How to Attack the Gender Wage Gap? Speak Up
By JESSICA BENNETT
Published: December 15, 2012
A workshop at the College of Mount St. Vincent in the Bronx dealt with the many issues of the gender pay gap — and offered ways for women to negotiate about salary. Sain Mota, a participant, answered a question during the session.
“How many of you know about the wage gap?” she asks a roomful of undergraduates, almost all of them women, at the College of Mount St. Vincent in the Bronx.
A few hands go up.
“Now, how many of you worry about being able to afford New York City when you graduate?”
The room laughs. That’s a given.
Ms. Houle is the national director of a group called the WAGE Project, which aims to close the gender pay gap. She explains that her dollar bills represent the amounts that women will make relative to men, on average, once they enter the work force.
Line them up next to a real dollar, and the difference is stark: 77 cents for white women; 69 cents for black women. The final dollar — so small that it can fit in a coin purse, represents 57 cents, for Latina women. On a campus that is two-thirds women, many have heard these numbers before. Yet holding them up next to one another is sobering.
“I’m posting this to Facebook,” one woman says.
One of three male students in the room is heading to the photocopier to make copies for his mother.
Another woman in the group sees a triple threat. “This is crazy,” Dominique Remy, a senior studying communications, says, holding the pink cutouts in her hand. “What if I’m all of them? My mother is Latina. My father is Haitian. I’m a woman.”
I’ve come to this workshop amazed that it exists — and wishing that there had been a version of it when I was in school.
I grew up in the Girl Power moment of the 1980s, outpacing my male peers in school and taking on extracurricular activities by the dozen. I soared through high school and was accepted to the college of my choice. And yet, when I landed in the workplace, it seemed that I’d had a particularly rosy view.
When I was hired as a reporter at Newsweek, I took the first salary number that was offered; I felt lucky to be getting a job at all.
But a few years in, by virtue of much office whispering and a few pointed questions, I realized that the men around me were making more than I was, and more than many of my female colleagues. Despite a landmark sex discrimination lawsuit filed against the magazine in 1970, which paved the way for women there and at other publications to become writers, we still had a long way to go, it turned out.
When I tried to figure out why my salary was comparatively lower, it occurred to me: couldn’t I have simply asked for more? The problem was that I was terrified at the prospect. When I finally mustered up the nerve, I made my pitch clumsily, my voice shaking and my face beet red. I brought along a printed list of my accomplishments, yet I couldn’t help but feel boastful saying them out loud. While waiting to hear whether I would get the raise (I did), I agonized over whether I should have asked at all.
This fear of asking is a problem for many women: we are great advocates for others, but paralyzed when it comes to doing it for ourselves.
BACK at the Bronx workshop, Ms. Houle flips on a projector and introduces Tina and Ted, two fictional graduates whose profiles match what’s typical of the latest data. Tina and Ted graduated from the same university, with the same degree. They work the same number of hours, in the same type of job. And yet, as they start their first jobs, Ted is making $4,000 more than Tina. In the second year, the difference has added up to almost $9,500. Why?
“Maybe he just talked up his work more,” one woman, a marketing major, suggests.
“Maybe he was mentored by other men,” another says.
“Or maybe,” chimes in a third, a nursing student, “she didn’t know that she could negotiate.”
Bingo. Over the next three hours, these women are going to learn how to do it — and to do it well.
There has clearly been much progress since President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, mandating that men and women be paid equally for equal work. Yet nearly 50 years later, if you look at the data, progress toward that goal has stalled.
Of course, not all statistics are created equal. Some account for education and life choices like childbearing; some don’t. But if you sift through the data, the reality is still clear: the gender gap persists — and it persists for young, ambitious, childless women, too.
Continue reading, here.
12/17/12
12/5/12
Women Breaking Barriers on Congressional Committees
Nita Lowey breaks barrier on Appropriations panel
By DAVID ROGERS, Politico.com 12/4/12 11:44 PM EST
Rep. Nita Lowey — Bronx-born, Jewish and Mount Holyoke-educated — was tapped to be the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, making her the highest-ranking woman in the history of that once hidebound Southern male enclave that famously resisted hiring even female secretaries for decades.
The 75-year-old New Yorker will succeed retiring Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) in the new Congress just as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will move into the ranking spot on the House Financial Services Committee, replacing Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Together with Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) in the Rules Committee, they pose a remarkable trio for Democrats: women leading the opposition party in three of the House’s five most exclusive committees.
For Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who broke her own barriers as the first female speaker of the House, it’s a personal triumph, made more so in Lowey’s case because of their friendship and Pelosi’s own roots in House Appropriations.
Indeed, in the early 1990s, first Pelosi and then Lowey and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) all won seats on the panel and established themselves as a force on labor, health and education issues as well as foreign aid. When Republicans took over the House in 1995, the three women had to scramble in the minority but those ties remained important even after Pelosi left the panel to climb the leadership ladder.
Among the top committee posts voted on Tuesday by the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Appropriations was the only real contest. Lowey had to first get around another woman, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who enjoys more seniority on the panel but less of a following in the party.
In a secret ballot, the New Yorker prevailed easily, 36-10, and by prior arrangement, the two lawmakers had agreed not to contest the outcome in the full caucus. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Kaptur joked beforehand of being the Toledo Mud Hens vs. the New York Yankees: “I’m just happy to be in the league,” she told reporters.
For Lowey, it’s a lesson that patience pays. Elected to Congress in 1988, she has twice been seen as a potential Senate candidate, first in 2000 and then again in 2009. But on each occasion, she opted to stay put, accumulating the seniority that has now allowed her to move into the ranking position.
Indeed, the top Democratic ranks on House Appropriations have seen a remarkable level of change in the past three years, beginning with the sudden death of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) in February 2010, the retirement of former Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) at the end of that year and now Dicks’s surprise decision to leave after a relatively short two-year run in the top position.
Continue reading, here.
By DAVID ROGERS, Politico.com 12/4/12 11:44 PM EST
Rep. Nita Lowey — Bronx-born, Jewish and Mount Holyoke-educated — was tapped to be the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, making her the highest-ranking woman in the history of that once hidebound Southern male enclave that famously resisted hiring even female secretaries for decades.
The 75-year-old New Yorker will succeed retiring Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) in the new Congress just as Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will move into the ranking spot on the House Financial Services Committee, replacing Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). Together with Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) in the Rules Committee, they pose a remarkable trio for Democrats: women leading the opposition party in three of the House’s five most exclusive committees.
For Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who broke her own barriers as the first female speaker of the House, it’s a personal triumph, made more so in Lowey’s case because of their friendship and Pelosi’s own roots in House Appropriations.
Indeed, in the early 1990s, first Pelosi and then Lowey and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) all won seats on the panel and established themselves as a force on labor, health and education issues as well as foreign aid. When Republicans took over the House in 1995, the three women had to scramble in the minority but those ties remained important even after Pelosi left the panel to climb the leadership ladder.
Among the top committee posts voted on Tuesday by the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Appropriations was the only real contest. Lowey had to first get around another woman, Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio), who enjoys more seniority on the panel but less of a following in the party.
In a secret ballot, the New Yorker prevailed easily, 36-10, and by prior arrangement, the two lawmakers had agreed not to contest the outcome in the full caucus. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, Kaptur joked beforehand of being the Toledo Mud Hens vs. the New York Yankees: “I’m just happy to be in the league,” she told reporters.
For Lowey, it’s a lesson that patience pays. Elected to Congress in 1988, she has twice been seen as a potential Senate candidate, first in 2000 and then again in 2009. But on each occasion, she opted to stay put, accumulating the seniority that has now allowed her to move into the ranking position.
Indeed, the top Democratic ranks on House Appropriations have seen a remarkable level of change in the past three years, beginning with the sudden death of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) in February 2010, the retirement of former Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.) at the end of that year and now Dicks’s surprise decision to leave after a relatively short two-year run in the top position.
Continue reading, here.
12/4/12
More Women in Government=Less Corruption?
Are women leaders less corrupt? No, but they shake things up
By Stella Dawson
Reuters – 8 hrs ago
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (TrustLaw) - It is almost a cliché that getting more women into power is a good way to tackle corruption. Women, the argument goes, are less likely to take bribes or put personal gain before public good.
But is it true?
While many bristle at the suggestion that women are the "fairer sex," considering it simplistic and even sexist, a growing body of research hints that the ascent of women might indeed help dent corruption.
A deeper look shows the connection between gender and corruption is more complex than the cliché suggests.
It is not that women are purer than men or immune to the pull of greed. Rather, the link appears to be that women are more likely to rise to positions of power in open and democratic political systems, and such societies are generally more intolerant of wrongdoing, including the abuse of power and siphoning off of public money.
"It's not about having more women in politics and saying, 'Ah, that will change everything,'" said Melanne Verveer, U.S. ambassador for global women's issues.
"It's about changing the gender imbalance and then we could do a better job of tackling our problems. From what we can glean, you can tell this would have a salutary effect."
So it might not be a direct cause, but anecdotal evidence would seem to support the view that with more women in public office the quality of government improves, and with that. corruption falls.
In Lima, Peru, for instance, a field study by Sabrina Karim found that public perceptions of whether bribery was a major problem among traffic police had plummeted in 2012 compared with 14 years earlier. The change came after recruiting 2,500 women to patrol the streets.
A separate public opinion survey showed 86 percent approval for the job done by female traffic officers. From the point of view of the female traffic police, Karim, now a doctoral candidate at Emory University, found that 95 percent of those surveyed thought the presence of women on the force had reduced corruption and 67 percent believed women were less corrupt.
Mexico has copied Lima and introduced women officers as a way to tackle corruption.
India also has seen changes since a 1993 law reserved 30 percent of seats on village councils for women. The World Bank's annual World Development Report this year credited this change for increasing the provision of clean water, sanitation, schools and other public goods in the villages, and for lower levels of corruption.
The World Bank report found that bribes paid in Indian villages headed by women were 2.7 to 3.2 percentage points lower than in those led by men. When men control all the levers of power, researchers say, money is more likely to be invested in big-ticket construction projects such as road building where corruption is rife, rather than in schools or clinics.
BREAKING THE OLD BOY'S NETWORK
Mahnaz Afkhami, who was minister of state for women's affairs in Iran from 1975 to 1978, thinks raising women's voices can have a significant impact on the quality of government.
"There is a direct relationship between the level of democracy and the presentation of women in leadership and the quality of governance," said Afkhami.
"They are not part of the old boy's network and they are less willing to take for granted that this is the way things are done," she said.
Afkhami is now president of Women's Learning Partnership, a training and advocacy center for women leaders based in Maryland. During her tenure in Iran, she oversaw women gaining equal rights to divorce, support for employment, maternity leave and childcare.
In Nicaragua, a councilman soliciting sex in return for metal roofing for her home prompted Aurora Arauz to run for a seat on the municipal council.
Arauz was president of a women's cooperative and trained in her legal rights, so she filed a police complaint when the council member sought a sexual bribe, the U.N. Development Programme reported in a study published in October on women's perceptions of corruption. The council threw the man off the body and held a special meeting to improve services for women, including naming Arauz as a women's coordinator.
All these examples reinforce an influential World Bank study in 1999, which found that for every standard deviation point increase in women in public office above 10.9 percent, corruption declined by 10 percent.
NOT THAT SIMPLE
Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who as Indonesia's first woman finance minister earned a reputation as a tough reformer, agrees that at the grassroots level, more women in government can have an important impact particularly on how resources are allocated.
Women think of the welfare of children first and whether they have enough food to feed the family, whereas men can be less sensitive to public needs and serve their own interests, she said. "They are just being comfortable among themselves and are not having other views," she said.
At the national level, however, Indrawati and other experts said the impact of more women in power was less clear and it is too simplistic to say women clean up government.
Today, women hold a record 20.2 percent of seats in national legislatures, more than double their number in 1987, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Rwanda for example allots half its parliamentary seats to women.
Despite these gains, corruption is scarcely in retreat.
A Gallup poll of 140 countries released in May found that two-thirds of adults worldwide believed corruption was widespread in business and in their countries. Widely watched governance indicators from the World Bank likewise show that the number of countries that have improved their corruption scores is roughly similar to those that have deteriorated.
Helen Clark, who served nine years as prime minister of New Zealand, said there is no specific proof that women are any less corrupt than men. Instead, integrity may be more a function of opportunity and the way society operates than of gender, she said.
"There is a growing body of evidence that corruption operates in specific political and social networks to which women do not usually have access - particularly when women are new to positions of power," said Clark, who is the first woman to head the U.N. Development Program.
A new study titled "Fairer Sex or Purity Myth?" by researchers at Rice University and Emory University lends support to the idea that it is institutional structures that matter most, and that women's political gains are a result.
The report found that in autocratic regimes with strong male hierarchies, more women in power had little measurable impact on corruption, but that in more open, democratic political systems the change was noticeable.
The researchers speculated that the difference may be partially because women are less apt to take risks. They cite two different behavioral studies from 2003 and 2008 that show women are just as ready as men to take bribes, but they are more cautious if there is a good chance they will be caught.
In autocratic regimes, women are more likely to have gained power through male patronage, and if corruption is the norm within the male hierarchy, women are less likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs, they said.
The opposite happens in open and democratic governments. The risk of getting caught is higher where the legal system functions well, and where voters are more likely to punish corruption at the polls. Because they tend to be risk-averse, women are doubly cautious, they said.
This could help explain why corruption in a patriarchal culture like India remains so pervasive despite women's increased political participation, while in open and transparent Nordic countries it is low.
Indeed, a new U.N. study examining 3,000 elected women and men in Indian villages noted that the social and cultural environment does play a powerful role. If women face low levels of literacy, poor training, a large housework burden, live in male-dominated societies and are financially and socially dependent on fathers and husbands, public positions for women have less impact on corruption and governance.
Lavina Banduah, executive director of the Sierra Leone branch of Transparency International, which watches out for graft worldwide, sees the problem daily in her country, which ranks high for corruption and low for accountability on governance indicators.
"Women cheat other women," Banduah said. "In the marketplace, it is women who are using the dubious means and weighting the scales."
(Reporting by Stella Dawson; Editing by Jackie Frank)
By Stella Dawson
Reuters – 8 hrs ago
WASHINGTON, Dec 4 (TrustLaw) - It is almost a cliché that getting more women into power is a good way to tackle corruption. Women, the argument goes, are less likely to take bribes or put personal gain before public good.
But is it true?
While many bristle at the suggestion that women are the "fairer sex," considering it simplistic and even sexist, a growing body of research hints that the ascent of women might indeed help dent corruption.
A deeper look shows the connection between gender and corruption is more complex than the cliché suggests.
It is not that women are purer than men or immune to the pull of greed. Rather, the link appears to be that women are more likely to rise to positions of power in open and democratic political systems, and such societies are generally more intolerant of wrongdoing, including the abuse of power and siphoning off of public money.
"It's not about having more women in politics and saying, 'Ah, that will change everything,'" said Melanne Verveer, U.S. ambassador for global women's issues.
"It's about changing the gender imbalance and then we could do a better job of tackling our problems. From what we can glean, you can tell this would have a salutary effect."
So it might not be a direct cause, but anecdotal evidence would seem to support the view that with more women in public office the quality of government improves, and with that. corruption falls.
In Lima, Peru, for instance, a field study by Sabrina Karim found that public perceptions of whether bribery was a major problem among traffic police had plummeted in 2012 compared with 14 years earlier. The change came after recruiting 2,500 women to patrol the streets.
A separate public opinion survey showed 86 percent approval for the job done by female traffic officers. From the point of view of the female traffic police, Karim, now a doctoral candidate at Emory University, found that 95 percent of those surveyed thought the presence of women on the force had reduced corruption and 67 percent believed women were less corrupt.
Mexico has copied Lima and introduced women officers as a way to tackle corruption.
India also has seen changes since a 1993 law reserved 30 percent of seats on village councils for women. The World Bank's annual World Development Report this year credited this change for increasing the provision of clean water, sanitation, schools and other public goods in the villages, and for lower levels of corruption.
The World Bank report found that bribes paid in Indian villages headed by women were 2.7 to 3.2 percentage points lower than in those led by men. When men control all the levers of power, researchers say, money is more likely to be invested in big-ticket construction projects such as road building where corruption is rife, rather than in schools or clinics.
BREAKING THE OLD BOY'S NETWORK
Mahnaz Afkhami, who was minister of state for women's affairs in Iran from 1975 to 1978, thinks raising women's voices can have a significant impact on the quality of government.
"There is a direct relationship between the level of democracy and the presentation of women in leadership and the quality of governance," said Afkhami.
"They are not part of the old boy's network and they are less willing to take for granted that this is the way things are done," she said.
Afkhami is now president of Women's Learning Partnership, a training and advocacy center for women leaders based in Maryland. During her tenure in Iran, she oversaw women gaining equal rights to divorce, support for employment, maternity leave and childcare.
In Nicaragua, a councilman soliciting sex in return for metal roofing for her home prompted Aurora Arauz to run for a seat on the municipal council.
Arauz was president of a women's cooperative and trained in her legal rights, so she filed a police complaint when the council member sought a sexual bribe, the U.N. Development Programme reported in a study published in October on women's perceptions of corruption. The council threw the man off the body and held a special meeting to improve services for women, including naming Arauz as a women's coordinator.
All these examples reinforce an influential World Bank study in 1999, which found that for every standard deviation point increase in women in public office above 10.9 percent, corruption declined by 10 percent.
NOT THAT SIMPLE
Sri Mulyani Indrawati, who as Indonesia's first woman finance minister earned a reputation as a tough reformer, agrees that at the grassroots level, more women in government can have an important impact particularly on how resources are allocated.
Women think of the welfare of children first and whether they have enough food to feed the family, whereas men can be less sensitive to public needs and serve their own interests, she said. "They are just being comfortable among themselves and are not having other views," she said.
At the national level, however, Indrawati and other experts said the impact of more women in power was less clear and it is too simplistic to say women clean up government.
Today, women hold a record 20.2 percent of seats in national legislatures, more than double their number in 1987, according to the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Rwanda for example allots half its parliamentary seats to women.
Despite these gains, corruption is scarcely in retreat.
A Gallup poll of 140 countries released in May found that two-thirds of adults worldwide believed corruption was widespread in business and in their countries. Widely watched governance indicators from the World Bank likewise show that the number of countries that have improved their corruption scores is roughly similar to those that have deteriorated.
Helen Clark, who served nine years as prime minister of New Zealand, said there is no specific proof that women are any less corrupt than men. Instead, integrity may be more a function of opportunity and the way society operates than of gender, she said.
"There is a growing body of evidence that corruption operates in specific political and social networks to which women do not usually have access - particularly when women are new to positions of power," said Clark, who is the first woman to head the U.N. Development Program.
A new study titled "Fairer Sex or Purity Myth?" by researchers at Rice University and Emory University lends support to the idea that it is institutional structures that matter most, and that women's political gains are a result.
The report found that in autocratic regimes with strong male hierarchies, more women in power had little measurable impact on corruption, but that in more open, democratic political systems the change was noticeable.
The researchers speculated that the difference may be partially because women are less apt to take risks. They cite two different behavioral studies from 2003 and 2008 that show women are just as ready as men to take bribes, but they are more cautious if there is a good chance they will be caught.
In autocratic regimes, women are more likely to have gained power through male patronage, and if corruption is the norm within the male hierarchy, women are less likely to speak out for fear of losing their jobs, they said.
The opposite happens in open and democratic governments. The risk of getting caught is higher where the legal system functions well, and where voters are more likely to punish corruption at the polls. Because they tend to be risk-averse, women are doubly cautious, they said.
This could help explain why corruption in a patriarchal culture like India remains so pervasive despite women's increased political participation, while in open and transparent Nordic countries it is low.
Indeed, a new U.N. study examining 3,000 elected women and men in Indian villages noted that the social and cultural environment does play a powerful role. If women face low levels of literacy, poor training, a large housework burden, live in male-dominated societies and are financially and socially dependent on fathers and husbands, public positions for women have less impact on corruption and governance.
Lavina Banduah, executive director of the Sierra Leone branch of Transparency International, which watches out for graft worldwide, sees the problem daily in her country, which ranks high for corruption and low for accountability on governance indicators.
"Women cheat other women," Banduah said. "In the marketplace, it is women who are using the dubious means and weighting the scales."
(Reporting by Stella Dawson; Editing by Jackie Frank)
11/28/12
Hmmmm.. Newswomen's Attire
Not sure how I feel about this article yet..
The colorful evolution of newswomen’s attire
By Katherine Boyle, Nov 27, 2012 02:11 AM EST
The Washington Post Published: November 26
Dresses dangled on the racks at Neiman’s and Saks and all Norah O’Donnell needed was a suit.
Earlier this year, when the veteran news anchor was scouring stores for a suit jacket to wear for her “CBS This Morning” publicity photo, she discovered what her viewers have known for years: The women’s blazer is disappearing — from department stores and network news broadcasts.
I couldn’t find a nice suit jacket that wasn’t black,” O’Donnell said. “You used to find all kinds in blues and hot pinks. They stopped making them. That’s when I thought, what’s changed?”
For her head shot, O’Donnell, 38, ended up choosing a six-year-old navy Giorgio Armani blazer out of her closet, one she rarely wears except when interviewing presidents or heads of state. Like so many working women in the news media and other professions, O’Donnell hasn’t bought a suit in years, a surprising admission given that the newswoman spent her 20s wearing suits so she “could be taken seriously.” The same can be said of seasoned anchors such as Diane Sawyer and Andrea Mitchell, who rarely graced the screen in the 1980s and ’90s without lapels shielding their chests.
For decades, the suit jacket transformed women into workers. With jackets required for entrance at male-dominated clubs and boardrooms, women bundled up their breasts to blend into a professional culture that predated their arrival. But in recent years, even as men continued to assume corporate uniforms of suits and ties, newswomen — one of the last vestiges of female suit wearers — have resoundingly dismissed them from their closets. They now flank themselves in bright sleeveless sheath dresses and stiletto heels, renouncing the once hard-and-fast edicts of television news: no bare legs, no long hair, no feminine distractions from the news. The revision of the female anchor’s dress code happened swiftly and broadly on network and cable television. And if newswomen are the most visible barometers of workplace fashion, the women’s suit may one day go the way of the petticoat.
“Ten years ago, professional dress meant a Talbots suit for women,” said Dave Smith, president of SmithGeiger, a market research firm that consults with news networks. “What’s appropriate for female talent on television has evolved because of familiarity. The audience has equal regard for female and male anchors. It’s given women far more liberty to be feminine.”
O’Donnell agrees: “There has been an evolution of women’s wear on television. Part of that is the changing times, but it’s also because there are more women in media who feel comfortable about what they want to wear.”
That theory of empowerment rings true for many newswomen. They’ve finally laid claim to the anchor’s chair and can let their hair down or, at least, grow it past their shoulders. Even Sawyer and Mitchell have adopted subtle changes in wardrobe. Sawyer sometimes wears crisp black blouses sans jacket while anchoring the evening news. Mitchell often prefers pastel, cap-sleeved shells for her afternoon show on MSNBC.
Continue reading here
The colorful evolution of newswomen’s attire
By Katherine Boyle, Nov 27, 2012 02:11 AM EST
The Washington Post Published: November 26
Dresses dangled on the racks at Neiman’s and Saks and all Norah O’Donnell needed was a suit.
Earlier this year, when the veteran news anchor was scouring stores for a suit jacket to wear for her “CBS This Morning” publicity photo, she discovered what her viewers have known for years: The women’s blazer is disappearing — from department stores and network news broadcasts.
I couldn’t find a nice suit jacket that wasn’t black,” O’Donnell said. “You used to find all kinds in blues and hot pinks. They stopped making them. That’s when I thought, what’s changed?”
For her head shot, O’Donnell, 38, ended up choosing a six-year-old navy Giorgio Armani blazer out of her closet, one she rarely wears except when interviewing presidents or heads of state. Like so many working women in the news media and other professions, O’Donnell hasn’t bought a suit in years, a surprising admission given that the newswoman spent her 20s wearing suits so she “could be taken seriously.” The same can be said of seasoned anchors such as Diane Sawyer and Andrea Mitchell, who rarely graced the screen in the 1980s and ’90s without lapels shielding their chests.
For decades, the suit jacket transformed women into workers. With jackets required for entrance at male-dominated clubs and boardrooms, women bundled up their breasts to blend into a professional culture that predated their arrival. But in recent years, even as men continued to assume corporate uniforms of suits and ties, newswomen — one of the last vestiges of female suit wearers — have resoundingly dismissed them from their closets. They now flank themselves in bright sleeveless sheath dresses and stiletto heels, renouncing the once hard-and-fast edicts of television news: no bare legs, no long hair, no feminine distractions from the news. The revision of the female anchor’s dress code happened swiftly and broadly on network and cable television. And if newswomen are the most visible barometers of workplace fashion, the women’s suit may one day go the way of the petticoat.
“Ten years ago, professional dress meant a Talbots suit for women,” said Dave Smith, president of SmithGeiger, a market research firm that consults with news networks. “What’s appropriate for female talent on television has evolved because of familiarity. The audience has equal regard for female and male anchors. It’s given women far more liberty to be feminine.”
O’Donnell agrees: “There has been an evolution of women’s wear on television. Part of that is the changing times, but it’s also because there are more women in media who feel comfortable about what they want to wear.”
That theory of empowerment rings true for many newswomen. They’ve finally laid claim to the anchor’s chair and can let their hair down or, at least, grow it past their shoulders. Even Sawyer and Mitchell have adopted subtle changes in wardrobe. Sawyer sometimes wears crisp black blouses sans jacket while anchoring the evening news. Mitchell often prefers pastel, cap-sleeved shells for her afternoon show on MSNBC.
Continue reading here
11/16/12
Did Irish abortion laws kill a young Indian woman?
When Pro-Life Means Death
Nov 16, 2012 6:00 AM EST
Did Irish abortion laws kill a young Indian woman?
This week, thousands of people gathered outside the Irish Parliament to protest the death of a young pregnant woman who died in a hospital from blood poisoning after doctors refused to perform a life-saving abortion, reportedly on the grounds that “this is a Catholic country.”
Since the death of Savita Halappanavar on Oct. 28, outrage in Ireland and the rest of the world has steadily gathered force, and on Wednesday, demonstrators outside Parliament held candles as a minute’s silence was observed to commemorate the 31-year-old. Some wept while others expressed anger. “I have a heartbeat too!” one sign read.
On Oct. 21, the Indian-born woman went to Galway University Hospital with a back pain. She was 17 weeks pregnant. At the hospital, doctors told her that she was miscarrying but that the ordeal would be over in a few hours. Instead, according to her husband Praveen, Savita went on to endure four days of “agony” during which time she asked repeatedly that the pregnancy be terminated.
Doctors, however, told her that because there was still a fetal heartbeat, Irish law would not permit the termination of the pregnancy, he said, and that, “this is a Catholic country.” Savita protested, telling doctors, according to her husband, that “I am neither Irish nor Catholic.” But was told again that there was nothing medical staff could do while the fetal heartbeat remained.
The next day, Savita became visibly ill, shivering and vomiting, and the fetal heartbeat stopped during the following afternoon. Doctors then removed the fetus and Savita was taken to intensive care where she deteriorated rapidly, suffering multi-organ failure a few days later, dying in the early hours of Oct. 28. She had contracted a form of blood poisoning as well as an E. coli infection, a pathologist found.
Speaking from Karnataka in southwest India, where he had taken the body of his young wife to be cremated, Praveen was adamant that if Savita’s pleas for a termination had been listened to, she would have survived.
“How could they leave the womb open for days? It was all in their hands and they let her go,” Praveen said. “How can you let a young woman go to save a baby who will die anyway? Savita could have had more babies.”
The appalling events, first revealed in The Irish Times on Nov. 14, have led Irish news bulletins and have been reported across the world, catapulting the most divisive issue of Irish life—abortion—right to the top of the public and political agenda, exactly where the Irish government doesn’t want it.
Ireland has among the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. It remains illegal under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, though referendums in 1983 and 1992 have allowed for protections for pregnant women seeking information about abortion services abroad and wishing to travel for abortions. A High Court ruling in 1992 also stated that abortion was legal in cases where there was a threat to the life of the mother—and not simply the health.
The fussy legal language complicates what is sometimes a life-or-death situation. In Savita’s case, the fetus had a heartbeat, though it would clearly not live. At the same time, the mother’s health was clearly at risk but the doctors ran the risk of prosecution if they intervened and terminated the pregnancy.
Coincidentally, a report commissioned last year about how the government should respond to a European Court of Human Rights ruling obliging Ireland to provide abortions in situations when a woman’s life is threatened, was submitted the evening before news of Savita's death broke.
The larger of the two government parties, Fine Gael, has said it will not countenance legal abortion in Ireland. The smaller, the Labour Party, is avowedly pro-choice.
Solving what has become a political and, more significantly, a moral morass will be paramount for the government in the coming days. Both domestically and internationally, pressure has been mounting. Expressing its concern over the case, the Indian government has said it will closely monitor the two investigations into Savita’s death, which were announced this week by the Irish authorities.
In solidarity with the Halappanavar family, a demonstration calling for improved legislation is planned to take place this weekend in Dublin. It is expected to be one of the largest demonstrations on the streets of the Irish capital in decades.
Nov 16, 2012 6:00 AM EST
Did Irish abortion laws kill a young Indian woman?
This week, thousands of people gathered outside the Irish Parliament to protest the death of a young pregnant woman who died in a hospital from blood poisoning after doctors refused to perform a life-saving abortion, reportedly on the grounds that “this is a Catholic country.”
Since the death of Savita Halappanavar on Oct. 28, outrage in Ireland and the rest of the world has steadily gathered force, and on Wednesday, demonstrators outside Parliament held candles as a minute’s silence was observed to commemorate the 31-year-old. Some wept while others expressed anger. “I have a heartbeat too!” one sign read.
On Oct. 21, the Indian-born woman went to Galway University Hospital with a back pain. She was 17 weeks pregnant. At the hospital, doctors told her that she was miscarrying but that the ordeal would be over in a few hours. Instead, according to her husband Praveen, Savita went on to endure four days of “agony” during which time she asked repeatedly that the pregnancy be terminated.
Doctors, however, told her that because there was still a fetal heartbeat, Irish law would not permit the termination of the pregnancy, he said, and that, “this is a Catholic country.” Savita protested, telling doctors, according to her husband, that “I am neither Irish nor Catholic.” But was told again that there was nothing medical staff could do while the fetal heartbeat remained.
The next day, Savita became visibly ill, shivering and vomiting, and the fetal heartbeat stopped during the following afternoon. Doctors then removed the fetus and Savita was taken to intensive care where she deteriorated rapidly, suffering multi-organ failure a few days later, dying in the early hours of Oct. 28. She had contracted a form of blood poisoning as well as an E. coli infection, a pathologist found.
Speaking from Karnataka in southwest India, where he had taken the body of his young wife to be cremated, Praveen was adamant that if Savita’s pleas for a termination had been listened to, she would have survived.
“How could they leave the womb open for days? It was all in their hands and they let her go,” Praveen said. “How can you let a young woman go to save a baby who will die anyway? Savita could have had more babies.”
The appalling events, first revealed in The Irish Times on Nov. 14, have led Irish news bulletins and have been reported across the world, catapulting the most divisive issue of Irish life—abortion—right to the top of the public and political agenda, exactly where the Irish government doesn’t want it.
Ireland has among the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. It remains illegal under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, though referendums in 1983 and 1992 have allowed for protections for pregnant women seeking information about abortion services abroad and wishing to travel for abortions. A High Court ruling in 1992 also stated that abortion was legal in cases where there was a threat to the life of the mother—and not simply the health.
The fussy legal language complicates what is sometimes a life-or-death situation. In Savita’s case, the fetus had a heartbeat, though it would clearly not live. At the same time, the mother’s health was clearly at risk but the doctors ran the risk of prosecution if they intervened and terminated the pregnancy.
Coincidentally, a report commissioned last year about how the government should respond to a European Court of Human Rights ruling obliging Ireland to provide abortions in situations when a woman’s life is threatened, was submitted the evening before news of Savita's death broke.
The larger of the two government parties, Fine Gael, has said it will not countenance legal abortion in Ireland. The smaller, the Labour Party, is avowedly pro-choice.
Solving what has become a political and, more significantly, a moral morass will be paramount for the government in the coming days. Both domestically and internationally, pressure has been mounting. Expressing its concern over the case, the Indian government has said it will closely monitor the two investigations into Savita’s death, which were announced this week by the Irish authorities.
In solidarity with the Halappanavar family, a demonstration calling for improved legislation is planned to take place this weekend in Dublin. It is expected to be one of the largest demonstrations on the streets of the Irish capital in decades.
11/4/12
Nicholas Kristof: Romney + Women
How Romney Would Treat Women
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published November 3, 2012
In this year’s campaign furor over a supposed “war on women,” involving birth control and abortion, the assumption is that the audience worrying about these issues is just women.
Give us a little credit. We men aren’t mercenaries caring only for Y chromosomes. We have wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, and we have a pretty intimate stake in contraception as well.
This isn’t like a tampon commercial on television, leaving men awkwardly examining their fingernails. When it comes to women’s health, men as well as women need to pay attention. Just as civil rights wasn’t just a “black issue,” women’s rights and reproductive health shouldn’t be reduced to a “women’s issue.”
To me, actually, talk about a “war on women” in the United States seems a bit hyperbolic: in Congo or Darfur or Afghanistan, I’ve seen brutal wars on women, involving policies of rape or denial of girls’ education. But whatever we call it, something real is going on here at home that would mark a major setback for American women — and the men who love them.
On these issues, Mitt Romney is no moderate. On the contrary, he is considerably more extreme than President George W. Bush was. He insists, for example, on cutting off money for cancer screenings conducted by Planned Parenthood.
The most toxic issue is abortion, and what matters most for that is Supreme Court appointments. The oldest justice is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a 79-year-old liberal, and if she were replaced by a younger Antonin Scalia, the balance might shift on many issues, including abortion.
One result might be the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which for nearly four decades has guaranteed abortion rights. If it is overturned, abortion will be left to the states — and in Mississippi or Kansas, women might end up being arrested for obtaining abortions.
Frankly, I respect politicians like Paul Ryan who are consistently anti-abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. I disagree with them, but their position is unpopular and will cost them votes, so it’s probably heartfelt as well as courageous. I have less respect for Romney, whose positions seem based only on political calculations.
Romney’s campaign Web site takes a hard line. It says that life begins at conception, and it gives no hint of exceptions in which he would permit abortion. The Republican Party platform likewise offers no exceptions. Romney says now that his policy is to oppose abortion with three exceptions: rape, incest and when the life of the mother is at stake.
If you can figure out Romney’s position on abortion with confidence, tell him: at times it seems he can’t remember it. In August, he abruptly added an exception for the health of the mother as well as her life, and then he backed away again.
Romney has also endorsed a “personhood” initiative treating a fertilized egg as a legal person. That could lead to murder charges for an abortion, even to save the life of a mother.
In effect, Romney seems to have jumped on board a Republican bandwagon to tighten access to abortion across the board. States passed a record number of restrictions on abortion in the last two years. In four states, even a woman who is seeking an abortion after a rape may be legally required to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.
If politicians want to reduce the number of abortions, they should promote family planning and comprehensive sex education. After all, about half of all pregnancies in the United States are unintended, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which conducts research on reproductive health.
Yet Romney seems determined to curb access to contraceptives. His campaign Web site says he would “eliminate Title X family planning funding,” a program created in large part by two Republicans, George H. W. Bush and Richard Nixon.
Romney has boasted that he would cut off all money for Planned Parenthood — even though federal assistance for the organization has nothing to do with abortions. It pays for such things as screenings to reduce breast cancer and cervical cancer.
Romney’s suspicion of contraception goes way back. As governor of Massachusetts, he vetoed a bill that would have given women who were raped access to emergency contraception.
Romney also wants to reinstate the “global gag rule,” which barred family planning money from going to aid organizations that even provided information about abortion. He would cut off money for the United Nations Population Fund, whose work I’ve seen in many countries — supporting contraception, repairing obstetric fistulas, and fighting to save the lives of women dying in childbirth.
So when you hear people scoff that there’s no real difference between Obama and Romney, don’t believe them.
And it’s not just women who should be offended at the prospect of a major step backward. It’s all of us.
10/31/12
Interesting Opinion Piece: Why I Am Pro-Life
Why I Am Pro-Life
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 27, 2012
HARD-LINE conservatives have gone to new extremes lately in opposing abortion. Last week, Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, declared during a debate that he was against abortion even in the event of rape because after much thought he “came to realize that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” That came on the heels of the Tea Party-backed Republican Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois saying after a recent debate that he opposed abortion even in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which a woman would not survive without an abortion. “Health of the mother has become a tool for abortions anytime, for any reason,” Walsh said. That came in the wake of the Senate hopeful in Missouri, Representative Todd Akin, remarking that pregnancy as a result of “legitimate rape” is rare because “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.”
These were not slips of the tongue. These are the authentic voices of an ever-more-assertive far-right Republican base that is intent on using uncompromising positions on abortion to not only unseat more centrist Republicans — Mourdock defeated the moderate Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana in the primary — but to overturn the mainstream consensus in America on this issue. That consensus says that those who choose to oppose abortion in their own lives for reasons of faith or philosophy should be respected, but those women who want to make a different personal choice over what happens with their own bodies should be respected, and have the legal protection to do so, as well.
But judging from the unscientific — borderline crazy — statements opposing abortion that we’re hearing lately, there is reason to believe that this delicate balance could be threatened if Mitt Romney and Representative Paul Ryan, and their even more extreme allies, get elected. So to those who want to protect a woman’s right to control what happens with her own body, let me offer just one piece of advice: to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. And we must stop letting Republicans name themselves “pro-life” and Democrats as “pro-choice.” It is a huge distortion.
In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet.
You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”
“Pro-life” can mean only one thing: “respect for the sanctity of life.” And there is no way that respect for the sanctity of life can mean we are obligated to protect every fertilized egg in a woman’s body, no matter how that egg got fertilized, but we are not obligated to protect every living person from being shot with a concealed automatic weapon. I have no respect for someone who relies on voodoo science to declare that a woman’s body can distinguish a “legitimate” rape, but then declares — when 99 percent of all climate scientists conclude that climate change poses a danger to the sanctity of all life on the planet — that global warming is just a hoax.
The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is leading to terrible distortions in our society.
Respect for life has to include respect for how that life is lived, enhanced and protected — not only at the moment of conception but afterward, in the course of that life. That’s why, for me, the most “pro-life” politician in America is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While he supports a woman’s right to choose, he has also used his position to promote a whole set of policies that enhance everyone’s quality of life — from his ban on smoking in bars and city parks to reduce cancer, to his ban on the sale in New York City of giant sugary drinks to combat obesity and diabetes, to his requirement for posting calorie counts on menus in chain restaurants, to his push to reinstate the expired federal ban on assault weapons and other forms of common-sense gun control, to his support for early childhood education, to his support for mitigating disruptive climate change.
Now that is what I call “pro-life.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 28, 2012
A phrase in this version of the article has been changed to “every fertilized egg in a woman’s body” from “in a woman’s ovary.”
10/24/12
WTF?
WTF?!
Mourdock: ‘God Intended’ Pregnancy
Richard Mourdock recently had an epiphany. During a debate Tuesday, the Indiana Republican running for Senate explained, “I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Naturally this didn’t sit well with everyone, and Mitt Romney, who’s trying to win a presidential election for God’s sake, was quick to disassociate himself from his fellow Republican, his campaign issuing a statement confirming that the former Massachusetts governor “disagrees with Richard Mourdock’s comments, and they do not reflect his views.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, however, is more focused on a GOP takeover of the Senate and was happy to jump to Mourdock’s defense. “To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief [that life is a gift from God] is irresponsible and ridiculous,” Cornyn said.
--from The Daily Beast, 10/24/12
Mourdock: ‘God Intended’ Pregnancy
Richard Mourdock recently had an epiphany. During a debate Tuesday, the Indiana Republican running for Senate explained, “I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Naturally this didn’t sit well with everyone, and Mitt Romney, who’s trying to win a presidential election for God’s sake, was quick to disassociate himself from his fellow Republican, his campaign issuing a statement confirming that the former Massachusetts governor “disagrees with Richard Mourdock’s comments, and they do not reflect his views.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, however, is more focused on a GOP takeover of the Senate and was happy to jump to Mourdock’s defense. “To try and construe his words as anything other than a restatement of that belief [that life is a gift from God] is irresponsible and ridiculous,” Cornyn said.
--from The Daily Beast, 10/24/12
10/23/12
Scary: One in Three Women Have No Retirement Plans
LIMRA Research: One In Three Women Have Not Planned For Retirement
By MSturdevant
On October 22, 2012
One in three women have not planned for retirement, according to study results released Monday by Windsor-based LIMRA, an insurance research firm.
The study found that women are less involved in retirement and investment than men with one-third of women saying they are monitoring or managing their retirement savings compared with 46 percent of men. Two-thirds of women said they were not confident they would be able to live in the retirement lifestyle of their choosing.
The survey of 3,763 U.S. adults who are not retired was conducted in May.
Women, on average, have 40 percent less than men in their retirement savings, according to LIMRA research.
“Engaging and educating women should be a top priority of our industry,” said Alison Salka, LIMRA’s director of Retirement Research. “There are approximately 16.6 million women within 10 years of retirement, (age 55 to 70 and not yet retired). Our research reveals that many of them are financially unprepared for retirement and because of their lack of knowledge and understanding of our products and services, are not taking the steps to reduce the risk that they run out of money in retirement.”
-- from Courant.com
By MSturdevant
On October 22, 2012
One in three women have not planned for retirement, according to study results released Monday by Windsor-based LIMRA, an insurance research firm.
The study found that women are less involved in retirement and investment than men with one-third of women saying they are monitoring or managing their retirement savings compared with 46 percent of men. Two-thirds of women said they were not confident they would be able to live in the retirement lifestyle of their choosing.
The survey of 3,763 U.S. adults who are not retired was conducted in May.
Women, on average, have 40 percent less than men in their retirement savings, according to LIMRA research.
“Engaging and educating women should be a top priority of our industry,” said Alison Salka, LIMRA’s director of Retirement Research. “There are approximately 16.6 million women within 10 years of retirement, (age 55 to 70 and not yet retired). Our research reveals that many of them are financially unprepared for retirement and because of their lack of knowledge and understanding of our products and services, are not taking the steps to reduce the risk that they run out of money in retirement.”
-- from Courant.com
Let's Talk about Eggs.
We Need to Talk About Our Eggs
By SARAH ELIZABETH RICHARDS
Published: October 22, 2012
WHEN I recently mentioned to a pregnant acquaintance that I was writing a book about egg freezing (and had frozen my own eggs in hopes of preserving my ability to have children well into my 40s), she replied, “You’re so lucky. I wish I had known to freeze my eggs.”
She was 40 years old and wanted two children, so she and her husband were planning to start trying to conceive a second child shortly after the birth of their first. “Now everything is a rush,” she said. Married at 38, she didn’t think to talk to her obstetrician-gynecologist about fertility before then. If her doctor had brought up the subject, she said, she might have put away some eggs when she was younger.
In our fertility-obsessed society, women can’t escape the message that it’s harder to get pregnant after 35. And yet, it’s not a conversation patients are having with the doctors they talk to about their most intimate issues — their OB-GYNs — unless they bring up the topic first. OB-GYNs routinely ask patients during their annual exams about their sexual histories and need for contraception, but often missing from the list is, “Do you plan to have a family?”
OB-GYNs are divided on whether it’s their responsibility to broach the topic with patients. Those who take an “ask me first” approach understandably don’t want to offend women who don’t want children, or frighten those who do. It doesn’t take much for an informational briefing to spiral into a teary heart-to-heart about dating woes. Do you reassure a distraught 38-year-old that she’s still got time; encourage her to seriously consider having a baby on her own; or freak her out so she settles for a lackluster relationship? And considering that fertility figures are averages (while one woman may need fertility treatment at age 36, another can get pregnant naturally at 42), when is the right age to sound the alarm?
But the biggest impediment to bringing the issue up was that doctors didn’t have many good recommendations for a single woman: she could either use an anonymous donor’s sperm to have a baby today, or she could fertilize her eggs with it and freeze the resulting embryos for future use.
Now, a better option is gaining credibility. Egg freezing (a technique that allows women to store their unfertilized eggs to use with a future partner when they are older) has been available in the United States since the early 2000s, but success rates at first were low and doctors have been hesitant to push it. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine said the technique shouldn’t be “offered or marketed as a means to defer reproductive aging,” and deemed it “experimental.”
Last week, the doctors’ society announced that it was removing the experimental label (though it stopped short of endorsing widespread use of egg freezing to put off having children). After reviewing four randomized controlled trials, it found little difference in the effectiveness of using fresh or frozen eggs in in-vitro fertilization, and said that babies conceived from frozen eggs faced no increased risk of birth defects or developmental problems.
The procedure isn’t a panacea. It’s terribly expensive — often $10,000 to $15,000 — and is not usually covered by insurance. In addition, there’s a worrisome lack of data regarding the success rates of eggs frozen by the women at the end of their baby-making days. The majority of the women in the four studies reviewed by the society were under 35, and it warned against giving women who want to delay childbearing “false hope” that their frozen eggs will work when they are ready to get pregnant years later. Although estimates of the number of American women who have frozen their eggs for nonmedical reasons are in the thousands, very few have yet returned to thaw them — there are only a couple of thousand babies born from frozen eggs in the world.
Women should be allowed to come to their own conclusions and take their own risks — there’s a fine line between doctors’ “mentioning” and “suggesting” the procedure — but this is an option they should be hearing about from their OB-GYNs. To standardize the message, professional groups like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists should create pamphlets that doctors can give to patients. OB-GYN residents also can learn suggested scripts that present the information in a nonbiased, nonalarmist way.
I first learned about egg freezing from a friend who had talked to her OB-GYN about whether she should freeze, given her family’s history of premature menopause. When I asked my doctor about the procedure, she said she had heard that the success rates had recently improved and gave me the name of a respected fertility doctor. As a result, I stashed away several batches of eggs between the ages of 36 and 38 — just before the cutoff at which many doctors no longer consider eggs worthwhile to save.
I was fortunate, because I knew to ask. We must go one step further and expect OB-GYNs to bring up family planning at every annual visit, so that women have the information they need to choose to take charge of their fertility. Perhaps more women will think about freezing in their early to mid-30s, when their chances of success are greater. Or maybe, after being asked about their plans from their very first visit, more will decide to start families when their eggs are at their prime, and won’t even need to freeze.
Sarah Elizabeth Richards is the author of the forthcoming book “Motherhood, Rescheduled: The New Frontier of Egg Freezing and the Women Who Tried It.”
By SARAH ELIZABETH RICHARDS
Published: October 22, 2012
WHEN I recently mentioned to a pregnant acquaintance that I was writing a book about egg freezing (and had frozen my own eggs in hopes of preserving my ability to have children well into my 40s), she replied, “You’re so lucky. I wish I had known to freeze my eggs.”
She was 40 years old and wanted two children, so she and her husband were planning to start trying to conceive a second child shortly after the birth of their first. “Now everything is a rush,” she said. Married at 38, she didn’t think to talk to her obstetrician-gynecologist about fertility before then. If her doctor had brought up the subject, she said, she might have put away some eggs when she was younger.
In our fertility-obsessed society, women can’t escape the message that it’s harder to get pregnant after 35. And yet, it’s not a conversation patients are having with the doctors they talk to about their most intimate issues — their OB-GYNs — unless they bring up the topic first. OB-GYNs routinely ask patients during their annual exams about their sexual histories and need for contraception, but often missing from the list is, “Do you plan to have a family?”
OB-GYNs are divided on whether it’s their responsibility to broach the topic with patients. Those who take an “ask me first” approach understandably don’t want to offend women who don’t want children, or frighten those who do. It doesn’t take much for an informational briefing to spiral into a teary heart-to-heart about dating woes. Do you reassure a distraught 38-year-old that she’s still got time; encourage her to seriously consider having a baby on her own; or freak her out so she settles for a lackluster relationship? And considering that fertility figures are averages (while one woman may need fertility treatment at age 36, another can get pregnant naturally at 42), when is the right age to sound the alarm?
But the biggest impediment to bringing the issue up was that doctors didn’t have many good recommendations for a single woman: she could either use an anonymous donor’s sperm to have a baby today, or she could fertilize her eggs with it and freeze the resulting embryos for future use.
Now, a better option is gaining credibility. Egg freezing (a technique that allows women to store their unfertilized eggs to use with a future partner when they are older) has been available in the United States since the early 2000s, but success rates at first were low and doctors have been hesitant to push it. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine said the technique shouldn’t be “offered or marketed as a means to defer reproductive aging,” and deemed it “experimental.”
Last week, the doctors’ society announced that it was removing the experimental label (though it stopped short of endorsing widespread use of egg freezing to put off having children). After reviewing four randomized controlled trials, it found little difference in the effectiveness of using fresh or frozen eggs in in-vitro fertilization, and said that babies conceived from frozen eggs faced no increased risk of birth defects or developmental problems.
The procedure isn’t a panacea. It’s terribly expensive — often $10,000 to $15,000 — and is not usually covered by insurance. In addition, there’s a worrisome lack of data regarding the success rates of eggs frozen by the women at the end of their baby-making days. The majority of the women in the four studies reviewed by the society were under 35, and it warned against giving women who want to delay childbearing “false hope” that their frozen eggs will work when they are ready to get pregnant years later. Although estimates of the number of American women who have frozen their eggs for nonmedical reasons are in the thousands, very few have yet returned to thaw them — there are only a couple of thousand babies born from frozen eggs in the world.
Women should be allowed to come to their own conclusions and take their own risks — there’s a fine line between doctors’ “mentioning” and “suggesting” the procedure — but this is an option they should be hearing about from their OB-GYNs. To standardize the message, professional groups like the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists should create pamphlets that doctors can give to patients. OB-GYN residents also can learn suggested scripts that present the information in a nonbiased, nonalarmist way.
I first learned about egg freezing from a friend who had talked to her OB-GYN about whether she should freeze, given her family’s history of premature menopause. When I asked my doctor about the procedure, she said she had heard that the success rates had recently improved and gave me the name of a respected fertility doctor. As a result, I stashed away several batches of eggs between the ages of 36 and 38 — just before the cutoff at which many doctors no longer consider eggs worthwhile to save.
I was fortunate, because I knew to ask. We must go one step further and expect OB-GYNs to bring up family planning at every annual visit, so that women have the information they need to choose to take charge of their fertility. Perhaps more women will think about freezing in their early to mid-30s, when their chances of success are greater. Or maybe, after being asked about their plans from their very first visit, more will decide to start families when their eggs are at their prime, and won’t even need to freeze.
Sarah Elizabeth Richards is the author of the forthcoming book “Motherhood, Rescheduled: The New Frontier of Egg Freezing and the Women Who Tried It.”
10/11/12
How You Talk about Sex Is Everything
I read the below article today and thought to myself: Really? Here we go again, another statement about how women use rape when it's convenient. And while I think it's so wrong that this Wisconsin state representative is defending what his father said to him about rape, I also think it may be a lesson of what happens when we have "THE" conversation with our kids.
If his father conveyed a different message to his son, perhaps the importance of respecting the woman he has sex with, how he has a responsibility to take precautions to avoid an unwanted pregnancy and how to take those precautions, a more valuable lesson would have been taught. Instead, he portrayed women as dangerous villains who will quickly turn and lie to cover up a possible mistake. And what's more unfortunate, even as an older, more experienced individual, he does not recognize the problem with that lesson and the need to point it out as a problem.
It made me realize just how important that uncomfortable "birds-and-the-bees" conversation with our children is. That conversation goes beyond the technical and maybe should include topics such as rape for both sexes.
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Thursday, Oct 11, 2012 09:31 AM EDT
Wisconsin GOPer: “Some girls rape easy”
A Republican state Rep. defends his father's warning that premarital sex "may be rape the next morning"
By Jillian Rayfield
Wisconsin state Rep. Roger Rivard is trying to defend himself for repeating his father’s advice to him when he was younger, that “some girls rape easy.”
Rivard, a Republican, had made the initial remarks in December to a local newspaper, when discussing a case where a 17-year old high school student was charged with sexual assault by an underage girl. He said that his father had warned him that even if you think the sex is consensual, ”Some girls rape easy.”
The remarks have resurfaced during Rivard’s reelection campaign, and so he explained himself to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel thusly:
“He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.
‘He also told me one thing, “If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,”‘ Rivard said. ‘Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, “Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.” All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, “Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,” he said, “they rape so easy.”
‘What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.”‘
‘So it’s been kind of taken out of context.’”
He later said in a statement: ”Sexual assault is a crime that unfortunately is misunderstood and my comments have the potential to be misunderstood as well. Rape is a horrible act of violence. Sexual assault unfortunately often goes unreported to police. I have four daughters and three granddaughters and I understand the importance of making sure that awareness of this crime is taken very seriously.”
If his father conveyed a different message to his son, perhaps the importance of respecting the woman he has sex with, how he has a responsibility to take precautions to avoid an unwanted pregnancy and how to take those precautions, a more valuable lesson would have been taught. Instead, he portrayed women as dangerous villains who will quickly turn and lie to cover up a possible mistake. And what's more unfortunate, even as an older, more experienced individual, he does not recognize the problem with that lesson and the need to point it out as a problem.
It made me realize just how important that uncomfortable "birds-and-the-bees" conversation with our children is. That conversation goes beyond the technical and maybe should include topics such as rape for both sexes.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, Oct 11, 2012 09:31 AM EDT
Wisconsin GOPer: “Some girls rape easy”
A Republican state Rep. defends his father's warning that premarital sex "may be rape the next morning"
By Jillian Rayfield
Wisconsin state Rep. Roger Rivard is trying to defend himself for repeating his father’s advice to him when he was younger, that “some girls rape easy.”
Rivard, a Republican, had made the initial remarks in December to a local newspaper, when discussing a case where a 17-year old high school student was charged with sexual assault by an underage girl. He said that his father had warned him that even if you think the sex is consensual, ”Some girls rape easy.”
The remarks have resurfaced during Rivard’s reelection campaign, and so he explained himself to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel thusly:
“He told the Journal Sentinel that his father had advised him not to have premarital sex, and he took that seriously.
‘He also told me one thing, “If you do (have premarital sex), just remember, consensual sex can turn into rape in an awful hurry,”‘ Rivard said. ‘Because all of a sudden a young lady gets pregnant and the parents are madder than a wet hen and she’s not going to say, “Oh, yeah, I was part of the program.” All that she has to say or the parents have to say is it was rape because she’s underage. And he just said, “Remember, Roger, if you go down that road, some girls,” he said, “they rape so easy.”
‘What the whole genesis of it was, it was advice to me, telling me, “If you’re going to go down that road, you may have consensual sex that night and then the next morning it may be rape.” So the way he said it was, “Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.”‘
‘So it’s been kind of taken out of context.’”
He later said in a statement: ”Sexual assault is a crime that unfortunately is misunderstood and my comments have the potential to be misunderstood as well. Rape is a horrible act of violence. Sexual assault unfortunately often goes unreported to police. I have four daughters and three granddaughters and I understand the importance of making sure that awareness of this crime is taken very seriously.”
10/10/12
9/27/12
This Birthday I Am Embracing My Curves
So the day I have been dreading for about five years is here: my 40th birthday. I loved turning 30, but when I hit 35, found myself still single without children, it freaked me out. I remember being 14, envisioning myself at 40 years old as a US Senator, wife to an adoring, successful husband, and mom to three kids.
I am none of those things.
I sweated my 39th birthday, which I blogged about here, as it was just a small one year away from the big one. It's funny how much is still appropos and I am still working on the same stuff-- I've been going to Weight Watchers and steadily working out (down at least 35 pounds -- probably more from my birthday last year), I've been working Match.com like it's a second job (will be having my first second date with a nice guy next week) and am digging my job more than ever. Pretty proud of the developments in the last year.
But I keep reflecting on that vision that I created for myself at the age of 14 and wonder why I have not met it, why do I not "have it all". Of course, could be that at the age of 14 my world view was pretty narrow. Recently, there have been numerous articles about women, never men, having it all. Perhaps the idea of having it all is more easily defined when you are 14 and don't really understand what that means in adult terms. In a recent conversation with a close friend, we talked about how being a 40 year old woman in today's world, is different than being a 40 year old woman in the 80s.
That seems to really be sticking with me. When I was 14, I didn't think that my work would bring me to over a dozen countries or have me working on more than 15 campaigns with a 98% success rate. When I was 14, I never thought I would be the leader of women's organizations who continue to point out the necessity of women's right to equal pay, health care and choice. When I was 14, I didn't think I'd be able to put together a 40th birthday party invitation list that had over 100 friends on it, and that was keeping it small.
Last night, as I tried on my birthday party dress and had a total melt-down my legs are not svelte gams that will turn heads, which of course meant I was completely unlovable. The 14 year old me totally popped up again on the eve of my celebration and left me feeling bewildered as to why. As I told a friend, I thought I would have it together by 40. And now of course, I'm wondering what does it really mean to have it together.
As I walked by the mirror this morning, I made the concious decision to stop the hate. Embrace my sausagey tree trunk legs, embrace my curves. And as I re-read my 39th birthday blog post from last year, I realized that this life stuff is a process-- they don't call it your life's journey for nothing.
And once again reminded myself, it's all about what I am, not what I am not.
I'm saying it again, it's all about what I am, not what I am not.
Happy Birthday to me.
I am none of those things.
I sweated my 39th birthday, which I blogged about here, as it was just a small one year away from the big one. It's funny how much is still appropos and I am still working on the same stuff-- I've been going to Weight Watchers and steadily working out (down at least 35 pounds -- probably more from my birthday last year), I've been working Match.com like it's a second job (will be having my first second date with a nice guy next week) and am digging my job more than ever. Pretty proud of the developments in the last year.
But I keep reflecting on that vision that I created for myself at the age of 14 and wonder why I have not met it, why do I not "have it all". Of course, could be that at the age of 14 my world view was pretty narrow. Recently, there have been numerous articles about women, never men, having it all. Perhaps the idea of having it all is more easily defined when you are 14 and don't really understand what that means in adult terms. In a recent conversation with a close friend, we talked about how being a 40 year old woman in today's world, is different than being a 40 year old woman in the 80s.
That seems to really be sticking with me. When I was 14, I didn't think that my work would bring me to over a dozen countries or have me working on more than 15 campaigns with a 98% success rate. When I was 14, I never thought I would be the leader of women's organizations who continue to point out the necessity of women's right to equal pay, health care and choice. When I was 14, I didn't think I'd be able to put together a 40th birthday party invitation list that had over 100 friends on it, and that was keeping it small.
Last night, as I tried on my birthday party dress and had a total melt-down my legs are not svelte gams that will turn heads, which of course meant I was completely unlovable. The 14 year old me totally popped up again on the eve of my celebration and left me feeling bewildered as to why. As I told a friend, I thought I would have it together by 40. And now of course, I'm wondering what does it really mean to have it together.
As I walked by the mirror this morning, I made the concious decision to stop the hate. Embrace my sausagey tree trunk legs, embrace my curves. And as I re-read my 39th birthday blog post from last year, I realized that this life stuff is a process-- they don't call it your life's journey for nothing.
And once again reminded myself, it's all about what I am, not what I am not.
I'm saying it again, it's all about what I am, not what I am not.
Happy Birthday to me.
9/26/12
Obama order might help DCF fight against child sex slavery
Great story in the CT Mirror regarding new steps to stop child sex slavery.
http://ctmirror.org/blogs/obama-order-might-help-dcf-fight-against-child-sex-slavery
Tue, 09/25/2012 - 5:20pm
By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas
The Obama administration Tuesday morning issued an executive order stepping up enforcement against goverment contractors that do business overseas and engage in or fail to report knowledge of human trafficking.
The order prohibits companies under federal contract from using misleading ads and similar tactics to recruit and effectively enslave workers; and it forbids them from engaging in or failing to report instances of "procurement of commercial sex acts."
"Companies have to now take steps to ensure it's not happening on their watch," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat and co-chairman of the U.S. Senate's Human Trafficking Caucus.
The order primarily addresses practices that exploit foreign laborers, but also intersects with one of the state Department of Children and Families' top priorities -- shutting down child sex slavery in Connecticut.
Blumenthal said he has no reason to believe that there are any Connecticut companies with federal contracts that have engaged in such activity, but these mandated reporting requirements aimed at both domestic and companies overseas receiving federal money will oblige them to inform the government when they do discover such incidents.
While a group of child advocates applauded the executive order at the state Capitol complex Tuesday, it is unclear how much impact it will have on efforts to shut off the international sex slavery spigot. DCF reports that it is aware of one child from another country being sold for sex in Connecticut, but fears many cases are going unreported.
"For every one we know about there are probably 100 [cases] we don't know about," Teresa Younger, executive director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women said Tuesday afternoon shortly after the executive order was released.
Blumenthal acknowledged the executive order only goes so far in addressing the overall problem of child sex slavery. In Connecticut, while DCF reports 100 children have been sold for sex in the last five years, only a handful of pimps have been prosecuted.
"Legislation is necessary. The president has gone as far as he can," said Blumenthal, noting his proposed bill would also impose criminal fines on government contractors that ignore sex and labor trafficking laws.
Conflicting bills approved by House and Senate committees have yet to be resolved. Gary Levvis, the coordinator of the University of Connecticut's Children's Rights Education Project told the state's sex trafficking task force earlier this year that the House bill focuses more on curbing domestic trafficking while the Senate bill aims more internationally.
Obama's order on Tuesday is strictly based on addressing labor and sex trafficking overseas by those who are working under a federal contracts.
"This is a zero-tolerance policy," Blumenthal said.
As far as curbing domestic sex trafficking goes, Younger said that she is working with state officials to come up with some solutions to boost enforcement and identification of victims.
The state Department of Children and Families launched earlier what they describe as a "frontal assault" on sex trafficking of children. The initiative includes training local police departments, school districts and hospital staff to identify sexually exploited children. DCF is also asking police to treat child prostitutes they come across as victims, rather than criminals.
DCF Commissioner Joette Katz in a statement called the executive Order, "another weapon in the fight against human trafficking domestically and abroad... As DCF has experienced first-hand through our own anti-trafficking efforts, the number of children and families impacted by this crime often are invisible to the public. The signing of this Executive Order will call attention to and strengthen existing DCF efforts to combat the modern-day slavery of too many innocent victims."
http://ctmirror.org/blogs/obama-order-might-help-dcf-fight-against-child-sex-slavery
Tue, 09/25/2012 - 5:20pm
By Jacqueline Rabe Thomas
The Obama administration Tuesday morning issued an executive order stepping up enforcement against goverment contractors that do business overseas and engage in or fail to report knowledge of human trafficking.
The order prohibits companies under federal contract from using misleading ads and similar tactics to recruit and effectively enslave workers; and it forbids them from engaging in or failing to report instances of "procurement of commercial sex acts."
"Companies have to now take steps to ensure it's not happening on their watch," Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat and co-chairman of the U.S. Senate's Human Trafficking Caucus.
The order primarily addresses practices that exploit foreign laborers, but also intersects with one of the state Department of Children and Families' top priorities -- shutting down child sex slavery in Connecticut.
Blumenthal said he has no reason to believe that there are any Connecticut companies with federal contracts that have engaged in such activity, but these mandated reporting requirements aimed at both domestic and companies overseas receiving federal money will oblige them to inform the government when they do discover such incidents.
While a group of child advocates applauded the executive order at the state Capitol complex Tuesday, it is unclear how much impact it will have on efforts to shut off the international sex slavery spigot. DCF reports that it is aware of one child from another country being sold for sex in Connecticut, but fears many cases are going unreported.
"For every one we know about there are probably 100 [cases] we don't know about," Teresa Younger, executive director of the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women said Tuesday afternoon shortly after the executive order was released.
Blumenthal acknowledged the executive order only goes so far in addressing the overall problem of child sex slavery. In Connecticut, while DCF reports 100 children have been sold for sex in the last five years, only a handful of pimps have been prosecuted.
"Legislation is necessary. The president has gone as far as he can," said Blumenthal, noting his proposed bill would also impose criminal fines on government contractors that ignore sex and labor trafficking laws.
Conflicting bills approved by House and Senate committees have yet to be resolved. Gary Levvis, the coordinator of the University of Connecticut's Children's Rights Education Project told the state's sex trafficking task force earlier this year that the House bill focuses more on curbing domestic trafficking while the Senate bill aims more internationally.
Obama's order on Tuesday is strictly based on addressing labor and sex trafficking overseas by those who are working under a federal contracts.
"This is a zero-tolerance policy," Blumenthal said.
As far as curbing domestic sex trafficking goes, Younger said that she is working with state officials to come up with some solutions to boost enforcement and identification of victims.
The state Department of Children and Families launched earlier what they describe as a "frontal assault" on sex trafficking of children. The initiative includes training local police departments, school districts and hospital staff to identify sexually exploited children. DCF is also asking police to treat child prostitutes they come across as victims, rather than criminals.
DCF Commissioner Joette Katz in a statement called the executive Order, "another weapon in the fight against human trafficking domestically and abroad... As DCF has experienced first-hand through our own anti-trafficking efforts, the number of children and families impacted by this crime often are invisible to the public. The signing of this Executive Order will call attention to and strengthen existing DCF efforts to combat the modern-day slavery of too many innocent victims."
9/21/12
"All glory comes from daring to begin."
(quote by Eugene F. Ware)
Today's blog post comes courtesy of my sister, Laura, who is a Health and Wellness Coordinator at the Wang YMCA of Chinatown in Boston, MA. She took some time out of her schedule to give some advice and encouragement to those who want to start exercising and either have trouble getting started, or don't know what to do once they do start.
(PLUG: If you're in the Boston area and want a great trainer to help you out, I encourage you to visit the Wang YMCA and try to get in contact with her, or take one of her classes!)
Today's blog post comes courtesy of my sister, Laura, who is a Health and Wellness Coordinator at the Wang YMCA of Chinatown in Boston, MA. She took some time out of her schedule to give some advice and encouragement to those who want to start exercising and either have trouble getting started, or don't know what to do once they do start.
(PLUG: If you're in the Boston area and want a great trainer to help you out, I encourage you to visit the Wang YMCA and try to get in contact with her, or take one of her classes!)
"I just can’t seem to get started."
"I don’t know what to do once I get there."
These are two of the most common reasons for not exercising I hear when I first meet someone. Yes, a gym can be intimidating and overwhelming. But with small goals and a handful of exercises, you can make a huge impact on your body and start to take control of yourself!
You walk into the gym and don’t know what to do first.
Pick a machine that incorporates cardio movement (a treadmill, bicycle, elliptical, etc…) and press Quickstart (the green button). From there, you can control every factor from speed and resistance to time. It is the simplest way to get started and get yourself moving. Learning different machines is great for variety, but if you are uncomfortable with that, just choose one and stick to it for a week or two. From there, switch it up and try something new!
Strength training is a component of exercise many people forget about, also. Between choosing exercises and making sure you have proper form, it can be a challenge. Get the help from a trainer if necessary, or choose some strength machines and read the instructions labeled. There are pictures highlighting which muscles are being used, and it will explain how to do the movement. Plus, since it is a fixed form cable machine, it's pretty easy to pick up the correct motion. But be careful, since there could still be error due to misuse of the machine.
From here, remember to stretch and always ask questions. Trainers like to have people come up to them and give advice to those who need a jumpstart. Watch them on the floors to see who you might respond well to and grab their attention. They are willing to help!
9/20/12
Great CT Forum on Women's Issues
This past Saturday, the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women (PCSW) and Vision 2020 put on a great forum on a variety of women's issues. Below is an article that covers the discussion of one of the panel discussions, in case you missed it.
Women Confront Retirement Security, Family Leave Issues
by Christine Stuart, CT News Junkie
Sep 17, 2012 5:30am
Women earn $2.4 trillion annually, but despite those gains women are at an increased risk of dying alone and in poverty, according to one financial planner.
Debra Clark, a certified financial planner with Hornor, Townsend, and Kent Inc., told a group of women gathered Saturday at the Legislative Office Building that they need to demand to be involved in the financial planning process.
Clark made her remarks during a panel discussion sponsored by the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and Vision 2020.
She said women need to continue to fight for equal pay because it makes such a big difference, not only in their take home pay, but in their retirement planning.
An individual earning $50,000 a year, who is enrolled in a company retirement plan which is contributing 3 percent that’s a $1,500 contribution. If person across the hall is doing the same exact job and earning $30,000 that contribution drops to $900.
“That $600 difference may not sound like a lot but when you compound that over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40 years it amounts to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Clark said.
She said women need to be comfortable making long-term financial decisions because it’s often their quality of life that suffers, if they don’t.
Sen. Toni Harp, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said a lot of what the General Assembly does impacts the financial security of women.
"Women have got to be part of the political conversation,” Harp said. “Right now, we’re not.”
She said every year the legislature’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women is threatened by budget cuts and wholesale elimination when they’re the ones lobbying on behalf of women’s issues at the state Capitol.
There are forces in state government that “think 77 percent is enough for you,” Harp told the women gathered for the day long session. “If you don’t think it’s enough then you have got to become activated and support those groups that support you.”
One of the issues the General Assembly faced this year was a proposal to increase the minimum wage.
“This is a women’s issue,” Harp said.
She said she understands women are busy with their multifaceted lives and often don’t know the issues that impact their lives, but she urged women to get involved. If they had maybe the disposition legislation would have been different.
The minimum wage increase died during the last legislative session when the state Senate refused to take it up.
Harp said 35.5 percent of Connecticut women ages 16 or older make the equivalent of a yearly minimum wage. Of those earning the minimum wage or below, 63 percent of all of them are women and 37 percent are men.
“Increasing the minimum wage is a significant issue for women, and yet you don’t really see us, except for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, championing that,” Harp said.
She said women often have very low salaries and have a hard time contributing to a retirement savings account, if they can afford to do that.
One woman in the audience wanted to know what the legislature is doing to address those caught up in the sandwich generation. The sandwich generation is still taking care of their adult children and their elderly parents at the same time. The woman said her employer has given her some flex time to use, but there are issues that come up quickly and not every employer is as generous as hers with their time.
“That is becoming a real drag on our retirement plans because we will miss time out of the workforce to care for our parents,” Clark said.
Natasha Pierre, policy and legislative director for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, said that’s one of the issues they plan to address this year.
The family care issue is an emerging issue for the commission. With Connecticut to become the first state in the nation to adopt Paid Sick day legislation, they’re looking to advance that legislation with Paid Family leave.
Pierre said it’s a difficult issue for the state because Connecticut doesn’t have a state disability program. Most disability insurance is purchased privately so there’s no public system for paid family leave and the state would be responsible for setting up a system for it.
She said they’re in the early stages of the conversation but were thinking about setting up some sort of employer-based system where an employee could pay into it and if you need it the money would be there.
Over the summer Pierre said she received calls on both ends of the spectrum for family leave, those who are caring for elderly parents and those who are new parents having their first child.
“The husbands are calling the office and saying, ‘My wife is going on leave so where’s the fund that she gets the money from?’,” Pierre said.
Pierre’s had to explain that Family Medical Leave Act just makes sure the woman gets her job back, it doesn’t pay for her maternity leave.
She said the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women is looking at paid family leave as a proposal, but aren’t sure how quickly they would be able to get legislation since they first need to come up with a system to finance it.
Women Confront Retirement Security, Family Leave Issues
by Christine Stuart, CT News Junkie
Sep 17, 2012 5:30am
Women earn $2.4 trillion annually, but despite those gains women are at an increased risk of dying alone and in poverty, according to one financial planner.
Debra Clark, a certified financial planner with Hornor, Townsend, and Kent Inc., told a group of women gathered Saturday at the Legislative Office Building that they need to demand to be involved in the financial planning process.
Clark made her remarks during a panel discussion sponsored by the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and Vision 2020.
She said women need to continue to fight for equal pay because it makes such a big difference, not only in their take home pay, but in their retirement planning.
An individual earning $50,000 a year, who is enrolled in a company retirement plan which is contributing 3 percent that’s a $1,500 contribution. If person across the hall is doing the same exact job and earning $30,000 that contribution drops to $900.
“That $600 difference may not sound like a lot but when you compound that over the course of 10, 20, 30, 40 years it amounts to thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Clark said.
She said women need to be comfortable making long-term financial decisions because it’s often their quality of life that suffers, if they don’t.
Sen. Toni Harp, who chairs the Appropriations Committee, said a lot of what the General Assembly does impacts the financial security of women.
"Women have got to be part of the political conversation,” Harp said. “Right now, we’re not.”
She said every year the legislature’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women is threatened by budget cuts and wholesale elimination when they’re the ones lobbying on behalf of women’s issues at the state Capitol.
There are forces in state government that “think 77 percent is enough for you,” Harp told the women gathered for the day long session. “If you don’t think it’s enough then you have got to become activated and support those groups that support you.”
One of the issues the General Assembly faced this year was a proposal to increase the minimum wage.
“This is a women’s issue,” Harp said.
She said she understands women are busy with their multifaceted lives and often don’t know the issues that impact their lives, but she urged women to get involved. If they had maybe the disposition legislation would have been different.
The minimum wage increase died during the last legislative session when the state Senate refused to take it up.
Harp said 35.5 percent of Connecticut women ages 16 or older make the equivalent of a yearly minimum wage. Of those earning the minimum wage or below, 63 percent of all of them are women and 37 percent are men.
“Increasing the minimum wage is a significant issue for women, and yet you don’t really see us, except for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, championing that,” Harp said.
She said women often have very low salaries and have a hard time contributing to a retirement savings account, if they can afford to do that.
One woman in the audience wanted to know what the legislature is doing to address those caught up in the sandwich generation. The sandwich generation is still taking care of their adult children and their elderly parents at the same time. The woman said her employer has given her some flex time to use, but there are issues that come up quickly and not every employer is as generous as hers with their time.
“That is becoming a real drag on our retirement plans because we will miss time out of the workforce to care for our parents,” Clark said.
Natasha Pierre, policy and legislative director for the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women, said that’s one of the issues they plan to address this year.
The family care issue is an emerging issue for the commission. With Connecticut to become the first state in the nation to adopt Paid Sick day legislation, they’re looking to advance that legislation with Paid Family leave.
Pierre said it’s a difficult issue for the state because Connecticut doesn’t have a state disability program. Most disability insurance is purchased privately so there’s no public system for paid family leave and the state would be responsible for setting up a system for it.
She said they’re in the early stages of the conversation but were thinking about setting up some sort of employer-based system where an employee could pay into it and if you need it the money would be there.
Over the summer Pierre said she received calls on both ends of the spectrum for family leave, those who are caring for elderly parents and those who are new parents having their first child.
“The husbands are calling the office and saying, ‘My wife is going on leave so where’s the fund that she gets the money from?’,” Pierre said.
Pierre’s had to explain that Family Medical Leave Act just makes sure the woman gets her job back, it doesn’t pay for her maternity leave.
She said the Permanent Commission on the Status of Women is looking at paid family leave as a proposal, but aren’t sure how quickly they would be able to get legislation since they first need to come up with a system to finance it.
9/19/12
August Activist of the Month
CT NOW's August Activist of the Month
This past month CT NOW decided to honnor Margaret Middleton for her strong commitment to women's issues. Margaret has always been a champion for veterans as co-founder and executive director of the Connecticut Veterans Legal Center.
Armed with the story of two women who were raped while in the military, Margaret urged U.S. Congress to make it easier for victims of sexual assault to get cleared for disability compensation by addressing the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs.
To read a recent article written about Margaret in the New Haven Independent please click here.
9/13/12
Book Review: The End of Men?
Battle Hymn of the Slacker Father
In the battle of the sexes, the losers have been middle-class families.
By Carol Tavris
Back In the 1970s—the olden days, when women were said to suffer a "fear of
success" that was keeping them out of careers, and when there was no women's
bathroom near the U.S. Senate chamber (it arrived in 1993; congresswomen in the
House got theirs last year)—I interviewed the great anthropologist Marvin
Harris. "Male supremacy," he said, "was just a phase in the evolution of
culture." It would end in the 21st century, he predicted, because its two
bolsters—women's inability to control fertility and the need for men's physical
strength in war and work—would be gone.The End of Men
By Hanna RosinRiverhead, 320 pages, $27.95
Anyone who has lived through decades of popular books about gender, arguing about "who started this," "who's worse off," who's up, who's down, who can have it all and who can have only 62% of it all (whatever "all" even means), may be amused by the melodramatic title. But this provocative book is not so much about the end of men but the end of male supremacy. In much of the world, from South America to South Korea, from Iceland to India, from villages to urban centers, in desperately poor countries as in affluent ones, what Iceland's prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir, calls "the age of testosterone" is ending.
Consider: In 2010, young American women had a median income higher than that of their male peers in 1,997 out of 2,000 metropolitan regions. In Brazil, one third of married women earn more than their husbands. Women are the majorities in colleges and professional schools on every continent except Africa; in Bahrain, Qatar and Guyana, women are 70% of college graduates. The more education and better jobs that women get, the more they narrow their marriage chances: They have to marry down, marry late, or not marry at all. Indeed, Ms. Rosin shows, the average age of marriage is rising: Even across Asia, it is now 32. Divorce rates are skyrocketing; births are declining and out-of-wedlock births increasing. The whole planet is becoming Sweden.
Ms. Rosin avoids the journalistic habit of doing "spotlight interviews" with individuals selected to support the writer's hypothesis, a practice she knows is misleading. Instead, her argument is based on substance and scholarship: She starts from data, then turn to interviews to illuminate the human effects of these world-wide changes. She spoke with demographers, social scientists, educators and gender-studies scholars. She traveled widely, examining the lives of rich and poor alike. She went to modest Midwestern universities and community colleges as well as to high-powered business schools. She went to Seoul, to see how in merely one generation South Korea has shifted from being "one of the most rigid patriarchal societies in the world" to a nation of "manic superwomen," where parents prefer daughters to sons. Everywhere she finds women improving their lives through education and determination, raising the bar for what they want from a man and not sticking with him if they don't get it.
Women's equality once seemed so elusive that few of its advocates paused to predict how men would respond if it actually arrived. Sure, some dinosaurs would sulk in their cave, some would respond with violence, some would daydream about a nonexistent past when women knew their place and a rape victim couldn't get pregnant. But, overall, surely, the march was steady onward, with men benefiting as much as women from women's higher status and education?
Ms. Rosin makes us face the uncomfortable evidence that many men are engaging in a sit-down strike. In macho cultures, such as those of Spain, men import poorer, more traditional women from other countries to marry. In Japan, Ms. Rosin reports, men are causing something of a national crisis because of their indifference to dating, marrying and even having sex.
Here in America, many men have dialed down their ambitions, and not simply in response to a loss of job opportunities. Although three-fourths of the jobs lost in the recent recession were in fields that are overwhelmingly male (including construction, manufacturing and finance), the same number of new ones emerged in health fields, service industries and teaching. Yet surprisingly few men are entering these areas or seeking the education they would need to do so. "Our vast and struggling middle class, where the disparities between men and women are the greatest," writes Ms. Rosin, "is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the workforce and home, and as women make all the decisions."
The result, Ms. Rosin painstakingly shows, is virtually a reversal of the psychological landscape of the 1960s and 1970s. Then, men wondered why they should give up freedom and sex for marriage, child care and the burden of financial responsibility; now it is women asking that question. Then, men complained of clinging, freeloading wives; now Ms. Rosin hears repeatedly from women that, in the words of one executive, women should "be very careful about marrying freeloading, bloodsucking parasites." Then, it was women who tamped down their aspirations, knowing the objective unlikelihood of attaining them; now it's the men who have "fear of success" and a "why bother?" attitude. Then, if women had casual sex it was to keep the guy happy; now many have casual sex for their own pleasure and to keep from being derailed from their career goals with something "serious."
The great strength of Ms. Rosin's argument is that she shows how these changes in sex, love, ambition and work have little or nothing to do with hard-wired brain differences or supposed evolutionary destiny. They occur as a result of economic patterns, the unavailability of marriageable men, and a global transformation in the nature of work.
In tracing the big picture, Ms. Rosin inevitably omits considerable nuance and exceptions. Of course countless men are desperate to work and egalitarian marriages thrive all over the world. But in America, Ms. Rosin believes, such relationships are largely another perk of privilege; they mainly exist among the affluent 30% who have a college degree and whose division of earnings between husband and wife shift from 40-60 one year to 80-20 another, as both parties pursue their individual goals. Yet, she writes, even among men with egalitarian sympathies, many seem "haunted by the specter of a coming gender apocalypse." Why is that? she asks one young man. "It's because our team is losing," he said.
In that reply is the problem—and its solution. Ms. Rosin believes that the "end of men" can be averted if men "expand the range of options for what it means to be a man." The author provides heartening examples of couples and companies that are doing just that. (Even one oil drilling company she describes has transformed its work culture from having the "baddest roughnecks" around—and the worst safety record—to a culture of reciprocal help and cooperation.)
"Ultimately," Ms. Rosin says, "the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women." This great truth is often lost in the two predominant portrayals of men in contemporary popular culture: preposterously muscled action men who save the planet and childish, beer-drinking lads who just want to save themselves. Between the brawn of the past and the boy of today, we await the man of tomorrow. One who will realize that, for the well-being of all, men and women need to see themselves as being on the same team.
Gentlemen, start your engines.
—Ms. Tavris, a social psychologist, is the author of "The Mismeasure of Woman" and the co-author, with Elliot Aronson, of "Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)."
A version of this article appeared September 8, 2012, on page C5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Battle Hymn of the Slacker Father.
9/12/12
'My Friends Are Married' Tumblr Reveals Thoughts On Singlehood
I found this article interesting. I am recently single after a10 year on and off again relationship (back on for almost 5 years) and find it disheartning at times, while happy for them that all my friends are getting married and/or having children. They keep telling me to put myself out there and go on a few dates, but its only been 2.5 months and I am enjoying being single for now. I joined an online dating site and have some reservations and am interested in the Meet Up goups insted for a less imtinating way to meet new people. Anyway I found the below article great, because it makes me feel like I am not the only one going through this.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/my-friends-are-married-tumbler-singlehood_n_1874159.html?utm_hp_ref=women&ir=Women
The Huffington Post | By Katherine Bindley
Posted: 09/11/2012 3:39 pm
"My friends are getting married, and I'm just 25 and drunk."
So goes the theme of #myfriendsaremarried, a recently launched Tumblr that addresses many of the unfortunate situations, cliched advice, inappropriate questions and harsh judgements that single women sometimes face.
Oh, and the aforementioned scenarios are all addressed through hilarious GIFS.
Sure, this Tumblr may not be the first page to play around with the contrast between the lives of people getting married and those still enjoying singlehood -- there was a similarly named Facebook group created a while back -- but there's plenty of material to go around when it comes to some of the issues that single women encounter, such as arriving at a party only to learn its all couples, for example.
The Tumblr pokes fun at not only the well-meaning words that married friends tend to pass on to their single friends -- such as "you need to put yourself out there more" and "you'll find love when you stop looking" -- but also the subtle forms of admonishment that can come from those friends if you're, say, going out a lot, ending a relationship that isn't working, or having trouble moving on from an ex.
And in case the married friends of this Tumblr author have anything to say about her page, she already has a response: "Oh please. You guys love me. I keep it real and I'm hilarious."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/11/my-friends-are-married-tumbler-singlehood_n_1874159.html?utm_hp_ref=women&ir=Women
The Huffington Post | By Katherine Bindley
Posted: 09/11/2012 3:39 pm
"My friends are getting married, and I'm just 25 and drunk."
So goes the theme of #myfriendsaremarried, a recently launched Tumblr that addresses many of the unfortunate situations, cliched advice, inappropriate questions and harsh judgements that single women sometimes face.
Oh, and the aforementioned scenarios are all addressed through hilarious GIFS.
Sure, this Tumblr may not be the first page to play around with the contrast between the lives of people getting married and those still enjoying singlehood -- there was a similarly named Facebook group created a while back -- but there's plenty of material to go around when it comes to some of the issues that single women encounter, such as arriving at a party only to learn its all couples, for example.
The Tumblr pokes fun at not only the well-meaning words that married friends tend to pass on to their single friends -- such as "you need to put yourself out there more" and "you'll find love when you stop looking" -- but also the subtle forms of admonishment that can come from those friends if you're, say, going out a lot, ending a relationship that isn't working, or having trouble moving on from an ex.
And in case the married friends of this Tumblr author have anything to say about her page, she already has a response: "Oh please. You guys love me. I keep it real and I'm hilarious."
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