Women and Girls

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Elections

      Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum Names New Director

      by

      Elizabeth C. Babcock, the chief executive of Forever Balboa Park, will start this summer, after Nancy Yao’s withdrawal.Second time’s the charm?A year after the Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum in Washington named its founding director — only to have the candidate withdraw before her official start date — the museum is trying again.It has chosen Elizabeth C. Babcock, the president and chief executive of Forever Balboa Park in San Diego, a nonprofit, as its new director. An anthropologist, museum educator and experienced administrator, Babcock will take over an institution that is still very much in formation. Although Congress approved plans for the museum in 2020, it is about a decade away from opening and does not have a site or a permanent collection yet.The museum’s original choice, Nancy Yao, resigned after an investigation into her handling of sexual harassment claims while leading the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan.After Yao’s appointment was announced, The Washington Post reported that her former workplace had settled three wrongful-termination lawsuits from employees who said they were fired in retaliation for reporting sexual misconduct. A Smithsonian spokeswoman said in 2023 that Yao had cited “family issues that require her attention” when she withdrew. (The Smithsonian used a different search firm this time around, according to the spokeswoman.)In an interview, Babcock said her priorities for the museum include expanding into digital media and supporting scholarly research. “We are going to listen and learn and work hard to ensure that the material we cover represents diverse communities across the country,” she said. She declined to specify whether the museum would include the work of transgender women, but said that “our museum will not shy away from discussing controversial topics.” She will begin her new role in June.Babcock has been the chief executive of Forever Balboa Park since 2022. Before that, she was dean of education at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and vice president of education and library collections at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.The American Women’s History Museum, which has been led by an interim director, Melanie A. Adams, since last summer, has a staff of 22, with six more to begin this year. Its annual operating budget is $7 million.Fund-raising will be a key part of Babcock’s agenda. The museum needs to raise half its total budget, which is expected to exceed the $540 million it cost to open the National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. (The other half of the budget comes from the federal government.) So far, it has amassed $65.5 million from donors.Babcock said that she intends to cultivate support from both women and men. “I think the power here for this museum is that it represents all of us — its intention is to be inclusive,” she said. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      PCOS Diets Are Unlikely to Ease Symptoms

      by

      Patients were told for years that cutting calories would ease the symptoms of polycystic ovary syndrome. But research suggests dieting may not help at all.For years, people who had polycystic ovary syndrome and were also overweight were told that their symptoms would improve if they lost weight via a restrictive diet. In 2018, a leading group of PCOS experts recommended that overweight or obese women with the hormonal disorder consider reducing their caloric intake by up to 750 calories a day. That guidance helped to spawn questionable diet programs on social media, and reinforced an impression among people with PCOS that if only they could successfully alter their diets, they would feel better.But the recommendations were not based on robust PCOS studies, and researchers now say that there is no solid evidence to suggest that a restrictive diet in the long-term has any significant impact on PCOS symptoms. Dieting rarely leads to sustained weight loss for anyone, and for people with PCOS, losing weight is particularly difficult. Beyond that, the link between sustained weight loss and improved symptoms is not very clear or well-established, said Julie Duffy Dillon, a registered dietitian specializing in PCOS care.In 2023, the same group, called the International PCOS Network, revised its guidance based on a new analysis of the research and dropped all references to caloric restriction. The group now recommends that people with PCOS maintain an “overall balanced and healthy dietary composition” similar to the Mediterranean diet, which is associated with a reduced risk of the health issues that are linked to the disorder, like cardiovascular disease and diabetes. It’s not known whether eating this way might improve symptoms of PCOS. The changes in the guidelines reflect “the PCOS literature and the lived experience of people with the condition,” said Dr. Helena Teede, an endocrinologist at Monash Health in Australia and lead author of the 2023 guidelines. “It’s no longer about blaming people or stigmatizing them, or suggesting that it’s their personal behavioral failure that they have higher weight.”What is PCOS?PCOS is a hormonal disorder that affects as many as five million women in the United States. It’s characterized by irregular periods, infertility, excessive facial hair growth, acne and scalp hair loss — symptoms that are common with other health conditions, too, making diagnosis tricky. People with PCOS usually ovulate less than once a month and often also have higher levels of androgens (male sex hormones) or multiple underdeveloped follicles on their ovaries (not, as the name suggests, cysts) or both.Typically, when a woman is experiencing symptoms, a doctor will either scan the ovaries to look for those follicles or draw blood to test hormone levels. There is no cure for PCOS; the first line of treatment is often some form of birth control to help regulate the menstrual cycle.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      MLB The Show Will Include Women Players for the First Time

      by

      MLB The Show 24 will feature a career mode that allows gamers to create a female player and steer her journey to the big leagues. The game draws on the experiences of female baseball players.For the first time, women will don Major League Baseball jerseys in MLB The Show, the long-running popular video game.MLB The Show 24 will debut the option to create and play a female player in a reinvented version of the game’s career mode, Road to the Show, in which gamers direct a custom character’s ascent from the minors to the big leagues. The game’s developer, Sony San Diego Studio, announced the new mode Tuesday.The game, which comes out March 19, calls the new career mode Road to the Show: Women Pave Their Way. It includes a storyline that follows the ascendence of two women into the major leagues and touches on the unique challenges they face, according to Sony San Diego Studio.MLB The Show joins other high-profile sports video game franchises that have moved to include women, such as FIFA (now EA Sports FC) and NBA 2K. But the gender dynamics in baseball are far more complicated, because most women and girls play softball instead.Some hoped MLB The Show 24 would help change that.“I think that in the United States especially, we’re brainwashed to think that boys play baseball and girls play softball, when in reality both exist in both worlds,” said Veronica Alvarez, manager of the U.S.A. Baseball Women’s National Team, which will compete in this year’s Women’s Baseball World Cup.Ms. Alvarez, a former national team player herself, and some of her players provided Sony with input for the game’s development.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      Global Warming Is Particularly Bad for Women-Led Families, Study Says

      by

      New U.N. research shows that climate change disproportionately erodes income in households led by women in poorer countries. But there are ways to fix it.Extreme heat is making some of the world’s poorest women poorer.That is the stark conclusion of a report, released Tuesday, by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, based on weather and income data in 24 low- and middle-income countries.The report adds to a body of work that shows how global warming, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, can magnify and worsen existing social disparities.What does the report find?The report concludes that while heat stress is costly for all rural households, it is significantly more costly for households headed by a woman: Female-headed households lose 8 percent more of their annual income compared to other households.That is to say, extreme heat widens the disparity between households headed by women and others. That’s because underlying disparities are at play.For instance, while women depend on agricultural income, they represent only 12.6 percent of landowners globally, according to estimates by the United Nations Development Program. That means women-headed households are likely to lack access to essential services, like loans, crop insurance, and agricultural extension services to help them adapt to climate change.The report is based on household survey data between 2010 and 2020, overlaid with temperature and rainfall data over 70 years.The long-term effect of global warming is also pronounced. Female-headed households lose 34 percent more income, compared to others, when the long-term average temperature rises by 1 degree Celsius.The average global temperature has already risen by roughly 1.2 degrees Celsius since the start of the industrial age.Flooding similarly suppress the incomes of female-headed households more than it does other kinds of households, according to the report, but to a lesser degree than heat.“As these events become more frequent, the impacts on peoples’ lives will deepen as well,” said Nicholas Sitko, an economist with the Food and Agriculture Organization and the lead author of the report.Why does it matter?There’s been growing attention in recent years to the disproportionate harms of extreme weather, sometimes aggravated by climate change, on low-income countries that produce far less greenhouse gas emissions, per person, than wealthier, more industrialized countries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in Elections

      How to Grow Old Like Isabella Rossellini

      by

      If you go to Isabella Rossellini’s Instagram page — and I recommend you do — you will see the 71-year-old actress/director/model/farmer wearing a giant woolly hat and vest, beaming with joy in the sunshine at her farm on Long Island. Another photo shows her staring off into the distance, her face proudly unretouched. Scrolling through, I often wonder how Rossellini is so comfortable in her own skin at an age when many women struggle in theirs.Rossellini’s early life was, in some ways, defined by other people’s fame. She looks strikingly like her mother, the Swedish Hollywood star Ingrid Bergman. Her father, the director Roberto Rossellini, was a giant of Italian cinema. She was married to Martin Scorsese, and another partner, David Lynch, famously directed her in the 1986 film “Blue Velvet.” But she also built her own interesting and varied career, becoming one of the most recognizable models in the world as the face of Lancôme until, in her 40s, the beauty brand dumped her for being too old. Rossellini was suddenly faced with a question, she told me, that she’s still working through today: “Who am I, and how do I fulfill the rest of my life?”The short answer is that she wrote books, went back to school, bought a farm, learned to be single, got rehired by Lancôme and kept acting. In the film “La Chimera,” directed by the Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher and opening in theaters on March 29, Rossellini plays a Tuscan matriarch who’s aging with a lot less equanimity than Isabella herself. (She also has a small part in the new film “Spaceman,” starring Adam Sandler.) Rossellini just started “a little experiment with sheep” at her farm, partnering with design schools to help students better understand wool, and describes herself as diligently following whatever amuses her. “I just play,” she says. “I’m playful. And I became increasingly more playful with age.”I will confess that I have been slightly obsessing over your farm, where you are right now. It’s clearly both a refuge and also hard work. Did you always think this is what you’d be doing in your 70s? Because when I dream of my 70s, I’m not working quite as hard as you are. Well, you know, I say you need two ingredients to open a farm: optimism and ignorance. Optimism is like: Oh, it’s a piece of a dream, wouldn’t it be great to have it? Sure, I can do a farm! And ignorance is how hard it is — how hard it is workwise, but also to make it financially viable. All these little farms in the Hudson Valley or in Long Island, we are all struggling. How do you make it? Yet it’s such a contribution to the community, and it opened up so many possibilities and fills my mind with wonder, and I have to study hard to understand how to run it well.What is it about the hard work that you find so compelling? There are little farms that don’t exist anymore, because there’s no money and it’s a lot of work. So why do it? It started with my love for animals. I always had dogs and cats, and then my father, when I was 14 years old, gave me Konrad Lorenz’s book “King Solomon’s Ring.” Lorenz is a founder of the science of ethology — the science of animal behavior — and I read that book. It was like an illumination. This is what I want to do. And when I became older and there was less work as a model and as an actress and my children were grown up, I thought, Well, maybe I’ll go back to school and study ethology. And so in my 60s, I signed up.Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini in 1954 with their children, Isabella, Ingrid and Roberto.Keystone-France/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men

      by

      This box represents a real photo of a 9-year-old girl in a golden bikini lounging on a towel. The photo was posted on her Instagram account, which is run by adults. 1 🔥🔥🔥 wooowww Mama mia ❤️❤️🥰💯🤗 Great body😍🔥❤️ Love 😍😍😍😍 Perfect bikini body ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️😋😋😋😍😍😍🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Mmmmmmmmm take that bikini off 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ You’re sooooo hot ❤️🤗💋🌺🌹🌹💯 […] More

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      Don’t Underestimate the Mobilizing Force of Abortion

      by

      Poland recently ousted its right-wing, nationalist Law and Justice Party. In 2020, a party-appointed tribunal severely restricted the country’s abortion rights, sparking nationwide protests and an opposition movement. After a trip to Poland, the Times Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg came to recognize that similar dynamics could prevail in the United States in 2024. In this audio essay, she argues that Joe Biden’s campaign should take note of what a “powerful mobilizing force the backlash to abortion bans can be.”(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available by Monday, and can be found in the audio player above.)Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin and Alison Bruzek. Engineering by Isaac Jones and Sonia Herrero. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Jean Carnahan, First Woman to Represent Missouri in U.S. Senate, Dies at 90

      by

      Ms. Carnahan was appointed to the seat after her husband was posthumously elected to it just weeks after he was killed in a plane crash in 2000.Jean Carnahan, who in 2001 became the first woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate after being appointed to fill her husband’s seat following his posthumous election, died on Tuesday. She was 90.Her family released a statement saying that Ms. Carnahan died following a brief illness.“Mom passed peacefully after a long and rich life,” the statement said, without specifying the cause of death. “She was a fearless trailblazer. She was brilliant, creative, compassionate and dedicated to her family and her fellow Missourians,” her family said in the statement.Ms. Carnahan, the wife of Mel Carnahan, was appointed to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in December 2000, following the posthumous election of her husband, who was killed just weeks beforehand with their son and a longtime aide in a plane crash. She was sworn in on Jan. 3, 2001.Ms. Carnahan, a moderate Democrat who had never held public office before being appointed to fill in for her husband, served for nearly two years. She lost to Jim Talent, a Republican, by 22,000 votes in November 2002.Following her defeat, Ms. Carnahan told The New York Times that despite the tumult and heartache she had endured, she had always pushed bitterness aside. “It’s an acid in your life that corrodes your soul,” she told The Times.Sheelagh McNeill More