Monday, November 30 on KPFA Women's Magazine: A Home Between Iran and US

In this segment we visit with Sabereh Kashi, whose personal documentary explores her return to Iran after her mother’s unexpected death.  Using women’s ritual, dance and theater, Sabereh’s film seeks to bridge her two cultures, challenging American viewers to see the best Iran has to offer us.  Sabereh will be screening portions of the film and celebrating the end of her crowdfunding campaign with a solstice event December 18 at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley. Don't miss it!!!

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Click here to listen to the entire show. 59:50 min

Also on today's show:
28 Ways of Looking at Hillary Clinton

Upcoming Events:
Kate Raphael of Women's Magazine will be reading from her new novel, Murder Under the Bridge: A Palestine Mystery
Thursday, December 3, 7:00 pm
Reading and Community Conversation About Trafficking
Modern Times Bookstore
2919 24th Street
San Francisco, CA
with Janelle White of San Francisco Women Against Rape and others
cosponsored by San Francisco Women Against Rape

For tickets and information about the OPC Music events go to www.opcmusic.org

October 28, 2013 - Geeky Women, Ex-Nuns and Iranian American Theater

Why Don't U.S. Women Choose Science Careers?

Eileen Pollack was one of the first two women to receive a bachelors in Physics from Yale, but ended up teaching creative writing instead of going on in science. In this interview, Ms. Pollack talks about what happened to her, and why the numbers of U.S. women in math and science have changed very little in the last thirty years.  Ms. Pollack is author of the novels BREAKING AND ENTERING and PARADISE, NEW YORK. She recently wrote a piece for the New York Times entitled "Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?"

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"444 Days" from Z Below

Golden Thread Productions, recognized as the leading Middle Eastern Theater in the country, opens its fall season with "444 Days." "444 Days" is artistic Torange Yeghiezarian's first full-length play to be staged in 15 years. It explores the relationship between a former American hostage in Iran, and one of his captors, who has come to the Bay Area 25 years later to seek treatment for her critically ill daughter. It has received excellent reviews in local press. Torange Yeghiezarian talks with Kate Raphael about how she wrote the play and what she hopes to accomplish.




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Find out how you can get tickets for "444 Days."

Being Out of Order, or How Feminism Rocked the Convent

Carole Ganim and Lucienne O'Keefe spent 38 years between them in an Ursuline convent in the 1950s and 60s. They were very happy there, yet by the early seventies, they, like so many other women, had left their order. In this interview they discuss why they grew restless with the idyllic life of the convent, and how they see the future of the Catholic church.  Ganim is author of the book BEING OUT OF ORDER: THE PROPHETIC GENERATION OF NUNS AND SISTERS. 

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Twice Censored: Underreported Women's and Gender Issues of 2010

The Project Censored List of Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009-2010 includes not one story related to a women's or gender issue. NOT ONE! Does that mean women's issues get lots of attention? We don't think so. Instead, it points to the masculinist bias of even the progressive media and media watchdogs.

So producer Kate Raphael has produced her own quite inexhaustive list of censored or underreported stories related to women and gender in the last year. See what you think. If you want to comment on one of her choices or suggest one of your own, please email us at kpfawomensmag@gmail.com.

Listen to the show, which also includes memorial tributes to Dorothy Height, Wilma Mankiller and Mary Daly.


The list below is not in ranked order, though Kate feels that Iraq does belong at the top.

-- The impact of 7 years of occupation on Iraqi women (Malihe Razazan of Voices of the Middle East and North Africa comments)

-- Sexual assault in the military hits epidemic proportion (includes excerpt of report by Scott Shafer of KQED TV)

-- New mammogram guidelines stir controversy (interview with Barbara Brenner of Breast Cancer Action)

-- Grassroots women's organizations are leading in the rebuilding of Haiti (interview with Yifat Suskind of Madre International [Malihe points out that Madre's website doesn't even mention Iraq!))

-- Pregnant women prisoners in California still face shackling, and thousands of abused women are still in prison for defending themselves (interview with Karen Shain of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children)

-- Victoire Ingebirre Umuhoza was the leading challenger to Rwandan president Paul Kagame, except instead of being allowed to run, she was imprisoned (Ann Garrison interviewed Ingebirre for WINGS)

-- Many women political prisoners in Iran are held in solitary confinement and without access to lawyers, families or medical care (interview with Malihe Razazan)

-- Global gatherings like the Cancun climate conference, the G20 and the U.S. Social Forum were covered from start to finish by progressive media, but several major international women's gatherings didn't even rate a headline. These included the 15 year review of the Beijing Platform for Action, the Global Maternal Health Conference and the third African Feminist Forum (interview with Nigerian feminist scholar Amina Mama).

-- Year of the Disabled Lesbian (interview with Laura Rifkin, founder of the Fabled Asp project)

-- Disabled women led the fight against cuts to In-Home Support Services and other social welfare programs, with ArnieVille, a tent city in Berkeley (Jean Stewart, Jan Santos and Hannah Jo Karpalo talk about the creative protest known as ArnieVille).

-- More bad news for women workers: Republicans in the Senate filibustered to block passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would have required employers to prove that wage disparities were job-related, not gender based.

-- Did you know there were women working on oil rigs and leading the clean up of the Gulf? Coastal Women for Change is one of a number of women's organizations that sprung into action when the Deepwater Horizon well blew up. (Merle Savage, general foreperson on the Exxon Valdez cleanup, begs President Obama to make BP give the Gulf cleanup crews respirators and tell them the truth about the risk.)

-- Same sex marriage and Don't Ask Don't Tell were all over the media, both mainstream and progressive, but where were the voices of queers who aren't interested in heteronormative marriage or seeing queers join the imperialist military? (Excerpt from the documentary "Beyond Gay Marriage" by Women's Magazine's Lisa Dettmer)

December 6th: Women and gender in Iranian theater. Race to Nowhere film about education in the US.

Kate Raphael speaks with Vicki Abeles, producer of the film Race to Nowhere, about challenging the achievement culture in education; and Simin Yahaghi interviews Torange Yeghiazarian artistic director of Golden Thread Productions.

Torange Yeghiazarian visited Iran and talks about women and gender in theater in contemporary Iran. 27:52

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Is testing in our schools really all it is chalked up to be? Vicki Abeles talks about her new film Race to Nowhere that argues how emphasis on achievement is hurting kids. 22:50

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August 23rd: Women's Magazine examines Islam and women in Iran, families and homophobia as a pathology and a tribute to Abbey Lincoln

Minoo Moallem, professor of Women's and Gender Studies at U.C. Berkeley, challenges the mainstream stereotypical representation of Islam and Muslims as backward, fanatical, and premodern by showing how Islamic nationalism and fundamentalism are by-products of modernity. Using magazines, novels, and films, she offers a feminist transnational analysis of contemporary Iranian culture that questions dominant binaries of modern and traditional, West and East, secular and religious, and civilized and barbaric.

In this interview with Iranian American Simin Yahaghi, Moallem explains that veiling, like other signifiers of national and cultural identities, needs to be understood in the context of both Iran's own nation-building traditions and Orientalism and colonial attitudes toward Islam and feminism. She discusses how the Iranian women's movement has navigated complex identities, and calls on us to challenge both religious and secular forms of absolutism
Simin Yahaghi talks with Minoo Moallem, author of the book Between Warrior Brother and Veiled Sister: The Politics of Patriarchy in Iran. Audio, 22:39
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Well-known lesbian author and activist Sarah Schulman speaks with Lisa Dettmer about the possibility of recognizing homophobia in families as a pathology, rather than pathologizing gay people. They also discuss the relationship between familial homophobia and the demand for same-sex marriage.


Interview with Sarah Schulman, author of Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences. Audio: 16:16



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Singer, songwriter, actress and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln died last week at the age of 80. She was best known for her collaboration with Max Roach on the Freedom Now Suites in 1960, but she also wrote the song "Caged Bird" which inspired the title of Maya Angelou's . This piece includes short selections of Lincoln's powerful music and an interview with KPFA's Gabrielle Wilson.



A tribute to jazz songstress Abbey Lincoln, with interview by Gabrielle Wilson. Audio: 11:43



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June 28 - A Brief History of Queers: Iran and U.S.

Wrapping up our Pride Month coverage, Women's Magazine takes a look at the historical and current realities for LGBT in Iran, with gender studies professor Sima Shakhsari; we also look back at the last quarter century of lesbian organizing and activism in the U.S. with lesbian cultural icon Elana Dykewomon.

Since Iranian President Ahmadinejad famously said "There are no homosexuals in Iran," in a speech at Columbia, opponents of the Iranian government have worked hard to put and keep the situation of Iranian LGBT people in the front of our consciousness. But we seldom hear the voices of Iranian queers themselves, who have a more nuanced and complex reality than that portrayed in the Western media. Simin Yahaghi talks with Dr. Sima Shakhsari, professor of Ethnic and Gender Studies at U.C. Berkeley. 26 mins.


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For more info on queers in Iran and other parts of SouthWest Asian and the Middle East: 
Interview with Hazhir, Iranian queer activist, in Cheraq, the journal of Iranian queers
Bint el Nas (Arab Lesbian Network)
al Bab (an open door to the Arab world)

Kate Raphael talks with lesbian feminist author and cultural worker Elana Dykewomon, whose novel RiverFingerWoman was the first book ever advertised in the New York Times as a "lesbian book." Elana discusses her own history and the history of radical lesbian activism and literature. 25 mins.


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Listen to the entire show, including the Women's Community Calendar and music by Iranian lesbian rapper Saye Sky.

This Week: Continuing Coverage of Women in Iran

This week on Women's Magazine, we continue our coverage of the struggle of women in Iran. We will talk with York University Sociologist, Haideh Moghissi about the Iranian women’s struggle for Equality in the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, the challenges they have faced and the strategies they have devised to reform the discriminatory laws against women. And we will talk to Malihe Razazan of KPFA’s voices of the Middle East and North Africa about women’s roles in the ongoing mass protests challenging the outcome of June 12th presidential election that handed president Ahmadinejad a second term.

Plus Jovelyn's World, the Women's Community Calendar and information about the upcoming LSB election.

Women's Magazine - June 29, 2009 at 1:00pm

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Also, remember that July 15 is the last day to become a member of KPFA in order to vote in the upcoming board elections, which is important to keep Women's Magazine and other diverse voices on the air. If you made a pledge in the last fund drive, be sure to pay at least $25 of it before July 15.

Segments:

Interview with Malihe Razazan on the situation and the women's movement in Iran:

This Week: The Iranian Women's Movement and the State of Abortion Rights in the US

Women's Magazine speaks with feminist anthropologist, Sima Shakhsari about the popular uprising in Iran and how it relates to the growing feminist movement in that country. We also discuss the rise of the anti-abortion movement with feminist writer and activist, Jennifer Baumgardner.


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For more info on the women's movement and the current crisis in Iran.

Segments:

Jennifer Baumgardner on abortion rights movement and its opposition:


Sima Shakhsari on the Iranian women's movement and the current crisis in Iran: