Via Truthout.org, we found an interesting article that looks at how far we have evolved on the issue of gender discrimination in our courts.
When Legal Momentum, a U.S. advocacy group that works with all aspects of gender in the legal system, started its National Judicial Education Programme in 1980, gender discrimination was an unacknowledged problem in the country’s courtrooms.
Thirty years later, the New York-based NJEP has produced dozens of reports and educational programmes for U.S. judges and lawyers, including an authoritative 500-page handbook on gender discrimination in the legal system.
Link to the rest of the article
While there are still obvious issues of gender discrimination in our courts, groups like Legal Momentum deserve credit for helping make our courts more equitable.
Posted in: Judicial, Women's Issues.
Here’s an update from a December post we did about Sexual Assault on Campus
The Center for Public Integrity has added some new articles to their report about college sexual assault.
Here’s a sampling of some of the interesting articles:
‘Undetected Rapists’ on Campus: A Troubling Plague of Repeat Offenders
An Uncommon Outcome at Holy Cross
Posted in: College, Sexual Assault.
Found Via USA Today:
The report says the “date-rape drug” phenomenon “is evolving rapidly, as sexual abusers attempt to circumvent more rigorous drug controls by using substances not restricted by the international drug conventions.”
Link to the complete UN Report
Posted in: Sexual Assault.
With February being Teen Dating Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, we wanted to highlight this piece about Dating Violence by Laura Sessions Stepp
on the sexreally.com website:
Confronting Dating Violence, reminds us: The incidence of assaults on intimate partners is rarely taken as seriously as it should be. And despite various educational campaigns encouraging witnesses to intervene, most people still see relationship abuse as the couple’s problem, not theirs.
Linda Dunphy, executive director of an Arlington, VA, organization called Doorways for Women and Families, wrote in The Washington Post late last year that calls to her office concerning domestic violence had jumped 56 percent from the year before. Some of the situations might have been prevented, she said, had a neighbor, friend, or family member offered help in some fashion.
Link to the Original Article
Posted in: Dating Violence, Domestic Violence.
Heres’s an an update of a previous story, France: Move to Make Emotional Abuse a Crime.
From The New York Times:
France’s National Assembly approved Thursday night a proposal to add “psychological violence” to a law intended to help victims of physical violence and abuse, despite doubts that the law is specific enough to have much impact.
The proposed law says that to “act or repeatedly say things that could damage the victim’s life conditions, affect his/her rights and his/her dignity or damage his/her physical or mental health” is punishable by a jail term of up to three years and a fine of up to 75,000 euros, or about $103,000.
According to the article, the next step for bill will be the French Senate, where passage is likely to happen this summer.
Posted in: Current Events, Legislation.
We found this interesting story via the New York Times about two different studies relating to pregnancy and depression:
The first, published online by the journal Pediatrics, finds that a startling percentage of low-income, urban mothers show symptoms of postpartum depression. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center screened 198 mothers of children between the ages of 2 weeks and 14 months who brought their children for checkups at the center’s outpatient pediatric clinic. More than half of those mothers — 56 percent — met the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of some degree of depression.
Postpartum depression is thought to affect 14 percent of new mothers in the United States, and while it is known to be higher in low-income populations, these numbers surprised researchers.
The second study cited in the article looked at acupuncture as a treatment for depression with pregant women:
Researchers at Stanford University tested alternative treatments and antidepressants for pregnant women and found that acupuncture specifically designed to treat depression is a potential substitute. Sixty-three percent of women who received that treatment responded well, compared with only 44 percent who received massage therapy or acupuncture that was not specifically designed for depression.
Link to the original New York Times Article:
Posted in: Women's Health.
Found via the Feminist Daily News:
Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) reprimanded her colleagues in a floor speech Thursday for their two-month-long hold on the confirmation of Judge Susan Carbon as the Director of the Department of Justice’s Office of Violence Against Women (OVW). President Barack Obama first nominated Carbon to be director of the OVW in October 2009, according to the Boston Globe. The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously voted for Carbon’s confirmation on December 3. She was eventually confirmed last Thursday.
During her speech on the Senate floor, Shaheen said, “Every two minutes someone in this country is a victim of sexual violence. Every 52 seconds a woman is victimized by a spouse or partner. These crimes devastate victim’s lives. They shatter families…These Senators cloaked in anonymity were not punishing Attorney General Holder by blocking Susan Carbon’s confirmation. These Senators were punishing the victims of domestic and sexual violence in states across this country…the police officers who put their lives at risk every day when they enter homes plagued by domestic violence…[and] the community groups that are working to prevent domestic and sexual violence.”
Posted in: Current Events, Domestic Violence, Legislation.
From the BBC, comes the disheartening results from a study of school children in Scotland:
A study of schoolchildren has found that most of those questioned thought violence towards women was acceptable if there was a reason behind it.
The majority of the pupils said it was justified if the woman had an affair, or if she was late in making the tea.
The study by a researcher from Edinburgh Napier University also suggested that girls expect to curtail ambitions once they are married.
The research involved 89 primary seven children at five Glasgow primaries.
The 11 and 12-year-olds were questioned in depth about their attitudes and aspirations towards gender roles and behaviour.
Link to the complete story
Posted in: Domestic Violence.
Related to a previous post about Michelle Obama’s effort to combat childhood obesity, we found this interesting article published by Time that discusses the links between childhood sexual abuse and trauma to eating disorders and obesity
In recent years, studies by both Felitti and others have largely confirmed the association between sexual abuse — as well as other types of traumatic childhood experience — and eating disorders or obesity. A 2007 study of more than 11,000 California women found that those who had been abused as children were 27% more likely to be obese as adults, compared with those who had not, after adjusting for other factors. A 2009 study of more than 15,000 adolescents found that sexual abuse in childhood raised the risk of obesity 66% in males in adulthood. That study found no such effect in women, but did find a higher risk of eating disorders in sexually abused girls.
Discoveries by Felitti and colleagues have also helped give rise to broader work linking stressful experiences early in life — as early as in the womb — to effects on health and behavior later on, such as an increased risk of heart disease or becoming addicted to drugs. Scientists are finding that such effects are not only long-lasting, but can even be inherited by future generations.
Link to the complete Time article
Posted in: Body Image, Child Abuse, Children's Issues, Health Issues, Sexual Assault.
