Latika Bourke for the Age reports:
Companies with more than 1000 employees will be forced to publicly reveal their gender pay gap, named and shamed if they fail to comply, and excluded from lucrative government contracts, under a Labor government.
Fairfax Media can reveal the Opposition is preparing legislation that would also force companies to reveal the difference in pay between managerial and non-managerial staff, and would ban “secrecy clauses” that prevent employees telling colleagues how much they get paid.
While companies already report their gender pay gap to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, Labor would make that data publicly searchable, as well as the pay gap between managers and their employees.
Labor’s announcement comes ahead of an expected statement by the government due in spring. The Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer has pledged practical measures to improve women’s economic security.
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/gender-pay-gap-labor-policy-women-20180919-p504ti.html
Author: fem4admin39
The Radical Dissent of Helen Keller
Peter Dreier of YES! Magazine writes:
Less well known (but no less inspiring) is the fact that Keller, who was born in 1880 and died in 1968, was a lifelong radical who participated in the great movements for social justice of her time. In her investigations into the causes of blindness, she discovered that poor people were more likely than the rich to be blind, and soon connected the mistreatment of the blind to the oppression of workers, women, and other groups, leading her to embrace socialism, feminism, and pacifism.
Keller was part of wide circle of reformers and radicals who participated in a variety of overlapping causes. She was a strong advocate for women’s rights and women’s suffrage, writing in 1916: “Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice.” She supported birth control and praised its leading advocate, Margaret Sanger, with whom she had many mutual friends. Keller argued that capitalists wanted workers to have large families to supply cheap labor to factories but forced poor children to live in miserable conditions. “Only by taking the responsibility of birth control into their own hands,” Keller said, “can [women] roll back the awful tide of misery that is sweeping over them and their children.”
She donated money to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—then a young and controversial civil rights organization that focused on opposition to lynching and job and housing discrimination against African Americans—and wrote for its magazine. At an antiwar rally in January 1916, sponsored by the Women’s Peace Party at New York’s Carnegie Hall, Keller said, “Congress is not preparing to defend the people of the United States. It is planning to protect the capital of American speculators and investors.
In 1918 she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union, which was initially organized to challenge the U.S. government’s attempts to suppress the ideas of and jail or deport radicals who opposed World War I, including Socialists and members of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Keller is well known for being blind, but she also deserves to be heralded for her progressive social vision.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/the-radical-dissent-of-helen-keller
At Yale, Kavanaugh Belonged To A Secret Society With An Unprintable Name
JakeThomas for The Intellectualist writes:
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s fraternity and secret society publicly and privately were known to have little or no respect for women. The name of their secret society affirms that.
In today’s Yale Daily News: what Brett Kavanaugh was up to back in his school days, when he belonged to a secret society known as “tit and clit”. Motto: No means yes. Yes means anal.
While Adam Edelman and Kasie Hunt report:
The dean of Yale Law School on Thursday responded to reports that a prominent professor at the school had advised students seeking judicial clerkships with Brett Kavanaugh on their physical looks, saying the reported allegations of faculty misconduct are “of enormous concern” and calling on anyone affected to come forward.
And Eyewitness News reports:
Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of a sexual assault decades ago, has faced vicious online harassment and death threats after her name became public. But the professor at Palo Alto University has also seen a wave of support in her hometown.
Ford has claimed that Kavanaugh attacked her when she was a teen. She told The Washington Post that Kavanaugh had forced himself on her in a bedroom at a party when he was 17 and she was 15, attempting to remove her clothes and clapping his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream. She says she escaped when a friend of Kavanaugh jumped on the bed.
AJ Willingham and Christina Maxouris at CNN:
It’s a question that was posed, more or less, by the President of the United States, to a woman who alleges a current Supreme Court nominee held her down at a high school party and tried to assault her: Why didn’t you speak up earlier? In response, people on Twitter have been sharing their reasons for not speaking up about their own assaults.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/21/health/why-i-didnt-report-tweets-trnd/index.html?
https://mavenroundtable.io/theintellectualist/news/at-yale-kavanaugh-belonged-to-a-secret-society-with-an-unprintable-name-6M4_RxlyZ0KZjoN3hd6P1A/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/yale-law-dean-reports-professor-groomed-female-clerks-kavanaugh-enormous-n911571
https://abc7.com/politics/kavanaugh-accuser-christine-blasey-ford-sees-support-in-hometown-palo-alto/4295884/
Doctors Regularly Give Anesthesized Patients Non-Consensual Pelvic Exams—And This Needs To Stop
Zoë Naseef for BUST writes:
Did you know that doctors and med students are allowed to practice pelvic exams on patients who they are under anesthesia for unrelated surgeries? Did you know that they do not need to ask first, or let them know after if it happened?
It is very common for teaching hospitals around the world to have med students “practice” performing pelvic exams on a surgical patient while they are under anesthesia without their consent, or even knowledge. According to Medscape, oftentimes, multiple med students will practice on the same patient. In the US, non-consensual pelvic exams are legal in every state besides Hawaii, California, Illinois, and Virginia.
Phoebe Friesen, a medical researcher, published an article called “Educational Pelvic Exams On Anesthetized Women: Why Consent Matters” in which she studied the phenomenon. She noted that in 2005, a study at University of Oklahoma “found that a large majority of medical students had given pelvic exams to gynecologic surgery patients who were under anesthesia, and that in nearly three quarters of these cases the women had not consented to the exam.” She also states that “the vast majority (72–100%) of women say they expect to be specifically consented for an educational pelvic exam performed while they are under anesthesia” and that many women “said they would feel ‘physically assaulted’ if not consented.”
According to Medscape, a 2007 study done in Canada found that 72 percent of med students admitted to having done a pelvic exam on an anesthetized patient. A common argument for these non-consensual pelvis exams made by doctors is that many patients would say no—which is really a further reason for why they should be asking. If patients are not willing to be used as test subjects, medical school should hire people to practice on who are informed and willing.
Lauren Dobson-Hughes, an activist and former president of Planned Parenthood, wrote a thread on Twitter about this epidemic. She said that after there was media coverage about this happening, many people came forward about unexplained internal bruising and vaginal pain after undergoing an unrelated surgery. She heard anecdotally from many others saying their demands for their own medical records had been blocked or redacted as hospitals attempt to cover up their rape-y practices.
https://bust.com/feminism/195099-public-exams-anesthesia.html
More Than 90% Of Girls In UK Worry About Going To School On Their Period
Amy Packham on MSN writes:
More than 90% of girls in the UK worry about going to school when on their period, according to a new report that identifies period shaming as a major contributing factor.
The YouGov research found more than a quarter (27%) of girls have missed school at least once while on their period. This equates to a 350,000 girls nationwide missing 2.1 million hours of education.
The reasons they gave ranged from shame, teasing and boys knowing to a fear of leaking and not being able to go to the toilet during lessons.
When questioning boys, Bodyform found that 20% of boys don’t know the basic facts about periods.
Grace Barrett, co-founder of the Self-Esteem Team, believes education is key to normalising periods: “People are still uncomfortable talking about periods because of how we educate about them,” he said. “Humour is a common tactic used to handle things that make us uncomfortable. Because periods fall into that category, girls are often left feeling like the butt of the joke.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/familyhealth/more-than-90percent-of-girls-in-uk-worry-about-going-to-school-on-their-period/ar-BBNzzxG
How Indigenous women have become targets in a domestic violence system intended to protect them
Heather Douglas and Robin Fitzgerald write for the Conversation:
[I]n a system originally intended to protect women from violence, our research shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) women are being swept up in domestic violence-related offences in disproportionate numbers compared with the overall population. Many are ending up in prison as a result.
In our study, we examined Queensland court data on protection order applications and breaches for the year 2013-14. We found a dramatic over-representation of ATSI people – especially women – in the protection order system.
Women are typically much less likely to be respondents in domestic violence cases and charged with breaches of a protection order. However, of the women imprisoned for breaches in our study, 69% of them were ATSI women.
When these women fight back, they may not fit with stereotypical expectations of how a victim should behave: for example, vulnerable, blameless and weak. This might result in police applying for a protection order against them or charging them with breaching an order.
Many strategies have been put forth to address the over-representation of ATSI people in the justice system. Of urgent concern to us is the plight of ATSI women being incarcerated in ever-increasing numbers in a system originally introduced to protect women from violence.
https://theconversation.com/how-indigenous-women-have-become-targets-in-a-domestic-violence-system-intended-to-protect-them-102656
Somalia under renewed scrutiny over FGM after two more young girls die
Kate Hodal of The Guardian writes:
Two more girls in Somalia have died after undergoing female genital mutilation, just weeks after a high-profile case prompted the attorney general to announce the first prosecution against the practice in the country’s history.
The deaths of Aasiyo and Khadijo Farah Abdi Warsame have come at a time of transition in Somalia, where 98% of all women and girls undergo FGM, the highest rate in the world. Most cases go unreported.
Most girls in Somalia undergo the most severe form of circumcision – during which external genitalia are removed or repositioned and the vaginal opening is sewn up, leaving only a small hole through which to pass menstrual blood – between the ages of five and nine. The operation is often performed by untrained midwives or healers using knives, razors or broken glass.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/sep/17/somalia-under-renewed-scrutiny-over-female-genital-mutilation-after-two-more-young-girls-die
Is it acceptable to laugh at Donald Trump’s mushroom?
Hadley Freeman for The Guardian writes:
So, for anyone who has been living under a rock for the past 36 hours, Daniels has indeed written a book in which she describes the president’s penis as “smaller than average … like the mushroom character in Mario Kart”.
Is it right that the world is now laughing at his penis? Well, given that Trump made a fortune from Miss America, which is all about reducing women to their various anatomical parts and judging them accordingly, this all feels like a rather pleasing O Henry story.
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them and women are afraid that men will kill them, as the Margaret Atwood quote goes. And given that banning abortion, as Trump wishes to do, will end up costing women’s lives, it seems fair enough that we get to laugh at him. It’s not exactly a quid pro quo, but it will do.
Much has been written about Daniels’s refusal to be shamed. . . . Not only will she not be humiliated – she will humiliate him. And why not, damn it? She wasn’t the married one. She is not the one with the power to ruin women’s lives by banning global abortion funding and defunding Planned Parenthood while having bragged in the past how, when you’re a star, you can grab women “by the pussy”. He is.
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2018/sep/19/donald-trump-mushroom-acceptable-to-laugh?
Fury as transsexual paedophile who groomed underage girls is moved to women's prison
Rob Pattinson for The Sun writes:
Female prisoners are terrified by convicted paedophile Michelle Lewin’s transfer to HMP Peterborough while she awaits gender reassignment surgery.
[A] source said: “A lot of the women are genuinely terrified of her. Lewin’s a serious sex offender and she’s physically much stronger.
“There are female inmates in there who have been raped and they are scared of her.”
Lewin, who has two children, was born Shaun Pudwell. She has to be held in a female jail after getting a gender recognition certificate.
Figures show there are 25 transgender cons in women’s jails.
To be legally recognised as a transgender woman, a person must have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and lived as a woman for two years.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7281372/transsexual-paedophile-moved-womens-prison/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/leicestershire/7099064.stm
Labor promises $400m super boost for women
Matt Coughlan for The New Daily writes:
Women on maternity leave or juggling several low-paid jobs would be paid superannuation under a $400 million Labor plan to close the retirement gender gap.
Women retire on average with $113,000 less in their super than men, a gulf of 40 per cent.
The party is also looking to phase out the $450 minimum monthly threshold for eligibility for the superannuation guarantee, helping people in part-time and casual work.
Ms Plibersek said more and more people – particularly women – were working various low-paid jobs to make ends meet.
Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O’Neil welcomed Labor’s announcement, but argued the threshold should be scrapped immediately to ensure working women don’t retire in poverty.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/09/19/labor-super-boost-women/?
