Originally posted on Women’s Voices for Change . Today, April 12, is Equal Pay Day in the United States — a way to address the fact that U.S. women still make 77 cents for each dollar that men earn. We can’t make it to the flash mob on Capitol Hill or join the women from 9to5 and AAUW lobbying for the long-stalled Paycheck [...]

Originally posted on Women’s Voices for Change and written by Chris Lombardi . A few years back, actor-scholar Anna Deavere Smith was about to appear at Carnegie Hall. She’d already been nominated for Tony and Pulitzer awards for her signature one-woman shows, but this was a little different. She was nervous, she told a friend, Brent Williams, who [...]

Originally posted on Women’s Voices for Change , written by Alexandra MacAaron A thick fog encircles you as you wander through an old hotel lobby, into children’s bedrooms and gory crime scenes, along a shadowy shop-lined street, out to a cemetery, through a pine-scented wood and back inside a pool hall. You’re surrounded by hundreds of other silent travelers, all [...]

Originally posted on Women’s Voices for Change and written by Diane Vacca. Taking her place at the podium, the vice-presidential nominee looked out at a sea of smiling women’s faces. Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman nominated by a major political party to national office, was momentarily taken aback as she gazed at the ecstatic delegates. “It was the [...]

Originally posted on Women’s Voices for Change . What did Mary Poppins do on her day off after jumping with Bert into one of his chalk pictures? Extremely protective of her privacy, Ms. Poppins kept secret her doings while away from her young charges. Now imagine the extraordinary nanny slinging a camera round her neck, her bag loaded with [...]

Our society emphasizes youth. This is no surprise to anyone over the age of 48; especially those that want to do something new or different. If you’re young and somewhat talented, you can get a mentor to give you sage advice and introduce you to who you have to know. You are forgiven for all your [...]

by Chris Lombardi This week was one of stirring scenes from Egypt, spellbinding even to those of us who don’t follow public affairs closely: it careened from the January 25 Facebook-organized protests , with hundreds of thousands converging in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere to demand that their leader relinquish power after 30 years; to the harsh, government-inspired “Days [...]

by Alexandra MacAaron Many years ago, a friend and I took our husbands to see the Bolshoi Ballet’s “Swan Lake.” A better choice of words would probably be “dragged them.” Their enthusiasm at the final curtain call had more to do with the evening’s being over than with the breathtaking score and extraordinary technique we had seen [...]

by Dr. Patricia Yarberry Allen, M.D. The Million Women Study is a British observational study that began in May 1996 and ended in December 2001. Women were 50-64 at the time the study began, and their numbers included one in four of all women in this age group in Great Britain at the time. The latest report [...]

Many of us know Eleanore Wells from previous WVFC pieces on shoes, fashionable dressing for airport security screenings , and living the child-free life . We’re delighted to present her latest as a sneak preview of our upcoming month-long focus on all things love-related–physical, emotional, and otherwise–for women over 40. It all kicks off on Tuesday, February 1. Meanwhile, enjoy Eleanore’s [...]

Originally posted on WVFC and written by Alexandra MacAaron . This year, the University of Southern California’s renowned School of Cinematic Arts, alma mater of legendary directors George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis and dozens of others, has exactly as many women enrolled as men.

 Perhaps someone should let these aspiring female filmmakers know that they are trying to get [...]

Originally Posted on Women’s Voices for Change and written by Chris Lombardi A week after the Tucson shooting that killed six people and gravely injured Gabrielle Giffords, a bipartisan group is pushing back against the conventional Beltway wisdom that nothing can be done to curb gun violence. Among that group, unsurprisingly, are women who were close to shooting [...]

Originally posted on Women’s Voices for Change and written by Chris Lombardi . Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is planning to soon conduct classes in the Constitution for some freshmen members of Congress . He’s been criticized for this mostly due to the partisan nature of those members, many of us are more worried about what he’ll say, especially given his [...]

Originally posted on Women’s Voices for Change and written by Chris Lombardi . This Week with Christiane Amanpour , normally a Washington chat show, this weekend flew to Tucson, Arizona to film the above segment.  We expected nothing less of Amanpour, one of the top journalists in the world (and long a WVFC heroine ). When a member of Congress is gunned down [...]