When Delma Rosa Gómez was 27 years old, she was diagnosed with advanced stages of metastatic cancer. When she told her physician she was pregnant, they replied that they couldn’t start chemotherapy. “They said any treatment could provoke an abortion. And they couldn’t give me an abortion because it was penalized by law. They said… Read more →
Cassia Roth
Cassia Roth
Contributor
HIV in Brazil: Health and Human Rights in a Global Context
The fight over the future of the ACA here in the U.S. has made me think about universal healthcare, disease, and rights in a global context. The fierce debate over the idea of healthcare as a “right” versus a “privilege” on Capitol Hill seems almost antiquated when compared with other countries. When a friend of… Read more →
For the Love of Data: Science, Protest, and Power at Love Canal
For many environmental activists and scientists, the phrase “Love Canal” remains indelibly marked in the imagination. A toxic waste site that pitted scientists and citizens against the government, it is heralded as one of the first successes of the environmental movement in holding the state accountable for the public health of its residents. In 1896,… Read more →
What Lies Beneath: The Handmaid’s Tale in Trump’s America
I first came across Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale in my junior year of college, when it was assigned for my feminist theory class. I didn’t know much about the novel, but I remember that the professor emphasized how relevant the book’s message was in 1985, when it was first published; in 1990, when… Read more →
When the Man Gets You Down… Or the Power of Transnational Feminism
Over the last fifteen years, Latin America has seen the rise and fall of women in politics. A decade before the U.S. (almost) elected their first woman president, Chile elected Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010 and 2014-present); Argentina voted in Cristina Kirchner (2007-1015); and Brazil chose Dilma Rousseff (2010-2016). These women ran on mainly leftist platforms and… Read more →
Tales of Transnational White Privilege: Gender, Race, and Nationality on the Streets of Rio de Janeiro
It’s old news by now that on August 14, 2016, American swimmers Ryan Lochte, James Feigen, Gunar Bentz, and Jack Conger claimed that they were robbed at gunpoint by police officers at a gas station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In an interview with NBC, Lochte said that the four swimmers had been pulled over… Read more →
Writings Appropriate to Her Sex: Women Authors, Pseudonyms, and the Gendered History of Publishing and Reading
Recently, Italian journalist Claudio Gatti allegedly “outed” the popular Italian novelist Elena Ferrante by publishing in the New York Review of Books proof of her “true” identity. Ferrante’s writing, particularly the Neapolitan novels — a series of four books that chronicle female friendship, violence, poverty, and gender in postwar Italy — have become international bestsellers… Read more →
#Niunamenos (#Notoneless): Gendered Violence in Latin America
In a July response to a recent series of public protests decrying violence against women, Argentine President Mauricio Macri introduced a national plan to end the country’s high rates of gender violence. In addition to funding battered women’s shelters and telephone hotlines, Argentina will introduce gender violence awareness in school curricula. As Macri stated, ending… Read more →
The Mother of Title IX Goes to Washington: Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927-2002)
When the US women’s basketball team dribbled their way to a 6th straight Olympic gold this summer in Rio, they owed some — if not much — of their success to Patsy Takemoto Mink (1927-2002). Mink was the first woman of color elected to Congress, where she served as a US Representative from Hawai’i (1965-1977,… Read more →
Lenora Fulani: She “Fuled” the Bern
Universal healthcare. Free university education. The regulation of the big banks. No my friends, I’m not talking about Bernie Sanders in 2016. I’m referring to Dr. Lenora Fulani (b. 1950), the most successful female minor party candidate in US history. As a member of the New Alliance Party in the 1980s and 1990s — a… Read more →