BBC: Call for investigation of menstrual changes after Covid jabs. “Changes to periods and unexpected vaginal bleeding after having a Covid vaccine should be investigated to reassure women, says a leading immunologist specialising in fertility. Writing in the BMJ, Dr Victoria Male, from Imperial College London, said the body’s immune response was the likely cause, not something in the vaccines.”
The Next Web: Why Alexa and not Alexander? How gendered voice assistants are hurting as they help. “For a society that hasn’t quite broken out of its mindset around traditional gender roles, seeing women as everyone else’s helpers instead of their own people with their own destinies is par for the course. We even see this reflected in the emerging field of AI voice assistants – all of which sound female.”
Berkeley Public Health: Study shows COVID-19 disruptions led to less access to medical abortion. “A new study shows that the COVID-19 pandemic caused major disruptions to abortion service availability, especially to medical abortions and telemedicine, in the United States between May–August 2020.”
CNET: Facebook’s own research shows Instagram is harmful to teens, report says. “In studies conducted over the past three years, Facebook researchers have found that Instagram is ‘harmful for a sizable percentage’ of young users, particularly teenage girls, reported The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. Research presented in 2019 reportedly found that Instagram makes body image issue worse for one in three teen girls. In focus group and online surveys done by the company, teens also apparently said Instagram increased rates of anxiety and depression, reported the Journal.”
GW Hatchet: Milken professor creates online map tracking nationwide contraceptive care access. “The U.S. Contraception Workforce Tracker – an online map released by the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute for Health Workforce Equity which studies health care disparities – breaks down the types of contraceptive service providers like gynecologists and nurse midwives on the county and state level. Candice Chen, the project’s lead researcher and an associate professor of health management and policy, said she hopes the map will direct patients to better contraception access and guide policymakers who can address unequal training practices on contraception distribution among health care providers.”
Business Leader: Diem raises $900,000 pre-seed funding to build a social media alternative. “Diem, a new social universe designed for women and non-binary folks is announcing a $900,000 pre-seed led by Xfactor Ventures and Acrew, with participation from leading angels such as Create & Cultivate founder, Jaclyn Johnson and Discord Executive, Amber Atherton.”
Yale Alumni: Digital version of The 50th Anniversary Written History Project unveiled. “Almost two and a half years after it began, the Written History Project, initiated by the 50th Anniversary of Coeducation Committee, is now nearing completion. The book produced by the project, The First Women in Yale College: Reflections on Coeducation for the 50th Anniversary Celebration, is a collection of first-person essays that chronicles what it was like to be among the first women to attend and graduate from Yale College. Although early versions of the project have been released, including a book prepared for the cohort of women in the first three classes, a new digital edition of the essays, meant for general distribution, was finished this summer and is now available as a digital book.”
Washington Post: Stillbirths have doubled during covid in Mississippi. Officials are sounding the alarm.. “Mississippi has recorded 72 fetal deaths in unvaccinated pregnant women infected with the coronavirus, state health officials announced Wednesday, sounding the alarm on the virus’s danger in pregnancy. Speaking during a news conference, Mississippi State Health Officer Thomas Dobbs said those deaths had occurred since the start of the pandemic. The number, which includes only deaths that occurred past 20 weeks of gestation, ‘is twice the background rate of what would be expected,’ he said.”
Penn Today: Archiving empire. “A long-unseen archive centered on an 18th-century Mughal woman will soon be publicly accessible, thanks to the work of religious studies professor Megan Robb and a team of Penn students.”
Business Insider: Anti-vaxxers are targeting pregnant women with misinformation that can lead to tragedy, experts warn. “Samantha Willis, a 35-year-old mother of three other children, died after choosing to wait for more information about the COVID-19 vaccine and pregnancy. Data now shows that the inoculation is completely safe to have whilst pregnant: but a dedicated misinformation campaign is trying to make people believe otherwise.”
The Irish Times: Accessible Stasi archive offers a model for Catholic Ireland’s troubled past. “Religious orders retain their archives. There is no palpable pressure on them to hand them over, nor is there a dedicated public institution to manage the files if they did. Official Ireland still adopts an ad hoc approach to its past, limiting any chance of coherent research or public education on our vanished Catholic past…. It would be wrong to compare Catholic Ireland and communist East Germany, but Ireland’s approach to its collective past today jars with how East Germans sometimes at real risk to themselves and their families took ownership of the Stasi files and their past. Twice.”
Ohio State News: Groundbreaking ideas from women scientists get less attention. “Researchers used a novel way of tracing the flow of ideas to find that even some of the most well-known breakthroughs in biomedical research from 1980 to 2008 had a more difficult road to adoption when research teams were dominated by women. Specifically, the five-year adoption rate of new ideas from female-majority teams was 23% lower than that of male-majority teams – even among the top 0.1% of ideas.”
Evening Standard: Protesters dressed as giant breasts march outside Facebook’s London office. “Medical tattooists and breast cancer survivors dressed up as giant breasts at the headquarters near Oxford Circus. Some claim their pictures have been removed and their accounts blocked. This prevents breast cancer survivors from learning about possible treatments. The campaigners said they should be able to post images of their experience without being wrongly sexualised.”
Washington Post: They were the world’s only all-female army. Their descendants are fighting to recapture their humanity. . “History is often told through the lens of conquerors. Generations of American schoolchildren learned more about the 15th century ‘discoveries’ of Christopher Columbus than his record of enslaving Indigenous people. Britain framed its 1897 takeover of a storied West African kingdom as a ‘punitive mission,’ glossing over the mass theft of priceless bronzes. After France seized what is now southern Benin in 1894, colonial officers disbanded the territory’s unique force of women warriors, opened new classrooms and made no mention in the curriculum of the Amazons. Even today, many in the country of 12 million know little about their foremother.”
CNN: Kickstarter: ‘We were wrong’ about men’s guide to women. “‘We were wrong.’ With that, Kickstarter said Friday that it had erred in not moving quickly to remove from its website a request for money for a book that critics described as a guide for would-be rapists.”
