We’re pleased to bring you another cross-post from our friends at Feminist Review. In this week’s edition, Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum reviews Michelle Goldberg’s The Means of Reproduction. –Kristen

In The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World, author and investigative journalist Michelle Goldberg uses her abilities to uncover the truth about the reproductive rights (and lack thereof) for women around the world. As we grow into a global community, the politics of sex, child bearing, and child rearing are monumental issues that are overlooked for the convenience of those in power. This book explores the reality of the situation, including many real life accounts of the struggles faced by women in countries that span four continents.

Chapter one begins with a heartbreaking tale of the first victim of an abortion ban in Nicaragua. The country deemed that abortion in any form was illegal. Jazmina Bojorge began suffering a miscarriage and due to fear of legal repercussions the doctors, against their better judgment, gave her medicine to stop the labor because helping her with the miscarriage—that is, terminating the pregnancy—would have been illegal. The delay in action caused her to die. If the doctors could have performed medical assistance in ways that are associated with abortions, it would have saved Jazmina’s life.

The book goes into great detail about the various issues that surround women’s rights and the laws and culture that repress them. Topics include contraception, pregnancy and childbirth, AIDS, female circumcision, abortion, sex-selective abortion, rape, and the role of women in society. The political stances of both the Left and the Right are dissected with suggestions of what should be done and how women can stand strong together to fight against the torment we collectively endure.

The Means of Reproduction is a hard hitting read. Goldberg opens the eyes of the reader to the unjust treatment of women due to reproduction. Feminist activists will be motivated to take stronger action after reading this book. Anyone else will be hit with the realization that they can no longer choose to be ignorant. The facts are stacked up, and it’s time to take action.

Review by Sarah Eve Nichols-Fulghum

(Crossposted at Feminist Review)

Everyone should take a look at this fascinating article at the New York Times on the phenomenon of teenage girls sticking by Chris Brown after his beating of Rihanna. According to the article:

In a recent survey of 200 teenagers by the Boston Public Health Commission, 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible for what happened; 52 percent said both bore responsibility, despite knowing that Rihanna’s injuries required hospital treatment. On a Facebook discussion, one girl wrote, “she probly ran into a door and was too embarrassed so blamed it on chris.”

I caught a clip of Oprah where Oprah opined that women who return to abusive relationships do so because low self-esteem makes them think that they can’t do better, or that they “deserved” the beating. She was speaking to a teenage girl in her audience who had argued that if Rihanna had gotten back together with Chris, she must have done something to deserve the beating and knew it. As Oprah tried to explain a more complex psychology behind the relationship, the girl adamantly shook her head “No.” I was pretty shocked by this response at the time. The Times article seeks to shed some light on this, but raised from childhood with the mantra that “guys never hit girls no matter what,” I’d be interested in further ideas as to why why teenage girls are being so supportive of Chris Brown.

I’m THRILLED to announce that my nationally touring (whohoo!) intergenerational panel, “Women, Girls, and Ladies” will be appearing on MARCH 18 at the 92nd Street Y in Tribeca.

For a taste, you can check out the piece up today in honor of International Women’s Day over at the Women’s Media Center site, where Gloria Feldt (67), Courtney Martin (29), Elizabeth Hines (33) and I (40 + 3 weeks) each share personal reflections on the economic crisis from our generational vantage point and comment on some of the unfinished feminist business of economic recovery.  Hint: It’s a lot about work and life, life and work, work and life….

For more on the March 18th panel, see our WGLs blog or the 92nd Street Y.

Just wanted to remind everyone about the NCRW Making a Difference for Women Awards Dinner and the FREE Afternoon Program that day, too, called “An Immodest Proposal: Advancing a New Era of Social Justice.” Details below:

Afternoon Program

An Immodest Proposal:
Advancing a New Era of Social Justice

Tuesday, March 3, 2009
3:00 – 5:15 pm

Moderated by WNYC’s
Adaora Udoji, host of The Takeaway

Hosted by
American Express
200 Vesey Street, New York City

Welcome:
Linda Basch, President, National Council for Research on Women
Kerrie Peraino, VP, Human Resources, Chief Diversity Officer, American Express

Featured Speakers Include:
Nancy Cantor, Chancellor and President, Syracuse University
Dina Dublon, Former EVP and CFO, JPMorgan Chase
Marcia D. Greenberger, Founder and Co-President, National Women’s Law Center
Patricia Williams, The Nation’s Mad Law Professor columnist,
Columbia University [invited]

Afternoon Program

PLEASE RSVP via e-mail to ncrw@ncrw.org, or call 212-785-7335, ext. 100.

SAVE THE DATE! The annual Making a Difference for Women Awards Dinner will be held on March 3, 2009 at Cipriani Wall Street. To order tickets: ncrw@cmevents.net. (Heads up: the NCRW Annual Conference 2009 will take place June 10-12 at The Graduate Center, CUNY.)

Making a Difference for Women Awards Dinner

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

2009 HONOREES

Sharon Allen
Chairman of the Board, Deloitte LLP

Nancy Cantor
Chancellor and President, Syracuse University

Sunita Holzer
Executive Vice President and Worldwide HR Officer, Chubb & Son

Angelique Kidjo
Grammy Award-winning Beninese singer and songwriter

Sharon C. Taylor
Senior Vice President Human Resources, Prudential Financial

Presenters will include filmmaker/philanthropist Abigail Disney, playwright (and former awardee) Eve Ensler, Maritza Gomez Montiel of Deloitte, Paul Krump of Chubb, Martin Bandier of Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Mark Grier of Prudential Financial. Grammy-winner Angélique Kidjo will also give a live performance.

Reception and Awards Dinner

6:00 pm
Cipriani Wall Street – 55 Wall Street – New York City
Festive Attire

Please RSVP by February 23, 2009 to: ncrw@cmevents.net; tel: 212 763-8591

Just had to post the amazing, emotional speech Dustin Lance Black gave at the Oscars. Black won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Milk (go see it if you haven’t!). After this, it was pretty much downhill for the Oscars:

In his inaugural address, Barack Obama said, “We will restore science to its rightful place.” Yet just a few weeks later the Stimulus Package was stripped of provisions to expand affordable family planning, “a betrayal of millions of low-income women” as Planned Parenthood termed it. Republicans successfully jettisoned the provisions on the claim that family planning would do little to stimulate the economy, though they provided no statistical or economical rationale for this, proving only that prejudice and the culture wars still take precedent over the evidence of statistical science.

Just a few weeks later and now a detailed study from the Guttmacher Institute is out clearly showing the economic and social benefits of family planning:

Publicly funded family planning prevents nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions in the United States each year, saving billions of dollars, according to new research intended to counter conservative objections to expanding the program

…

Report co-author Rachel Benson Gold called the family planning program “smart government at its best,” asserting that every dollar spent on it saves taxpayers $4 in costs associated with unintended births to mothers eligible for Medicaid-funded natal care.

For a Republican block that is so focused on saving Americans their tax dollars, family planning seems to cohere extremely well with their notions of economic stimulus after all. Let’s hope that the Democrats don’t bow out so easily on their next fight: they claim that they will soon work toward a large increase in funding for Title X, the main federal family planning program.

Let’s also hope that such two-faced rhetoric as that of Troy Newman of Operation Rescue, who termed the attempt to include family planning in the stimulus package a “shameful population control program that targeted low-income families,” disappears from the debate. Providing access to family planning and contraception does not add up to coercion. Taking away this access for those who cannot otherwise afford it does.

Courtesy of Feminist Review, I am excited to be able to continue the conversation on GWP about the relationship between feminism and religion. Last week, Allison McCarthy brought us an interview with Leora Tanenbaum, author of Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality. Today Renee Leonowicz reviews Mary Henold’s Catholic and Feminist (UNC Press) and the rise of a feminist movement that originated within the Catholicism it hopes to change. –Kristen

It may be customary for some to place Catholic and feminist identities in opposition to each other, but Mary Henold’s illuminating and meticulous examination of the Catholic feminist movement unearths a critical link between feminist consciousness and activism, and Catholic tradition and conviction. Her comprehensive research illuminates an exhaustive timeline of the Catholic feminist movement that incorporates information gathered from texts and periodicals, a number of self-conducted interviews, and archival documents.

Henold traces the beginning of the feminist movement within the Catholic community to around the same time of the emergence of the larger women’s movement in the United States. She asserts, however, that religious women’s embrace of feminism was not applied to their faith as a mere reaction to the political climate at large. Henold argues that their feminism was actually propagated by their faith, and explores the inherently radical nature of Christianity through the actions of practicing feminist Catholics who declare social justice as a principle of their faith.

The American Catholic community underwent a radical reconstruction in the 1960s that brought blossoms of feminist consciousness into the church. This change led to a struggle to assert women’s autonomy and integrate progressive ambitions within the staunch conventionalism of the church’s hierarchy, and resulted in confusion, doubt, and subdued optimism in the 1970s. A fissure formed between women who were disenchanted with, and repudiating, the church, and those still hopeful for improvement. Henold chronicles the beginning of those divergent paths, which continue today.

In Catholic and Feminist, readers are introduced to the encapsulating sisterhood of religious women, theological scholars, and laywomen born of the prestigious and virile hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Whether ruminating on the sexist implications of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s, demanding ordination through grassroots organizing, or marching against injustices alongside nonreligious activists, Catholic feminists have incorporated their zeal for revolutionary equality with their faith to challenge sexism and other forms of oppression within the church and society at large.

Review by Renee Leonowicz

Cross-posted from Feminist Review

We’re extremely pleased to give you a guest post from Allison McCarthy, who is offering a unique addition to Girl with Pen with author discussions on recent books with a feminist twist. Allison is a freelance writer based in Maryland and a recent graduate of Goucher College. Her work has been published in The Baltimore Review, ColorsNW, Girlistic, JMWW, Scribble, Dark Sky, and The Write-Side Up. –Kristen

Leora Tanenbaum is a full-time writer and the author of classic contemporary feminist texts such as Slut! Growing Up Female With A Bad Reputation and Catfight: Rivalries Among Women–From Diets to Dating, From the Boardroom to the Delivery Room. She worked for ten years at the Jewish Education department of the National Headquarters of HADASSAH: The Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her new book, Taking Back God: American Women Rising Up for Religious Equality (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), explores the complex relationships between American women and faiths such as Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including many historical texts and personal interviews, Tanenbaum analyzes the dynamics of religion and feminism with skillful insight and nuanced sensitivity. In a recent phone interview, Tanenbaum discussed her work with this groundbreaking new book:

1.) Although this book may seem like a departure from the themes of your previous two books, it still carries a strong current of secular feminism. Do you see this book as continuing the work of your previous books?

It does on the face seem to be very different, but everything I write is ultimately about the same concern: to improve the lives of girls and women. Obviously, if we improve the lives of girls and women, it will improve the lives of boys and men. [My books] share in common the ways females are socialized in our culture and certainly in our culture, religion is chock-full of socialization of females to behave in certain circumscribed ways.

2.) Have you always self-identified as an Orthodox Jewish feminist? Were there any conflicts in your life that fractured these two identities?

Click to keep reading!

I have never identified as Orthodox. My community is Orthodox and I send my children to Orthodox schools; my social life and friends, my synagogue, they all revolve around the Orthodox community. But I don’t consider myself Orthodox. That’s partly a function of the fact that I take Jewish law very seriously and for people who take Halakhah (Jewish Law) seriously, Orthodoxy tends to be the best fit. But it is very difficult to be feminist and Orthodox. Orthodoxy is a movement that advances many ideas that I do not share. If I did identify myself as Orthodox, many people would be led to the conclusion that I believe in the inequality of women and the inequality of lesbian and gays, which I don’t. There are any number of ideological issues in which I part with Orthodoxy. Having said that, I don’t call myself Conservative or Reform because I’m not a part of those movements. There is a feminist Orthodox organization and I write about it in the book, The Jewish Feminist Orthodox Alliance. I’m also involved in an alternative prayer group which, in many ways, follows Orthodox practice but departs from mainstream Orthodoxy in that women take on leadership roles in this prayer service that, normally, they are not permitted to take on.

3.) Can you talk about the ordination issues within sects of Judaism, Christianity and Islam?

In an Orthodox Jewish Synagogue, men and women sit separately. The architecture is such that women either sit next to the men, but separate, with a partition between them, or they sit behind the men with a partition between them, or they sit upstairs in a gallery overlooking the main sanctuary. Women are not allowed to lead any part of the prayer service, including reading from the Torah, which is the centerpiece of the service, and in Orthodoxy, women are not allowed to become rabbis. If you’re a woman and you’re Orthodox, you’re really never a full participant; you’re really an onlooker. A lot of women don’t mind that. Sometimes you want to be a passive onlooker or don’t want to be asked to take on a leadership role. But you can never achieve equality unless you have equal access to leadership. Within Orthodoxy, there’s really not much space for feminist activism because of the way everything is structured. A lot of people opposed to feminism say, “Well, if you don’t like Orthodoxy, why not go to a more liberal movement, like the Conservative movement?” But the problem there is that other movements have different theologies and someone who has the belief system of adhering to Jewish law may not feel that [another denomination] is a good fit for them.

This issue is similar to Catholic women being unable to be ordained as priests. Many people believe that the horrible sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church would not have occurred had there been women in leadership positions. Likewise, Muslim women cannot be recognized as imams, so Muslim women also are shut out of their power structure in their communities and mosques.

4.) What common patriarchal practices do Judaism, Islam and Christianity share?

All three religions have at their center a belief in a God who is described in male terms. This has resulted in the idea that God is male. Even though Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all emphasize that God is neither male nor female, in practice most adherents do think of God in male terms. This had led to the belief that men are closer to God than women are. The feminist theologian Mary Daly has said that “If God is male, then the male is God.” With this mindset in place, it’s easy to understand how the religions have developed over time to value men more than women. If God is neither male nor female, then why do we talk about God in masculine language? My opinion is that it would be better to alternate masculine and feminine language—to describe God as both he and she—in order to bring to the forefront the fact that God transcends gender entirely.

5.) Your book is written from frequently marginalized perspectives: modern spiritual women of Muslim, Christian, and Judaism’s organized religious sects, with a focus on those who are invested in their religion’s rituals and traditions. Why do you think the religious beliefs of these women are so often ignored in mainstream feminist writing?

Mainstream feminist thought hasn’t addressed religion all that much. I think in general, intellectuals tend to look down on religion because people who have faith are to some extent admitting that they’re not using reason totally in how they perceive or understand the world. They’re willing to suspend reason, at least in part. I think that makes intellectuals, feminists included, somewhat dismissive. I find that approach very interesting because I consider myself intellectual and feminist. The reason I love Judaism so much is that I see it as a highly intellectualized religion. In Jewish tradition, the cerebral is so highly valued. But it’s still a religion and there’s still a belief system about a deity, and at the end of the day, if you don’t buy into belief systems about a deity, it’s very easy to dismiss those who do have that belief.

6.) Your style choices for this book reflect a thoughtful, conversational tone of intimacy with your reader, yet the research is still highly rigorous. Was it important for you to approach writing this book in non-academic ways?

In all three of my books, I strive to create an atmosphere that’s similar to a consciousness-raising group. I want the reader to feel that he or she is part of a larger conversation of like-minded people who are sharing personal details of their lives with a larger goal to change things, to make them better. To me, if it’s too academic or too distanced, I’m not going to be able to achieve that goal. One thing that I do is try to make the reader feel immediacy with my interviewees: I describe what they look like, what they’re wearing, what their voices sound like. I very much want the reader to feel included and enveloped in this larger conversation.

7.) What advice would you offer to women looking to merge a feminist political identity with their religious institutions?

The first thing I would recommend is to learn as much as you can about your religious tradition and your religious history. In Christianity and Islam, the cores of those religions really are feminist in my opinion. Jesus was a feminist. A large part of his mission was to get women to be treated with respect and he personally treated women with respect. Mohammed the prophet also elevated women’s status in seventh century Arabia: he gave women rights in inheritance and in marriage that they did not have before. Know your facts about your religion and if you already have a good knowledge base, deepen your knowledge base. I would also recommend finding other like-minded people in your religious community–the Internet is fantastic for this. Communicate and strategize for what you can do together. The voice is so much louder when you have more than one person talking. I also recommend that, if you are part of a church or mosque or synagogue, you approach a religious leader and talk to them about specific ideas about how women can be given a more visible role and more responsibility. Change happens from grassroots pressure, but it also happens when people from the grassroots work together with their leaders. My other suggestion is in all of these religious traditions, there is a very strong emphasis on giving money to charity. When you’re figuring out where you’re giving your charitable dollars, don’t just unthinkingly give it to your local religious institution if that institution is not treating women with equality. Do some research and find an organization that does advocate for women’s equality and give your charitable dollars to that organization or non-profit instead.

8.) What writing projects are you currently working on?

I’m not working on another book yet, but I hope to write about LGBT people of faith.

A day late, but on behalf of the whole Girl with Pen community I wanted to wish a smashing, happy 40th to our founder and inspiration, Deborah Siegel. Deborah rocked some truly glamorous locks (see pic of us to the left) at a fabulous party that proved that women really can find common ground across generations– at least in having a good time drinking wine and eating chocolate cake. 🙂 Happy Birthday, Deborah!!!

With the economic downturn and an $800 billion stimulus and recovery package going through the Hill, it’s no surprise that welfare, or the “W” word as the New York Times termed it in an article yesterday, is making the rounds once again. If ever there were a need for an influx of research into the journalist’s notebook and the politician’s rationale, it is now when the word “welfare” will be sure to once again pervade popular lingo with all the attendant stereotypes.

The Times article cites Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation’s taking a traditional, conservative, Reaganesque stance on welfare:

“I find it offensive that they’re trying to sneak things in there,” Mr. Rector said of the bill’s supporters. “None of these programs deals with the fundamental causes of poverty, which are low levels of work and lower levels of marriage. They just say, ‘Give me more.’ ”

With 524,000 jobs lost in December and joblessness at 7.2%, a 16-year high, I wonder what Rector and other conservatives expect those who just can’t find work to do in the years ahead while the economy, as Obama has emphasized, will very slowly repower itself (hopefully). For many, jobs will be hard to come by.

But most offensive is the myth of the “welfare queen” that Rector invokes with references to “lower levels of marriage” and welfare as a direct underminer of marriage. Rector is well aware that such language is meant to image up racialized and gendered ideas of the innercity single mother who ostensibly gets herself pregnant and remains unmarried to bring in optimal welfare income.

To give credit to the Times, on the same day, it published an editorial entitled “No Welfare, No Work” defending welfare programs:

The truth is, there will always be people who need to rely on welfare, especially when the economy takes a grim turn. Civilized societies make sure that when people are in desperate need of help, the money is there to take care of them.

Yet the article on the W-word relies on more of a he-said, she-said back-and-forth, playing into people’s preconceived stereotypes, referencing no studies on the actual benefits and repercussions of welfare as studied by sociologists and economists. I’ve recently begun to read works on urban poverty, including William Julius Wilson’s When Work Disappears: The New World of the New Urban Poor. Published in 1997, just after Congress did away with Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), the study reveals the conundrum of a new urban poor defined primarily by the lack of jobs available to them.

Importantly, Wilson stridently emphasizes the lack of evidence for the idea that “a direct causal connection exists between the level of welfare benefits and the likelihood that a young woman will bear a child outside marriage,” as pundits and politicians often claim when criticizing welfare.

Wilson writes:

The scientific evidence offers little support for the claim that AFDC benefits play a significant role in promoting out-of-wedlock births. Research examining the association between the generosity fo welfare benefits and out-of-wedlock childbearing and teen pregnancy indicates that benefit levels have no significant effect on the likelihood that African-American girls and women will have children outside marriage; likewise, welfare rates have either no significant effect or only a small effect on the likelihood that whites will have children outside marriage. There is no evidence to suggest that welfare is a major factor in the rise of childbearing outside marriage.

As a discussion on welfare once again becomes part of the national dialogue, I hope that it doesn’t fall into the typical stereotypes it did back in the ‘90s. Growing up in a predominantly white, middle-to-upper middle class suburb in Connecticut, I have multiple memories of adults and news programs discussing the “Puerto Rican, welfare queens” in neighboring Hartford. Let’s hope that discussions today will be more nuanced, infused with better research and with a deeper understanding of those very real problems that face all who are affected in this downturn, but particularly the urban poor.