Congress didn’t adapt to the women among them until this century even though the first woman Senator was seated in 1922. The Senate still behaves like a “boy’s club,” as New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s memoir Off the Sidelines revealed. (‘Don’t lose too much weight now. I like my girls chubby!’”) In 2008, the Senate swimming pool was males-only because some of the men liked to swim naked and they fought to retain this privilege, women be damned. The women’s restroom closest to the Senate floor had only two toilets until women protested in 2013 when there were 20 women senators. And this week, the Senate discovered that women Senators give birth but Senate rules don’t allow her to bring her baby onto the Senate floor.
Choose one: your baby or your Senate vote.
Women’s work was a subject repeated in the news this past week. Whether a Senator or a retail cashier, CEO or sex worker, our society and our legal system fails women. An overarching regulation guaranteeing equal rights to women still hasn’t been approved 36 years after being sent to the states for ratification. The ERA now needs only two more states to maybe become federal law, if Congress extends the deadline for ratification that expired 36 years ago. Last week, it was ratified in the Illinois Senate and now needs House ratification. (H/T to Vega for the correction.)
This week drew attention to the gap in pay between men and women. The point is that women don’t earn less than men, we’re paid less even when we do exactly the same work as men. The pay gap isn’t due to the job categories that employ women, although once a particular type of work becomes more valued and higher paid, more men are hired than women.
Despite all the data showing this reality (and women not being secretive about it), 1 in 2 Americans don’t know the pay gap exists, and it is getting worse. A U.S. study found that over the past two years the pay gap worsened for women under 40.
Then there’s the complex topic of sex work. A new set of laws isn’t being embraced as giving sex workers more protection. There’s a bigger issue than FOSTA/SESTA. Should prostitution be legalized so workers can be open about it and thus safer? How can we eliminate sex trafficking without making voluntary prostitution more dangerous?
Tammy Duckworth, the first sitting U.S. Senator to give birth, is only one of 10 women to do so while holding any federal office
Since this hasn’t happened before, the Senate has no workplace accommodation for a new mother, putting Duckworth in a position similar to other women in less prestigious jobs with just as little support from the men in charge (see bold in text below).
"As tough as juggling the demands of motherhood and being a Senator can be, I'm hardly alone or unique as a working parent," Duckworth said in a statement, "and my children only make me more committed to doing my job and standing up for hardworking families everywhere."
First, Duckworth is seizing the opportunity to call for adjusting Senate rules to accommodate new parents. [...]
Duckworth says the most problematic Senate rules generally prevent anyone who isn't a senator, a designated aide, or other official from being on the Senate floor. Because a senator must be on the floor in order to vote, she argues that she should be allowed to bring her young child with her.
"For me to find out that there are issues with the United States Senate's rules where I may not be able to vote or bring my child onto the floor of the Senate when I need to vote because we ban children from the floor, I thought, 'Wow, I feel like I'm living in the 19th century instead of the 21st,' " she told CNN last month.
A spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declined to comment on Duckworth's proposal.
Tuesday was Equal Pay Day
Equal Pay Day marks how far into the year (97.95 days) a woman typically has to work into the next year to make what men were paid in 2017. The equal pay gap won’t be closed for women until 2059 unless we make a change fast. It is even longer for Latinas (2233) and Black women (2124). On average, women are paid just 80 cents for every dollar earned by earned by white, non-Hispanic men.
In many states, it’s legal to pay disabled women less than minimum wage and everywhere all people with disabilities, on average, earn less than non-disabled.
The median pay for women with disabilities is 72 cents for every dollar earned by men with disabilities. And in 2016, an American Association of University Women report found that people with disabilities made only 68 cents for every dollar non-disabled people earned.
The inequality of pay is one reason why women are leading the wave of strikes in the U.S.
The spreading teachers strikes are for wages and benefits – but they arise from a social landscape scoured by gender and racial inequalities.
Striking women hear this kind of guilt-trip crap from a man in charge
If a woman/mother isn’t home caring for her child, someone (men?) will sexually assault them? I’ve a different solution for this problem, if it exists. Those poor abandoned children whose teacher mothers are striking for better pay and working conditions are going hungry because their single mother doesn’t have money? No, Bevin, the striking women are not the problem.
It’s a familiar story to almost any woman in the workforce, from minimum-wage earners to striving assistants to C.E.O.s: “Despite being a leader, I am still left off of important e-mails, left out of important decision-making processes, and left in the dark,” one woman wrote in a survey conducted by theSkimm. “When the group is together or a speaker is addressing us, they tend to only look towards the men—even with things as small as eye contact . . . the ‘boys’ club’ mentality is, unfortunately, still alive and thriving.” Other women recalled similar situations: being passed over for promotions, watching their female co-workers struggle to break through, or facing sexual harassment that drove them out of their industries. Their stories are a necessary reminder that despite the advances made by the #MeToo movement, millennial women are still running up against many of the same gender dynamics faced by generations before them—even if they don’t realize it themselves.
Part of being a woman is being judged if you are an acceptable version of a woman
Sexism and Sumo wrestling, admittedly, is nothing I ever considered but now that I have, I oppose it
In reading to learn enough about Sumo wrestling to decide if this story deserved attention, I learned that violence and sexual harassment of Sumo wrestlers to each other is also an issue.
Sumo has been in the headlines in recent weeks after women providing medical assistance were asked to leave a sumo ring, and a female politician was barred from giving a speech from the ring.
In the past, girls and boys have both been allowed to get in the ring and grapple with the sport’s famously hefty stars at the outreach events.
But an official told AFP that the Japan Sumo Association last week requested girls be barred from participating in a programme for children in Shizuoka prefecture, part of an event designed to showcase the sport to local fans.
source
FOSTA/SESTA is messy
Women are responding to the “protection” the government has offered in the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) and the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) bills signed into law this week. Bottom line is this doesn’t feel like protection. The public relations pitch about the bills is that they make it easier to hold websites accountable for what users share (e.g., pimping and sex trafficking) but sex workers aren’t feeling safer. If you want to know the details about these bills, read this article that explains why this is the laws sum effect.
In reality, the legislation Trump signed will do nothing to eliminate sex trafficking. But it will do a great deal to imperil everything from sex workers’ health and safety to internet freedom, not to mention the First Amendment.
Comments to that story point out problems with the bills.
The problem is that the law’s effect goes far, far beyond prosecutions. [...]
The laws broad wording lets any prosecutor decide what it really means: a notorious flagrant violation or an unintended and unwanted ad/notice that slipped by? We’ve all seen how prosecutors can suddenly decide to crack down, charging everything possible and targeting certain crimes or groups for their own agendas (see Sessions, Jeff).
That can have a chilling effect on people who are really trying to be ethical and screen out minors and victims of trafficking. It potentially gives prosecutors license to take down those they find offensive. Can you imagine Jeff Session deciding to go after Grindr and Tinder, ostensibly because of a SESTA violation that slipped through the cracks but really because they offend his puritan morality by letting people get together sexually (yes, his boss does it, but that’s different!)?
And this one.
The bill is being advertised as targeting sex trafficking which everyone agrees with but it also includes 10 year sentences for web site owners who allow consentual [sic] sex workers to post ads, that is the bait and switch they did.
In disability forums online, people claim (based on their lived experiences) that many sex workers are disabled due to needing to set their own work hours and to have unreported income because employment opportunities, SSD, or SSI don’t provide enough income to survive. Also, the legislation will impact disabled folks who aren't sex workers by banning things like nude video chats on Skype.
The Guardian pointed out that Sex workers fear violence as US cracks down on online ads: 'Girls will die.'
Phoenix Calida’s friends are preparing for death. Some are sending photos of tattoos to make it easier to identify their bodies. Others are giving instructions for eulogies.
Calida, 35, is a Chicago-based sex worker who has depended on websites that host classified ads, such as Craigslist and Backpage.com, to meet and screen clients. But the US government’s recent crackdown on those platforms has abruptly eliminated many workers’ primary source of income, forcing some to turn to the streets or to rely on abusive pimps, greatly increasing the risk of violence.
“Girls are going back to the streets and they are going to die in the streets, and nobody cares,” said Calida, a mother of two, who said she used to do street work and fears she will have to start again to make ends meet. “Everybody is terrified.”
Girl violates the no jiggle not-a-rule and Florida high school censors her breasts and adds a new rule to the dress code
In a statement released few days after the incident, Mitchell Teitelbaum, the district's general counsel, noted that the situation was mishandled but contended that Martinez broke the rules because she had distracted other students by not wearing a bra. [...]
The school's dress code policy does not specifically require or address bras and undergarments.
It states that students "are expected to dress appropriately for school and for the business of learning with proper attention given to personal cleanliness, grooming, and neatness." [...]
...the district will be amending its dress code policy to require bras and undergarments.
I refuse to be silenced Op Ed by Asia Argento who spoke up about being raped by Harvey Weinstein
‘Play dumb, be silent, act sexy.’ Women around the globe are fed up with the shallow, old demands powerful men place on them.
Whore. Liar. Traitor. Opportunist.
I have been called all of these things and more since I first began to speak out last October about being raped in 1997, when I was 21 years old, by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. For speaking my truth, I have been slut-shamed, victim-blamed, bullied, and threatened on a daily basis. And I am not alone. [...]
What began in Italy is now manifest here, public discourse degraded into a sick tabloid fantasy. Of sex, corruption, violence and lies. What began with Berlusconi continues with Trump and Weinstein. All men in positions of power and of a now all-too-familiar type, view women as chattels to serve their sexual lusts, to puff up their fragile egos, and then, later, try cover up their crimes by bribery, threats and intimidation. The exploitation of women has been central to each of their paths to power. Weinstein used his company to hunt for prey. Trump, the Miss USA Pageant, to gain power and influence in the business and media world.
Blavity: Janelle Monáe And Tessa Thompson Are Pretty Much Giving Black Girls Their Own 'Vagina Monologues' With New 'PYNK' Music Video
Janelle Monáe debuted her new music video, "PYNK," featuring Grimes, this week, and it is the visual representation of womanhood! In all of their colorful splendor, women are celebrated for their inner strength and outer sexiness in the video.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN PROVIDES A WEEKLY SUMMARY OF NEWS ON WOMEN'S ISSUES AND INFORMATION ON CURRENT POLITICAL ACTIONS.
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April is Black Women’s History Month
Do you know this woman’s story?