Pop over to the Twitter hashtag #wiwchat if you’d like to discuss women and the global community for the next hour. Chat is led by @womeninworld. 

First question is: What issue(s) impacting women on a global scale do you feel need greater attention?

pritheworld:

This cartoon is by the very talented Egyptian (female) political cartoonist Doaa Eladl. Egyptian women are organizing to call attention to sexual harassment which they say is reaching epidemic proportions.

(via poptech)

Women voters proved that politicians cannot threaten their rights with impunity. We don’t yet know the precise influence that issues like equal-pay legislation, abortion, and birth control had on the electorate. Women are more liberal than men on a whole range of issues, including the strength of the safety net, and would likely have broken for Obama even if reproductive rights had played less of a role in the race.

Michelle Goldberg writes that the influence women exercised on this year’s results goes beyond electing female representation. 

Republicans, you have a problem:

In Iowa, the 2008 gender gap was 5 points. This year it was 15. Ohio swung from a 2-point gender gap in 2008 to 10 points in 2012. Virginia saw a 5-point swing, from 2 points in ’08 to 7 this year. Florida went from a 1-point gender gap to a 7-point gap in 2012. The only swing state that didn’t see a significant gender gap this time around was Colorado.

The media treated the “War on Women” as being primarily about reproductive issues, but not so the Obama campaign. Team Obama knew that the issue that women cared about the most was the economy, and reminded women constantly that the hostility the GOP shows toward the government could leave single women in a perilous situation. Republicans ridiculed “The Life of Julia,” but it was a brilliant campaign outreach tactic that showed how a Romney administration would affect women in a way that left nothing to the imagination.

Adding to the alienation of women voters this year were deeply troubling comments from GOP Senate candidates about rape, a tirade by Rush Limbaugh calling a woman a slut for testifying about the availability of birth control, and so on. Yes, Bill Maher is a pig and says terrible things about women too, but voters don’t view him as a leader in the Democratic Party in the same way Limbaugh is viewed in the GOP.  Also unhelpful to the GOP cause is the constant insistence that there is no wage discrimination against women—a stance that led to the mocking of the Lily Ledbetter Act, a milquetoast measure protecting women from salary discrimination that any decent person should support.

Truth.

Rather than leaping with glee at the liberation that has befallen women since the 1960s, we are laboring instead under a double whammy of impossible expectations—the old-fashioned ones (to be good mothers and wives, impeccable housekeepers and blushing brides) and those wrought more recently (to be athletic, strong, sexually versatile, and wholly independent). The result? We have become a generation desperate to be perfect wives, mothers, and professionals—Tiger Moms who prepare organic quinoa each evening after waltzing home from the IPO in our Manolo Blahnik heels. Even worse, we somehow believe that we need to do all of this at once, and without any help.

Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, in a Newsweek story: Why Women Should Stop Trying to Be Perfect

This photo is from a gallery by Olivia Aurthur accompanying our feature that peers inside the secretive world of Saudi women.

In a kitchen in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, an abaya-clad woman shows her zebra-striped slippers. Some Saudi women like to have small bands of color or other decorative touches on the long, black garb that’s supposed to help them maintain modesty. Others say such ornamentation is improper because it attracts men’s attention.

Columbia Journalism Review’s July/August cover pays tribute to Newsweek’s 1970 “Women in Revolt” cover.

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!]

Burned.