Lesbians In The News

[vagina]

http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/a...-07.7696496692


Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir: The gender pay gap is now the most important equality issue
Iceland’s Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir has managed what many thought near impossible. She has cut public spending in the wake of the market crash without negatively impacting Iceland’s social security system.

Mar 08, 2012 | Text: Guðrún Helga Sigurðardóttir, Photo: Gunnar V. Andrésson
Today Iceland enjoys an economic growth of 2.5 to 3.5 percent. The European average is 0.5 percent. Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir is happy that Iceland has achieved such good economic results. The government has also succeeded on other fronts, notably on gender equality, she says.

Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir believes Iceland’s pre-economic crisis society was run according to male considerations. Power was held by only a small elite. The government has worked to change the old power structure in order to create fairer power sharing. This has mainly been done by giving more women access to power.

“It is sometimes said said that things would look different if women had been in power before the crash.

“Women don’t take as many risks as men and are guided by other considerations. I think this can impact on leadership,” she says.

Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir points out that the government’s goal has been that at least half of the ministers should be women. And it has succeeded. The majority of the government posts are held by women. Department and parliamentary committees too boast 40 percent women members.

“We will soon achieve what Norway did a few years ago, which is 40 percent of all company board members being women,” says Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir.

Two-year adjustment
The government has earlier encouraged businesses to appoint women to managerial and other powerful posts. This has been slow work, however, says Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir. As a result, Iceland’s government has been forced to legislate in order to achieve gender equality on company boards, just like Norway did. The law says no more than 60 percent of company board members can be men and women should make up at least 40 percent of the board. It comes into force in 2013 when companies and pension funds must have at least 40 percent of either sex on their boards.

Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir points out that during Norway’s two-year adjustment period the number of female board members rose from less than 10 percent to nearly 32 percent, but so far this has not been the case in Iceland.

“I am sure the new law will give us an equally good result, even thought the transitional period has not provided us with the same quick result as seen in Norway,” she says.

Iceland’s government works on a four-year equality plan led by the Minister for Social Security. The government has also established a ministerial committee which will lead the government’s work on gender equality. It comprises the Minister for Social Security, the Minister for Finance, the Minister of the Interior and the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir says the committee’s work will highlight the importance of the equality policy. The four government ministers already work with important issues such as human rights, prostitution and trafficking. Results have already been seen in the work to prevent and fight sexual violence and sexual assault.

“We address these issues on the committee,” she says, and adds that Iceland now has a law banning the purchase of sex similar to the Swedish one.

But what is you most important task right now?

The Prime Minister doesn’t hesitate before answering:

“To fight the pay gap between men and women. The government has a project plan to achieve total wage equality.”

"The pay gap breaks my heart"
The government aims to develop a certification standard to achieve equal pay for equal work. Companies can use the standard and they will be awarded a certificate if they can prove that they are following the standard, paying equal wages for equal work. Sigurðardóttir hopes the certificate standard will become a sought-after tool for individual companies.

“Achieving equal pay for equal work is taking so long it breaks my heart,” says Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir.

“But we keep working and we will further our wage policy through our project plan.”

The public sector will head this development. Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir has so far been disappointed with the large pay gaps within the white-collar sector. Public institution management has a certain freedom to influence local wage moderation but often fails to take into account pay gaps between the sexes when money is being divided up.

“The pay gap between men and women has grown, and we will now take this seriously,” she says.

The Icelandic Prime Minister has high hopes for the certification system. She thinks it will help private businesses and the public sector to focus their work on questions of equality.

Snail-speed progress
Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir is impatient and expects quick results. She is worried because the government has still not managed to achieve the desired result without the process now being forced forward.

“Changes to gender equality happens at snail-speed,” she says.

Iceland has changed its legislation on parental leave to allow men to take paternal leave without loosing out economically. Before the current legislation came into force only a small percentage of fathers took parental leave. Today between 80 and 90 percent of all fathers do.

She believes parental leave is the single most important step forward for Iceland’s gender equality policies in recent years.

“The system means fathers loose their right to take leave if they don’t take a full three month parental leave. Fathers’ rights to parental leave cannot be transferred to the mothers,” she explains.

Parental leave has been reduced during the crisis. The government has been forced to make cuts by introducing a ceiling to parental leave compensation. But Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir says it is important to increase the compensation again as soon as possible.

“Now that our economy is on its way back up we will soon have the chance to increase the compensation for fathers and mothers on parental leave. This is high up on my list of priorities,” she says.

Iceland’s EU membership application is being processed by the EU right now, under the auspices of the Danish presidency. Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir had expected that important questions for Iceland, like fisheries and agriculture, would be negotiated during Denmark’s presidency. But the chances for that happening are slim as the presidency comes to an end this summer.

She has just met Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who heads Denmark’s current EU presidency.

“I am not sure we will manage to look at fisheries and agriculture in time.”

The two female prime ministers had fruitful talks during their meeting in Copenhagen. They discussed general EU issues but also the block’s economic challenges.

“We discussed Iceland’s application too, of course. I presented my views and she presented her opinions on the issue,” says Prime Minister Sigurðardóttir. She also adds that Iceland has met a great deal of good will from both the Danish people and from the other European countries.

[Kobi]

Vivian Boyack and Alice "Nonie" Dubes say it is never too late for people to write new chapters in their lives.

Boyack, 91, and Dubes, 90, began a new chapter in their 72-year relationship Saturday when they exchanged wedding vows at First Christian Church, Davenport.

Surrounded by family and a small group of close friends, the two held hands as the Rev. Linda Hunsaker told the couple that, “This is a celebration of something that should have happened a very long time ago.”

The two met in Yale, Iowa, where they grew up, and moved to Davenport in 1947.

Boyack was a longtime teacher in Davenport, directing the lives of children at Lincoln and Grant elementary schools.

“I always wanted to be a teacher,” Boyack said Saturday after the ceremony. “My plan at an early age was to teach in the school where I was then going, and my teacher would move on to another school.”

Dubes worked for the Times and Democrat for 13 years in payroll. “I signed the paychecks for everybody, including Bill Wundram,” she said. After leaving the news business, she worked for Alter Corp. for 25 years.

Over the years, the two have traveled to all 50 states, all the provinces of Canada, and to England twice.

“We’ve had a good time,” Dubes said. Boyack added it takes a lot of love and work to keep a relationship going for 72 years.

Jerry Yeast, 73, of Davenport, has known the couple since he was an 18-year-old landscaper working in their yard.

“I’ve known these two women all my life, and I can tell you, they are special,” Yeast said. “This is a very special day for all of us.”

http://qctimes.com/news/local/weddin...092f7ec3f.html

[Kobi]

When Barb Webb was in sixth grade, she thought so highly of her teacher that she decided she wanted to teach, too. After graduating from Eastern Michigan University with a degree in Chemistry she passed up more lucrative private-sector opportunities and instead went on to earn a Master’s in Science Education from Lawrence Technological University. Her first full-time teaching position was at the all-girls Marian High School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. For the past nine years she has taught Advanced Placement and Honors Chemistry and coached various athletic teams at the all-girls’ school. This period brought Barb not just happiness in her professional life but also in her personal life: Two years ago she married her girlfriend, and she is now 14 weeks' pregnant.

But two weeks ago, during a ten-minute meeting with two school administrators, she was told she either needed to resign or be fired from a job she had wanted since she was eleven years old.

According to school administrators, Webb, a Catholic, is not a role model for students. Marian High School, of which I'm a graduate, is a parochial school, and every teacher must sign a contract that contains a very broad “morality clause” that stipulates: “Teacher agrees, in the performance of her/his services hereunder that she/he will not publicly engage in actions, or endorse actions or beliefs contrary to the teachings and standards of the Roman Catholic faith and morality.”

Marian High School, which refused to publicly comment for this article, isn’t the first school whose Catholic institutional identity conflicted with the lived realities of its teachers. Butte Central Catholic Schools in Montana was sued last month by Shaela Evenson, a partnered lesbian and a literature and physical education teacher there for nine years, who was fired in January while pregnant with their first child. In 2010, Christa Dias, also a partnered lesbian, was fired from two schools in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Cincinnati under similar circumstances. The computer technology teacher was awarded more than $170,000 last year by an Ohio jury that ruled the archdiocese had discriminated against her.

None of these women were ministerial employees, but allegedly lost their jobs for their “out of wedlock” or “nontraditional” pregnancies—in other words, for violating one of the school's morality clauses. According to Ari Waldman, a professor of Law at New York Law School, “These so-called morality clauses are attempts to make end runs around anti-discrimination laws by employing the pretext of religious freedom. Your freedom to worship your religion gives you no more right to discriminate than you having red hair. And when it’s done in schools, it creates an environment where young people learn that is O.K. to discriminate against someone for who they are, something that has nothing to do with an employee’s ability to do her job well.” (As the Archdiocese of Cincinnati learned, though, this isn't a legally infallible approach to getting rid of an employee.)

Hundreds of Marian High School students and young alumnae have rallied around Barb Webb, including those who didn’t have her as a teacher. Many, both heterosexual and homosexual, are concerned about the impact of Webb's firing on young students who are struggling with their sexuality and who may now feel shame when they could have had a positive role model. Some are even reevaluating whether they could send their own daughters to Marian. Mary Mullen Ballard, a 1998 graduate who lives in the area, says, “I have been planning to send my two daughters there, but actions such as these truly cause me to reevaluate Marian, as well as all other parochial schools, as hate and discrimination are not traits I want instilled in my children.”

Mullen’s views are consistent with those held by young Catholics today. Over 70 percent of Catholics ages 18-30 agree or strongly agree that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry, while 74 percent believe same-sex female couples can raise a child as well as a male-female couple can, according to Andrew L. Whitehead, a Clemson University professor who studied General Social Survey data.
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While young Catholics are especially open, American Catholics as a whole have dramatically changed their beliefs in the past 25 years. Based on Whitehead’s analysis, in 1988 only 19.3 percent of American Catholics either agreed or strongly agreed that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry. By 2012, 56.7 percent either agreed or strongly agreed that they should have the right to do so. Across all years, Catholics are more accepting of gay marriage than the general American population.

So how can Catholics, especially the young, advocate for change in a system that seems to disregard their beliefs? Carol Ann MacGregor, an expert on organizational change in Catholic education who teaches at Loyola University–New Orleans, says, “As costs continue to increase, philanthropy is becoming a more and more important source of funding for Catholic schools, some of which are struggling to survive. For progressively minded Catholics, withholding donations could be a very effective strategy for enacting change.” Older, conservative Catholics hold more sway for now, as they can make larger donations.

This is especially true for Marian High School, which receives no money from the Archdiocese of Detroit, instead relying on tuition and donations for its operating budget. The Archdiocese, in its only statement on the issue, distanced itself from the controversy by stating that the school is “sponsored, owned and operated by the Monroe-based religious order of women, Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM). Oversight of Marian’s mission, along with establishment of its policies, is the responsibility of its Board of Directors, which includes representation from the IHM sisters.”

So what of the IHM Sisters? The IHM are part of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represent about 80 percent of American nuns and has famously been under investigation by the Vatican for “radical feminism,” including support for homosexuality and female priests. While Pope Francis’ “Who am I to judge?” attitude has reinvigorated many Catholics worldwide, his message is still slowly trickling down through the Vatican bureaucracy.

The IHM refused to comment on personnel decisions at Marian High School, but consider the IHM motto: “Courageous Spirit. Action for Justice.” With support from the LCWR and young Catholics, the IHM have the opportunity to advance a more catholic—rather than Catholic—education by supporting teachers like Barb Webb.

Webb says charity, social justice, and equality are all principles that have long motivated her as a teacher, telling her students: "You need to be able enter into a world where you will face discrimination as a woman, especially women entering science."

She added, "I never made it an LGBT issue."

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...descrimination

[Kobi]

Now, this is how marriage proposals at sporting events should be done.

Of course, it helps the person doing the proposing is Martina Navratilova at the U.S. Open, but still…

Navratilova was in the midst of an interview with Ken Solomon in the Tennis Channel suite Saturday when she turned to Lemigova, said she’d be asking the questions and dropped to one knee. Her longtime companion, Julia Lemigova, said yes and the the moment was shown on the big screen at the stadium.

“I was very nervous. It came off, and she said yes. It was kind of an out-of-body experience,” Navratilova said of the big moment, which came in the Tennis Channel’s suite. “You’ve seen people propose at sporting events before, in movies, in real life, and here it was happening to me. So I was like watching myself do that. It was cool.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...wpmm=AG0003326