Michelle Chen's Posts

Masses of Yemeni Women Defy Oppression–And Stereotypes

When a wave of protesters took to the streets in the Yemeni city of Taiz this week, a mass of black-clad women once again stood out in the crowd. To Westerners, their conservative dress might seem incongruous in a pro-democracy uprising, but these women represent the backbone of Yemen’s revolution: ordinary people galvanized by unbearable [...]

Women Rise to the Challenge in the Arab Spring

The scene would have had most Americans readjusting their television sets—or their preconceived notions about Arab society. In the April sun, throngs of protesters washed over the streets of the southern Yemeni city Taiz, most clad head-to-toe in black, their eyes steely with determination. The crowd was festooned with bright baseball caps and signs bearing [...]

India’s Poorest of the Poor Bring Gender Politics to the Dinner Table

In countries rich and poor alike, the burden of struggling to make ends meet often falls on the woman of the household, who in turn has to stretch resources in the face of income inequality and gender discrimination. As hunger intensifies in the most disadvantaged communities, however, women who’ve long been ignored as providers are [...]

Midwives Fight for The Right to Deliver

As if politicians weren’t busy enough attacking abortion rights and access to contraception, there’s another reproductive choice that’s under threat from conservative lawmakers: the right to choose where your baby is born and with whose help. Though it may sometimes be eclipsed by the public fixation on the abortion debate, a movement to improve women’s [...]

How Come Funding For Global Health Care Leads to Poorer Health?

Wherever they fall on the scale of economic development, most countries generally provide some form of health care to the poor and sick. So what happens when that public responsibility winds up on the balance sheet of a foreign loan? A new economic analysis reveals that the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the subprime lender to [...]

Why Have Abortion Rates Stopped Dropping?

Abortion rates have generally fallen since the 1980s for a variety of reasons including greater access to contraception and the availability of over-the-counter emergency contraception. But in recent years, according to a new study by the Guttmacher Institute, abortion rates have stalled, raising questions about whether pregnant women have access to a full range of [...]

Economic Recovery? Not So Much for Women

The latest employment figures place the economic “recovery” firmly on the Y chromosome. According to the National Women’s Law Center, the unemployment crisis declined for men in 2010–but grew for women. From January to December 2010, federal data shows that unemployment among women ticked up from 7.8 percent to 8.1 percent, while the rate for [...]

U.S. Flunks Women’s Health

Kids might dread that report card that comes every winter, but a nationwide report card on women’s health doesn’t make officials nearly as anxious as it should. According to the National Women’s Law Center’s latest report card on state and national health policy, no state got a “satisfactory” (S) grade on the group’s selected health [...]

Homelessness Creeps Up on Working Americans

Many cities will begin the New Year with a sad resolution: to make sure the number of homeless families doesn’t grow as much as it did the year before. A new survey of homelessness covering 27 cities, published by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, sheds light on the epidemic. A rise in family homelessness in many [...]

A Bitter Pill: Birth Rates Fall, But It’s No Reproductive-Rights Victory

It seems that the Great Recession may have done for America’s teens what countless hours of puritanical preaching have failed to: dissuaded them from having babies. Federal health authorities reported last week that the birth rate among U.S. girls between 15 and 19 fell six percent from 2008 to 2009 to a record low of [...]

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