Women News Feb 9 2010

Jane: The U.S. Department of Defense announced that the emergency contraceptive Plan B will now be available at all military health clinics and hospitals around the world.According to NARAL, this decision will affect more than 350,000 women.

Joan: Last week we reported on an ad that CBS planned to show at the Superbowl produced by Focus on the Family and featuring Tim Tebow and his mother. Tonight we would like to play for you a response to by former college and professional football player Sean James and Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner. 1 minute, 7 seconds
The ad can be listened to on the Planned Parenthood website.

Jane: The proposed Obama budget would exempt some programs for women and girls from spending restrictions proposed for many other domestic programs According to McClatchy from the Kansas Star, the document -- "Opportunity and Progress for Women and Girls" 15 federal programs that benefit women and girls and would receive 2011 funding increases.." The budget proposal would increase funding for family planning efforts, food aid for low-income pregnant women, infants and children up to age five, for Head Start meals, child care and funding for domestic violence survivors for a total of $535 million. In addition, six programs are broader initiatives that would also benefit men and boys, such as a 1.4% pay increase requested for the U.S. military.

Joan: Last Wednesday, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said that he will sign a decree denying French nationality to a man who acknowledged forcing his French wife to wear a burqa-style veil over her face, declaring that the man had rejected France's core national values of secularism and gender equality. President Sarkozy called the veils degrading to women and unwelcome in France.  It is believed that only several thousand women in France wear the burqa. The move to ban the burqa has drawn fierce criticism from some of France's five million Muslims, who say such restrictions are based in fear and intolerance of Islam.

Jane: According to Reuters, Bishop Michel Santier, warned that if Paris passed a law, banning the full burqa, "the result could be the opposite of what is desired and lead to a reaction that increases the number of women wearing this garment". He continued, "If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy all their rights, we should in our country respect the rights of all believers to practice their faith.

The Vatican has long pointed to the rights of Muslim minorities in Western countries when pressing Muslim countries to allow more religious freedoms for Christian minorities there.

French Jewish leaders have also expressed concern about a veil ban.

Joan: According to a report by California Watch, the mortality rate of California women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has nearly tripled in the past decade, making it more dangerous to give birth in California than in Kuwait or Bosnia.

Fearing that the problem may be occurring nationwide, the Joint Commission, the leading health care accreditation and standards group in the United States, issued a “Sentinel Event Alert” to hospitals on Jan. 26, stating: “Unfortunately, current trends and evidence suggest that maternal mortality rates may be increasing in the U.S.” The alert asked doctors to consider morbid obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, along with hemorrhaging from C-sections, as contributing factors.

Dr. Jeffrey C. King, who led a special inquiry into maternal mortality for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, believes the decline resulted from a better counting of deaths. To confirm this, Shabbir Ahmad, a scientist in California’s Department of Public Health, organized academics, state researchers and hospitals to conduct a systematic review of every maternal death in California. The group’s initial findings provide that there is a true increase in deaths – not just the number of reported deaths.

There are many factors such as poverty and obesity that are contributing to the rise in deaths, but the researchers in California are most interested in the areas where they have control, such as the high C-section birth rate. Nearly one in three babies is now born by C-section.

Jane: According to a letter to the editor in the Herald Tribune on Sunday, Adrienne Rossi, was told by a female manager in a Lakewood Ranch restaurant that public breastfeeding is “illegal” and “indecent” and that she must cover herself. She quotes the manager as saying, “In this country it is indecent to be naked in a restaurant.”

As a recent resident to Florida, Rossi questioned whether breastfeeding was in fact illegal. She researched the law and discovered that breastfeeding in public is not against the law and that Florida Statutes allows a mother to breastfeed in any public or private location. Other statutes exclude breastfeeding from various sexual offenses, such as lewdness, indecent exposure and sexual conduct.

She concludes, "In 2010 I cannot believe that anyone would be uncomfortable or offended by a mother practicing the most natural form of nourishment and love. Is a mother breastfeeding her child really the equivalent of someone sitting in her restaurant naked?"

Joan: A report released by the Institute for Women's Policy Research shows that federally funded training may reinforce sex segregation and the gender wage gap. The Briefing Paper found that: Women on average earn $1500 to $2000 less per quarter than men after federally funded career counseling or training. After completing services, women earn 79.5 percent of what men earn among adult participants and 74.1 percent of what men can earn among dislocated workers.

The wage gap is not due to less training: on average women received more weeks of WIA-funded training than men. Fewer than 3 percent of WIA participants received training for non-traditional occupations where the opposite sex accounts for at least 75 percent of workers.

The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) is likely to come up for reauthorization this Congress. WIA includes 'self-sufficiency' as a stated objective of training services. The report concludes that unless greater attention is paid to the causes of the gender earnings gap after WIA services, that goal will remain elusive for many women and their families.

Jane: Beyoncé made history at the Grammy's by collecting six trophies, including song of the year for her anthem "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." In 2004, Beyoncé, won five Grammy's and is mow the first to reach that mark twice. For a complete list of Grammy winners, go www.grammys.org

Joan: United Nations agencies are targeting their relief efforts at Haitian women since 45 percent of Haitian households are headed by women. Roberta Clarke, regional program director for the United Nations Development Fund for Women, or UNIFEM said, "They are the ones who are the economic as well as the psychological mainstay of children and other dependents, the aged and the sick."

The World Food Program, or WFP, has developed women-only centers for food distribution in Haiti. WFP spokesman Marcus Prior said Saturday that 10,000 women a day will be given 55-pound bags of rice at 16 WFP distribution points around the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. The women can bring family members along to help them carry the rice, but only the women will receive the bags.

Jane: Great News! Costa Rica elected its first female president. Laura Chinchilla, from the National Liberation Party won with close to 46.8% of the vote.