EXCLUSIVE: Celebrating International Women’s Day: Reflections from Natalie Portman, Maya Angelou and Other Renowned Women

Women’s Media Center

March 7, 2011

By Marianne Schnall

For the centenary of International Women’s Day this week, Marianne Schnall samples assessments from a wide range of women on where we stand around the world.

Stories related to women and girls globally generally tend to get so little mainstream coverage in the media that it’s too easy to remain blissfully unaware of their status. March 8, International Women’s Day, lets the world stop and consider women’s condition past and present—both to celebrate the economic, political and social strides women have certainly made globally, but also to remind us of the enormous inequities that remain to be addressed. Around the world, girls and women continue to lack economic opportunity and adequate health care and education. They are pushed into early marriage and suffer sexual violence and many forms of oppression and discrimination.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

Statistics can Serve to Minimize the Real, Human Pain of Trauma

Releasing the Past

Posted by Paul on Feb 28, 2011

I came across a CNN article recently entitled “PTSD in women may have genetic link”. Early in the article it states, “10% of women and 5% of men develop the condition [of PTSD] sometime in their lives.” It offers no supporting evidence or sources for these numbers. I instantly felt highly suspicious as I see so many traumatized people in my practice as well as so many traumatized, but untreated, people in my life. Such trauma can come from many different sources, including:

Egypt: The country’s sisterhood sparks a movement within a movement

LA Times/Opinion

February 3, 2011 | 12:13 pm

Seeing female protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square has been one of the most surprising developments to emerge in Egypt over the past week. In a country where women are considered second-class citizens (menstruation among the reasons) and are often groped by male passersby, women crossing that threshold and standing side by side with Egyptian men seems to have sparked a movement within a movement.

Early maturing girls ‘at greater risk of depression’

WebMD

Girls who begin menstruating at an early age may benefit from help to cope with depression, says author of a new study

By Peter Russell
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Dr Keith David Barnard

4th January 2011 – Girls who begin menstruating at an early age are at greater risk of experiencing depression during adolescence, according to a new study.

Dr. Gabor Maté on the Stress-Disease Connection, Addiction, Attention Deficit Disorder and the Destruction of American Childhood

Democracy Now

December 24, 2010

AMY GOODMAN: Today, a Democracy Now! special with the Canadian physician and bestselling author Gabor Maté. From disease to addiction, parenting to attention deficit disorder, Dr. Maté’s work focuses on the centrality of early childhood experiences to the development of the brain, and how those experiences can impact everything from behavioral patterns to physical and mental illness.

Birth control pangs

Down to Earth
Author(s): Ankur Paliwal
Issue: Dec 31, 2010

Injectable contraceptives raise alarm
THE Union health ministry is again considering introducing injectable contraceptives in the family planning programme. The ministry has asked its Drug Technical Advisory Body (DTAB) to allow use of Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate (DMPA) in the programme. An earlier attempt to introduce it was withdrawn in 1995 after Supreme Court’s intervention.

Girl Child Network Worldwide marks the World AIDS DAY

zimguardian.com

Africa
December 2, 2010

Girls in Africa perishing because of Virgins cure AIDS Myth

In Africa the myth that virgins cure HIV and AIDS has a traceable history and link to virgin related myths like virgins can make one rich, a girl’s breasts can make customers flood a shop just as breast milk comes out of it, a virgin girl’s blood has purifying effect on any disease and the list goes on.

The last decade has seen thousands of girls perish through rape as more and more traditional healers privately prescribe girls as cure for HIV and AIDS . The death toll though not traceable is certain to be a genocide on humanity of such a silent nature.

Reproductive Coercion

Society for Menstrual Cycle Research

re: Cycles

July 29th, 2010 by Elizabeth Kissling

In our May 28 “Saturday Surfing” round-up of recommended reading, we highlighted Lynn Harris’ essay for The Nation about new research on “reproductive coercion”: the alarming frequency with which young men try to get their partners pregnant, often by sabotaging birth control methods.

When Teen Pregnancy Is No Accident

The Nation
Lynn Harris
May 24, 2010

Leyla W. couldn’t figure out where her birth control pills kept going. One day a few tablets would be missing; the next, the whole container. Her then-boyfriend shrugged and said he hadn’t seen them. She believed him—until she found them in his drawer. When she confronted him, he hit her. “That was his way of shutting me up,” says Leyla, who is in her mid-20s and living in Northern California. (For her safety, Leyla wishes to withhold her last name and hometown.)

80 Percent of Rape Kits Go Untested In Illinois

Care2
July 10, 2010

You would think, if given evidence about thousands of potential rapists, who are quite possibly committing repeat offenses, that police departments across the country would see rape kits for what they are – an opportunity to stop horrifying crimes.