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Sherwin
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06/07/2011

Louisiana School Board Suspends Sex-Segregation Program

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Lenora M. Lapidus, Women's Rights Project at 3:24pm

A local school board in Vermilion Parish, Louisiana, voted Thursday night to suspend a program at a public middle school that has for two years separated girls from boys in core curriculum classes. The decision was announced as the ACLU was poised to file papers in the District Court seeking to stop Rene Rost Middle School (RRMS) from providing sex-segregated classes during the 2011–12 school year, following a favorable ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in April.

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05/08/2011

For Mother's Day, Screw Chocolate! Give Us Equality!

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 10:08am

When I was in the third grade, my mom gave me a button to wear to school that said “I’m a mini-feminist.” Yes, it was the 1970s. And yes, I got teased. When I came home from school in tears, my mom explained that wearing the button was an important way to speak out for equality.

That simple lesson had a profound impact on my life: not only did I wear the button on my book bag from that day forward — I also have dedicated my professional life to the fight for equality for women.

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03/11/2011

Protecting the Human Rights of Domestic Workers

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 3:42pm

Mani Kumari Sabbithi was brought to the United States in July 2005 by a Kuwaiti diplomat and his wife to work in their home in McLean, Virginia. The diplomat and his wife forcibly confined Sabbithi in their home, confiscated her passport, and forced her to work 16 to 19 hours per day, seven days per week. They paid her family in India $242 per month and paid her nothing. Sabbithi was verbally and physically abused on a regular basis: the diplomat's wife slapped her, pushed her into wall, pulled her hair and hit her with heavy objects. On numerous occasions, the wife threatened to kill Sabbithi and send her defiled body back to India.

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02/23/2011

Restoring Dignity on the Job to Breastfeeding Mothers

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 6:04pm

Returning to work after having a new baby can pose real barriers for women who are breastfeeding. Consider the following real-life examples:

  • When one employee returned from maternity leave, her employer criticized her for needing to express breast milk (or "pump") as frequently as she did because she thought her baby should be eating more solid food, told her she had to stop pumping when her baby turned a year old, and fired her when she asserted her rights.
  • A woman who worked for a local county agency and whose job required her to drive between different locations throughout the day was prohibited from pumping in her unmarked, county-issued car—even if she covered up and completely screened the inside from public view. She was left with no option but to pump in restaurant bathrooms along her route.
  • When one woman asked for a private place to pump, her employer told her the only available space was a room used to store computer servers; the room was kept so cold in order to prevent the equipment from overheating that the woman had to wear her hat, scarf, gloves, and winter coat the entire time she was pumping.

Not everyone who has given birth wants to breastfeed (and many women have difficulties doing so, for a variety of reasons). But for those women who are breastfeeding, incidents like these can force them to choose between giving up breastfeeding and taking time off from work. For most women, taking time off is not a realistic option, either because their employers won't grant them anything beyond the 12 weeks of unpaid leave mandated by federal law or because they couldn't afford to take time off even if it were available. (Shockingly, the U.S. is one of only two industrialized countries with no nationwide mandate for paid parental leave— the other, Australia, offers a full year of unpaid, job-protected leave).

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12/16/2010

Human Trafficking Victims Take Significant Steps Toward Bringing Kuwaiti Diplomats to Justice

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Steven Watt, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 4:29pm

For two years, Mani Kumari Sabbithi, Joaquina Quadros, and Gila Sixtina Fernandes were held as slaves by a Kuwaiti diplomat and his wife at their home in McLean, Virginia. Deprived of food, underpaid, isolated from the outside world and threatened with their lives, the three women eventually escaped the home and were granted T visas (temporary visa for victims of trafficking).

In 2007, ACLU filed suit against the state of Kuwait, the diplomat and his wife seeking redress for their injuries. Since then, the ACLU has been fighting to get these women their day in court and Kuwait has vigorously opposed their attempts to get a hearing, arguing that the court should dismiss the case on the technical ground that it does not have authority to hear the case.

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10/26/2010

What Does Birth Control Have to do With Your Mortgage?

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Vania Leveille, Washington Legislative Office at 2:19pm

Imagine if you were applying for a loan and were asked to write a letter to the bank discussing your "family planning." Believe it or not, that is what happened to one woman in Pennsylvania who was applying along with her husband for a home mortgage.

Indeed, as the New York Times first reported, some lenders are applying newly tightened restrictions on home loan credit in the wake of the foreclosure crisis in a way that has resulted in pregnant women, women on parental leave, couples, and families with children being inappropriately questioned about irrelevant aspects of their private lives and subjected to pregnancy discrimination and sex stereotypes.

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10/06/2010

Keeping Gender Stereotypes Out of Classrooms

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 5:30pm

Increasingly, school districts throughout the country are instituting single-sex classes in coeducational public schools based on faulty and outdated stereotypes. Many of these programs are rooted in the theories of single-sex education proponents Leonard Sax and Michael Gurian, who assert that girls and boys brains are so different they need to be taught separately. Their faulty ideas include the theory that girls should not be given time limits on tests because they can't handle the stress, and boys are better at math due to daily surges of testosterone. The National Association for Single-Sex Public Education, a group that advocates for sex segregation, asserts that there are now more than 500 public schools in the country that have single-sex programs, up from only 11 in 2002.

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03/11/2010

Fellow Travelers

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 12:04pm

I represented Dr. M. on a case, and I will never forget what he told me about how he came to the work of providing abortion care. He was working as an OB-GYN at a hospital in upstate New York, performing a few abortions a year after the only other local abortion provider retired. Through NARAL Pro-Choice America and the National Abortion Federation, he connected with other abortion providers, and “got inspired” to step up to fill the gap. He opened a small outpatient clinic connected to the hospital, and eventually made the move to a full-time family planning clinic, where he has practiced for six years.

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