Television newcomer Rachel Maddow is the best thing to happen to cable television this year. Campbell Brown, veteran political reporter, is a close second.

During the campaign, Brown took on sexist treatment of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Before that, she held the line during an interview with Tucker Bounds, spokesman for the McCain campaign, about Palin’s lack of foreign policy experience. That interview made me an eternal fan.

On “No Bias, No Bull,” a daily show on politics, Brown calls it like she sees it. And more often than anyone else on television, she’s sees the sexist comments and attitudes that seem to escape most political reporters and pundits (not surprising, since most of them are men and some have been known to tilt sexist themselves).

Brown latest commentary addresses assumptions about women and work, prompted by some not-so-smart comments Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell made about the selection of Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano’s to lead Homeland Security. Here’s what Rendell said during a casual conversation held next to an open microphone:

Janet’s perfect for that job. Because for that job, you have to have no life. Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19-20 hours a day to it.

Which prompted Brown to respond:

Wow. Now, I’m sure Gov. Napolitano has many qualifications for the job beyond having no family, and therefore the ability to devote 20 hours a day to the job.

But it is fascinating to me that that is the quality being highlighted here as so perfect. C’mon. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is married with two grown children. His predecessor, Tom Ridge, had a family. Anybody remember a debate about whether they would have trouble balancing the demands of work and family?

While Rendell got his lesson in mic etiquette, Brown also made sure the governor and anyone else who assumes women with families aren’t capable of taking on demanding jobs, and women without families have no life, understand how those assumptions hurt everyone. Watch the video (if you’re an IE user; can’t get it to work in Firefox, though you can view it at CNN) — another excerpt from the transcript is below.

Question one: If a man had been Obama’s choice for the job, would having a family or not having a family ever even have been an issue? Would it have ever prompted a comment? Probably not. We all know the assumption tends to be that with a man, there is almost always a wife in the wings managing those family concerns.

Question two: As a woman, hearing this, it is hard not to wonder if we are counted out for certain jobs, certain opportunities, because we do have a family or because we are in our child-bearing years. Are we? It is a fair question.

Three: If you are a childless, single woman with suspicions that you get stuck working holidays, weekends and the more burdensome shifts more often than your colleagues with families, are those suspicions well-founded? Probably so. Is there an assumption that if you’re family free then you have no life? By some, yes.

Again Gov. Rendell, I don’t mean to rake you over the coals. I know what you meant to say. But your comments do perpetuate stereotypes that put us in boxes, both mothers and single women. In government and beyond, men have been given the benefit of the doubt when it comes to striking the right work-life balance. Women are owed the same consideration.

- The Reverend Debra W. Haffner, director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing, makes a good argument on the limits of family privacy when there are important public issues at stake. In a column reprinted at RH Reality Check, Haffner writes that the unplanned pregnancy of Gov. Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter “raises legitimate questions about Gov. Palin’s positions on sexuality education, teenage pregnancy and reproductive choice. Americans have every right, and American media the responsibility, to explore those questions without exploiting the child involved.”

- Funny that Rachel today cited a section of the Republican Platform that claims the party has “a moral obligation to assist, not to penalize, women struggling with the challenges of an unplanned pregnancy.”

The Washington Post notes that Palin used her line item veto to slash funding for programs that serve teenage mothers:

After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation — “SP” — Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.

According to Passage House’s web site, its purpose is to provide “young mothers a place to live with their babies for up to eighteen months while they gain the necessary skills and resources to change their lives” and help teen moms “become productive, successful, independent adults who create and provide a stable environment for themselves and their families.”

Michelle Cottle at TNR says it best:

I’m sorry, but a politician who opposes abortion even in cases of rape and incest and who opposes comprehensive sex education should be at the forefront of championing support systems that make it easier for young mothers to keep their babies. [...]

Surely a program aimed at assisting the most desperate of young mothers — those whose boyfriends aren’t amenable to a shotgun wedding or who don’t have a strong family support system — would be something a pro-life feminist such as Palin would work to expand not destroy.

- On the subject of working mothers, Ann Friedman suggests changing the conversation from can Gov. Palin balance work and family in the White House to what is she doing to help other working mothers?

Where does Palin stand on S-CHIP? On fair pay? On paid family leave? I have no idea. But her running mate, John McCain, was rated by the Children’s Defense [Fund Action Council] as the worst senator for children. He supports businesses who discriminate on the basis of gender. He attempted to weaken the Family and Medical Leave Act. And he supported Bush’s veto of S-CHIP. (Gloria Feldt and Carol Joffee have more.)

The real story here is not how Sarah Palin chooses to balance her own life. It’s about whether she (and McCain) are committed to making these choices easier for all women. And clearly, the answer is no.

- FInally, I think Rebecca Traister does an excellent job of summing up the frustration many have voiced about Palin’s nomination:

In his callous, superficial and ill-judged attempt to woo women voters with the presence of mammary glands on his ticket — hot, young ones to boot — McCain has committed a sickening grievance against both voters and those female politicians whom he purports to respect and support. What a failure by McCain to have this woman — with her pregnancies and progeny and sex life and child-rearing prowess now being inspected instead of her policy and voting history — stand in for, and someday, possibly emblemize the political progress of American women, especially at a moment at which women had, temporarily it seems, risen far enough above our gestational capabilities to be taken seriously in the race for the White House.

For Labor Day, a round-up of links dealing with occupational health and workplace-related issues relevant to women:

Women’s Safety and Health Issues at Work - National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

MedlinePlus: Occupational Health - National Library of Medicine

Women and Occupational Health - World Health Organization

Workplace Safety and Health - CDC

Women Workers - Human Rights Watch

Working it Out: Breastfeeding at Work - La Leche League

National Center for Farmworker Health

Have more, especially on specific topic areas? Please leave them in the comments!

Workplace bullying has been receiving a fair bit of attention recently, mainly thanks to recent headlines proclaiming “workplace bullying worse than sexual harassment.” This news coverage was generated by a review presented at a bullying conference (sponsored in part by the American Psychological Association and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) at which Canadian researchers looked at studies on the two issues and concluded that workplace aggression had greater adverse effects on “work stress and physical, psychological and emotional well-being” than did sexual harassment.

The discussion seems to have struck a chord with many people; after posting on the topic at the New York Times’s Well Blog and receiving more than 300 comments, blogger Tara Parker-Pope posted a second entry on Monday to specifically ask readers if they had experienced bullying, and nearly 250 comments and many harrowing tales have already been shared, including some commenters who report physical and psychological problems they attribute to their work environments.

It may seem odd initially to consider bullying as equal to or worse than sexual harassment, but gains over the last decades have resulted in legal protections and clear workplace policies that allow workers to confront and address physical and verbal abuse of a sexual nature, while non-sexual verbal abuse has been left unaddressed. As this piece notes, “Business groups often argue that existing laws are adequate to protect workers. But bullying generally does not involve race, age or sex, which have protected status in the courts. Instead, most workplace hostility occurs just because someone doesn’t like someone else.”

Indeed, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in defining harassment in general, states that “To be unlawful, the conduct must create a work environment that would be intimidating, hostile, or offensive to reasonable people.” The “persistent criticism, yelling, spreading gossip, and insults” mentioned in one of the Well blog posts certainly seems to fit this criteria, but federal law indicates that the offensive conduct must be “conduct that is based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, and/or age.” Despite this distinction, both forms of abuse seem like affronts to basic human dignity, and both are likely bad for productivity, morale and employee retention and recruitment.

To address this loophole, laws have been proposed in various states, but have not succeeded to date. A bill has been proposed in New York State that proclaims “The social and economic well-being of the state is dependent upon healthy and productive employees” and would make subjecting an employee to an abuse work environment illegal while allowing for civil action by the worker, with damages up to $25,000 even when a negative employment outcome (such as firing the worker) did not occur.

The Census Bureau has released a new report on women’s working patterns, choices, and benefits during and after a first pregnancy, Maternity Leave and Employment Patterns of First-Time Mothers: 1961–2003 [PDF]. The report reveals trends over the recent decades, and concludes, “Overall, these findings indicate that women are staying longer at work, returning more rapidly after having their first child, and, in general, choosing to incorporate work life with childbearing and childrearing more than did women in the 1960s.”

I do have a small quibble with that statement, however, as the report does not address economic considerations in detail, leaving aside the question of whether women are freely “choosing” to be in the workforce or if economic factors make it more of a necessity than was the case in earlier decades. It also ignores the possibility that women simply may be more able to work during and after pregnancy now, rather than being fired or preemptively quitting. Data on these items was only available back to 1981, so the report misses the baseline status of these earlier decades prior to the Civil Rights Act and FMLA provisions. The report also ignores changes in the medical management of pregnant women as a factor, such as debates about bed rest and attitudes about pregnancy in general. Although the report wasn’t intended to address such complex issues, it’s difficult to interpret the data without this context.

Among the findings:

• From 1961-1965, 44% of women worked during their pregnancies. This percentage hit the 60-70% range in the 1976-1980 period and has remained there since, being 67% from 2001-2003.
• The percentage of women who worked full-time during pregnancy reached the 50-60% range in the 1976-1980 period as well, from about 40% in the early 1960s.
• Interestingly, among women who did work during pregnancy, the percentage working full time was actually lower in 2001-2003 than in 1961-1965 (90% vs. 85%).
• Based on 2001-2003 data, the older women were at their first birth, and the higher their educational attainment, the more likely they were to work during pregnancy.
• A detailed analysis of leave arrangements from 2001-2003 reveals that part-time workers were more likely to quit their jobs, less likely to receive paid leave, and more likely to be fired than full-time workers.
• From 2001-2003, 49% of working women who gave birth took some paid leave (including maternity, sick, and vacation leave). 39.1% reported taking some unpaid leave, 25.3% quit their current job, and 3.8% reported being let go from their job. Respondents could choose more than one answer, as many women took some combination of paid and unpaid leave.
• From 2000-2002, 42.4% of women were working 3 months after giving birth. This is dramatically different from the 9.9% of women who were working by 3 months in 1961-1965.

What do you think of these findings? Do they suggest areas for work on improving benefits and maternity leave, such as in part-time workers, protections for pregnant workers against being fired, or the swiftness with which many women need to return to work?

Listen Up: Professor Kim recommends Farai Chideya’s interview on NPR with actress and singer Sheryl Lee Ralph, a longtime HIV/AIDS activist and organizer of the benefit show Divas Simply Singing.

Women and Science: “During a Congressional hearing focused on the recruitment and retention of female faculty members in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields Wednesday, witnesses discussed how the federal government can combat the underrepresentation of women through targeted grants and incentives — and even the creation of a new quasi-governmental agency that would expand the enforcement of Title IX, the landmark 1972 gender equity law, to better encompass academic practices,” reports Inside Higher Ed.

Plus: Female Science Professor, a blog by a professor at a research university, offers an inside look at her life and job.

Harassment Unchecked at Army Hotel: “For active and retired military members and their families, the U.S. Army-owned Hale Koa Hotel in Honolulu is a place to relax in a tropical paradise at affordable rates,” writes Kari Lydersen in In These Times. “For hotel parking manager and veteran John “Jack” Lloyd, it appears to be a place to touch and proposition female workers, mostly Filipina — according to complaints filed with the military’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office and testimony from several workers.”

When Writing the Personal was Revolutionary: “By writing honestly about the ways in which women struggle with gender roles, motherhood, and sexuality, she threw open the doors to a more complex understanding of social interactions, and validated women’s experiences as key to political transformation,” Phoebe Connelly writes in this American Prospect essay on author Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

J.K. Rowling Outs Dumbledore: “Harry Potter” phenom author J.K. Rowling, responding to a question from a child about master wizard Dumbledore’s love life, made the big reveal: “I always saw Dumbledore as gay.” Interesting comments over at KnowThyNeighbor.org.

Black Women and Maternal Health: Molly M. Ginty, writing at Women’s eNews, covers the findings of five reports released by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies on black maternal health and racial inequities:

The center’s 19-member Courage to Love: Infant Mortality Commission — funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and partnering with the UCLA School of Public Affairs and the University of Michigan’s NIH Roadmap Disparities Center — says the health problems of black women and black infants stem not just from inadequate medical care but from stress, racism, poverty and other social pressures.

Released during the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference from Sept. 26 to 29, the reports also coincide with a meeting organized by the Joint Center and the Washington-based Black Women’s Agenda for 250 representatives of black women’s organizations in Washington, D.C. Attendees will discuss the reports and preview “Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick?” an upcoming PBS television series that explores race and health.

In the five reports — one on breastfeeding, one on nutrition, two on infant mortality and one summarizing the others — commission members address the possible reasons for black women’s negative birth outcomes.

Continue reading Ginty’s story here.

For Starters, Try Talking to Women: Laura L. Mays Hoopes, a writer and molecular biology professor at Pomona College, offers 10 suggestions aimed at men who want to help retain women working in the sciences. The Scientist magazine published the suggestions online last week, ahead of publication in the magazine’s January issue, to spark a discussion of gender bias in science. Suggestions and comments are encouraged.

Using a Breast Pump from the Start: Chicago Tribune health columnist Julie Deardorff writes about skipping breastfeeding directly and going straight to using a breast pump. Predictably, debate follows. Earlier entries on breastfeeding, including a history of La Leche League International, are here.

Plus: “Facebook is getting an online scolding after the social networking site deleted pictures of nursing babies it considered “obscene content” and closed the account of at least one Canadian mom,” reports the Toronto Star. (via Aetiology, which has lots more good links and analysis.)

Condom Accusations Spark Anger: The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique, Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, angered AIDS activists last week after telling the BBC he believes some European-made condoms and some anti-retroviral drugs have been deliberately infected with HIV “in order to finish quickly the African people.”

According to the BBC, it is estimated that 16.2 percent of Mozambique’s 19 million inhabitants are HIV positive. The Catholic Church’s official doctrines oppose condoms.

Plus: Broadsheet did a wrap-up Friday of other condom-related news …

Rural Mothers Have Higher Employment Rate: A new study by the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire shows that rural mothers with children under age 6 have higher employment rates than their urban counterparts, but have higher poverty rates, lower wages, and lower family income.

The Happiness Gap: Is there a growing “happiness gap” between men and women? Researchers seem to think so, reports The New York Times.

What’s Missing on TV: “Your chances of seeing a lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender character on the broadcast networks in prime time this new TV season are about the same as your chances of seeing a talking fish or caveman,” writes Washington Post TV critic Lisa de Moraes.

The latest “Where We Are on TV” report, created by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, found that there are only seven regular LGBT television characters this season, out of 650 regular lead or supporting characters, featured in just five scripted programs.

“On the new prime-time schedules, LGBT characters represent just 1.1 percent of those 650 characters,” adds de Moreas. “In real life, based on U.S. Census projections, LGBT marketing companies estimate 15.3 million adults identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, which would be about 6.8 percent of the population.”

Lethal Injections Offer Legal Shield, But Doctors Debate Safety: “In response to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers in Boston and around the country have adopted a defensive tactic. To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures,” writes Carey Goldberg at the Boston Globe. “That clinical shift in late-term abortions goes deeply against the grain, some doctors say: It poses a slight risk to the woman and offers her no medical benefit.”

Another side-effect of the decision is the impact on medical education. Dr. Mark Nichols, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University, told the Boston Globe there is great concern among faculty and staff that anyone watching a late-term abortion could potentially misinterpret the procedure and file a criminal complaint. Medical and nursing students, therefore, are no longer invited to watch. The federal ban, writes Goldberg, “is broadly written, does not specify an age for the fetus, and carries a two-year prison sentence.”

Plus: Read Adam Liptak’s column (TimesSelect) about a South Dakota law that quite simply puts the government’s words in a doctor’s mouth. “South Dakota’s solution — to mandate a set of disclosures — stops short of Justice Kennedy’s, which was to uphold a ban on an abortion procedure on the apparent theory that women cannot sort things out for themselves even with full information,” writes Liptak. “But there is, according to the federal courts that have so far blocked the South Dakota law, a constitutional flaw in how the state seeks to go about informing women of its views. The problem with the law, the courts said, is that it would hijack the doctor-patient relationship.”

The Gay Presidential Debate: E.J. Graff has the scoop on how the answers provided by the Democratic presidential candidates who attended the LOGO/Human Rights Campaign debate went over with viewers at the predominantly gay Club Cafe in Boston.

Reproductive Health Pop Culture Sampler: RH Reality Check has put together another good collection of posts, this time looking at the treatment of reproductive health in books, television and film. Check out Andi Zeisler’s reflection on “The Book of Phoebe,” a young adult novel by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith; Joanna Lipper shares the story of how she made a documentary about teenage moms; and Andrea Lynch offers praise for “Sex and the City” and lists the “Top Ten Movies that Deal Honestly with Abortion, Unintended Pregnancy, Sex Ed, and Related Issues.”

Editorial on the Failure of Abstinence Ed: “Congress has spent $1.5 billion in the last 10 years on programs that deliver a single message: Abstain from sex until you marry. That’s a good message for young people about how to stay healthy and safe. Taken alone, though, it doesn’t appear to be a terribly effective message,” begins this Chicago Tribune editorial.

Mo’Nique’s Real Appeal: “Now, after making her way from loud-mouthed, often profane stand-up comedian who embraced the subjects of sex and her size to playing Nikki Parker on the UPN show “The Parkers” from 1999 to 2004, Mo’Nique Imes Hicks presides over a small but growing empire,” reports The New York Times. “Like Oprah Winfrey, Mo’Nique positions herself as an Everywoman, trying to inspire women through her example. She believes fat women need to exercise and stay healthy (as she does), implores black women to embrace psychotherapy as needed (as she did) and asks those moaning about their weight to figure out what is going on in their heads so they can take control of their lives (as she has).”

The Numbers Aren’t Great, But It’s Progress: “According to preliminary figures, 87 women are entering a freshman class of 206 students in September. That 37% share is Caltech’s highest since it began admitting undergraduate women in 1970, when pioneering females comprised 14% of the entering class. (Female doctoral candidates first arrived in the 1950s.),” according to the L.A. Times. Also read Samhita’s post on a Computer World article about the experiences of four successful women in the IT profession.

Growth of Prostitution in China: “No longer limited to well-known bars or a growing number of karaoke parlors, prostitutes are everywhere in China today, branching out onto college campuses, moving into private residential compounds and approaching customers on mobile phone networks,” reports the Washington Post. “There was no open prostitution 25 years ago,” said Jing Jun, a sociology and AIDS policy professor at Tsinghua University. “Among government officials, Chinese social scientists, health professionals, they are coming around to see that prostitution is not fundamentally connected to a lack of values but a lack of jobs, choices, opportunities and education.”

Abortion Legalized in Portugal: Until last month, abortion was not only illegal in Portugal, but women who had abortions could be criminally prosecuted, along with their doctors. Now abortion is available without restriction up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, but women may still have trouble finding someone to perform the procedure, reports the L.A. Times. “Even with the law, numerous doctors are refusing to perform the procedure and are declaring themselves ‘conscientious objectors.’ Several public hospitals said they would not be able to offer abortions, despite the legal obligation to do so, because they lacked the doctors or necessary equipment.”

It was the article heard ’round the blogosphere.

In 2003, the “opt-out revolution” was coined by The New York Times with the publication of Lisa Belkin’s controversial magazine cover story about wealthy, Ivy League grads choosing to stay home with their children.

Since then, there’s been much written about whether the opt-out revolution exists (see E.J. Graff’s comprehensive analysis in CJR or recent appearance on NPR’s “On the Media”) — and, if there has been an uptick in the number of women “opting out,” then the driving force for many is likely the lack of family friendly work policies and affordable childcare.

Today Belkin charts a new trend for The New York Times: opting back in. More businesses, writes Belkin, are accepting the nonlinear career path and are offering women more flex and part-time opportunities, making it easier to re-enter the workforce.

“It’s a movement that’s still in its infancy. And it is hard to separate lip-service by companies from true commitment for the moment. But should it take hold — should the stopping and starting, the ramping down and revving back up of a career become the norm — it would transform the workplace,” writes Belkin, adding:

Numbers are driving the trend. There has been a 6 percent falloff in labor force participation among married mothers, according the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But those women are not leaving permanently. They stay out an average of 2.2 years, according to research by Sylvia Ann Hewlett, the founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, whose book “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success” (Harvard Business School Press) is just out. Then they try to opt back in. “Ninety-three percent of off-ramped women are trying to get back on track,” Ms. Hewlett says, and while 74 percent do find work, only 40 percent find work they call satisfying. [...]

Her new book is an upbeat chronicle of how dozens of major companies are setting out to improve those numbers. A looming worker shortage, brought on by the imminent retirement of the baby boomers, means off-ramped employees, already trained and battle-tested, will be increasingly valuable.

This means more of what we have already seen: flexible work schedules, telecommuting, job sharing. Women in particular, but also a substantial percentage of men, have made it clear that is what it will take to keep them loyal.

The story was already number 12 on the Times’ most-emailed list as of mid-morning, and it’s a safe bet that it will continue to rise in the rankings. But while the issue is always a hot topic, as Belkin herself notes, it’s far too soon to accept that there is a permanent shift underfoot. And the low percentage of women who find “satisfying” work opportunities is troubling. But Belkin concludes somewhat optimistically:

I have been writing about life and work long enough to know that a change in policy is not the same as real change. I hear regularly from workers who were all but laughed at when they tried to take advantage of a flexible program that was nothing but corporate window dressing. Or who work for a company listed in Working Mother’s “100 Best Companies” but who are at the office nearly every weekend. This week I got a typical e-mail message from a woman, in her 40s and trying to return to the workforce, who finds that “interviewers still think your brain has the consistency of baby food just because you’ve spent some time off with a baby.”

So I am too jaded to believe that this small handful of trendsetters will bring transformation overnight. They will not change the fact that too many employers still look at a resume gap as a disqualifying mark; or that women who leave and return pay an average 18 percent salary penalty compared with those who never pause; or that men feel constrained from asking for flexibility because it carries a stigma; or that the only way to eliminate the stigma is for men to start to ask.

But whatever distance is left to travel before these exceptions become the norm, we are five years closer than when Ms. Stepnowski opted out. And I am not so jaded that I don’t recognize that this is a promising, and important, start.

It’s great to read that some enlightened companies are stepping up, but women at all economic levels will benefit only if there is a real shift in political consciousness — and this need to take place at both the state and national levels.

Belkin doesn’t mention MomsRising.org, which was founded a year ago to advocate for changes in public policy. But as the Washington Post noted this past weekend, the organization is already effecting real change with its blend of house parties and coordinated political activism.

“More than 90,000 people have registered, galvanizing around six main issues: family leave, flex time, health insurance, child care, fair wages and children’s activities, such as better after-school programs. Their proposals are not new, but together they create a “motherhood” agenda that has attracted a fresh enthusiasm,” writes Donna St. George in a profile of MomsRising that was published on Mother’s Day.

Said Kristen Kiefer, a mother of two in Manassas: “The reality is that, no matter what your situation is, everyone struggles with this.”

This nascent mothers’ movement sealed its first legislative victory last week. In Washington state, MomsRising members vigorously lobbied for paid family leave for working parents. Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) signed a measure Tuesday making the state the second, after California, with such a mandate.

“The Washington state experience shows moms truly can make a difference, and that is thrilling,” co-founder Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner said, recalling the effort: 14,000 e-mails to lawmakers, hundreds of telephone calls, 600 hand-delivered cookies and a mass display of decorated “onesie” infant leotards.

Some PBS stations have aired (or may soon air) the Motherhood Manifesto documentary film by MomsRising. You can check listings here. Or you can purchase your own copy for only $6.

Cynthia L. Cooper has written an excellent article for Women’s eNews about teachers running up against dogma and discrimination at Catholic schools.

The story opens with Kelly Romenesko of Appleton, Wis., a French teacher who was fired by the ACES/Xavier Educational System in Appleton for violating a “morals clause” in her contract to “teach and act in accordance with Catholic doctrine and Catholic moral and social teachings.”

Her crime? Her twin daughters were conceived through in vitro fertilization.

“Romenesko argued that a male teacher whose wife gave birth after in vitro fertilization had not been similarly disciplined, and that she was fired after the pregnancy, not after the fertilization treatment,” writes Cooper.

An administrative law judge from the state’s Department of Workforce Development issued a finding of probable cause that the Catholic school system had engaged in pregnancy discrimination back in February, and Romenesko’s case will be heard this spring before the state’s Equal Rights Division.

There are more examples, of course, of women being dismissed for their pro-choice views or stances on reproductive technology. It’s impossible for there not be conflicts, when you consider that there are 150,502 lay teachers at Catholic schools throughout the United States, and 75 percent of them are women, according to the National Catholic Educational Association in Washington, D.C.

Yet teacher retention is hard enough already, and with Catholic schools traditionally paying less than the local public school system, you’d think that private decisions that have no effect on students would not be grounds for dismissal.

According to a survey by Catholics for a Free Choice, 97 percent of Catholic women use artificial birth control, writes Cooper, and Catholic women have abortions at the same rate as non-Catholics.

“The sad thing about a crackdown on teachers is that it is part of day-to-day living in a hypocritical situation,”
said Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for a Free Choice.

Also frustrating is the level of scrutiny directed at Catholic colleges with regard to invited speakers an on-campus student performances. Cooper writes:

The Cardinal Newman Society, headquartered in Manassas, Va., monitors the nation’s 224 Catholic college campuses and issues condemnations on speakers or activities that take positive positions on reproductive freedom, gays or sexuality, including performances of Eve Ensler’s play, “The Vagina Monologues.”

In February, the group protested a lecture at Loyola University in New Orleans by Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women. In March, it objected to a film festival at the University of San Francisco for screening “Rosita,” which shows the difficulties of Nicaraguan parents in seeking an abortion for their 9-year-old daughter after she was raped.

The group is also releasing a list of 2007 commencement speakers to whom it objects. Some university presidents and politicians are named because they support stem-cell research, or are “pro-gay.”

Dr. Daniel Maguire, a tenured professor at Marquette University, is a popular target of the Cardinal Newman Society because of a 2001 book he wrote: “Sacred Choices: The Right to Contraception and Abortion in Ten World Religions.” As you could imagine, that didn’t go over so well with the U.S. Conference of Bishops

“They are impaled on pelvic orthodoxy, fixating on all sexual reproductive issues,” Maguire told Women’s eNews. “Eight-five percent of all the calls I get concern only one issue: abortion. Not peace, not poverty, not racism, not sexism. And I think that is an unwholesome fixation.”

E.J. Graff, senior researcher at Brandeis University’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, has an excellent story, “The Opt-Out Myth,” in CJR magazine that goes beyond debunking the conventional wisdom about waves of women choosing to leave the workforce to raise children.

Graff deftly weaves together statistics and studies that show how the “moms-go-home” storyline focuses on a “tiny proportion of American women — white, highly educated, in well-paying professional/managerial jobs.”

The stories also look only at the lives of married women before divorce and fail to provide any historical context. “Their opening lines often suggest that a generation of women is flouting feminist expectations and heading back home. At the simplest factual level, that’s false,” writes Graff.

Most importantly, Graff explains the consequences of misleading media coverage :

The problem is that the moms-go-home storyline presents all those issues as personal rather than public — and does so in misleading ways. The stories’ statistics are selective, their anecdotes about upper-echelon white women are misleading, and their “counterintuitive” narrative line parrots conventional ideas about gender roles. Thus they erase most American families’ real experiences and the resulting social policy needs from view.

Here’s why that matters: if journalism repeatedly frames the wrong problem, then the folks who make public policy may very well deliver the wrong solution. If women are happily choosing to stay home with their babies, that’s a private decision. But it’s a public policy issue if most women (and men) need to work to support their families, and if the economy needs women’s skills to remain competitive. It’s a public policy issue if schools, jobs, and other American institutions are structured in ways that make it frustratingly difficult, and sometimes impossible, for parents to manage both their jobs and family responsibilities.

Brandeis’ Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism has posted a more complete version of the story, along with links to the original research and resources.

I missed the NYT story on the gender pay gap from Sunday — part of the Times series “The New Gender Divide,” which aims to examine “what has happened to men and women several decades after the women’s movement began.”

David Leonhardt writes:

Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, women of all economic levels — poor, middle class and rich — were steadily gaining ground on their male counterparts in the work force. By the mid-’90s, women earned more than 75 cents for every dollar in hourly pay that men did, up from 65 cents just 15 years earlier.

Largely without notice, however, one big group of women has stopped making progress: those with a four-year college degree. The gap between their pay and the pay of male college graduates has actually widened slightly since the mid-’90s.

For women without a college education, the pay gap with men has narrowed only slightly over the same span.

These trends suggest that all the recent high-profile achievements — the first female secretary of state, the first female lead anchor of a nightly newscast, the first female president of Princeton, and, next month, the first female speaker of the House — do not reflect what is happening to most women, researchers say.

Continue reading here. Also read Echidne’s analysis.

For more information, visit the WAGE Project and check out “Getting Even: Why Women Don’t Get Paid Like Men — and What To Do About It” by E.J. Graff and Evelyn Murphy. Judith Stadtman Tucker reviewed “Getting Even” earlier this year at her website, The Mothers Movement Online.

Sixty-five women in the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan or Iraq since 2002. That’s the cover story of Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review section. Brief bios and photos of all the women are available here.

The perspective is their deaths — and the injuries sustained by the hundreds of women wounded at war — have not been the cause of major media attention or public scrutiny, despite the growing numbers.

“There is no shortage of guesses as to why: Americans are no longer especially shocked by the idea of a woman’s violent death. Most don’t know how many women have fallen, or under what circumstances. Photographs of body bags and coffins are rarely seen. And nobody wants to kick up a fuss and risk insulting grieving families,” writes Lizette Alvarez.

And the debate over whether the military is appropriate for women (or vice versa) takes a back seat when the United State is experiencing a shortage of troops. “As has happened many times in war, circumstances have outpaced arguments,” Alvarez writes. “They are sure to be taken up again at some point, only this time, the military will have real-life data on the performance of women in the field to supplant the hypotheticals.”

In 1994, Congress relaxed rules on women serving in the military, allowing women to serve in combat support groups close to the front line. Women are technically still not permitted to participate in ground combat forces, but they can serve as fighter pilots and on warships. In Iraq, however, when combat can be anywhere, the distinction is fuzzy.

“It’s that policy that when this war is over is going to have to change, even if we have to keep women out of the infantry per se,” Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain and director for the Women In the Military project at the Women’s Research and Education Institute, told the Times. “The next door to open is ground combat. That’s the last frontier. A lot of the social conservatives have powerful feelings about training mothers to kill.”

The story also addresses issues that affect women more than men, such as sexual harassment. (See also the Washington Post story on Suzanne Swift, a 22-year-old Army specialist who was sexually harassed in Iraq. Swift may face a court-martial for refusing to return to duty.) Alvarez notes that “veterans are suffering from post-traumatic stress and lost limbs, circumstances that sometimes prove more difficult for women who often fill the role of nurturers to their families.”

Alvarez also mentions some “practical considerations”:

Women on smaller bases in Iraq often share sleeping quarters with men. Equipment in women’s sizes can sometimes be harder to come by. Some women use newer forms of birth control to make their periods less frequent. Even urinating can become a problem. The military has disbursed portable contraptions the women affectionately call a weenus, for use on long truck drives.

I confess that is the first time I’ve heard of a weenus.

Plus: The Chicago Tribune profiles Sgt. 1st Class Merideth Howard, the oldest known American woman to die in combat. Howard was killed in Afghanistan on Sept. 8. She was 52.

From The New York Times:

Women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and “outmoded institutional structures” in academia, an expert panel reported yesterday. The panel, convened by the National Academy of Sciences, said that in an era of global competition the nation could not afford “such underuse of precious human capital.” Among other steps, the report recommends altering procedures for hiring and evaluation, changing typical timetables for tenure and promotion, and providing more support for working parents.

“Unless a deeper talent pool is tapped, it will be difficult for our country to maintain our competitiveness in science and engineering,” the panel’s chairwoman, Donna E. Shalala, said at a news conference at which the report was made public. [...]

The panel dismissed the idea, notably advanced last year by Lawrence H. Summers, then the president of Harvard, that the relative dearth of women in the upper ranks of science might be the result of “innate” intellectual deficiencies, particularly in mathematics.

If there are cognitive differences, the report says, they are small and irrelevant. In any event, the much-studied gender gap in math performance has all but disappeared as more girls enroll in demanding classes. Even among very high achievers, the gap is narrowing, the panelists said.

Read the NYT story here. Or visit The National Academies website for the press release describing the study. You can also purchase the full report — “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering” — or read it for free online (scroll down on the purchasing page).

If your tolerance for stories about the “mommy wars” has reached its limit, you might want to cross the border and give this Toronto Star story a read before calling it quits for good. Writer Andrea Gordon provides a good overview of the issues that are debated ad nauseum in the media — and the concerns and voices that are lost in the crossfire.

Readers should also take note of a terrific resource that rises above the media clutter: The Mothers Movement Online covers the social, cultural, economic and political issues that affect the well-being of mothers by publishing a smart mix of news analysis, commentaries, reviews and interviews.

Editor Judith Stadtman Tucker last month brilliantly deconstructed Michael Noer’s now-infamous Forbes article “Don’t Marry Career Women.” Features from the most recent summer issue include a review of Linda Hirschman’s book “Get to Work,” and a reflection on Adrienne Rich’s “Of Woman Born.”

Stay tuned for September’s issue on the need for a mother’s revolution — and advice on how to start one.

After all, it’s much more rewarding to make movements, not war.