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NEWS & LETTERS, February 2008 - March 2008Women World Wideby Mary Jo Grey Government changes in rules for those in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program were announced in February. Welfare recipients going to college can use up to a year of classwork to meet the program's work requirements and will no longer need to have homework supervised. This benefits mothers whose work, study and family schedules make it difficult to find time for supervised homework. While these are positive changes in an oppressive set of rules introduced by Bush in 2006, problems still exist--especially oppressive reporting requirements. The revisions don't go into effect until October. * * * In January, 30 nurse practitioners and physician assistants at the University of Michigan sued the university for wage discrimination. The women, who work in the cardiology, oncology and radiology departments, said the university has paid male workers in comparable jobs more over the past three years. * * * City officials in Basra, Iraq, announced that 2007 saw 133 women killed and mutilated, their bodies dumped in trash bins with notes warning others against "violating Islamic teachings." However, ambulance drivers hired to collect the bodies say the actual numbers are much higher. Activists from the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), who visited city morgues to determine the scale and pattern of the killings, say most of the murdered women are "professionals, activists and office workers." Their "crime" was opposition to the transformation of Iraq into an Islamist state. Yanar Mohammed, OWFI founder, calls these killings a campaign "to restrain women into the domestic domain and end all female participation in the social and political scene." --Information from OWFI |
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