Chris Allen, founder of the Innocence Atlanta campaign, defines sex trafficking as “Fraud, Force, and Coercion” (Spornhauer, 2011). This definition aptly places the blame of sex trafficking upon the johns and pimps who profit from the use of girls for sex. In most cases, however, the girls being trafficked are looked upon as the vermin of society. They are shunned and arrested and used up and tossed aside without regard to their humanity or rights, while the johns and pimps who degrade them get, not only anonymity, but also leniency for the …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Earlier this year, Saudi women started a movement to be allowed to drive. It sounds ridiculous — that women cannot get behind the wheel of a car and drive — and yet this is their reality. Although there is no actual law that says women are not allowed to drive cars, there is a religious edict that insists on the segregation of men and women; therefore, if women need to get anywhere, a man …

The following post is cross-posted by Erin McNeill’s blog Marketing, Media, and Childhood. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Watch this trailer from the Media Education Foundation, which highlights the powerful messages boys are getting from current popular media. Or, as they put it, “Takes aim at the forces in male culture that condition boys and men to dehumanize and disrespect women.”
The issue with negative media messages to our children, as I see it, is not so much how those …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
image from www1.cyfernet.com
According to Jane Hyde, a psychologist from the University of Wisconsin, “the stereotype that boys are better at math is alive and strong…Parents still believe it, and teachers still believe it” (Alice Park, Time Science). But based on the research she and other researchers from University of California, Berkeley, are conducting, this stereotype is just that: a stereotype and a myth, and girls are shutting it down with irrevocable force.
Funded by the …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
This is just an advertisement, you say. It doesn’t mean anything.
I have complete control over my children’s self-esteem, and my daughters are just as independent as my sons, you vehemently argue. But they’re not.
Self-fulfilling prophecy: when the entire world tells you who you are on a daily basis, you begin to believe it — and the voices of the one or two people who love you and say otherwise are drowned out. …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Image from Squidoo
I turn forty on Wednesday, and for me this is a long-awaited day. I have wanted to be forty since I was in my twenties. Why? Because the idea of turning forty is ripe with a sense of true womanhood. You are not a woman, not really, until you are forty. Everything before forty is trite, experimental, and full of the work that will bring you the fruits of forty.
Being forty means …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Image from ucsdnews.ucsd.eduNext Monday night, HBO is showing a documentary called Gloria Steinem: In Her Own Words. An activist, feminist, journalist and writer, Steinem co-founded Ms Magazine and spent her life advocating for women’s equality. Here’s her blog for more of her accomplishments towards this end.
The HBO special airs on the 18th at 9-10pm, and the Women’s Media Center has an entire page focused on it. Its objective is to get as many people to sit down …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Amazon preparing for a battle (Queen Antiop or Armed Venus), by Pierre-Eugène-Emile Hébert 1860 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)Similar to China’s bound feet, American society has chosen the female breast as the core of feminine beauty. The rounder, fuller, and more pert the breast, the greater the appreciation, the lovelier the woman. The female body has taken on the requirements of society’s ideals, and women run to surgeons to be sliced open and …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Image from CARA-Seattle.orgDuring the Victorian Era, medical institutions all over the world established that women were inherently fragile and emotional creatures and that it had nothing to do with the fact that they were drowning in the suffocating waters of patriarchy that condemned them to the domestic spheres of their existence.
Depression over not having a voice or the power necessary to govern their lives, their homes, or their bodies was defined by the medical industry as …

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Image and statistics provided by RAINN
In an article published by The Daily Beast titled The Problem with Rape Prosecutions, Alan Dershowitz, a writer and law professor at Brooklyn College suggests that one of the ways the Dominique Strauss-Kahn rape case went wrong was that the woman allegedly raped by him was not publicly outed. If she had, then those who knew her — neighbors, friends, family — could have revealed personal information about …