

Alito’s decision in Harris also weighs in on the question of who ultimately employs the growing number of workers laboring under a confusing web of contracts and subcontracts. As the Supreme Court watchers at SCOTUSblog explained, “One of the key points of the Harris decision is that the customer (i.e., the patient) is the nominal employer of the home-carer.” Alito argues that while the state provides the paycheck, customers control most of the relationship with the care worker — which in Pamela Harris’ case, implies that her son is in fact her boss. One would not assume that the patient in a hospital is the ultimate employer of the nurse who cares for them, but in this case, it seems, the patient is assumed to be the boss.

Harris and Hobby Lobby are both cases about health care and how it will be provided and paid for. In the case of Harris, the Court implies that health care paid for by the state is still the individual responsibility of the recipient of care; in Hobby Lobby, an employer required by the government to include health care as a part of a compensation package is able to dodge the requirement to provide a certain kind of care for a certain kind of worker — leaving that worker ultimately responsible for her own health care. In each case, the ultimate decision of the court is that health care is an individual, not a social, responsibility.

The Affordable Care Act, passed in 2010, requires large employers to include in the health care plans for their employees certain types of coverage — among them contraceptives. The owners of the Hobby Lobby corporation, a chain of 500 crafting stores with 13,000 employees across the country, object to certain of those birth control methods, and sued to avoid having to provide that insurance. The Court ruled in Hobby Lobby that birth control is different from other forms of health care, and that an employer therefore has the right to pass judgment on their employees’ reproductive and sexual health care decisions by virtue of their religious beliefs — at least, if the employer is a “closely held” corporation, with at least half its shares owned by five or fewer individuals. Such corporations employ more than half of the American workforce, according to one 2009 study. (So as long as you work for someone with some seriously concentrated power, in other words, your birth control is up to their beliefs.)

The majority decision was based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a 1993 law signed by Bill Clinton, which says, “Government shall not substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” The Hobby Lobby ruling applies this to closely held corporations the way it would to nonprofit religious organizations.

As SCOTUSblog noted, “The Court holds that corporations (including for-profit corporations) are ‘persons’ for purposes of RFRA. The additional question was whether corporations can have a religious “belief” within the meaning of RFRA. On that question, the Court limits its holding to closely held corporations, leaving for another day whether larger, publicly traded corporations have religious beliefs.”

This means that workers at Hobby Lobby, relatively low-wage retail employees (though the company has raised its wages to $14 an hour for full-timers, $9.50 for part-timers) will either have to buy their own birth control, or, as SCOTUSblog noted, the Obama administration may figure out a way for the government to pay for the coverage.

Under our current system, employer-funded health care is part of compensation provided by one’s employer. If, of course, we had a single-payer health care system or something like it, employers would not be required to pay for insurance directly at all (though the longstanding Hyde Amendment, which bans public funding for abortion, implies that conservatives certainly won’t stop at trying to halt direct employer-provided coverage for reproductive and sexual health care). Justice Kennedy implies in his concurring decision that the government funding birth control directly would be acceptable, at least to him, but for the moment, I’m not going to re-argue the single payer question. (See my recent piece on the subject for more.)

Though employer-subsidized health care is sometimes referred to as a “benefit,” as if health insurance is a gift, it is as much yours as are the wages you have worked for. The decision in Hobby Lobby, then, says that bosses can decide that certain parts of a worker’s compensation are against their religion. Though the decision, as noted above, is narrowly tailored to exclude only contraceptives, it’s worth noting again that employer-provided health care became a norm because workers struggled and bargained for it, not because employers decided once upon a time to be nice.

We’ve long known that low-wage workers have very few rights on the job, that their bosses are able to interfere in all sorts of personal decisions. In this case, it’s the particular nature of the benefit denied that is worth exploring for a moment. Eileen Boris, author with Jennifer Klein of Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State, has noted that particular ideas of “intimacy and dirt” influence how we think about home health-care workers and the work they do, which often involves exposure to bodily processes that are extraordinarily intimate. In the case of contraception, too, we see ideas of intimacy and dirt coming into play — sexuality is dirty, and intimate decisions can in part be influenced by one’s boss. By ruling, in theory, that the state cannot make an employer provide health insurance that covers birth control, or require that home-care workers pay the costs of their representation to the union, the court is in fact weighing in on the intimate relationships of thousands of workers.

Justice Elena Kagan, in her dissent to Harris, pointed out that the care provided by home-care workers is better when the workers are valued and paid better — things that have happened since they have had the right to union representation. In this way, she argues, the interests of the workers and the care recipients are not in opposition, as Alito’s opinion implies — they are actually aligned. The statement of Hobby Lobby’s CEO on raising wages indicates that Hobby Lobby, too, understands that workers do a better job when they are properly cared for. That includes, or should include, the right to make their own health care decisions, when it comes to contraception or anything else.

The conservatives pushing both of these cases would have you believe that these are cases about freedom — the freedom to avoid a union, the freedom to practice religion. And yet what they wind up being about is reducing power on the job for thousands of people — mostly women, mostly low-paid workers — across the country.

Attacks on all workers’ rights often come first through attacks on those deemed to be less important workers. When we decide that birth control isn’t a pivotal issue because it only affects some workers, or that home-care workers’ loss is not a loss for us all, we leave the door open for the next attack.

And so, in a country where these feminized personal service jobs are increasingly the only jobs available, the court continues to rule that workers’ rights are less important than the bosses’, that protections on the job are a luxury working-class women can’t afford.

Unions Boost Women’s Earnings, Benefits, and Workplace Flexibility

LIBertea — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:28:58 GMT

Unions Boost Women’s Earnings, Benefits, and Workplace Flexibility

Union coverage can play significant role in strengthening the workplace to better support the needs of women and working families.

WASHINGTON - June 19 - Over the past four decades, women have played increasingly important roles as breadwinners in their families. At the same time, women’s share of unpaid care work and housework has remained high. A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), “Women, Working Families, and Unions,” explores the role unions play in addressing the challenges facing working women and families in balancing their work and family responsibilities. The paper looks at trends in unionization for women; the impact of unions on wages, benefits and access to family and medical leave; and the role of unions in addressing work-life balance issues.

“There are few other interventions known to improve the prospects for better pay, benefits and workplace flexibility as much as unions do. Anyone who cares about the well-being of women workers and working families should also care about unions,” states Nicole Woo, a co-author of the report.

The report finds that unions increase access to benefits that help working families succeed in this economy. Women in unions are 36 percent more likely to receive health insurance benefits through their jobs and 53 percent more likely to participate in an employer-sponsored retirement plan.

Unions also support working Americans when they need time off to care for themselves or their families. Union workplaces are 16 percent more likely to allow medical leave and 21 percent more likely to offer paid sick leave. Companies with unionized employees are also 22 percent more likely to allow parental leave, 12 percent more likely to offer pregnancy leave, and 19 percent more likely to let their workers take time off to care for sick family members.

One out of nine women in the United States are represented by unions. They make up almost half of the union workforce and are on track to be the majority by 2025. The report also analyses the demographics of women in unions, including the shares of black, Latino, white, and Asian and Pacific Islander women, educational attainment, age, occupations, and states of residence.

Affluenza: Billionaire Johnson Heir Gets Sweet Deal for Sexual Assault

LIBertea — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 00:11:56 GMT

When it comes to justice in America, it pays to be a billionaire. In the latest case of affluenza, a condition that has struck not just rich people who commit crimes without remorse, but also the justice system which seems blinded to their guilt, a Johnson heir received a slap on the wrist despite confessing to sexual assault.

Back in 2011, the stepdaughter of Samuel Curtis Johnson III told police that Johnson was ‘ a sex addict‘ and that he had been repeatedly touching her inappropriatey from the time she was 12 years old. Think Progress reported that the victim "told her mother about the abuse in order to protect her younger sister, and Johnson confessed when the mother confronted him.”

Of course, the heir's massive well-funded legal team swung into action, and according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Johnson plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of fourth-degree sexual assault and disorderly conduct rather than the felony sexual assault on a minor child charges he originally faced in 2011.

The prosecution was hampered by the fact that neither the victim nor her mother was willing to testify. But still hoping to get the serial molester behind bars for a year, Assistant District Attorney Robert Repischak asked the judge to apply the maximum sentence for the hugely reduced charges, while. Johnson’s attorney, Michael F. Hart vehemently argued that maximum prison terms should only be for “maximum defendants,” whatever that means. Hart said that Johnson leads a "productive life" and had never been in trouble with the law before.

Surprise, surprise, the judge agreed with the defense. Milwaukee’s Channel 4 News reported that Circuit Judge Eugene Gasiorkiewicz got downnright cozy with the defendant, talking about the Johnson family's importance to the community and saying “you could not grow up in this community and not know some of the people involved in this case.”

Judge Gasiorkiewicz also opined that he found the state’s request “troubling” in that he has never seen a first-time offender receive the maximum sentence for his crimes.

He sentenced Johnson to four months in jail and a fine of $6,000. Hmmm. That's going to really take a bite out of those billions.

Felony charges of the sort Johnson faced have resulted in a prison sentences of up to 40 years.

Robert Reich - How the Right Wing is Killing Women

LIBertea — Tue, 13 May 2014 13:19:35 GMT

How the Right Wing is Killing Women

Monday, May 12, 2014

According to a report released last week in the widely-respected health research journal, The Lancet, the United States now ranks 60th out of 180 countries on maternal deaths occurring during pregnancy and childbirth.

To put it bluntly, for every 100,000 births in America last year, 18.5 women died. That’s compared to 8.2 women who died during pregnancy and birth in Canada, 6.1 in Britain, and only 2.4 in Iceland.

A woman giving birth in America is more than twice as likely to die as a woman in Saudi Arabia or China.

You might say international comparisons should be taken with a grain of salt because of difficulties of getting accurate measurements across nations. Maybe China hides the true extent of its maternal deaths. But Canada and Britain?

Even if you’re still skeptical, consider that our rate of maternal death is heading in the wrong direction. It’s risen over the past decade and is now nearly the highest in a quarter century.

In 1990, the maternal mortality rate in America was 12.4 women per 100,000 births. In 2003, it was 17.6. Now it’s 18.5.

That’s not a measurement error because we’ve been measuring the rate of maternal death in the United States the same way for decades.

By contrast, the rate has been dropping in most other nations. In fact, we’re one of just eight nations in which it’s been rising. The others that are heading in the wrong direction with us are not exactly a league we should be proud to be a member of. They include Afghanistan, El Salvador, Belize, and South Sudan.

China was ranked 116 in 1990. Now it’s moved up to 57. Even if China’s way of measuring maternal mortality isn’t to be trusted, China is going in the right direction. We ranked 22 in 1990. Now, as I’ve said, we’re down to 60^th place.

Something’s clearly wrong.

Some say more American women are dying in pregnancy and childbirth because American girls are becoming pregnant at younger and younger ages, where pregnancy and birth can pose greater dangers.

This theory might be convincing if it had data to support it. But contrary to the stereotype of the pregnant young teenager, the biggest rise in pregnancy-related deaths in America has occurred in women 20-24 years old.

Consider that in 1990, 7.2 women in this age group died for every 100,000 live births. By 2013, the rate was 14 deaths in this same age group – almost double the earlier rate.

Researchers aren’t sure what’s happening but they’re almost unanimous in pointing to a lack of access to health care, coupled with rising levels of poverty.

Some American women are dying during pregnancy and childbirth from health problems they had before they became pregnant but worsened because of the pregnancies — such as diabetes, kidney disease, and heart disease.

The real problem, in other words, was they didn’t get adequate health care before they became pregnant.

Other women are dying because they didn’t have the means to prevent a pregnancy they shouldn’t have had, or they didn’t get the prenatal care they needed during their pregnancies. In other words, a different sort of inadequate health care.

One clue: African-American mothers are more than three times as likely to die as a result of pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts.

The data tell the story: A study by the Roosevelt Institute shows that U.S. states with high poverty rates have maternal death rates 77 percent higher than states with lower levels of poverty. Women with no health insurance are four times more likely to die during pregnancy or in childbirth than women who are insured.

What do we do about this? Yes, of course, poor women (and the men who made them pregnant) have to take more personal responsibility for their behavior.

But this tragic trend is also a clear matter of public choice.

Many of these high-poverty states are among the twenty-one that have so far refused to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government will cover 100 percent of the cost for the first three years and at least 90 percent thereafter.

So as the sputtering economy casts more and more women into near poverty, they can’t get the health care they need.

Several of these same states have also cut family planning, restricted abortions, and shuttered women’s health clinics.

Right-wing ideology is trumping the health needs of millions of Americans.

Let’s be perfectly clear: These policies are literally killing women.

This Mother’s Day, Amazon thinks I am a 1950s housewife

LIBertea — Sun, 11 May 2014 13:47:58 GMT

This Mother’s Day, Amazon thinks I am a 1950s housewife

Amazon's gift ideas for moms: Vacuum cleaners and irons for the "high-tech homemaker." Please don't buy me those

My personal Mother’s Day wish list includes me, some white sheets, a fluffy robe and a hotel room, alone and with no connection to the outside world. I will also accept a card and some roses. But if you wander over to the “Mother’s Day” gift page on Amazon.com, you will find a very different vision of the modern mother. Suddenly you are confronted with a virtual door-to-door salesman peddling George Jetson housekeeping “contraptions” to housewives in 1954.

For just $429, you can own a multi-limbed vacuum that looks like a cyborg. For $300, you might get your own space-age silver microwave. Just this morning, a friend forwarded an email that was “personalized” to her from Amazon Prime. It was titled “Last-Minute Mother’s Day Gifts In Home & Kitchen” and suggested gifts for the “high-tech homemaker,” including a garment steamer, a sewing machine and a shiny Cuisinart slow cooker. “Gifts for every type of mom,” it trumpeted. “Do they deliver hot tubs on Amazon Prime?” my friend wrote in her email. Because that is what she actually wants for Mother’s Day.

Yes, of course there’s an anticipatory algorithm. And it’s surely possible that my friend received this email because she bought some kind of vacuum from Amazon. That still doesn’t change the fact that this Amazon newsletter is a) demeaning and b) the worst marketing idea ever.

Yes, despite how far we’ve come, domestic chores are still primarily a female job. A 2011 Pew study as well as a report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that women spend six hours more doing household work and an additional three hours more in childcare than men. The Pew study also found that about 55 percent of mothers who work outside of the home still do most of the housework on average. Fathers who worked outside of the home do only 18 percent of the household work. (Surprised? I love my husband, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him clean a bathroom sink.) Sure, it’s important to note that men have taken over more of the domestic and childcare chores since 1965 — a little more than double.

But it’s pretty incredible that women are still the focus of cleaning-product sales pitches, even on Mother’s Day — a day on which marketers have attempted to sell us some bullshit sanctity. Curious to see if Amazon was alone in representing mothers as one-dimensional cleaning machines, I scrolled through some other Mother’s Day lists. I didn’t have to look hard to find more sexist examples. One CBS segment that touted a list of more “high tech” Mother’s Day gifts (a title I instantly thought would break the trope of the vacuuming mom) suggested a $200 baby monitor to measure your baby’s temperature, breathing and body position. The Mophie battery space pack (an iPhone battery booster) was another gift idea “so you’d have plenty of space for your adorable toddler photos and videos.” Because even when it’s not about the kids or the homemaking or the chores — it’s always about them. For the record, CRN.com compiled a list of 25 tech items for moms with only one mention of baby and zero mentions of toddlers. My favorite from that list is the Logitech UE Boombox. Because moms — shocker! — like some songs that don’t begin with the line, “The wheels on the bus.” Oh, and that boombox happens to be sold on Amazon.

Maybe someone in Amazon’s marketing department read the 2012 study that found that when men took on domestic chores — folding laundry, cooking or vacuuming — couples had less sex. And maybe that Amazon’s Mother’s Day newsletter to my friend was inspired not by an algorithm, but by reverse psychology. In that case, the subject line should have read: “You don’t know this, but if you buy a new vacuum, you’ll have better sex.” Amazon, next time, just send this.

Census Bureau Facts for Features: Mother's Day: May 11, 2014

LIBertea — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 15:53:34 GMT

U.S. Census Bureau Facts for Features: Mother's Day: May 11, 2014 (via PR Newswire)

U.S. Census Bureau Logo. (PRNewsFoto/U.S. Census Bureau) WASHINGTON, April 16, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The driving force behind Mother's Day was Anna Jarvis, who organized observances in Grafton, W.Va., and Philadelphia on May 10, 1908. As the…

Right-Wing Reaction Exposes Link Between Racism and Misogyny

LIBertea — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 00:02:52 GMT

ABC Correspondent's On-Air Mammogram Reveals Cancer

LIBertea — Wed, 13 Nov 2013 10:48:12 GMT

When Good Morning America correspondent Amy Robach agreed to undergo a mammogram on-air last month as part of the show's promotion of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, she did so for the benefit of viewers with little thought to her own health.

"I would have considered it virtually impossible that I would have cancer. I work out, I eat right, I take care of myself and I have very little family history; in fact, all of my grandparents are still alive," said Robach.

But as it turns out, the procedure may just have saved her life.

Speaking on GMA, Robach called it "the diagnosis that's still hard for me to say out loud."

Robach's statement regarding her diagnosis:

"I was alone that afternoon, never thinking to bring anyone with me, never thinking that day would be life-altering. My husband was on a business trip and my parents live across the country, but that night everyone flew into New York City and we started gearing up for a fight.

On Thursday, Nov. 14, I will go into surgery where my doctors will perform a bilateral mastectomy followed by reconstructive surgery. Only then will I know more about what that fight will fully entail, but I am mentally and physically as prepared as anyone can be in this situation.

And while everyone who gets cancer is clearly unlucky, I got lucky by catching it early, and there are so many people to thank for making sure I did. Every producer, every person who urged me to do this, changed my trajectory.

The doctors told me bluntly: "That mammogram just saved your life."

I was also told this, for every person who has cancer, at least 15 lives are saved because people around them become vigilant. They go to their doctors, they get checked.

"On-air" screenings are an innovative way for television shows to promote cancer awareness while showing that those avoiding the procedure have nothing to fear. In fact, GMA's morning rival show did a similar promotion this month when Al Roker and Matt Lauer had prostate cancer exams on Today, thirteen years after Katie Couric aired her colonoscopy on the same program.

"I can only hope my story will do the same and inspire every woman who hears it to get a mammogram, to take a self exam. No excuses," says Robach. "It is the difference between life and death."

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report

inbluevt — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 03:51:40 GMT

The Global Gender Gap Report, introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006, provides a framework for capturing the magnitude and scope of gender-based disparities around the world. The index benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, political, education- and health-based criteria and provides country rankings that allow for effective comparison across regions and income groups and over time.

The rankings are designed to create greater awareness among a global audience of the challenges posed by gender gaps and the opportunities created by reducing them. The methodology and quantitative analysis behind the rankings are intended to serve as a basis for designing effective measures for reducing gender gaps.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2013 benchmarks national gender gaps of 136 countries on economic, political, education- and health-based criteria. The Global Gender Gap Index was developed in 2006, partially to address the need for a consistent and comprehensive
measure of gender equality that can track a country’s progress over time. The index points to potential role models by revealing those countries that – within their region or income group – are leaders in dividing resources more equitably between women and men than other
countries, regardless of the overall level of resources available.

The Global Gender Gap Report 2013 emphasizes persisting gender gap divides across and within regions. Based on the eight years of data available for the 110 countries that have been part
of the report since its inception, it finds that the majority of countries covered have made slow progress on closing gender gaps.

This year’s findings show that Iceland continues to be at the top of the overall rankings in The Global Gender Gap Index for the fifth consecutive year. Finland ranks in second position, and Norway holds the third place in the overall ranking. Sweden remains in fourth position.
Northern European countries dominate the top 10 with Ireland in the sixth position, Denmark (8) and Switzerland (9). New Zealand (7), Philippines (5) and Nicaragua (10) complete the top 10.

Much more