gender issues digest

Gender Issues Digest – Edition 42

The Editor — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 04:10:02 +0000

Welcome to another bumper edition of Gender Issues Digest – this one covering notable Gender Issues news in March and April. Regular readers may have noticed that we have been off our normal 2-week cycle for the past 3 months and we plead guilty as charged thanks to a hectic work and travel schedule. As things settle down, we will hopefully be back to our normal routine sooner rather than later.

If time is short on your end as well, here are some recommended reads in this issue:

Emmeline Pankhurst‘s infamous 1913 speech, arguably the speech that gave birth to Western feminism. Read the whole speech in 3 parts or get the gist from the edited version. Pankhurst was one of the leaders of the suffragette movement.
Get an update on the issue of abortion in the USA, UK and Mexico under a variety of articles in that section. Particularly relevant for the USA case is the law article on the woman-protective legislation.
The obituary of Mary Crisp provides a well-drawn portrait of a courageous Republican woman who went up against her own party for her belief in the woman’s right to choose.
A Muslim woman finds that she is discriminated against for her choice of swimwear in Oxford as opposed to the American South.

Happy reading and discussing!

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Recommended Blog

Women’s space/The Margins

Interviews, Profiles and Obituaries

Interview: Andrea Madarassy – The woman leading the fight for working mothers

Interview: Ann Sophie Pic – First female Michelin 3-star chef in France for 50 years

Interview: Camellia Panjabi – Indian entrepreneur and owner of food empire

Interview: Leslie Bennetts – Author and U.S. advocate for working mothers

Interview: A.M. Homes – Writer

Interview: “It’s okay to be dark”, Madeleine Peyroux – contemporary interpretive jazz-blues singer

Interview: “Now we’ve got a backlash”, Meera Syal – British Asian comedian and writer

Interview: Sophie Ellis Baxtor – British pop diva

Interview: Katharine Hamnett – Green British fashion designer

Interview: Tyra Banks, supermodel, on weight, body image and the media

Interview: Segolene Royal – potential next President of France

Interview: Julie Christie – Actress and 60s icon

Profile: Barbara Stanwyck - late American actress

Profile: Daphne Du Maurier – late novelist

Profile: ‘Ask me anything!’ – Beth Ditto on her new fortnightly agony aunt column

Obituary: Mary Crisp – GOP official rebuked by Reagan over her views on abortion, aged 83

Obituary: Dakota Staton – charismatic jazz vocalist known for her ‘blues ballads’, aged 76

Obituary: Juanita Millender-McDonald – who represented California in House, aged 68

Special focus: Emmeline Pankhurst, a mother of women’s rights

Freedom or Death, p1

Freedom or Death, p2

Freedom or Death, p3

Freedom or Death – edited

Issue: The State of Gender Politics Today

The liberation of the sexes from their pink and blue fates have hardly begun

Up the revolution! Why there are so many good reasons to be a modern feminist

We’ve never had it so good – does Generation Y’s women’s lives really live up to the hype?

Who says middle age is a crisis for men?

The significance of the boy-girl ratio in British schools today

Why a woman’s place is in the kitchen

Mother of all blunders

Issue: Women, Work and Achievement

After adopting term limits, states lose female legislators

Beauty before age – on rising star in photography, Alex Prager

Why men can’t manage women and why women in their 30s are increasingly striking out on their own

A new breed of ‘olderpreneurs’ – women striking out on their own after retirement

City trader says bank’s culture of sexism forced her out of job

When will we stop penalising working mothers?

Mothers face job discrimination, according to report

Tesco joins job share scheme to help women

Computer science takes steps to bring women into the fold

Failure for these women could haunt a generation of politicians

In praise of… women in business

Ladies who lug – female band managers and roadies

Menstruation question outrages India’s female professionals

No dumb blonde

Wellesley class sees ‘one of us’ bearing standard

When women lost the lead in the film industry

Why Fergie and Heather Mills have been reborn in the USA

Clinton gladly plays the gender card

BBC Dragon: I wouldn’t hire fat people

Issue: Violence against Women

Huntley sex victim wins damages

Japanese businessman acquitted over Blackman’s murder

How the web became a sexist’s paradise

A call for manners in the world of nasty blogs

Life after rape in the Congo

Japan’s ‘atonement’ to former sex slaves stirs anger

‘They keep on killing and killing’ – the killing of women and girls in Guatamala

‘The abuse wasn’t about sex. It was about control’

Pope ‘did not help girls abused by Florence priest’

Polygamous Nigerian lesbians flee Sharia

Dangers for women travelling solo

Teenage victim of asylum scandal faces deportation

Issue: The Politics of Contraception, Abortion and Reproduction

Mexico City legalises abortion early in term

Vote could end Mexico’s abortion subculture

Abortion doesn’t boost breast cancer risk according to large-scale long-term study

U.S. Supreme Court upholds ban on abortion procedure

The new politics of abortion: An equality analysis of woman-protective abortion restrictions

Abortions ‘crisis’ threatens Britain’s NHS

‘Intolerant’ doctors blamed for looming abortion crisis

Nurses ‘could perform abortions’

Delay in detecting pregnancy blamed for many late abortions in the UK

‘I knew where I stood on abortion. But I had to rethink.’

Spitzer pushing bill to shore up abortion rights in New York state

Bush’s US$1bln ‘Don’t have sex’ campaign a flop

Pill that eliminates period gets mixed reviews

Perfect timing – can natural family planning work?

Woman loses final embryo appeal

Let her choose

Women face rationing of fertility treatment in UK

Issue: Gender and Health

Anorexics given new rights

A new plan to combat obesity in UK schoolgirls

Building strong bones in the womb

‘I was born without a womb’

Device offers hope in cutting stillbirth rates

Mothers miss a ‘friend’ as health visitors decline

What women want – home births

While women in the developing world are dying in childbirth, why are we fetishising doing it at home?

Red meat ups breast cancer risk

HRT linked to 1000 deaths from cancer

Breast cancer rates fell after hormone treatments declined

Texas legislators block shots for girls against cancer virus

Issue: Gender and Sexuality

Seeking the keys to sexual desire

Pas de deux of sexuality is written in the genes

Mysteries of sexual desire

Sex theme park to open in London

Everything you need for an all-night party

God and his gays

Who are you calling a virgin?

Issue: Modern dating, marriage and relationships

A ‘First Spouse’ in France? Not any time soon.

Living with a real size zero

Anatomy of a marriage

Around the world in 80 dates

Giving new meaning to ‘whirlwind courtship’

Hey! You’re breaking up on me!

It pays to be picky in love

Love’s labour’s lost

Why is it no longer acceptable for a woman to say her greatest aspiration is to fall in love?

With this ring…

Would you buy a date from a cad?

In a crowded online field, it’s more than a pet project

Romantic revulsion in the new century – Flaw-o-matic 2.0

The perils of dating with family in tow

Chinese slough off old barriers to divorce

Issue: The state of the modern family

A letter to my ‘bad’ granma

One-parent families on the rise in the UK

Bee Lavender on having a child at 18

India’s shrinking families

The women laughed as they forced toddlers to fight

Numbers drop for the Married-with-Children

‘Sometimes I feel a bit of a fraud’ – does not being a biological mother make a woman unfit to be a grandmother?

Issue: Gender, Fashion, Beauty and Self-Image

A touch of the oh-la-la – how French women look after themselves

Age-old rules – how to grow old gracefully in dressing

‘How do I look?’ – Cilla Black, British Singer and TV presenter, age 67

‘I felt more welcome in the Bible belt’ – a Muslim woman on discrimination against her Islamic swimwear

Nancy Pelosi, respectfully maintaining her own image

Never knowingly undersized

Time to put an end to skinny-bashing

The Kate divide

Tweens ‘R’ Shoppers

Designing women of the WNBA

Top surgeons offer budget breast ops

In apparel, all tariffs aren’t created equal

Miscellaneous

‘China women town’ to be built

Queens of mean

Women in basketball team unsure if they will accept Imus’s apology

International Women’s Day: The Telegraph, Calcutta

somak — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 01:05:37 +0000

Editor’s note: The appearance of this posting below by Somak has been long-delayed due to my own busy schedule. Do accept my apologies and enjoy the read!

The Telegraph, Calcutta, did a special oped page on the International Women’s Day, on March 8. In order to bypass the platitudes, we had put to three important Indian women one question: What has it been like to inhabit a women’s body? Their responses were supplemented by a short extract (in translation) from an all-time favourite work by one of the pre-eminent Bengali women writers, Leela Mazumdar, who turned 100 this year. I am pasting the link to the web version of this page below. Hope you’ll enjoy reading it.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1070308/asp/opinion/story_7484392.asp

Eating Habits Survey

The Editor — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:52:00 +0000

Via a listserve:

We’re investigating self perceptions and eating habits in men and women. The study is part of a joint Oxford Uni and Brookes student project, and we are seeking men and women to complete an on line survey.

It’s interesting to do, and doesn’t take too much time. The study can be found at:

http://www.brookes.ac.uk/schools/social/psych/research/eatinghabits.html

The study does have ethical approval from both Universities.

For any inquiries, contact:

Myra Cooper
Oxford Doctoral Course in Clinical Psychology
University of Oxford
Warneford Hospital
Oxford OX3 7JX

email: myra.cooper@hmc.ox.ac.uk

tel: +44 (0) 1865 226431
fax:+44 (0) 1865 226364

Free Gender and Development journal articles for download

The Editor — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 08:40:40 +0000

Via a Gender Issues Digest reader in Oxford:

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Oxfam Great Britain is pleased to announce that selected articles from our two journals are freely available for download until 31 March 2007.

These include articles from the journal Gender & Development on climate change, and also articles on ending impunity for violence against women and girls from Development in Practice.

Also featured are examples of Oxfam’s publications on Gender and Diversity, as well as a link to the We Can coalition campaign pages on the Oxfam GB website which includes short video clips.

For access to these resources, please click on the link below. Please feel free to forward this offer onto your colleagues in other organisations.

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/resources/iwd.htm