Meri's Musings

One thing I learned when reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is that when a woman in a third world country earns income, her status in the community grows by leaps and bounds and her family's economic position improves dramatically -- even more so than if her husband (if she has one) earned the same amount of income. That's because women are more likely to use resources for their family unit, while men  are more likely to address their own needs  and desires first, putting the needs of wives and children second. That's why grass roots charities benefitting women and girls' education and economic opportunities are near and dear to my heart. And if women are empowered through art, well that's even better. So I was delighted to find the Zimbabwe Artists Project (a Portland, Oregon nonprofit) represented at the Northwest Folklife Festival. The folk art they produce is charming and naive and quite reasonably priced. The pieces ...

Ever get the sense that there's still a glass ceiling? White House photos of the Situation Room during the SEAL Team assault on the Bin Laden compound It looks to me as if  there are an awful lot of "boys" in power central. But right now, even the women  have to think and act like men to gain access to power. . . and I'm not sure that we exercise it differently than men do, especially when we're so new to top level governmental decision-making  and our only models for how to do it  have been powerful men.. Baby steps. . . . p.s. The other woman in the situation room photo  is 34-year old Tufts University graduate and Harvard Kennedy School of Government alum Audrey Tomason, Director of CounterTerrorism. And if you want to read about what it was like to be one of the first wave of women going in respectable numbers to law school, click HERE to read one of my old posts.

Pitchers. This image makes me laugh because it reminds me of my days in law school. You see, I went to law school in the days when the barriers to women in law (overt or covert) were just beginning to give way. The class two years before mine was 2-5% women. The class a year ahead was 25% women. My class had 40% women. So the makeup of the student body had changed a bit, but facilities lagged behind. There was a women's locker room on the first floor with a small "ladies room,"  which as I recall might have had two small toilet stalls and two sinks. But the second and third floors of the building had always had two mens' restrooms, no women's. Realizing that would be a problem with greater numbers of  those of the female persuasion, the powers that be decided to screw up a sign that said "Women" on one of the men's room doors on each floor. So we got our ladies' rooms, complete with functioning urinals. Now they did seem to realize tha...

If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It's a factual and informative book detailing the many forms of oppression that women and girls experience in developing countries. It also introduces us to home-grown organizations around the world that are making an impact in redressing the wrongs on a local scale. You can find projects to support that address issues such as: midwifery and maternal health empowerment of women through job training and microloans eliminating sex-trafficking of young girls for prostitution helping educate girls, which reduces rates of early pregnancy, provides a way out of poverty, and breeds a new generation of women to educate and inspire their communities and provide menstrual supplies to girls so they don't have to miss school on a cyclical basis. I've given Christmas gifts in honor of my parents who have always been committed to activism to...