Feminism in News and Popular Media

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON — It was, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg later said, “such a delightful surprise.”

In a 2003 Supreme Court opinion, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist suddenly turned into a feminist, denouncing “stereotypes about women’s domestic roles.”

Justice Ginsburg said the chief justice’s “life experience” had played a part in the shift. One of his daughters was a recently divorced mother with a demanding job.

Justice Ginsburg’s explanation in 2009, though widely accepted, was but informed speculation. Now there is data to go with the intuition.

It turns out that judges with daughters are more likely to vote in favor of women’s rights than ones with only sons. The effect, a new study found, is most pronounced among male judges appointed by Republican presidents, like Chief Justice Rehnquist.

“Our basic finding is quite startling,” said Maya Sen, a political scientist at the University of Rochester who conducted the study along with Adam Glynn, a government professor at Harvard.

The standard scholarly debate about how judges decide cases tends to revolve around two factors: law and ideology. “Here, we’ve found evidence that there is a third factor that matters: personal experiences,” Professor Sen said. “Things like having daughters can actually fundamentally change how people view the world, and this, in turn, affects how they decide cases.”

The new study considered about 2,500 votes by 224 federal appeals court judges. “Having at least one daughter,” it concluded, “corresponds to a 7 percent increase in the proportion of cases in which a judge will vote in a feminist direction.”

Additional daughters do not seem to matter. But the effect of having a daughter is even larger when you limit the comparison to judges with only one child.

“Having one daughter as opposed to one son,” the study found, “is linked to an even higher 16 percent increase in the proportion of gender-related cases decided in a feminist direction.”

The authors also looked at the same judges’ votes in a separate set of 3,000 randomly chosen cases. There was no relationship between having daughters and liberal votes generally. Daughters made a difference in only “civil cases having a gendered dimension.”

Researchers have found similar “daughter effects” in other areas. Members of Congress with daughters are more likely to cast liberal votes, particularly on abortion rights, one study found. Another study showed that British parents with daughters were more likely to vote for left-wing parties, while ones with sons were more likely to vote for right-wing parties.

The new study on judges considered some possible explanations. Perhaps judges wanted to shield their daughters from harm. But the voting trends showed up in only civil cases, like ones involving claims of employment discrimination, and not criminal ones, including rape and sexual assault.

Or perhaps daughters tend to be liberal and succeed in lobbying their parents to vote in a liberal direction. But the judicial voting trends were limited to civil cases in which gender played a role.

The study was lukewarm about the possibility that judges acted out of economic self-interest — to avoid, say, having unemployed daughters.

The most likely explanation, Professor Sen said, was the one offered by Justice Ginsburg. “By having at least one daughter,” Professor Sen said, “judges learn about what it’s like to be a woman, perhaps a young woman, who might have to deal with issues like equity in terms of pay, university admissions or taking care of children.”

In the 2003 decision that so delighted Justice Ginsburg, Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs, the Supreme Court considered whether workers could sue state employers for violating a federal law that allowed time off for family emergencies. Chief Justice Rehnquist, who had long championed states’ rights, had not been expected to be sympathetic to the idea.

Instead, he wrote the majority opinion sustaining the law. It was, he said, meant to address “the pervasive sex-role stereotype that caring for family members is women’s work.”

Chief Justice Rehnquist was 78 when he wrote that. He died a couple of years later, in 2005. In the term he wrote the opinion, he sometimes left work early to pick up his granddaughters from school.

“When his daughter Janet was divorced,” Justice Ginsburg told Emily Bazelon in the 2009 interview in The New York Times, “I think the chief felt some kind of responsibility to be kind of a father figure to those girls. So he became more sensitive to things that he might not have noticed.”

I asked Professor Sen what her study suggested about how to think about the Supreme Court.

“Justices and judges aren’t machines,” she said. “They are human, just like you and me. And just like you and me, they have personal experiences that affect how they view the world.

“Having daughters,” she said, “is just one kind of personal experience, but there could be other things — for example, serving in the military, adopting a child or seeing a law clerk come out as gay. All of these things could affect a justice’s worldview.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/us...ghts.html?_r=2

[Kobi]

Did you know there are only 13 feminist bookstores left in North America?


1. Antigone Books* (Tucson, AZ) Established in 1973, Antigone Books is the oldest feminist bookstore in the country.

2. Bloodroot (Bridgeport, CT) Selma Miriam and Noel Furie co-own Bloodroot, a vegetarian restaurant and bookstore.

3. Bluestockings (New York, NY) Kathryn Welsh founded Bluestockings, a collectively owned and volunteer-run bookstore and cafe, in 1999.

4. BookWoman* (Austin, TX) opened in December 1974 and will celebrate its 40th anniversary at the end of this year. Current owner Susan Post, who started out as a volunteer, has been with the bookstore since its inception.

5. Charis Books and More* (Atlanta, GA) Sara Luce Look and Angela Gabriel co-own Charis Books and More, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary in November.

6.Common Language* (Ann Arbor, MI) Opened in 1991. Common Language’s biggest sellers include lesbian fiction, gay studies, trans studies, women’s studies and children’s books, particularly those children’s books that spread a message of diversity.

7.In Other Words (Portland, OR) was founded in 1993 by Johanna Brenner, Kathryn Tetrick and Catherine Sameh. (It’s also where the feminist bookstore sketches are filmed for the TV show Portlandia.)

8. Northern Woman’s Bookstore (Thunder Bay, ON) Margaret Phillips is the owner of Northern Woman’s Bookstore, the only feminist bookstore in Canada.

9. People Called Women* (Toledo, OH) Owned by Gina Mercurio , People Called Women opened in 1993. The bookstore specializes in multicultural children’s books, non-fiction, memoirs, lesbian fiction and romance in addition to mainstream books.

10. A Room of One’s Own Books & Gifts* (Madison, WI) Owned by Sandy Torkildson, A Room of One’s Own offers new and used books in conjunction with Avol’s Bookstore.

11. Wild Iris Books* (Gainesville, FL), which opened its doors in 1992, is co-owned by Cheryl Krauth and Lylly Rodriguez.

12. Women and Children First* (Chicago, IL) Established in 1979, Women and Children First was listed for sale by owners Linda Bubon and Ann Christopherson last October. (They are currently in negotiations with a buyer and anticipate a seamless transition.)

13.Womencrafts (Provincetown, MA), which opened its doors on the tip of Cape Cod in 1976, is owned by Kathryn Livelli.

http://feminismandreligion.com/2014/...marie-cartier/

[vagina]

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandst...minist-country


Iceland has just banned all strip clubs. Perhaps it's down to the lesbian prime minister, but this may just be the most female-friendly country on the planet.





The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Saturday 27 March 2010

Iceland's prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, was wrongly credited with being the country's first female head of state. That honour goes to Vigdis Finnbogadottir, who served as president from 1980 to 1996

Iceland is fast becoming a world-leader in feminism. A country with a tiny population of 320,000, it is on the brink of achieving what many considered to be impossible: closing down its sex industry.

While activists in Britain battle on in an attempt to regulate lapdance clubs – the number of which has been growing at an alarming rate during the last decade – Iceland has passed a law that will result in every strip club in the country being shut down. And forget hiring a topless waitress in an attempt to get around the bar: the law, which was passed with no votes against and only two abstentions, will make it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees.

Even more impressive: the Nordic state is the first country in the world to ban stripping and lapdancing for feminist, rather than religious, reasons. Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, the politician who first proposed the ban, firmly told the national press on Wednesday: "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold." When I asked her if she thinks Iceland has become the greatest feminist country in the world, she replied: "It is certainly up there. Mainly as a result of the feminist groups putting pressure on parliamentarians. These women work 24 hours a day, seven days a week with their campaigns and it eventually filters down to all of society."

The news is a real boost to feminists around the world, showing us that when an entire country unites behind an idea anything can happen. And it is bound to give a shot in the arm to the feminist campaign in the UK against an industry that is both a cause and a consequence of gaping inequality between men and women.

According to Icelandic police, 100 foreign women travel to the country annually to work in strip clubs. It is unclear whether the women are trafficked, but feminists say it is telling that as the stripping industry has grown, the number of Icelandic women wishing to work in it has not. Supporters of the bill say that some of the clubs are a front for prostitution – and that many of the women work there because of drug abuse and poverty rather than free choice. I have visited a strip club in Reykjavik and observed the women. None of them looked happy in their work.

So how has Iceland managed it? To start with, it has a strong women's movement and a high number of female politicans. Almost half the parliamentarians are female and it was ranked fourth out of 130 countries on the international gender gap index (behind Norway, Finland and Sweden). All four of these Scandinavian countries have, to some degree, criminalised the purchase of sex (legislation that the UK will adopt on 1 April). "Once you break past the glass ceiling and have more than one third of female politicians," says Halldórsdóttir, "something changes. Feminist energy seems to permeate everything."

Johanna Sigurðardottir is Iceland's first female and the world's first openly lesbian head of state. Guðrún Jónsdóttir of Stígamót, an organisation based in Reykjavik that campaigns against sexual violence, says she has enjoyed the support of Sigurðardottir for their campaigns against rape and domestic violence: "Johanna is a great feminist in that she challenges the men in her party and refuses to let them oppress her."

Then there is the fact that feminists in Iceland appear to be entirely united in opposition to prostitution, unlike the UK where heated debates rage over whether prostitution and lapdancing are empowering or degrading to women. There is also public support: the ban on commercial sexual activity is not only supported by feminists but also much of the population. A 2007 poll found that 82% of women and 57% of men support the criminalisation of paying for sex – either in brothels or lapdance clubs – and fewer than 10% of Icelanders were opposed.

Jónsdóttir says the ban could mean the death of the sex industry. "Last year we passed a law against the purchase of sex, recently introduced an action plan on trafficking of women, and now we have shut down the strip clubs. The Nordic countries are leading the way on women's equality, recognising women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale."

Strip club owners are, not surprisingly, furious about the new law. One gave an interview to a local newspaper in which he likened Iceland's approach to that of a country such as Saudi Arabia, where it is not permitted to see any part of a woman's body in public. "I have reached the age where I'm not sure whether I want to bother with this hassle any more," he said.

Janice Raymond, a director of Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, hopes that all sex industry profiteers feel the same way, and believes the new law will pave the way for governments in other countries to follow suit. "What a victory, not only for the Icelanders but for everyone worldwide who repudiates the sexual exploitation of women," she says.

Jónsdóttir is confident that the law will create a change in attitudes towards women. "I guess the men of Iceland will just have to get used to the idea that women are not for sale."

[Kobi]

As one of the few African-Americans in her law school class, Paulette Brown noticed career counselors steering her and other black students toward legal service or public defender jobs assisting the poor, instead of more prestigious jobs in big law firms. But she refused to go down that path, eventually serving as in-house counsel for several Fortune 500 companies.

Since those law school days, Brown, a partner in the Boston law firm Edwards Wildman Palmer LLP, has fought against subtle racism, discrimination, and small slights known as “micro-inequities.” For much of her career, she has pressed firms to hire and promote more women and minorities; mentored hundreds of lawyers, mostly women of color; and trained many others on diversity in the workplace.

Now Brown, 63, has a platform to expand her mission even further. Last month, she became the first black woman elected to lead the 400,000-member American Bar Association, which, until 1943, did not allow African-Americans to join.

In a profession where only 7 percent of partners are people of color and the number of female associates has fallen for the past five years, Brown is focused, among other things, on raising awareness about implicit bias in law offices, the legal system, and American society. How is it that defendants of different races who commit the same crime get different sentences, she asked. Why are more black and Latino children suspended from school?

“Once you recognize that it’s a possibility that you could have some unconscious bias, then it hopefully will adjust your behavior. You will take a second to say, ‘Wait a minute, am I reacting this way because I could have some sort of bias in this situation?’ ” Brown said. “As a result, I think that you will be more fair in any kind of deliberation that you are engaged in.”

Brown grew up attending segregated schools in Baltimore, the fourth and youngest child of a truck driver and a stay-at-home mother, who later did clerical work. As with others who have had to overcome obstacles in order to succeed, she is tough — and persistent.

Once, when a judge kept telling her to be quiet, Brown slammed her checkbook down on the table and said, “You can fine me whatever you want, but I am talking today.” And the judge left her alone.

Her son, Dijaun, now 30, whom Brown adopted out of foster care on her own when he was 8, recalled his mother sneaking into his fifth grade class to teach him a lesson. Brown slipped into the desk behind him, caught him reading an Easy Rawlins mystery tucked inside his social studies textbook, and tapped him on the shoulder: “Why are you not paying attention?” she asked.

At the same time, friends and colleagues describe Brown as a warm, engaging woman who wins people over wherever she goes — even those on the other side of her legal cases. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she was taking a deposition from a state trooper in a whistle-blower case. During a break, they got to talking about whether she could take a pecan pie through security for Thanksgiving.

The trooper later called her at her office — even though contacting opposing legal counsel is forbidden — to tell her he checked with the Transportation Security Administration and her pecan pie would be just fine.

Brown is also a notorious prankster. Her son recalls going to the airport with his mother to send her off on a three-week trip to conduct mediation training in Ghana. When Dijaun, who was 11 at the time, started to cry, his mother revealed her surprise: “You’re going with me!”

“The seriousness she brings to her work, she brings that same dedication to her jokes and trying to make people smile,” Dijaun said.

Paulette Brown has pressed law firms to hire and promote more women and minorities.

Neither of Brown’s parents went to college, nor did her siblings. But Brown was determined to go. She studied political science at Howard University in Washington and earned a full scholarship to law school at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. She began her career doing health and pension plan work at a steel company in Wayne, N.J., then served as in-house counsel for Prudential Insurance Co. of America and other Fortune 500 companies.

Later, she opened her own firm, focusing on employment, civil rights, and product liability law, and served as a municipal court judge. She joined Edwards Wildman as a partner in 2005.

Along the way, she successfully defended companies in discrimination cases involving sexual harassment, age, race, and wage and hour claims, while working to make her profession more diverse. In 2006, Brown helped the bar association produce a study showing that a growing number of minority women were leaving the country’s biggest law firms. Women of color make up less than 2 percent of partners nationwide; at Edwards Wildman, it is 1 percent.

In 2008, Brown was named one of the National Law Journal’s “50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America.”

When she takes the helm of the American Bar Association next summer, her already full plate will get even more crowded. Brown, who specializes in labor and employment law, practices mainly out the firm’s location in Morristown, N.J., although she keeps an office in Boston. She is the firm’s chief diversity officer, requiring her to travel around the world to Edwards Wildman’s 16 offices to conduct trainings.

In between all this, she monitors elections in low-income communities to ensure that they are conducted fairly.

As busy as she is, Brown turned down Edwards Wildman’s offer to put aside her legal practice and devote herself to diversity training full-time. “Contributing in more than one way provides you with more credibility,” she said.

As a result, Brown’s free time is scarce — and not exactly leisurely. She has done five 60-mile walks to raise money for breast cancer research. They aren’t races, but she checked the time of her last event anyway: She finished 22d out of 4,000 participants.

Cooking is a big hobby, including the peach cobbler she makes for her secretary every summer and the pumpkin bread and pickled tomatoes she brought from New Jersey for a dinner party at the home of Matt McTygue, the partner in charge of the Edwards Wildman Boston office.

Brown is a “classic example of somebody who has succeeded through her own will and an amazing amount of effort,” McTygue said. “I don’t even know if she sleeps at all, but if she does it’s very little.”

The women who Brown mentors say she has had a strong influence on their lives. Courtney Scrubbs, a first-year associate at the Boston office of Edwards Wildman, said while most people tell Scrubbs she’s doing fine, Brown pushes her to work harder. People in corporate America normally do a “a lot of smiling and nodding,” to keep from offending others, Scrubbs said, but not Brown.

“It’s helpful,” she said, “to have someone who’s just going to give it to you [straight].”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/...?event=event25

[Kobi]

CoverGirl's easy, breezy, beautiful ad campaign has undergone a shocking makeover at the hands of Roger Goodell protestors who are adept at Photoshop.

The "official beauty partner of the NFL" launched a football-themed ad series recently, touting eyeshadows and makeup looks to coordinate with teams' colors.

But over the course of the past several weeks, the NFL's image has been severely tainted, mainly by the video leaked by TMZ showing Ravens running back Ray Rice knock out his then-fiancée Janay Palmer in a hotel elevator.

The ensuing backlash against NFL Commissioner Goodell — and his failure to handle the Rice situation (initially, he only issued a two-game suspension) — has been swift. One form that such backlash is the doctoring of a CoverGirl "Get Your Game Face On" ad to show a girl with a bruised eye in a display of domestic violence.

The image took off on Twitter this weekend with the hashtag #GoodellMustGo. Goodell has not been fired from his position, nor has he stepped down.



Women's advocacy group Ultraviolet also plastered the hashtag on banners that were flown over several NFL stadiums during Sunday's games. Ultraviolet has not come forward as the creators of the Photoshopped CoverGirl image, nor has the group responded to Mashable's request for comment.

CoverGirl has not specified if their "Get Your Game Face On" campaign will be pulled. The brand's website was down on Monday, stating the site was currently under maintenance.

As of Sept. 10, however, CoverGirl seemed to still be shooting ads for the "Game Face" series.

Last week, CBS restructured its Thursday night pregame footage, pulling a theme song sung by Rihanna. CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus said in light of the Rice incident, the song — and additional lighthearted pre-game elements — would not be the appropriate "because of time or tone." Rihanna has experienced domestic abuse; in 2009, the singer's then-boyfriend Chris Brown assaulted her.

http://mashable.com/2014/09/15/cover...roger-goodell/

[Kobi]

NEW YORK (AP) — An all-women sports show premieres Tuesday night with perfect timing.

NFL domestic violence cases have dominated the headlines for weeks. A core panel of a dozen female commentators will appear on "We Need to Talk," which airs on cable channel CBS Sports Network. The weekly, hour-long, prime-time show is the first of its kind.

CBS executives say it will be a traditional sports program offering a different perspective. The main panelists are a mix of veteran broadcasters and former pro athletes.

CBS has shown its commitment to the show by promoting it during hugely popular NFL and SEC broadcasts. The audience for "We Need to Talk" will be limited, though, by the distribution for CBS Sports Network, which is in fewer than half of the country's homes with televisions.

http://www.cbssportsnetwork.com/weneedtotalk

[Kobi]

Radicals react to the sex-based gender hierarchy by seeking to destroy gender.

Liberals react to the sex-based gender hierarchy by seeking to destroy (the concept of) sex.



http://womensliberationfront.org/