womens rights | Women of Green

Abortion rights supporters’ voices thunder at #StopTheBans rallies across the nation

By wogwpa1358 on May 21, 2019 / Featured Media, Featured Post, Health / Leave a comment

Tags: abortion, pro-choice, Protest, reproductive rights, stop the bans, womens rights

Thousands of #StopTheBans supporters – fueled by fury over a string of state laws aimed at restricting access to abortions – rallied Tuesday across the nation in a powerful statement for abortion rights. The ACLU and NARAL Pro-Choice America were among the sponsors of the national day of action, featuring more than 450 events in all 50 states. “Politicians, take notice: If you come for our reproductive freedom, you’ll have to get through ALL of us,” the ACLU said in a statement. Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Ohio and Mississippi recently approved legislation that would restrict access to abortions in their states. Kentucky and Missouri are among states considering action. Abortion foes are hoping that the Supreme Court, with the addition of conservative justices appointed by President Donald Trump, will back the measures and reverse or weaken the court’s landmark Roe v. Wade ruling. Protesters march to the Alabama Capitol to protest a bill to ban abortion that passed last week , Sunday, May 19, 2019, in Montgomery, Ala. (Photo: Butch Dill, AP) Hundreds of protesters packed the high court’s steps in the nation’s capital Tuesday, toting signs that vowed to “protect safe, legal abortion” and putting lawmakers on notice their voices would be heard. “We are not going to allow them to move our country backward,” U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn, told the […]

Continue reading... →

Million Women March being planned for January 21, 2017 in D.C.

By wogwpa1358 on November 23, 2016 / Family, Featured Post, Leadership / 1 Comment

Tags: inauguration, women of green, women's issues, women's leadership, women's march on D.C., womens rights

womens_march_dc_inauguration_women_of_green

On Friday, January 20 in Washington D.C., Donald Trump will be sworn in as the nation’s 45th president. The next day, a demonstration that aims to bring a million women and feminists to the nation’s capital will formally protest his inauguration as commander-in-chief. This march is a show of solidarity to demand our safety and health in a time when our country is marginalizing us and making sexual assault an electable and forgivable norm. EVERYONE who supports women’s rights are welcome.

Continue reading... →

U.S. Falls Far Behind In Gender Equality, U.N. Assessment Concludes

By wogwpa1358 on December 17, 2015 / Family, Featured Post, Leadership / Leave a comment

Tags: gender equality, women's empowerment, women's health, women's leadership, womens rights

The U.N. Sent 3 Foreign Women To The U.S. To Assess Gender Equality. They Were Horrified. A delegation of human rights experts from Poland, the United Kingdom and Costa Rica spent 10 days this month touring the United States so they can prepare a report on the nation’s overall treatment of women. Human rights experts Eleonora Zielinska (Poland), Alda Facio (Costa Rica), and Frances Raday (U.K.), visited the United States in December to assess gender equality. The three women, who lead a United Nations working group on discrimination against women, visited Alabama, Texas and Oregon to evaluate a wide range of U.S. policies and attitudes, as well as school, health and prison systems. The delegates were appalled by the lack of gender equality in America. They found the U.S. to be lagging far behind international human rights standards in a number of areas, including its 23 percent gender pay gap, maternity leave, affordable child care and the treatment of female migrants in detention centers. While the U.N. delegates were shocked by many things they saw in the U.S., perhaps the biggest surprise of their trip, they said, was learning that women in the country don’t seem to know what they’re missing. The most […]

Continue reading... →

Atomic Moms, Radium Girls, and Hiroshima Maidens: Part 2

By wogwpa1358 on August 5, 2015 / Arts, Family, Featured Post, Health / Leave a comment

Tags: social justice, toxins in environment, women and war, women workers, women's empowerment, women's issues, womens rights, worker's rights

The Radium Girls were so contaminated that if you stood over their graves today with a Geiger counter, the radiation levels would still cause the needles to jump more than 80 years later. They were small-town girls from New Jersey who had been hired by a local factory to paint the clock faces of luminous watches, the latest new army gadget used by American soldiers. The women were told that the glow-in-the-dark radioactive paint was harmless, and so they painted 250 dials a day, licking their brushes every few strokes with their lips and tongue to give them a fine point.

Continue reading... →

How These Nobel Peace Prize Women Used Fun to Forward Their Missions.

By wogwpa1358 on October 24, 2011 / Featured Post, Leadership / Leave a comment

Tags: Leymah Gbowee, Lisa Witter, Pray the Devil Back to Hell, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Wangari Maathai, women of green, women's empowerment, women's issues, women's leadership, womens rights, Yemeni Tawakkul Karman

Lisa Witter, Chief Strategy Officer of Fenton and co-author of The She Spot: Why Women are the Market for Changing the World – And How to Reach Them.

The last few weeks we have experienced joy and sorrow for new and old Nobel Peace Prize winners — the death of the first African woman winner, Wangari Maathai, as well as the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, and Yemeni democratic activist Tawakkul Karman for their work on women’s rights.

This group shares a number of obvious attributes: strength, leadership, risk taking and vision. Another that may not be so obvious is how fun they all are or were, and how fun may have impacted the resilience of those movements.

I have had the privilege of spending personal time with two of them — Ms. Maathi when she was in Oslo to receive her prize and with Ms. Gbowee through the last few years as she toured the U.S. telling her story of Liberian peace in the award-winning film Pray the Devil Back to Hell. I can say that they both have fierce eyes of kindness and were often funny, with larger-than-life smiles.

Fun is often thought of as superfluous, extra, something to get to when you have time and a tool not to be used in serious situations. In fact, we have sayings to reinforce this notion: “this is no laughing matter” or “serious times call for serious solutions.” But fun can be, and has been, a powerful tool for transformation when tapped appropriately, as our past and recent Nobel-Prize-winning women demonstrate.

Environmental activist Maathi and her Green Belt Movement mobilized community consciousness using tree planting as an entry point for self-determination, equity, improved livelihoods and security, and environmental conservation. As she planted trees, she worked hard but never forgot to smile or create a chorus of song with her colleagues.

While being the first African woman to win the Prize, she was not the only Nobel winner to tap the fun factor in her organizing; Leymah Gbowee did, as well. It is not often you experience what feels like a real-time, front-row seat to a Nobel Peace Prize act like you do in Pray the Devil Back to Hell. The film, released this week on PBS, chronicles Liberian women’s struggle for peace, shows the fierce organizing ability of Nobel winner Leymah Gbowee, and highlights the political skills of the first woman African President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Continue reading... →