For Women in America, Equality is Still an Illusion

Jessica Valenti writes in The Washington Post: “Every day, we hear about the horrors women endure in other countries: rape in Darfur, genital mutilation in Egypt, sex trafficking in Eastern Europe. We shake our heads, forward e-mails and send money. We h…

Girls Gone Anti-Feminist

Susan J. Douglas writes for In These Times: “[E]nlightened sexism takes the gains of the women’s movement as a given, and then uses them as permission to resurrect retrograde images of girls and women as sex objects, still defined by their appearance and…

Home Fires: Women’s Work

“As of 10 years ago, women have been allowed to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (I.D.F.) in any capacity that male soldiers serve, including combat units. . . . Meanwhile, back here in the United States, women in the military are still seen as less capable and something of a curiosity,” writes Catherine Ross for The New York Times’ blog the Opinionator.

Judge Sylvia Pressler, Who Opened Little League to Girls, Dies at 75

“Sylvia B. Pressler, whose 1973 ruling as a hearings officer with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights opened the door for girls to play Little League baseball, and who later rose to be the presiding administrative judge of the state’s Appellate Division, died Monday at a family cottage in Sparta, N.J.,” writes Bruce Weber in The New York Times.

Olympic Gender Discrimination

“This is a tale of two ski jumpers, one male, one female. Anders Johnson, 20, ranked 100th in the world, made the US Olympic team for the second time and headed for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. His sister Alissa, 22, who is ranked 11th in the world, did not go to the Olympics. In fact, no woman will have the chance to jump for Olympic gold. That’s because ski jumping, one of the original winter Olympic events, still holds a male-only competition, the only Olympic sport to do so,” writes Michele Morris on Huffington Post.