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Happy International Women’s Day! Some history of the day, which is more popular and more often recognized in other countries but has finally hit home in the US, can be found here.
Articles of Interest for IWD:
NYT: Three Proven Steps to Advance the World’s Women
HuffPo: 11 Women Who Are Changing the World
Gender Across Borders held a celebration via blogs! They asked all bloggers to blog on IWD.
AWearNess: Equal Rights, Equal Opportunity
Kathleen Hanna came into a music scene in the 90s that was angry, violent, and full of men. She and her bandmates in Bikini Kill, along with the rest of the riot grrrl movement, pushed back against that culture and helped usher in a new “wave” of feminism.
After Bikini Kill, Hanna went on to make feminist dance music with Le Tigre and has kept pushing boundaries ever since. Recently, she donated her zine archive to NYU’s Fales Library as part of its new Riot Grrrl collection. She joins Laura in studio to talk feminism, rock’n’roll, and why she’s hopeful for the future.
“With the options for young women seemingly either the decried “hook-up culture” or settling in for “college marriage,” I have to pause and ask: These are our options?”
More and more women are opting to take their partners’ last name.
The Boston Globe thinks this is something public opinion should make sense on: “ A recent poll of US men and women by researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah found that 71 percent of those surveyed agreed, either strongly or somewhat, that it was beneficial for a woman to take her husband’s name. About half of those polled felt so strongly about it that they said the government should force women to take their husband’s name.”
I’ve made the decision already not to do so if I was ever to marry. One woman in the article claims her name was “her brand,” while another claims taking her husband’s name made the coupling more “concrete.” So, what is it then? What makes women take someone else’s name, someone else’s family history, as their own?
It seems simple enough- the last name as a sign of who you are. After all, our names are important parts of our identities.
So why not have one for ourselves?
“On the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010, GWPD received a report of a forcible fondling that occurred in Gelman Library on Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010, at approximately 11:30pm. The victim reported that she was assisting the suspect when he unexpectedly put his hands down her pants and up her shirt. The victim pulled away and fled the area and the suspect left the library.
SUBJECT DESCRIPTION: Black male, 6′ 3″- 6′ 7″, 265 lbs., 35 to 45 years old, wearing a white sweater.”