Women's eNews (https://womensenews.org/author/melinda-tuhus/)
Along the miles of transcontinental pipeline being built to transport oil from the tar sands of Canada, women are fighting the project. One put her body in front of a bulldozer. Another is challenging eminent domain seizure of her family’s land.
U.S. women take only one-quarter of the country’s bike trips and one reason for that, surveyed women say, is aversion to riding alongside motorists. Road danger is considered a big brake on women’s enthusiasm for cycling.
A bill in Congress would help states research why so many U.S. women die in pregnancy and childbirth. And that data could make health reform more responsive to a worsening problem, a leading health activist says.
Marriage equality was a big story in 2009 for New England states and nearby New York. But while the year raised hopes for a rainbow-hued region, Maine’s November referendum repealed same-sex marriage and dealt a blow.
After winning a legal victory for equal marriage rights in Connecticut, lawyers at GLAD are pursuing a 6-by-12 strategy, meaning all six New England states by 2012. Vermont and New Hampshire currently have bills in their legislatures.
Female farmers are seeking advice from an agricultural organization that helps them succeed in a male-dominated field. One woman who was told she couldn’t do it 30 years ago is plucking her Thanksgiving turkeys.
C-sections are being performed in the U.S. at a rate that far exceeds international recommendations. A clash over the high rate and related issues has broken out between professional groups for midwives and obstetricians.
In Connecticut, activist women are raising the ante for lending their support to political candidates. That means fewer of them are backing moderate incumbents Christopher Shays in the House and Joe Lieberman in the Senate.
As the latest maternal mortality statistics show, great numbers of women are still dying in childbirth and never making it to Mother’s Day. A small aid group’s work in Haiti shows how a few simple, inexpensive interventions could improve that picture.
As the public debate intensifies over the Bush administration’s drive to privatize Social Security, women have a special stake in the outcome. Sixty percent of recipients are women and for a quarter of all women over 65, the program is their only income.