Women’s Independent Press

By Marianne Schnall
www.womensmediacenter.com

Members of the Nobel Women’s Initiative are marshaling their collective
wisdom and experience to tackle the challenge of ending rape as a weapon
of war.”Violence starts in the mind, so we have to start by changing the minds of
men and women all over the world.” Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi,
democracy leader in Burma, participated in the conference by video.
Certain topics have always been hard to talk about—rape and sexual abuse
ranking high up on that list. And yet we must speak up more because of the
many women affected. According to conservative UN estimates, “worldwide,
one in five women will become a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime.”
It is likely that sexual assault has happened to you, or to your friend, your mother,
your daughter, your sister—the girl next to you on line at the grocery store, to
scores of women reading these words right now. In too many cases, the secret
lies buried deep within us for the rest of our lives.

But six women who are Nobel peace laureates want to not only break the silence
but also to spearhead a global campaign to end rape. Who better to take on this
challenge than this group who have individually overcome enormous odds?
Nobel Peace Laureates Jody Williams, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, Rigoberta
Menchu Tum, Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire have already created a global
organization to “work together for peace with justice and equality.” As part of this
effort, the Nobel Women’s Initiative just released a report that finds that rape as a
weapon of war is a crime occurring “on a massive scale” and is a threat to global
peace and security. War on Women: Time for Action to End Sexual Violence in
Conflict examines studies of sexual violence in five regions of the world, explores
the leading causes of such heinous acts, assesses actions taken by the international
community and offers some ways individuals and governments can move forward to
end sexual violence.

“Waging war on the bodies of women has got to stop,” says Jody Williams, the 1997 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to ban landmines. “Like any tactic of war, it can be eliminated.”

Rape is only one of many manifestations of the global pandemic of sexual violence—what some at the UN call a “global scourge”—that includes sexual slavery, forced prostitution, mutilation, as well as forced pregnancy and sterilization. Women may be targeted as members of a different tribe, to force their families off mineral-rich lands or to silence their voices raised to defend human rights. Whatever the reason, the scale and scope of the problem is growing. In places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, Bosnia and Burma, mass rapes have been used as a deliberate and strategic tactic of war—as an effective way to terrorize civilians and tear the basic fabric of society.

According to a report in May in the American Journal of Public Health, almost two million women and girls have been raped in the Congo, at an alarming rate of approximately 1100 a day, 48 women every hour. In the 1990s, more than 500,000 women were raped in the Rwanda genocide, and some 40,000 during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. We should allow that information to go beyond our eyes and our brains and sink into our hearts, to feel the suffering of a girl as young as two months or a woman as old as eighty. These women may have been raped in front of family members, their bodies violated with broken glass bottles or rifles, leaving them permanently mutilated or pregnant or infected with HIV and other diseases. While the perpetrators rarely suffer any repercussions, the women are often sentenced to a lifetime of misery—ostracized by their communities and rarely getting the medical and psychological support they need.

To kick-start its effort to mobilize the world community, the Nobel Women’s Initiative organized a three-day international conference last month in Canada of more than 120 activists, academics, security experts and corporate leaders from some 36 countries. Participants at “Women Forging a New Security: Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict” shared ideas and developed strategies to join together as an organized movement, ending with a day of action, in which they called upon the public to pressure their elected officials to “take a stand.”

There is no single solution to stopping the use of sexual violence in conflict zones; it is entangled with many other thorny issues that face the world locally and internationally.

However the peace laureates can speak with authority of non-violent means to resolve conflicts and to begin to look with an honest, open heart at its roots—at the cracks in the culture and the people in places where violence, and particularly sexual violence, thrives.

How is it that human beings have grown so disconnected from each other, from our sense of compassion and empathy for the suffering of another human being, that such savage and brutal crimes can be routinely committed on such a grand scale?

This profoundly disturbing problem nevertheless offers the potential for hope and transformation,
for the world community to, as Nobel Laureate Maguire Maguire puts it, “create a civilization with a heart.”
Says Maguire, who won the peace prize in 1976 for her efforts to end violence in Ireland, “Sexual violence is not just happening in far away places, it is happening in our own homes.
We need to recognize that this is not someone else’s problem but an issue to be faced by the whole human family. Working together, we can bring these horrific crimes to an end.”

Article courtesy of Women’s eNews and Wendy Murphy
Women’s eNews website
 “http://womensenews.org/story/athleticssports/110511/cheer-her-rapist-lets-make-noise-over

By  Wendy Murphy

A Texas teen was expelled from her cheerleading squad for refusing to
cheer for a guy accused of raping her. The courts have let her down,
so about a dozen of us who are former NFL cheerleaders are standing
up. We want to hear some noise about this.
     
(WOMENSENEWS)–On May 2 the United States Supreme Court declined to
hear the appeal of a Texas high school cheerleader who was kicked off
her squad for refusing to cheer for a basketball player accused of
raping her weeks earlier.

About a dozen of us former NFL cheerleaders, standing on the
sidelines, were stunned. Then we decided to do what we can to speak up
for Hillaire, who wants her real first name to be used.
“There’s always been this idea that if you’re a cheerleader,
you’re just there to decorate the sidelines for the benefit of male
players and fans,” said Cheryl Duddy Schoenfeld, who cheered for
the NFL for two years in the 1970s. “Well we’ve got news for
anyone who believes in such nonsense. We are rallying behind this girl
and her family and we are committed to doing what we can to make sure
this never happens again–to any girl. If the school officials and
courts won’t support her, we will. We are calling on all
cheerleaders–NFL, college and high school, past and present–to step
up and join us in this effort.”

The victim’s family has been ordered to pay $45,000 in costs to
reimburse the school for having to defend against the lawsuit.

“Making the victim’s parents pay tens of thousands of dollars
because they tried to protect their child is like sending a message to
all cheerleaders that they had better stay quiet about things like
sexual assault and dating violence,” said Bonnie Gardner-Drumm,
an NFL cheerleader for five years in the early 1980s.

She calls the incident an outrage. “How hard would it have been
for school officials to just let her stay silent? Ideally they should
have forbidden the guy to play sports, but insisting that a young
woman literally cheer for a man who abused her is its own form of
abuse.”

Support ‘Really Good’

The victim’s lawyer, Larry Watts, said he was disappointed with the
court’s response, but that it felt “really good” to learn
that a group of NFL cheerleaders had stepped forward to support the
victim.

“I’ve been frustrated and shocked that no women’s or victims’
groups or even cheerleaders’ organizations have spoken out in support
of Hillaire. I just don’t get it,” he said. “This is a brave
young woman. It’s great that professional cheerleaders are now
supporting her. They don’t even know Hillaire but they know what she’s
going through and what it took for her to do what she did.”

Hillaire and her parents filed the lawsuit against the high school
after school officials in Silsbee, Texas, told Hillaire she had no
choice but to cheer for the man who attacked her.

She was willing to cheer for the team, but when her assailant was at
the free-throw line, and the squad was cheering for him in particular,
she stepped back from the others and crossed her arms in defiance.

Watts described the cheer they wanted her to say. He said, “It
went something like this: ‘Two, four, six-eight-10, come on [player]
put it in.’ Think about that. How does a school official make a rape
victim say something like that to a man who did something so
horrible?”

The accused was charged with rape and pleaded guilty to assault in
2010, but while the matter was still being resolved he continued to
play sports.

In February 2009, when the victim refused to cheer for him, she was
sent home by school officials and later dismissed from the squad for
the remainder of her high school career. The accused student continued
to enjoy the cheers and adulation of other students, parents and
school officials.

“People dismiss the value of cheerleaders as unimportant compared
to the guys,” said Schoenfeld. “It took a lot of guts for
this young woman to take a stand the way she did. She didn’t deserve
to be punished for that. It’s unbelievable in this day and age that
school officials could be so backward thinking about an issue as
important as violence against women and girls.”
Examining Cheerleaders’ Rights

In their lawsuit against the school district, Hillaire and her family
argued that a victim has a constitutionally-protected First Amendment
right to express herself by refusing to cheer for a student accused of
rape.

The federal court disagreed and ruled the teen had no free speech
rights because cheerleaders act as agents of the
school–”mouthpieces” is the word the court used–not as an
individual students.

The NFL cheerleaders, offended by the court’s characterization of them
as mere “mouthpieces,” are putting their megaphones to their
mouths to speak out.

I did, when I wrote that Hillaire should have sued under Title IX,
instead of the First Amendment, on the grounds that requiring a
cheerleader to cheer for her rapist is a form of sexual harassment and
thus an act of gender discrimination.

Another former NFL cheerleader, Jeanne Ball, is upset to hear that
there has been so little public support for Hillaire.

“Fortunately, she seems to have strong family support,” Ball
said.

Attorney Watts says Hillaire regrets nothing and is proud of herself
for refusing to cheer and for bringing the lawsuit.

“It was the least she could do to show everyone how she felt not
only about being raped, but also about being so disrespected by school
officials,” he said.

Former cheerleader Schoenfeld could not agree more.

“We don’t want cheerleaders–or any women–to stay quiet about
such things,” she said. “Many of us have daughters now–and
sons–and we want them to have healthy relationships. There’s nothing
healthy about rape and there’s certainly nothing healthy about making
a young woman cheer for her abuser.”

The school’s lawyer did not return a call seeking comments.
Article courtesy of Women’s eNews and Wendy Murphy
Women’s eNews website
 “http://womensenews.org/story/athleticssports/110511/cheer-her-rapist-lets-make-noise-over

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Sexual violence  is not motivated by sexual desire , it is a crime of  violence sexualized and includes: rape, incest, child sexual assault, ritual abuse, date and acquaintance rape, statutory rape, marital or partner rape, sexual exploitation, sexual contact, sexual harassment, exposure, human trafficking and voyeurism. Sexual Violence occurs whenever a person is forced, coerced, and/or manipulated into any unwanted sexual activity.

Rapists use sex as a weapon to dominate and hurt others, and it is a crime

BY Author and activist Letty Cottin Pogrebin

The Women’s Media Center
151 West 25th Street, Suite 12F
New York, NY 10001
Phone: (212) 563-0680
Fax: (212) 563-0688

The 1984 Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro ticket

The bishop of New York showed up at the wake on Tuesday and kneeled before Geraldine Ferraro’s coffin.  Gerry would have been pleased.  The church owed her one for all the years when its establishment excoriated her for supporting abortion rights. Whether as a candidate, congresswoman, Walter Mondale’s running mate in 1984, or in the decades since, whenever she spoke in public, Gerry never knew if she might have to face off against some priest threatening her with eternal damnation, hostile Catholics demanding her excommunication, or jeering catcalls of  “Baby Killer!”

Such vicious personal attacks would unnerve anyone.  For Gerry, a devout Catholic until the day she died, the vilification cut close to the bone. She was a church-going, family-loving, Italian-American wife and mother whose conscience would not allow her to choose abortion for herself, but whose sense of decency led her to defend other women’s right to do so in the privacy of their conscience.  Gerry’s empathy was rooted in her personal relationship with Jesus Christ and his relationship to human suffering.  Only after perceiving the depth of her devotion to the church did I fully appreciate how brave was her pro-choice advocacy. While other politicians and public feminists could blithely speechify on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, each time Gerry spoke out it was an act of courage, a spiritual risk-taking, a hard-won triumph of her secular sense of fairness over her deeply rooted religious faith.

Courage is a hackneyed term but no other word adequately describes the attitude with which she lived her life.  From the early 1970s on, I had occasion to witness it close-up after our families got to know each other in the tiny summer community of Saltaire, Fire Island, a narrow barrier beach wedged between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great South Bay about 50 miles from Manhattan.  Cars are banned in season on Fire Island; you arrive by passenger ferry and once there, travel on foot or by bike, and transport your luggage, children, and groceries by wagon. Saltaire boasts one food market, one playground, one doctor-on-duty, one club, but two churches.  The Zaccaros—Gerry, her husband John, and their three children—were regulars at Our Lady Star of the Sea, a white clapboard structure with Gothic windows, imposing by Fire Island standards, that rises out of the sand like a mirage and has stood firm against several hurricanes.

The church was a kind of metaphor for Gerry who was solid and strong, a lady in the way Marymount Manhattan girls like her were taught to be, and soon to become the star of our seaside community. But she started as a public school teacher, while attending Fordham Law School at night, where she was one of only two women in her 1960 graduating class.  She raised her three children while doing some legal work for her husband’s real estate firm.  Her career as we know it didn’t really take off until 1974 when she was appointed an assistant district attorney in Queens, a big deal back when few women were prosecutors.

Always a strong proponent of women’s legal, economic, and political equality, Gerry was uncomfortable with movement rhetoric of the day, words like “women’s lib,” “male supremacy,” or “patriarchy.”   She wasn’t into feminist theory or analysis; she was interested in facts and law.  I remember how shocked she was when she discovered that she was being paid less than her male colleagues, a discrepancy her superior defended on the grounds that she had a husband to support her.

In 1975, she was assigned to the Special Victims Bureau where she prosecuted cases of rape, domestic violence, and child abuse (she was made head of the unit two years later), and soon became a passionate advocate for women, children, and poor people. Exposure to these victims seemed to add to her gut-level understanding of gender inequities a more global perspective on women’s suffering.   Gerry was looking at life through the prism of the powerless.

During her first campaign for the United States Congress, she often talked about her humble beginnings in the South Bronx and how her values were shaped by her widowed mother, a hard-working seamstress.  But Gerry’s courage was all her own as she led on issues of child abuse and domestic violence, and withstood the personal ordeals yet to come.

In 1984, while she was running for vice president and her husband’s business dealings and the couple’s tax returns became a campaign issue, Gerry submitted to a grueling media interrogation with authority, assurance, and dignity. A few years later, their son’s youthful drug arrest again opened their private life to harsh public scrutiny.  Where other beleaguered families might have lashed out at one another behind the scenes, Gerry and John presented a united front and remained fiercely loyal, they never played the blame game.

For the past 13 years, an even deeper level of courage rose to the fore as she battled multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells in bone marrow, as if she were fighting it one cell at a time.  While undergoing countless drug treatments, steroid shots, a stem cell transplant, thalidomide therapy, repeated hospitalizations and surgical procedures, she continued, as best as she could, to work at her law firm, appear at fundraising events to help women candidates get elected, and make herself presentable for her stints on Fox News.  (“I don’t mind being their token liberal,” she’d say. “Someone’s got to do it.”)

Until a few months ago, nothing made her more animated than talking politics with her friends. She was pissed when Hillary lost the 2008 nomination.  She was  adamant about the urgent need for affordable health care and reasonably priced drugs for every American, not just people like herself who could pay for the best.  Sexism in the media made her furious.  Glen Beck drove her nuts.

In the last couple of years, she yo-yoed through good days and bad days, the bad days marked by excruciating back pain, cracked ribs, pinched nerves, and a swollen face. It was a shock to see her height shrink to under five feet and her weight plummet, to hear her quick, vigorous Queens accent turn sluggish with medication, to notice the black and blue marks on her arms and legs, or watch her make her way across the room on a walker, then in a wheel chair. Through it all, she actively pursued the latest cutting-edge treatment, the next experimental drug, anything that might keep her alive a few more months, maybe even years.   She never gave up.  Three days after she died, her husband told me that the doctors said 85 percent of her body was made up of cancer cells.

Her sheer physical fortitude, good humor, worldly engagement, and unbending will to survive were awe-inspiring to me and the other three friends who, with Gerry, had started a women’s group a few years ago to discuss our work, families, the state of the world, and the strange terrain of life over 60.  Our little cabal, which, in a burst of delayed adolescence, dubbed ourselves The Fab Five, met twice a year for weekend retreats, always with a full agenda, and between meetings, kept the conversation going by email. When Gerry became too sick to travel, she attended the retreats by speaker-phone.

As honest and self-disclosing as all of us were in those meetings, we never directly confronted the elephant in the room, the fact that one of us was dying.  But this January, Gerry and I finally had that conversation. She told me she had prepared her family for life without her, that she could finally relax because she’d taught John to make his own meals and told her kids which of her belongings she wanted each of them to have, and what sort of funeral and gravestone they should arrange for.

“Are you afraid of death?” I asked

She laughed.  “Letty, you’re Jewish. You don’t understand that I really believe I’m going to heaven. I’m going to be with my mom and Jesus. What have I got to be afraid of?

The U.N. designates March 22 as the day of the year when we spotlight the global safe water and sanitation issue and the collective efforts underway to get solutions to those struggling and in need

Together, We Are Solving the Global Water Crisis

In contrast to easy access to taps and toilets across the United States, today much of the world faces a global safe drinking water and sanitation crisis. One out of every eight people lacks safe drinking water and two out of every five people lack adequate sanitation.

World Water Day is March 22. Recognized by the United Nations and the global community, World Water Day reminds us that much of the world still faces a global water and sanitation crisis, and that it is our urgent obligation to act. This year, a coalition of diverse US-based groups is calling for increased commitments by the US government and private citizens to reduce poverty, disease and hunger by helping to improve sustainable access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation for many millions around the world.

Why Invest in Water and Sanitation?

Investing in safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene makes economic, social, and financial sense. Many key water and sanitation solutions are cost-effective: every $1 invested in water and sanitation improvements returns on average $8 in increased economic productivity and averted healthcare costs. In addition, these solutions have immediate impacts on health and education: preventing cases of diarrheal diseases among children - the leading cause of child death in Africa - can prevent deaths as well as improve cognitive development and nutritional status.

Americans support prioritizing water and sanitation in developing countries, creating a ripple effect making this investment one of the smartest in tight economic times. Recent UN Foundation polling shows enthusiasm among Americans for the US government to support clean water and sanitation in developing countries. Water and sanitation programs are important in their own right, and get results across multiple sectors. Communities with safe drinking water and sanitation also see tangible progress in children’s health, school attendance, and local economic development.

Investments in water and sanitation are working, but there is a long way to go. Significant progress has been made globally towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) for water. The world is on track to meet the MDG targets for water, and in sub-Saharan Africa access to drinking water has improved 22% since 1990. .

However, many of the most vulnerable countries remain underserved. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, is home to 40% of those without safe water, with at least 15 countries in the region not on track to meet the MDG target. Even more startling, nearly 40% of the world’s population lives without access to adequate sanitation and only a handful of developing countries are on track to meet the MDG target.

What Should Be Done?

Scale up the solutions that are already working. US support for water and sanitation has produced demonstrable results in thousands of communities around the world. Solutions include digging wells and boreholes, harvesting rainwater, protecting springs, water filtering and purification, and building safe and affordable latrines. Sustainability is key: programs must be implemented in a fashion that is sustainable on a local level, in technical, financial, social, and environmental terms. Integrating simple and cost-effective water and sanitation solutions into child survival, health, and nutrition programs can dramatically decrease both child mortality and long-term developmental problems caused by the most common child killers - diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition.

Encourage decision makers to target US funding to the countries and communities most in need of first-time access. The US government must ensure the funding it provides for international water and sanitation programs benefits the people who need it most. Most of those living without safe drinking water and improved sanitation are poor people in impoverished countries. Helping to provide first-time access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation in those communities will also ensure progress toward other related goals: improved health, poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, and increased educational opportunities.

Why now?

The needs are great, and solutions exist today. Today’s investments in global water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives are working. Around the world successful models for replication exist. While working towards long-term change in infrastructure, capacity building and health systems, we should prioritize funding and implementation for programs that can deliver packages of cost-effective, sustainable water, sanitation and hygiene interventions available today.

About the Coalition for World Water Day

A diverse coalition of water, sanitation, hygiene and health organizations has come together for World Water Day 2011. Its goal is to raise awareness and call for stronger commitments and more robust action to ensure universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The global safe drinking water crisis can be solved with solutions available today. The 2011 coalition includes Catholic Relief Services, CARE, charity: water, Church World Service, Food for the Hungry, Global Water Challenge, International Relief & Development, Lifewater, Living Water International, Millennium Water Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, PATH, Procter & Gamble, PSI, Save the Children, Tetra Tech, WASH Advocacy Initiative, WaterAid, Water For People, Water.org, World Vision, and Water and Sanitation Program.

By Heather Arnet, CEO, Women and Girls Foundation

412-434-4883 (office)
We “Will Work for Equality” – Will you?
Join us today by making a donation at www.wgfpa.org
When women and girls thrive communities prosper!

On Thursday, Feb 24, 2011, the Women and Girls Foundation co-hosted a press conference with the National Council of Jewish Women and Pennsylvania NOW at our offices at Station Square. We invited over a dozen social service agencies in our community to participate in this press conference to report on the impacts the proposed federal budget cuts, being suggested by the U.S. House of Representatives, will have on our local economy and the lives of millions of women and girls in Southwest Pennsylvania. We hosted this press conference because we were shocked by the drastic job cuts and service cuts being proposed by the United States House of Representatives. 

Representatives from the following organizations spoke at the press conference:  Pittsburgh Association for the Education of Young Children, Fair Housing Partnership, Just Harvest, WQED Multimedia, Women’s Center & Shelter, PennFuture, Planned Parenthood, Adagio Health, The Arc of Greater Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Community Services, Action United, ACLU Pittsburgh, Women’s Law Project, New Voices Pittsburgh, National Council of Jewish Women, National Organization for Women, Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Health Care for America Now, and the YWCA.

Congress’s newest members arrived with a promise to focus on restarting the economy and creating jobs.  We are saddened to learn that the very first priority of this new Congress – H.R. 1 – is focused instead on eliminating millions of jobs in this country that will result in thousands of unemployed Pennsylvanians.

This job cutting bill will throw American families even further into debt and poverty and then as these families find themselves in a free fall – they will find that there is no longer any safety net.  

This bill cuts nutritional aide for infants, housing assistance for our elderly and veterans, early childhood education, community and family health care centers, and environmental protection of our water and the air we breathe. Some of these programs were enacted under Republican presidents and have long had bi-partisan support. And it does so while leaving billions of dollars of subsidies for millionaires, corporations, and foreign wars unscathed.

The phrase women and children first, used to mean, in an emergency these groups should be the ones first given the lifeboats to safety. It did not mean, in a crisis, throw the women and children overboard. But that is exactly what this US House budget does. It makes the most vulnerable in our community bear the brunt of the sacrifice.

The recession had a devastating impact on millions of Americans, especially women raising young children on their own. In 2009 single female headed households with children made up 74% of those living in poverty in Pittsburgh. Unemployment rates for single mothers have doubled since 2007 and are TWICE that of their married male counterparts. (11.3%)

These budget cuts will not only result in decreased social services for the poor. They also will cut millions of jobs. Jobs in the health care, education, and child care sectors. The majority of which are held by women, many of them raising children on their own. The National Women’s Law Center, recently reported that women lost 86 % of the jobs cut in the government sector during 2010. And so if these cuts are approved by Congress not only will the women and children currently served by these programs suffer. But more families will be moved from economic self-sufficiency to unemployment and poverty.

This is not a job creation strategy. This is not an economic recovery strategy. This is an attack on society’s most vulnerable. As we watch our brothers and sisters in Egypt struggle to achieve freedom and equal access to jobs, healthcare, food, and education, American women should not have to fight to retain their rights here at home. Pennsylvanians need to become informed as to the local impact this job cutting bill would have on our local economy and local working families. And we must speak out against the passage of this bill through the U.S. Senate. Congress can be fiscally prudent without being cruel.

“Real life, real women, real leaders”

By Donna McAleer

In an era where the American public is saturated with images and accounts of women selling sexuality and self-centered materialism, PORCELAIN ON STEEL: Women of West Point’s Long Gray Line (Fortis Publishing, 2010) by award-winning author Donna McAleer spotlights 14 women, all West Point graduates, who chose to make a positive contribution to society. 

The United States Military Academy at West Point is America’s oldest and most respected leadership institution.  Since 1802, West Point has given the country some of its greatest generals and presidents. For 173 years it was all male. In 1976, it opened to women, allowing women to break the gender barrier and reach the top levels of leadership in the army.

There is much to be learned from the women that enter and graduate from the US Military Academy. As a strong and positive influence, the examples West Point women set can help others understand their own limits and then show them how to ignore them to achieve their goals. 

Rich, poor, immigrant, native born, black, white, Hispanic, straight, and lesbian, representing a cross-section of American Society, each came to West Point with different personal goals but sharing the desire to serve their country.

These women come face to face with challenges like losing a limb in battle, fighting life-threatening cancer and dealing with the death of a spouse. Their qualities and strength of character would lead to success in any era, but their stories are especially relevant today. They give inspiration that when one is determined to succeed—it can be done, regardless of barriers.

Their stories include:

Performing a soldier’s marriage ceremony and then his funeral—how do you comfort someone who went from wife to widow, from bliss to bereavement in only a year? How do you help cadets, soldiers, and military families that struggle to manage competing demands of serving both God and country and with the moral dilemma of faith and fighting? How do you deal with a mother institutionalized for mental illness and growing up in foster homes and juvenile detention centers? What kind of life does that set you up for? Cynthia Lindenmeyer can tell you how she does these things and how she turned an arrest for shoplifting as a child into the determination to change her life. A 1990 graduate of West Point, she ultimately became an Army Chaplain and earned a Master’s Degree of Divinity from Duke University.

After a successful career of 16 years of active duty, Lissa Young, a 1986 graduate, Army helicopter pilot and former West Point instructor was outed and forced to resign her commission because of the nation’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Instead of fighting back, Lissa chose to embrace her dismissal as an opportunity to explore new ventures.

During a parachute jump while in the Army, Nancy Hogan plummeted with both main and reserve parachutes tangled around her neck. Terribly injured by the impact, doctors felt she would never walk again on her own. Then, she was diagnosed with kidney cancer. She overcame both devastating challenges to live and walk again. A 1995 graduate of West Point, Nancy, though still physically challenged, is now a dedicated advocate for veterans having served as a director at Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) and now as a legal counsel for the US Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs.

The women profiled in Porcelain on Steel forged successful careers in the military and in civilian life, giving back to their country and their communities.  These are the stories of mothers, daughters and wives; the stories of educators and athletes; of doctors and lawyers, and officers; who all started as soldiers.

Awarded a Gold Medal in 2010 for non-fiction by the Military Writers Society of America (MWSA), Porcelain on Steel is a book for your daughter, your sister, your best friend, and yourself. America’s youth as well as parents in search of stories of inspiration, education, courage, loyalty, public service and leadership that set a positive direction for our young people should read this book.

About the Author: Donna McAleer, a 1987 West Point graduate, attended St. Cecilia Academy, a girls college preparatory school in Nashville, TN. An award-winning author, she has been an Army officer, business leader, non-profit executive director, high school coach, and National bobsled team member. She earned an MBA at the Darden Graduate School of the University of Virginia. Donna lives in Park City, Utah, with her husband, daughter, and faithful dog, where she consults, writes and teaches skiing.  Porcelain on Steel is available at various on-line retailers at www.porcelainonsteel.com

Kathryn Atwood

“A Very Dangerous Woman: Martha Wright and Women’s Rights”

By Sherry H. Penney and James D. Livingston

 ISBN 1-55849-446-4

University of Massachusetts Press

“No matter what a wife’s annoyances may have been during the day, her countenance must always be wreathed in smiles on the approach of her husband.”

– Martha Wright, excerpt from a satirical newspaper piece.

“Just get hold of life’s reverses & disappointments in a ridiculous point of view, & it helps along wonderfully – there is a great deal of fun, among all the annoyances, if one can only find it.”

– Martha Wright, excerpt from a letter to a relative.

The first women’s rights convention, held in July, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, was organized by five women, two of which have achieved nigh-sainthood in women’s rights history: Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  Lesser known is Martha Wright, Lucretia Mott’s younger sister, also one of the Seneca Falls organizers, and the great-great-grandmother of author James D. Livingston.  Livingston and his wife Sherry H. Penney have sought to shed light on Wright’s life and work with the publication of their book, “A Very Dangerous Woman.”

Twenty-first century readers might find the book’s title highly ironic when encountering the self-effacing, thoroughly domestic, and humorous Martha Wright within the pages of “Dangerous Woman.”  But set within the framework of 19^th century America, Martha Wright — who not only promoted abolition and repeatedly provided hospitality to Frederick Douglass, but whose home was also part of the underground railroad; who not only promoted the idea of female suffrage but also the concept of fair divorce and wage laws — was indeed deemed quite dangerous.

During the numerous women’s conventions that followed Seneca Falls, Wright served in various capacities but her main contribution was that of writer and the copious inclusion of her lively personal letters in “Dangerous Woman” sheds light not only on her variegated personality, the numerous women’s rights and abolitionist conventions she took part in, but also on the characters of 19^th century luminaries who she encountered.  For instance, after a visit from Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Wright was charmed: “We all fell in love with Mrs. Stanton, the merry twinkle of her eye and her genuine hearty laugh.”

After the war, when Harriet Tubman was settled in Auburn, she and Wright became quite close and when Tubman missed a chance to see Wright’s visiting daughter Ellen (married to the son of William Lloyd Garrison, one of Tubman’s heroes) and her new baby, Wright notes that Tubman was “so disappointed that her eyes filled with tears.  She [had] never shed a tear in telling me of all her troubles.”

When she visited the Boston transcendentalists after the war (Bronson Alcott, father of the famed author, among them), she was unimpressed and wrote “Just between ourselves I think those radical meetings a great humbug.  Each essayist, in turn, trying to see how obscure he can make his meaning, by wrapping it, like a mummy, in spiced cloths, and then aping Emerson in the reading.”

Penney and Livingston spend a good deal of time on the civil war and its affect both on the women’s movement in general (the push to grant suffrage to freed male slaves basically shelved the women’s suffrage movement) and on Martha specifically.  Her tolerance of those with differing opinions and her peaceable nature is evident in her continued correspondence with her confederate relations from her first marriage, even when war was looming.  When one of these young relatives expressed his approval of the vicious attack on Senator Charles Sumner in retaliation for Sumner’s critical speech of a South Carolina senator, Martha reproved the young man thus: “I felt very sorry that you should justify the murderous attack on Sumner, & that you should be willing to endorse the sentiment, so unworthy an American citizen, that personal violence, under any circumstances, was allowable, for words uttered in debate . . . “

Yet, she signed off the correspondence thus: “I shall always be happy to hear from you & I trust that more mature reflection, & the generous impulses of youth, will lead you to judge wisely on this momentous question wh. is destined to shake the Union from centre to circumference.”

However, the war became close and personal when her own son joined the Union forces and it affected the generous nature of Quaker-born Wright: “I dread any misplaced ‘magnanimity’ towards the leaders of the Rebellion, & the murderers of our prisoners.  I would not have one hanged, but disfranchised & their land confiscated.”  Later she wrote even more pointedly, “I for one wd. rather the war wd. last till the South is depopulated.”

Her attitude says more about the war’s powerful influences than it does about Martha’s character because for the most part, Wright was a renowned peacemaker especially within the ranks of the sometimes divided woman’s movement.  Attempting to make peace between these warring factions she once quipped: “What’s the difference between a bird with one wing & a bird with two? A mere difference of a pinion.”  Indeed, her humor was such an intrinsic part of her nature that William Lloyd Garrison, writing an obituary after Wright’s death in 1875, said that “Beneath [Wright’s] habitual gravity there lurked a keen sense of the ludicrous, her wit and humor being always at command.”

“A Very Dangerous Woman,” like its subject, is intelligent but accessible, a long overdue biography on a very interesting – if occasionally, dangerous — woman.

 “Kathryn Atwood’s book reviews have appeared in numerous print and online journals and she is the author of the new young adult title, “Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue.” 

Today’s water crisis is not an issue of scarcity, but of access. More people in the world own cell phones than have access to a toilet. And as cities and slums grow at increasing rates, the situation worsens. Every day, lack of access to clean water and sanitation kills thousands, leaving others with reduced quality of life.

Glass ceilings aside, millions of women are prohibited from accomplishing little more than survival. Not because of a lack of ambition, or ability, but because of a lack of water. Millions of women and children in the developing world spend untold hours daily, collecting water from distant, often polluted sources, then return to their villages carrying their filled 40 pound jerry cans on their backs. And though women are responsible for the majority of food production in their villages, their productivity is severely limited by this constant struggle.

But the real tragedy is that the problem is so easy to solve. For just $25 www.water.org can provide clean, sustainable drinking water for one person for life, bringing opportunity, hope and possibilities to lives without them.

Women

• In just one day, more than 200 million hours of women’s time is consumed for the most basic of human needs — collecting water for domestic use.
• This lost productivity is greater than the combined number of hours worked in a week by employees at Wal*Mart, United Parcel Service, McDonald’s, IBM, Target, and Kroger, according to Gary White, co-founder of Water.org.

• Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources.
• A study by the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC) of community water and sanitation projects in 88 communities found that projects designed and run with the full participation of women are more sustainable and effective than those that do not. This supports an earlier World Bank study that found that women’s participation was strongly associated with water and sanitation project effectiveness.  

• 884 million people lack access to safe water supplies; approximately one in eight people.

• 3.575 million people die each year from water-related disease.  
• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.  
• Poor people living in the slums often pay 5-10 times more per liter of water than wealthy people living in the same city.  
• An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.

• Diarrhea remains in the second leading cause of death among children under five globally. Nearly one in five child deaths – about 1.5 million each year – is due to diarrhea. It kills more young children than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.  
• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.  
• Diarrhea is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status.

• Children in poor environments often carry 1,000 parasitic worms in their bodies at any time.
• In the developing world, 24,000 children under the age of five die every day from preventable causes like diarrhea contracted from unclean water.  
• 1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea each year.  

Disease

• At any given time, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene.  
• The majority of the illness in the world is caused by fecal matter.
• Almost one-tenth of the global disease burden could be prevented by improving water supply, sanitation, hygiene and management of water resources. Such improvements reduce child mortality and improve health and nutritional status in a sustainable way.

• 88% of cases of diarrhea worldwide are attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation or insufficient hygiene. (9)
• 90% of all deaths caused by diarrheal diseases are children under 5 years of age, mostly in developing countries. (8)
• It is estimated that improved sanitation facilities could reduce diarrhea-related deaths in young children by more than one-third. If hygiene promotion is added, such as teaching proper hand washing, deaths could be reduced by two thirds. It would also help accelerate economic and social development in countries where sanitation is a major cause of lost work and school days because of illness. (6)

What Can You Do?

Join us as we combat the water crisis and work for the day when women are free from the all consuming search for water, making it possible for them to lead productive lives of hope and dignity in a world where everyone in the world can take a safe drink of water.

• Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter with our latest stories, projects, and ways you can help.
• Bring someone clean water for life: Donate.
• Get involved in your school, your community or go online and spread the word.
• Check out the Give Yourself section below for more ideas.

Water isn’t just a world crisis, it’s a women’s crisis. We can change the world, and we can do it one woman at a time if we have to.

Give Your Voice

We know you want to help, but we also know cash might not be that easy to come by. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do.

You’re an influential person. No really. Whether your network includes thousands of dedicated followers or just a few close friends and family members, people listen to you. And getting our message out is worth plenty. While we can’t pay you to use your sway, we can make it easy and effective. We’ve created some social networking resources – avatars, signatures and the like — for you to use wherever and whenever you want, each with it’s own assigned virtual value. Using them is almost like making a cash donation, and best of all, they’ll make a difference. So use them everywhere and often.

Put your Facebook, Twitter or blog power to work for women around the world. If enough people spread the word, we figure that’s a donation worth millions in saved advertising dollars; money we can put to work providing water.

On the other hand, if you do happen to find a little something between the couch cushions, we happily accept cash donations

By Bonnie Hassan

As we move into 2011, many of us think about the changes we’d like to make in our lives in the upcoming year.  Some of us made New Year’s resolutions, and many more of us passed on this tradition because we knew from past experiences that we just don’t keep them, no matter how much we’d like to, no matter how much we promise ourselves that this time will be different. 

I’d like to invite you to move into the new year in a different way, by adopting an ‘attitude of  gratitude’ at the beginning and end of each day.  Angeles Arrien, a cultural anthropologist, author and educator, says this about the power of gratitude:

            “The practice of offering gratitude bestows many benefits.  It dissolves negative feelings.  Anger, arrogance, and jealousy melt in its embrace.  Fear and defensiveness dissolve.  Gratitude diminishes barriers to love and evokes happiness, which is itself a powerfully healing and beneficial emotion.  It establishes a foundation for the challenging work of forgiveness in relationships when we have experienced betrayal, loss, broken promises, deceptions and disappointments.  Gratitude keeps alive what has meaning for us and fosters our capacity to apologize and forgive.”

2011 will bring changes to all of us.  That is a certainty, because change is a constant and is needed if we are to grow and evolve.  Some of those changes will be immediately positive and easily recognized as such, and others will present themselves as challenges that may seem to suck the life right out of us. 

If I’ve learned anything in my journey in this lifetime it’s that there is always a blessing, gift or opportunity presented in every challenge, if I’m willing to look for it. Sometimes those are easily discernable, but most times I have to look deeply within myself at the changes that have occurred within and around me as a result of that challenge, to be able to see the positive outcome that the challenge provided.  And yes, I’ll  admit that sometimes I’m unable to see the positive because I’m so caught up in the ’suckiness’ of the moment. It’s only as time passes and I look back and see where that challenge took me, that I’m able to recognize the blessing, gift or opportunity.  But each time I look, I can see the positives that were generated by the challenge.

And so I start each day with a prayer of gratitude for all that the Universe will bring to me that day, trusting that each encounter, each experience, each moment, offers me an opportunity to grow, to evolve, to live, in an even bigger, more positive way.  And each evening, just before sleep,  I spend a few moments looking back over the day’s events to find the blessings, gifts and opportunities that have been given to me  in the experiences that have come to me.  I offer up a brief prayer of gratitude for each of them, and begin my night’s sleep with positive thoughts and a positive outlook, knowing and trusting that on some level, in some way, I have been blessed, and I am grateful.  I know that like attracts like, and what I send out will come back to me.  So I choose, very deliberately, to put out good energy so that good will come back.

Gratitude opens the door to love - loving yourself and loving others.  Express your gratitude to the Universe for all that it brings to you each day, and to all who have contributed to the life that you have, because when that door opens, miraculous changes can occur in ways beyond your imagination and expectations.