2005 February Archive

Talk sex with Jessica

Well not really. But you can hear her on Sex Talk, “a weekly podcast on gender issues, equity and feminism,” that Rebel Dad started up. Good shit.
In addition to Jess’ odd ramblings on masturbating in Atlanta, the show features an interview with Lissa Bell of the National Partnership for Women & Families, and some great news items.
Click here to download the full show.

Well not really. But you can hear her on Sex Talk, “a weekly podcast on gender issues, equity and feminism,” that Rebel Dad started up. Good shit.
In addition to Jess’ ...

By Jessica • 19 years ago

Founder of Amnesty International dies

Peter Benenson, the founder of human rights organization Amnesty International, died Friday evening. Very sad. Send Amnesty a message of condolence here; I believe they are collecting them for a later tribute.

Peter Benenson, the founder of human rights organization Amnesty International, died Friday evening. Very sad. Send Amnesty a message of condolence here; I believe they are collecting them ...

By Jessica • 19 years ago

Single Japanese women want to stay that way

According to a recent poll, most single Japanese women would prefer not to marry and think they would be happy living alone for the rest of their life.
While the newspaper that did the poll, the Yomiuri, noted that the results reflect “a recent trend among single women who no longer attach social stigma to choosing the single life,” they didn’t necessarily think this was such great news.

Japan’s government is struggling to stem a tumbling birthrate and keep the population from shrinking…
“The result depicted a tendency among younger generations to remain single, leading observers to the conclusion that the number of people who marry late will further increase and will lower the birthrate,” the ...

According to a recent poll, most single Japanese women would prefer not to marry and think they would be happy living alone for the rest of their life.
While the newspaper that did the ...

By Jessica • 19 years ago

UN meeting on women begins today

So Samhita beat me to the chase a bit on this one, but just to elaborate a bit…
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) begins its two-week run starting Monday in New York City. I know a lot of folks aren’t really into the UN processes (for varying reasons), but this meeting should be really interesting.
Firstly, over 5,000 people (mostly women) have registered for the meeting from all around the world. Also, this particular CSW marks the ten year anniversary of the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, a meeting that resulted in the Beijing Platform for Action, an agenda for women’s empowerment. ...

So Samhita beat me to the chase a bit on this one, but just to elaborate a bit…
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) begins its two-week run starting ...

By Samhita • 19 years ago

Beijing Plus Ten

The Beijing Plus Ten Conference starts today in New York which is the ten year review of the Beijing Conference in 1995. The Beijing Conference raised awareness of the international status of women’s rights and attempted to bring about legislative change by way of a document called the Beijing Platform for Action, that were a set of principles and strategies of action to help enforce change around women’s issues.
After ten years, there is a lot to discuss. According to one article on Voice of America several of the sponsers of the conference (including the World Bank) believe that we have made progress in the area of women’s issues. On the contrary, groups such ...

By noauthor • 19 years ago

I Think the IWF & Larry Summers Just Found A New Best Friend

Meet Dr. Farrell. He’s the asshole of the week that the NY Times Business Section decided to give in-depth coverage. He’s a pseudo-scientist that believes he’s finally figured out the gendered wage gap. His answer: women self-sabotage.
“Women, he believes, methodically engineer their own paltry pay. They choose psychically fulfilling jobs, like librarian or art historian, that attract enough applicants for the law of supply and demand to kick in and depress pay. They avoid well-paid but presumably risky work – hence, the paucity of women flying planes. And they tend to put in fewer hours than men – no small point, he says, because people who work 44 hours a week make almost ...

By noauthor • 19 years ago

So where do we go from here?

Check out Cynthia Gorney’s piece for the NY Times, Imagine a Nation Without Roe v. Wade. After giving a brief purview of the states that still have pre-Roe abortion laws on the books (Michigan, Colorado, Alabama & fourteen others) and the states likely to keep abortion legal (New York, Maryland, California & seventeen others), she offers this thought-provoking passage:
“Roe created the national right-to-life movement, forging a powerful instant alliance among what had been scores of scattered local opposition groups. What would happen to that movement, should the galvanizing target of its loathing suddenly disappear? How different would it be, fighting on simultaneous multiple fronts? And how would politicians react if an antiabortion vote were no longer ...

Check out Cynthia Gorney’s piece for the NY Times, Imagine a Nation Without Roe v. Wade. After giving a brief purview of the states that still have pre-Roe abortion laws on the books (Michigan, ...

By noauthor • 19 years ago

Naming Offending Countries?

According to Reuters, U.N. officials are finally acknowledging that sexual assault by peacekeepers is not limited to African missions such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Ivory Coast. A recent examination revealed that widespread allegations of sexual exploitation have emerged in all *sixteen missions* worldwide.
In an attempt to address the issue, the U.N. is now threatening to expel countries that refuse to prosecute its offending soldiers. U.S. State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said that the U.S. would consider supporting the move. He also noted that, “We have worked very carefully with the U.N. to try to get them to…make sure that in fact prevention becomes a top priority for U.N. peacekeeping ...