A federal appeals court yesterday declined a request to review its recent ruling on Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage in California that was approved by voters, greatly increasing the chances that the Supreme Court will take up the issue. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law against same-sex marriage in […]
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) survived a recall attempt yesterday; the recall election was prompted by Walker’s attack last year on collective bargaining rights of public sector employees, specifically teachers, nurses, and social workers. Democratic nominee, Tom Barrett, mayor of Milwaukee, lost to Walker by 6.9 percent of the vote, with Walker taking about 53 […]
The Paycheck Fairness Act failed to get the 60 votes necessary to break the filibuster in the US Senate today and was not brought to the floor, with all Republicans voting against the bill and all Democrats voting for the bill in a straight party-line vote. (Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) must vote procedurally with […]
The Vatican censured a US nun, Sister Margaret Farley, on Monday because she wrote a book on sexuality. The book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” focused on sexuality and veered from the Church’s teachings on masturbation, homosexuality, remarriage after divorce, and gay marriage. According to CBS News, Farley said that she had […]
Protesters rallied in Istanbul on Sunday to protest proposed anti-abortion laws by Turkish Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan. An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 protesters gathered, most of them women. One protestor, Bahar Guler, told Reuters that “it is our right to choose when to give birth or to have children at all. We will not bow […]
The US Senate is scheduled to hold a procedural cloture vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act today, a bill that seeks to tighten equal pay protections. Under the proposed law, employers would be required to demonstrate that salary differences between men and women who do the same work are not due to gender. Employers would […]
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently launched “Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes Campaign,” which calls for the end of unlawful and ineffective sex segregated programs in public schools. This campaign complements an earlier campaign to “Rescind the Bush Administration 2006 Regulation Weakening prohibitions Against Sex Discrimination in Education”. The new ACLU campaign identifies sex discrimination […]
The Louisiana State Legislature passed two bills restricting abortions last week – one that prohibits abortions in the state after 20 weeks and one that requires a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound 24 hours before the procedure. The 20 week restriction, based on the unsupported premise that a fetus can feel pain […]
The Virginia Department of Health released its proposed permanent regulations for women’s health clinics on Friday. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed the Targeted Regulations on Abortion Providers (TRAP) law last year and emergency regulations have been in effect since January 1, even though there was no declared public health emergency. The law requires that first-trimester […]
A Federal District Judge blocked a portion of Florida’s voting law yesterday that put restrictions on voter registration. The judge issued an injunction against the part of the law that required those who conduct voter registration drives to turn in forms within 48 hours of collecting them. Opponents argued that the law, signed by Governor […]
Documents released yesterday show that Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York authorized payments, some as much as $20,000, to priests who sexually abused children as a means of encouraging them to leave the ministry. The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) announced the findings after discovering them in the minutes of a Milwaukee […]
The US House of Representatives voted 246-168 yesterday against the Pregnancy Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA), a bill that sought to impose criminal penalties on doctors who perform an abortion for a woman who seeks the procedure on the basis of the gender of the fetus. The bill would have also prohibited federal funding for organizations that […]
UPDATE: The House rejected this bill. Debate began in the House of Representatives yesterday on H.R. 3541, the Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act (PRENDA). The bill, sponsored by Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ), would impose fines or imprison doctors who perform desired abortions due to the fetus’s gender and bar federal funding for organizations that do not comply. […]
More women as the primary breadwinners? More men staying at home and taking care of the kids? This may sound like a prime step to gender equality and the eradication of gender roles, but unfortunately the reality is not as cheerful. Women may be replacing men as primary breadwinners in many families, but women still […]
The average American woman earns only $0.77 to every full dollar that the average American man earns. What do statistics fail to capture about the lives of women of color? A Black woman in the US earns only $0.62 to every full dollar that a white man in the U.S earns. A Hispanic woman earns […]
A West Virginia Roundtable discussion on Tuesday brought together domestic violence survivors, law enforcement officers, and domestic violence service providers to discuss methods to reduce and prevent domestic violence. The discussion was hosted by Senator Jay Rockefeller, one of the original co- sponsors of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) in 1994. As reported in […]
A fire that occurred late last week at a New Orleans women’s clinic appears to be arson. The fire, at Women with a Vision, occurred shortly after the FBI announced it was investigating arson attacks against clinics in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Women with a Vision’s executive director, Deon Haywood, told the Times Picayune that […]
A US court of appeals ruled today that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional because it discriminates against married same-sex couples that are denied federal benefits. The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston struck down the part of […]
By Fatima Goss Graves, Vice President for Education and Employment at the National Women’s Law Center For this 14th #HERvotes blog carnival, we’re blogging about equal pay and the need for the Paycheck Fairness Act – which will be on the Senate floor for a vote next week. Why do we need the Paycheck Fairness […]
The U.N. reported yesterday that a majority of the victims in last Friday’s Houla massacres in Syria were women and children. According to the reports, 49 children and 34 women were executed by Shabbiha soldiers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. UN reports and victim testimonies describe acts of torture and close-range execution; only 20 of […]
