What do you do if you need to take time off work to care for a sick child or parent? Does having children hurt your career? Unequal pay. Maternity leave. Spiraling health care costs. Family and children plus a full-time career.

Working people face these issues every day. But all too often, women especially don’t have the resources or support to help meet these challenges.

Working America and the AFL-CIO are conducting a nationwide survey on what it's like to be a working woman. If you’re a working woman, your opinion matters greatly. Please take a moment to complete the Ask a Working Woman survey and share your thoughts and experiences.

 

National Women's Health Week empowers women across the country to get healthy by taking action. The nationwide initiative, coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Women's Health (OWH), encourages women to make their health a top priority and take simple steps for a longer, healthier and happier life.

During the week, families, communities, businesses, government, health organizations and other groups work together to educate women about steps they can take to improve their physical and mental health and prevent disease.

Here are two activities to check out:

Help Women and Girls : Illinois Organizations that help women and girls need donations of all kinds of things. Check out their website to see where you can donate items.

Woman Challenge : This May, thousands of women across the country will embark on an eight-week physical activity challenge for better health. They will be part of the WOMAN Challenge: Women and girls Out Moving Across the Nation. Find out how you can take part and improve your health.

The Chicago Feminists Meetup Group is sponsoring a book discussion on Ellen Bravo's Taking on the Big Boys on May 19 at Argo Tea 16 W. Randolph in downtown Chicago.  A fee of $1  is charged to cover expenses.  An RSVP is requested. You may sign up and RSVP at the Chicago Feminist Meetup site.

For people unfamiliar with Meetups, the idea is to sign up at the Meetup website where you will be able to see who is in the group, get the latest news, contact other Meetup participants, and register for events. It's a form of online organizing that can work suprisingly well.

The Chicago Feminist Meetup Group currently has 113 members and has sponsored 12 meetings so far. Check them out here.

It's no secret that feminists are on both sides of the fence in the Democratic primary.

Despite the media stereotype of a vast leftwing feminist conspiracy made up of goose-stepping fembots, the actual women's equality movement is very diverse. Being the independent-minded people that we are, feminists tend to resist being forced to toe a party line.

Ellen Bravo wrote this article which was posted on the AFL-CIO blog. She is former director of 9to5, National Association of Working Women and author of Taking on the Big Boys: Or Why Feminism Is Good for Families, Business and the Nation.

Congratulations, working women! As of today, your salary since January 1, 2007, has finally reached the total earned by your male colleagues in 2007 alone. What’s more, this pay gap is all your fault!

According to the media, the problem is that women just don’t ask. If we learned to speak up in salary negotiations, pay equity would be a hard fact.

The AFL-CIO is launching the Turn Around America Online Video Competition to engage and inspire people like you from across the country to tell us how they’d turn our country around.

Click here to submit your short video today.

Most winners will receive cash prizes and selected videos will be featured in television ads.

We received these passover reflections from poet, writer and historian Aurora Levins Morales. We asked her to share them with you. Aurora and her mom Rosario were both members of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union.

Dear Friends: Like other Jews around the world, I am preparing for Passover, our annual feast in celebration of freedom. I've been cleaning house, chopping nuts and fruit, and if I were not allergic to wheat anyway, I'd be getting rid of my bread. But in the midst of this work that I love, I can't get my mind off all the people who are taking to the streets this month, in country after country, to demand changes in the food policies that are starving them. The prices of wheat, rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples have skyrocketed in the last three years and hundreds of millions of people can't afford to eat them. Although the Haitian people's protests brought down their government, people are still eating patties made of salted mud.

Anyone who has ever had a conversation with a know-it-all knows how flustering and frustrating that can be. But somehow, the know-it-all man comes equipped his own special brand of arrogance and aggravation.

In her blog post entitled "Men Explain Things to Me" over at AlterNet , Rebecca Solnit relates her experiences with men who hold forth with great authority on subjects that they know nothing about.

Poet, essayist and activist Adrienne Rich will appear in Northeastern Illinois University's (NEIU) Presidential Lecture Series. Since receiving the Yale Younger Poets Award in 1951 at the age of 21, Adrienne Rich has not stopped writing in her distinct voice, with strength and conviction.This event is free and open to the public

Fine Arts Center Recital Hall, Northeastern Illinois University
5500 N. Saint Louis Ave in Chicago
(Use campus entrance located at 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.) Free parking in Lot F
Thursday, April 24 at 8 p.m

Labor singer Anne Feeney's new cd "Dump the Bosses off Your Back" is now available at CDBaby and Anne assures us that its her best cd yet. For those of you unfamiliar with Anne Feeney's music, you are in for a real treat. If you don't believe me, head on over to her website and listen to some of her MP3's. Anne Feeney is “the best labor singer in North America,” according to Utah Phillips. Based in her hometown Pittsburgh, PA, Anne is on the road more than 200 days a year, singing in union halls, on picket lines, at rallies, riots, folk clubs, festivals, conferences, conventions and colleges.

From the Chicago Abortion Fund's First TV Appearance

The Chicago Abortion Fund(CAF) is made up of a diverse group of women who firmly believe that affordable abortions are part and parcel of the fight for reproductive justice. Not content with simply raising money to financially assist women to obtain abortions, CAF has been doing some serious outreach efforts  into the communities of Chicagoland.

The Our Bodies, Ourselves (OBOS) group has been teaching us about women's bodies since their first stapled and cheaply printed pamphlet appeared in 1970 and started a revolution in women's health.

Founder Judy Norsigian will be visiting Chicago to introduce the latest book from OBOS, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Pregnancy and Birth. You can meet Judy and buy a copy of the book.

Monday, April 7, 2008 4:00-6:00 pm at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum University of Illinois at Chicago 800 S. Halsted Street, Chicago, IL

Keynote Speakers: Judy Norsigian, Co-author and Executive Director of Our Bodies Ourselves & Carrie Klima, CNM, PhD, Clinical Assistant Professor, UIC College of Nursing

Please come to welcome the newest book from the creators of Our Bodies, Ourselves, as the presenters explore the history of health care for pregnant women in the United States, beginning with midwives and dramatic change that happened with physicians taking over pregnancy and childbirth, and the movement over the last 30 years to take back some of the control for women over their birthing experience.

This annual event brings together young organizers from unions and community groups and Chicago area college students interested in learning about working for change. Panelists from Illinois Action Now, UNITE HERE, AFSCME Council 31, IEA-NEA and others will share their experiences as organizers. Some of the invited groups are looking for interns and new staff.
Saturday, April 5th
11:00am to 1:00pm (lunch included)
Gage Gallery,
Roosevelt University,
18 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago

To rsvp please contact:
Carrie Breitbach This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

If you are in the Washington D.C. area on March 24, 2007, don't miss this one.

The Department of U.S. Studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. will host a book launch of Jo Freeman's We Will Be Heard: Women's Struggles for Political Power in the United States on Monday, March 24 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.

The discussion will be held at:

5th floor conference room
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
1300 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20004-3027

The event is open to the public but you must RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . Directions are available here. Please allow extra time for security; a picture ID is required. Admission to the discussion and the reception are free but seating is limited.

Former CWLU member This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it attended the memorial service for women's health activist Barbara Seaman held last week. The following is her report. Laura is now a medical journalist living in New York City.

Barbara Rosner Seaman, Sept. 11, 1935 – February 27, 2008

Barbara Seaman’s contributions to the women’s health movement were celebrated last week at a memorial service in New York. More than 300 people attended the service and 25 people were asked to deliver eulogies. Although best known for her book The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill, her friends pointed to many other accomplishments.

Her work in fighting high-dose birth control pills in the early 1970s led to important changes at the FDA, according to Dr. Philip Corfman, who was at the FDA when Barbara began her organizing. As a result of her work, patient package inserts were added to prescription medicines; FDA meetings became open meetings; and the public got safer pills.

Feministing.com is a bold brash feminist blog site where many women and some men start their day by reading the articles and opinion pieces and then posting their comments.

The youngish organizers of Feministing represent a generation of women who are fighting the complex 21st century battle for gender equality. They are web-savvy, very smart and refreshingly outspoken.

Now they are trying to create network of likeminded groups through an online initiative called the Feministing Alliance.

Join author Paula Giddings for a reading and discussion of her new book Ida: A Sword Among Lions on March 10 at 6 pm at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum.

Ida B. Wells was one of the most fearless crusaders for civil rights and women's rights in United States history. She was a newspaper editor and publisher, investigative journalist, co-founder of the NAACP, political candidate, mother, wife, and the single most powerful leader in the anti-lynching campaign in America.

Located close to the Capitol building in the heart of the federal city is the Sewell-Belmont House and Museum, the headquarters of the National Women's Party and the former home of women's rights leader Alice Paul.

The Sewell Belmont House now offers a free downloadable guide for a special walking tour of Washington DC women's suffrage history. For a copy, visit the Museum's homepage.

We learned of the death of Barbara Seaman last week from Jennifer Baumgartner's remembrance on Feministing and we are updating our original blog entry with an announcement of a memorial service in Barbara's honor. If you are in the NYC area, please attend if you can.

A memorial service for Barbara Seaman will be held on Thursday, March 6 at 5:30 pm at the Riverside Memorial Chapel at 180 West 76th Street and Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan.

Barbara Seaman was one of the leaders of the women's health movement. Way back in the 1960's, she warned us about the dangers of birth control pills in her magazine articles and in her book The Doctor's Case Against the Pill . It was largely due to her efforts that warnings were placed on the pill and people became aware of the dangers of excessive estrogen ingestion.

We received this essay on the 2008 election from Aurora Levins Morales. Aurora is a Latina-Jewish poet, scholar and activist. Aurora and her mom Rosario were both members of the Chicago Women's Liberation Union. In it Aurora discusses the sexism and racism that have characterized this election season.

Over the last few weeks, and increasingly the last few days I've been getting emails from every direction, (particularly the progressive friend who have my address,) telling me why we should all get behind either Clinton or Obama. Since I'm not a registered Democrat, I won't be voting in this primary, but I've been thinking about it a lot.