Free Republic

It’s “ethically inappropriate” for government and medical organizations to describe breastfeeding as “natural” because the term enforces rigid notions about gender roles, claims a new study in Pediatrics. “Coupling nature with motherhood… can inadvertently support biologically deterministic arguments about the roles of men and women in the family (for example, that women should be the primary caretaker,” the study says.

The door opens to the Amal Women’s Center, a transitional home for women and children operated by the Muslim social services organization, ICNA Relief. Opened this week, it marks the first Muslim-operated transitional housing shelter in Massachusetts, according to Malika MacDonald-Rushdan, ICNA Relief’s state field office director. Amal means “hope” in Arabic, MacDonald-Rushdan explained. The door’s vibrant purple color signifies that feeling.

Ivanka Trump has been involved in discussions with the World Bank about establishing a funding operation that would support female entrepreneurs, bank and administration officials said Wednesday. The officials stressed that nothing has been set up yet and that talks are ongoing about how this would be set up. They said it could be structured as a World Bank-run "facility," which accepts contributions from governments and private donors and then provides funding and support to women in developing countries. According to a senior administration official, Trump recently pitched the idea to World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, who then...

YPJ members at a military parade in northern Syria's autonomous region Rojava. Twelve members of the Kurdish Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) were killed in Turkish airstrikes targeting the group’s headquarters in northeastern Syria early Tuesday morning.The YPJ, in a statement on Wednesday, confirmed that of the 20 Kurdish fighters killed in the multiple airstrikes, 12 belonged to the YPJ, while the other eight were members of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). 18 other militants were injured in the air raid.In the statement the group, which came to prominence following several victories against the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group, also accused...

Ivanka Trump had been speaking for less than five minutes on Tuesday before the jeers started coming from the audience. Given the topic and venue, they seemed almost inevitable. At the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the First Daughter of the United States had come to Berlin for a roundtable discussion on the empowerment of women, a subject that was sure to clash with the sexist and vulgar remarks her father has made about women in the past. Sure enough, when she referred to President Donald Trump as a “tremendous champion” of women’s rights, particularly the right to take...

Beyoncé is celebrating the one-year anniversary of Lemonade, her award-winning visual album, by launching a scholarship program for young women. The singer made the announcement on her website Tuesday. The Formation Scholars program will kick off in time for the 2017-2018 academic year "to encourage and support young women who are unafraid to think outside the box and are bold, creative, conscious, and confident." Four scholarships total will be awarded to incoming, current, or graduate female students studying creative arts, music, literature, or African-American studies at Berklee College of Music, Howard University, Parsons School of Design, and Spelman College. The...

Declining marriage rates among millenials are a matter of some unease in the conservative policy world, as can be seen in W. Bradford Wilcox’s recent article. This trend may be partly due to an increasing imbalance in the number of marriageable men and women at all levels of society. For example, women have attended and graduated from college at higher rates than men for some years now, and in 2010 women receiving doctoral degrees outnumbered men for the first time. The overall cultural sense is that women are gaining and men are falling behind, as Hanna Rosin argues in The...

Analyzing the feedback, the researchers claim mindfulness as it is typically practiced is ideal for women, who stereotypically ruminate on things. The practice teaches them to let go of the past and future, and focus on the now. Meanwhile the biggest stress-driver for male participants was the fact that they distract - completely shutting off past and future worries. Since they were, in general, already focused on the present moment, mindfulness was relatively futile.

Fox News Channel ditched Bill O’Reilly on Wednesday following the revelation of a series of sexual harassment allegations. His accusers—including Juliet Huddy, Andrea Tantaros, and Gretchen Carlson—also tellingly no longer work at Fox News. But the women who never worked at Fox News strike as the ultimate victims. Those who share the chromosomes of the aggrieved parties but not a CV that includes girl-next-door looks, or a rock-star boyfriend, or a Miss America crown don’t, generally, get hired in cable news. Strangely, the ladies that cable news regards as bringing viewers the most articulate, insightful opinions, cogent analysis, and trusted,...

Every submarine in the U.S. fleet was designed with the height, reach and strength of men in mind, from the way valves are placed to how display screens are angled. That's going to change.

ELVERUM, Norway — An explosion just a few feet away rocks the unmarked station wagon as it travels along a dirt road in the Norwegian woodland. Immediately, two soldiers jump from their front seats and run for cover behind the carcass of an old, rusty tank. Firing their weapons at targets along the snow-covered hillside, they call for support from the rest of their unit. This firefight is just a drill, but the soldiers taking part are battling to break down one of the final barriers to women serving in the armed forces. They are training to become part of...

Acclaimed Chef Angela Dimayuga, who has restaurants in San Francisco and New York City, isn’t buying Ivanka Trump’s brand of working woman “empowerment” and publicly slammed a freelance writer’s request to do an interview for the first daughter’s lifestyle website. Dimayuga, of Mission Chinese Food in San Francisco and New York’s Lower East Side, told the Huffington Post this week that the irony of the request left her “screaming” on a number of levels, including when the writer billed the website as a “non-political platform of empowerment for modern working women.” The writer, Adi Heyman, tried to flatter the 31-year-old...

Two asylum seekers who are on trial for raping a Swedish girl and streaming the ordeal live on Facebook will not face deportation back to their home countries. The asylum seekers directly involved in the rape, aged 18 and 21, will not face deportation after the prosecution withdrew their previous claim. “The prosecutor has taken a wise decision. It is against the Aliens Act, which I pointed out here before,” said lawyer Stefan Wallin who is defending one of the men accused of the rape, 24 Uppsala reports.

A Muslim woman says that 'a man who doesn't beat his wife isn't a man.'

Islamic headscarf a shroud of death for a free society,’ says former radical Feminist Zana Ramadani. With her book The Veiled Threat dealing with the plight of Muslim women in Europe, former radical feminist Zana Ramadani has kicked the Islamist hornets’ nest in Germany. Being born a Muslim herself, Ramadani is fearful of her life after receiving countless death threats from radical Muslims in Germany ... Once a darling of the left, Ramadani quickly fell out of favour with German liberals once she started criticising the oppression of women within Islam. Her fellow feminists accused her of being a racist...

It turns out Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” are actual binders after all — filled with the resumes of women who hoped to land jobs in his administration as governor. The Boston Globe reports Tuesday that it was shown the binders by a former Romney aide. The two white three-ring binders contain about 200 cover letters and resumes with some handwritten notes. […] The binders — and the resumes — were the result of an effort to get more women into state government in Massachusetts after Romney defeated Democratic nominee and then-state Treasurer Shannon O’Brien for governor in 2002....

Hillary Clinton on Thursday narrowed down the "determinative" reasons for her 2016 presidential loss to two factors: FBI Director James Comey and WikiLeaks. During an appearance at the eighth annual Women in the World Summit in New York City, Clinton said her team and supporters have been spending time "trying to piece it all together" — referring to why she lost to President Trump.

Chelsea Clinton says if you want a raise, you should ask for one. And if you need time to yourself, take it. In fact, she’s gotten very far in her life without ever having to worry about being turned down or told no, so why should you worry about getting fired from your job for being greedy? Chelsea sat down with Levo, a female-oriented online leadership training and mentoring program that connects women in business with other, more famous women in business.

Illinois tollway directors agreed Thursday to spend up to $4 million to assist minority-, women- and veteran-owned construction companies that are seeking work with the agency. The funds will be distributed among seven entities including the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce, Illinois State Black Chamber of Commerce and Chicago Minority Supplier Development Council. Training ranges from basics such as explaining the technicalities of bidding for a contract and obtaining financing to advanced classes in estimating the cost of a job or managing a business. The program will be evaluated based on the number of businesses served and successful bids, among other...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The eurozone’s top official said “fatigue may have played a role” for comments he made last month that unleashed a storm of criticism across southern Europe. In an interview with Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, published Monday, Jeroen Dijsselbloem said the scale of the backlash made it look like “I committed a war crime.”