Contributed by Ashleigh

Further supporting fans’ beliefs that an iPhone is all you need in life, a company called DivorceApps.com now offers applications aimed at helping people who “can’t afford the services of a lawyer and need to help themselves.”

The new company, based in Dallas and run in part by family lawyer Michelle May O’Neil, was launched in March and sells two apps through the iTunes store. The “Cost & Prep” app helps people calculate the costs of divorce and create a list of necessary documents, saving money on lawyer fees.  The other is called “Estate Divider” and helps ex-couples keep track of who gets what, including alimony. More apps, like a calendar to help exes set the dates and times they take care of the kids, are on the horizon.

Seems to me divorce was around long before the iPhone, and people got by ok – well, at least they didn’t need phones to remind them when to visit their kids. There are suggestions that these apps reinforce a growing notion that divorce is “no big deal,” and with more people getting divorced than ever, perhaps that’s true—but iPhone applications can hardly be blamed as a major contributing influence.  Hey, I like technology as much as the next person, but I see quick-fix phone applications for such individual, personal circumstances such as divorce only helping to draw us deeper into our dependence on gadgets and making us rely less on our own brains— and each other.

MacLeans: With this app I Thee Divorce

Contributed by Cherie

As the Global Programs Director at the Feminist Majority Foundation, Anushay Hossain is an expert on the impact of US foreign policy on the health and rights of women and girls in the developing world. She also covers these issues in publications including The Huffington Post, The Washington Examiner, Ms. Magazine, NPR and Feministing, and founded her own blog Anushay’s Point in an attempt to bring more people to the conversation about gender and help “take the fear out of feminism.”  Raised in Bangladesh where she was inspired by her mother’s work on behalf of  women’s rights, Anushay’s understanding of feminism and women’s issues is far ranging as it covers the Indian subcontinent, the US and UK.  In this interview, she discusses the development of her interest in gender issues and shares her views on a wide variety of topics including her reaction to her alma mater’s initial and subsequent handling of the murder of lacrosse player Yeardley Love.

Did your interest in gender issues and women’s struggles for equality begin in Bangladesh? How did it develop?

Yes, it definitely developed in Bangladesh. My mother was very involved in the women’s rights movement in the country, and growing up she would always take me with her to all her activist events. This early exposure to the women’s rights world had a huge influence on me. It pretty much shaped who I am today. My mother showed me from an early age how difficult it is to access education and healthcare for the majority of women and girls in Bangladesh. She taught me about the violence women in my country endure. This had a profound impact on the development of my own feminist conscience, and it taught me never to take opportunities given to me for granted.

How did you decide to get a master’s in gender and development in the UK? What kind of work did you do/ are you doing in this area?

The experience of working with the Feminist Majority Foundation straight out of college confirmed to me that I wanted to cultivate a career for myself in this field. I knew that I needed not only more work experience, but that I needed to analyze the field through an academic lens. I knew I needed a Master’s in this area. The UK is really where anyone serious about Development Studies goes to pursue higher education in this field. At the time I wanted to get my MA, no University in the US was offering degrees in Gender and Development.

I have dedicated my entire career to this field. Right now, the majority of my work consists of monitoring and analyzing the impact of US foreign policy on the health and rights of women and girls in the developing world.

You recently wrote about the murder of Lacrosse player Yeardley Love allegedly by her ex-boyfriend George Huguely and criticized your alma mater, the UVA for as you put it in your post “skirting around the issue of domestic violence instead of confronting it.”  Why do you think that’s the case and what would you like to see academic institutions do in this regard?

I wrote that piece immediately after the murder, and my reaction to the University’s response was premature. I actually wanted and should have done a follow-up piece on that post. In the days and weeks that followed, UVA’s response has been adequate and I think I spoke too soon. For example, they had the White Ribbon Alliance present at Graduation, so many graduates were wearing the white ribbon, students are working on legislation to protect victims of domestic violence, and a fund has been established for Love. In addition, John Casteen, the President of the University, spoke at length about intimate partner violence and the Women’s Center has taken extraordinary steps in raising awareness and educating around this issue. Ultimately, we all have a role in shaping the conversation around domestic violence, and determining what it looks like.

How does media coverage of women’s issues and perspectives in the UK compare to US coverage? For example the Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail all have sections on their online sites dedicated to women’s issues which is something rarely seen in the states—do you feel these sections are important and progressive?

Yes. I have always thought that and it became especially evident when I lived in London. I think in America everyone is too caught up with the abortion debate and the abortion issue. It is holding the women’s movement in this country back. It is just frustrating because there are such larger issues we need to talk about that go beyond abortion. The American media has an important role to play here. Can you imagine what the world would gain from an American feminist movement that transcended abortion?

Why did you decide to create your own blog, Anushay’s Point?  What would you like to achieve through it?

I felt as though for a long time I was having conversations with my colleagues and my friends, with so many women and men about what feminism means, what development means, how women have such a critical role in achieving development goals, about the double-standards applied to women and what men can get away with… all these issues that people were interested with respect to women’s rights, but somehow all these ideas were not accessible to the masses. The majority of people were missing the message, missing the point.

Most people think that feminists are a bunch of angry, extremist, man-hating lesbians. They think the women’s rights movement is irrelevant in this day and age. But when you brought up issues like equal pay, access to family planning services, land rights, access to education I found the majority of people agree that equal rights should extend to women without question. People understand that women’s rights are human rights. I found that people across the board are feminists, but are terrified of that label, especially young women. This really bothered me and the misconception really frustrated me. It still does.

So I wanted to put “my feminism” out there through “Anushay’s Point.” Most of what I cover on “Anushay’s Point” comes from conversations I have with my family, friends, colleagues. And those were the people who really pushed me to start the site. I just wanted to bring more people into this conversation and take the fear out of feminism. I wanted to show people, “See, we are all feminists and there is nothing wrong with that.” I am really proud of this blog. It is so personal to me. It is my voice.

Speaking about the misconceptions around feminism,  what is something that you are particularly concerned about?

That women’s rights movements are only needed in countries like Afghanistan, in “developing countries.” This idea that the West has won the fight for women’s rights is very misleading and not true, but it exists because (more…)

Contributed by Meridith

This week, many newspapers were atwitter about a possible new test to predict the age at which a woman will reach menopause. An article in The Guardian summarized the preliminary studies of the test, which tested women as young as 20 years old and was typically accurate to within four months of the actual onset of menopause. The test could be particularly helpful for women who are likely to reach menopause earlier than average; the estimated 1% who reach menopause before 40 and the 5-10% who reach it before 45 could use this knowledge to help plan pregnancies in advance of their predicted age of reaching menopause.

It seems fair to say that having more information about your health and body is generally a positive thing. I just hope that this test, if it ultimately becomes widely used, doesn’t lead to false expectations of being able to conceive a child at some future time, something which may or may not actually be possible. Becoming pregnant can be difficult for women at any age, and although knowing a good estimate of when you’ll go through menopause could certainly be a useful factor in planning out pregnancies, it could also lead to bitter disappointments if that hope of having a child is quashed by other physiological or social factors, such as physical obstacles to conceiving, early-onset of menopause resulting from chemotherapy, lack of a desirable partner to help raise the child, or lack of access to quality and affordable childcare. Bringing a child into the world is a process that can often be complicated by unforeseen issues; although this menopause test could certainly take some of the guesswork out of planning out a family, I hope it doesn’t mislead people into a false sense of certainty about their likelihood of conceiving a child as menopause approaches.

The Guardian: Menopause test could close the baby gap

Contributed by Cherie

We all complain about senseless male pick up lines and question why a guy would ever think any of them could possibly work but the reality is that most guys tend to overlook the one way to really capture an intelligent, independent and free thinking woman’s attention. Convince us you are a real feminist and poof, you’ve caught our attention. Ok, I don’t plan to go down some cliche route about how a sensitive and understanding man is a dream come true but cutting all crap, a guy who isn’t afraid to call himself something that many women are still to this day afraid to admit is damn intriguing and dare I say sexy. If only we had more men openly identifying themselves as feminists, I believe the dreaded F word wouldn’t be so effin’ scary to both sexes.

I had hoped that Katrin Benhold’s NY Times piece, Feminism of the Future Relies on Men, would offer a similar message  and could hopefully spark some action in a few young men who happened to read it. Turns out, I didn’t get all I had hoped for. While the article stresses the importance of involving men in the fight for gender equality whether advocating for paternity leave, hiring and promoting women for leadership positions, setting a reasonable office pace, it argues that “guys are the more effective feminists because other guys are more likely to listen to them.” Furthermore, Benhold claims that a woman would not be able to pass gender equal legislation or change policies that discriminate against women in the way that a man could. I could not agree less. Men inspiring other men is one thing but presenting women advocating and acting on their own behalf as ineffective strikes me as another way to marginalize and diminish their accomplishments in the fight for gender equality.  Using the right to take paternity leave in Iceland, Sweden and Norway as one example, Benhold claims this legislation described as “one of the biggest and most important steps taken towards gender equality since women’s right to vote,” would have been unlikely to pass if it weren’t men leaders who pushed for it. Well the last time I checked, a women’s right to vote happened when women decided to fight hard for what they believed they deserved; they did not wait for a man to come and save the day.  Ninety years later, we should think no less of ourselves since after all who knows where we would be on health care if Nancy Pelosi had decided she needed a man to take the lead. While it is important and necessary to have men involved in the movement towards gender equality, it seems rather unequal and disparaging to assume that a female leader is less effective than a man in paving the way for gender equality.

NY Times: Feminism of the Future Relies on Men

Contributed by Cristen

Girls between 18 and 20 years old gathered in Toronto prior to the G20 Summit to discuss how they can change the world. Modeled after the political summit, G(irls)20 delegated a young woman from each of the 20 representative countries and the African Union to discuss issues affecting the 3.3 billion women around the world and how to solve them.

Although G(irls)20 didn’t make much of a ripple in the press, I recommend checking out the event’s YouTube channel to catch a glimpse of what these smart young women were tackling, including child brides, empowering rural women and getting more girls through school. And even if you’re not a statistics dork like me, bookmark the summit Web site’s resources page, which is chock-full of recent studies and profiles of the status of women and girls across the globe. Whether you wish to get involved with G(irls)20 or not, educating yourself in your own cultural backyard is one of the most powerful things we women can do to support all 3.3 billion of us.

Contributed by Cherie

I first heard of Haleh Esfandiari when a friend told me about her memoir, My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran in which she recounts how an innocent trip to visit her sick mother turned into a several month detention in a deadly Iranian prison. I could not believe that the Iranian government would lock up a sixty-seven year old academic who also happened to be a grandma with no real grounds or basis and so I had to learn more.  Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C, Esfandiari is an Iranian-American  specialist in Middle Eastern women’s issues and contemporary Iranian and Middle East conflict and politics. In 2007, Esfandiari was kidnapped at knife point, accused of treason, detained and held in solitary confinement in Iran’s infamous Evin Prison  for more than 100 days, between May 8 and August 21. The Iranian government accused Esfandiari of being a spy and conspiring to overthrow their regime. After several high-level interventions including the Wilson Center, American Islamic Congress, U.S. Representatives, senators, Nobel Prize winners, and then-presidential-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Esfandiari was released on a $333,000 bail despite the fact that nothing was proven against her.

Watch the video interview below where she discusses why she was the perfect target in Iran’s eyes and click here for her interview with DoubleXX where she shares her daily routine in prison and her views on what she believes is in store for women’s rights in Iran.

Contributed by Annamarya

Phoebe Prince was a beautiful brunette with a full smile and sweet eyes. Late this past summer, she and her family immigrated to America from Fanore, a quaint seashore town in Clare, Ireland. They settled in South Hadley, Massachusetts, where their extended family lived. Prince attended South Hadley High School for few months before she committed suicide on January 14, 2010 – at the age of 15. And why did she take her own life? Because she couldn’t take being bullied anymore.

The “initially…relatively popular” Prince allegedly dated two boys two of her six tormentors (four girls and six boys) dated. These two brief, innocent flings angered the two girls and, deciding payback was the only appropriate response, put Prince through weeks of physical and emotional violence. On the day of her suicide, she was harassed in the school’s library and after school let out. While she walked home, one of the girls drove by, taunted her and hurled a can at her. Prince went inside her home and hung herself in the stairwell – dead by 4:55 pm. The six accused – 16-year-olds Ashley Longe, Flanner Mullins and Sharon Chanon Velzquez, 17-year-olds Sean Mulveyhill and Kayla Narey, and 18-year-old Austin Renaud – were charged with felonies in connection to bullying that, prosecutors say, led to Prince’s death.

The saddest part about this story is that while a sickening one, it’s not uncommon. In May, 16-year-old Christian Taylor, and 11-year-olds Celina Rebecca Okwuone and Ty Field, committed suicide on separate occasions. So did 13-year-old Jon Carmichael in March. And 13-year-old Hope Witsell in 2009. And 12-year-old Maria Herrera in 2008. And 13-year-old Megan Meier in 2007. And 16-year-olds Kristina Arielle Calco and Jeffrey Scott Johnston in 2005, respectively. And 13-year-old Corinne Wilson in 2004. And 14-year-old Matthew Alexander Epling in 2002. And 14-year-old April Himes in 2000. And Jared Benjamin High in 1998. And countless other. All because they were viciously bullied. All because they felt the only way to end the bullying was to remove themselves from the equation.

What’s worse? It took Phoebe Prince’s death for Massachusetts lawmakers to sign Anti-Bullying legislation into law. And when did that happen? On May 3. Bullying is nothing new, so why did it take a suicide – one that could’ve been prevented if school staff didn’t ignore what was happening right under their noses – for lawmakers to take action in protecting students? (more…)