Use for general womens’ issues
Working women, 1950s (Minorities in the 1950s)
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), women ages 16-55+ comprised 18K+, which was less than 30% of the labor force. (By contrast, working men numbered 43K+ and over 70%.) Out of the 12% of American women who worked outside the home, only 6% of women held management positions.
Today, things have changed…slightly. It’s still difficult for women to climb the corporate ladder and make it all the way to the C-suite.
Hillary Clinton (ABC News)
The first presidential debate aired this past Monday night between Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump. It was clear that Trump interrupted Clinton many times (51 times, to be exact), but his talking time massively negatively impacted Clinton’s.
Clinton spoke only 38% of the debate running time.
How do we know this? Twitter crunched some numbers surrounding the frequency of the hashtag #debates, and possibly how many times the two nominees’ names (and maybe quotes) were mentioned. (I couldn’t find the methodology behind Twitter’s data, so I couldn’t delve into it. Sad.)
By contrast, Trump spoke for 62% of the time. Given his verbose tendencies, this hardly comes as a surprise.
Birth control pills (Salon)
Once again, California blazes the way for the rest of the nation. Last week, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that states that women will be able to pick up a year’s supply of birth control pills at one time. Before this law passed, pharmacists were only able to dispense birth control in three-month supplies. (And I know I’ve had trouble with even that.)
Worried about if your insurance will cover it? No need: the new law also requires that the new year-at-once be covered in healthcare plans.
The new law goes into Jan. 1, 2017.
Viola Davis, Emmys 2015 (Betches)
At the Emmys this past weekend, actress Viola Davis was nominated for Best Actress in a Drama Series for her lead role in ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder.” Though she didn’t win on Sunday night, she won the award in 2015, and made history in the process. Davis became the first Black woman to win the Best Actress award.
Crazy that seemingly simple milestones are still only now being surpassed.
Cosmo Kramer, ‘Seinfeld’ (Pinterest)
Here’s some downer news to start your day: Sexually-transmitted disease (STD) gonorrhea has become resistant to certain antibiotics.
Earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) released new treatment guidelines for the STD. Gonorrhea isn’t the only STD that’s become drug-resistant; strains of chlamydia and syphilis have also begun resisting treatment.
The common STD most affects women ages 20-24, with 820K new cases throughout all demographics cropping up per year. Worldwide, 78M people contract gonorrhea each year.
Gonorrhea is becoming drug-resistant at the same time that STD rates are rising. In 2014, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) reported that rates of gonorrhea rose 5%+, which was the first increase in the U.S. in eight years.
The STD now cannot be treated with penicillin and doxycycline, among other drugs. The WHO estimates that completely new drugs will be needed for treatment within the next five years.
Teenage girls with pregnancy test (Young Adults)
When I was growing up in the ’90s, teenage pregnancy was just a fact. It was depicted in movies and on TV, and you probably knew at least one girl in your school who got pregnant.
But teenage pregnancy now seems so…dated. Times have changed. Having kids young and outside of wedlock isn’t a big deal anymore. And I feel like I’m not seeing teen pregnancies focused on so much anymore (granted, that might be because I’m no longer a teen myself).
There’s a good reason for this: the teen birth rate is decreasing.
According to the U.S Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Adolescent Health, the teenage birth rate in the U.S. has actually been decreasing for over 20 years. In 1991, there were 61.8 babies born for every 1k teenage girls. In 2014, there were 24.2 babies born for every 1K teenage girls. Quite a drop.
Even the year-over-year drops can be steep. The 2014 number is a 9% drop from 2013, where 26.5 babies were born to every 1K teenage girls. And the 2015 number of 22 babies per every 1K teenage girls is a 8% decrease from 2014.
For a longer-term view of how the teen birth rate has declined from the previous decade, CNN has the scoop:
Since 2007, the year-to-year decline in teen birth rates has been between 7% and 9%…The number of teens becoming moms has dropped by a total of 54% from 2007 to 2015.
That’s huge! We’ll see how small the number of teenage pregnancies eventually gets.
Melissa Villasenor (Remezcla)
Earlier this week, new additions to the “Saturday Night Live” cast were announced for the upcoming season. Among the three new cast members is comedian Melissa Villasenor. Villasenor’s hiring is significant because she’ll be the first Latina cast-member since “SNL” debuted 41 years ago.
How in the hell did it take Forty. One. Years?!?!?!
Villasenor’s hiring is just the latest achievement for Latinas in the entertainment industry, and she’s not the first to bust down a barrier.
Mexican actress Dolores del Rio worked in Hollywood from the 1920s until the ’40s, and achieved cross-over success with American audiences. She was the first Mexican actress to do so, and she worked with Hollywood luminaries such as Fred Astaire. (Fun fact: In the 1933 film “Flying Down to Rio,” del Rio danced with Astaire in the same film where he first paired with Ginger Rogers.)
Actress Rita Moreno overachieved with the firsts. Not only did she win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1961, but she won the same award at the Tonys in 1975. Moreno went on to be the second person ever to get the EGOT honor (that is, she won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony).
Villasenor’s hiring opens the door for more diversity at “SNL,” but more Latina achievement in entertainment.
Actress Rita Moreno poses with her Oscar after she was named best supporting actress at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles on April 9, 1962. She won for her roll in “West Side Story
In 1961, actress Rita Moreno won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Anita in “West Side Story.” She was the first Latina actress to win that award.
Moreno didn’t stop there: In 1975, she won the Tony for Best Supporting Actress for “The Ritz.” And she was the first Latina actress to win that award as well.
Two years later, Moreno became the second person ever to achieve the EGOT: winning an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony. She’s continued working steadily and blazing trails today.
Female reproductive diagram (Pinterest)
Well, this is alarming. A new study that surveyed 1K British women found that only 56% of women could identify the vagina from a medical diagram. For those of you who can’t do math, that’s 44% of women who can’t identify the vagina. And that’s way too high.
By contrast, nearly 70% of women could identify the male reproductive organs from a diagram. (Full disclosure: this was me in fifth grade health class. But then I got some knowledge.)
The study turned up some other things to note: Less than 30% of women could correctly identify all six parts of the women’s reproductive system from the same diagram. Also, only one in seven women were able to name a cancer that affects the reproductive organs. (The study was done by The Eve Appeal, a UK-based gynecological charity in awareness of September being Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month.)
The study also turned up the interesting note that women ages 65 and older were most likely to have scant knowledge of their reproductive organs, with less than one of four women able to name even one part. This might speak to a divide in sexual and health education between generations.
Not to be dramatic, but knowing this information could save your life, or the life of another woman you know.
Ursula Andress in “Dr. No,” 1962 (YouTube)
This year, the bikini turns 70 years old. How can it be that old?! And love it or hate it, the iconic swimsuit isn’t not going anywhere anytime soon.
The bikini’s invention is credited to French engineer Louis Reard. When he went to the beach, he noticed women trying to get a better tan by adjusting their suits. Sensing a hole in the market, he designed the first bikini out of 30 square inches of fabric in 1946.
Though the bikini took some time to catch on with the average consumer, it caught fire on film in the 1960s. The decade featured some instantly iconic bikini moments, ensuring that the garment had earned its place in fashion and film history.
One of the first to appear was in 1962’s James Bond film “Dr. No.” Ursula Andress, playing shell diver Honey Ryder, appears from the ocean clad in a white bikini. Bikini sales rose after audiences saw the movie, and the bikini was later auctioned off for $61.5K in 2001.
After that head-turning debut, bikinis became a wardrobe staple of the beach party genre, starting with 1963’s “Beach Party” with Annette Funicello. In 1966’s “One Million Years B.C.,” actress Raquel Welch rocked a deerskin bikini.
But why were bikinis taking off during the 1960s? There are a few reasons. One is that women’s dress standards had somewhat relaxed due to the sexual revolution. While a woman might’ve felt a bikini was too revealing in the 1950s, many women grew comfortable showing their bodies (up to a point) in the 1960s.
Though the bikini gained popularity a good 15 years after its debut, the classic women’s swimwear item shows no signs of slowing down in the near or distant future.
Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang 