Fifty years ago today, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act into law, requiring men and women be paid equally for equal work. Argue the statistics whichever way you want, but the pay gap persists. White women earn, on average, 77 cents to the white male dollar. Black woman earn 69 cents, and Latina women earn 57 cents. (Infographic by Emily Nemens for LeanIn.Org.)
(Source: leanin, via jessbennett)
What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?
Over the next month, more than 1 million women in this country will graduate from college. They will enter the workforce with higher GPAs than their male peers. Many will continue on to earn advanced degrees. For these bright young women, the world is their oyster.
Or is it?
Studies show that even after college, women are less ambitious than their male peers. They avoid leadership roles. They are afraid to speak up.
Why do women harbor such fear? Why are they afraid to raise their hands? We asked young women to answer the question: What would you do if you weren’t afraid?The answers were inspiring, staggering, enlightening, eye-opening.
Now we want you to share your story. What would you do if you weren’t afraid? And why aren’t you doing it already?
It wasn’t until 1920 that women were granted suffrage, but it was 1917 when members of the National Women’s Party — Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and others — picketed outside the White House, burning copies of Woodrow Wilson’s speeches and demanding the right to vote. What resulted — mass arrests (most for “obstructing traffic”), unlawful imprisonment and bloody beatings — became known as the Night of Terror, though it’s fair to say most among my generation don’t know it.
The Night of Terror took place on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Workhouse Prison, in Occoquan, Virginia, ordered his guards to teach the suffragists a lesson. For weeks, the women’s only water had come from an open pail. Their food had been infested with worms. But on this night, some 40 prison guards wielding clubs beat the women senseless — grabbing, dragging, choking, kicking and pinching them, according to affidavits recounting the attacks.
Political portraiture doesn’t often feature women, so artist Emily Nemens decided to paint all 90+ female members of Congress — in watercolor. The result is 47 linear feet of women in power — and a stark display of uniform power suits, bouffant hair, and toothy smiles. Read more
(via jessbennett)
Presenting Lynn Povich’s (Newsweek’s first Female Senior Editor) Great New Book On the Landmark Class Action Suit Against The Magazine In 1970. And 40+ Years Later, Read How Her Contemporary Counterparts Question How Much Has Actually Changed.
The case that inspired the blog… out tomorrow from Public Affairs.
In my mind, what she said meant this: In feminism and in writing and in life, righteous indignation alone—divorced from action or a sense of the absurd—will not be cute for long. It will ripen, and it will rot. And who among us likes to clean up rot?
—The wonderful Sarah Ball, on what Nora Ephron told us. She put it better than anyone, it’s stuck with me since she wrote it, and it deserves a shout-out, even months after the fact.
(Source: jesseellison)
“I think marriage is insurance for the worst years of your life. During your best years you don’t need a husband. You do need a man of course, and they are often cheaper emotionally and a lot more fun by the dozen.”
RIP Helen Gurley Brown, founder of COSMO
(via jessbennett)
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‘How To Be A Woman’: Not A Feminist? Caitlin Moran Asks, Why Not? : NPR (via blogofhorses)
Truth.
(via jessbennett)
Girls to ‘Magic Mike’: Less Heart, More Flesh
Amanda Hess on how young girls are charting a new sexual revolution, via Magic Mike GIFs — erasing negative cultural messaging around sex, one ass shot at a time.
Would spaceflight affect her reproductive organs? Would she wear a bra or makeup in space? Did she cry on the job? How would she deal with menstruation?
—Reporters to astronaut Sally Ride, in 1983, before her first shuttle flight.
NY Times: Sally Ride, Trailblazing Astronaut, Dies at 61
(Source: jessbennett)
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