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Noise

Panchita, Isabel Allende’s mother, once said, “Everything can be handled elegantly and without noise.” Isabel disagreed. “There’s no feminism without noise,” she writes. I just read Allende’s book The Soul of a Woman. Some of the book is very interesting, and some of it is not so interesting. –Joy

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Anger

“An obstinate and defiant character was accepted in my brothers as an essential condition of masculinity, but in me it could only be pathological,” writes Isabel Allende. “Isn’t it always thus? Girls are denied the right to be angry and thrash about.” I just read Allende’s book The Soul of a Woman. Some of the […]

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Feminism

“The patriarchy is stony,” writes Isabel Allende. “Feminism, like the ocean, is fluid, powerful, deep and encompasses the infinite complexity of life. It moves in waves, currents, tides and sometimes in storms.” I just read Allende’s book The Soul of a Woman. Some of the book is very interesting, and some of it is not […]

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Dianne Feinstein

“Toughness doesn’t have to come in a pinstripe suit,” Dianne Feinstein once said. Feinstein died on September 29, 2023. She was 90 years old, the longest serving woman senator.

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No sightseeing for women

Women can no longer visit one of Afghanistan’s most popular national parks. The Vice and Virtue Ministry alleges that women have not been wearing their hijabs the proper way when they are in the park. “Going sightseeing is not a must for women,” explained Mohammad Khalid Hanafi, the minister of Vice and Virtue, in an […]

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Women should be quiet

Women, of course, often have not enjoyed anything close to equality, reports Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years. Socrates, Barber writes, once asked an Athenian gentleman named Isomachos if he had trained his 14-year-old bride. Yes, the gentleman replied, because the girl was of “good breeding,” and she had spent […]

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Egyptian women

Egyptian women were weavers and grinders of grain. However, a few women were listed as overseers and “sealers” of storehouses, writes Elizabeth Wayland Barber in her book Women’s Work—The First 20,000 Years. One woman was a gardener. Women also worked as housekeepers, nurses, hairdressers, cosmeticians and just plain servants. A few women were “priestesses of […]

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Feminism?

Some students in Florida will be listening to PragerU videos this year. One of these videos describes feminism as “a mean-spirited, small-minded, oppressive philosophy.” Yikes! That was the outdated, sexist view of some people in Florida when I lived there in the early 1970s. –Joy

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Maternal mortality

These are bleak statistics. The United States ranks 46th in the world for maternal mortality, reports Ms. magazine And, the United States is the only wealthy nation that doesn’t provide paid maternity leave. Globally, paid maternity leave averages 29 weeks.

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Tired and weary

Representative Cori Bush, a Democrat from Missouri, announced the formation of an ERA caucus in the House in April. According to Ms. Magazine, she commented, “I would venture to guess that you have grown tired and weary of our statistics of all the disparate treatment that women experience in this country. Imagine how tired we […]

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