About Women's Issues

For Veteran's Day, Adopt a Deployed Servicewoman Through Ladies of Liberty

2009-11-11T13:46:02Z

Veterans Day is celebrated with parades, a day off from school, the closing of government offices, wreaths laid on graves, and tributes to the women and men who've served our country in the past. Those are important gestures, but like other holidays that exhort us to be mindful of a particular thing (gratitude on Thanksgiving, peace and goodwill to all on Christmas, pesonal resolutions on New Year's Day), wouldn't it be better if we could extend the practice throughout the year?

And why don't we have an Active Serviceperson's Day? Why do we only remember sacrifice and service to our country when the deed is long past?

You can say "thank you" to deployed servicewomen in a very tangible way through Soldier's Angels, a non-profit with the motto "May No Soldier Go Unloved. " Its Ladies of Liberty team is dedicated to meeting the unique health and hygiene needs of servicewomen through gender-specific programs to connect women with each other.

This Veteran's Day, consider adopting a servicewoman. As a Ladies of Liberty 'Angel,' you can provide her with personal care items, haircare products, leisure materials and pampering products.

These small things mean a lot:

I have been receiving the most wonderful packages for over a month now from Soldiers' Angels and I just wanna say that it truly is a blessing to open the cards and the letters and all of the boxes. I love the letters. They make me soo happy.� I even got birthday cards for my 19th b-day in the mail! It almost brought me to tears. I was so thankful, so I just wanted to take a moment to say....[t]hank you soo, soo much. - PVT Cassandara

Thank you Cassandara and all servicewomen past and present. You are trailblazers in what many still regard as 'a man's world,' and your hard work and dedication are appreciated today and every day by those of us back home.

More on female veterans and servicewomen:

For Veteran's Day, Adopt a Deployed Servicewoman Through Ladies of Liberty originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 13:46:02.

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Didn't Your Mom Ever Say Crazy Stuff?

2009-11-11T12:38:52Z

Anyone else remember Amy's Answering Machine? A few years back, a thirty-something woman briefly made it big by playing back answering machine messages left by her doting and concerned mother -- messages that could serve as the dictionary definition of "Jewish mother." (I had a Jewish grandmother who sounded just like Amy Borkowsky's mom.) Amy put together a CD and a book using the unintentionally funny messages, enjoyed some notoriety, and then faded away.

Maybe Amy should have waited until the Twitter revolution.

As reported by TechCrunch, some guy with the twitter account 'sh*tmydadsays' (he uses the actual 'S' word if you search for him) just landed a TV deal for twittering the crazy stuff his dad says. Justin Halpern, the son, will be working with the creators of Will & Grace on a new television show and Warner Brothers will produce it.

Hey, for years I've been making friends laugh with the oddball advice my Japanese-Jewish mother freely dispensed in her uniquely-accented English...and no book deal or TV deal for me. What gives? And why didn't Amy get a TV deal out of her answering machine messages? Maybe because loving moms are famous for being a little too overprotective when it comes to their daughters.

Didn't your mom ever say crazy stuff? Provide advice that was more scary than helpful? Or do something untoward like bake lima bean cookies (no joke, it really happened to me) or comment on the curve of your boyfriend's butt? (My mom was disappointed to find out it was only his wallet.)

Share it here, or tell your story by following the 'Readers Respond' link below.

Related articles:

Didn't Your Mom Ever Say Crazy Stuff? originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 at 12:38:52.

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Health Care Reform Bill - What Women Stand to Gain (and Lose)

2009-11-09T18:05:15Z

We all knew it wasn't going to pass without a fight...and some compromises. But when the House just barely eked out enough votes to pass the health care reform bill on Saturday, some significant changes were made at the last minute that have pro-choice advocates reeling. Many feel that abortion was thrown under the bus in order to gain the support of pro-life Democrats who threatened to bury the bill.

Yes, women gained a great many benefits under the version of the health care reform bill that the House passed. But we've lost significant ground on the issue of abortion. Millions of women have just lost access to a safe and legal medical procedure because of what happened last week.

Writing for the Women's Media Center, Peggy Simpson is aghast that the worst rollback of women's reproductive rights in decades happened so casually and so quickly:

It was a showdown shocker between the Catholic bishops and women's rights--and the bishops won.

The House bill would provide the most sweeping expansion of federal prohibitions on abortion since 1976, when the Hyde Amendment was enacted that has since banned federal funds for abortion in the military, the Foreign Service, the Peace Corps, Medicaid and other federally connected health care services....

The first woman House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, a pro-choice Catholic with decades of experience in counting votes, made the deal....

Fewer than two weeks ago...the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops...began spreading the word to grass roots Catholics to lobby House members to oppose health care reform unless anti-abortion bans were tightened. Only in recent days did they insist on applying the Hyde amendment to health care plans.

An amendment proposed by Rep. Bart Stupack (D-Michigan) essentially expanded Hyde to the health care reform bill; and to gain the votes of pro-life Democrats, Pelosi allowed the Stupak amendment to be voted on, and it passed. The amended bill then went on to narrowly pass in the House by only 5 votes.

As Simpson describes it:

Pro-choice House members were furious and said so.

[Representative Rosa] DeLauro [D-CT] called abortion "a matter of conscience on both sides of the debate," adding that the Stupak amendment takes away the "freedom of conscience from American women" and prohibits them from abortion coverage "even if they pay for it with their own money."

Representative Barbara Lee, D-CA, said she had been reared in the Catholic Church and respected Stupak but called his amendment "simply outrageous" for inserting the church's "religious views into our public policy....We're a democracy, not a theocracy."

Women gained a great deal from the passage of the health care reform act. But we lost a critical right that many have taken for granted for decades. That fact needs to be made known loud and clear. Abortion,� a legal medical procedure, will now be blocked from nearly all the health care plans made possible by health care reform. As Terry O'Neill, President of NOW explains:

The Stupak Amendment, if incorporated into the final version of health insurance reform legislation, will:

Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;

Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using 100 percent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;

Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases.

At least two prominent national reproductive rights groups say that this version of health care reform will leave women "worse off" than before. Is this what we wanted from health care reform?

Related articles:

Health Care Reform Bill - What Women Stand to Gain (and Lose) originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 18:05:15.

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Placenta as 'Person' - Colorado's Personhood Amendment Ignores Basic Biology and Legal Issues

2009-11-06T18:28:59Z

Colorado is stepping onto the slipperiest of slopes with ballot initiative 25, also known as the Colorado Personhood Amendment, which will severely curtail the rights of pregnant women by granting full legal rights to the cells of a fertilized egg. Initiative 25 would also extend personhood rights to eggs fertilized asexually, which would impact in vitro fertilization. And it falsely assigns 'personhood' without really understanding human development.

The initiative is less about promoting personhood and more about restricting reproductive choice. It's part of a nationwide effort by pro-life activist organization Personhood USA to introduce similiar legislation in every state in the U.S., a goal they announced earlier today. Founded by Cal Zastrow and Keith Mason, the two men are clear on their intent as they told MetroCatholic.com:

"Our goal has been to serve Jesus Christ and offer support to grassroots pro-lifers," stated Cal Zastrow, co-founder of Personhood USA. "Personhood USA exists to support, encourage, and assist Personhood movements across the country. We are excited to continue this fight against the dehumanization and murder of preborn children."

Attorneys affiliated with Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union say that Personhood USA is essentially opening up a can of worms with little regard for the legal ramifications. In Colorado, initiative 25 would amend the state constitution in more than 20,000 places, opening the door to potential criminal charges being filed against pregnant women who have a drink, are morbidly obese, attempt�suicide, or use the Pill -- all situations that could pose a risk to the fetus. And a woman could be charged with a crime even if she didn't know she was pregnant at the time.

According to the Colorado Independent, the co-founders of Personhood USA could give a hoot about any of the above:

The legal questions surrounding the initiative at this point are not a priority to Personhood USA....

Presented with some of the hypothetical legal and rights issues related to the initiative, Keith Mason...one of the proponents of Initiative 25, said he didn't want to speculate on the particulars of the bill.

"I can't answer that because it's a hypothetical," said Mason. "It's like asking what would happen if a Martian came down and impregnated a woman on Earth. Let's talk about real issues."

Mason said he would "worry about the [legal] details later," after the bill had passed.

Let's talk about the real issues then, as Mason said.

The real issue is that any form of 'personhood' would ban all forms of abortion, even in the case of rape or incest; it would deny women the right to choose; and it would even make illegal many forms of contraception such as birth control pills, which prevent a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Personhood destroys the most fundamental of American democratic concepts -- the separation of church and state, a guiding principle of government that our founding fathers knew was critical to freedom and self-determination. Personhood is far more dangerous than we realize.

Personhood is misogyny wrapped up in the 'you can't touch this' veil of religion and puts forth a faith-based viewpoint which does not even represent the majority of those who are followers of Christianity and/or believe in God or a higher Being.

Looking at 'personhood' from a purely rational perspective, consider this; it's estimated that the human body has between 50 and 75 trillion cells. If we go back to basic biology, you'll remember that when the sperm penetrates the egg, the resulting single cell is called a zygote. At this point, Personhood USA refers to this material as a 'person'...but is it? Read on to refresh your memory about how embryonic development occurs:

The zygote spends the next few days traveling down the Fallopian tube and divides to form a ball of cells. The zygote continues to divide, creating an inner group of cells with an outer shell. This stage is called a blastocyst. The inner group of cells will become the embryo, while the outer group of cells will become the membranes that nourish and protect it.

The blastocyst reaches the womb (uterus) around day 5, and implants into the uterine wall on about day 6....The cells of the embryo now multiply and begin to take on specific functions. This process is called differentiation. It leads to the various cell types that make up a human being (such as blood cells, kidney cells, and nerve cells).

I've bolded the sentence that highlights the biggest flaw in the personhood argument -- a point I have yet to see any anti-choice advocate refute.

In the early stages of fetal development, only a small portion of the cells actually become 'the baby.' The other portion becomes the placenta, the support material that makes a full-term pregnancy possible but is 'thrown out' after birth -- in fact, it's often called 'afterbirth.' Afterbirth arises from embryonic tissue, but it is not a 'person.'

So personhood amendments, in effect, are elevating the cells of the zygote by labeling all of them a 'person' when many of them will never grow into a human being and lack the potential to do so. In fact, can anyone tell the difference between the cells of the zygote that will become the fetus and those that will develop into the placenta?

As for the fetus itself, cell differentiation doesn't begin until after day 6 following conception.

Keep this in mind as we go back and compare the woman with the zygote.

What rational, intelligent, thinking human being would say, "Yes, I agree that the rights of the 50-70 trillion cells of the mother should be superseded by the rights of the 32-celled zygote when it's not even clear which of those cells will become a baby and which will become the placenta which will be thrown out after birth."

That's what Personhood USA is saying, and it's not only an irrational argument, it's an incredibly emotional and uninformed position to take.

I'll support 'personhood' when Mason and Zastrow can look at a multi-celled embryo and tell me which ones will grow and emerge as a baby,� speak its first words, take its first steps, attend kindergarten, learn to read, go to prom, graduate from high school, get a job, pay taxes, marry or live alone, raise children (or not) and eventually die...and which ones will become the placenta and get 'thrown out.'

Because Personhood USA is adamantly opposed to throwing out cells -- it intends to empower them by making them 'persons' at an arbitrary point in embryonic development. But it ignores basic biology and attempts to slap a simplistic, emotionally-laced definition of 'personhood' on a cellular mass of genetic material, some of which may or may not have the potential to become human life.

And there's the rub. When we begin to falsely empower placenta cells -- in an attempt to protect human life and 'unborn babies' -- and trample the basic rights of women in the U.S., then something is terribly, terribly wrong. And smart, intelligent, rational women and men cannot stand aside and let this happen without a fight.

Placenta as 'Person' - Colorado's Personhood Amendment Ignores Basic Biology and Legal Issues originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 18:28:59.

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Beware of "The Numbers - The Fictions - Shaping Public Opinion"

2009-11-05T00:22:05Z

There are so many monkey wrenches being thrown into Congress' attempt to pass a health care reform bill that it can be hard to separate fiction from fact.

One example is the claim that government funds will be used to pay for abortion. And another is that the government health insurance program known as Medicare is so ill-managed that fraud eats up roughly 13% -- or $6o billion -- of its $456 billion budget; and if Medicare is such a mess, we'd be stupid to extend government health care further. Right?

Few of us have the knowledge, resources, time or energy to fact check every claim back to its original source. But when determined people take the time to do so, it can be disturbing to find out what turns up.

Recently, the well-respected grandparent of all news magazine shows, 60 Minutes, did a segment on Medicare fraud, citing those numbers I mentioned above -- specifically the alleged $60 million figure.� One of my About.com colleagues, Pierre Tristam (who also writes for the Daytona Beach News-Journal), felt discouraged by the story, thinking it was another nail in the coffin for health care reform. So he started calling around to verify the facts, beginning with the producers of 60 Minutes:

It didn't take long for the story to unravel. There are no facts. "60 Minutes" doesn't know how much Medicare fraud there is. You don't know. I don't know. The federal government doesn't know. Nobody knows, because Medicare fraud as a whole isn't tracked. That's why "60 Minutes" correspondent Steve Kroft said fraud is "estimated now to total about $60 billion a year." Estimated. Fine. By whom?

Pierre tried to find the original source for that very specific number, and a 60 Minutes spokesperson handed him over to the Justice Department, where they attempted to pass him off to Health and Human Services. He describes his search and his ultimate findings in "Loose With Numbers: Medicare Fraud Report a Fiction" and tells us, "Those are the numbers -- the fictions -- shaping public opinion across the country and public policy in Washington."

What makes this story a women's issue?

Health care reform is in our best interests. If it's passed, we'll see the elimination of many gender inequities that persist in the current system such as charging women more for insurance than men and calling 'domestic violence' a pre-existing condition and denying coverage.

But more important, it teaches us to question everything that's placed in front of us as 'fact.' So many times, women don't trust their own instincts, experiences, or background knowledge. We get shouted down in debates, or feel unsure of our own research and findings, or hesitate to express an opinion for fear that we might be wrong.

When the most honored of investigative journalism news programs gets it wrong, that tells us that the 'facts' can be slanted, or misunderstood, or selectively chosen (or ignored) to support or discredit a position on a key issue. Or a piece of legislation -- like health care reform -- that will enhance women's lives.

Keep this in mind the next time a politician or pundit spews forth a laundry list of facts and figures to back up his or her argument. If there were a fact checker verifying every claim, how much of it would really be ' the truth'?

Beware of "The Numbers - The Fictions - Shaping Public Opinion" originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 00:22:05.

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Anti-Choice Democrats Use Abortion to Hold Health Care Reform Hostage

2009-11-04T00:58:53Z

We all knew that at some juncture in the health care debate, pro-life and pro-choice advocates would confront each other...and abortion would become a sticking point. Several issues previously targeted as potential deal breakers -- including a public option -- have been resolved through compromise and careful negotiation. But abortion has never engendered civil discourse between opposing sides.� One of the prime arguments put forth by abortion opponents is that the issue could derail health care reform...so pro-choice advocates had better back off in pushing for it.

We have just reached the crossroads where push comes to shove.

As the Christian Science Monitor notes, one member of the House claims there are enough anti-abortion Democrats to prevent health care reform supporters from reaching 218 votes, which is the minimum count needed for a majority in the House. That person is Representative Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) who says he has 40 Democrats who'll side with him in opposing anything that might allow federal funds to be used for abortion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has received letters (signed by some of those supporters) asking that an anti-abortion amendment to the reform bill be considered.

Yesterday afternoon, Stupak's office released a statement which made clear where he draws the line in the sand: "I will oppose bringing the bill to the floor until an amendment can be offered or language agreed to that will prevent public funding for abortion."

Is this really necessary? As the Monitor points out:

Currently, a federal law known as the Hyde Amendment already prevents the federal funding of abortion. In the drafting of health reform legislation, members of Congress worked to keep the reform "abortion neutral."

In what is known as the Capps Amendment, named for its author, Rep. Lois Capps (D) of California, the reform would allow private health care plans included in a new insurance marketplace to cover abortion, as long as the funds were segregated. In other words, an individual's private funds would be used for abortion coverage, not federal monies....

Advocates of abortion rights argue that the Capps Amendment's provision that separates public from private funds succeeds in keeping the legislation "abortion neutral." Keeping funds separate is a technique already used by the government....[F]ederal Medicaid funds and state matching funds may not be used for abortion, but states have the option of providing supplemental abortion coverage.

Pro-choice advocacy groups such as NARAL believe that Stupak is seeking an outright ban on abortion in the new system health care reform would create. At the very least,� his efforts will reduce the reproductive health care coverage women currently have, as NARAL states 85% of private insurers cover abortion.

Even USA Today supports abortion coverage for women and decries its use as weapon against health care reform. Here's what they said on their opinion page:

As long as abortion remains a legal, constitutionally protected medical procedure, it ought to be covered by insurance plans, private or public. Regardless of how the issue plays out in Congress, though, it mustn't be allowed to scuttle the urgently needed effort to overhaul the nation's dysfunctional health care system.

Anti-Choice Democrats Use Abortion to Hold Health Care Reform Hostage originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 00:58:53.

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Beyond the Shriver Report - Ms. Magazine on Changing Work/Life Policy

2009-11-03T21:30:27Z

The big news in the Shriver Report, subtitled "A Woman's Nation Changes Everything," is that women comprise 50% of today's workforce...and that we've reached that magic number due to current economic woes. Of those laid off during the recession, three-quarters have been men. But where's the change that California First Lady Maria Shriver, author of the report, alludes to?

The sad truth about this "woman's nation" is in the Fall 2009 issue of Ms. magazine, on newsstands today. In the eye-opening article "Paycheck Feminism," authors Karen Kornbluh and Rachel Homer reveal why our current system is dysfunctional in meeting the needs of working women and families:

[C]rucial U.S. government policies that provide economic security to American workers and their families were designed initially during the New Deal to fit that very different era. "Social insurance" programs--which today include Social Security, employer-provided (and tax-subsidized) health care and pensions, unemployment insurance and Medicare -- as well as the 40-hour workweek were first established when only 10 percent of married women were in the paid workforce.

Women are penalized because far more work part-time (25% of women compared to 11% of men) and therefore do not enjoy benefits typically reserved for full-time workers. Kornbluh and Homer say that policymakers were deliberate in crafting legislation that supported men working full-time because "Even as families during the Great Depression were increasingly relying on the wages of a wife or daughter, a backlash was brewing against women working and potentially taking 'men's jobs.'"

As the workplace changed and woman (and men) began to veer away from the traditional work patterns of previous generations, policies did not keep up with these changes. And 30% of households are headed up by women, yet concessions still are not made for women who still bear the burden of caregiving -- for children or elderly relatives -- and have to adjust their work lives to make job and family possible.

What needs to change? The Ms. article comes up with five recommendations "for revamping U.S. work/life policy to take into account women's lives, the variety of way they work and the value of that work." Just the first one alone would be a significant cultural shift in the workplace: "Stop making unemployment, retirement and other benefits contingent on steady, full-time work." The others also address specific concerns of working women and, in the long run, would lead to a stronger economy and more flexibility for the American family. You can read all five recommendations in the Fall 2009 issue of Ms.

Beyond the Shriver Report - Ms. Magazine on Changing Work/Life Policy originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 at 21:30:27.

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Will Washington Posts's "Next Great Pundit Contest" Alter Gender Disparity in Op-Ed Pages?

2009-11-02T16:29:10Z

On the surface, the Washington Post's "America's Next Great Pundit Contest" seems to be taking steps to correct a terrible gender inequity that stares at us from the pages of major American dailies -- the lack of female voices on the op-ed page. This is an ongoing issue and was a big bone of contention back in 2005 when syndicated columnist Susan Estrich got into a shouting match with then-editor of the Los Angeles Times� Michael Kinsley over this inequity.

At that time, WaPo noted the discrepancy between men and women opining:

In the first two months of this year, about 19.5 percent of op-ed pieces at the California paper were by women, 16.9 percent at the New York Times and 10.4 percent at The Washington Post. Only a handful of female columnists -- Maureen Dowd, Ellen Goodman, Molly Ivins -- are nationally known.

Today, I'm happy to report that WaPo appears to be deliberate in its decision to feature female voices in its "America's Next Great Pundit Contest." Out of 4800 entries, the paper chose 10 finalists, half of whom are women. We the readers can look over their entries, and over the course of two days (November 7-9) vote our choices into the next round.

The contest's tagline, "You have an opinion, but do you have what it takes to be heard?" speaks to a deeper issue at the heart of the gender op-ed debate: fewer women submit op-eds than men because many feel they lack the 'qualifications' to express a noteworthy opinion worth publishing.

Catherine Orenstein, who's published a number of op-ed pieces in leading newspapers across the country, decided it was time to counter this with specific training for women to prove this idea false. She founded the Op-Ed Project on a simple premise. As Orenstein explains:

It's a teachable form....It's not like writing Hemingway. You show people the basics of a good argument, what constitutes good evidence, what's a news hook, what's the etiquette of a pitch....

I try to convey the idea that there is a responsibility....Op-ed pages are so enormously powerful. It's one of the few places open to the public. Where else is someone like me going to get access? It's not like I can call up the White House: 'Hello?'

The above example of a conversation with the White House isn't so far-fetched. Orenstein tells Op-Ed Project participants that a week after her opinion piece on Haiti was published in the New York Times, she was meeting with President Bill Clinton's Latin American policy advisors.

Whether that sort of opportunity will present itself to any of the 10 finalists is anybody's guess. But having sat in on an Op-Ed Project presentation with a twenty-something writer and teacher, Courtney Martin -- who is now one of WaPo's 10 finalists -- I can absolutely vouch for the fact that if you give a woman the opportunity, the training, and the conviction that her words have merit, she will use what she's learned to speak out and push for change.

With more women on the op-ed pages, the line between work and life will become more "porous" as Martin notes in her contest entry, "Between work and life." One contest anointing one winner won't make a huge difference. But WaPo's decision to put five women on equal footing with five men in its own fantasy op-ed competition means that we're finally at the table we've been fighting to sit at -- a place where our opinions are of equal weight and value. And if they can do it, why not you?

Will Washington Posts's "Next Great Pundit Contest" Alter Gender Disparity in Op-Ed Pages? originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 16:29:10.

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Philanthropy Friday - Gender-Based Blindness and the 'Flying Eye'

2009-10-30T13:09:18Z

I remember being terrified as a kid by a stunningly cheesy B-movie called The Crawling Eye, in which a radioactive cloud on a mountaintop hides a deadly secret.

But the Flying Eye is much more benevolent. It's a world-class eye hospital built right into a DC-10 aircraft, and it's run by ORBIS International, a non-profit organization dedicated to saving sight worldwide. Earlier this month, World Sight Day was observed on October 8th, and I'm kicking myself for not blogging about this earlier since this year's theme was Gender and Eye Health -- equal access to care.

How does sight relate to women's lives? Here's what I learned from ORBIS International:

[N]early two thirds of blind people worldwide are woman and girls....In many places, men have twice the access to eye care as women....But equal access to eye care could reduce the rate of blindness in poor countries. An estimated 45 million children and adults�are blind worldwide...and every year between 1 and 2 million more will lose their sight.

It's reported that 75% of these cases are due to preventable blindness; and many could have their eyesight restored with access to proper eyecare. Without some form of intervention, it's� estimated that by the year 2020 blindness will affect more than 76 million people.

The Flying Eye Hospital offers that kind of intervention through volunteer medical professionals who train local medical teams to provide care. Inside the Flying Eye Hospital, local doctors watch and learn from surgeries involving the latest medical techniques. They then take that knowledge back to their own communities.

Close your eyes and imagine a day of work without sight. Women worldwide are tasked with caring for their families, cooking, cleaning, raising children; think how much harder it would be to do all that without benefit of vision.

ORBIS has put together Eye Reports to show the work of the Flying Eye Hospital. Like any other non-profit, they appreciate donations, but interestingly enough they can also accept donations of frequent flyer miles from United Airlines and AsiaMiles, enabling an ORBIS doctor to travel and perform sight-saving work.

Philanthropy Friday - Gender-Based Blindness and the 'Flying Eye' originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 13:09:18.

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Scariest Thing This Halloween? Extreme Gender Bias Against Women in Politics

2009-10-30T12:10:26Z

Want to hear something that'll chill your blood? Then listen to the way female politicians have been portrayed in recent days by their peers and by the mainstream media. The National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) offers a round-up just in time for Halloween:

Gender-stereotyping goblins and ghosts are lurking in the corners of the media and political arena, looking to demean our accomplishments and our women representatives at every turn with a sexist quip.

Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi expresses her opinion on a press conference and the NRCC [National Republican Congresssional Committee] releases a statement saying that she should be "put in her place."

[Maine] Senators [Olympia] Snowe and [Susan] Collins cast their votes on health care reform, and rather than attacking the choice itself they are called "jezebel," and [Rush] Limbaugh quips "women, damn it."

Martha Coakley, who has the potential to be Massachusetts's first female senator, is stereotyped as an "ice queen" and "mean girl."

Some ([Minneapolis radio host] Chris Baker) go so far as to say that they are "not that excited about women voting."

The frightening fact [is] that women - despite comprising over half of the US population - make up only 17% of the House and Senate.....[W]omen get paid only 80 cents for every dollar a man makes! And isn't it shocking that we still haven't been able to get the Equal Rights Amendment passed?!

Want to change the ending of these horror stories? Your opportunity comes just three days after Halloween, on Election Day, when you have the chance to vote.

The NWPC identifies two key races in which highly qualified, competent women are running -- candidates who are not merely 'gender picks' but are best suited to serve the needs of their constituents:

the Massachusetts Senate race (to fill Ted Kennedy's vacant seat) with Democratic candidate Martha Coakley who is currently that state's first female Attorney General. If elected in the January 19, 2009 special election, she'll also be the state's first female Senator.
the New York 23rd Congressional District race with Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava who breaks with her party in declaring herself to be pro-choice and pro-marriage equality. She'll be running in the general election on Tuesday.

Whether or not you can vote in these two races isn't the issue. What matters is that women go to the polls, even in an 'unsexy' off year, and support candidates who will go forth and legislate on behalf of women.

With only 17% of the House and Senate seats filled by women, of course we're not going to find our needs met.

We need to be pro-active and run for public office, support other capable and qualified women in our hometown races, and get inside the system so we can fix what isn't working.

Scariest Thing This Halloween? Extreme Gender Bias Against Women in Politics originally appeared on About.com Women's Issues on Friday, October 30th, 2009 at 12:10:26.

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