Rita Henley Jensen is founder of Women's eNews. A former senior writer for the National Law Journal and columnist for The New York Times Syndicate, Rita Henley Jensen has more than 30 years of experience in journalism and an armload of awards, including the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni award, the Hunter College Presidential Grant for Innovative Uses of Technology in Teaching, the Alicia Patterson fellowship, and the Lloyd P. Burns Public Service prize. Jensen is also a survivor of domestic violence and a former welfare mother who earned degrees from Ohio State University and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She is the grandmother of four, two granddaughters and two grandsons.
Young women's outpouring of justifiable rage on social media against misogyny is a wonderful and inspiring sign of solidarity. As I watch and participate it's made it easier to process the pains of my own life.
Two young children and no car didn't prevent Rita Henley Jensen from enrolling in Ohio State University. She caught a ride with a stranger and her family's future was transformed, she says in this excerpt from the anthology “Nothing But The Truth So Help Me God.”
Amid all the 50-years-later press about LBJ's war on poverty, a deafening silence surrounds government support for single heads of household. This program, known as welfare, was ransacked in 1996 and today's single mothers are paying the price.
The 21 Leaders advance the idea that women's rights are human rights across the globe, carrying forward decades of activism and dramatically changing what the future holds for this generation of emerging women.
The Judean desert was full of perils and hardship for a 9-month pregnant Jewish woman struggling to reach Bethlehem for the Roman census. We follow that same female trek of endurance in our watch over Syrian refugees in Jordan, U.S. women in maternity wards.
In a one-week period last month two major developments-both tied to Women's eNews' coverage-could signal a rousing from complacency. One was a New York hearing; the other was $6 million in funding by pharmaceutical giant Merck.
On Nov. 13 Rita Henley Jensen, Women's eNews' founder and editor in chief, appeared at the New York City Government Committee on Health hearing to share our findings on New York City's high maternal mortality rates. This is a copy of her testimony.
Blocks away from where the United Nations delegates gathered with Syria's chemical weapons on top of their agenda, a simple ceremony in New York's Central Park floated a new path for peace.
Very few of the maternity wards that have won a seal of approval for providing breastfeeding support are located in communities with a significant population of African Americans, a Women's eNews analysis finds.
Charlotte Maxeke, Lilian Ngoyi and Helen Joseph are some of the leaders extolled in a small exhibit at the Apartheid Museum that pays rare tribute to those who fought pass cards. Current-day leaders, meanwhile, are battling HIV, violence and fear.