To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.
Jill Bolte Taylor
Inspirational Woman Of The Day
May 5, 2012 by 14 Comments
Emine Saner
The Guardian March 7, 2011
Article History
Vandana Shiva
Environmentalist and founder of Diverse Women for Diversity
When Shiva, 58, and women villagers wrapped their arms around trees to prevent them being felled by commercial loggers, the name “tree hugger” was born. Since then Shiva’s influence on the global environmental movement has grown. Fascinated by physics, she went to the University of Western Ontario but left her formal scientific work when she was inspired by the non-violence of the Chipko movement. “My father had been a forester and I had grown up on those hills. I learned from the [peasant women] what forests mean for a rural woman in India in terms of firewood and fodder and medicinal plants and rich knowledge.” Shiva founded her Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in 1982, in a cow shed at the foothills of the Himalayas, to “serve the powerless not the powerful, which would not get all its cue from Western Universities and international institutions, but would also be open to learn from the indigenous knowledge of local communities”.
Her organisation promotes biodiversity, conservation and small farmers’ rights. She is an authority on globalisation and biodiversity, lobbying governments and challenging agriculture giants such as Monsanto.
She has been called naive, with critics saying her promotion of organic farming will not be able to support the world’s food needs, but Shiva has always said this is a short-term view. Vandana’s main theme is biodiversity – the power of agribusiness, she says, will lead to a domination of homogenous genetically-engineered seeds, that will eventually require farmers to use vast quantities of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and water. Farmers in developing countries will not reap the economic benefits of their harvests, she argues; instead, that will go to a handful of global companies who will also hold the future power of food security.
Describing herself as an ecofeminist, Shiva, who also founded the organisation Diverse Women for Diversity , says feminism and environmentalism are inseparable. “Women who produce for their families and communities are treated as ‘non-productive’ and economically inactive. The devaluation of women’s work, and of work done in sustainable economies, is the natural outcome of a system constructed by capitalist patriarchy. This is how globalisation destroys local economies and destruction itself is counted as growth.”
Women In The News
May 5, 2012 by 3 Comments
By Matthew Philips on May 04, 2012
Black Women Continue Making Job Gains
Digging through the demographic data in the latest job numbers, one of the clear winners of the last few months has been black women. Since December, they’ve knocked more than 3 percentage points off their unemploymentrate, from 13.9 percent to 10.8 percent. That’s the biggest drop over the last five months for any single demographic group broken out by race, sex, and age by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Education, health care, and retail appear to be factors. All three sectors were among those that posted the largest job gains last month.
Unemployment among black men dropped from 15.7 percent in December to 13.6 percent in April. For white women, the rate has essentially remained unchanged at 6.8 percent, which is the same rate as white men. Total white unemployment remains well below total black unemployment, though the gap has narrowed over the past year. In April 2011, white unemployment was exactly half that of black unemployment, 8.1 percent compared with 16.2 percent. Now the difference is 6.8 percent compared with 13 percent.
Falling unemployment among black women is not a function of people dropping out of the workforce. The employment participation rate of black women has steadily increased over the last few months, from 53.5 percent in December, to 56.1 percent in April. Employment participation has actually fallen among white women, down nearly a full percentage point since April 2011, from 55.6 percent to 54.8 percent.
Employment participation remains low for the total population, about 58 percent. That’s down from the most recent high of 64 percent back in 2000, and basically where it was back in the early 1980s. Back then, the dip was a sudden fall followed by a fairly quick recovery. Today, participation has flattened over the past few years, after plummeting from 62 percent beginning in summer 2008.
Inspiration Of Motherhood
May 5, 2012 by 14 Comments
By Kavita Varma-White
Tornado Mom: New foot, big day
Stephanie Decker described her Wednesday in one word: Big.
The Indiana mom of two, now affectionately known around the country as Tornado Mom, protected her kids by laying on top of them during a deadly March 2 tornado that demolished their home and took parts of both of her legs.
Yesterday, two months exactly from when the tornado hit, she got a new prosthetic foot.
“I’ve been sitting in this chair for two months…so it’s a good anniversary to stand up, stretch and be able to do something and not just be confined to awheelchair,” says Decker.
On her Facebook page, Decker posted a photo of the new foot, clad in a cool pair
of black Nikes with pink laces, with the status update:
It’s been an amazing day for me today… Can you figure out why???…
Decker says her doctors once thought it could be close to a year before she walked again. Apparently her grit and determination proved them wrong.
Decker credits her positive attitude and support from friends and family as helping her get to where she is today.
One thing’s for sure: Mother Nature – you can’t mess with Tornado Mom.
LadyRomp 