I am taking a break from writing next week to recharge at a lake in the Idaho mountains.

But these two reports from the Center from American Progress speak to the core issues I will discuss in my next book. How do we tap the great economic potential of women--in the case of these two reports women of color and unmarried women? And how do we move beyond our own economic insecurities to fully use the economic power that we have?

The two reports can by clicking here for the report on unmarried women. And clicking here for the report on women of color.

I've added a few paragraphs of statistics and information here as food for thought.

More when I return the week of Aug. 24.

Continue reading "Economic Insecurity? To find economic independence we also need to feel economically stable..." »

Posted by Fara at 08:28 AM

Do we believe in equality for women in theory, but in reality think men still deserve better jobs and bigger salaries and more access to education? That appears to be the case from one global survey regarding our thoughts on female equality.

I'll dig into this survey more in a post tomorrow, but let me know what you think by clicking here to read the story.

Posted by Fara at 02:32 PM

Several media stories about women in Afghanistan caught my attention today. All of them reminded me of the unquestioning power of women--even if that power is only to get the conversation going about the continuing fight for the rights of women around the world.

First off was a Mother Jones article that discussed the Taliban's response to Time magazine's cover story that featured the disfigured face of Bibi Aisha. Her nose and ears were cut off by her husband, who is a member of the Taliban. The Taliban fired back a long response that included a condemnation of the way America treats its women.

Then today on WBUR's Here and Now program on NPR, there was a compelling interview with a young Afghan woman, Parnian Nazary, who grew up under Taliban rule, but still found a way to educate herself even though she was confined to her home for years. Now several years later, she just graduated from Wellesley College.

She was interviewed along with Patty Ward, whose daughter was killed by the Taliban while she was working in Afghanistan. The two women were are inspiring for their devotion to the cause of educating women as the most powerful way of moving countries forward. Ward has set up a program to bring Afghan women to the U.S. to be educated at Wellesley and has hired Nazary to be the program's cultural adviser.

But it was Patty Ward's statement about the power of women--even in a war-ravaged country--that was profound.

She said (and I paraphrase here so please listen to by clicking on the link above) that no matter what happens in Afghanistan, that she believes wholeheartedly in the power of women to find ways to be educated, to move their country forward, and fight for their rights.

That should be a call to action for all women to take action on the importance of educating a woman--whether it's here in America or Afghanistan. We know that that this act--sometimes simple, sometimes hard--is the fastest way to grow a country's economy.

Posted by Fara at 03:50 PM

Newsweek is out with a report on the importance of beauty in our society. It's a lengthy report...chock full of all kinds of information about how much we spend on beauty, the financial gains for pretty people, the dangers of plastic surgery, and on and on. Of course, while the magazine attempts to bring "handsome" men into the stories, most of the articles in the report focus on women.

It occurs to me that while all this is nice fodder for the virtual water cooler...where does it really take us as women? I would have preferred a deep analysis on the economic status of women around the world--not another take on why Heidi Montag both horrifies and captivates us.

Or we could have done with a special report about the true power of women in the workforce. But the reality is that beauty sells--both magazines and in society at large. And it occurs to me that this beauty fascination may be part of the repercussions of "civil death," which I wrote about yesterday. We are still bound to the cultural norms of our times just as Eunice Chapman was bound to ours. But where is our Ms. Chapman--the one who fights against those norms to take back her power?

Posted by Fara at 11:31 AM

Driving into Ann Arbor today, I heard a fascinating interview with an author of a new book called "The Great Divorce." It chronicles the life of Eunice Chapman, a woman who defied her husband, a powerful religious group, and the cultural mores of her times--the U.S. in the 19th century--to gain a divorce and control of her children. The interview is well worth a listen...if only to hear the author read from Chapman's powerful letters in which she states her rights emphatically.

What so captivated me as I listened to this woman's story was my sense of displacement and discouragement. My thoughts kept rollercoasting between "we have come so far" to "we haven't come very far at all." Certainly, we (by we I mean women of a certain socio-economic class in so-called first world countries) live in times where divorce is far more common--but not necessarily easier on us. A range of studies have shown that divorce has a negative impact on a woman's finances (although there are studies that show that there also is a negative impact on men as well.)

Without a doubt, women have gained far more control over their lives, their children, and their bodies in the past 200 years. But I still sense that both here in the U.S. and around the world that women continue to deal with the repercussions from a 19th century cultural and legal norm called "civil death." This term was used in the 19th century to describe what happens to a woman when she marries. When she marries, she becomes civilly dead, or non-existent in society.

I wondered what are the modern ramifications of this cultural and legal norm? How far do we have to go to put "civil death" behind us because I still perceive its hold on us some 200 years later. Despite all we have achieved, women in many countries become the property of their husbands when they wed. Even in countries where women have fought for independence, we continue to live with hangover of this "death." We still struggle to gain financial freedom and independence--whether it's fighting for higher pay or having that tough conversation with our partners about money.

So yes we have come very far from this 19th-century notion of being dead to our society because we were married. But I also realize that our path toward independence has been one that is tougher and far ore philosophically challenging than even I had imagined.

Posted by Fara at 01:54 PM