TO Jenny Moon, the whole business of giving menus to women before men, taking orders from women before men and clearing women’s plates first just didn’t make sense, not in the East Village in 2008.

So, as she readied Apiary for its recent opening there, she and other managers told servers not to sweat that sort of thing. And they made sure the restaurant’s order-tracking software followed suit.

At most upscale restaurants such software lets servers note both the position at a table to which a dish is going and whether the diner is female, so the food’s couriers can plot to present dishes in a gender-conscious sequence.

For instance, servers at some restaurants can electronically punch in “L” for “lady.” But Apiary installed its software without that option. Maybe a gentleman’s dish would be set down ahead of his female companion’s. Would anyone really care?

Read more from the New York Times

by Elsa Orejudos Valmidiano

For over two years, I have been an after-abortion talkline counselor for Exhale, the only national non-judgmental after-abortion talkline answering phone calls from women who have had an abortion and also hearing from their family, friends, and partners.

During my training as a counselor, it truly tested my strength on what I could handle as a counselor. We not only covered difficult issues that may arise in our calls such as suicide, domestic violence, and sexual assault, but we were also required to take a tour of an abortion clinic. I was not particularly looking forward to that part of the training for I felt I would have to open a huge skeleton in my closet, a skeleton I had not really revisited in my memory for several years.
Read more »

Right now, there are unprecedented numbers of women serving in public life in the United States. The 110th Congress has set a record with 74 women lawmakers serving out of a total of 434 seats (one is vacant now). There are also 16 woman senators. Next month, there’s a strong possibility that we’ll see the number of women serving in both houses of Congress grow.

Americans may feel somewhat proud of the decreasing gender gap in the legislative branch, but the tiny nation of Rwanda has outdone the U.S. and the world. Already the world leader in the proportion of female lawmakers, Rwanda just became the first parliament in the world with a female majority. As a consequence of the elections held here the week of September 15th, today, women took 44 seats in the 80-seat assembly.

Read Josh Ruxin’s article in the NY Times

“My daughter’s dream became a nightmare,” sadly said Gloria Barrios, seven months after her daughter, US Air Force Senior Airman Blanca Luna, was murdered on Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

On March 7, 2008, Senior Airman Luna, 27, was found dead in her room at the Sheppard Air Force Base Inn, an on-base lodging facility. She had been stabbed in the back of the neck with a short knife. Luna, an Air Force Reservist with four years of prior military service in the Marine Corps including a tour in Japan, was killed three days before she was to graduate from an Air Conditioning, Ventilation and Heating training course.

Read Ann Wright’s article at TruthOut

Over the last several weeks, it has become apparent that Sarah Palin is out of touch on a whole host of issues, ranging from the bailout and the economy to foreign policy to the Supreme Court. After this week’s interview with Katie Couric, we can now add women’s health to the list.

Her answers on reproductive health issues, such as criminalizing abortion, exceptions for rape and incest, and what exactly the morning-after pill is, were a rambling mix of contradictions and platitudes, much like her answers about Russia bordering Alaska, the bailout, health care, and the economy.

Read Cecile Richards’ article at The Huffington Post

The women line the mountainside, locked hand in hand in their green battle fatigues, and begin dancing. It’s a victory dance, they say, that is routine after raids across the border on Turkish troops.

“We want a natural life, a society that revolves around women — one where women and men are equal, a society without pressure, without inequality, where all differences between people are eliminated,” says Rengin, the head of a female battalion of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

“Women grow up enslaved by society. The minute you are born as a girl, society inhibits you,” she says. “We’ve gone to war with that. If I am a woman, I need to be known by the strength of my womanhood, to get respect. Those are my rights. And it was hard for the men to accept this.”

More at CNN

Three days in a month my mother would hang around looking cool in her bedroom. She would read magazines and novels in a supine position, her head resting on a block of wood fashioned like a pillow. She would sometimes practise drawing kolams — patterns that are made with rice flour at the entrance — in an unruled notebook, and would ask me which ones I liked. Amma looked so relaxed, unhurried and undisturbed. She wouldn’t take part in household activities nor go out shopping or attending functions. On ‘those’ days, Amma wouldn’t wear the usual crimson, tear-shaped kumkum on her forehead. Instead, she sported a black, round bindi, what we called chaandu pottu, made of dried, burnt rice that was left to coagulate and dry in the cradle of the empty half of a coconut shell.

from The Times of India

The US government is cutting its funding for the supply of contraceptives to family planning clinics run by Marie Stopes International in Africa, alleging that it condones forced abortions in China.

MSI has categorically denied that it supports forced abortions or coercive sterilisation in China or anywhere else in the world, and says that the actions of the Bush government will result in more abortions in Africa, as women will be unable to get contraceptives and will end up with unwanted pregnancies.

from the Guardian

BAMIAN, Afghanistan — Far away from the Taliban insurgency, in this most peaceful corner of Afghanistan, a quiet revolution is gaining pace.

Women are driving cars — a rarity in Afghanistan — working in public offices and police stations, and sitting on local councils. There is even a female governor, the first and only one in Afghanistan.

from The New York Times

The US Supreme Court is set to hear a case this week that will provide important practical advice to workers asked to participate in an internal company investigation of alleged sexual harassment by a senior manager.

The question: Should you cooperate and speak freely, or remain silent?

“Be quiet if you want to keep your job,” says Ann Buntin Steiner, a Nashville employment lawyer.

from The Christian Science Monitor

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin “distorted the truth” by misquoting her.

At a campaign stop in California Saturday Palin urged women to vote Republican, invoking what she said was a quote by Albright, the first woman to serve as Secretary of State. Palin said the quote was printed on her Starbucks mocha cup.

from United Press International

The 38-year-old teacher wanted to participate in Iraq’s first provincial elections in four years — until she realized that a new law would require the ballot to list her name, not just her party.

Even as violence has declined, lingering fear bred by rampant crime and a small but die-hard insurgency has left many Iraqi women afraid to run in the elections, to be held by Jan. 31.

“I feel that I am unprotected,” said the teacher, speaking by telephone on condition of anonymity because of her fears. “I am not going to run in the elections because I fear for the safety of members of my family who might be targeted.”

from the Associated Press

Sheikh Muhammad al-Habadan said showing both eyes encouraged women to use eye make-up to look seductive.

The question of how much of her face a woman should cover is a controversial topic in many Muslim societies.

from BBC News

Georgia’s top court ruled in favor of a transgender politician who was slapped with a lawsuit by two political opponents who claimed she misled voters by running as a woman.

The Georgia Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling on Monday found that the two political opponents who filed the lawsuit failed to produce evidence of fraud, misconduct or illegal action after claiming that Michelle Bruce bamboozled voters by identifying herself as female.

from The Washington Post

Christine Bierman, a small-business owner, has been to the Rose Garden and met President Bush. She has received awards from the federal government for how she runs her company.

But after 28 years in business, Ms. Bierman says, she has yet to win a six-figure federal contract that would catapult her company, a distributor of industrial safety supplies based in St. Louis, into the higher-earning ranks.

And she is not alone in her frustration. Last year, female small-business owners were awarded only 3.4 percent of annual federal contracts — even though the latest statistics show women own almost half, or 10.1 million, of small businesses nationwide, and generate about $2 trillion in revenue.

from NY Times