International Women’s Day & Blog Against Sexism Day

Happy International Women’s Day! Today marks a celebration of women all over the world, but also an acknowledgement that much work remains to be done to achieve gender equality all over the globe.

Here on campus, TFA is kicking off our “This is What a Feminist Looks Like” campaign to ‘raise awareness’ (it sounds like we are a disease) about feminism—what it is, who we are, and what we want. The goal of feminism is quite simple:

Equality for all genders.

I’ll leave you to marinate on that for a while, but we want to make it clear that that our primary goal is achieving equal choice for women across the world, whether that be the choice to work, stay home, be healthy, speak freely, or otherwise.

In addition, you are all invited to our International Women’s Day Celebration, TONIGHT in Sophia Gordon from 5-7 pm. Grace Paley, Deborah Digges, TFA, VOX, the Jackson Jills, and John McDonald will all be there…plus, free food! TFA and other groups will also be tabling today in the campus center from noon to 2 with info, food, stickers and other fun stuff for International Women's Day.

The Tufts Daily's coverage of the "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" campaign can be found here.

Bill O'Reilly: not exactly a feminist.

On February 28th, Bill O'Reilly's radio show, which is played throughout the nation, tackled feminism and equality when he had Lis Wiehl (Author of "The 51% Minority: How Women are Still Not Equal and What You Can Do About it") on his show.

He said that women at ABC and CBS News had received preferential treatment because "[t]hey had a little cabal; and they intimidated the men in the organization and said, 'If you look at me cross-eyed, I'm gonna bring you up to Human Resources and destroy your life.' " He went on to say, "every man in the place was terrified of them." and, "in a lot of places, women have formed cabals to terrorize the men because they take advantage of, 'Oh, we're downtrodden. You're kicking us in the teeth.' "
He's referring here to women's advocacy for rules to put an end to sexual harassment in the workplace.

In 2004, his former producer, Andrea Mackris, brought a lawsuit against him for sexual harassment.

You can listen to the outrageous interview and read the full article here.

Vital Women's Heath Office faces huge setback

The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the Office of Women's Health of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received an unexpected $1.2 million cut to their $4 million dollar budget. The Office was established in 1994 in response to a growing body of scientific evidence that "some sex-based differences in biology warranted special regulatory attention -- and a recognition that other offices within the FDA did not have the time, money or expertise to focus on women's special needs." They were incidentally also instrumental in the approval of Plan B Contraceptives (the Morning After Pill) to be sold to those 18 and older-- a stance in opposition with the views of the current administration and FDA officials. They made clear their disapproval, and in 2005, the former director, Susan Wood, resigned because of the resistance the administration put up despite scientific research that supported the "safety and appropriateness" of Plan B availability.

The $1.2 billion dollar cut will, according to a member of the office, mostly prevent the office from doing further work for the remainder of 2007 due to previous assignment of the remainder of the funds.

Is this the beginning of the end of the office, experts are worried, says the article in the post.

Today, four senators (Hillary Clinton, D-NY, Barbara Mikulski, D-MD, Patty Murray, D-WA, and Olympia Snowe, R-ME), wrote a letter to the Commissioner of the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, asking that the budgeting be reconsidered, or at least explained to the senate. "As Congress moves forward with the budget and appropriations process, we will pursue every course to make certain that this funding is restored. We intend to use every tool at our disposal to make sure that the OWH has the resources it needs to safeguard women’s health." In that full text of their letter, they make the connection that a cut to the Office would be an attack on women's HEALTH-- this isn't even necessarily a choice issue.