Man enough to be a woman and still rock’n'rolling [theindependent.co.uk]

by Matilda Battersby / theindependent.co.uk

It has been all over the newspapers that Against Me! singer Tom Gabel has decided to live as a woman. The Mail Online’s headline shrieked: “Punk rocker says he is having a sex change operation to become a woman… but he’s STAYING with his wife.” Another read: “Drugs, Sex(uality) and Rock’n'Roll”.

It was quite a surprise that the frontman of a rather macho band (all black jeans, tattoos and growling guitars) should have felt this way. During an interview with Rolling Stone magazine she described plans to take hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery, after which he will be named Laura Jane Grace. “I’m going to have embarrassing moments,” she said. “But [I'm] hoping people will understand, and hoping they’ll be fairly kind.”

The news reports have not all been “fairly kind” and a couple were not very understanding at all, revealing thinly disguised ignorance about transgenderism. Several made inferences about Gabel’s sexuality and the implications for his marriage, confusing Gabel’s gender dysphoria (where you feel trapped in a body of the wrong sex) with questions about whether being a woman and having a wife makes her gay. Most strikingly, several of the reports lauded Gabel as “the first major rock star” to come out as transgender. While it is undoubtedly the case that in 2012 transgenderism is still a taboo, the statement that it has taken this long for a major musician to “come out” as trans simply isn’t true.

Fans of Jayne County will already know this. Born Wayne Rogers in 1947, County began performing as Jayne in 1979. With a signature track titled “Man Enough to Be a Woman”, County is acknowledged as one of the earliest, probably the first, transgender rock star. Despite never quite achieving the commercial success of some of her peers, the American was a big part of the English punk scene, forming Wayne County & the Electric Chairs in 1977. David Bowie, Patti Smith and Lou Read have credited her with influencing them.

There are more recent examples of high-profile musicians who have changed gender: Mina Caputo, formerly Keith Caputo, singer of heavy metal band Life Of Agony, confirmed last year that she was transitioning. German pop singer Kim Petras is probably the world’s youngest transgender musician (and one of the youngest post-operative trans people, full stop), after having sex reassignment surgery in 2009 aged 16. Jethro Tull keyboardist Dee Palmer (formerly David) transitioned at the aged of 67, long after he’d left the band.

The word “transgender” doesn’t refer to people who have had sex changes. It is an umbrella term used to describe those who identify with a gender which isn’t the one they were born with, or with no particular gender at all, regardless of whether they have sex reassignment surgery or take hormones.

Another famous muso, Antony Hegarty of the Mercury Prize-winning band Antony and the Johnsons, was born male, but is transitioned. “Do I feel female? You know, I feel like a mixture. I feel pretty mixed. I probably would identify as transgender,” he told NME. Similarly, Genesis P-Orridge of 1970s band Throbbing Gristle, sees himself as “pandrogynous”.

It’s not only rock and punk that have a healthy number of trans representatives. Jazz bassist John Leitham became Jennifer Leitham in 2001. Dana International, who won the 1998 Eurovision song contest for Israel, released her debut album soon after having sex reassignment surgery in 1993.

Regardless of whether Gabel is the first rock star to admit to being transgender, he is still brave to go public. The paradox of the music industry is that, despite nurturing talent and putting musicians with unusual or distinct sounds in the spotlight, there is still a perception that artists need to be squeaky clean and conventional if they’re to sell. Record labels have been known to advise against lifestyle choices that are celebrated and accepted in wider society, such as being gay, for fear that fans will no longer fancy their pop stars or believe that one day they can marry them – and that this will dent sales. Their attitude may be repugnant, but you can understand it from a business point of view.

Of all the companies I called, only one would speak to me on the record. That was Brighton-based Fat Cat Records, whose founder, Dave Cawley, spoke very supportively of trans artists but agreed he wouldn’t be surprised if pressure was applied at the corporate end of the industry not to come out.

Several people I spoke to off the record made it clear that the mainstream music scene is not a happy place to be transgender. One industry executive, who did not want to be named, said: “Trans musicians are treated in much the same way as gay artists. The straight men who run the music business aren’t ever particularly comfortable knowing how to work them and there is pressure not to come out.”

I contacted seven transgender musicians for comment, receiving polite refusals from Gabel, Dee Palmer and Justin Vivian Bond, and silence from three others.

Our Lady J, a gospel singer who has a growing following and counts Daniel Radcliffe among her fans, launched her musical career after transitioning from male to female. She told me: “There is a responsibility to educate that comes with being trans if you have any hope of surviving. I think this often keeps people from transitioning. There are huge risks, both professionally and personally.”

Joan King, chair of The Gender Trust, has worked as an artist manager in the music industry for two decades. “There is pressure not to come out as transgender in the music industry,” she said. “But I don’t think this is any different from boy bands being told not disclose that they have girlfriends and wives.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/man-enough-to-be-a-woman-and-still-rocknrolling-7766426.html

We’ve All Been Duped Into Thinking that Women Are Making More Money than Men [jezebel.com]

by Doug Barry / jezebel.com

The urge for a jaunty news narrative about how women are overtaking men as family breadwinners has apparently, according to the Daily Beast’s Rosalind Barnett and Caryl Rivers, given rise to a popular misconception about the ascendent working women: she’s outearning the working man.

Why are media outlets peddling this undoubtedly pleasant myth, which is based, argue Barnett and Rivers, on a lot of specious data? It’s because we the gullible American news gobblers prefer to hear that an economic class of women is on the rise (though it really isn’t) instead of that men who lost their jobs at the beginning of the recession are getting them back (which they are). Women, according to the latest glum jobs data, have lost some 300,000 jobs between June 2009 and June 2011, but a perception that they’re outpacing men in our toddler-walking economy has taken hold amongst news purveyors based on the single encouraging fact that 40 percent of women are now the breadwinners of their particular households.

But numbers are just abstract squiggles on a calculator screen — what do they even mean? (Fast irrelevant fact: Troodon, a dinosaur that lived during the Late Cretacious period, walked upright and, according to some hopeful paleontologists, was prety close to developing the sort of intelligence that allows people to cower in fear of the Solar System. It had three “fingers” on each hand and, if it hadn’t been extinguished by Jesus/an asteroid, it would have developed into a race of lizard people who used a number system based on six for the same arbitrary reason our number system is based on ten). Not what Time, which ran a cover back in March called “The Richer Sex,” would have you believe. Female breadwinners, as a social phenomenon, account for a significant percentage of low-income workers. According to a 2010 study conducted by the Center for American Progress, among couples whose earnings are in the lowest 20 percent, 70 percent of women outearn their husbands.

As researchers climb up the gilded rungs on the ladder of American wealth, however, they find that women who outearn their husbands are rare. According to the University of Missouri’s Anne Winkler, the wealthier a couple is, the more likely that the man is the breadwinner. Using the term “rich,” as Time does, to describe the women who are winning all that Sunbeam for their families is misleading, at least according to Barnett and Rivers, because the vast majority of women outearning their husbands are still only bringing in about 60 percent of the average low-income household income of $20,000 a year. Dolla dolla bills indeed.

“Only,” write Barnett and Rivers,

when you define a woman who outearns her working husband by as little as a dollar a day as the “breadwinner”–and you include single mothers who are sole providers-can you get to that 40 percent figure.

The underlying narrative at the beginning of the recession that propelled stories like “The Richer Sex” to the glossy cover of Time was that men on the lower economic rungs were hit harder than any other group, losing their jobs at a rate faster than that of fruit flies multiplying on an old banana peel. Women, meanwhile, are still entering the workforce at an empirically clear disadvantage — female Harvard alumni, for instance, earn 30 percent less than their male counterparts even 10 to 16 years after graduation. Female presence in corporate boardrooms has, likewise, flatlined, and though more women are ponying up loan money to get into the legal racket, only 16 percent of equity partners at law firms are women. The “richer sex” narrative, argue Barnett and Rivers, has the insidious capacity to blind women — and men — to the persistent workplace inequalities extant between the genders, which could further hamper progress among working women.

Still, the urge to spin a narrative about the ascendent corporate woman, the ascendant lady lawyer, or the ascendant female machinist betrays a general hunger for and interest in the rise of women in the workplace. Though the truth behind Time‘s data may be more blah than whoa, the very fact that Time would run a story about women outearning either their husbands or male coworkers demonstrates a public eagerness to hear good news about women gaining ground in the workforce. Maybe in a few years, life will begin imitating art.

Don’t Call Women the Richer Sex! [The Daily Beast]

http://jezebel.com/5906086/weve-all-been-duped-into-thinking-that-women-are-making-more-money-than-men

 

A Transgender Candidate Is Hoping to Make History [nytimes.com]

by Kate Taylor / nytimes.com

Zoning. School overcrowding. The design of New York’s transportation system.

These are just a few of the subjects that Mel Wymore, a candidate for City Council on the Upper West Side, brought up in an interview before addressing the elephant in the room: that, if elected, he would be the first transgender member of the Council.

“I’m not running because I’m transgender,” said Mr. Wymore, 50, who was born female but now, after testosterone therapy and top surgery, identifies as transgender. But, he said, that “doesn’t mean that being transgender doesn’t bring a certain perspective.”

Although gay men and lesbians have broken many electoral barriers — serving as mayors, state legislators and members of Congress — the same is not true of the transgender community. Only a few, including a Democratic district leader in Westchester County and a former member of the Hawaii Board of Education, have been elected to office around the country.

“I think there is a feeling that there is too much difference there,” Mr. Wymore said. But he said he believed: “This is the seat. This is the community that’s ready to go forward.”

The race, for the Sixth District seat occupied by Gale A. Brewer, who is term-limited, is competitive and has drawn a number of candidates, including Marc Landis, a district leader; Helen Rosenthal, a former chairwoman of Community Board 7; and Ken Biberaj, a vice president of the Russian Tea Room.

Melissa Sklarz, a transgender woman, said that the race was full of worthy candidates, and that as president of the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City, she could not make an endorsement. But she described Mr. Wymore’s candidacy as “an opportunity for transgender people everywhere.”

“He’s a great representative,” Ms. Sklarz said. “Many people only know of transgender, I guess, from watching Chaz Bono on ‘Dancing With the Stars.’ Mel Wymore brings a much different, broader experience.”

Click to read the rest of the story…

Where Is The Physician Outrage? [whatever.scalzi.com]

by Anonymous Doctor 

Originally published on Whatever (http://whatever.scalzi.com)

Right. Here.

I’m speaking, of course, about the required-transvaginal-ultrasound thing that seems to be the flavor-of-the-month in politics.

I do not care what your personal politics are. I think we can all agree that my right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.

I do not feel that it is reactionary or even inaccurate to describe an unwanted, non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound as “rape”. If I insert ANY object into ANY orifice without informed consent, it is rape. And coercion of any kind negates consent, informed or otherwise.

In all of the discussion and all of the outrage and all of the Doonesbury comics, I find it interesting that we physicians are relatively silent.

After all, it’s our hands that will supposedly be used to insert medical equipment (tools of HEALING, for the sake of all that is good and holy) into the vaginas of coerced women.

Fellow physicians, once again we are being used as tools to screw people over. This time, it’s the politicians who want to use us to implement their morally reprehensible legislation. They want to use our ultrasound machines to invade women’s bodies, and they want our hands to be at the controls. Coerced and invaded women, you have a problem with that? Blame us evil doctors. We are such deliciously silent scapegoats.

It is our responsibility, as always, to protect our patients from things that would harm them. Therefore, as physicians, it is our duty to refuse to perform a medical procedure that is not medically indicated. Any medical procedure. Whatever the pseudo-justification.

It’s time for a little old-fashioned civil disobedience.

Here are a few steps we can take as physicians to protect our patients from legislation such as this.

1) Just don’t comply. No matter how much our autonomy as physicians has been eroded, we still have control of what our hands do and do not do with a transvaginal ultrasound wand. If this legislation is completely ignored by the people who are supposed to implement it, it will soon be worth less than the paper it is written on.

2) Reinforce patient autonomy. It does not matter what a politician says. A woman is in charge of determining what does and what does not go into her body. If she WANTS a transvaginal ultrasound, fine. If it’s medically indicated, fine… have that discussion with her. We have informed consent for a reason. If she has to be forced to get a transvaginal ultrasound through coercion or overly impassioned argument or implied threats of withdrawal of care, that is NOT FINE.

Our position is to recommend medically-indicated tests and treatments that have a favorable benefit-to-harm ratio… and it is up to the patient to decide what she will and will not allow. Period. Politicians do not have any role in this process. NO ONE has a role in this process but the patient and her physician. If anyone tries to get in the way of that, it is our duty to run interference.

3) If you are forced to document a non-indicated transvaginal ultrasound because of this legislation, document that the patient refused the procedure or that it was not medically indicated. (Because both of those are true.) Hell, document that you attempted but the patient kicked you in the nose, if you have to.

4) If you are forced to enter an image of the ultrasound itself into the patient chart,ultrasound the bedsheets and enter that picture with a comment of “poor acoustic window”. If you’re really gutsy, enter a comment of “poor acoustic window…plus, I’m not a rapist.” (I was going to propose repeatedly entering a single identical image in affected patient’s charts nationwide, as a recognizable visual protest…but I don’t have an ultrasound image that I own to the point that I could offer it for that purpose.)

5) Do anything else you can think of to protect your patients and the integrity of the medical profession. IN THAT ORDER. We already know how vulnerable patients can be; we invisibly protect them on a daily basis from all kinds of dangers inside and outside of the hospital. Their safety is our responsibility, and we practically kill ourselves to ensure it at all costs. But it’s also our responsibility to guard the practice of medicine from people who would hijack our tools of healing for their own political or monetary gain.

In recent years, we have been abject failures in this responsibility, and untold numbers of people have gleefully taken advantage of that. Silently allowing a politician to manipulate our medical decision-making for the purposes of an ideological goal erodes any tiny scrap of trust we might have left.

It comes down to this: When the community has failed a patient by voting an ideologue into office…When the ideologue has failed the patient by writing legislation in his own interest instead of in the patient’s…When the legislative system has failed the patient by allowing the legislation to be considered… When the government has failed the patient by allowing something like this to be signed into law… We as physicians cannot and must not fail our patients by ducking our heads and meekly doing as we’re told.

Because we are their last line of defense.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/03/20/guest-post-a-doctor-on-transvaginal-ultrasounds/

Why Women Make Better Bosses [livescience.com]

by David Mielach / livescience.com

Women make better bosses.  That’s the finding of a new survey, which found that women in management positions lead in a more democratic way, allow employees to participate in decision-making and establish interpersonal channels of communication.

“In line with known gender differences in individual leadership, we find that in workplaces with more women managers, more individualized employee feedback is carried out,” Eduardo Melero, study author and a professor in the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid department of business administration, said. “Likewise, we can see evidence, although weaker, that in these workplace decisions are made more democratically and more interpersonal channels of communications are established.”

Those interpersonal channels of communication facilitated increased communication between management and employees in companies with women in management positions. This has a twofold benefit for these organizations.  First, these companies are able to make more well-informed decisions, since employee feedback will be utilized in the decision-making process.  Additionally, employees will also have the feeling of contributing to and having their opinions heard at work.

“Women managers seem to be more inclined to use these types of practices, individually, as well as promoting them among the rest of the management team,” Melero said. “And as such, a management team with more women could be more effective (keeping all other factors constant) when implementing them.”

The research, which is published in the Journal of Business Research, was based on data from the Workplace Employment Relationships Survey, a survey of workplaces in the United Kingdom. Melero analyzed this data by looking at the number of women in management positions in companies and the leadership tactics employed at those companies.

http://www.livescience.com/19224-women-bosses.html

Abortion Laws in the State of Texas and Their Implications

Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: alvina.lopez @gmail.com. 

by Alvina Lopez

For some time now, abortion has been a topic of much controversy throughout the United States. The subject has breached its way into our discussions of politics, religion, health, education, and almost any other sector you can imagine. In truth, abortion has been discussed so much and so fiercely throughout the country in the last several decades that it has become something of a cliché topic. But, nonetheless, abortion is discussed throughout the news, internet, blogosphere, and television, and, it should be. Since the iconic 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade, abortion has been legal in one way or another throughout every state in the United States. However, even with major steps in a positive direction for woman’s health and a woman’s right to choose, abortion laws remain difficult to bear in many states. Now, it’s clear by now that I’m not coming at this issue from an unbiased standpoint. I agree with a woman’s right to choose and I would like to discuss the Texas state laws concerning abortion and how they affect a woman wishing to obtain an abortion for whatever reason.

As it stands currently, Texas state law allows women to obtain an abortion only under specific circumstances, after a 24 hour waiting period, and only after state mandated counseling. While these state mandated stipulations are not as severe as some found in other states, they still pose a challenge to many foundations of women’s rights and women’s health. As of January 2011, a woman must receive state-directed counseling that includes information that is designed to discourage her from having an abortion. This information must be provided in person at the clinic 24 hours before a woman is allowed to obtain the procedure. The pamphlets and packets that is provided include diagrams of what the fetus looks like at its various stages and describes in detail the various organ functions developing at different states. Before the woman is provided with these detailed handouts, she is required to watch the ultra sound of the fetus as the doctor describes it in detail. The doctor is then required to look for a heartbeat in the fetus and play it for the woman, if it is found. After all of these proceedings take place, the woman must wait at least 24 hours before she can actually have the abortion preformed.

What is it that these state mandated counseling sessions and ultrasound viewings aim to do? Sure, there is likely some educational value behind understanding the various states of the fetus and organ development as a woman who is capable of bearing a child. But, is it necessary to perform these lessons after a woman has expressed a want or need to terminate her pregnancy? Many think yes and I can at least see their line of reasoning. However, it seems that these counseling sessions and forced observations of their own body are more of a shaming than an educational practice. Women are made to feel guilty for their already painful and terrifying decision. Not only does this pose a threat to the very foundations of woman empowerment, but it also deliberately threatens the mental stability of a woman. Furthermore, the 24 waiting period requires that women make two trips to the doctor before they can have the procedure done. This puts a financial and time stress on women of a lower economic status who wish to obtain an abortion. Two doctor’s appointments means taking two days off of work and having to pay for two trips to the doctor. There are many individuals who simply cannot afford this. In this way, Texas abortion laws not only challenge the right women have to their own bodies, but they also put lower income women at a disadvantage.

Abortion is a challenging topic and one that most anyone has an opinion on. Of course, there are plenty of individuals out there that strongly disagree with my take on the facts that I have presented here. I accept that there are other opinions and only wish to open up a discussion of these state laws and their impact on women throughout the states where they are enforced.

Turns Out Being Born a Woman Is a Major Financial Mistake [jezebel.com]

by Cassie Murdoch / jezebel.com

As if being a woman wasn’t difficult enough—what with all the not having control over important decisions about our own bodies, making less money than our male colleagues, and, yes, let’s play the childbirth card—we are also routinely hit with financial penalties just for having the balls to be born with a vagina. That’s right, women pay more for everything from razors to houses to health care for no reason other than that we are women. It’s like our own personal vagina tax, and it sucks.

In fact, it’s enraging. You might think such gendered pricing practices would be illegal and we wouldn’t even have to worry about them, but alas they are not. Of course, there are federal civil rights laws which project against discrimination in employment and housing on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, but the same cannot be said for the sales of goods and services. Some states and cities have their own statutes, but they often don’t make much of a dent in these kinds of widespread problems.

In fact, this problem is so pervasive that often we don’t even notice it’s happening—we just accept the cost of items as a given, sort of like the air around us. But there are lots of little ways we’re charged more than men. Marie Claire has a detailed run-down of how this plays out, and they point specifically to dry cleaners, who often charge women three times as much to clean shirts which are virtually identical to mens’ dress shirts. They justify this by saying that these “blouses” require extra labor to press. Hmm, seeing as I wear a larger shirt size than some of my male friends, yet their shirts fit on the pressing machine, this hardly seems possible.

Then there are things like haircuts and women’s toiletries, which are typically priced higher than their men’s counterparts, despite the fact that, even though they are all wrapped up in them purty pale pink packages, they are virtually the same products. (Maybe pink ink is just astronomically expensive?) Obviously retailers don’t like to admit to it, since if they did, we’d come running at them, nails filed to a point and extra-gentle razors in hand, demanding a refund, but it is happening.

Click to continue reading the article…

After Limbaugh, Maybe It’s Finally Time To Ignore The ‘Slut’ Slur [time.com]

by Megan Gibson / Time.com

Make no mistake, ladies. Rush Limbaugh wasn’t just calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” on his nationally syndicated radio show, heard by an estimated 15 million people. He was calling all of us sluts.

The furor started last week, when Limbaugh spent three consecutive days describing the testimony to House Democrats given by Sandra Fluke on February 23, 2012. A 30-year-old law student at Georgetown University, Fluke had testified that a close friend had been denied birth control coverage through her insurance provider; she required the pills to treat polycystic ovary syndrome. Though Fluke’s testimony did not delve into her own sex life, Limbaugh characterized her as a “slut” and a “prostitute”, saying she wanted taxpayers to pay for her sexual practices.

Apart from Limbaugh’s wildly inaccurate description of Fluke’s statement – she was speaking in favor of requiring private insurance plans to cover contraception – it was his language that caused a firestorm. There was nothing radical about Fluke’s testimony; in 2012, a woman requiring birth control should be altogether uncontroversial. Birth control is something that the vast majority of American women use, have used, or will use at some point, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, college students, sex workers, mothers or even virgins, since hormonal birth control pills are commonly prescribed to remedy irregular or painful menstrual cycles. If Limbaugh thinks Sandra Fluke is a slut, then he must think a whole lot of other women are, too.

Which is why it has been heartening to see the rush of women and men taking to Twitter, Facebook and online petitions to support Fluke and condemn Limbaugh. Across the Internet, women have begun an ongoing campaign to take Limbaugh down, putting pressure on advertisers to pull funding from his show. Despite Limbaugh issuing a written and on-air apology to Fluke, around three dozen advertisers have already pulled their sponsorship and at least two stations have dropped the show altogether. Will the backlash lead to Limbaugh’s show being canceled altogether? In all likelihood, probably not. Still, the solidarity that Fluke and women across the country have shown has been inspiring.

Click to read the read of the article at Time.com…

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/03/08/in-rush-limbaughs-wake-women-are-reclaiming-the-word-slut/#ixzz1p34GaLIZ

One-Way Wantonness [nytimes.com]

by Frank Bruni / nytimes.com

Hussy. Harlot. Hooker.

Floozy. Strumpet. Slut.

When attacking a woman by questioning her sexual mores, there’s a smorgasbord of slurs, and you can take your rancid pick. Help me out here: where are the comparable nouns for men? What’s a male slut?

A role model, in some cases. In others, a presidential candidate.

“Gigolo” doesn’t have the acid or currency of “whore,” and the man with bedpost notches gets compliments. He’s a Casanova, a conquistador.

The lady is a tramp.

Nearly two weeks since Rush Limbaugh let loose on Sandra Fluke, equating her desire for insurance-covered birth control with a prostitute’s demand for a fee, the wrangling over how awful that really was and whether it will truly haunt him continues.

Advertisers bolted in protest; advertisers come and go all the time. It was the beginning of his end; it was ratings chum. He lost his way; he was Rush in Excelsis.

One especially robust strand of commentary has focused on whether Limbaugh, a god of the far right, was smacked down for the kind of thing that less conservative men routinely get away with.

Click to continue reading the article at the NY Times…

 

Hillary Clinton: For Women, It’s Time to ‘Shape Our Destinies’ [thedailybeast.com]

by Eleanor Clift / thedailybeast.com

Taking on extremists both abroad and at home who would marginalize women, the secretary of state called for an ‘audacious’ fight.

Clinton stressed that for her what she does is “not so much work as a mission.” She talked about the various brave women she has met over the last 20 years, and when her energy flags, she thinks of all the obstacles they face. She spoke of the relationships she built with women in China, in Belarus, in Ireland, and in Pakistan, and asked, “What does it mean to be a woman in the world?”

“It means never giving up,” she said. “It means getting up, working hard and putting a country, or a community on your back.” She noted how “exquisitely appropriate” she found the picture on the front page of The New York Times that morning of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF managing director Christine Lagarde. “I know both of them, and I think they are worthy of our gratitude and admiration because, boy, do they have hard jobs. Chancellor Merkel is carrying Europe on her shoulders trying to navigate through this economic crisis,” she said.

Clinton noted the countries where women have been elected head of state, notably Liberia, where Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is in her second term, and Chile, which Michelle Bachelet led, the first woman to do so. “They carry an enormous load for the rest of us,” she said, noting that it’s hard for any leader, man or women, to govern in these tumultuous times, but it is “harder for women” because of the stereotypes and caricatures that are deeply embedded in psyches and in cultures.

Click here to read the rest of the article…

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/10/hillary-clinton-it-s-time-to-shape-our-destinies.html?fb_ref=article&fb_source=home_multiline