Women artists including Paula Cole, Judy Collins, Janis Ian, Jewel, Helen Reddy, Phoebe Snow, Odetta and Mandy Barnett donated their time and talents to a benefit performance for family planning services at Madison Square Garden Monday. Proceeds from the “History of Women in Music Concert” will benefit Zero Population Growth’s Turner/Fonda Family Planning Outreach Project. […]
Over 300 women’s rights activists from around the world met in Bangladesh Wednesday for a three day conference addressing the sexual exploitation of women. The conference was organized by the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), an umbrella organization that represents 50 women’s organizations worldwide. The organization’s president, Philippine native Aurora Javate de Dios, addressed […]
Two weeks after civil rights lawyers filed a complaint with the U.S. Labor Department that graduate students working as employees should be covered by the University of California’s federal contractor-mandated affirmative action plan, California Assembly Democrats have urged UC to postpone its ban on affirmative action admissions. Assembly Speaker Cruz Bustamente asked UC to delay […]
The state of Alabama asked a federal appeals court to uphold a 1992 Alabama law banning funds for any campus group that “fosters or promotes a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the (state’s) sodomy and sexual misconduct laws” in order to keep lesbian and gay campus groups from receiving state funds. Last year, a federal […]
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the government may not use statistical sampling in the upcoming year 2000 census for the purposes of apportionment. The Court did not rule on whether statistical estimates could be used in calculations for other purposes. Census figures are of great political importance because they used in apportionment (defining […]
Danial J. Williams was convicted of raping and stabbing the wife of a neighbor and Navy colleague in July 1997. Six other men who had also been current or former members of the U.S. navy are also charged in the crime. As part of a plea bargain that would protect him from a death sentence, […]
Scientists have long hypothesized that women’s biology makes them naturally monogamous and that men are naturally prone to stray and seek multiple sexual partners. This argument is based on the theory that women’s more limited opportunities for reproduction (9 months for each pregnancy, with time to wean children in between) and need for help in […]
A recent finding may help to explain why women who have children before the age of 30 have less risk of breast cancer than those who become pregnant later in life or never have children. Researchers at the Texas A&M Health Sciences Center found that young mothers gain protection from a protein called alpha-fetoprotein (AFP). […]
Traditional beliefs that tie women to early marriage and child-rearing without the help of their husbands have made it difficult for Japanese women to excel in the business world. Women often serve as assistants and helpers to their male colleagues, and are denied the opportunity to lead. Poor child care, lack of maternity leave benefits, […]
DNA from a strand of hair found near the home of murdered obstetrician-gynecologist and abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian closely matches the DNA found in another strand of hair from a former home of 44-year-old anti-abortion protester James C. Kopp. Technicians will conduct further tests to verify that the two strands both came from Kopp. […]
A bill sponsored by Republican Delegate Robert G. Marshall of the Virginia House of delegates has would damage women’s health by reducing women’s access to reproductive health services including abortion. The new law would require abortion clinics to have certain architectural requirements that are currently applied to hospitals. For example, hallways must be at least […]
Last August, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced his intention to rule Pakistan under a system of Islamic Shari’a law by proposing a constitutional amendment that would eliminate all secular laws and institute laws based on the Muslim holy book, the Koran. Under the amendment, the government would have complete power to “prescribe what is […]
More than 200 women from 26 Mexican states gathered together this weekend at the first National Assembly of the Feminists’ Political Group. Patricia Mercado is a leader in the movement to incorporate women’s issues into the political sphere. Called “DiVersa,” the movement lists legalized abortion, equal rights for homosexuals and indigenous peoples, increased financial resources […]
Claire (Schillace) Donahue was the first woman drafted to play in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1943, and played for four seasons as a center fielder for the Racine, Wisconsin Belles. The women’s league was established during World War II, when the major leagues were suffering a shortage of players due to […]
The number of young women who smoke remains shockingly high, despite educational campaigns and widespread public knowledge about the health hazards of smoking. Many educators suspect that young women are especially vulnerable to smoking campaigns because advertisers have connected smoking with thinness, because young women often smoke as a means of maintaining their weight, and […]
President Clinton proposed a $4.5 million initiative to protect abortion clinics from anti-abortion violence today, on the 26th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion. Under the initiative, security professionals would assess abortion clinics’ risk for attack, and money would be allocated to help clinics […]
In countries throughout the Middle East, India, Pakistan, and Brazil, women and girls are routinely killed by family members who believe that they have violated the family’s honor in some way. Most often, women are thought to violate their family’s honor by losing their virginity. A girl or woman who has been accused of losing […]
The first person accused of violating California’s new “cyberstalking” law has been charged with computer stalking, using a computer to commit fraud, deceive, or extort, and three counts of solicitation to commit sexual assault. Fifty-year-old Gary S. Dellapenta began stalking the plaintiff after she refused his romantic advances. She alleges that Dellapenta was so persistent […]
The National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, D.C., will soon boast a new exhibit profiling the experiences and contributions of Jewish female veterans of major U.S. wars and discussing women’s historical role in war efforts. The exhibit will consider how Jewish women overcame discrimination based on their sex and their faith to […]
Eleanor Smeal, national feminist leader and one of the nation’s leading experts on anti-abortion terrorism, today released the results of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s sixth annual National Clinic Violence Survey Report, the most comprehensive study of anti-abortion violence in the United States. The 1998 survey shows that in the first seven months of 1998, 22.2% […]
