The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued guidelines suggesting that more women, as well as greater racial, ethnic and age diversity, be included in research trials by companies submitting drug and device applications for review and approval. Unfortunately, the agency stopped short of requiring that companies have greater diversity in their study populations and to study the drug’s effects in those sub-populations.
The Department of Labor (DOL) announced a proposed rule that would extend the definition of the word “spouse” with regard to the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to include same-sex couples working in states that do not recognize their marriage.
While plenty of my online nearest and dearest were just as outraged as I was, a certain kind of anti-sex positivity fueled many of the most heated posts I discovered. Behind every “Why should your boss pay for your birth control?” question, there was an implicit “Why are you even bringing up your sexuality right now? Put that away!”
The National Organization for Women has advocated for many years for policies that would value women’s unpaid caregiving work, either raising children or caring for dependent adults.
While we’ve got a century of distance from the Victorians, our social norms have not advanced as much as we’d like to believe. We still see sex, especially female sexuality, as something taboo at best and nonexistent at worst.