Health and Fitness
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Seven Who Exert the Power of Their Voice
Bushra Jamil, Jackson Katz, Shelby Knox, Jane Mansbridge, Jamie McCourt, Dena Merriam, Marisa Rivera-Albert Bushra Jamil, Women"s Rights Broadcaster Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism The Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism goes this year to Bushra Jamil, a co-founder and supporter of Iraq"s only independent radio station for women who is not easily deterred. Last year the station, Al-Mahabba, was hit by a car bomb aimed at two nearby hotels in Baghdad. Almost everything in the station, which went on the air in April 2005, was destroyed: computers, electronic equipment, furniture, windows, doors and, most importantly, the station"s transmitter, which broadcast throughout the country a mix of programming covering news, personal concerns, education, health, the law, poetry, situation comedies and music, including special songs about women"s and human rights. Despite the country"s growing violence, Jamil and her colleagues were determined to keep their fledgling station alive. They rented a smaller transmitter until a Florida communications company, Harris Corp., donated a new transmitter that allowed them to air their programs advocating women"s equality throughout Iraq. "Iraqi women have suffered immensely and feel that they are living a dismal life with a bleak future," Jamil says. "Our programs point out the positive aspects Iraqi citizens should endure to help them stay intact and strong." But the station is still struggling. It has lost advertising revenue and survives in part on charitable donations, which can be hindered by the station"s political independence. It suffers continual shortages of such basic services as water, power and fuel. Amid the growing violence gripping the country two staff members were killed by a separate bombing at a nearby market. Still, Jamil and her colleagues push on. "We just take it one day at a time," she says. "It"s no good living in despair and in continued fear if we can"t change the situation." It"s advice she"s followed throughout her life. Jamil began professional life as a teacher, but resigned after nine years because Saddam Hussein"s Baath party forced her--and all teachers--to choose between joining the party or being transferred to another job. When the Gulf War began, she and her family fled to Canada, where she worked and studied business management. She decided to return to Iraq in 2003 to help her country recover from the Hussein dictatorship. "During the 10 years away from Iraq, I always wanted to go back and help my fellow Iraqis to improve their lives," she says, "especially after I lived in Canada and experienced the wonderful feelings of being treated as a human being, being able to plan for your future, being able to enjoy basic needs without fear and humiliation, and being respected by all." --Allison Stevens. Jackson Katz, Ordinary Outraged Guy Ask Jackson Katz, a former all-star football player, why he has dedicated his life to combating sexism and he goes on the offensive. He"s not a victim of violence or harassment, he says. He"s just an ordinary guy who became outraged at the ordinariness of men"s violence against women. "I realized I was in a position as a man, as a white guy and a heterosexual, to do something about it," Katz says. "Because I was successful as a young guy in sports, I was totally unintimidated by the prospect of challenging men." Katz, 46, was a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst when he was shocked to discover that his female friends couldn"t walk to a nearby store at 9 p.m. without fear of assault. He began to raise the issue in his student newspaper column and even earned a minor in women"s studies, becoming the first man to do so at his university. Katz says he is often asked why he does this work as a man when it"s perceived as a woman"s issue. "Why aren"t we asking the millions of men who aren"t doing anything?" Katz responds. "Why do we ask the handful of men who are, as if we"re freakishly different?" Katz spearheaded an anti-sexist men"s organization, Real Men, in Boston in 1988, and in 1993 co-founded the Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP) Program, a group that enlists athletes at all levels in the campaign against gender-based violence. Tens of thousands of high school students, student athletes and other student leaders have participated in the program, the largest of its kind in the country. A growing number of professional sports teams in the United States, Canada and Australia, including the New England Patriots and the Boston Red Sox, have also implemented the Mentors in Violence Prevention programs. Since 1997, Katz has directed the first sexual and domestic violence prevention program in the United States Marine Corps. "Working with men and boys is by far the best hope for preventing gender violence, because men and boys are the ones doing it," says Katz. Katz says it"s important to work with men in positions of cultural and political influence, including those in government, law enforcement, education, business, religious organizations and health care. Katz is currently pursuing his doctorate at the University of California, Los Angeles, and spreads his message through lectures, trainings, educational videos, articles and books, including "The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help," published in 2006 by Sourcebooks. --Allison Stevens. Shelby Knox, Campaigner for Sex Ed Shelby Knox noticed something was going wrong for many of her high school classmates and decided to take action. Five years later, she is now a national spokesperson for accurate and comprehensive sex education in public schools. Knox was 15, a devout Christian and a member of a politically conservative family when she took a vow of abstinence until marriage. At the time, Knox also joined the Lubbock Youth Commission, a group of high school students that represented the youth in city government. She soon realized that teen pregnancy was a common thread that ran throughout Youth Commission discussions. She came to believe that the local high schools" abstinence-only sex education was failing to protect young women. In fact, Lubbock has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases in the nation, she learned. Knox, now 20, was especially critical of Pastor Ed "Sex Ed" Ainsworth, who was employed to teach students abstinence-only education riddled with faulty messages, such as saying that shaking hands could spread sexually transmitted diseases or that AIDS was spread through sweat and tears. The Youth Commission decided to fight for comprehensive, fact-based sex education in the town"s public schools and Knox became a devoted member of the campaign. "As feminists and as women, we have to fight for comprehensive sex education because it promotes positive sexuality and it teaches women how to protect themselves," she says. Knox"s crusade drew criticism from many members of her church and caused her parents consternation, but was supported by students at her high school. In the end, she was unable to force the school to change its policy on an abstinence-only curriculum, but her fight drew widespread attention to the issue when her struggle was chronicled in the "The Education of Shelby Knox," a 2005 documentary by filmmakers Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt. The film aired on PBS and was screened at film festivals around the country. Now a student at the University of Texas-Austin who is graduating in May 2007, Knox continues to lobby for comprehensive sex education on a national level as she attends screenings of the film made about her when it is shown at colleges and universities across the country. "I can"t wait to see the day the government starts funding comprehensive sex education and I can go from advocating it to actually creating curriculums on it," said Knox. --Irene Lew. Jane Mansbridge, Harvard"s Everyday Feminist Jane Mansbridge, the Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard"s Kennedy School of Government, works on the same campus as Lawrence H. Summers, who famously questioned women"s innate abilities to handle math and science. Summers" declaration was consistent with much of what Mansbridge experienced in academia after she left Wellesley College, a place where "all the pictures on the walls were of women and the message was "women can do anything."" In graduate school at Harvard during the 1960s, the message was much different. Female students and professors had to enter the Harvard Faculty Club through the back door. "Do you know the term "over-determined?"" asks Mansbridge, a political theorist who has written extensively on altruism. "It"s when there are many, many explanations for one phenomenon. You could say my participation in the feminist movement was over-determined. There were about 27 reasons it had to be." Among those reasons, says Mansbridge, was her husband"s expectation, though they were both graduate students, that she would do the "second shift"--shopping, cooking, cleaning--while he studied. She was also raped during that time and the experience violently altered her understanding of sex and power. In 1970 Mansbridge, now 67, wrote the sexuality section for the first edition of "Our Bodies, Ourselves," a landmark effort to give women open access to health information. She was part of the movement to pass the Equal Rights Amendment and today she sits on committees to change Harvard"s work-family policy to be more flexible and fair for all employees. "What makes a social movement is all these people out there making choices every day, which together form a wave," Mansbridge says. Those individual choices are the subject of her forthcoming book, "Everyday Feminism," in which she interviews women from low-income backgrounds. One of her subjects, a nursing home aide, bravely told a male stranger on the job the story of herPages: [1] 2