From International Museum of Women

Imagining Ourselves, A Global Generation of Women reaches out to a new generation of women— the one billion women in their twenties and thirties— answering the question, “what defines your generation?” Through an interactive online exhibit, a series of global gatherings and a new book, Imagining Ourselves is a platform for young women to create positive change in their lives, communities and the world.

Imagining Ourselves is a project of the International Museum of Women...[which] began in the Fall of 2001. Project Director Paula Goldman sent a call to women in their twenties and thirties in every corner of the globe. She asked the question, “What defines your generation of women?” She and her team received over 3000 responses, and 800 formal submissions from over 105 countries. Imagining Ourselves was born.

Overwhelming interest and enthusiasm from around the globe has caused the project to grow to tremendous heights. A network of over 200 organizations around the globe are sponsoring events or outreach for the launch in March, 2006. A growing list of prominent young women, from Olympic Gold Medallist Oksana Baiul, to Marisa Monte, one of Brazil’s most popular young musicians, have submitted their work for the project...

From See Jane

Where the Girls Aren’t is the first of several research briefs drawn from the most in-depth content analysis of popular G-rated movies ever conducted. Led by Dr. Stacy L. Smith, researchers from the Annenberg School for Communication (ASC) at the University of Southern California (USC) studied the 101 top-grossing G-rated films released from 1990 through 2004. The research analyzed a total of 4,249 speaking characters in the movies, which included both animated and live-action films.

Where the Girls Aren’t analyzes the pronounced imbalance in male and female characters which researchers documented. The researchers tracked the gender of speaking characters in three ways: characters, groups of characters, and narrators. The research found that, overall, three out of four characters (75 percent) are male, with similar patterns holding true when the data is analyzed from multiple perspectives (major characters, characters in groups, movies released in the 1990s vs. the 2000s).

The research was commissioned by See Jane, a program founded by Academy Award winner Geena Davis at the national nonprofit Dads & DaughtersŪ. See Jane engages professionals and parents to dramatically increase the percentages of female characters, and to reduce gender stereotyping, in media made for children ages zero to 11.

From Newsweek

Pity women in the workplace. For the last 40 years, we've been told what it takes to get to the top: determination and a fierce competitive spirit. At the same time, we're relentlessly reminded that we have to play nice—and look good doing it. Then there's the hangover from the women's movement when we were admonished not to compete at all but to band together and help each other. Which in turn sets us up for an ugly and lingering shock when, usually in the early years of our careers, we stumble across a woman manager who isn't interested at all in smoothing the way for other women and in fact, undermines them every way she can. The authors of three new books "Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth About Women and Rivalry", "I Can't Believe She Did That! Why Women Betray Other Women at Work" and "The Girl's Guide to Being A Boss (Without Being a Bitch)" set out to help women sort through those conflicting messages about competition and power...

From Newsday.com

It was late in the evening and the van she had been riding in through mountains in Germany with four U.S. teammates and their coach was nearing their hotel as 18-year-old Alissa Johnson spoke on her cell phone. But at that moment her younger brother, Anders, was where she really yearned to be.

Both Johnsons are among the best ski jumpers in the world. Alissa is ranked ninth among the top women who compete, about 141 spots higher than her brother sits in the men's rankings. But only 16-year- old Anders is preparing to compete for the U.S. Winter Olympic team this week in the Alps north of Turin. Not because Alissa can't fly far. But because women ski jumpers aren't allowed in the Olympics, for reasons older than the hills.

Though the top men and women competitors in the world routinely fly off the same 90- and 100-meter jumps and the very best women train on the 120- meter hills, the only Winter Olympic events in which women are not allowed to compete are ski jumping and Nordic combined, which is a combination of cross- country skiing and ski jumping. Imagine what that means for the Johnson siblings, whose father, Alan, is a former coach of the U.S. national ski jumping team...

From The Black College Wire

...“Hair is a touchy, diverse topic,” percussionist Ancestor Gold Sky proclaimed through the rhythms of the melodic beats.

“Yes,” responded Tiaja Bilah, an 18-year-old freshman, from the audience. “That is a touchy topic.”

This touchy topic affirmed by Bilah and many in the audience was explored Feb. 17 in “Beyond Image, Emancipation through Self-Discovery,” a program addressing issues of cultural awareness through hair in professional society, in self-expression and in beauty...

From Slate.com

The proliferation of TV blondes will come as news only to the blind and those who have killed their televisions. Halos of honeydew yellow, strident gold, and silver birch radiate on the morning news shows, the afternoon gab slots, the business news on CNBC, prime time, and the overnight newsreader desks.

Fashionably black-rooted like CNN's Paula Zahn, framed in a head scarf like Fox's Amy Kellogg, or peering out of a glistening hair doughnut like MSNBC's Alex Witt, the blond broadcasters dominate the airwaves in numbers far beyond their proportions in the population. Joanna Pitman estimates in On Blondes that only one in 20 white adult Americans is a genuine blond, yet one in three adult American females has the look. If you do the math, it's clear that many female newscasters lie about their true hair color every time they appear on television.

From Third World Majority

The World Social Forum.. starts today and there are people everywhere. I can't imagine what the people who live here feel like having their city invaded by people from all over the world! Today they had to push people into the Metro to get the doors to close, just like Mexico City and Tokyo!

I realize that I will probably have less time to write once the WSF starts. The schedule is from 8:30am to 8pm everyday until Sunday! So I will try to include all the things I have been noticing and thinking about while I've been here in Venezuela.

There are murals everywhere encouraging civil participation, even murals for the WSF.

From Feministing.com

I know, I know it is difficult to feel happy about *women's history* in light of all the anti-choice, anti repro-rights legislation we have been reading about all week.

And we all know that Women's History should not be ghettoized to one month, but should be celebrated every month (day and moment)! But hey it doesn't hurt to celebrate just a little bit...