On Saturday night, the House of Representatives passed the health care reform bill, 220-215. However, the bill must still pass the Senate and be signed by the President to be enacted into law.What exactly does health care reform represent? Will it be more of a setback for women than a push forward? The bill includes the Stupak Amendment, which bans any funding for abortions.  Considering the ban on partial birth abortions and the debates around health care reform, many people are worried that this will lead...

An article on Jezebel, got me thinking about the affect MAD MEN mania may have on our culture. In a blurb about a recent study from the UK newspaper, The Telegraph (regarding the shocking treatment of modern secretaries), Jezebel posted a picture of the gals from Mad Men. Though Jez didn't explain the choice in photography, it is clear when one thinks of a misogynistic office environment, one thinks of our favorite ad agency, Sterling Cooper. During the Mad Men years, the job of a secretary was...

You think your high school experience sucked? Try being a teenage feminist these days. Girls who want equality are getting more crap than you can imagine, but are fighting harder than ever to have their voices heard. Eighteen-year-old Carmen Rodi reports by Carmen Rodi I am happy to call myself a teenage feminist. And thankfully, there are others out there like me. But it is by no means an easy ideal to uphold. In high schools all across the country,...

 There is a unique movement happening in Iran right now; some have preemptively labeled it a 'revolution,' while others have said it's all U.S.A.-backed smoke and mirrors, but should anyone reject this as anything less than an uprising, they would have to be in denial. So often in traditional media outlets, we see women in Iran and throughout other Muslim-majority countries portrayed as oppressed homemakers, washing clothes by hand outdoors, pulling tightly at their hijabs (head coverings) or burkas. But now, with the help of...

So Amnesty International has this new interactive billboard . When you look right at it it shows a picture of a happy, smiling couple. As you look away the picture changes to one of domestic violence. The poster has an eye tracking camera in it to know when someone is looking directly at it. The point is to raise awareness of how domestic violence is often behind closed doors, when no one is looking. A couple could seem happy and perfect to the outside world...

Remember the heated discussion we were having about the Calvin Klein billboard in SoHo? Some felt that it was too racy to be up in public where kids could see it, others felt that it should be left alone as art. We're even divided on the issue here at BUST (so what I'm saying here is my opinion but not necessarily everyone's). Well, now CK has put up a different ad, replacing the steamy scene with a chick in a bikini. The question remains whether the...

As the new owner of an iPod touch, I have been scouring the iTunes app store looking for whatever awesome (free) things I can add to my new toy. In the process, I've discovered something sort of troubling. There's a whole host of incredibly sexist apps. Tons of bikini babes and hottie slideshows, and that's just the beginning. As annoying and moderately offensive as those objectifying ones are, others are much worse. Let's start with fetishes. Of course, you can download babes in your choice of...

With all the attention that the Iranian election protests are getting, some focus is being drawn to an incredibly important issue: women's rights . Right now, women in Iran are legally second-class citizens. An NPR segment talking about recent women's protests said that women are considered one-half of men. A woman's life is valued at half of a man's and her testimony in court is only worth half of what a man's is. This also means that women have less say in cases of inheritance,...

A young couple in Canada decided they don't want to have more than two kids, but their doctor won't perform a tubal ligation. Tarrah Seymour is 21 and pregnant with her second child. She and her husband, Adam Sylvester, who is 23, know they don't want to have any more children, so they asked the OB/GYN, Dr. Kayode Ayodele, to perform the sterilization during Seymour's planned C-section. He refused because of their ages, claiming Seymour might ''get involved with someone else down the road and...

The Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, which is the headquarters of the National Women's Party, honored Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with its Alice Award. The award is named for Alice Paul, who founded the National Women's Party and authored the Equal Rights Amendment. In her acceptance speech, Clinton said, ''there is so much work to be done to improve the status of women and girls in many parts of the world. Every single day, you can pick up the newspaper or turn on the TV...