87: The Self-Empowered Woman: Saudi Women/Sports

Dear Followers,

Thanks to Katherine Zoepf of the New York Times, I've learned about an issue that should be of interest to all of us who took sports and physical activity for granted as just another unremarkable part of life as an American woman.

The girl wearing a green jacket is Dalma Malhas, an 18 year-old Saudi Arabian equestrian who recently won a bronze medal in show jumping at the first Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. What makes this achievement noteworthy is that she had to enter the competition on her own and pay her own expenses. Malhas is the first Saudi woman to ever compete in an international event.

Physical activity is forbidden in Saudi Arabia's state-run girls' schools, and conservative Muslims consider sports for women either immodest or (potentially) immoral. A few large Saudi cities have gyms where women can workout, but they are usually unmarked to avoid attention.

So here comes the kicker. Saudi Arabia (like Brunei and Qatar) does not permit women to compete in international athletic competitions, which means no women can be part of the Olympic Games.

The man pictured above is Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi dissident, who directs the Institute for Gulf Affairs in Washington, D.C.. Three months ago, he began a campaign called No Women, No Play, with the goal of urging the IOC (International Olympic Committee) to suspend Saudi Arabia from future competitions until women are allowed to participate.

Critics might consider this a case of feminism gone wild, but the precedent was set in 1964, when the IOC banned South Africa because of apartheid. The Olympic Charter states, "... sport is a human right..." and "... discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement."

The woman in white is Lina al-Maeena, who founded a growing and very popular women's basketball team named Jeddah United. But whether or not liberal Saudis approve of gyms for females, the fact is that Saudi Arabia is a monarchy in which the king and a Salafist religious establishment create the laws. Unfortunately, most of the clerics oppose sports for women because it's felt that athletic females might a) wear immodest clothes, b) want to travel, c) compete in public, d) leave their homes unnecessarily, and (if virgins) e) damage their hymens and become unmarriageable.

Ms. Maeena has tried to put a good face on her country's restrictive approach by arguing that the U.S. didn't give women "equal rights" in sports until Title IX passed in 1972. And while that "equality" changed academic sports, the truth is that American women had been participating in sports and competing in the Olympics decades earlier.

How lucky we are that our grandmothers and granddaughters were and are able to play tennis, golf, ride, run, and compete without fear of government reprisal. Hats off to Dalma Malhas!

Looking forward to your comments...

86: The Self-Empowered Woman: Taylor Swift

Dear Followers,

As I reviewed the last dozen or so posts, I noticed that there was (possibly) an overdose of women who were either foreign or older. So today's Self-Empowered Woman is 20 year-old American recording sensation Taylor Swift.

When she was only ten years old (2. An Early Sense of Direction), a computer repairman showed her how to play three chords on a guitar, and that inspired her to learn as much as she could about music. Soon after, she wrote her first song, "Lucky You."

At age eleven, she persuaded her parents to take her to Nashville because she wanted to get a record deal. She bravely showed a demo tape of her singing to recording companies (11. Risk Addiction), but even though she visited all of the label companies in town, she was rejected by every single one (13. More Than Meets the Eye).

At the age of twelve, she began playing the twelve-string guitar; writing songs and playing the guitar helped Swift cope with the pain of being bullied at school (5. Life is Not a Popularity Contest). Soon she was performing at Pennsylvania fairs and festivals.

When she was 14, her family moved to a Nashville suburb to help her chances of getting a recording deal. That year, she became the youngest staff songwriter ever hired by the Sony/ATV Tree Publishing House. For her junior and senior years of high school she was home schooled. She received her diploma in 2008.

Not surprisingly, Swift has used her personal life as the basis for many of her wildly popular songs. Her romantic disappointments with Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, and John Mayer have become public knowledge (15. Forget About Prince Charming).

One can only imagine how much those other labels regret overlooking her early talent. Here are a few of her musical accomplishments:

• Her 2008 album "Fearless" was the bestselling country album in digital history.




• Swift was the first artist ever in the history of Nelsen SoundScan to have two different albums in the Top 10 year-end album chart.




• She is the youngest artist in history to win the ACM Album of the Year Award.




• She was also the youngest ever to win the Country Music Association Award for Entertainer of the Year (only six other women have won this honor).




• Swift has sold more than 28 million digital tracks, as well as received three Gold Mobile Ringtones for the 14 million ringtones sold. She has sold more than 13 million albums worldwide.
• She was the first country music artist to ever win a MTV Video Music Award.
• Last year, Swift became the first female artist with the most Top 40 singles of the decade, surpassing Beyonce.
• She made her acting debut in the movie Valentine's Day, and her song "Today Was a Fairytale" was on the movie's soundtrack.
• Swift was on People magazine's "100 Most Beautiful People" list in 2008, 2009, and 2010.
• According to Forbes, she is this year's twelfth most-powerful celebrity with earnings of $45 million.

Imagine what she'll have accomplished by the time she's 40! A big thank you to everyone for all the amazing birthday wishes.

Looking forward to your comments...

85: The Self-Empowered Woman: Dilma Rousseff

Dear Followers,

Now that our American election fever is over (for a little while) I thought that today I would introduce you to Brazil's first-ever female president. Dilma Vana Rousseff (who was born on December 14th, 1947) is the daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant; her father had been an active member of the Bulgarian Communist Party in the 1920s. He moved to Brazil to escape political persecution, and became financially successful. He married Dilma Jane Silva, a schoolteacher, and they had three children, but he died when Dilma Vana was only 15 (1. No Paternal Safety Net).

The new President of Brazil (which has the seventh-largest economy in the world) received her early education at a Catholic (3. Belief in the Unbelievable) boarding school, where the students and nuns primarily spoke French. After her father's death, the teen aged Rousseff went to the Central State High School where she became more aware of politics and realized that "The world was not a place for debutantes." This is where she first became interested in The Worker's Politics Organization (POLOP), and became opposed to Brazil's dictatorship (2. An Early Sense of Direction).

Rousseff became so involved with politics that the authorities gave her several nicknames: "The Joan of Arc of Subversion," "Political Criminal,"
"Female Figure of Sadly Notable Aspect," and "the She-Pope of Subversion." Obviously, such name-calling didn't upset her (5. Life Is Not a Popularity Contest).

In 1968, she married Claudio Galenao Linhares, a political activist five years her senior. Two years later, he was arrested; she was captured by the authorities, sentenced to six years in prison, and her political rights were suspended for 18 years. During her time in prison, she was tortured for several weeks with punching, ferule, and electric shock devices (12. Hard Times).

She was released from jail in 1972, but was barred from continuing her university studies the next year. Ultimately, she applied to the Rio Grande do Sul Federal University, where she majored in economics and graduated in 1977. In addition to politics and economics, Rousseff is an opera lover (9. Music).

Her first marriage (in 1968) ended with an amicable divorce in 1981, but she used her first husband's name until 1999, when she reverted to her maiden name. Her second (common law) marriage was to Carlos Araujo, even though he had an affair with actress and fellow militant Bete Mendes, he and Rousseff had a daughter, Paula Rousseff Araujo, who was born in 1976. In 1994, Rousseff found that another woman was pregnant with Araujo's child (15. Forget About Prince Charming); Rousseff and Araujo separated, but later reconciled. They remained together until 2000, when she left.

Politically, Rousseff had served as Brazil's Energy Minister and was chosen by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula) to be his Chief of Staff, the first female to hold that position. Many believe that his support helped her win last month's election.

In 2009, Rousseff disclosed that she was battling Lymphatic System Cancer, and she also suffered from Myopathy as a result of the cancer treatment. During much of her campaign, she wore a wig due to chemotherapy-related hair loss. The story of a former left-wing, urban guerrilla who has risen to become her country's (first female) leader is a stirring one.

Looking forward to your comment...

84: The Self-Empowered Woman: Iana Matei

Dear Followers,

It's no secret that I really admire brave women. And last week I learned about a woman who has truly put her own life at risk in order to try to help others. Her name is Iana Matei; she lives in the small town of Pitesti, Romania (about 300 miles North of Istanbul), and she has rescued over 400 young girls who were victimized by human traffickers.

In her words, "It is a crime against humanity to sell and buy life. There are many girls in Eastern Europe, including in Romania, forced into prostitution...Kept in captivity, abused and forced to have paid sexual intercourse with strangers, they become what can only be labeled as slaves."

Few Americans know about Ms. Matei's work, but for the past decade or so, her efforts have become more publicized, particularly in Europe. In 2006, the U.S. State Department gave her the Hero of the Year Award, in 2007, she received the Abolitionist Award from the U.K.'s House of Lords, and this year, she became the 15th recipient (and the first Romanian) to be chosen Reader's Digest European of the Year.

Matei is her country's leading advocate for victims of human trafficking, and that means that she often single-handedly rescues (11. Risk Addiction) girls as young as thirteen who have been either sold into sexual slavery or tricked into phony offers of marriage or "foreign job opportunities." Matei frequently "kidnaps" these girls from their often-violent captors, and then offers them a place to live as well as heal and rebuild their young lives. Her determination to help these young victims (and bring their tormentors to justice) has become her 7. Magnificent Obsession.

A psychologist by training, Matei is livid that there is no real, adequate legal punishment for the people who sell young girls into prostitution. In her words, "When these guys get caught, they get what? Six years? Maybe. They destroy 300 lives and they get six years. You traffic drugs, you get 20 years. There is something not right... I would like to see these criminals locked behind bars forever. I would throw away the keys of their cells. Let's have them locked up for 100 - 150 years." (5. Life Is Not a Popularity Contest)

Matei began caring for these young girls when a policeman asked her to let three "prostitutes" stay at her home because their allotted ten days for "re-integration" had expired. The girls were 14, 15, and 16 years old, "frozen, badly dressed and starving"; there was no official welfare service available to help them recover from the trauma of being locked up in a brothel and forced to work the streets.

Matei is so devoted to her young charges that she even adopted three year-old twins who had been the children of one of the young girls that she had recently rescued. Fortunately, the 52 year-old Matei has plenty of energy.

Matei's dream is to own a self-sustaining hotel where the girls can work, learn skills, and earn a living. Currently, though, she houses them in the small shelter she runs. While the Reader's Digest Award contributed $5,000 towards her goal, the Make Way Partners in Birmingham, Alabama also helps fund Matei's shelter.

Over 400 young girls have looked to Ms. Matei as a real life heroine. Thanks to her, they are able to heal the wounds inflicted by the traffickers, society at large, and (all too often) their no-longer-loving judgmental families.

If you would like to help support the work of this brave, nurturing woman, visit the link below to learn more about the Make Way Partners. And, in case you wondered, all three of the teenagers Matei picked up at the police station are now married and have children of their own.

https://www.makewaypartners.org/index.php

Looking forward to your comments...

83: The Self-Empowered Woman: Stacy Schiff

Dear Followers,

As you know, it's important to me to introduce readers to remarkable women-- regardless of how many of the 17 traits that appear in their lives.

The latest woman who has caught my attention is Pulitzer-Prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff. The recipient of an excellent education (Phillips Academy, and Williams College -- class of 1982), Schiff was a Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster until 1990.

In 2000 she won the Pulitzer Prize for her biography "Vera (Mrs. Vladimir)Nabokov): Portrait of a Marriage, the wife of the man who wrote "Pale Fire" and "Lolita". Five years later she was a Pulitzer finalist for her biography of Antoine de Saint Exupery. In 2005, she wrote "A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America," which was published as "Doctor Franklin Goes to France" in the UK.

As if all that brilliant writing weren't enough, Schiff has won fellowships from John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the 2006 Arwen Taylor book prize, the Ambassador Award in American studies, the Institut Francais's Gilbert Chinaid prize, the 2006 George Washington Book prize, and 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Whew!

Now Schiff has a new biography out about Cleopatra, whom she fells has been misrepresented for years. When recently asked by the New York Times if Cleopatra had "slept her way to the top," Schiff answered "...it has always been preferable to attribute a woman's success to her beauty rather than brains. We seem convinced that men strategize while women scheme. Men are authoritative while women are shrill."

Those of you who have heard me lecture about how my library trips as a young girl helped me identify the 17 traits of Self-Empowered Women, will find Schiff's comments of interest: "...I was nostalgic even as a child. I was happiest in my hometown library in Adams, Mass., where nothing seemed to change... I notice in retrospect that biographies for kids seemed to be about women who are famous for their disabilities, delusions or sensational deaths. The big three were Helen Keller, Joan of Arc and Isadora Duncan...I fear that sudden demises always help. Think Lady Di or Amelia Earhart or Sylvia Plath."

The undeniably brilliant Schiff has an unusual lifestyle. Her husband, Marc de la Bruyere, is a real-estate developer who spends large chunks of time in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, while she and their three children live mostly in New York City.

Schiff's articles, essays, and book reviews have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New York Times.

Looking forward to your comments...

82 The Self-Empowered Woman: French Women

Dear Followers,

Who would argue with the idea that French women are undeniably amazing? Those of us who've spent time in Paris know how amazing French females seem -- slim, well-dressed and oozing sophistication from every pore. I've always wondered how they learn to work magic with a simple scarf...

Naturally, when I read Katrin Bennhold's article in The New York Times titled, "For Women In France, Dim Outlook on Equality," I was amazed. Here I'd spent a lifetime thinking that their lives were effortless and enviable, when in fact they have struggles of their own.

To wit, Valerie Toranian (who is editor-in-chief of French Elle) observed that "French women are exhausted. We have the right to do what men do -- as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner, and look immaculate. We have to be Superwoman."

On average (according to INSEE, The National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies), French women spend five hours and one minute each day on child care and domestic tasks; men spend two hours and seven minutes. And a recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center revealed that three out of every four French people believed that men have a better life than women. People in 22 different countries were surveyed and this was the "highest share" of any respondents.

According to the European Union's statistical agency, French women have more babies (1.89 per woman) than any other country in Europe (for example, Italy is 1.38 and German is 1.32), but they also are Europe's biggest consumers of antidepressants.

The majority of French medical school graduates are female, but most hospital department heads are male. Overall, French women earn 26% less than men, and in 2009, even childless French women who were in their 40s still earned 17% less than men. Eighty-two percent of French women aged 25-49 are employed, but 82% of National Assembly members are male.

The French Government spends 5.1% of its gross national product (twice the European Union average) on family, childcare and maternity benefits. Women are encouraged -- via tax benefits and childcare assistance -- to have children. According to Genevieve Fraisse (an expert on gender history), "French mothers have conditions women everywhere can only dream of. But stereotypes remain very much intact."

France ranks 46th in the World Economic Forum's 2010 Gender Equality Report, which means its lower than the U.S., most of Europe, as well as Jamaica and Kazakhstan. In theory, the French Republic made equality a founding principle, but women were not able to vote until 1944!

Years ago, the French philosopher, Bernard-Henri Levy observed that "France is an old Gallic macho country."

Looking forward to your comments...

81: The Self-Empowered Woman: Ntozake Shange

Dear Followers,

Sorry I haven't posted as regularly as normal, but the hunt for CCSVI treatment has entered an exciting new phase. If I'm lucky, I may be able to receive the procedure in Albany before the end of the year; anyone who knows what it's like to live with MS (Multiple Sclerosis) will understand my scattered state of mind as I wait for a date...

Today's blog is prompted by the news that on November 5th, Tyler Perry will release his new film "Colored Girls," which is based on the play "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf." This Obie Award-winning play has long been considered Ntozake Shange's signature work, and it was produced on Broadway in 1976, when she was 28 years old.

The film is expected to be successful (like most of Perry's productions, but Shange's new novel, "Some Sing, Some Cry," which she co-authored with her sister (Ifa Bayeza) is getting lots of positive press and is expected to become a national bestseller. It took the two women almost 15 years (7: Magnificent Obsession) to complete the story of seven generations of black women who - with the help of music - overcome the violent challenges and heart breaking roadblocks that stopped them from reaching their dreams.

As Kaiama L. Glover wrote in the New York Times "[the authors] give us generation after generation of black women whose greatness and potential for happiness are undone, or nearly so, by men...If any of the Mayfield women managed to realize some measure of success, it's despite-or to spite-the men in their lives...After every near defeat, these women pick themselves up, sometimes literally off the ground, and take the next impossible step."

Shange was born Paulette L. Williams in Trenton, New Jersey; her father was an Air Force Surgeon and her mother was a Psychiatric Social Worker. As a little girl her family moved to (segregated) St. Louis, and she was bussed to a white school where she experienced racism. After completing high school in New Jersey, Shange attended Barnard College (where she graduated Cum Laude in American Studies) and USC (for her Master's Degree in the same field).

During her first year in college, Shange married, but the relationship ended bitterly; reportedly, several suicide attempts followed (15: Forget About Prince Charming), and soon after she adopted her Xhosa/Zulu name which - roughly translated means - "she who walks with her own things" and "she who walks with lions."

Shange is no stranger to challenges. In 2004, she learned that she had suffered a series of minor strokes, which at one point left her unable to read, speak, or write (12: Hard Times). Today her balance and speech are still mildly impaired, but the playwright and poet who calls herself "A Black Feminist" is ready for a new chapter in her life to begin.

Looking forward to your comments...