Category Archives: Gender Equality

Traveling to the USA alone at age 13, in 1908

Forward: My Hero Grandmother Who Escaped An Arranged Marriage. By Laurie Gwen Shapiro.

“When I was nine, I joined my mother Jeanette Meiselman Shapiro to conduct an oral history of my grandmother’s dramatic escape from an arranged marriage — a thesis project for Mom’s 1970s feminism class at Pace University, where she had returned to school to finish her degree.

Not long ago, while reading a current story about girls forced to marry young for religious reasons, I felt renewed rage and pride at how daring my grandmother had been at the turn of the last century. My mother died nine years ago and only recently, when I was cleaning out a closet, did I dig up her yellowed notes on her mother’s escape and early life in America. Not everything was familiar, as I had been asked to leave the room for the more sensitive conversations. With the aid of the Internet and more oral interviews from remaining family, I’ve kept going where my mother left off.”

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Who said Donald Trump doesn’t get anything done? <\Sarcasm>

The Washington Post: What Trump has undone.

“President Trump has repeatedly argued that he’s done more than any other recent president. That’s not true, as measured by the amount of legislation he’s been able to sign. It is true, though, that Trump has undone a lot of things that were put into place by his predecessors, including President Barack Obama.

Since Jan. 20, Trump’s administration has enthusiastically and systematically undone or uprooted rules, policies and tools that predated his time in office. Below, a list of those changes, roughly organized by subject area.”

Peers pose a large threat

Deutsche Welle: Study shows German students frequently exposed to sexualized violence. “A German study has found that 48 percent of surveyed students aged 14 to 17 have experienced verbal or physical sexual violence. Researchers said that the violence was often carried out by the students’ peers.”

“When presenting the results on Thursday in the city of Wiesbaden, the study’s two main researchers highlighted one of the study’s main takeaways – that fellow students are often the perpetrators.

“The main risk for [perpetuating] sexualized violence are other youths – meaning their peers,” Professors Sabine Maschke and Ludwig Stecher said.

Around 48 percent of the perpetrators of physical sexual violence and 64 percent of those who carried out non-physical violence were “friends” or “classmates” according to the study.

Additionally, students reported that over 50 percent of non-physical sexualized violence occurs at school.”

The Mental Load

Emma: You should’ve asked.

“When a man expects his partner to ask him to do things, he’s viewing her as the manager of household chores. So it’s up to her to know what needs to be done and when.

The problem with that is that planning and organizing things is already a full-time job.

At work, once I started managing projects, I quickly stopped participating in them. I didn’t have the time.

So when we ask women to take on this task of organization, and at the same time to execute a large portion, in the end it represents 75% of the work.

Feminists call this work the mental load.”

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