International Day of the Girl: The Threat of Education

Today is the first International Day of the Girl. In the public health world, where I worked for 13 years, it was always said that the most efficient and effective way to improve health globally was to educate girls and women. It also happens to be the best way to improve economies and to enlighten societies. This is unsettling to static, patriarchal nations. It may even be unsettling to people in our own country.

In "Her Crime Was Loving Schools," New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has written about the 14-year-old Pakistani girl shot this week by the Taliban for advocating for girls' education. The point blank shooting by masked men who boarded her school bus in the assassination attempt -- was an abomination decried by the Pakistani government and one that should be denounced by all who call themselves civilized. [at this writing Malala Yousafzai is still alive but in critical condition after bullets to her head and neck]

Kristof writes that the shooting and other recent international assaults against girls "remind us that the global struggle for gender equality is the paramount moral struggle of this century, equivalent to the campaigns against slavery in the 19th century and against totalitarianism in the 20th century."

Kristof does not exaggerate. I add to his words my archived blog post on the 40th anniversary of coeducation at Princeton University and the work that remains to assure that girls worldwide reach their human potential.

Baseball, Locker Rooms and Equal Protection

Thirty-four years ago today, Federal Judge Constance Baker Motley ruled that female sports reporters were to be allowed equal access to Yankee Stadium's locker rooms. The plaintiff was Melissa Ludtke, a young journalist (and friend of mine) then at Sports Illustrated who had been barred from the Yankees and Dodgers locker rooms during the 1977 World Series. The lead defendant was Major League Baseball's Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.

 Yankee Stadium was a city-owned facility. Motley cited the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection clause. Case closed.  But not really...

The ruling was hardly the end of the story for women reporters who still had to contend with other teams and sports, yet it was exceedingly high profile and served notice to all leagues (and symbolically to any all-male institution) that the time had come; women would be treated as the professionals they were or the law would have something to say about it.
As Melissa explained to me today via FB: "Technically only Yankee Stadium was affected by Motley's ruling, and Major League Baseball appealed that decision. In early October, we were back in Motley's district courtroom twice, once for a hearing amending her ruling and then Kuhn's lawyers refused to agree that Motley's order be extended to the city of Philadelphia to allow equal access there during the playoffs. But on January 3, 1979, Kuhn attorney's notified the Second Circuit's Court of Appeals that Major League Baseball would not pursue further its appeal of Motley's decision. When the baseball season opened in 1979, equal access was the rule with all of the league's teams."

Others of us had been in NBA and NHL locker rooms since 1975 (Newsday's Jane Gross was the pioneer covering basketball; The Daily News' Lawrie Mifflin and myself at The New York Times were the intrepid female duo covering ice hockey).

But Ludtke vs. Kuhn and Yankee Stadium sent the loudest message to date. Yet here we are 34 years later with another closed room still to contend with. My question: When is the NFL going to put a woman in the anchor booth?? We could all die waiting....

NFL Referees Built That

With the regular refs locked out by NFL management and with college replacements on the field, the whole weekend saw football games that looked more like hockey or rugby rumbles. The uncalled late hits alone were terrifying. Several fistfights broke out. The refs were confused or hesitant or equally overeager in calling infractions. The men in stripes couldn't control the game, and the players knew it.

The Monday night Seattle-Green Bay game-ending call topped it all.  After the Seattle quarterback's Hail Mary pass was unmistakably intercepted, Seahawks' Golden Tate and Green Bay's Jennings landed on the turf and wrestled for what seemed like an hour as the officials tried to clear the pack. One ref signaled touchdown; the other signaled no touchdown. The replay, shown immediately by ESPN to millions, testified to an interception (and to earlier offensive pass interference by Seattle -- no NFL pro ref would have missed that). But then came the announcement that, after review, the ruling on the field would stand. Seattle ended up "winning" the game 14-12. Read the NFL's exegesis of the call.

We've all had enough -- the press, the players, the fans in the stand, the fans at home. We have not been watching NFL ball the past 3 weeks. This is clear and needs no replay.

The owners are willing to pay tens of millions to a single player but won't cough up a little change for the guys who actually run the game on the field (NFL refs make between $25,000 and $70,000 tops) nor guarantee their paltry pensions (let them eat 401Ks). Prevalent attitude this election year...

Michelle O at DNC: Don't Slam the Door of Opportunity Behind You

Michelle Obama at the DNC last night had some great messages about equity, education, health care and the true meaning of success, while also telling the story of Barack and her own modest beginnings, the debt owed to govt student loan programs and their continuing focus on providing a good upbringing and better world for their girls and, by extension, all of the next generation.

photo AP

And without saying the word "Romney" she managed by implication to undercut the Republican candidate's economic policies, his character and his moral values.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUpN6klYP9o&feature=player_embedded

"Barack.. believes that when you work hard and done well and
walk through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it
shut behind you."

"Because for Barack, success isn't about how much money you make.  It is
about the difference you make in people's lives."

"And he believes that women are more than capable of making
our own choices about our bodies and our health care."

Taking Your Husband's Name

My new friend Carol Cassara has a great prose poem post on her blog Middle-Aged Diva, musing about the choice of whether to change your last name to his when you get married. She's let me share it with you. Here's an appetizer; then read the rest at her blog.

These arrived the other day.
Yes, the college I'm teaching at needs to have them on file
to be sure I have the appropriate credentials
to be teaching young minds. 

Not that these tell you much

except that I met a university's degree criteria.

But, whose name is on them?

Mine. 

That is M's surname, which I took in 1972 when we married the first time. 

And that's who I was as I finished my college career.

And then, one day, after he left, I was writing a check in Publix on Appalachee Parkway in Tallahassee, Fla. {Yes, there was a day when grocery stores did not take credit cards and debit cards had not yet been invented.}  I remember the moment vividly. I stopped, mid-signature and thought to myself, Why do I have this name? 

CONT'D at : Middle-Aged Diva

Purchase Power = Women Power

BlogHer is a big deal. And a blast this year in NYC. Plus the Expo hall is jammed w brand name company booths trying to interest us in their latest products. Women in U.S. make up to 85% of household consumer purchase decisions. 

Sponsors of the event include Verizon, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, Hillshire Farm, Samsung, Dannon, Lysol (!), Wells Fargo and Harley-Davidson Motorcycles to name a few.

Obama Addresses 5,000 Blogging Hers

Here's Lisa Belkin's account on Huffington Post as the BlogHer2012 Conference opens in NYC with a video address from President Obama.  (Mitt Romney was also invited but only Obama accepted)

Obama said “the choice women face right now in this election could not be bigger.”

Watch video of the President's address.

Ready for BlogHer2012?

The conference of the year starts tomorrow! I'm heading down from Boston. BlogHer, now in its 8th year, is always an electric storm of female bloggers who write on every topic imaginable (though Parenting and Food blogs are big). Women from around the U.S. and the world. Look for my on-site tweets @girlinthelocker

Guns Don't Make Citizens Safer

Do you really want the facts about gun ownership and gun violence, or do you prefer the NRA's false rhetoric? At Harvard School of Public Health, where I worked until recently, its Injury Control Research Center website tells the truth about the causes and consequences of our precious "right to bear arms" -- more like a "right to be killed by a gun."

Some examples: States with higher gun ownership rates have higher rates of gun homicide. Same holds true for countries. (the point -- guns don't make people safer) And guns in the home are more likely to be used to intimidate intimates than to fend off strangers. Meanwhile, young people who commit suicide by firearms almost always do it with a gun owned by a parent. How tragic is that? Completely preventable. Guns give no second chances. Of people who attempt suicide by gun, 85% are "successful". Compare this to attempted suicide by poison/pill overdose -- 2% success. And the vast majority of people who have a failed attempt at suicide will not eventually die by suicide. Instead they will go on with their lives and die sometime of other, different causes. But, as I said, no second chances for people with a gun in their hands.

The right to bear arms is bunk. Semi-automatic weapons too easily turn violent psychotic people into mass murderers. Think about if the guy at the movie theater last night in Aurora, a suburb of Denver,  had only had a knife...

At this posting, 12 people were killed in the massacre and 59 were wounded.

A Girl from Delhi in Ghirardelli Square

courtesy: Chronicles of a Valley Girl

As a "pioneer" in an earlier generation, I identify with my young friend from India. She is an engineering student at Princeton University, the first of her extended family to study abroad and a female at that! What a fuss the Aunties made at home, she told me, criticizing her parents for allowing her, an unmarried girl, to live and study beyond their reach and protection.

There are still many barriers to break, pioneering to be done by women globally. My friend recently felt her liberation, of personhood and thought, most keenly in SF's Ghirardelli Square. Her post is illuminating -- about her journey and ours.

Excerpt:
On the SF visit, my friends were kind of annoyed at my constant nagging to go to Ghirardelli Square to eat ice cream (though they did a good job of trying to hide it!). Still, visiting Ghirardelli for me was more than just tasting their wonderful desserts. The last time I visited Ghirardelli Square and stayed around for a while was in 2008 with family. 2008 was a different life. It was my first visit to the US and I was struck first and foremost by how self reliant people here seemed. Of course, I now know that it is more of a necessity. The US seems to force you to be self reliant, in a way in which I was never forced before. Growing up in Delhi, I was very protected and sheltered. Of course, a lot of it had to do with age and the level of safety a city like Delhi accorded me - but coming to the US, I felt it gave me the means to be completely free, make my own decisions, my own mistakes and really understand myself.
I mentioned this to my parents and others around me when we visited, and most people laughed it off. Like many other things I said on the trip, this too was considered a whim, a teenager’s fantasy and phase that I would soon grow out of.
“Things are different in the real world. Don’t try and be TOO independent. It’s not a good attitude, especially for girls…”

Full blog post at Chronicles of a Valley Girl