Tag - sexism

The Philadelphia Story (Another Experiment on Women)

On the weekend of May 13, 1972, twenty women travelled by bus from Chicago to Philadelphia, to recieve abortions in an out-patient clinic. The women were scheduled to get abortions at Chicago clinics which had just been shut down by the Chicago police. The Philadelphia Women's Health Collective became involved when...

AAAS: Action and Reaction

The fundamental aim of all our actions this past December was to point out to the general AAAS membership the involvement of establishment science with the oppressive, racist policies of the U.S. government. We were careful to distinguish between the unwitting complicity of scientific workers like ourselves who make...

Women’s Biology in a Man’s World: Some Issues and Questions

"Yes . . . but women are different" says the well-intentioned liberal, ready to support civil rights and other struggles of women. ..You really can't trust women, they are too emotional, they get hysterical, they're just different ... " says the employer, justifying having women in low-paying, low-status positions...

What’s Happening? Reports from Groups and Chapters

The SESPA Science Teaching Group held a science conference on Saturday, March 10 at the Cardinal Cushing High School in South Boston. The 150 participants included students and faculty from local high schools and colleges. The conference was organized in response to a need felt among science teachers to begin a...

SESPA at American Chemical Society Meeting

SESPA attended its first meeting of the American Chemical Society this year. The immediate reaction of the lower echelon officials was of hostility. Denied the right even to put up a literature table, some of us circulated among the arriving chemists armed with leaflets and other "subversive" goodies, while others...

Women in Chemistry — Part of the 51% Minority

In a country where over one half of the population are women, why are only 9% of chemists women? Why do women constitute only 4.2% of all physicists and 0.8% of all engineers? Are we dealing here with those mythical natural interests and capabilities of women? Is the reason irrational discrimination, or is it perhaps...

Using Pregnancy Tests in Hiring Discrimination Against Women

One of the films that Steve gave me was called "Pregnancy testing in the 70's". It was a panel discussion between six members of the medical profession. The trend of the discussion was how important routine early pregnancy tests are, since women could go into X-ray therapy, for instance, unaware of their pregnancy...

Our Bodies, Our Selves: A Review

The oppressive set of myths that make up a large part of this ideology can survive only so long as women remain ignorant of their physiology, of the commonness of their psychological suffering, and of the role that the ideology itself plays in influencing them to accept their oppression (indeed in often preventing...

Liberation in the Liberation

It was Shirley Chisholm, the black American Congresswoman, who said recently that she had faced discrimination all her life-but that she had suffered more as a woman, than as a Black. Under the regime of Apartheid, it would not be possible for any black South African woman to say the same; in this society, colour...

The Tyranny of Structurelessness

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose wiil inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly...