September 22, 2011

"The finest minds have always underscored the peacemaking role of women," Nobel Peace Prize winner and Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev said decades ago.

Now a new five-part TV documentary series, Women, War & Peace, illustrates this …


Read The Full Article:
TV Documentary Series Elevates Women's Work to Stop Warring

September 15, 2011

Conservative Republicans flexed considerable muscle earlier this year and threw a knockout punch against freedom in the arts.

Led by House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Catholic League and other groups, conservatives …


Read The Full Article:
Pushing Back Attacks on Artistic Freedom

September 8, 2011

The Center for Women's Global Leadership's 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence is an international campaign that began in 1991. Participants of the Center's first Women's Global Leadership Institute chose the dates November 25, International Day for …


Read The Full Article:
Challenging Militarism and Ending Violence Against Women

September 1, 2011

The war against domestic violence is heating up. In a decision released publicly on August 17, 2011, an international human rights tribunal has determined that the U.S. authorities paid insufficient attention to domestic violence and violence against women in …


Read The Full Article:
Most Wanted: Meaningful Enforcement in the War Against Domestic Abuse

August 24, 2011

You can't build peace leaving half of the people out.

Women are a prime target in conflict, yet when it comes to building peace, they are being left out. The discourse around peace building often emphasizes the importance of inclusive and sustainable …


Read The Full Article:
No Women, No Peace: Time to Change Peace Building

August 17, 2011

The international legal system treats rape in wartime as a serious crime, especially when it is used in a systematic way as a weapon of war. But what the law says about rape is only a tiny, tiny part of the picture, and that picture is a bleak one, indeed. In my …


Read The Full Article:
Ending Wartime Rape Means Ending War and Patriarchy

August 11, 2011

On September 20, 2011, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- the law barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military -- will officially be repealed. Created by President Clinton in 1993 as a compromise between the existing ban on homosexuals in the military …


Read The Full Article:
Fighting to Fight: Questioning the Battle of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"

August 3, 2011

In 2006, when I discovered that more women were serving and fighting in the Iraq War than in all past American wars put together, I wanted to know why: why they had joined, why they went to war, and what was it like to be a woman in combat.

To find out, …


Read The Full Article:
Why I Wrote A War Novel

July 28, 2011

The Veterans Administration released a new directive on transgender veterans in June 2011, "Providing Health Care For Transgender And Intersex Veterans." This directive recognizes the reality of many service members' lives: the intersection of trans women's and women …


Read The Full Article:
Good News for Trans Veterans: New VA Health Care Guidelines

July 21, 2011

Rwandan women now boast the highest percentage of women in government of any country in the world. In fact, since the 1994 genocide of nearly 800,000 Rwandans, the majority of the country's population is composed of women. These women are the breadwinners, the business …


Read The Full Article:
Afghan and Rwandan Women Entrepreneurs Seek Peace through Business

July 13, 2011

The archetype of Cassandra may be seen as a key symbol for women who warn of the dire and immutable consequences of war. The myth of Cassandra – her predictions and the costs of ignoring her -- carries an important message for those in anti-war movements even today.


Read The Full Article:
Understanding the Myth: Why Cassandra Must Not be Silenced

July 6, 2011

"I've never told anyone this before," the email said. It was one of several that landed on my desk at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) after the news broke that CBS correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted in Egypt in February.

The …


Read The Full Article:
Trapped In The Story: Local Journalists Face Sexual Violence

June 29, 2011

In October 2002, I was scrolling around on the Internet, when an image caught my eye of a woman wearing a fur and a hat that seemed to be a yard in diameter. At that time, my mind was nearly paralyzed with worry. My son had joined the Navy in 2000 when he was 19 to try …


Read The Full Article:
Jeannette Rankin, Suffragist and Pacifist: She Speaks For Me

June 23, 2011

Jessica Kenyon was one of more than 400,000 women who serve in the Armed Forces at any given time. It can be a brutal life. Women in the military are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted as women in civilian life, according to a pending ACLU lawsuit. Yet, though …


Read The Full Article:
Military Women: Unfair Denial of Abortion Access Needs to End

The war in Afghanistan is not the first U.S. war in which the ill-treatment of women was used to stoke the fire for war support at home. The New York Times on April 18, 1943, reported on President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech to the Daughters of the American Revolution in Cincinnati just …


Read The Full Article:
A Lesson From History: WWII and Fighting to Keep Women From Slavery