Actress Gail Davis, who portrayed the “gun-toting, pigtailed rancher” Annie Oakley in the popular 1950s show has died of cancer at age 71. In 1994 Davis, who created the first western to star a female, Annie Oakley, and who starred in many Gene Autry Westerns, received a “Golden Boot” award for her contributions to Westerns. […]
The Department of Education has released guidelines to all schools and colleges on what constitutes sexual harassment. The department called on school officials to use “judgment and common sense” when fighting harassment. The guidelines say that, “In order to give rise to a complaint, sexual harassment must be sufficiently severe, persistent or pervasive that it […]
A law banning the use of Rohypnol, the so-called “rape drug”, has passed both Houses of the Florida Legislature. The drug is slipped into the drinks of unsuspecting sex-crime victims who become unable to resist an attack and often black out. Governor Lawton Chiles is expected to sign the bill because the drug, a sedative […]
A three-member state appeals panel sitting in New Jersey unanimously has ruled that Rutgers University does not have to provide health benefits to domestic partners. The panel concluded that the state is only mandated to provide benefits to spouses of state employees under a law established in 1961. The law, however, does not cover live-in […]
Operation Rescue anti-abortion activists have been picketing four high schools in California. Groups of three to twelve people have been picketing outside schools in the San Juan Unified School District. The protesters were part of a national campaign aimed at young people. But, so far, the tactic is backfiring. Shelley Benvenuti, a 16-year-old junior at […]
The Peruvian Legislature moved on March 12th to pass a law which would strike down a a penal code section allowing men who rape women to escape punishment by marrying their victims. The law also allowed men involved in a gang rape to go free if one of the men married the woman. “It was […]
The Florida Governor’s Task Force on Domestic and Sexual Violence conducted a study which found that women in Florida are not often believed by hospital staff treating them for rape. The study found that the rape victims have only a fifty percent chance of being believed, even though national statistics show that the false report […]
The Lexington Herald-Leader has appointed Vanessa Gallman to serve as the paper’s editorial page editor. Gallman most recently served as a reporter in Knight-Ridder’s Washington Bureau where she covered welfare reform and national politics. She has also worked for The Washington Post and The Charlotte Observer. Gallman, who will become the paper’s first African-American editorial […]
The board of the American Cancer Society will vote during its March 17-22 meeting on whether or not to recommend that women over 40 have annual mammograms. Though scientists are in agreement that annual mammograms for women over the age of 50 significantly cut the number of deaths from breast cancer, the ACS’s current recommendations […]
According to estimates released at the first world childbirth mortality congress opening on March 10, more than a million women and 8-10 million babies die in childbirth around the world every year. Poor childbirth conditions also result in another five million infants being handicapped for life. Congress president Dr. Daniel Weinstein of Israel said that […]
Beginning in January 1998, San Francisco-based Bank of America will extend health benefits to same-sex or opposite-sex domestic partners or to one under-65 dependent adult relative of its employees. Enrollment for the medical, dental and vision coverage will begin this fall. Partners are required to have been in “committed relationship that has existed for at […]
For women with uterine fibroids, non-cancerous growths that cause pain and bleeding, there has not been an alternative treatment to the surgical removal of the uterus, a hysterectomy. At a medical conference in Washington, DC on March 11, doctors presented an alternative procedure called embolization that involves making a quarter-inch incision and using a catheter […]
The full Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on the D&X abortion procedure on March 11. Participating in the panel were Kate Michaelman, NARAL President; Gloria Feldt, Planned Parenthood President; Vicki Sapporta, National Abortion Federation Executive Director; National Coalition of Abortion Providers President Renee Chelian; Dave Johnson […]
Officials at South Carolina’s military school the Citadel announced Monday, March 10 that one male cadet had been dismissed and nine others punished for participating in the hazing and harassment of female cadets Kim Messer and Jeanie Mentavlos who left the school in December because of the treatment. The school held private hearings on the […]
Alleging that female inmates in state prisons have been sexually assaulted and subjected to unlawful invasions of privacy, the Justice Department sued Arizona and Michigan on March 10. The lawsuits, which seek a court order requiring the states to protect female inmates from rape, sexual assault and other improper sexual conduct, come after investigations of […]
Procept, Inc., a pharmaceutical company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has announced the development of a antiviral drug that has the potential to provide women with a more effective means of protection against HIV and other STDs than current available methods. PRO 2000 is a topical microbicide that forms a chemical barrier against the entry of HIV […]
Early on Friday, March 7, a firebomb of flammable liquid was thrown through the window of the North Hollywood, California Family Planning an Associates Medical Group clinic. No injuries were incurred, but damage to the facility was estimated at $1,000. The fire started by the bomb extinguished itself before firefighters arrived. No arrests had been […]
In Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul University reopened on March 9 after being closed by the Islamic militia Taliban’s takeover of the city in September. Women are still forbidden to attend, due to the Taliban’s ban on women working or getting an education. Before the Taliban takeover, women had comprised 60% of the University’s teachers and had […]
In the face of renewed opposition to the rare D&X abortion procedure, President Clinton is standing by his decision last spring to veto legislation that would have banned the procedure with no exception to save a woman’s health. At a moving ceremony in which women who’d had the procedure told how it save their lives […]
A war crimes trial, conducted by the United Nations’ tribunal in Yugoslavia, opened on March 10 in the Hague, becoming the first collective war crimes trial since World War II atrocities were examined by Nuremberg and Tokyo courts. In the trial against three Muslims and a Croat, prosecutor Eric Ostberg said that Serb prisoners were […]
