Cross posted at StoriesinAmerica
With all eyes on Bush’s BS, the following stories get little to no coverage. I try to compile this list daily.
General
*Out of all the major studio-financed films released in the United States last year, only three — Bewitched, Aeon Flux and North Country — were directed by women.
Source: Miami Herald
*Wendy Wasserstein’s “Uncommon Women and Others,” which was initially aired during PBS’ 1978 Great Performances season, will be rebroadcast in April.
Source: Playbill
*The federal government agreed to stop funding a nationwide program that promotes teen abstinence to settle a lawsuit alleging the money was used for Christian proselytizing. The agreement was reached Wednesday between the Department of Health and Human Services and the American Civil Liberties Union. Under the deal, the Silver Ring Thing program won’t be eligible for more funding unless it ensures the money won’t be used for religious purposes. “Public funds were being used to fund a road show, really, to convert teens to Christianity,” said Julie Sternberg, an ACLU attorney.
Source: AP
Politics
*Unmarried women hold solidly progressive views and would vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates if they voted regularly, according to a new poll released this week by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. The survey was sponsored by the Women’s Voices. Women Vote. Action Fund (WVWVAF) to explore the reasons that 20 million single women did not vote in the 2004 election. WVWVAF is dedicated to raising awareness among single women, who represent a quarter of all Americans of voting age.
Source: Feminist Wire
In the Workplace
*Why women have not achieved parity with men in the workplace continues to bewitch experts. Yet, insights to the mystery may be readily available in the widely popular Harry Potter series.
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Reproductive Rights
*Filling a void left by the Food and Drug Administration’s inability to decide whether to make the “morning-after” pill available without a prescription, nearly every state is or soon will be wrestling with legislation that would expand or restrict access to the drug. More than 60 bills have been filed in state legislatures already this year, and that follows an already busy 2005 session on emergency contraception. The resulting tug of war is creating an availability map for the pill that looks increasingly similar to the map of “red states” and “blue states” in the past two presidential elections — with increased access in the blue states and greater restrictions in the red ones.
Source: Washington Post
*Thousands of women suffer long and short-term disabilities because of complications resulting from illegal abortions performed in private clinics and homes each year. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), in low-income countries, approximately 200 women die each day as a result of unsafe abortions.
Source: Daily Times
International
*The gender pay gap between men and women in Britain is the worst in Europe, with female workers earning on average 17 percent less than their male counterparts, an offical report said.
Source: AFP
*Iraq’s interior minister says he believes American journalist Jill Carroll is alive and will be released. The deadline set by the Ann Arbor native’s kidnappers passed at midnight.
Source: AP
*Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is not enough to ensure everyone has a job, so young people are encouraged to set up businesses – men and women. So young Saudis are being encouraged to set up their own businesses – and not just young Saudi men.
Source: BBC
*Australian couples are traveling to the United States for in-vitro fertilization so they can select the sex of their baby. The couples are spending up to $25,000 to use a controversial embryo sex screening procedure that is banned in Australia, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported.
Source: UPI
*1091 honor killings were committed in Turkey in the past 5 years, said Turkish Parliamentary Investigation Commission which was set up to probe honor killings. The commission will submit a report on honor killings soon. The report includes the reasons of violence against women and proposals to prevent such violence.
Source: TurkishPress.com
Thanks for posting this new series here, I appreciate the focus on women in the news and women’s news. These are the kinds of things we really need to be talking about a lot more.
Especially now…I can’t imagine how the feminists of the 70s feel.
The group with the highest turnout is the elderly. Why? Because they get a lot of attention from politicians? Yes. But one reason they get a lot of attention because they turn out.
It’s interesting that unmarried women don’t turn out in high numbers, but I suspect that the predominant reason is the same reason that many people don’t vote. Lack of education on the issues. Lack of time to be educated on the issues.
Compare this with the elderly. Retired persons have, in general, more time to learn about issues. They also have a lifetime of experience that can lead them to believe that they understand the issues.
Thanks for posting this.
I also think that a lot of young women believe that they don’t matter because they’ve been getting that message all their lives.
A campaign to get young women to vote needs first to convince them that their lives, their needs, their futures are important.
True
The findings of this study correlate quite well with what other people who study voter turnout have found. Those who feel insufficiently informed about the issues on which they are voting and/or those who doubt that their vote makes a difference are less likely to come out to vote.
I was thinking more about the “insufficiently informed” part because I’ve been wondering if a strategy of putting more voter referenda on the ballot is really a good strategy for winning or if it will suppress voter turnout.
One theory about why voter turnout is lower in the US than it is in other democracies is that our ballots have too many issues on them. It is easier to feel sufficiently informed about one issue than 25 issues. And when people don’t feel sufficiently informed they stay home.
What I wanted to get at was that focusing on the idea the problem is they don’t think that their votes make a difference or that they don’t know enough about the issues is way too far downstream from the source of the problem. They believe their votes don’t matter because they believe they don’t matter. They have no reason to be informed about the issues because their view of the world is so severely constrained that they might as well be living at the bottom of a well. We need to help them out of that well first and that’s why I think any campaign to get younger women ought to take some lessons from good old conscious-raising — we need more “clicks”.
I was focusing more on the fact that the study was of single women generally. Not just young single women. And although two thirds of the women surveyed were of low income, I don’t like to draw the conclusion from that that low income women always have low self esteem. That may be true but the survey didn’t question esteem.
I don’t disagree with what you are saying. You are looking at (one of) the long term solutions to the problem while I am looking at the short term — how to get more people to vote in the next election — problem.
I don’t think low self-esteem is necessarily an economic issue (though I do think it is exacerbated by that). My husband is a 6th grade teacher in a very middle-income school and he sees many of his students have taken in that message that they don’t matter (or at least don’t matter as much as boys). The book “Reviving Ophelia” really hit home for him.
Sometimes all it takes is one piece of information. I went to Reno a few times before the 2004 election to register voters. I met a single woman (who doesn’t vote) with two kids from different fathers. She makes minimum wage at two jobs; keeping up with current events is not a priority. After giving her the form, she said, “I’m not sure which party to choose.” After telling her about Bush’s family planning budget cuts, she registered Democrat. That’s all it took. We have to accept the fact that most people don’t live and die by their vote.
Wherever you live, please start carrying around voter registration forms and hand them out.
This is good advice. And I’m in favor of doing anything to increase voter registration.
But voter turnout is a different issue than voter registration. Registration is fairly easy but if the result is an increase in registered voteres who STILL don’t vote, you haven’t addressed the real issues.
Not only do we have to hand out the voter registration cards we have to call those people before election day and walk them through the process. Maybe that’s simply taking the time to walk through all the ballot issues with them so they feel completely comfortable when they go to the polling place. Maybe that’s telling them that its perfectly fine to make a cheat sheet and take it in with them to help them remember how they intended to vote when confronted with the actual ballot. Maybe that’s arranging for them to be picked up and taken to the polls and walking them in as far as is allowed.
Good points. Take election day off now.
We went to Vegas to drive people to the polls. I was amazed at how many accepted rides without even asking us where we were from or what organization we were with; they jumped in the van, no questions asked…many poor moms needed rides because they had no transportation and were too busy to find one.
We also need to ensure their votes are actually counted.
Poor moms need you to stand outside and entertain their kids while they go in to vote. Not many people think about what it’s like to navigate a 12 page ballot that includes judges and 13 propositions while you have little kids running around.
wonder if that means that 14% of the respondents have the power to be in two places at one time.
I wish I was one of them.
And John Tierney, in today’s NYT, has proclaimed that a survey shows that women who don’t work outside the home are the most happily married. (Or at least if they rely entirely on their husband’s income they’d better believe they are happy.)
I’m certain that many non-working women are happy, but his comments completely overlook how the lack of financial autonomy might color one’s perspective. One of the major reason’s women tolerate domestic violence is their financial dependency on their mate.
There’s a good discussion on this over at Pandagon.
Thanks.
That’s the worst in Europe. But things could be worst — in the US, female earn about 20 percent less than their male counterparts, even after correcting for occupation, industry, marital status and job tenure.