Captain Barbara Duffy of the Milwaukee Fire Department was honored with her high school’s Distinguished Alum of the Year award by the John Marshall High School Alumni Association. Captain Duffy is the highest-ranking woman firefighter in her department. In her acceptance speech she spoke of the bias that she has overcome to be a female […]
Officer John Joseph Mark of the Milwaukee Police Department was charged this week with assaulting a female citizen after she resisted his sexual advances. He then lied about the encounter to investigators, saying that the woman fabricated the story. Marek, 27, was charged with a felony count of misconduct in office, and three misdemeanors including […]
Girls are being excluded at an alarming rate from vocational programs in the higher-paying trades, the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) announced today. Nationwide, male students make up the majority of students in drafting, computer installation and repair, carpentry, and automotive classes while females make up 90 percent of the students in child development, health […]
A multi-million dollar funding gap for the United Nations World Food Program’s work in Afghanistan has resulted in cutbacks on relief projects throughout the country. These cutbacks have forced families to take on debt, reduce their dietary intake and sell their assets and livestock, according to Nigel Fisher, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for […]
Inmates in need of abortion services at the Cuyahoga County Jail in Ohio will now receive transportation to clinics that can perform the procedure. The county will also provide sex education programs and information on contraception, abortion, and adoption to inmates as part of a legal settlement reached with a former prisoner, Yuriko Kawaguchi. In […]
Eighty percent of all US women who go to emergency rooms after being sexually assaulted are not given emergency contraception to prevent pregnancy, according to a study released Monday by Johns Hopkins University. Another 42 percent are not screened for sexually transmitted diseases or given drugs to prevent infection, the study concluded. “This points to […]
Nick News, a television show that provides educational programming for kids, is producing a news special about gay parenting and discrimination against homosexuals. The show will feature recently self-outed lesbian mom Rosie O’Donnell, members of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Gay and Lesbian Education Network, and representatives from the conservative right wing. […]
In a press conference held earlier today, Secretary of State Colin Powell unveiled the Annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, mandated by the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000. This year, the report investigated government anti-trafficking efforts in 89 countries, excluding those with insufficient information or fewer than 100 trafficking cases. As […]
Mara Teresa Macias v. Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Ihde will be heard in a San Francisco courthouse beginning on June 17th. Mara Teresa Macias was shot to death by her estranged husband, Avelino Macias, on April 15, 1996. Her mother was also shot, but survived. Prior to her death, Teresa had called the Sonoma County […]
A new report by the Police Professionalism Initiative at the University of Nebraska at Omaha documents disturbing nationwide occurrences of female drivers being stopped by male police officers and subjected to sexual harassment and assault. The report examined a decade of over 400 media accounts describing incidents across the United States. Only 100 of the […]
After a series of cases of excessive force, unjustified shootings, and evidence planting, the U.S. Department of Justice has decided to send a team of investigators to review the Miami Police Department. The city and the Chief have said that they welcome the investigation, which comes shortly after this year’s highly publicized case where 13 […]
A draft proposal outlining the Catholic Church’s response to child sexual abuse cases falls just short of the zero tolerance policy hoped for by victims and victim advocates. The proposal, which will be debated at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to be held in Dallas next week, recommends that every priest who sexually abuses […]
Forty Honduran women and girls, lured by the promise of jobs as maids and waitresses, trekked for days from Choluteca, Honduras to Fort Worth, Texas only to be tricked and forced into a Texas couple’s sex trafficking ring. In testimony delivered last Friday, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Special Agent George Ramirez described the sex […]
Voters in Switzerland approved the decriminalization of abortion in a pivotal decision that Swiss Justice Minister Ruth Metzler called a “historic victory for women.” In an effort to challenge a law passed by Swiss lawmakers last year, an anti-abortion coalition brought a referendum before voters Sunday. In a country where 44.1 percent of the population […]
Republican leaders in Congress are trying to resurrect a provision that would allow churches to play a larger role in the political process and give the religious right new ammunition in their ongoing battle against reproductive rights. Currently, churches, synagogues, mosques and other non-profit religious organizations must refrain from directly supporting or opposing political candidates […]
United Nations Envoy for Recovery, Relief, and Reconstruction Nigel Fisher revealed that the international community has provided “insufficient” aid to Afghanistan and noted that the country is still undergoing an “immediate humanitarian crisis,” evidenced by widespread hunger. According to the World Food Program (WFP), the agency needs more than $585 million to deliver aid to […]
The 23-member United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women kicks off its 27th biannual session today at UN Headquarters in New York to review implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Specifically, the Committee will evaluate treaty compliance for Suriname, Saint Kitts and Nevis, […]
The city of Boston and the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Department in Massachusetts settled a class-action lawsuit this week, agreeing to pay $10 million to over 5,000 women who were wrongfully strip searched at a local jail over a period of four years. The women, many of whom were arrested for petty crimes including failure to […]
Mildred Wirt Benson, creator of Nancy Drew, the brave sleuth who preferred to be called “interesting” rather than “pretty,” died at 96 in Toledo, Ohio. Benson, who was still working as a columnist at the Toledo Blade despite her technical retirement a year ago, became ill at work Tuesday. She was taken to the Toledo […]
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released a report Wednesday showing that the United States has the highest teen birth rates among all 28-member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The UNICEF report, “A League Table of Teenage Births in Rich Nations,” indicated that 1.25 million teenagers become pregnant every year […]
