Hillary Clinton's popularity is near her all-time high

According to a Gallup Poll, 66 percent of Americans view Secretary of State Hillary Clinton favorably. 

That is only one point below her all-time high rating of 67 percent in 1998, which came after President Bill Clinton was impeached on charges of perjury for scandals involving Monica Lewinsky and Paula Jones.

An article in the Washington Post suggests that her surge in popularity may have something to do with the nature of her position as secretary of state, which is viewed as less partisan than other public offices.

Gallup also found that Clinton is viewed more favorably than President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Unfortunately, this comes weeks after Clinton announced that she will not serve a second term as secretary of state or run for president of the United States.

Say it ain't so.

Remembering Geraldine Ferraro

Geraldine Ferraro, the first major female vice presidential candidate, passed away on March 26 at the age of 75.

She was the woman my mother and countless others referenced when they told their daughters they could do anything.

I was not even alive when Ferraro accepted the nomination for vice president in 1984, but the momentousness of the occasion still resonates in her acceptance speech.

Hillary Clinton says she will not serve a second term as secretary of state or run for president of the United States

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she will not serve a second term or run for president of the United States.

She seems pretty determined, but I have trouble imagining Clinton outside of the political arena.

In a recent interview with Newsweek magazine, Clinton said, "I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century.”

And Hillary doesn't strike me as the type of person who leaves business "unfinished".


So maybe she will leave politics, but surely she will continue to be an influential advocate for women's rights...right? 

Or maybe I'm in denial. Let me know what you think:

Florida state rep. blames 11-year-old victim of gang rape

Oops! Republican Florida state rep. Kathleen Passidomo made a small gaffe during a debate over a student dress code bill.

Actually, it was more like a gaping lapse in decency. This is what she said:

"There was an article about an 11 year old girl who was gang raped in Texas by 18 young men because she was dressed like a 21-year-old prostitute. And her parents let her attend school like that. And I think it’s incumbent upon us to create some areas where students can be safe in school and show up in proper attire so what happened in Texas doesn’t happen to our students."

Yikes! I didn't think a politician could possibly be that unrefined.

In her defense, the article she referred to pretty much explains the rape in the same way.

In his New York Times article about the brutal rape of an 11-year-old girl by 18 young men and teenage boys in Cleveland, Tex., James C. McKinley Jr. focuses on community concerns about the ruined lives of the rapists and their disapproval of the child victim's "provocative" attire.


Without offering context or explanation, McKinley writes that neighbors said the victim "dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground."


He chose to quote another resident, who said, "Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?"


None of the residents McKinley included in his report expressed any concern for the 11-year-old victim. Instead, he writes that neighborhood residents were asking themselves how their young men could have been "drawn into such an act".


The only traces of sympathy coming from residents in McKinley's story were for the perpetrators.


"These boys have to live with this for the rest of their lives," one woman said.


After reading this "news" story, it isn't that astonishing that someone like Kathleen Passidomo might buy into the rape myth that girls get raped when their mothers allow them to dress like prostitutes.


OK, McKinley didn't use the word "prostitute". And he was restating the heinousness that came from the mouths of neighbors, not asserting his own opinion.


But the story was not framed as a community reaction piece, it was supposed to be a NEWS article.


I doubt that McKinley intended to minimize the brutality of the rape, but he should have known that his story needed either more context or more devotion to the victim's ordeal.


He also should have made it explicitly clear that, however the child was supposedly dressed, the men who raped her are the only ones at fault.

"I Have Sex": Students defend Planned Parenthood with web video

Wesleyan University students created a simple yet effective video in support of Planned Parenthood and open sexual dialogue:

On their Facebook page, they urge other students to take part in the movement by making their own videos, signing the Planned Parenthood petition, and calling Congress.

Revolution is not over for women in Egypt

Women who stood in protests during Egypt's 18-day revolution experienced a very different Tahrir Square on International Women's Day.

Several hundred activists gathered in Cairo on Tuesday for a peaceful demonstration to promote women's rights.

But according to Lauren E. Bohn, a Ms.Magazine blogger who witnessed and recorded the event, the "part-celebration, part-demonstration soon turned violent when throngs of men arrived to harass the women."

Women were verbally attacked, groped, and eventually rushed out of the square by the men. 

The Christian Science Monitor reported that the men yelled things like, "Go home, go wash clothes,” and “You are not married; go find a husband.” Others said that now is not the time to demand inclusion.

But for the women who fought with men as equal partners in the revolution, now is a better time than ever to demand inclusion in planning Egypt's future.

Just weeks ago, an article in The Washington Post stated that during the anti-Mubarak protests,"Egyptian women who were in the square were treated with a tolerance they hardly expected. Woman after woman marveled at that."

It isn't difficult to understand why the women who openly participated in every aspect of the revolution would expect to be involved in the daily politics of the country they risked their lives for.

I truly believe that the sense of empowerment Egyptian women felt as they celebrated the end of Mubarak will fuel them through their next revolution: gender equality.


I just hope that stories like this don't discourage Muslim women in the Middle East and North Africa who also want to fight for democracy.

Women in America: White House releases report in time for Women's History Month

In honor of Women's History Month, the White House released a report on the status of women entitled, Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being (PDF). 

According to The New York Times, "White House officials concede there is nothing new in the report. Rather, it is a compilation of data that paints a statistical portrait of changes in the social and economic lives of women over the past several decades."

In fact, the most interesting thing about the report may be its very existence-- It is the first comprehensive federal report on the status of women since Eleanor Roosevelt convinced President Kennedy to produce a similar report almost 50 years ago.

While the release of Women in America seems more symbolic than substantive, it does include some interesting bits: 
 

• Women are marrying later and having fewer children than in the past. Women also give birth to their first child at older ages.  

 

•  Women are more likely to live in poverty than adult men. Single-mother families face significantly higher poverty rates, often because of the lower wages earned by women in these families.

 

• Today, younger women are more likely to graduate from college than are men and are more likely to hold a graduate school degree. Still, women earned only about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009. 

• Workforce participation among men has declined, but women are still less likely to work in the paid labor force. When women do work, they are much more likely than men to work part-time.

If you don't feel like reading the full report, you can check out highlights* provided by the Council on Women and Girls.

Happy Women's History Month!

*The report is divided into five categories: people, families and income; education; employment; health; and crime and violence