Brazil, Sierra Leone, Kyrgyzstan, and Costa Rica do not have much in common beyond their female presidents. In the last decade, female representation in parliament and executive cabinet positions has almost doubled. Yet advances around the world are extremely varied. Rwanda, where quotas guarantee women 30 percent of seats in parliament, tops the charts with … Read more
Fifty-three years after Betty Friedan wrote about “the problem that has no name,” the name has a problem. In the United States today, “Feminism” is feminism’s greatest enemy. The movement achieved its original goals but changed its mission in order to persist. In the process, feminism may have lost its path. The Paranoid Schizophrenic At … Read more
The Republican-led 112th Congress began the legislative session with what many liberals characterized as a “war against women” which ranged from an attempt to redefine rape as “forcible rape” to a push to eliminate all federal funding for family planning services. A renewed effort to limit access to reproductive health services has fired up legislators, … Read more
In Griswold v. Connecticut, Justice Hugo Black began his opinion with “I agree with my Brother Stewart’s dissenting opinion.” Throughout the opinion, Black used the term “brother” over 15 times when referring to his colleagues. This practice was completely normal until Sandra Day O’Connor joined the Court. Josh Blackman, Co-Founder of the Harlan Institute, told … Read more
The International Labor Organization estimates that 12.3 million people have been trafficked around the world. Forty-three percent of these victims are used for forced commercial sexual exploitation, of which 98 percent are women and girls. Thirty-two percent of victims are used for forced economic exploitation, of which 56 percent are women and girls. Women are … Read more
One of the most common motifs in world politics has been fragmentation along sectarian lines. Since the Biblical breakup of Solomon’s kingdom to now in South Sudan, nationalistic, ethnic, and cultural divisions express themselves through movements for secession: the breaking off of one part from a sovereign, whole state entity. In 1900, there were 57 … Read more
During the late 1920s, as the American stock market was growing rapidly, prospects for economic growth could hardly have seemed brighter. President Hoover remarked in August 1928 that “in America [we] are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us.” … Read more
In the summer of 2010, USA Today’s Greg Toppo asked, “Is 2010 the year of the education documentary?” The article seized on a striking trend: the sudden emergence of films examining the problem of public education in the United States. Three of these, 2010’s highly acclaimed Waiting for “Superman,” the lesser-known 2009 film The Cartel, … Read more
At first glance, the Colombian presidential election of 2010 seemed a great deal like a turning point in the nation’s politics. The election featured new issues, new parties, and, most important, a field of candidates that did not include Álvaro Uribe. Without the presence of the country’s extremely popular president, debates were contentions and the … Read more
In February 2011, tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets of Madison and occupied the Wisconsin State Capitol. In demonstrations modeled after those which took Egypt by storm, activists protested a proposed bill by Governor Scott Walker which would curtail the collective bargaining rights of state and municipal employees. Although the Wisconsin protestors … Read more