by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

For me and my colleagues, Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn’s new book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide is exhilarating. Already in its 17th printing, Half the Sky pulls no punches in detailing the major abuses women suffer worldwide. Through personal stories, told by the women living them, sex trafficking, forced prostitution, honor killings, mass rape, and maternal mortality become shockingly real. Critics believe Half the Sky will ignite the global women’s movement as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring did the environmental movement in the 1960s. So do I. This remarkable book moves the conversation from women’s issues to human rights; shows change is possible one woman at a time; and, most importantly, inspires hope.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP

California’s Women’s Conference, one of our nation’s largest annual forums for women, took place in the port city of Long Beach October 26th and 27th. Hosted by Governor Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver, this year’s conference included an impressive lineup of women and men brought together to empower and inspire an audience of more than 25,000 women to be “Architects of Change.”

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Recently, I had an insightful conversation with Linda Tarr-Whelan, author of Women Lead the Way: Your Guide to Stepping Up to Leadership and Changing the World. As the founder of this online publication it is such a pleasure when I can connect in person with writers in contrast to the virtual world where we usually communicate. This personal interaction always provides a greater depth and context to our work at The WIP, so it’s only natural that my conversation with Linda also brought refined clarity on the impact of women’s leadership and its implications for media.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

The WIP launched in 2007 on International Women’s Day, a commemorative day that marks the centuries-old struggle women have faced to participate in society on equal footing with men. The WIP was created to balance the under-representation of women in media and as a platform for women writers to share their stories in a global forum. I am thrilled to announce that The WIP is hosting a special Community Chat to discuss women in media with Carol Jenkins and Patricia DeGennaro.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

As many as a third of California’s teachers may retire over the next decade leaving California with a shortage of approximately 100,000 teachers. While budget cuts limiting opportunities for new teachers are compelling enough reasons to choose different professions, it is well understood by most prospective teachers that teaching, while honorable and at times rewarding, is a stressful, unappreciated, and undervalued career choice.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

It’s clear that school budgets are woefully inadequate and underfunded. But, will simply throwing money at a system that is flawed, broken, and unequal successfully nurture the academic achievement of under-performing students? The great state of California has the third highest student teacher ratio in the country and the dubious distinction of coming in dead last in total school staff - principals, teachers, guidance counselors, and librarians. Lack of adequate resources is exacerbated by grave inequalities in many school districts throughout the state. Often under-performing schools suffer from a lack of qualified teachers, textbooks, access to a curriculum that prepares students for college, and safe school environments.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

It is one of the greatest joys of my life to see the dream of The WIP coming true this year - a dream for real news stories as they affect real people; a dream for news that is unencumbered by the agendas of advertising and the corporate world; a dream for a platform where everyday people from all walks of life, in all corners of the world, can come together in conversation about the issues as we see them, through our own eyes and our own unique perspectives and experiences.

It is, however, breathtaking and frightening to look back on the stories we published in 2008. Wars raged on with very little respite. Natural disasters ravaged innocent victims from Burma to the Caribbean. The world participated in and protested one of the most anticipated Olympics in recent history. The USA elected its first African American President. Food is inaccessible for many around the world, and a global financial crisis is upon us like nothing we have witnessed since The Great Depression. And all this barely scratches the surface.

As we prepare to close a year’s worth of coverage, The WIP’s editors will be taking a week off to rest, spend time with our families and friends, and reflect on this incredible year. Our hope is to start the New Year fresh so we can do an even better job delivering quality news from the unique perspectives of women in 2009.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Though the USA has typically been a leader in women's rights, the policies of the Bush Administration have taken us backwards in terms of women's issues, especially policies regarding the health and rights of women globally. Currently, the USA the only country in the world that does not financially contribute to UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) for reasons that are political and not financial. With Barack Obama as President-elect, we have reason to be hopeful that U.S. funding to UNFPA will be restored. There are many challenges facing the USA, but we must ensure that restoring American leadership on women's issues is included and prioritized in the foreign policy of the new Administration.

On Monday, December 8th from 10am-12pm PST we were joined by Anika Rahman, the President of Americans for UNFPA, for a live online chat. As head of the official support organization for the United Nations women's health agency, Anika's role is to increase American engagement in the promotion of the health and rights of women globally. For more than twelve years Anika has monitored and analyzed United States and international policies that affect the reproductive health and rights of women.

by Katharine Daniels
Founder & Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

On March 8th, we will celebrate The WIP’s one year anniversary. In that time, The WIP has made its way into homes, offices, and Internet cafés in 146 countries. Whether you’re a reader in the USA, Indonesia, Nigeria, Argentina or South Korea – you’ve found us somehow. You’ve read our articles and joined our community. Through your commentary you’ve added your voices to the critical dialog that begins with a story. In just one short year The WIP has built a community of men and women from all over the globe.

On the pages of The WIP, readers and writers have built a meeting place where everyone is invited to listen to each others’ voices, histories, and insights. On these pages we’ve come to realize that issues such as the plight of vulnerable children, genocide, and rising food prices are not just the misfortune of somebody else. Looking past the headlines, we see clearly how national policies have international consequences. We’ve come to understand that we are all interconnected and through our stories we are educating ourselves. By responding to the women who write our stories, we let them know we are listening and together we are discovering fair, workable solutions to the problems we all face in our world today.

by Katharine Daniels
Founder & Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

On Tuesday Hillary Clinton made a campaign stop in Salinas, California. Otherwise known as ‘the lettuce capital of the world’ or John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Salinas just happens to be the farm town I call home.

Nearly 3,000 of Senator Clinton’s supporters showed up at the Hartnell College gymnasium to hear her speak. She was greeted in true Salinas Valley fashion, with mariachis and shouts for Viva la Causa (“Long Live Our Cause"). Clinton’s campaign stop was pulled together in just twenty-four hours following an official endorsement by the United Farm Workers of America, the union co-founded by Dolores Huerta and César Chávez that today represents more than 27,000 farm workers.

Katharine Daniels
Founder & Executive Editor, The WIP
- USA -

Every year this nation’s priorities move further and further away from the concerns of the majority of American citizens, making daily life harder and harder. The prices we pay for housing, utilities, medications, transportation and food are all going up. Meanwhile, big business interests, profiting every time we lose, monopolize our policymakers’ attention. While companies boasting record profits are rewarded with tax breaks, ordinary citizens struggle each day to get basic needs met for themselves and their families.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

On Monday afternoon Managing Editor Patricia Vásquez and I changed gears and filmed seven questions The WIP wants answered by the next President of The United States. Reporting to you from behind a camera is something I will certainly have to get used to, but nonetheless these powerful questions coming from Bahrain, Malawi, Argentina, Germany, Zimbabwe and the USA get to the heart of the US policies that matter most to the international community.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

Five long years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq the chatter coming from the White House reads like déjà vu. Despite the calls from world leaders and weapons experts to “stop and think,” the White House appears stubborn and determined to rush into another ill-conceived, poorly executed, and unsupported pre-emptive strike. In 2003 there were very few women’s perspectives in the debate that ultimately led to the war. The foreign policy experts, the politicians, and the journalists on television and in print during the critical period before the invasion were overwhelmingly male. The lack of women’s voices parallel a lack of perspective. That lack of perspective is similarly noticeable today as the White House drums up support for another war.

• Global demands to pursue diplomacy with Iran over nuclear development fall on the deaf ears of the Bush administration. Photograph by
Nic Persinger. •

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

The issue of deforestation hasn’t been on my radar for some years. It is one of the problems on our planet that I’d assumed would be so obvious that surely “they” would have discovered something more sustainable than chopping down our last remaining virgin forests for profit!

Yet, earlier this month, while driving up the Oregon coast for the first time, to my horror, I saw that the situation appears to be even worse than the last time I checked. Fresh scars mar hillsides; small, random patches of trees are left standing with no apparent logic dictating what has been cut and what left behind. Virgin forest has been shamelessly clear-cut all the way from the edge of the highway, up and over what were once green, pristine mountainsides.

In this critical period of climate change, healthy forests play a crucial role. They abate global warming by absorbing and storing carbon dioxide. Thriving forests also regulate the water cycle and stabilize soils. What look more like Christmas tree farms have replaced some of the old forest land. These young trees will take decades of growth to absorb and store the same amount of carbon their old growth ancestors once did. When wilderness is destroyed, the carbon it stored is either burned or oxidized. The threat of deforestation is even greater today than it was twenty years ago. With all the discussion surrounding biofuels, one topic embarrassingly absent is “where will all the land needed to produce biofuels come from”?

Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

This past weekend I attended the third annual BlogHer conference in Chicago, Illinois. Participants networked, socialized, and attended presentations by successful female bloggers from all online spheres of life. This year’s event, called “A World of Difference,” is precisely what I found.

• Elisa Camahort, Lisa Stone and Jory Des Jardins, founders of Blogher at this year's conference. Photograph by Josh Hallet •

BlogHer was developed in 2005 “to create opportunities for women who blog to pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment.” The founders call it a “do-ocracy” that gives women online the opportunity “to help ourselves and work together to voice and achieve our individual goals.” It is no surprise that Blogher’s founders, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort, and Jory Des Jardins are three successful internet pioneers who had the chutzpah to follow an intuitive hunch, and they have developed something great and important.

Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

On the 29th of June The WIP posted a link to Anti-Americanism Hits New Record in Turkey from Today’s Zaman, an online Turkish newspaper. Apparently Turks now dislike the United States more than any other country in the world. A report from The Pew Global Attitudes Project documented that today only 2 percent of Turkish respondents had a favorable opinion of US President George W. Bush’s foreign policy, despite the fact that only five years ago 52 percent were supporters of The United States. This is in Turkey, a US ally and a member of NATO!

By Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

On Monday we celebrated Memorial Day, a federal holiday commemorating soldiers who have died at war and a tradition in our country since the Civil War. Most Americans have the day off and spend it with their families at picnics or sporting events. Some visit cemeteries or memorials and flags around the nation are commonly flown at half-staff from dawn until noon.

• Photograph by Sarah McGowan •

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP

Photo by Gailf548

Friday, I attended my first Panetta lecture entitled “The Role of the Press in Choosing a Candidate.” The ninety-minute lecture had two parts—a sixty minute conversation moderated by Leon Panetta and thirty minutes of questions from the audience. The guests were author and HDNet News Correspondent Dan Rather and Washington Post News Correspondent and author Bob Woodward. Leon Panetta opened, quoting Edward R. Murrow: “Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.”

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

For The WIP’s first article of the 2008 United States election season, I am dedicating this piece to three of the underrepresented voices in American politics: Women, African Americans, and Latinos.

In the United States women make up half the population, nearly 42 million Latinos are residents, and it has been over 135 years since the Fifteenth Amendment gave African Americans the vote. Yet we still have never had a President from any minority group.

I sat among delegates and the press listening to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, and Denis Kucinich appeal for support. I was pleased to hear both a local and a global message from each candidate.

I wonder if such candidates can change politics through the introduction of a new perspective, a perspective that develops from the bottom-up versus the traditional top-down power structure we are so used to in the United States.

The WIP has invited each campaign to submit stories about their candidates introducing them to our readers worldwide.*

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. - Gandhi

The earth was designed to sustain every generation’s needs, not to be plundered in an attempt to meet one generation’s wants. – Matthew Sleeth

What do you get when you cross the chief of medical staff at a large New England hospital with an evangelical Christian? In the case of Dr. Matthew Sleeth, you find an environmental crusader with both the scientific understanding of how the environment impacts our health, and the spiritual understanding of our moral obligation to reverse the destruction humans inflict on this planet. This combination may just save us and succeed where both environmentalists and politicians have failed.

In Serve God Save The Planet, Matthew Sleeth defines the moral challenge of protecting the environment for future generations. As an emergency room physician, Sleeth saw first hand troublesome rising trends in illness. His patients were sicker than ever from cancer, asthma, and other chronic diseases.

by Katharine Daniels
Executive Editor, The WIP
USA

* The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, the new book from Dr. Riane Eisler, has allowed us at The WIP to take our mission to a new depth that I personally was not at before. I know that it will make the same impact on many other readers.

So to celebrate the release of Dr. Eisler's The Real Wealth of Nations, The WIP is proud to repost an editorial I wrote after I had the honor of interviewing her. This editorial first appeared on The WIP on March 31, 2007.

I read a book about Economics—something I don’t do very often. Actually, I think this was the first book I’ve ever read in my life about economics. It’s by Dr. Riane Eisler, The Real Wealth of Nations. It was accessible and legible, and interesting, and even inspiring. It was historical, thought provoking, and if what she proposes is true, life changing.

It was around the third chapter that I had eased into my couch and her statistics started to resonate with me—stats like the fair wage for a typical stay-at-home parent would be $134, 471 per year, or a 1995 United Nations report that calculated the annual unpaid work by women at 11 trillion dollars.