Over the last ten years, a lot of books have been written arguing that equality for women has been more or less achieved. Many careers that previously were seen as ”just for men” had opened up to women, girls seemed to be doing better in exams than boys, young women’s expectations about their futures were higher, and they were more confident about their sexuality.

To bridge significant budget shortfalls created by the Great Recession, state and local governments cut spending and increased taxes in each of the last several fiscal years. Since 2008, 46 states have cut essential services in health, education, human services or public safety, including layoffs. Women will experience the adverse effects of state and city budget cuts both as workers and as recipients of essential services.

Women will be one of the groups most affected by the brutal cuts in public services:

The so-called “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” made headlines in January for its attempt to redefine rape. In 1976, the Hyde Amendment limited federal funding for abortion to cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman.

Today the beauty industry, which refers to toiletries, cosmetics, dieting products and plastic surgery, is worth billions of pounds. The negative effects that its methods and advertising have, particularly on women, in the quest for profit can be traced back over hundreds of years.

Christine Thomas, author of the new book 'It doesn't have to be like this – Women and the Struggle for Socialism' spoke to Sarah Wrack about why such a book was necessary. Christine was the Socialist Party's national women's organizer from 1994 to 2006. She has written extensively on the question of women's oppression for the Socialist newspaper and the Socialist Party's theoretical magazine Socialism Today.

Every day, we’re all bombarded with images soliciting us to buy products. Companies spend millions of dollars during the Super Bowl for a 30-second ad alone. Cars, beer, beauty supplies, or electronics, if you can name it, you need to buy it. Big business wouldn’t spend money on these ads if they couldn’t affect our world-view. This has created shocking consequences for women of all age groups.

The 28-day strike of 1,500 nurses and professional/technical staff, represented by the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), beat back a long list of concessionary demands at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. Significantly, the hospital backed off its proposed “gag” clause which threatened staff with discipline and fines for any negative public statement about Temple. Further, the administration was forced to reinstate a limited dependent tuition benefit after illegally eliminating it unilaterally in March 2009. (For details on the settlement, see my May 21 article in labornotes.org).

The conclusions drawn by the influential feminist, Natasha Walter, in her latest book, Living Dolls, may surprise readers of her earlier material. In an honest reappraisal of her position, Walter now accepts that sexism and discrimination against women are ever more widespread, and that it is not possible to separate the personal from the political in capitalist society. CHRISTINE THOMAS reviews this change.

In the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history, 12,000 walked out of 14 Twin Cities (Minnesota) hospitals on June 10th, and are set to strike again. Prepared by months of big informational pickets, billboard ads, and internal organizing, the 24 hour strike was solid. The chants on the large and lively picket lines were frequently drowned out by honking cars showing the broad public support.

For decades, women have had more trouble paying for their health care and medications than men (Gallup-Health-ways Well-Being Index). More than one in seven women lack insurance coverage. The main reason for this disparity is insurance being tied to full-time employment, while according to the Government Accountability Office, only 52% of women (compared to 73% of men) are employed full-time. Women who work part time or have made the decision to stay at home are forced to pay all of their medical expenses out of pocket, or vie for private insurance on the free market.

Though restrictions on abortion got the most attention in the media, the recent health care bill fails women in a variety of ways beyond President Obama’s anti-abortion executive order.

International Women’s Day (IWD) was founded in 1910 in order to confront the great inequalities women faced in the labor force and society as a whole. Unfortunately, one hundred years later, women still make up a majority of the world’s poor.

A century ago, socialist women established International Women’s Day (IWD) as a way to reach out to working-class women. At the Second International Congress of Socialist Women in 1910, Clara Zetkin, chair and delegate from the German Social Democratic Party, proposed IWD as a day to campaign for economic and political equality for women. The very next year, on March 19, 1911, one million women and men in four European countries took part in the first IWD events organized around the slogan, “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism.”

Apparently, the Democrats in Congress are not only perfectly happy to work with Republicans on bank bailouts – they are also willing to work with the Republicans to further erode the right of working-class women to decide if they want to have children or not.