Great post!

5resolutions — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 14:13:33 -0600

Thanks so much for putting this together. This is the best, most comprehensive wrap-up I've seen. Happy New Year!

Claire
5 Resolutions to Transform the Fashion and Beauty Industries

Fab!

veronicaeye — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 16:19:38 -0600

wow...lots of work for an awesome post. Thanks! No need to see another 2007 wrap-up list.

I blog at http://vivalafeminista.blogspot.com

Excellent Post.

Catherine Morgan — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 07:44:38 -0600

Great Post Suzanne...thanks. Happy New Year!

Contributing Editor Catherine Morgan
also at CatherineBlogs.com and The Political Voices of Women

Feminism & Gender in 2007: The Good, The Bad, and the Photoshopped

Suzanne Reisman — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 05:30:00 -0600

It feels like just yesterday that I sat down to write Feminism & Gender in 2006: The Good, The Bad, and the Underwearless. And, like last year, 2007 seems to have flown by. (Is it just me, or did a year take forever to pass back in the good old days?) Now 2007 is almost gone, and like every year preceding it, it was chock full of fun moments, outrage and fury, progress, and unfortunate events. I thought a quick recap of some of the important things that happened this year under the rubric of Feminism & Gender would again be enlightening, this time as we look toward 2008. Without further ado, in no order whatsoever, I present 2007:

Work: The porn industry is the only industry in which women out-earn men, and it seems that in 2006-2007, more job opportunities than ever opened up for "mature" women in the porn industry. the pay gap between men and women still exists. Elena Centor shredded holes into a flawed study that showed that women are evil bosses that the mainstream media played up. web conferences tend to not include many women (although women outnumber men online); SXSW defies this rule of thumb. Not surprisingly, it turns out that American women with children are not "opting" out of work, but are being driven out of the workplace because few places have family-friendly policies. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), was originally was written to ban and provide remedies for "employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, , but "gender identity" was dropped for political expediency.

Sports: Women runners were furious about an article that claimed that most women are not biologically suited to run. Cheerleaders protested being forced to cheer at girls' sporting events. (I stand by my belief that the biggest obstacle to women's equality are women themselves.) After 123 years, Wimbledon finally decides to live up to US Open and Australian Open standards and pay men and women the same amount of money. Don Imus slurs the good names of the Rutgers Women's Basketball team and eventually loses his job over his inappropriate remarks. A Los Angeles Times sportswriter undergoes a sex change and no one cares. Petition to support Title IX is available.

You're gorgeous as you are, except that you need a lot of products and procedures, aka beauty: The grooming playing field for grooming evens out a slight bit when Norelco introduces the Bodygroomer for men, noting that body hair is not only unsightly on women. MAC cosmetics launches a human Barbie line. The national chapter of Delta Zeta sorority purges its DePauw branch of all women deemed to smart, fat, and/or ugly; half of the remaing members sisters rally around them and quit to protest such absurd discrimination. Several ads from Dove's "real beauty" Pro-Age campaign are banned because the over-50 women in the ads appear nude in profile. The amount of photo retouching that goes on in magazines is incredible. (See: Faith Hill and Redbook; America Ferrera in Glamour.) Thanks for photoshopped pictures, girls take up unhealthy habits that can cause death so they can be unrealistically thin.

Reproductive rights and freedom: In January, legislation was introduced to ban abortion in Virginia the second Roe v. Wade is overturned. Three honor students in New York are suspended from their high school for saying "vagina" during a production of The Vagina Monologues. The Supreme Court upheld an abortion ban that does not allow doctors to consider a woman's health needs. The shit hits the fan when legislators with ties to Merck make the Gardisil vaccine against HPV mandatory. some women's health advocates find themselves aligned with conservatives in protesting the vaccine. Yay - Plan B has been available over-the-counter to women over 18 years old at pharmacies that will stock it for one year! Anti-choice protestors terrorize and prevent women from using a new Planned Parenthood clinic in Aurora, IL, although most women who use the service are there for health purposes like pap smears that they can't receive from other health care providers for a variety of reasons. Should 6th graders have access to birth control pills? Speaking of birth control, it seems that the logical conclusion that societies with better access to birth control are ones with the lowest abortion rates and that countries with better access to birth control are also ones with the most liberal abortion laws. Along those lines, teen pregnancy rates rise for the first time since 1991 thanks to utterly useless abstinence-only sex "education."

Marriage and motherhood: It is revealed that more American women than ever are living without husbands, and they are happy, too! (Same in Canada. And, incidentally, feminists make better partners.) However, in Washington state, in response to a July 2006 ruling thus upheld a ban on gay/lesbian marriage because the state had a legitimate interest in only permitting couples who can have and raise children together to get married, a gay-rights group filed an initiative that would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled. For those hetero women who do did get married, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offers a BA in Homemaking, which is only open to women. The Health, Labor, and Welfare Minister of Japan refers to women as "birth-giving machines and devices" and implores them to "do their best per head." For couples who struggle to get pregnant, it turns out that 40% of infertility problems are due to the female partner, 40% are because of the male's issues, and 20% are problems from both sides.

Crime and Punishment: Rape victims continue to be victimized by the "justice" system around the world. a woman in Florida is jailed and denied emergency contraceptives after she reports a rape; a teenage boy is accused of engaging in illegal sexual acts when he is raped in Dubai; a woman in Saudia Arabia is sentenced to 200 lashes and 6 months in prison after being gang raped after complaining that it is unfair that she was initially to be punished for being out in public without a male guardian with 90 lashes. Women in Cambodia help other women survivors of violent crimes. Sexual slavery continues to be a horrific global problem that few leaders have the courage to confront. As if violence against women were not bad enough in "real" life, cyber-bullying plagues women.

Politics: One thing that began in 2007 that I know for certain will continue in 2008 is election mania. Much hand wringing by women is done over Hilary Clinton's run for president. On Hardball, Ann Coulter is finally held to task for her irresponsible and ill-informed personal attacks by Elizabeth Edwards.

International: The first female leader of a Muslim nation, Benazir Bhutto was killed in Pakistan.

Firsts: Katie Couric becomes first female nighttime news anchor; controversy ensues. India elects its first female president. Nancy Pelosi got a historical promotion to become the first female speaker of the US House of Representatives.

Lasts: Several inspirational and amazing feminists passed away this year. Betty Ford, Molly Ivins, Liz Claiborne, Anita Roddick (founder of The Beauty Shop), Madeline L'Engle. Thank you for the wonderful work you've done in your lifetimes. You will all be sorely missed.

Suzanne also blogs at Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants and is wrapping up 2007 in Hawaii

BlogHer - Feminism & Gender in 2007: The Good, The Bad, and the Photoshopped - Comments

Great post!

Fab!

Excellent Post.

Feminism & Gender in 2007: The Good, The Bad, and the Photoshopped