This morning The New Agenda issued the following open letter to the members of the New York State Senate.
March 26, 2009
Open Letter to NY State Senators Regarding the Indictment of Hiram Monserrate
Honorable members of the New York Senate, men and women, Republicans and Democrats elected to serve the people of the great state of New York.
The public’s trust, the safety of our citizens, the leadership of this state are in grave jeopardy. We implore you to take immediate and decisive action in asking that Sen. Hiram Monserrate …

(Editor’s note: We are pleased to present this guest post by Ali, one of our regular commenters on The New Agenda blog. Thank you, Ali!)
Who is Alice Paul? I didn’t know until a few years ago when I watched Iron Jawed Angels for the first time. I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of this amazing woman but I assumed it was just me. Everyone else must know her story, right? Wrong. After asking countless friends, family members and acquaintances “Who is Alice Paul?” only one person …

Just reviewing the Inter-Parliamentary Union results showing the percentage of women in national parliaments as of February, 2009. The Unites States ranks 71. Because of ties, there are 83 countries ahead of us. Looks like we’ve got some work to do to get this country moving up and forward! 2010 anyone?

Rank
Country
Lower or single House
Upper House or Senate

Elections
Seats*
Women
% W
Elections
Seats*
Women
% W

1
Rwanda
9 2008
80
45
56.3%
10 2003
26
9
34.6%

2
Sweden
9 2006
349
164
47.0%
—
—
—
—

3
Cuba
1 2008
614
265
43.2%
—
—
—
—

4
Finland
3 2007
200
83
41.5%
—
—
—
—

5
Netherlands
11 2006
150
62
41.3%
5 2007
75
26
34.7%

6
Argentina
10 2007
255
102
40.0%
10 2007
72
28
38.9%

7
Denmark
11 2007
179
68
38.0%
—
—
—
—

8
Angola
9 2008
220
82
37.3%
—
—
—
—

9
Costa Rica
2 2006
57
21
36.8%
—
—
—
—

10
Spain
3 2008
350
127
36.3%
3 2008
263
79
30.0%

11
Norway
9 2005
169
61
36.1%
—
—
—
—

12
Belgium
6 2007
150
53
35.3%
6 2007
71
27
38.0%

13
Mozambique
12 2004
250
87
34.8%
—
—
—
—

14
New Zealand
11 2008
122
41
33.6%
—
—
—
—

15
Iceland
5 2007
63
21
33.3%
—
—
—
—

16
Nepal
4 2008
594
197
33.2%
—
—
—
—

17
South Africa 1
4 2004
400
132
33.0%
4 2004
54
22
40.7%

18
Germany
9 2005
612
197
32.2%
N.A.
69
15
21.7%

19
Belarus
9 2008
110
35
31.8%
7 2008
56
19
33.9%

20
Uganda
2 2006
332
102
30.7%
—
—
—
—

21
Burundi
7 …

WE MUST DO THIS TOGETHER!
The New Agenda is so grateful for our new viewers and members. Our national organization is continuing to spread like weeds all over the country. As many of our blog viewers are new to our organization, I thought it might be helpful to give some background on TNA as an organization. One new member recently told me that she felt like joining TNA was like jumping on a speeding train – so much power moving forward, but yet hard at times to …

This morning The New Agenda issued the following press release:
Indicted State Senator Must Step Down
For Immediate Release
March 24, 2009
The New Agenda, a national non-partisan women’s rights group, is demanding that New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate step down immediately. Yesterday, a grand jury in Queens indicted Monserrate on three counts of second-degree felony assault and three counts of third-degree misdemeanor assault. Monserrate is expected to be arraigned later this week and faces up to seven years in prison.
Monserrate’s indictment comes on the heels of Chris Brown’s alleged abuse …

Results from the Boston Public Health Commission’s survey of teens on the Rihanna/Chris Brown caseThere’s an essay by Judith Timson in today’s Globe and Mail that is so much in line with my own thinking, I could almost have written it myself. Timson is grieving over the lack of feminist consciousness in the young women who are busy blaming Rihanna for getting beaten to a pulp by Chris Brown:
Recent events have made me wonder despairingly whether decades of modern feminism have made any significant dent at all in the …

What Every Woman Should Know is a bi-weekly series on American Women’s History. The series is weekly in March, which is Women’s History Month.
Despite scattered examples throughout history, such as Queens Elizabeth I and Victoria, women have only recently been afforded any opportunity to participate meaningfully in politics. In America it was not until 1916 that a woman was elected to national office, and scant few examples of local political women preceded Jeannette Rankin’s 1916 victory in Montana. Except in a very few cases, American women’s political participation begins after …

There is a fair amount of buzz swirling around the blogosphere about Timothy Geithner.  Many do not expect him to last out the next month in his current position as Treasury Secretary.  There needs to be a sacrificial lamb and he may well be the one.  Folks in Westchester are speculating whether he and his family will be returning to his as of yet unsold home.
But Geithner is not the only scapegoat of our economy’s vicious recession.  The loudest roars are for the heads of Wall Street executives. This past …

Elizabeth Gregory teaches at the University of Houston and blogs on motherhood, birth timing, and the economics of women’s work at www.readymoms.com. She will be the guest on Chewing the Fat with Ophelia on Monday, March 23 at 10pm EST.
In the twentieth century two enormous framework changes radically altered the experience of being human:

Innovations in medicine and public health mean that first worlders today can expect to live an average 30 years longer in good health than did their counterparts a hundred years ago, and sometimes longer. …

There were a few scary moments last year when it seemed a woman might actually be the next President of the United States, but then the patriarchy got things back under control with Barack Obama. Just as Obama’s inauguration was an aggressive and carefully calculated display of male dominance, the media coverage of his White House is like a nightmare rerun of Ozzie and Harriet. Yesterday’s puff piece in the New York Times on Michelle Obama is positively gleeful:
On the president and her wardrobe:
“He’s always asking: …