Author Archives: Ashley Romero

*Insert Feminist Rant Here*

Posted on by
1

Just wanted to make sure that everyone was up to date with their sexist-occupations list, since 2013. A few big ones were caught encouraging the “men>women” lie around the world, recently.

(Very recently.) Yesterday, the Women’s Media Center released a report that stomped on my Mass Media Communication Studies Degree.

“Sixty-five percent of U.S. political stories published during a three-month span in 2014 were written by men,” wrote a man for Poynter Institute.

“The report, which examined about 27,000 pieces of content produced at major news organizations during three months in 2014, shows that men produced the majority of coverage in nearly all cases. Three organizations — “PBS Newshour,” the Chicago Sun-Times and The Huffington Post — reached or surpassed gender parity.”

 

  • The New York Times: 32 percent female, 68 percent male
  • The Denver Post: 32 percent female, 68 percent male
  • USA Today: 33 percent female, 67 percent male
  • New York Post: 36 percent female, 64 percent male
  • The Washington Post: 39 percent female, 61 percent male
  • The Los Angeles Times: 40 percent female, 60 percent male
  • The Wall Street Journal: 40 percent female, 59 percent male
  • The San Jose Mercury News: 41 percent female, 59 percent male
  • The Chicago Sun-Times: 55 percent female, 45 percent male

Aside from my journalism passion being crushed, my soccer one also took a hard hit. Adding injury to insult, this Saturday marks the first match of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, and FIFA’s sexist decision to hold the entire tournament on artificial turf.

When Abby Wambach — the 2012 FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year — heard of this news, she noted, “The men would strike playing on artificial turf.”

 

Playing on turf is exponentially more dangerous than playing on real grass. And exponentially more expensive to upkeep. The Men’s 2014 World Cup got a $550Million Stadium built in a developing country (that ended up becoming a bus parking lot after the tournament ended) while women have to settle for turf in Canada.

Many famous female soccer players filed a lawsuit against FIFA, but later dropped the charges. 

The dozens of plaintiffs included U.S. Women’s National Team player Heather O’Reilly, who told NPR that the plan to use fake grass “is a blatant demonstration of FIFA not placing the women side by side with the men. You know, many men’s players refuse to play on artificial turf, actually, and the thought of it being played in the World Cup is almost laughable.”

How is it that oppression against women is still so evident and so prevalent? If professional athletes gave up their attempt to fight discrimination with their high profiles and the resources they have, what does that mean for us everyday women?

Re-messaging What it Means to be a Mother.

Posted on by
7

In Western culture, and many others, mothers are often expected to drop everything for their husband and children. I think that this is a very unfair and toll-taking emotional responsibility to place on women, and it is in fact what deters many people from even having kids. Mothers often carry an emotional guilt as a result of the media messaging that conditions society to believe that mothers must take care of everyone else first, before taking care of themselves. This is a social problem of gender inequity because fathers are not held to the same standard, nor should they be. In order to be in the position to care for others, one must first take care of themselves.

American actress, singer-songwriter, businesswoman, daughter, wife, and mother of two, Jada Pinkett Smith, shares some invaluable insight with her daughter Willow on the importance of cultivating your own happiness. She makes a brilliant point about how when someone isn’t balanced in life, they look to others to make them happy which leads to chronic unhappiness. So true and I hope people carry this message forward to help reshape how mothers, women and all people live, treat each other, and treat themselves.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQK9Ufr4yrY[/youtube]

 

Girl Fight

Posted on by
3

After coming across a Business Insider article about a new documentary featuring LGBT Athletes, I took a look at the trailer for the film called Game Face.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHkx9evsC-M[/youtube]

One of the individual’s being documented in the film is an MMA fighter, and a transgendered woman. She talks about her struggle with being accepted as a woman because of what her sport entails; she was born with the male sex chromosomes, but she is fighting women. Many people see this as a dangerous disadvantage for women who were born with female chromosomes because biologically men are built differently than women. The MMA fighter asserts that because of the hormones she takes, she is no different than the women she is fighting against.

I thought this was a very interesting issue, and I find myself on the fence about it. I’d have to do more research about how much hormones alter someone biologically before taking a stance on this controversial circumstance. I want her to have the freedom to feel that she can express herself as a woman, but I do not know enough yet to feel comfortable with the idea of fighting against her in a ring, even if I knew anything about MMA fighting. It’s hard because, while I love playing soccer against boys, MMA is a sport where the objective is to throw punches and actually fight, so the potential degree of injury is a lot greater than that of other sports. I’m interested to see how everyone else feels about this.