North America | United States | Ethics

Air Force pilot-turned-congresswoman in dogfight for WWII air women

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Air Force fighter pilot-turned-congresswoman Martha McSally is in a dogfight for a generation of female aviators who paved the runway for her, but not even the president can help, according to a top Pentagon official. The Arizona Republican, who became the first female fighter pilot in U.S. history to fly in combat and command a fighter squadron, is battling to win a place in Arlington National Cemetery for some 1,000 women who flew non-combat missions during World War II. At a House hearing Wednesday, she pressed the acting secretary of the U.S. Army on why President Obama has not taken ac
North America | United States | History

Women Haven’t Had Their Own Ticker-Tape Parade Since 1960

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Friday’s ticker-tape parade in honor of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, which won the World Cup on Sunday, is the first such parade in New York to honor exclusively women since 1960. That’s when Carol Heiss received the ticker-tape treatment in honor of her figure-skating gold medal at the 1960 Winter Games. The most recent parade in which a woman was included took place in 1998, when Chiaki Mukai was honored along with the rest of the crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Middle East | Iran | Culture

Iranian and Afghan women: then and now

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Reader John W. sent me the photo below, showing women in Kabul in 1970 and the present, clearly meant to underscore the religously-induced difference in dress. But of course those photos could be cherry-picked.  Then I remembered that, at her talk in Vancouver, Maryam Namazie, discussing the burqa, also said that since her youth, women in her Iranian homeland have been increasingly swathed and covered according to the dictates of Islam. So I simply did a few Google Image searches, and show in each case the first four rows of photos. I make no claim that these photos are a random s