Nationwide, the number of imprisoned women of color has increased by more than 500 percent in 20 years. The writer blames mandatory sentencing, biased cocaine laws and the increase in prison-dependent economic development plans.
What if women's advocates and advocates for affordable housing were to join forces in a new strategic alliance to press for their multiple common goals: affordable housing, welfare reform and reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act?
Beauty salons are intimate gathering places where women chat, confide and nourish more than hair and nails. Now, some are playing potentially life-saving roles in a network helping battered women take care of beauty and bruises, body and soul.
A school's commitment to gender equity can be easily discerned from bulletin boards and display cases, athletic fields, curriculum content, classroom seating and whether teachers encourage girls to develop a public voice-and boys a “public ear.”
While boys' problems and some girls' problems have been exaggerated for political reasons, the fact remains that anti-violence, anti-bullying and anti-harassment messages are good for boys and that both girls and boys need help.
From the “wilding” attacks in Central Park to systematic rape as a war crime in the Balkans, women are vulnerable to violence. Even more than reproductive choice, this writer argues, women must demand a safe enough world.
The publicized “women's vote” that gave Bill Clinton his victory margin in 1992 and 1996 was really the vote of Black women, not White women. And Black women's “stealth power” could strike again this year-if Black women turn out to vote.
The Republican Convention of spun sugar centrism, compassion and inclusiveness failed to mask the very real and bitter aftertaste of religious fundamentalism, Victorian sexual mores and intolerance.
In this, the first of five essays taking stock of this incredible Women's Summer, a key leader in the international women's rights movement assesses the pragmatic Beijing + Five session where women fought hard against the forces of backwardness.
The abortion debate in Australia hasn't reached the fevered pitch of the controversy in the U.S., but the recent highly publicized abortion in Melbourne of a 32-week-old fetus diagnosed with dwarfism illuminates the troubling issue of choice.
