Back to the Coat Hanger or Not?

By: Rich Polley

In Mississippi, Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the only clinic proving abortions and is facing potential foreclosure.

Mississippi House Bill 1390 requires that all physicians who perform abortions have admitting privileges at a local hospital and be board certified in obstetrics and gynecology. Current physicians have no problem being board certified in obstetrics and gynecology, because they all are. The piece of missing rail road is that only one physician has admitting privileges at local hospitals.

To increase the problem these local hospitals have the right to refuse admitting privileges to physicians and to top it off two hospitals in Jackson Mississippi have Christian affiliations. So I don’t think anything including the subject of abortion will be very supportive in the hospitals.

Many fear the return of basement or back-alley abortions with the dreaded coat hanger. “I find it terrifying when I see politicians like Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant working to cut off women's access to abortion by shutting down the health centers that safely provide them to women,” wrote Tamara Tuine, writer for the Root. 

State Ordered Rape

By: Rich Polley

7 states mandate that an abortion provider perform an ultrasound procedure in which a probe is inserted into her vagina. Each woman seeking an abortion is required by the provider to offer the woman the opportunity to view the image.

Alabama state senator Linda Coleman said, "If you look up the term rape, that’s what it is: the penetration of the vagina without the women’s consent." Which is exactly what the state is doing.

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett dished out a solution for women who were going to be forced by the government to undergo a completely unnecessary ultrasound against their wills, "You can't make anybody watch, okay? Because you just have to close your eyes."  This doesn’t stop the fact that it’s still considered rape. Even if you changed the term of rape, the lone star state of Texas requires that each abortion provider must display and describe the image of the ultra sound.

Several Steps Back: Body Image - The Devil Came Back

In 2010 a study was done by Marika Tiggemann and Jessica Miller titled "The Internet and Adolescent Girls’ Weight Satisfaction and Drive for Thinness."

The title is self-explanatory. The study sampled 156 adolescent students from Australia, having them complete a questionnaire on their exposure to the internet and their perceptions on female beauty and body image. The results were disheartening. To quote the study: "Regression analyses indicated that the effects of magazines and Internet exposure were mediated by internalization and appearance comparison. It was concluded that the Internet represents a powerful sociocultural influence on young women’s lives."

In other words: the plague of body dysmorphic disorder, an issue that was only recently crusaded against in the realms of old media and magazines, has infected the internet as well.

The trouble here is not that body dysmorphia caused by media exposure is a persisting issue. It's fairly common knowledge that an obsession with body-aesthetics is an intimate part of today's media-infused culture. The danger is the new source of weight obsession: the internet.

Viewing mass media is a much more passive experience than web browsing. The negative influences of ads, magazines, and television can be countered by placing positive media right along-side it. But when it comes to the internet, the web surfer is a very active information consumer. An adolescent may expose him or herself to whatever negative imagery of misinformation they wish, and can even circumvent any attempts at informing or countering the negative stimuli entirely. In Tiggemann and Miller's study, there was found to be a correlation between negative body image and internet exposure, but not television viewing.

What is clear, then, is that this issue of body image isn't simply a case of the dead coming back. This is an entirely new abomination. To counter this new insurgence of anorexic culture, awareness organizations and support groups will have to establish a sharp presence on the internet. But the thin-ideal culture has already settled in, and its exorcism will be a very long, difficult process.

War on Women: Repeal of Equal Pay Enforcement Act

By: Rich Polley

Last Fall Glenn Grothman, State Senator of Wisconsin, brought forth a bill to repeal the Equal Pay Enforcement Act. On April 8, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed legislation that repeals the states Equal Pay Enforcement Act.

Former Dane County executive Kathleen Falk told the Huffington Post, Walker has "turned back the clock for women across Wisconsin." Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's campaign said Walker's "ideological civil war includes a war on women, and repeal today of this protection against pay discrimination is a major step backwards for Wisconsin values and basic fairness."

Equal Pay Enforcement Act, a 2009 bill, offered legal repercussions for employees/victims discriminated against based on gender, race, age, disability, religion, sexual orientation or other factors.

Grothman stated that companies are bombarded with false accusations; the Daily Beast also reported that Grothman doesn’t believe in the gender wage gap. He thinks it all a myth.

Video: Herman Cain's 1986 Sexual Harassment Training ~ A satire of how bad sexual harassment can be.

Then and Now: Where are we?

This CBS video suggests that in today’s changing society, the recession defines the roles in our everyday lives. Since Russ Long lost his job last year, him and his wife Laura are both taking on new roles in the house and out in the workforce. It is not uncommon to see the women become the “breadwinner” in the relationship anymore. Laura is maintaining a full time job while Russ takes care of the children, the house and his wife.

 As the recession began in 2007, the unemployment rates were equal between men and women, both at 4.4 percent. By September of 2007, women’s unemployment rate in America was at 7.8 percent while men’s were at a shocking 10.2 percent. Because of these numbers and change of gender in the workforce, it naturally results in a change of roles at home as well. The CBS news video suggests if there is change in the workplace, there is change at home.

Then:

There has been a complete change in women’s equality in the workforce since Muller vs. Oregon in 1908. This court case suggests that in Oregon, women are unable to work over 10 hours a day, which was not favored by many women because men were allowed to.

 Now:

In United States vs. Virginia in 1996, the Supreme Court ruled against Virginia’s Military’s Institute 7-1 that held a male-only admission policy.

Even though women only make 77 cents to every dollar that the male makes, women’s unemployment rate is significantly lower than men and it is very common and honored to see successful women in the workforce.

Women Teaming Up

Nowadays there are organizations and services that bring women together in support and recognition of their daily hardships. Women with similar issues come together to discuss their ongoing problems and address them, many of them hosting events and creating publications especially for women.

 Women of the Workforce (WOW) is an organization that provides strategies that addresses women's everyday challenges in the workforce.  Women from all across New York State meet to study and recognize organized labor, government, community based organizations, female veterans, immigrants and refugees and the education community. WOW plans the focus of regional events that helps to address these issues.

Some of these issues are as follows:

·         Challenges Women with Disabilities Face in the Workforce: Overcoming Barriers; Sharing Abilities

·         Women's Leadership: Empowering and Supporting Women
December 3, 2011

·         Filling the Gap: Programming for Female Veterans

·         Finding Affordable, Accessable, High Quality ChildCare

Just two of the hundreds of women’s empowerment and workforce groups are www.femanist.com andwww.womenforwomen.org. These organizations also discuss the greatest need  for realizing women's empowerment:

(1) technology use

 (2) social norm change

 (3) economic resilience

In 2012, it is not uncommon to come across these kind of groups on a regular basis. You would not typically see this kind of recognition for a men’s group because it is the women who succumb to unequal treatment and discrimination.

The Favored Sex: What's so Great About Men Anyways?

                Even in today’s modern and developed world, research data such as surveys continue to reveal that parents still prefer to give birth to a male versus a female. These hopes stem from the belief that the male will grow to be an economic provider for a family and their parent’s old age.  It is time to rethink this, as women are becoming a better investment.

            In the 21^st century, women typically accumulate better grades in school than boys which in turn allow them to be more equipped for new jobs that are developing. In countries such as Britain, a significant amount of women as opposed to men are now training to be doctors. Surveys are showing that women consistently achieve higher financial returns than men do.

            The increase in the employment and success of women within these past couple decades has been the driving force of economic growth in the United States as well as several other countries. According to an article in the Economist in April 2006, it is impressive that even with their duties at home, “women have still managed to contribute more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants, China and India.” Although there is still obvious continuous success of men in the community, they typically do not take on duties at home like women do, such as taking care of household duties, children and their husbands. Later on in this article, the Economist explains that yes, even with the economic boost due to women’s accomplishments, they still do receive an unfair paycheck as compared to  men in the same field, doing the same job.

                                                           

What this article surprised me about is that they claim that women continuously complain about gender exploitation in the workforce. However at the same time women are not exploited enough. What does this mean? It means that the women is the worlds most underutilized player in the game of business, where, as quoted directly from the Economist, “getting more of them into work is part of the solution to many economic woes, including shrinking populations and poverty.” This basically leads to the fear that by utilizing working women, it may lead to negative social outcomes or a lower birth rate because women will be out in the field rather than at home.