WMC News & Features
Afghan Women to Obama: We Must Be at the Table!
The author, a global affairs professor who has worked extensively in Afghanistan, talks to Dr. Masooda Jalal, a political leader and the subject of a new documentary. Her message: women must be involved in peace making; the Taliban and warlords are “only powerful because we allow them to be.”
WMC News & Features
March 30, 2009 | Peggy Simpson |
Politics
Chances Improve for Ratification of CEDAW
The United States has been an odd holdout in ratifying the UN treaty on women’s rights. Now it’s a priority of the Obama Administration, and Senator Barbara Boxer chairs the subcommittee that will hold hearings. Still, there’s no guarantee.
WMC News & Features
Communicating with Jane Fonda
Not content merely to speak to her Broadway audience eight times a week through a critically acclaimed performance, Jane Fonda is blogging daily and twittering nightly. She finds herself hooked on the instant feedback.
WMC News & Features
Patsy Mink: Paving the Way
Kimberlee Bassford discovers a subject for her documentary who had crafted the laws that made it possible for the filmmaker to achieve her education and career.
WMC News & Features
Pondering the Chick Flick
Call it what you like, the genre comes with both good and bad traits. The author suggests that we reward Hollywood at the box office only when it resists its misogynistic tendencies.
WMC News & Features
“Lonely Soldier Monologues” Only Opens an Essential National Conversation
Helen Benedict’s play, now ending its run in New York, focuses attention on enlisted women soldiers with the authenticity of their own words. Now, argues a former Marine, we must go on to recognize ...
WMC News & Features
What Would Ida Do?
At a time in many ways parallel, though more perilous, than our own, Ida B. Wells stood up and spoke out. For Women’s History Month, her biographer describes her complex understanding of how race, class and gender play out in the politics of change.
WMC News & Features
New U.S. Policy in AfPak: Looking for Mr. Moderate Taliban
To those who advocate making peace with certain elements of the Taliban, the author, who has worked to secure human rights with Pakistani legislators across the ideological spectrum, argues against any prospective deal that sacrifices women’s empowerment.
WMC News & Features
Why We Must Still Remember
Beginning in 2006, the Women’s Media Center began a series of articles to alert the public about violence against women involving U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Helen Zia, a WMC board member, explains why we must continue to demand justice.
WMC News & Features
Obama Comes Through, Reversing Bush Era Repro-rights Restrictions
Monies to expand family planning services for poor women that were cut from the stimulus package are restored in President Obama’s proposed budget, and the administration rescinds a last-minute Bush Administration rule that would have severely weakened women’s access to reproductive health services.
WMC News & Features
Life and Work: A Conversation for International Women’s Day
The authors are appearing in New York City this month (March 18 at the 92nd Street Y-Tribeca) as part of an ongoing national tour to explore feminist issues through a multigenerational panel. The panel’s appearances (which have also included author Kristal Brent Zook) provoke more conversations: in Kansas City, a local panel adopted the format to continue to explore different dimensions of women’s lives. Here, the authors share their perspectives on work and life choices.
WMC News & Features
Finding a Media Career that Suits Me—Not My Image of Myself
From an early age, the author had a particular kind of career in mind. And, rapidly, she was realizing her dreams working in network television—until she stepped back and took another look at what she wanted in life.
WMC News & Features
Can We Talk? Teens Need a Realistic Dialogue About Sex and Contraceptives
While her mother seemed to accept her pregnancy as a normal part of teen life, Bristol Palin, in her recent Fox News interview, acknowledged that abstinence just doesn’t work. Here, the author, a hi...
WMC News & Features
To Michelle Obama, and Her Sister “First Ladies”
Journalist and historian Janus Adams pays tribute to the First Lady in the White House, recognizing that she joins a tradition of firsts among our nation’s African American women.
WMC News & Features
February 23, 2009 | Nichola Gutgold |
Politics
Hillary Clinton Continues To Rewrite the Script
Lisa Burns, author of First Ladies and the Fourth Estate (Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), concluded her illuminating book with the statement: “the question of women’s ‘proper’ place in political culture is as relevant today as it has been during any historical period.” As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton continues to redefine our possibilities as she demonstrates that the tradition-bound role of first lady can lead to a political voice on the international stage.
WMC News & Features
A Challenge to New York’s New Senator—and to Her Supporters
Senator Gillibrand’s troublesome record on immigration policy was ignored by a number of social justice organizations quick to congratulate her. Now the senator and those who support her must embrace an agenda that protects the human rights of immigrants.
WMC News & Features
The Fox Disconnect
As part of a Women’s Media Center campaign demanding that Bill O’Reilly apologize for his personal, sexist attack on the legendary White House correspondent Helen Thomas, Courtney Martin, a member of the WMC Progressive Women’s Voices program, appeared on The O’Reilly Factor this week to drive the message home. Here is Martin's account of the experience and its aftermath. (The WMC also received hundreds of hateful, profanity-laced, sometimes threatening emails and calls after calling for O’Reilly’s apology)
WMC News & Features
Of Slumdog and Loveleen
The author, a filmmaker herself, considers what the woman with the title of “co-director” contributed to the remarkable success of a leading contender for both best director and best picture at this year’s Oscars—and what the controversy means for women filmmakers.
WMC News & Features
February 13, 2009 | Melissa Silverstein |
Arts and culture
Frozen River: Oscar's 2009 Cinderella Story
A small budget movie breaks every conventional rule for success, and its writer and director, Courtney Hunt, is riding high—whether or not her film wins awards next week.
WMC News & Features
February 11, 2009 | Peggy Simpson |
Feminism
Can Feminist Groups and Bloggers Bridge the Digital Divide?
In Washington, DC, members of feminist organizations of long standing and feminist members of the blogospere met face to face for the first time. Now comes the hard part: to see what each group might offer the other.
WMC News & Features
Turning the Tide against the Taliban: What Works
The Obama Administration must empower the Pakistani people, who have already shown that they’re ready and able to stand up against the forces oppressing women and girls in the valley of Swat and elsewhere. Here, the secretary-general of Parliamentarians for Global Action, tells us how.
WMC News & Features
February 02, 2009 | Marianne Schnall |
Arts and culture,
Feminism,
Health,
International,
Politics,
Violence against women
Turning Pain to Power
Women and girls in eastern Congo suffer sexual atrocities that are tactics of war in the region. Playwright Eve Ensler has joined with Dr. Denis Mukwege to ask us to imagine the unimaginable, to empathize and join together to end the terror.
WMC News & Features
President Obama and Women’s Rights Activists: Celebration and Bumps in the Road
The White House ceremony and reception marking the President’s signature on his first major law honored feminists and the bill’s inspiration, Lilly Ledbetter. But the week was also marked by setbacks for legislation important to women workers and to women who depend on Medicaid.
WMC News & Features
Changing the World, One Blog at a Time
The author, WMC’s media manager, understood the potential of networking. But the true power of the web for advocacy hit home when an injustice threatened her family. Here she describes how anyone can use the process.
WMC News & Features
A War on Pakistan's Schoolgirls
In a remarkably beautiful area of Pakistan, the Taliban is making a nightmare of girls’ lives. The author, a Pakistani lawyer and staff member of Equality Now, tells us how the Obama Administration can avoid the mistakes of its predecessor.