Friday, February 28, 2014

From Awakening Women | No longer

I no longer want to be Better than you

In my heart of hearts,
I no longer want to be
Better than you
Smarter than you
Thinner than you
Prettier than you
Faster than you
Stronger than you
More accomplished than you
More creative than you
A better mother than you
A better friend than you
Better educated than you
ANYTHING more than you.

I want to walk this path
Side by side
In awe of who you are
In awe of what your gifts are
To see you only in love and light
With your beauty shining through
Just as you are.
And I want you to see me the same way.
For I really do love you
Just as you are.
I only thought I had to be better
In order for you to love me.

I drop this cloak of outshining at the gate.
It has been such a heavy burden,
An unnecessary burden
A self imposed burden.
Will you still love me
Being just as I am.
In my heart of hearts,
I know you will.

Katy Stevenson Wirth

Katy is originally from Hawaii and now calls Boulder, Colorado, home. She is a wife, mother of three grown children, a fiber artist, and works with her husband in the mortgage industry. She loves to hike, bike, swim, golf or just take a walk.

Source: http://awakeningwomen.com/2014/01/16/i-no-longer-want-to-be-better-than-you/

Stephanie Doty
Women’s Issues Matter
February 28, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Thursday, February 27, 2014

The time is NOW

Stand up, speak out --be heard

When the day arrives [as, more and more, it surely seems to have done] that others believe they have an inherent right to impose THEIR beliefs and/or values, this becomes the time when we must stand and be counted/heard. Differences are IMPORTANT [if not downright critical]. Differences are NOT to be disregarded by ANYONE WHATSOEVER -- NOT EVER -- NOT BY ANYONE. We must each commit to standing in the light of universal truths -- and allow our lights to shine brilliantly [with understanding, acceptance, love and compassion]. BE NOT AFRAID -- not now, not EVER!!!

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 27, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

From the National Women's Law Center

Increase in older women living in poverty alarming

"Here’s a new mystery in the economy; for some reason, the number of older women living in extreme poverty has rocketed up 18 percent over the past year. That’s 133,000 more women since just last year who are over 65, living alone on an income of only $5,500 a year or $458 a month, according to the National Women’s Law Center.

"The center just released its analysis of the census and state that nationwide; 2.6 million elderly women were living in poverty at the end of 2013, with 733,000 of those living in extreme poverty.

"The reason for this, however, is still perplexing."

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 26, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

American Express | Changemakers

full prize details:
Prize Opportunity: 15 entrepreneurs will be selected into an American Express Emerging Innovators Boot Camp in New York City, Mexico City and Toronto, for a total of 45 entrepreneurs. This 2-day workshop will be held alongside top Ashoka Fellows and American Express executives. Accommodations and food plus a generous travel stipend are covered by American Express in partnership with Changemakers.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 26, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

The Vacancy Crisis in the Federal Judiciary: What's at Stake for Women | National Women's Law Center

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 25, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

GO RED wants you to know

Women age 45 and younger are more likely than men to die within a year of their first heart attack

People ages 40 to 79 should have their 10-year risk calculated every 4 to 6 years.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 25, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

About Us | www.standupforwomen.org.uk

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 25, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Stand Up For Women was founded in 2012 by a collaboration of charity leaders and creatives.

We were set up to raise awareness and funds for women’s charities - with a heavy emphasis on comedy in the process!

We host comedy fundraisers and other events featuring some of the nation's favourite comedians.

And our buzzing website features alternative role models alongside women and men who are standing up for women in everyday life.

Stand Up for Women is a Trust currently applying for charitable status.

- See more at: http://www.standupforwomen.org.uk/about-us#sthash.rG3kav4q.dpuf

Monday, February 24, 2014

What the Latest Research Really Means for Women - The Daily Beast

Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC/Facebook

Relevant studies abound, so shall we parse the numbers? On the good news front: In a few years, Berkeley may be handing out quite a few computer science degrees to women. Last spring, the U.C. had more women than men enrolled in an introductory computer science course (106 vs. 104)—a rarity in the male-dominated field in which 82% of degree holders are men. But how beneficial is an equally coed class? Another recent (unrelated) study at the Australia National University states that female econ and business students who come from single-sex classrooms were 19% more likely to make risky decisions than those who studied for eight weeks in a coed class. Point being: social settings might play a larger factor in learning than originally thought. Finally, on the women-in-media horizon, the new numbers on racial and gender diversity from the Women’s Media Center look bleak. Women still make up only 36 percent of newsroom staffs (virtually unchanged since 1999) and among 143 prominent op-ed columnists, only 38 are women. Something of interest for all TV fans out there: women of color directed just 2 percent of TV episodes last year. Binge-watchers, time for a revolt.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 24, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Sunday, February 23, 2014

‘Albert Nobbs,’ With Glenn Close and Janet McTeer - Review - NYTimes.com

Award-winning actress Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs) plays a woman passing as a man in order to work and survive in 19th century Ireland. Some thirty years after donning men's clothing, she finds herself trapped in a prison of her own making. Mia Wasikowska (Helen), Aaron Johnson (Joe) and Brendan Gleeson (Dr. Holloran) join a prestigious, international cast that includes Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Janet McTeer, Brenda Fricker and Pauline Collins.

Rodrigo Garcia directs from a script that Glenn Close, along with Man Booker prize-winning novelist John Banville and Gabriella Prekop, adapted from a short story by Irish author George Moore.

Source: http://albertnobbs-themovie.com/#about

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 23, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

30 Artistes, 30 Songs, 30 Days” – Artiste Spotlight « Celebrity Role Model Pixel Campaign

“A woman constitutes the heart of the heart.

She is the great balancer and healer

and must be cared for and revered.

Closing the chapter on violence against women

will open up a new one of love and balance and harmony

lasting forever. We must dedicate ourselves to this

and begin living in our peaceful future – now.” Laura Berman

Click on the purple link under the title to visit the website for a free song download of Laura Berman's Voices.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 23, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

New Guidelines to Reduce Stroke Risk in Women — Go Red For Women

Stephanie Doty

Women's Issues Matter
February 23, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

A Brother's Love

JAMES BALDWIN: HIS VOICE REMEMBERED; A Brother's Love

Date: December 20, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition Section 7; Page 29, Column 2; Book Review Desk By Maya Angelou

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 23, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

National Partnership for Women & Families

ABOUT

We believe that actions speak louder than words. And for four decades, we have fought for every major policy advance that has helped women and families.

Today, we promote fairness in the workplace, reproductive health and rights, access to quality, affordable health care, and policies that help women and men meet the dual demands of work and family.

Founded in 1971 as the Women’s Legal Defense Fund, the National Partnership for Women & Families is a nonprofit, nonpartisan 501(c)3 organization located in Washington, D.C.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 23, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Career Advancement Tips: How To Get A Sponsor

Looking for a job when you don’t have one is one of the hardest things we do as responsible adults. Career transition is hard work and the biggest challenge is staying positive. Kathryn gives us some great strategies for keeping our chin up and focused until we find that perfect fit. InPower Editors

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 22, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Our journey to wholeness

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 22, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Looking back, looking forward

WOW!!

2013 was an amazing year - because of you!

Because of your support last year, the Healthy Families America network has grown to nearly 600 sites throughout the United States. 600 sites! That means over 95,000 children and families were able to participate in the program.

Your support has led to positive parenting attitudes, parent-child interaction and support for child development, which leads to lower education costs, improved family self-sufficiency and reduced child maltreatment!

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 22, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

‘The Invention of Wings,’ by Sue Monk Kidd - NYTimes.com

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at one of the most devastating wounds in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.

Giving Voice, and Finding Her Own

Sue Monk Kidd Tackles Race in ‘The Invention of Wings’

By FELICIA R. LEE JAN. 6, 2014

[Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/07/books/sue-monk-kidd-tackles-race-in-the-invention-of-wings.html?ref=books&_r=0&pagewanted=print]

The writer Sue Monk Kidd found the voice that her new book needed when she became smitten with an enslaved girl who is only a footnote to history. “I could hear Hetty in my head quite clearly,” Ms. Kidd said. “She would talk and talk and talk and talk to me.”

In that novel, “The Invention of Wings” (Viking), Ms. Kidd gives Hetty what she never had in life: powerfully eloquent words that receive a weight equal to those of her owner, Sarah Grimké, who became a prominent abolitionist and advocate for women. The novel, out on Tuesday and the third pick of Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club 2.0, weaves fact and fiction as it considers 35 years of the women’s lives, beginning in Charleston, S.C., in 1803, with their alternating first-person accounts. Hetty goes first

About Sue Monk Kidd
[Source: http://suemonkkidd.com/author/]

Sue Monk Kidd was raised in the small town of Sylvester, Georgia, a place that deeply influenced the writing of her first novel The Secret Life of Bees. She graduated from Texas Christian University in 1970 and later took creative writing courses at Emory University and Anderson College, as well as studying at Sewanee, Bread Loaf, and other writers conferences.

Her book When the Heart Waits, published by Harper SanFrancisco in 1990 has become a touchstone on contemplative spirituality. In 1996, Harper published The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, describing Kidd’s journey into feminist theology, a memoir that had a groundbreaking effect within religious circles.

In her forties, Kidd turned her attention to writing fiction, winning the South Carolina Fellowship in Literature and the 1996 Poets & Writers Exchange Program in Fiction. Her short stories appeared in TriQuarterly, Nimrod, and other literary journals and received a Katherine Anne Porter award and citations in Best American Short Stories’ 100 Distinguished Stories.

When her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, was published by Viking in 2002, it became a genuine literary phenomenon, spending more than 2½ years on the New York Times bestseller list. It has been translated into 36 languages and sold more than 6 million copies in the U.S. and 8 million copies worldwide. Bees was named the Book Sense Paperback Book of the Year in 2004, long-listed for the 2002 Orange Prize in England, and won numerous awards. For over a decade, the novel has been produced on stage by The American Place Theater, and in 2008 it was adapted into a movie by Fox Searchlight, which won the People’s Choice award for best movie and the NAACP Image award for best picture. It is taught widely in middle school, high school, and college classrooms.

Kidd’s second novel, The Mermaid Chair, has sold well over a million copies since its publication by Viking in 2005, reaching #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remaining on the hardcover and paperback lists for nine months. Winner of the 2005 Quill Award for General Fiction, the novel was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, translated into 24 languages, and made into a television movie by Lifetime.

The spiritual essays, meditations, and inspirational stories Kidd wrote in her thirties were collected into a single volume, Firstlight: The Early Inspiration Writings and published by Guideposts Books in 2006 and Penguin in 2007. After traveling with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor, to sacred sites in Greece, Turkey, and France, Kidd and Taylor co-authored a memoir, Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story. Published by Viking in 2009, it appeared on numerous bestseller lists, including the New York Times list and has been published in several languages.

The Invention of Wings, Kidd’s third novel will be published January 7, 2014 by Viking.

Kidd serves on the board of advisors for Poets & Writers, Inc. She lives in Southwest Florida with her husband, Sandy, and their black lab Lily.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 22, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Margaret Talbot: What’s Behind the Declining Abortion Rate? : The New Yorker

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 22, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Gloria Feldt - Take The Lead Channel - sageCrowd

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 20, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

New Issue with Nobel Laureate Betty Williams

Welcome to the new issue of
Woman ChangeMaker!

IN THIS ISSUE

NOBEL LAUREATE BETTY WILLIAMS REFLECTS ON A LIFETIME AS CHAMPION FOR PEACE AND CHILDREN'S RIGHTS

We are witnessing a tipping point as women are transforming the paradigm of the planet. It is our goal to chronicle this evolving success story for our world by spotlighting a new generation of women as they emerge into the limelight of influence to drive change and to tell NEW stories.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 20, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Women's rights pressure revamps Afghan law | Business Standard

Women's rights pressure revamps Afghan law

The law was widely criticised as weakening protection for victims of domestic violence and of forced marriage
AFP | Kabul February 17, 2014

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 20, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Olivia Judson is an evolutionary biologist and writer based at Imperial College London. Ms. Judson has been a reporter for The Economist and has written for a number of other publications, including The Atlantic and National Geographic. She is also the author of “Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex,” and a former online columnist for The New York Times. She is currently visiting das Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, where she is working on her next book. [Photographer unknown, protected by copyright]

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 19, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Mazouma Sanou -- If you help a woman, you help the country [WFP, West Africa]

“If you help a man you help one family, if you help a woman you help the country.”

One woman’s experience

Mazouma Sanou is a 43-year old woman farmer from Burkina Faso. She is married and the mother of three children. Mazouma is a member of a P4P-supported cooperative union called UPPA-Houet. Today, the union has 20,500 members, 11,000 of whom are women. Mazouma contributes maize, sorghum, and niébé (cowpeas) to her union’s sales to WFP.

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 19, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

partners-for-peace

Partners for Peace offers a rare window on the work of women at the grassroots in Israel and Palestine, doing the hard, often invisible and unreported work of building peace. Their efforts play outside governmental and international peace efforts, sharply contrasting and challenging those efforts by revealing the injustices of the current situation and bridging common ground between Israelis and Palestinians. Jaclyn, who sees great hope in the work of these women says, “These are women with ideas about how to get out of this mess . .. in reality there are almost infinite partners for peace, we’re just not asking the right people to the table.

Trailer for partners-for-peace

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 19, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

With Courage and Cloth: Winning the Fight for a Woman's Right to Vote | A Mighty Girl

Stunning archival photographs—some never before published—reams of research, and a deft and lively narrative tell this story as if it were hot off today's headlines. Any reader of this book won't easily forget the sacrifice and struggle of women who rose to champion Susan B. Anthony's 1876 clarion call: "We ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever."

"Bausum peels back the layers of the story of the women's suffrage movement, exposing grit, fiery determination, and radical tactics. After covering the importance of familiar names, she devotes the bulk of the book to the events of 1906 to 1920, when a new group of young women emerged who were willing to truly suffer for suffrage." -- School Library Journal

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 18, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Listening with body, mind, spirit

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 18, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Join the she28campaign!

SHE Mission
To invest in people and ideas that are typically overlooked (and often taboo) as vehicles of social and economic change.

SHE Sustainable Health Enterprises

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 18, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Monday, February 17, 2014

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

"a winged but grounded bird, intent on the blue void it could not reach--could not even see--but which filled the valleys of the mind." Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

"Here was an ugly little girl asking for beauty. A surge of love and understanding swept through him, but was quickly replaced by anger. Anger that he was powerless to help her. Of all the wishes people had brought him--money, love, revenge--this seemed to him the most poignant and the one most deserving of fulfillment. A little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes." Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 17, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

Toni Morrison: 'I want to feel what I feel. Even if it's not happiness' | Books | The Guardian

Stephanie Doty
Women's Issues Matter
February 17, 2014
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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Friday, February 28, 2014

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

full prize details:

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Monday, February 24, 2014

Sunday, February 23, 2014

JAMES BALDWIN: HIS VOICE REMEMBERED; A Brother's Love

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Giving Voice, and Finding Her Own

Sue Monk Kidd Tackles Race in ‘The Invention of Wings’

Thursday, February 20, 2014

IN THIS ISSUE

Women's rights pressure revamps Afghan law

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Monday, February 17, 2014