Tag Archives: women

United Nations: U.S. Is Failing Women

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(Gary Cameron/Reuters)

MOVING BACKWARD

From health care to wages, America is failing women on every level, according to a new report.

Earlier this month, human rights experts from the United Nations visited a backwards country where women are paid significantly less than men, where women are drastically underrepresented in the national legislature, where the percentages of women living in poverty and dying during childbirth are rising, where pregnant women in prisons are shackled during childbirth, and where women face intimidation and harassment while trying to access health care.

When they returned from their trip, they said they were “shocked” by what they found and chided the nation for being one of just seven—including Iran, Somalia, and Sudan—that hasn’t yet ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

You’ll be forgiven if you haven’t heard of this place before. It’s an obscure nation called the United States of America.

On December 11th, a UN working group on legal discrimination against women concluded its ten-day tour of the United States, which included meetings in Washington D.C. and visits to Alabama, Oregon and Texas. Between them, the experts in the working group, led by Eleonora Zielinska of Poland, have decades of experience in law, public policy, diplomacy, academia, and government.

What they found, essentially, was that the U.S. hypocritically fails to measure up to the very standards that it sets for other countries when it comes to women’s human rights.

“The United States, which is a leading state in formulating international human rights standards, is allowing its women to lag behind international human rights standards,” the group concluded in a statement, released to the press in advance of a full report coming in June 2016.

Their statement is an eye-opening description of the country from an outsider’s perspective that may recall that time you read “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” in grade school: When the U.S. is de-centered, it seems woefully unadvanced relative to its wealth.

“We acknowledge the United States’ commitment to liberty, so well represented by the Statue of Liberty which symbolizes both womanhood and freedom,” the statement began. The praise mostly stopped there.

Despite currently having “the highest level of legislative representation ever achieved by women” in the country, the U.S. still ranks at a mere 72 in the world in terms of the percentage of female lawmakers. With women holding just 19.4 percent of congressional seats, the U.S. falls well below Rwanda, Mexico, Uganda, Pakistan, and most developed nations.

The group also concluded that women play an essential role in driving the growth of the U.S. economy but suffer disproportionately from the global recession’s aftereffects and from persistent income inequality, with a wage gap of 21 percent. On top of these overarching disparities, non-white women, pregnant women, and new mothers face even more challenges in employment.

“[W]e are shocked by the lack of mandatory standards for workplace accommodation for pregnant women, post-natal mothers and persons with care responsibilities, which are required in international human rights law,” the experts noted.

Indeed, the U.S. consistently falls at or near the bottom of international parental leave rankings because it requires no paid leave, only 12 weeks of unpaid time off.

The working group was also discouraged by the fact that the percentage of women living in poverty had increased over the last decade from 12.1 to 14.5 percent, and that the maternal mortality rate increased by 136 percent from 1990 to 2013. Both of these figures vary by ethnicity: non-white women earn less than white women and African-American women die during childbirth at three to four times the rate of white women.

The statement listed off even more human rights violations and shortcomings in the United States: contraception exemptions in insurance plans courtesy of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, the criminalization of women in prostitution, a lack of “adequate and quality sex education” with an inordinate focus on abstinence, and widespread discrimination against immigrant women.

What they found, essentially, was that the U.S. hypocritically fails to measure up to the very standards that it sets for other countries when it comes to women’s human rights.

“While all women are the victims of these missing rights, women who are poor, belong to Native American, Afro-American and Hispanic ethnic minorities, migrant women, LBTQ women, women with disabilities and older women are disparately vulnerable,” they concluded.

But the experts were especially concerned by the current state of reproductive rights in the United States. They visited abortion clinics in Texas and Alabama and witnessed firsthand that “many of the clinics work in conditions of constant threats, harassments and vandalizing.”

“Although women have a legal right to terminate a pregnancy under federal law, ever increasing barriers are being created to prevent their access to abortion procedures,” they observed.

The late November shooting of a police officer and two civilians at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood center took place “just before the start of [their] visit,” they said, and “once again demonstrated the extreme hostility and danger faced by family planning providers and patients.”

“We urge the authorities to combat the stigma attached to reproductive and sexual health care, which leads to violence, harassment and intimidation against those seeking or providing reproductive health care, and to investigate and prosecute violence or threats of violence,” they advised.

Above all, the working group urges the U.S. to finally ratify CEDAW. As Amnesty International notes, the U.S. currently has “the dubious distinction of being the only country in the Western Hemisphere and the only industrialized democracy that has not yet ratified this treaty,” first adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979.

Ratifying CEDAW would require the U.S. to commit “to incorporate the principle of equality of men and women in their legal system.” The U.S. Senate has never voted on the treaty.

“We understand the complexity of federalism,” the working group noted, “but this cannot be regarded as a justification for failure to secure these rights.”

Published by Samantha Allen via The Daily Beast

Why it matters that Serena Williams is on the cover of Sports Illustrated

Updated by  via VOX

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Since 1954, Sports Illustrated has declared the most groundbreaking, important person in sports each year, starting with British runner Roger Bannister, the first known person to ever run a mile in under four minutes. This year the magazine has named its ninth woman ever to the list: tennis champ Serena Williams. While it may not be a shock that this dominant female athlete was named Sports Illustrated’s 2015 Sportsperson of the Year — she won the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the French Open, after all — it’s actually kind of rare, given the gender breakdown over the years.

While American Pharoah devotees shared their dismay over the choice Monday — the Triple Crown–winning horse won SI’s popular vote to get the title — writer S.L. Price recounted Williams’s tumultuous (and mostly victorious) year on the court.

Her major title bids came with plenty of health battles: an all-consuming flu, bruised bones, and busted knees, to name a few. She returned to Indian Wells Tennis Garden in March after a 14-year boycott following a matchup against Steffi Graf marred by jeering and racist comments. This year also included Williams’s disappointing loss at the US Open in September, when she lost to 43rd-ranked Roberta Vinci, missing her shot at the calendar Grand Slam and the chance to beat Graf’s record 21 career major title wins.

Off the court, though, Williams is an outspoken, stylish, confident social media darling and sports mogul with devoted fans around the world. At 34, she’s also been able to compete longer than many of her peers have been able to. And that’s why her newest title should come as no surprise.

Serena Williams is the third solo woman to receive the honor

Since Sports Illustrated started awarding athletes and coaches with its top title, the few women who have won it also shared the honor with men. Williams is one of only three women with the title who did not share the moment with a man — and she’s also the first since Mary Decker in 1983 to have the solo title. Meanwhile, 24 individual men have been named Sportsman of the Year since 1983. Among women, the title has also evaded traditional team players aside from the collective 1999 titleholders, the US Women’s National Soccer Team, after their monumental World Cup win. Here’s how women have fared on the list since 1954:

  • 1972: Billie Jean King, tennis (shared with men’s college basketball coach John Wooden)
  • 1976: Chris Evert, tennis
  • 1983: Mary Decker, track and field
  • 1984: Mary Lou Retton, gymnastics (shared with Edwin Moses, track and field)
  • 1987: Judi Brown King, track & field, and Patty Sheehan, golf (shared with six other athletes)
  • 1994: Bonnie Blair, speed skating (shared with Norwegian speed skater Johann Olav Koss)
  • 1999: US Women’s National Soccer Team
  • 2011: Pat Summit, University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach (shared with Mike Krzyzewski, Duke University men’s basketball coach)
  • 2015: Serena Williams, tennis

Choosing outstanding women athletes isn’t a groundbreaking feat for another sports authority. Since 1931, the Associated Press has named one man and one woman each as athletes of the year (Williams was named to that list in 2002, 2009, and 2013).

It’s rare to see a woman on the cover of an issue of SI who isn’t a model

While the Associated Press started publishing a gender-equal list in the 1930s, things haven’t been quite as equal for Sports Illustrated. After 61 years of publishing, SI’s weekly issues rarely feature women athletes on its covers. A University of Louisville study of the magazine from 2000 to 2011 found that women appeared on 4.9 percent of all Sports Illustrated covers; about a third of those featured women of color.

“Of the 35 covers including a female, only 18 (or 2.5 percent of all covers) featured a female as the primary or sole image,” the researchers wrote in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport. “Three covers included females, but only as insets (small boxed image), or as part of a collage background of both male and female athletes.”

Interestingly, more female athletes appeared on the covers from 1954 to 1965 than they did from 2000 to 2011. After that period, the distribution spread. By 2011, the average rate at which women were featured on the cover was about one woman per year, not counting the magazine’s highly anticipated annual swimsuit issue, despite growing participation of women in sports. The researchers attributed this to the rising dependence on corporate sports leagues, mainly the big four: the NBA, NFL, NHL, and MLB, Pacific Standard reports.

But SI has been slightly better in recent years

Considering 2015 was an incredible year for women in sports, at least in the United States, Sports Illustrated naming a woman to its annual title should be no surprise. With Williams’s big year in tennis, MMA fighter Ronda Rousey’s tough-talking near dominance, the US women’s national soccer team’s World Cup win, and the debut of professional women’s hockey, among many other landmark moments, you’d think we’ve reached a new level of respect for women athletes.

(SOURCE: Ronda Rousey on a 2015 cover of Sports Illustrated)

In some ways, we have. This year’s survey of SI covers shows an uptick in female presence: the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team’s uncanny national championship win, Rousey being called the “world’s most dominant athlete,” multiple covers on US soccer, and one on Serena Williams’s grand slam effort in August.

Last year’s SI covers featured one special Olympic preview with four covers — three of which featured women athletes — an issue with gold medal skier Mikaela Shiffrin, University of Connecticut women’s basketball star Breanna Stewart as one of six special March Madness covers, and Little League World Series phenom Mo’Ne Davis.

In 2013, there were no female athletes on the covers, and 2012 featured the US women’s Olympic gymnastics team, an all-text cover about Title IX, and Olympic gold medalist Kayla Harrison, a judoka. Prior to that, as mentioned above, the rate was about one female athlete per year.

Overall coverage of female athletes in sports media is pretty bad

Naturally, sports coverage isn’t all about Sports Illustrated. Most televised sports coverage generally goes to men’s pro and college football, basketball, and baseball, according to a 2015 study published in Communication & Sport. The study, which evaluated 25 years of sports coverage among ESPN’s SportsCenter and Los Angeles’s broadcast network affiliates, showed 3 percent of all sports coverage was dedicated to women’s sports. To be male in sports is to be the default — for example, the term March Madness nearly always means the men’s college basketball tournament, even though the women’s tournament goes by the same name.

When it comes to the amount of coverage throughout this tournament, ESPN’sSportsCenter devoted 83 on-air stories to the men’s tournament in March 2014, versus eight about the women’s tournament that year. Researchers often found the coverage was simply blah when focus turned to women athletes.

“We found that men’s sports were presented with far more enthusiasm, and excitement, the commentators consistency deploying vocal inflections, high-volume excitement, and evocative descriptors,” the researchers wrote. “Listening to commentators describe a women’s sports event was usually like hearing someone deliver a boring after-thought, with an obvious lack of enthusiasm.”

With that, it’s probably no surprise that only 10.2 percent of overall sports coverage was produced by women, according to the Women’s Media Center’s annual report on women in the US media — and that’s a 7 percent drop from 2014’s figure.

Sportsman and sportswoman? Or sportsperson?

One significant factor this year is that Sports Illustrated has called Williams the Sportsperson of the Year, taking on a more gender-neutral term than sportswoman. Does this mean the next man named to the list will also be called a sportsperson, rather than a sportsman? Until sports loses all of its gendered divisions — and who knows when that’ll be? — I guess we’ll know whenever the publication names the next man (or horse, perhaps?) to the list.

If I Had a Dollar (Why I Am a Feminist)

girl in the hat

image courtesy Devil Doll image courtesy Devil Doll

Because my mother was a painter and a beauty when artists had patrons and a woman like that needed a man to take care of her, so she married a money man.

Because my mother’s mother was a beauty and her mother was, too, and that’s what people said: “She was a beautiful woman,” as if that was the only remarkable thing.

Because I was born in 1966, the year Betty Friedan and others started the National Organization of Women and challenged an industry which required flight attendants to quit if they got married, pregnant, or reached the age of 32.

Because when my mother had me, she stopped painting and started cleaning house and throwing dinner parties and smoking too many cigarettes and crying in the mirror.

Because my mother never told me that I looked pretty because she did not want me to grow…

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A Court Ordered Sherri Shepherd to Pay Child Support for a Baby Not Biologically Her Own

A Pennsylvania court ruled Monday that Sherri Shepherd must pay child support for a baby she and her then-husband Lamar Sally had via surrogacy — even though the couple split three months before the child in question was born.

The baby boy is the biological product of Sally’s sperm and a donor egg, meaning Shepherd is not his biological mother. In April, despite her protests, Shepherd was legally declared the child’s mother on the birth certificate (initially, the surrogate mother was listed).

Shepherd maintained the surrogacy and subsequent lawsuits were all part of Sally’s elaborate and protracted plan to defraud her. The court was unconvinced, ruling the TV personality must continue paying $4,100 per month in child support, which will increase to $4,600 when the child reaches adolescence.

shepherd2Source: Mic/Getty Images

Shepherd “does not dispute that she freely entered into the gestational carrier contract,” the Superior Court ruling stated Monday, according to the Associated Press. “Baby S. would not have been born but for [her] actions and express agreement to be the child’s legal mother.”

Sally has since been vocal about the victory, speaking to a number of media outlets about the ordeal. “I’m glad it’s finally over,” Sally told People. “I’m glad the judges saw through all the lies that she put out there, and the negative media attention. If she won’t be there for L.J. [the baby] emotionally, I’ll be parent enough for the both of us.” He israising the child in Los Angeles.

Melissa B. Brisman, owner of the New Jersey-based surrogacy firm, Reproductive Possibilities LLC, which Sally and Shepherd used, celebrated the decision too.

“Surrogates don’t want to feel that someone could want a baby and then just back out,” Brisman said, according to the Associated Press. “The surrogate is not the mother.”

Don’t be a baby about it: The battle is one of a number in recent years that navigates the legally murky waters of conception and pregnancy assisted by technology and who, exactly, is liable for the resulting life. Many noted the parallels in Shepherd’s ordeal to that of actress Sofia Vergara’s, who in May was sued by her ex-fiancé, Nick Loeb, to preserve and use their biologically shared frozen embryos.

In an op-ed letter published in April in the New York Times, Loeb wrote, “keeping [the embryos] frozen forever is tantamount to killing them.”

Shepherd’s case involves a number of complicated elements. Beyond the hairy legalities that come into play with technologically assisted conception is this less-common instance of a mother being ordered to pay child support.

While Shepherd, with a reported net worth of $10 million, does not likely run the risk of finding herself in a financially inequitable dynamic, a 2011 study conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies found, on average, mothers liable for child support earn substantially less than their male counterparts.

childsupportORIGINALLY WRITTEN & PUBLISHED BY: Natasha Norman from Mic [11/25/15]