“Boys are not featured in packaging or promotional materials. And the oven comes in gender-specific hues: purple and pink. I feel that this sends a clear message: women cook, men work … I want my brother to know that it’s not ‘wrong’ for him to want to be a chef.”

Yesterday’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act was a “supreme win for women,” as our story by Jessica Arons, the director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress, helpfully explains.

Here’s the deal:

• As of 2014, “gender rating”—where insurers can charge women higher premiums than men—becomes illegal in all new individual and small group plans.

• Currently only 12 percent of plans sold in the individual market offer maternity coverage. Once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, about 8.7 million women will have guaranteed access to maternity and newborn care in all new individual and small group plans.

• It’s common in today’s market for insurers to refuse to cover women because of gender-based “preexisting conditions.” These conditions can include issues such as having had breast cancer or a Caesarean section or having been a victim of domestic violence or sexual assault. This practice, too, will be outlawed under Obamacare in 2014.

• Under Obamacare, insurers are now required to cover critical preventive services such as mammograms, Pap smears, and well-baby care without cost sharing.

• In addition, starting this August, more services specifically for women will be added to the list of preventive care that must be covered at no additional cost. That list includes contraception, gestational diabetes screening, breastfeeding counseling and equipment, annual well-woman care (in other words, a visit to the OB-GYN), and screening and counseling for domestic violence and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV and the human papillomavirus.

• Other benefits for women include the ability to see their OB-GYN without a referral, guaranteed breaks and a private space for nursing moms to pump breast milk while at work, and home visiting programs for at-risk new mothers.

Pretty wild, right?  There’s more.

[Edit: If you’re reading this out of the dashboard, it looks weird. Sorry!]

tballardbrown:

I post this with no comment. 

!!!

(via discoverynews)

joshsternberg:

msfranceswithane:

flavorpill:

Because that’s what we really need: more advertising beating you over the head with antiquated gender roles. Thx, Dr. Pepper!

Just when you think advertisers couldn’t possibly be any more tone deaf.

You’d think CEOs (or at least advertising/marketing people) would be paying attention to all mistakes other companies make. 

It’s like the ‘boys only’ tree house for the soda industry. Root beer for life, y’all.

It used to be that you couldn’t attack a female candidate without helping her … [But] the power of gender as a deterrent to political attack (and off-the-cuff remarks) is being tested, so far to no advantage, in this election cycle as California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman tries to rally women voters after the word “whore” was applied to her by the camp of her rival, democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown.

Our own Eleanor Clift, on Hillary Clinton, Meg Whitman and the “whore” slur