Women's Rights
 

Self-Evident? "All Men and Women Are Created Equal"

by Jen Nedeau

categories: Essay, Feminism

Published July 04, 2009 @ 06:49AM PT

We all know that Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, declaring independence from Great Britain. While Independence Day is commonly associated with fireworks, parades, barbecues,  concerts, baseball games, political speeches and ceremonies - I am going to pose a more provocative question for the readers of Change.org:

What does Independence Day mean for women? Historically and then in the present?

It's no secret that the Declaration of Independence was written and signed by men. And while the document has been translated to apply to both women and men and has become a statement of motivation for all marginalized groups - the original language seems to imply gender bias:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I challenge those who celebrate the 4th of July today to really think about our "founding fathers" and how they built a nation where women have been struggling to find their sense of independence ever since the Declaration of Independence was signed.

Personally, I wish we nationally celebrated the 20th of July of 1848 when Elizabeth Cady Stanton created The Declaration of Sentiments, a document signed by 68 women and 32 men, 100 out of some 300 attendees at the first women's rights convention, in Seneca Falls, New York.

Now take a read at this language, it suits me a little better:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to insist upon the institution of a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are suffer able, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they were accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design despotism, it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled.

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

I would hope that as we praise those who brought the United States to Independence from Britain today, we also think about those who brought women into independence from the patriarchy as well.

Any good feminist knows that it is important to maintain a critical eye toward tradition. Often those traditions carried misogynistic sentiments in the beginning when women were left out. Just as Betty Friedan asked all women to re-assess the alleged joys of housewifery because "The feminine mystique has succeeded in burying millions of American women alive" - I am asking those who are celebrating their own patriotism today to re-assess the role of the patriarchy in United States. It's important, in the quest for true independence - both as a country and a society - to make sure that all men and women are allowed to be independent human beings, not buried by the false expectations of what freedom is supposed to mean.

This post is dedicated to the female veterans. For more information on the plight of women in the military go see: http://www.graceafterfire.org/

Friday Femme Fatale: Sarah Palin, VAWA & Health Reform

by Jen Nedeau

category: Friday Femme Fatale

Published July 03, 2009 @ 04:58PM PT

I hope everyone has a lovely 4th of July! Here are the top stories of the week in the fem-o-sphere:

Why Health Care Reform Is a Women's Issue

by Danine Spencer

Published July 03, 2009 @ 11:17AM PT

We all know stories of women who have gone through hell just to get medical care:

  • A co-worker who spent hours on the phone pleading with the insurance company to cover a life-saving procedure

  • A friend with diabetes who had to choose between buying groceries for her kids or filling her insulin prescription

  • A cousin who paid through the nose for private insurance because her job didn't offer insurance and she has a very rare genetic disorder

  • A neighbor who stayed in a bad relationship because her husband's job offered good health insurance

These are all women I know. They could be women you know.  Women seem to bear the brunt of the health care crisis in this country. According to the Kaiser Foundation, there are approximately 17 million women who are uninsured.  That's nearly 1 in 5 adult women who have no health insurance. Men contribute to nearly two-thirds (63%) of the uninsured over all.

The good news is that most women do have health insurance.

  • 64% have employer-based coverage

  • 10% are on Medicaid.

  • 6% have private policies

  • 3% are enrolled in other government programs (i.e., military)

The bad news is that women are much more likely than men to be covered as a dependent on a spouse's employer-sponsored health insurance. (This may change as the "he-cession" continues.) Twenty-five percent of women (23.7 million) are covered as dependents. This makes them more vulnerable to losing their insurance if their spouse loses his job or the employer drops family coverage.  They are also more likely to lose their insurance if they are divorced or widowed.  (I know one woman who divorced her husband of 40 years when she was 62 years old. Since she wasn't eligible for Medicare yet, she had to negotiate for three years of health insurance in the divorce settlement.)

Only 39% of women (37 million) have their own job-based insurance.  These are the women the system is supposedly "working" for but health care costs are rising every day whether you have insurance or not. Every woman deserves quality, affordable health insurance.

Health care reform is a woman's issue.

It's going to be a long, hot summer in Washington as Congress tries to churn out some sort of health care reform legislation. By my count, there are at least five different proposals on the table and honestly, it's starting to look like there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Things are getting complicated, messy and expensive. Some have even suggested health care reform is too hard to do, at least right now. (Yes, I'm talking to you, Diane Feinstein.)

But health care reform can't wait, because women's health care can't wait. Study after study shows that if we have health insurance we take better care of ourselves. We go to the doctor when we're sick.  We fill the prescriptions that we need. We go for our annual Pap smears, mammograms and cholesterol screenings. Every woman has the right to good health, but as it stands, not every woman has the right to health insurance.

Contact your representative and your senators.  Tell them what you want to see in health care reform. They want to know what you think.  This is one of the most important pieces of legislation that will ever pass the United States Congress.

You have a voice. Use it.

Interview with Sheena Matheiken of The Uniform Project

by Dorothee Royal-Hedinger

categories: Interviews, Media

Published July 02, 2009 @ 10:21AM PT


Starting Starting May 2009, Sheena Matheiken pledged to wear one dress for one year as an exercise in sustainable fashion.

As if this wasn't cool enough, The Uniform Project is also a year-long fundraiser for the Akanksha Foundation, a grassroots movement that is revolutionizing education in India. At the end of the year, all contributions will go toward Akanksha’s School Project to fund uniforms and other educational expenses for slum children in India.

I got a chance to catch up with Sheena, who is based in New York, in the midst of a whirlwind of press and excitement around her project:

How did the The Uniform Project get started?

The notion of wearing the same dress for a year (or in more extreme cases a whole lifetime) isn't necessarily a new concept. Many artists have done this before and I simply wanted to give myself a style challenge. The idea sparked early last year when I took a 6 month sabbatical from my full time job in order to decompress, travel and generally focus on some personal projects.

Aside from giving myself this creative challenge, I also wanted it to be something of consequence and also something that people could engage and participate in. That's how the idea of making this a fundraiser came about. I always wanted to do something towards education for lesser privileged children, and I had to look no further than the motherland to see the gaping need for it.

Do you work in the fashion industry?

No, I have no fashion experience, my background is in design and technology. I currently work as a creative director at an interactive ad agency in New York City.

Who designed the cute and functional dress you wear everyday?

My good friend and designer Eliza Starbuck is the mastermind behind the dress. She designed and made me 7 identical versions of the uniform dress, one for each day of the week. The dress is reversible so it can be worn front and back and also as an open tunic.

What is the The Akanksha Foundation and how did you become involved with them?

The Akanksha Foundation is a grassroots non-profit founded in Mumbai in 1990 through the volunteered efforts of college students devoted to bringing education to slum children. The Indian government spends an average of $360 on one child's schooling, of which 80% drop out before reaching the 10th grade.

Akanksha vows to spend the same amount on every slum child to afford them a better, more well rounded education. I met the founder of Akanksha in new york early this year and heard her speak about the foundations work. Listening to her speak I was convinced that this was where I wanted all proceeds of this project to go.

Is educating women a challenge for low-income families in India?

Certainly. Often, young girls not only carry all of the domestic responsibilities of an entire family, they are also more coveted as panhandling pawn and hence put to work on the streets more aggressively.

What has the response to the project been like?

Incredible! We are absolutely amazed by the viral response we have received thus far without doing any PR for the project whatsoever. The blogosphere picked up our project within days after our site launch and we've had incredible followership on twitter. 3 weeks into launch, we've received over 125,000 hits of which over 75% has been new visits. We're also bombarded with emails from people who want to donate accessories to the project and participate in some form. Its been overwhelmingly positive.

Do you feel that fashion has a unique quality that captures people's attention for a great cause like this?

In a way, yes. Fashion is such a visual and subjective medium, so there is that intrinsic draw. The repetitive model a 365 day project makes it addictive as well, bringing viewers back on a regular basis. The project is also an attempt to freshen up the fashion and sustainability dialogue, and I think people are excited to see that style and sustainability needn't be mutually exclusive.

The accessories I use to revamp the uniform everyday are pre-owned, repurposed, vintage, handmade or hand-me-down goods to make the case that you don't need to buy new things all the time in order to satiate our innate shopping bug.

What's next for you?

We're amazed by how well this project is being received so far, and have a lot of ideas on how to expand on this after the lifespan of this venture. But for now, I still have another 10 months to go, so the focus is one day at a time. But we're excited about the future and can't wait to see what unfolds at the end of this project!

Donate to the cause here: The Uniform Project Donate Page

And The War Against Ovaries Continues

by Jen Nedeau

category: Politics

Published July 01, 2009 @ 07:19PM PT

Well, Al Franken's election win yesterday may make 60 Democratic votes in the Senate, but that doesn't mean that health care reform is going to be passed. Not when women still have a uterus, are able to get pregnant and continue to have the legal right to a reproductive medical procedure commonly known as abortion.

Take a look at this letter from 19 anti-choice Democrats who are writing to Speaker Nancy Pelosi to say that healthcare reform must avoid ushering in government-funded abortion:

June 25, 2009

Dear Honorable Pelosi:

As the debate on health care reform continues and legislation is produced, it is imperative that the issue of abortion not be overlooked. Plans to mandate coverage for abortions, either directly or indirectly is unacceptable.

We believe in a culture that supports and respects the right to life and is dedicated to the protection and preservation of families. Therefore, we cannot support any health care reform proposal unless it explicitly excludes abortion from the scope of any government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan. We believe that a government-defined or subsidized health insurance plan, should not be used to fund abortion.

Furthermore, we want to ensure that the Health Benefits Advisory Committee cannot recommend abortion services be included under covered benefits or as part of a benefits package. Without an explicit exclusion, abortion could be included in a government subsidized health care plan under general health care. The health care reform package produced by Congress will be landmark, and with legislation as important as this, abortion must be addressed clearly in the bill text.

Furthermore, funding restrictions save lives by reducing the number of abortions. The Guttmacher Policy Review, a leading pro-choice research organization noted "that about one third of women who would have had an abortion if support were available carried their pregnancies to term when the abortion fund was unavailable."

Thank you for taking the time to consider our request. By ensuring that abortions are not funded through any health care reform package, we will take this controversial issue off the table so that Congress can focus on crafting a broadly-supported health care reform bill.

Respectfully yours,

Reps. Dan Boren (D-OK); Bart Stupak (D-MI); Colin Peterson (D-MN); Tim Holden (D-PA); Travis Childers (D-MS); Lincoln Davis (D-TN); Heath Shuler (D-NC) Solomon Ortiz (D-TX); Mike McIntyre (D-NC); Jerry Costello (D-IL); Gene Taylor (D-MS); James Oberstar (D-MN); Bobby Bright (D-AL); Steve Driehaus (D-OH); Marcy Kaptur (D-OH); Charlie Melancon (D-LA); John Murtha (D-PA); Paul Kanjorski (D-PA); and Kathleen Dahlkemper (D-PA).

The Thriving Slave Trade

by Jen Nedeau

category: Global Feminism

Published July 01, 2009 @ 11:14AM PT

Mike Papantonio of Air America's Ring of Fire talks about how there are more people in slavery compared with ever before in history and what efforts are being done to control it. He interviews Benjamin Skinner, author of the book A Crime so Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern Day Slavery.

Take a listen:

Finding My Sense of Personal Democracy

by Jen Nedeau

category: News

Published June 30, 2009 @ 08:09PM PT

For the past two days, I was lucky enough to attend the Personal Democracy Forum - a conference in New York City focused on the intersection of technology, politics and transparency.

There were two presentations that really provoked me. The first was by danah boyd (purposefully lower case), titled "The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online." The  presentation is based on a controversial essay she wrote two years ago that attempted to locate divisions between MySpace and Facebook. Here is a particularly telling passage from danah's speech:

MySpace was first; arguably, some people got sick of it and, when Facebook came along, voila! This is certainly true for many teens (and adults), but this explanation would only work if MySpace was dead or if users of MySpace thought of it as uncool. The fact that MySpace is still quite popular among a certain segment of the population...

Herein lies the reality that makes all of this quite messy to deal with. It wasn't just anyone who left MySpace to go to Facebook. In fact, if we want to get to the crux of what unfolded, we might as well face an uncomfortable reality... What happened was modern day "white flight." Whites were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. The educated were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from wealthier backgrounds were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those from the suburbs were more likely to leave or choose Facebook. Those who deserted MySpace did so by "choice" but their decision to do so was wrapped up in their connections to others, in their belief that a more peaceful, quiet, less-public space would be more idyllic.

This dynamic was furthered by the press, an institution that stems from privilege and tends to reflect the lives of a more privileged class of people. They narrated MySpace as the dangerous underbelly of the Internet while Facebook was the utopian savior. And here we get back to Kat's point: MySpace has become the "ghetto" of the digital landscape. The people there are more likely to be brown or black and to have a set of values that terrifies white society. And many of us have habitually crossed the street to avoid what is seen as the riff-raff.

The fact that digital migration is revealing the same social patterns as urban white flight should send warning signals to everyone out there.

It's a lot to digest, but I really enjoyed how danah used her time on stage for consciousness raising about how social networks can essentially amplify existing racial and class divisions - we are not networking in a social way, but joining these sites to serve as a visible manifestation of our pre-existing social networks and personal biases. However, in amplifying the divisions, we also have a rare opportunity to review them. This struck a chord with the work I've done in terms of studying the gender attitudes of sites such as Digg and Wikipedia. Finally, I really enjoyed the fact that danah spoke to over 1000 people about the importance of looking at the online space with a critical eye toward diversity. This is important work. Thank you, danah.

Additionally, another presentation I greatly enjoyed was by Dr. Michael Wesch, from Kansas State University, who is dedicated to exploring and extending the possibilities of digital ethnography. Dr. Wesch presented a shorter version of what can be viewed in the following YouTube video and received a standing ovation from the crowd after he spoke:

What was most inspiring about Wesch's presentation can be found in the final 12 minutes of the video. So skip ahead if you really want to get jazzed about the new language of video and how YouTube, with more than 20 hours of video uploaded everyone minute, is changing the way the world communicates to each other. Additionally, I really enjoyed the part of his presentation about the evolution of "whatever" and I do believe in his final message:

The word "whatever" has morphed over the years.

Pre 1960s: Whatever meant: Whatever, that's what I said.
In the 1960's: Whatever was a call of rejection: "Whatever man."

In the early 1990's: Whatever was a term of indifference. "Meh, whatever." Also captured in Nirvana's "Whatever, nevermind."

In the late 1990 to now: Whatever has become a term of self indulgence "Whatever" from Clueless

The question is if the internet can create a sense of "whatever" that implies: “I care, let’s do whatever it takes by whatever means necessary.”

Over all the conference was a really great experience. I thought that conference organizers, Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej, worked hard to balance the panels in terms of gender, but it would be nice to see more people of color at next year's gathering.

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