Abstract

Good News for Women

The author reports that, amid gloomy news for women in 2003, there were some positive events and achievements worth celebrating. Her list includes: 1. Shirin Ebadi won the Nobel Peace Prize. 2. Hormone replacement therapy was further debunked. Instead of protecting you from Alzheimer's, it doubles your risk. 3. Antiwar activism got a feminist edge. The Lysistrata Project saw 1,029 productions of Aristophanes' hilarious, bawdy comedy performed all over the world on March 3. 4. Barbara Ransby's moving and invaluable Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision illuminated a behind-the-scenes heroine of the civil rights struggle. 5. A Department of Education commission rejected energetic efforts to water down Title IX, the main legal vehicle promoting equality for women's athletics in schools. 6. Some movies had leading female characters who were not wives, girlfriends, prostitutes or assassins. 7. One in four people in Ireland saw The Magdalene Sisters, the movie that exposed the lifelong virtual consignment to hard labor in convent laundries of Irish girls. 8. Afghan women set the gold standard for courage with major conferences in Kandahar and Kabul to push for women's rights in the new constitution. 9. In Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down sodomy laws criminalizing gay sex. 10. Amina Lawal, condemned to death by stoning by a Nigerian Sharia court for having sex out of wedlock, was set free on appeal.