Women's Rights

As the weather turns cooler (we hope), big yellow school buses will soon be lining the streets, bringing millions of children back to school to continue their education. But not all children are so fortunate. Conservative estimates suggest that 75 million children who should be in primary school are not. More than half of those children, 41 million, are girls. We understand the earning power of higher education here in the U.S., but even primary education can have exponential effects in the developing world. In addition to an increased income, an educated girl is more likely to have fewer and healthier children, send her children to school and participate in the political process. She is also less likely to become infected with HIV.

One way to keep girls in school is to reduce the number of child marriages. Approximately 60 million girls are married before the age of 17. These girls have fewer economic and educational opportunities than their unmarried counterparts, and are twice as likely to suffer domestic violence.

You can help by asking your member of Congress to support the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2009. The bill recognizes child marriage as a human rights violation, develops an integrated strategy to address child marriage, and incorporates child marriage prevention programs into existing foreign assistance programs.

So as you slow to 15 m.p.h in school zones, and navigate the school supplies aisles at the local store, please remember the millions of girls who are unable to obtain a basic education due to early marriages. Contact your legislator to support the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act.

Photo credit: Robert Ingham USMC

Girls have long battled sexist stereotypes about their academic prowess, particularly in the field of mathematical ability. A Kaplan, LA, middle school implemented single-sex classes under the rationale that girls are "content to simply observe" in class while boys "enjoy argument and lively classroom debate" and must be given more dynamic classes accordingly. But the "boys will be boys" mantra, often frustrating to girls who see their male classmates get away with far more trouble than they do, can actually be harmful to the boys themselves.

A new study out of England finds that boys (and girls) are more likely to believe that girls are harder working and better behaved, which creates a "self-fulfilling prophecy." When boys are expected to be the class clown, getting up to "schoolboy pranks," and asked, "why can't you sit nicely like the girls?" they live up to expectations. Just like when girls score worse on tests when they hear their sex can't do math, boys do worse at academics when they're treated like goof-offs from the start. When, for experimental purposes, it was announced before a test that boys don't do as well as girls, the boys scores are lowered.

The solution to this is one that will help both boys and girls: not promoting gender stereotypes in the classroom, not treating boys or girls as better or worse at something because of their sex, and not playing boys-vs-girls games that reinforce the concept of difference. Sexism and gender stereotypes must be viewed as matters of universal concern, detrimental to all children no matter their chromosome configuration.

Photo credit: Liz (perspicacious.org)

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, France's first lady, caught Iran's attention by publicly speaking out against the stoning of a mother for adultery. (Though international outcry spared Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani this punishment, she still awaits execution by hanging.) Angry about her role in forcing Iran's hand to a slightly less extreme human rights abuse, the Kayhan, a state-run newspaper known for its conservativism, called Bruni-Sarkozy a "prostitute" who had "kicked up a human rights fuss."

Certain people wondered: um, did we hear you right? Did something get lost in translation? Why, not at all, responded the daily. In fact, they followed up, because of her "perverted lifestyle" and alleged extramarital affairs, the first lady should suffer the same fate as Ashtiani. In the paper's words: "This shows that in reality she herself deserves death." Yikes. Usually, advocating killing the first lady of another country is not the best idea for a state-run paper.

The Iranian government did suggest that this kind of personal attack was maybe not a great idea, attempting to back away from being included in any blame for the mud-slinging, and advised: "The media can properly criticize the wrong and hostile policies of other countries by refraining from using insulting words." On Salon's Broadsheet, Tracy Clark-Fiory translates this statement as: "Next time, make your murderous ire a little more subtle, dudes." Subtlety was clearly the last thing on the Kayhan's mind in this instance.

Let's play see if you can spot the entrenched singlism and matrimania:

Mathematics Policy Research (MPR) reviewed the government-sponsored Building Strong Families initiative, which supported "eight voluntary programs that offer relationship skills education and other support services to unwed couples who are expecting a baby or have just had one."  MPR conducted their review because "studies have shown children fare best when raised by both their biological parents — particularly when their parents have a positive and healthy relationship.

Building Strong Families (BSF), the initiative being reviewed by MPR, is an effort to "develop and evaluate programs designed to help interested unwed parents" by teaching skills like "communication, conflict management, and building intimacy and trust," and providing, among other things, "individual support from a family support worker."

First, why do unwed couples need to be singled out for relationship skills education? I know several married couples with horrid interpersonal skills and several unmarried couples who appear to have wonderful techniques for making their relationships work.  Second, why limit services to couples with (or expecting) children? This perpetuates a narrow view of "family" that denigrates extended family relationships and implies that childfree couples somehow either don't need, deserve, or want to learn to strengthen their relationship.

MPR's main reason for studying BSF, that "studies have shown children fare best when raised by both their biological parents," is not accurate. Children raised by one, two, or more supportive adults do better than children raised in a strife-filled environment, regardless of whose parents are married or not. So children's welfare should not be used as an excuse to perpetuate the culture of marriage.

An alliance between the Montreal Community and Concordia University, called the Montreal Life Stories Project, documents about the lives of people with the experiences of being a visible minority, a refugee, or an immigrant in Montreal. Mostly, the center creates projects about the life stories of survivors of genocide, displacement, and human rights abuses. In most cases, the people working to document the life stories and to preserve these precious oral histories are from the Montreal community.

Recently, through my work with FWD/Forward, one of the people who worked on the project, Lynsey Grosfield, brought to my attention their documentary entitled "J'y étais","I Was There" Histoires de femmes en zones de conflit. Stories of Women in Conflict Zones. The 20-minute documentary is an incredible collection of stories told by four women, from different backgrounds, who are all survivors of mass violence, "ranging from the Holocaust to the Rawandan and Cambodian genocides, to political violence in Haiti, Latin America, and South Asia."

Lynsey told me that this documentary was created in the hopes that listening to these women recount their own stories of enduring and surviving mass violence will help us to better understand the impact it, along with displacement, has on those who seek refuge. A better understanding of their lives, and the ways in which it affects their sense of home and community, is hoped to be revealed by listening to women who have harrowing stories to tell.

When conservatives are looking to play the blame-game regarding what they refer to as the decline of the "traditional family," feminists, LGBT persons, and Hollywood liberal elites are generally on the dice. But Alex Henderson writes on Alternet that if they want to find the true culprit, they should look in the mirror.

What right-wingers mean by family values is something along the lines of a man and woman getting married, on the young side before they've sullied themselves with any premarital sex, pop out a bunch of children (sans contraception), and perish the thought of divorce. But one thing any parents (and most non-parents) know: kids are expensive. When people decide to have children later or not at all, when a greater number of people are interested in permanent sterilization, when marriage gets delayed, economic considerations are at the top of their reasons.

Wealth in America has become more concentrated in the hands of an elite few, while an average worker's wages have not kept up with inflation on basic necessities. Conservatives blocked comprehensive health care reform under the Clinton administration, while the bill that President Obama managed to squeeze through Congress falls far short of what the nation needs. We have inadequate or nonexistent maternity leave, paternity leave, sick days, subsidized day care, and other vital elements of a social safety net. What kind of impact do you think this would have on responsible individuals considering having a family?

Year in and year out, legislators think of new and exciting ways to impose control over a woman's body ... or they just try, try again to pass the old and uncreative means of letting women know we were silly to consider our bodies our own. While we're never particularly celebratory over these developments, 2010 has seemed like an especially bad year for reproductive rights. With most states done with their 2010 legislative session, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) today released an overview of this round's changes and what's popular in violating a woman's bodily integrity this year.

With President Barack Obama busy shoving health reform through Congress, it seems the only soundbite we heard as often as "death panels" was "government-funded abortion" (or "baby killer," or some other such permutation). Anti-choicers won a victory with the Nelson Amendment, which imposed mandatory restrictions on abortion coverage while giving states the green light to make life even harder for women, should the mood take them. Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee took them up on that offer with their own exchange bans, and Florida and Oklahoma would have followed if it weren't for the woman-friendly pen of their governors. Never mind that organizations from the World Health Organization to the American Public Health Association tout what a vital element of health care abortion is.