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The UMKC Women's Center has a new blog and this blog is no longer in use. The new blog url is http://umkcwomenc.wordpress.com/. We look forward to continuing the interesting discussion on our new blog.

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UMKC Women's Center

National Novel Writing Month

November is the National Novel Writing Month. Patsy and I had the opportunity to research famous women writers for the Women’s Center bulletin board on the first floor of Haag Hall. We came across some inspiring women for the board such as Alice Walker, Harper Lee, Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Margaret Mitchell, Joy Kogawa, and Erica Jong. These women have been the inspiration for many young writers today. Their works reflect on religion, education, culture, and history. Furthermore, through their short stories, poetry, and essays, they have given women encouragement to freely express their hopes, dreams, and desires through writing.

Every year, the National Novel Writing Committee challenges young writers to write for the entire month of November. The challenge is to write 50,000 words or more during the month of November. So if you are interested in writing, don’t hesitate to get involved in the writing extravaganza. For more information you can visit the National Novel Writing Month website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/whatisnano.

Also don’t forget to check out our bulletin board in Haag Hall!!!

A Not So Tasty Sandwich

While in my sociology class, I recently learned a term called the sandwich generation. According to my professor, this term refers to women who are taking care of their children and their adult parents. If you think of a typical turkey sandwich, the top piece of bread represents the woman’s parents, the bottom piece her children, and she is the turkey in the middle. This is something that we see all too often in America and do not even realize the strain it places on women. Before I was placed in this situation myself, I never gave too much thought to this way of life.

My father recently became ill and has been hospitalized for over a month now. Although I am my father’s second youngest child, I have now become his caregiver. I do not have any children of my own; however, I am a full-time student, I work two jobs, and I am only 18 years old. To say it is stressful to deal with all this at once is an understatement.

I decided to research more on this topic, and discovered that whenever parents (or other family members) get sick, it is usually a female family member who takes care of them. With many women now who are single mothers, I wonder what the long-term affects will be on the children who are raised in this situation. I would guess they do not receive that much attention for their mother due to her time being so divided with work, her parents, and her children.

I am extremely interested in hearing your views about this topic and possible solutions or even tips for women in this type of situation. I have attached an article on this topic to give you a little more insight. Feel free to share your views.

To HPV or not to HPV? That is the Question

So for the past few months I have been debating whether or not to get the HPV vaccine. The HPV virus is passed through genital contact and has been known to come and go on its own. If left undetected and untreated, it can lead to cervical cancer. The thought of getting cervical cancer really scares me. My mom and my aunt both had cervical cancer and I just remember being really scared. With that being said, you would think that I would be the first one in line to get the series of shots. Nope. I have heard a good mix of horror and success stories about the shot. But it’s the horror stories that keep replaying in my mind. I also haven’t decided to get the shot yet because I honestly haven’t done enough research on it to feel comfortable enough to make a decision. I plan on doing some more research on the HPV vaccine to help me make a decision. In the meantime, I have provided a link to a website that gives some basic information on the HPV vaccine to help you or someone make that decision as well. http://www.cdc.gov/std/hpv/STDFact-HPV-vaccine-young-women.htm#why

Local Resources in Fight against Domestic and Sexual Violence

Last time, I looked at a few state-wide resources in Missouri and Kansas, but this week, I’d like to talk briefly about three resources that we have right here in the community. For starters, we have a good list of local resources here on the UMKC Women’s Center website, and I’m using this resource to find the organizations I will highlight below.

Hope House is a local organization which helps thousands of domestic violence victims every year by providing two 52-bed shelters, awareness training and community outreach, court advocacy, an emergency hotline, and other useful services. They have been serving the Kansas City Metro for 26 years now. You can friend them on Facebook through the Women’s Center Facebook profile.

Mattie Rhodes Center has been serving the community for 115 years now. Here’s their mission statement: “Mattie Rhodes Center bridges cultures and communities through arts, mental health and social services. We empower individuals and families through culturally competent, bilingual services in a respectful and compassionate environment.” As for services, the center seems to focus more on tackling issues of mental health related to domestic and sexual violence, as well as intervention. They also provide a substance abuse prevention and treatment program, along with other valuable services.

Rose Brooks Center helps thousands of people every year who are affected by domestic violence by offering a full-spectrum approach from prevention to crisis intervention to various forms of treatment. Like Hope House, they also offer court advocacy and child programming and emergency shelter.

These are just a few of the organizations that you’ll find at the Women’s Center resource page for Domestic and Sexual Violence. Each of them plays an important part in the effort to stamp out domestic and sexual violence in our community. I encourage our readers to check out these, and other organizations. It’s a real eye-opener. If each of these organizations are helping thousands (or, more like tens of thousands) within our community, it is easy to see what a difficult challenge we face.

Woman's Work: The Shriver Report

The Center for American Progress and Maria Shriver have broken new ground with the publication of The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything. By taking a hard look at how women’s changing roles are affecting our major societal institutions, the report outlines how these institutions rely on outdated models of who works and who cares for our families, and examines how all these parts of the culture have responded to one of the greatest social transformations of our time.

The survey finds much more similarities than differences between men and women across a host of items. Just one example: Men and women have very similar life goals. We value security, fulfilling work, and children to a similar degree.

I love the way the Center for American Progress identifies their project. They focused on the great work force transition of the late 20th century as a human issue, not a gendered issue. Although women have been moving into the work force at a higher rate than men, the movement is actually about all of us, men and women.

I thought this report was very interesting to look into. To me, it really emphasized that everybody most definitely should be treated equally.

Amelia Earhart Still Lives On

While reading the US Today, I came across an interesting article that made me realize just how far women have come. The article was discussing Amelia Earhart and a movie about her life that is in theatres now.

Amelia Earhart was one of the first female pilots in the early 20th century and the first president of the Ninety-Nine International Organization of Women Pilots, an organization that started with 117 female pilots and currently has 40,000 around the world. Becoming the first president of this organization was a huge accomplishment for Amelia because women at that time were still seen as second class citizen – they had only gained the right to vote less than a decade earlier. This accomplishment, however, paled in comparison to her much bigger achievement which came in 1932 when she became the first women to fly across the Atlantic alone. This feat was controversial for many reasons. But one of the more interesting controversies was the debate around a woman’s ability to fly due to her menstrual cycle. Many men believed that women could not pilot planes because their periods would make them go crazy in the cockpit and lose control. Nevertheless, Amelia gained instant fame from this journey and was celebrated around the world. Sadly, in July 1937, when she was attempting to fly around the world, Amelia and her plane vanished into thin air. Her fans where instantly alarmed and speculation of a suspicious death quickly arose. Amelia Earhart and her plane have still never been found.

Since her disappearance many books have been written about her life and trying to explain her mysterious disappearance. Many have become best-sellers, including the novel that the current film is based on titled East to the Dawn: the Life of Amelia Earhart by Susan Butler. The movie focuses primarily on Amelia’s love life with her husband George Putnam and not so much her disappearance. It stars Hillary Swank and Richard Gere. I think it should be very entertaining and I’m looking forward to seeing it, especially since it tells a great story about an important female figure in American History.