2014 is on its way out, and what a strange year it was. The low points aren't hard to find: the killing spree by misogynist Elliot Rodger, the celebrity nude photo hacking (and the endless victim-blaming that followed), the abduction of girls and women by ISIL and Boko Haram.
HuffPost has the 29 best moments for women in 2014. In some cases, "best" is relative: for instance, the #yesallwomen hashtag and Emma Sulcowicz's "Carry that Weight" campaign were both responses to horrible events. But they were powerful responses that made a difference. And there were some real steps forward: the rise of "Yes means Yes" as a standard, Malala's Nobel Prize, and the one and only Mo'ne Davis.
This week's edition of the good, the bad and the ugly below the orange fastball.
Reproductive rights:
An appeals court struck down a North Carolina law mandating an ultrasound for women seeking abortions. The state is appealing.
An appeals court found that Texas's restrictive abortion law does not present an "undue burden" for a woman seeking an abortion. A reporter illustrates what this really means for a woman who lives over 100 miles from the nearest provider.
In Ireland, a brain-dead woman was being kept in life support, despite her family's wishes, because she was pregnant. This week, a court ruled to turn off the life support.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan took over a wedding to opine about how birth control and caesarean births are "treason."
Workplace Issues:
A district judge struck down the Department of Labor's minimum wage requirements for home care workers.
Low wages and dependence on tips leave food service workers vulnerable to sexual harassment.
Violence:
The news about ISIL keeps getting worse: they are openly selling women and young girls for rape and slavery.
Uncategorizable:
Two Saudi women who defied the law by driving cars will be tried in an anti-terrorism court.
Indonesia is ending its practice of requiring virginity tests for female civil service applicants.
The Miss World Pageant will no longer have a swimsuit competition.
Japanese artist Megumi Igarashi has been charged with obscenity for creating a kayak shaped like her vagina. She could face up to two years in prison and fine equivalent to $20,000. This in a country where child porn was legal until the last year or so.
From a century ago: posters warning of the dangers of a world with women's equality. It's amazing how little the stereotypes have changed.
Damon Young takes a revealing look at the phenomenon of men, including himself, not trusting what women tell them, particularly around women's own experiences.
The theme that women’s feelings aren’t really to be trusted by men drives (an estimated) 72.81% of the sitcoms we watch, 31.2% of the books we read, and 98.9% of the conversations men have with other men about the women in their lives. Basically, women are crazy, and we are not. Although many women seem to be very annoyed by it, it’s generally depicted as one of those cute and innocuous differences between the sexes.
Amanda Marcotte observes how this applies when women talk about abortion, rape, harassment, and other major issues in women's experience. And my own first thought on Young's article was: maybe, since a guy wrote it, men will take it seriously?
Good News:
I don't have any action items this week, but wanted to close with a story from Jimmy Carter's book A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, which I just finished reading. In it, Carter tells a story about his mother, Lillian Gordy Carter, who served in the Peace Corps in India at age 70. She became friends with a gardener who wanted to send both of his children to school, but he could only afford to send his son. Miss Lillian offered to teach the daughter to read, an experience she talked about in her book Away from Home: Letters to My Family. Decades later, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were in the same part of India, and attended a reception where they met many of the people who'd known Miss Lillian. He asked about the girl who'd learned to read. She was there, all grown up - and she was the president of the local university. Sometimes, one small change makes all the difference in the world.
In 2015, make a small change and see how much it changes the world.