1000 WORDS: Farmer and Child

A woman in Nepal works as a farmer, with financial support from the Women's Fund Tewa. From the Economica slideshow "Women's Wealth."

CLIO TALKS BACK: Oh, That Explains the Difference? or Why is Equal Pay for Equal Work so hard to translate into reality?

Women’s demands for equal pay for equal work are as old as history. European societies provide abundant documentation of such claims. Why? Because male authorities decreed that women who worked for pay should only receive one-half to two-thirds the pay of men. This was long before the "male-breadwinner model" began to be explicitly laid out.

Already in the year 1348, municipal authorities in Marseille set the wages for workers: 4 sous a day for men and 2 sous 6 deniers for women. [Such laws also dictated what women could or couldn’t wear in the way of gold, silver, and jewelry].

Leeds Postcards

Low Pay / Sex Difference

Flash forward! In 1869, in the first issue of Le Droit des Femmes, the feminist Maria Deraismes claimed equal pay as one of the objectives for the French women’s rights movement, a claim that would be repeated incessantly for the next 75 years.

When the Swiss women’s rights publication Le Mouvement féministe first appeared in Geneva in 1912, its motto was “A travail égal, salaire égal.” In translation: “for equal work, equal pay.” There was nothing hard to understand about this demand.

The Treaty of Versailles, which officially ended World War I, founded the International Labour Organization and contained a proviso guaranteeing equal pay for equal work. All signatories to the Treaty promised to support this proviso, among many others.

In France, the principle of equal pay for equal work was finally instituted in 1946, by the decree of 30 July 1946. Other European countries have also agreed, at least in theory, to this principle. But enforcing it has been another story.

At the United Nations in March 1948, the Economic and Social Council approved “the principle of equal remuneration for work of equal value for men and women workers.”

In December 1948 Eleanor Roosevelt insisted that the principle of equal pay for equal work be included in Article 23.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. “Everyone without any discriminhation, has the right to equal pay for equal work.”

In 1986 The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution on the role of women in society, in which (among other provisions) it invited member states “to encourage such social and economic development as will ensure the equal participation of women in all spheres of work activity, equal pay for work of equal value, and equal opportunities for education and vocational training.”

So why are American women today still having to demand equal pay for equal work? Why in 2011 do we need to designate a day (April 12, 2011) as Equal Pay Day?

Clio would like your ideas: Why is it taking so long to write Equal Pay into the laws of the United States? Why in other countries, even when equal pay for equal work is mandated by law, is it so difficult to enforce this law? What are the obstacles that stand in the way of this eminently fair demand?

Afghanistan: In Present, Past, and Future

As mounting protests sweep through Egypt and tensions rise across the Middle East, last weekend Bloomberg published U.S., Afghan Study Finds Mineral Deposits Worth $3 Trillion highlighting that the initial deposit of minerals in Afghanistan thought in June 2010 to be worth $1 trillion dollars now totals $3 trillion. The New York Times also reported United Nations and Afhanistan officials were signing a formal agreement to end the, “recruitment of children into its police forces and ban the common practice of boys being used as sex slaves by military commanders.”

A vast swath of minerals and resources. War. Child soldiers. Is this Congo or Afghanistan? Women for Women International’s Factsheet for the upcoming 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day cites that 75% of civilians killed in war are actually women and children. Yet, Women for Women International (WfWI) exists to help women and children survivors of war rebuild their lives and has been on the ground in Afghanistan and Congo implementing programs since 1993. This year the organization is hosting their second call to action in a campaign called Join Me on the Bridge. Held on March 8, 2011 to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, women will gather all over the world on bridges in that shared call for peace.

This year also marks the ten year anniversary of September 11, 2001, the day which provoked the War on Terror and initial invasion of Afghanistan. Late last year, after Afghanistan elections took place and the US announced plans for a 2011 slowdown and 2014 pullout, myriad articles focusing on Afghanistan were published by mainstream news sources reflecting life for the Afghanistan women and children who remain alive.

In Nicholas Kristof's What About Afghan Women?, the New York Times reporter and human rights advocate shares that although less women wear the full burqa, they keep them on hand “just in case.” Kristof also shares that most women he interviewed, “favored making a deal with the Taliban — simply because it would bring peace. For them, the Taliban regime was awful, but a perpetual war may be worse.”

“Oppression,” Kristof says, “is rooted not only in the Taliban but also in the culture.”

Nancy Hatch Dupree, cofounder of The Louis and Nancy Hatch Dupree Foundation, which is dedicated exclusively to “nation building through information sharing and to raise awareness and broaden knowledge about the history and culture of the people of Afghanistan throughout the United States,” has spent most of her life studying Afghan culture.

Recently honored as archivist of the year, Dupree was quoted in 2009 by the Global Post commenting on the U.S. Military and diplomatic approach in Afghanistan. “They make strategies for people who they don’t talk to... They sit behind the fortress with razor wire walls... They don’t seem to realize the strategy has to be about the people,” Dupree said from her home in Kabul.

Last November, Canadian Journalist Sally Armstong’s To the Women of Afghanistan made an outright call for Afghanistan women to push for rights.

Women of Afghanistan, it is time to go to the barricades.

Now is the hour to claim your rights. Negotiations are under way in earnest; the Taliban are at the table, so are the warlords and bandits, tribal elders and the president. There’s not a woman in sight. Yet everyone knows you are the ones who can yank Afghanistan into the 21st century.

You’ve been denied everything from human rights and jobs to health care and education. You refer to your illiteracy as being blind because as one woman said, “I couldn’t read so I couldn’t see what was going on.”

Education of children in Afghanistan has been vehemently disrupted by the war as well as Taliban violence. According to It Takes a Village to Raise a School, published last September, New York University Professor Dana Burde cited a CARE report that shows community-based schools are less terrorized than the 1,000 schools bombed since 2006 that have left less than one percent of Afghan girls in some southern provinces in school and active education. Suicide bombers target girl's schools more often.

In December, National Geographic’s Afghan Women posed the questions: “Why do husbands, fathers, brothers-in-law, even mothers-in-law brutalize the women in their families? Are these violent acts the consequence of a traditional society suddenly, after years of isolation and so much war, being hurled into the 21st century?”

GLAAD Takes Issue with Transgender "Comedy"

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot

You may have missed it over the weekend, but "Saturday Night Live" aired a skit that showed men taking hormone supplements to grow breasts and change genders. The sketch was for a mock prescription drug called "Estro-Maxxx," and the fake commercial attempts to make lighthearted jabs at transgendered people by showing men with breasts. The punchline? Transgendered people are funny to look at -- or so one would think from the video:

In timely fashion, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), responded:

This segment cannot be defended as "just a joke" because there was no "joke" to speak of. The attempted comedy of the skit hinges solely on degrading the lives and experiences of transgender women. Holding people up for ridicule simply on the basis of their identity fuels a hurtful climate and puts people in danger, especially given how infrequently the media shines a fair and accurate light on the lives of transgender people. "The violence, discrimination and harassment that transgender Americans experience each and every day is no laughing matter," said GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios. "Saturday Night Live is a touchstone of American comedy, but Saturday's unfunny skit sends a destructive and dehumanizing message."

1000 WORDS: Rebuilding

When most of the men in the village of San Miguel Amatitlan in Mexico left to find jobs in other cities or countries, the women in the village took on new roles and new challenges. From Marcela Taboada's work in Focusing on Latin America, "Women of Clay."

The Political is Personal: Women Writing about War

As a girl of 10, Aminatta Forna watched her father, a physician who also founded an opposition party to Siaka Stevens’ government in Sierra Leone, being taken away by the state secret police. Her first book, The Devil that Danced on the Water (2003), describes her experience of his imprisonment from 1970-73 and the search for those who hanged Mohamed Forna for treason in 1975. Of necessity, Forna introduces the conflict between private narratives and official histories, inviting her reader to experience the uncertainty, injustice, and profound trauma of war through the written word.

In her latest novel, The Memory of Love (2010), Aminatta Forna again takes up the devastating effects of the conflict in Sierra Leone. However, she reminds her reader that people not only struggle and die, but also live, love, and dream in times of war. Indeed, she goes further to assert that individuals sculpt their character and refine their integrity in relation to events on the national stage. She introduces both the idealists who died for their cause and those who betrayed ideals for the sake of personal preservation.

In a sense, Aminatta Forna simultaneously turns Carol Hanisch’s oft-cited claim, “The personal is political,” on its head and, conversely, also reasserts its truth. She demonstrates through her writing that the political is also deeply personal, even while reasserting the intended connotation of Hanisch’s statement: the personal and political inevitably intersect in the power relationships that characterize national governance, especially in times of profound oppression and civil resistance.

Forna’s unique insight into the complex interweaving of personal with public renders a poignant, at times, cynical commentator on the slow, traumatic political processes of resistance, liberation, and reform. Her truth-telling by way of fiction and memoir affords some sense of imaginative liberation from the trauma of state-sponsored violence and the failure of fellow citizens – be they fellow countrymen or members of their global family – to deal effectively with oppression, extrajudicial murder, rape, and other extraordinary acts of injustice and violence perpetrated during civil conflict.

Forna poses and responds to an uncomfortable question concerning one’s personal relationship to broader political struggle against state-sponsored oppression and armed violence. In a recent interview, speaking of her father’s murder by the state secret police for his efforts to oppose violence, corruption, and autocracy, she explores the choice he made to be a political actor rather than to remain silent out of fear for his own life and the fate of his children. Forna inquires, “When you do nothing, what do your children inherit? They inherit nothing.”

Reflecting on 2010, hardly a year in which great strides were made to address state-sponsored oppression, militarism, violence against women, and human rights abuses, the polished writing of Aminatta Forna and her peers who take up the subject of women, families, and the legacy of war seem a powerful antidote to potential myopia and amnesia that could allow us to forget the legacies of Forna's father and people like him who courageously and unselfconsciously pursue a legacy of justice and peace.

Aminatta Forna will be speaking as part of the I.M.O.W. Speakers' Series on Wednesday, January 26^th at the World Affairs Council Auditorium. To find out more about this event, click here.

Laerke Lauta's Floating Female

[Editor's Note: Please welcome new contributor Marissa Arterberry! To learn more about Marissa, check out our Contributors page.]

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

The Art Museum at Mills College in Oakland, California is currently exhibiting a five-channel video installation by Danish artist Laerke Lauta entitled Floating Female. The installation, a commission by the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD), is beautifully ethereal and heavy with suspense. The videos, which are projected in larger-than-life size on the museum walls, “map internal and external states of consciousness.”

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

One part of the installation representing a more external state of consciousness sets the scene in an intimate lounge. People seated in the softly lit room are engaged in conversation, and several empty beer bottles sit on a nearby tabletop. At the center of it all, a woman in a short red dress dances to softly pulsating house music with wild abandon. As she dances like no one was watching, someone clearly is: a man reclines on a nearby loveseat, taking in her performance with a bemused expression on his face. As the woman dances, seemingly without a care in the world, the suspense builds: Does she know this man? Is she intoxicated? What if she gets too carried away? Is the man an admirer, or could he pose a threat to her safety? I suddenly become very aware of all the things women must take notice of when they go out. I began to see this dancer as someone engaged in an audacious moment of pure freedom.

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

The exhibition, which was curated by Dr. Robin Clark at MCASD, “draw[s] from a northern European tradition that ascribes romantic, spiritual, and enigmatic qualities to the natural landscape. Lauta’s works are characterized by an undertone of unresolved suspense, the latent fear of a fatal event that is not directly revealed.”

One of the most arresting features in the exhibition is a diptych piece projected on two opposing walls. In one projection, a woman with white feathered wings floats on the surface of a body of water. We can see the wind blowing her feathers; she literally embodies the Floating Female. The camera is at close range, and with her wings spread wide, the woman appears to almost be flying on top of the water. The atmosphere this image creates is peaceful and dreamlike. But on the opposite wall, a simple shift in perspective changes everything: the camera angle shifts to the side, and the same figure that looked so free now appears to be a corpse floating face down in the water.

Laerke Lauta, Floating Female 2009, HD, 5 Channels, 30 sec.-5 min. loops

With freedom comes great risk, and an element of danger. Laerke Lauta’s work brings together feelings of exhilaration, suspense, and danger. She takes her audience to the edge and lets us gaze over the cliff through her eyes.

Floating Female is on display at the Mills College Art Museum until March 13th, 2011, with a lecture by Lauta on February 22nd. For more information on Laerke Lauta and her work, please visit her web site.

Swoon's Global Sculptures

Swoon's art in Berlin. Wheat-pasted paper and ink. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

The celebrated street artist Swoon tends to absorb her surroundings and combines wheat-pasted stencils with Realism à la Courbet. She creates larger-than-life images that suggest a momentary vision of a remotely familiar friend or place.Recently, BrooklynStreetArt.com co-founders Jaime Rojo and Steven Harrington sat down with Swoon at her New York studio, amidst a crowd of assistants. The interview is lively, honest, insightful, and leaves the impression that a retrospective isn't the end of the line for Swoon's plans.

Can’t We All Be Maladjusted?

“I would say about individuals, an individual dies when (s)he ceases to be surprised. I am surprised every morning that I see the sunshine again. When I see an act of evil, I'm not accommodated. I don't accommodate myself to the violence that goes on everywhere; I'm still surprised. That's why I'm against it, why I can fight against it. We must learn how to be surprised. Not to adjust ourselves. I am the most maladjusted person in society.”

--Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaking in 1965

Lost in a Sunday morning reverie, the sun glinting off the undulating sea and the music of elephant seals barking dawn greetings to each other, I glanced left barely in time to see a threesome of female walkers, all in their late 60s, striding energetically toward me.

Animated in discussion, the blond-ish woman nearest me turned toward her companions.

“And I was like, ‘Hell-o?!’ I mean, really??” She craned her neck toward them, her disbelief apparent on her face.

“Yea, ‘Hello-o?!’ Whoa, what was he thinking?” her Black friend echoed back to her in obvious agreement, the woman between them nodding her approval.

I smiled at their verve, their currency with the turns-of-phrase employed by pre-teens and adolescents exchanging the latest gossip. And, frankly, I marveled at the composition of the trio itself.

Women with a Technological Edge

Last week Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at a town hall meeting in Oman where she called for the inclusion of women in business as vital for the Arab world to thrive according to The Associated Press. President Barack Obama expressed a similar vision in his June 2009 speech in Cairo where he called for a greater collaboration with the United States and Muslim communities and populations. In late April 2010, Secretary Clinton first announced the TechWomen program during President Obama’s Entrepreneurship Summit.

The Institute of International Education (IIE), a not-for-profit founded in 1919, offers a range of excellent support to scholars and students, one of their most well-known being the Fulbright. Heather Ramsey, Director of three women-focused programs designed, initiated, and managed by IIE West Coast Center in San Francisco recently shared how TechWomen, Women in Technology, and E-Mediat: Tools, Technology, and Training are all moving Muslim women closer to being active and successful entrepreneurs. All three programs are sponsored by the US Department of State and focus on both empowerment and capacity building through technological innovation in the Middle East North Africa region (MENA).

In the summer of 2011, TechWomen will match women in Silicon Valley with their counterparts in the Middle East and North Africa for a mentorship and exchange program at highly regarded technology companies. The plan is to harness the power of global business, technology, and education. According to Heather, “using innovative technologies, cutting-edge content, and social networking tools, TechWomen will foster and develop the next generation of women leaders in the technology field by providing women and girls with the access and opportunity needed to pursue tech-based careers.”

With Microsoft as one of their strongest private sector supporters, for the past five years, Women in Technology (WIT) also empowered entrepreneurial women by concentrating on three core goals:

(1) To provide substantial capacity building to Partner Organizations to expand their reach, sustainability, and ability to serve low and middle income women in underserved areas.
(2) To create a strong base of women with vital IT, business and professional skills, enabling them to advance personally and professionally.
(3) To empower women to play an integral role in shaping their country’s future.

After launching in September 2005 in Yemen, Heather shares the program exceeded expectations from the start. “By focusing on empowering women and expanding their participation in the workforce and civil society by providing partner organizations, and the women they serve, with cutting-edge training in business planning; professional development; and Information Technology was implemented in collaboration with local partners in nine countries: Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Yemen.”

Currently, WIT has trained more than 10,000 women and helped build the capacity of more than 60 local women’s organizations along with 650 trainers in nine countries in the MENA region. More and more statistics indicate a link between women who are economically and technologically empowered lowering the need for humanitarian aid yet raising elements of community health, economy, and peacekeeping in the countries where they live. Heather cites, “there is strong correlation between women’s education, empowerment and employment and economic and political stability. Through the Women in Technology program, we have seen thousands of women gain new skills, confidence and in many cases, livelihoods. This positively impacts their daughters, families, communities and societies. Knowledge of technology is incredibly powerful, and seemingly innocuous. Women armed with technology are change agents. They use these cutting edge skills to build networks, lead their families, gain employment, start businesses, and build civil societies.”

The story of Rana Hadi, a student at the Science College of Baghad, is one of WIT’s most exemplary. She ascended from bomb survivor to wheelchair to WIT member then returned to college. On the day of the attack, she watched her closest friend die while her other one was torn to pieces. “Today, and after all this time has passed, I still relive the disaster minute by minute. The echoes of our giggles preceding the screams are still resonating in my ears whenever I immerse in my thoughts … And whenever I wake up I find my fist clenched in a bloody fist,” said Rana, in late 2008 when WIT asked her to share her story.

She calls her life after the bomb, “my second life, with hope.”

Heather acknowledges how deeply the programs impact not only the women’s lives who are changed by them but how deeply affecting it is to lead such innovative change. Challenges exist, of course, but Heather shares how great the reward of working on the three programs. “As with many women, balancing work and being a (single) mother continues to be my biggest challenge. And, truly, I am so fortunate to have a supportive employer and to work on projects with many extraordinarily strong women and working mothers around the world. This challenge is also my greatest joy. I am proud that these projects will help pave the way to a better future for the women of my daughter’s generation, many of whom may not be as fortunate as she. Practically speaking, I try to take one day at a time, otherwise I can feel overwhelmed, I value the simple joys of seeing my daughter develop each day, and I always remind myself of the enormous challenges faced by the majority of women around the world and the incredible strength and perseverance they exhibit. They inspire me each and every day.”

IIE West Coast is always looking to take WIT and its model to other regions and countries. If you have ideas, questions, or would like to be involved, please contact: Heather Ramsey, Director, Global Partnership, IIE West Coast Center, at hramsey@iie.org.

CLIO TALKS BACK: Abigail Adams, Entrepreneurial Woman Extraordinaire

Clio scan / Indiana University Press design

Jacket cover of Portia, with Abigail Adams portrait

Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818) is perhaps best known as the second "First Lady" of the United States. What is less well known is that she became an enterprising woman and sole support of her family when, in the 1770s and 1780s her husband John Adams effectively gave up his law practice for public service. He was instrumental in launching the American Revolution against the British, serving as a member of the Continental Congress from Massachusetts and later representing the fledgling nation to (and negotiating with) the major European powers, in Amsterdam, in Paris, and in London. For over 20 years of their 54-year old marriage, Abigail and her “dearest friend” lived mostly apart, though keeping closely in touch through letters.

Abigail Adams first took over operation of the family farm, managing its tenants and coping with a shortage of farm hands and rising labor costs. She then turned to merchandising and brokering – selling desirable and scarce goods such as chinaware, calico, handkerchiefs and ribbons that John sent to her by ship from Europe. She also speculated in land and acquired extensive holdings, in the face of troubles with currency inflation, counterfeit paper money, and increasing taxation. All this she did in an era when wives were technically deprived of property and the ability to make financial transactions – but she accomplished all this in John’s name, serving in effect as her husband’s “deputy.”

Her biographer, Edith B. Gelles, describes Abigail’s activities in these terms, quoting from her very extensive correspondence, which has become a treasure of American history and literature:

Clio scan / William Morrow design

Jacket cover, Abigail and John, with portraits

“Since she could not own property in her own right, she was obliged to inform John [12 July 1782] that ‘You are named in the Charter as original proprietor, so no deed was necessary.’ Ironic indeed that John now owned over 1,600 acres of Vermont which he did not want, purchased by Abigail, who had the courage to speculate and the cleverness to negotiate for land she could not legally possess. If the situation appeared unjust to Abigail, she did not write about such a reaction in her surviving letters.”

“The Adamses didn’t become rich, but that was not Abigail’s ambition. Her aim was to maintain the family, to feed, clothe, and educate her children without going into debt. She found that a satisfying goal.”

For most women, economic enterpreneurship has been and remains first and foremost about survival. The remarkable Abigail Adams was no exception.

Sources:
Edith B. Gelles, Portia: The World of Abigail Adams (Indiana University Press, 1992), chap. 3.
Edith B. Gelles, Abigail and John: Portrait of a Marriage (William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2009), chap. 6.

Words of Hatred, Words of Healing: Re-forming our Political Discourse

[Editor's Note: Please welcome our newest contributor, Caitlin Reyes Brune! This is Caitlin's first post for Her Blueprint. To find out more about Caitlin, visit our Contributor's page.]

"...What if the mightiest word is love?
Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,
praise song for walking forward in that light."

(from Praise Song for the Day, written and spoken by poet Elizabeth Alexander at the inauguration of US President Barack Obama, 20 January 2009 and subsequently published in Crave Radiance, a collection of new and previously published poems, pp. 247-248)

As Saturday’s news of the cold-blooded, brutal shooting of US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and a score of others reverberated around the vast space of digital media, I brooded ruefully about the state of political discourse. How, rather than embracing the “sharp sparkle” and “widening pool of light” that poet Elizabeth Alexander invoked and that so many Americans experienced so palpably on that crisp January morning in 2009, had we managed to regress into the worst kind of darkness imaginable: that which prompts one human being to irrevocably disregard the humanity of another?