Berlin mass transit will give women a discount to highlight the gender pay gap

From Women in the World authored by WIWT Staff:

“Berlin’s public transportation authority BVG will charge women 21 percent less for tickets to ride the city’s metro, buses, and trams on March 18 to help draw attention to the country’s gender pay gap.

The discounted tickets will be available only on Germany’s Equal Pay Day, which takes place 77 days into the year to mark the number of days that activists say women effectively work for free. According to data from Eurostat, it takes a German woman 442 days to make the same amount of money that a man makes in a year.

“You have to speak out when people are treated differently for no reason,” wrote BVG in a statement. “This is a small gesture of solidarity, though it is nothing in comparison with what women are deprived of in income every year.”

Unsurprisingly, a number of men expressed outrage about the plan on social media, condemning the initiative as unfair and possibly illegal. But BVG spokeswoman Petra Nelken said that the backlash was not only expected but desired.”

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Why equal parenting is still a myth

From Motherly authored by Diana Spaulding:

“Like many modern couples, before getting married and having kids my husband and I spoke frequently about our plans to be true partners in life—to share in the household responsibilities equally and to co-parent our children in a way that defied the stereotypical norms of our society.

Then we actually had kids and we quickly learned that it was a lot more complicated than that.

Even as members of the millennial generation, we were born into a society in which gendered expectations have been rooted in our way of thinking, living and doing. Although growing up in progressive households molded our expectations and ideas, that background didn’t prove enough to fully counter the pervasive inequalities that restrict partners from co-parenting as hoped.”

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The US Denied Visas To Women From Africa And The Middle East Hoping To Attend The UN’s Women Conference

From Buzzfeed News authored by Nishita Jha:

“Dozens of women have been denied visas to attend a major United Nations women’s conference in New York.

According to campaigners, women from African and Middle Eastern countries that fell under Donald Trump’s travel ban were disproportionately affected.

The US is obliged under a 70-year-old treaty to not restrict people or NGOs from attending the UN headquarters.

In protest, women’s rights campaigners are petitioning the US Mission to the UN to streamline visa procedures for those traveling to the UN.

The Commission on the Status of Women is an annual conference, running this year from March 11–22, where representatives from member states, NGO workers, and women’s rights activists gather to evaluate the global progress on gender and equality.

According to the petition, an “unprecedented” number of visa denials for women hoping to attend CSW has been witnessed.

The International Service for Human Rights, a UN-affiliated organization, said it was aware of at least 41 women who have been denied visas to attend the conference this year — but this figure is said to be only “the tip of the iceberg” and likely to increase.”

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Treated Like a ‘Piece of Meat’: Female Veterans Endure Harassment at the V.A.

From The New York Times authored by Jennifer Steinhauer:

“Corey Foster spent her Army career caring for wounded troops, both as a flight medic in the Iraq war and at Walter Reed hospital, so she looked forward to one of the most celebrated benefits of military service — health care for life from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Then she walked through the door at a V.A. medical center in Temple, Tex.

“You felt like you were a piece of meat,” said Ms. Foster, 34, who retired as a sergeant. “Standing in line at the registration desk, I was getting comments from the male patients behind me, looking me up and down. It was a major source of discomfort.”

The treatment was the same at the Veterans Affairs medical center in Murfreesboro, Tenn., where Ms. Foster moved after living in Texas. At that point she gave up, and opted for her husband’s insurance outside the department. “They need to make the facilities not feel like an old soldier’s home,” Ms. Foster said.

An entrenched, sexist culture at many veterans hospitals is driving away female veterans and lags far behind the gains women have made in the military in recent years, veterans and lawmakers of both parties say. Although the Department of Veterans Affairs has scrambled to adjust to the rising population of female veterans and has made progress — including hiring more women’s health care providers, fixing basic privacy problems in the exam rooms and expanding service to women in rural areas — sexual harassment at department facilities remains a major problem.”

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LESSONS IN HERSTORY BY GOODBY SILVERSTEIN & PARTNERS

From The Drum authored by Goodby Silverstein & Partners:

“In classrooms across the country, students are opening their US history textbooks to see pages of role models and important historical figures, but there are many figures that have been overlooked for years: women. According to research, 89% of textbook references aredevoted to men.

This March, in celebration of Women’s History Month, Daughters of the Evolution collaborated with San Francisco advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P) to address this issue head on, bringing recognition to the untold stories of women in history. Co-founded by GS&P partner and chief creative officer Margaret Johnson, Daughters of the Evolution is a new organization dedicated to helping young women create the world they want to live in.

Today, Daughters of the Evolution launches Lessons in Herstory, an app that uses augmented reality to celebrate stories of women typically omitted from history textbooks. When users open the app and scan an image of a male historical figure in A History of US, Book 5: Liberty for All? 1820­–1860, the app unlocks a story of an important female historical figure from that same period. For example, when a user scans President Zachary Taylor, they will see an illustration and story of Cathay Williams, the first African American woman to enlist in the army (using a disguise and a pseudonym) during the Civil War, when women were prohibited from entering the military. The app currently features stories of 75 women from the 19th century.”

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Which ‘Jen’ Sent the Baby Gift Cards? Not One You Know.

From The Wall Street Journal authored by Suzanne Vranica:

“Rebecca Kinney, a pregnant 24-year-old from Spokane, Wash., received a greeting card in the mail several weeks ago with about $200 in gift cards for baby products.

“So excited for you! Hope you like these,” said the note, which appeared handwritten, complete with an ink smudge. It was signed with a heart, “Jen.”

Ms. Kinney texted friends to figure out who sent it, but came up empty. She isn’t alone. The same card has landed in the mailboxes of dozens of pregnant women around the country.

It turns out “Jen” isn’t a friend or relative but rather part of an elaborate, personalized marketing program aimed at mothers-to-be. The women targeted were on a list of expectant mothers acquired by Utah-based Mothers Lounge LLC from sources in the marketing world, according to Jayson Crawley, a local law-enforcement official in Virginia who investigated the matter.”

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg Had a Very Different Path to Power than Brett M. Kavanaugh

From Medium authored by Petula Dvorak:

“The senator stared down at the Supreme Court nominee, declaring “I think we need to judge you as a total person.”

Are we talking brewskis, boofing and Beach Week here?

Come on, senator! They were just teens.

Oops, wait. This was Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., as he pressed Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her 1993 Supreme Court confirmation hearing.

The big scandal during that hearing? The senators — nearly all of them men — had their pinstripes in a twist because of Ginsburg’s work on cases advocating for women’s rights.

Kohl said he was “a little bit confused about the tension between the somewhat restrictive role you describe for judges and the much more dynamic role that you adopted as an advocate,” according to the hearing transcripts now catalogued in the Library of Congress.

Sigh, right?

Those were the good old days, when the juiciest mention in the 691 pages of testimony was Ginsburg’s confession that she liked the movie “Sleepless in Seattle.” Especially the soundtrack.”

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It’s 2019. Women Are Still Less Likely To Be Identified By Their Accomplishments.

From The Huffington Post authored by Monica Torres:

“Are you described as a manager, by that project you nailed, or as someone’s relation? How you are described can determine how you will be remembered. For many women, descriptions boil down to who they are with more than what they actually know or do.

Take Lauren Sanchez as an example. She was a TV news anchor for years, co-hosting Fox’s “Good Day LA” from 2011 to 2017, as detailed by People. She is a licensed helicopter pilot who founded her own aerial film company and consulted on Christopher Nolan’s film “Dunkirk.” But if you read about the 49-year-old today, you likely see her identity reduced to one word: mistress. After reports of her romantic relationship with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezosbecame public, multiple news outlets, including The Associated Press and New York Post, described her with that one word.

As Emily Peck explained in HuffPost, the term is sexist because it is “meant to suggest that a woman is subordinate to the man with whom she’s having a relationship. The word also implies that her behavior is immoral.” And its usage does not go the other way: You are not likely to see stories introducing Bezos’ defining characteristic as Sanchez’s mister and paramour.”

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The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes

From The Guardian authored by Caroline Criado-Perez:

“When broadcaster Sandi Toksvig was studying anthropology at university, one of her female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. “This,” said the professor, “is alleged to be man’s first attempt at a calendar.” Toksvig and her fellow students looked at the bone in admiration. “Tell me,” the professor continued, “what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.”

Women have always tracked their periods. We’ve had to. Since 2015, I’ve been reliant on a period tracker app, which reassures me that there’s a reason I’m welling up just thinking about Andy Murray’s “casual feminism”. And then there’s the issue of the period itself: when you will be bleeding for up to seven days every month, it’s useful to know more or less when those seven days are going to take place. Every woman knows this, and Toksvig’s experience is a neat example of the difference a female perspective can make, even to issues that seem entirely unrelated to gender.

For most of human history, though, that perspective has not been recorded. Going back to the theory of Man the Hunter, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics, the stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future, are all marked – disfigured – by a female-shaped “absent presence”. This is the gender data gap.

These silences, these gaps, have consequences. They impact on women’s lives, every day. The impact can be relatively minor – struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm, for example. Irritating, certainly. But not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety tests don’t account for women’s measurements. Not like dying from a stab wound because your police body armour doesn’t fit you properly. For these women, the consequences of living in a world built around male data can be deadly.”

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Sotomayor Is ‘Profoundly Troubled’ by Georgia Death Penalty Case

From The National Law Journal authored by Tony Mauro:

“The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied the latest petition from a black Georgia death row inmate who is claiming juror racial bias, prompting an angry statement from Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Sotomayor agreed that the denial may have been justified because the latest decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Keith Tharpe’s case did not turn on the merits of his claim, but rather on procedural issues.

But Sotomayor, who has raised concerns about capital cases in the recent past, said she was “profoundly troubled by the underlying facts of this case.” Sotomayor wrote:

“I therefore concur in the court’s decision to deny Tharpe’s petition for certiorari. As this may be the end of the road for Tharpe’s juror-bias claim, however, we should not look away from the magnitude of the potential injustice that procedural barriers are shielding from judicial review.”

Sotomayor recounted the statements made in an affidavit by a white member of the jury, Barney Gattie, who has since died, that “there are two types of black people: 1. Black folks and 2. Niggers” and that Tharpe, “who wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in [his] book, should get the electric chair for what he did.”

Tharpe, Sotomayor noted, has not received a hearing on the merits of his racial-bias claims. Gattie’s statements, Sotomayor wrote, ‘amount to an arresting demonstration that racism can and does seep into the jury system. The work of ‘purg[ing] racial prejudice from the administration of justice’ … is far from done.’”

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