"This is an attempt at recovery. This Essay hopes to call attention to then-Professor Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 1972 merits brief in Struck v. Secretary of Defense. The brief has been underappreciated in part because the Supreme Court of the United States eventually declined to decide the case.” On
the 40th anniversary of the brief's submission,
read Reva Siegel's compelling essay [pdf] on this overlooked brief in which “Ginsburg and the women’s movement talked about pregnancy discrimination in a way that ties together pregnancy discrimination and women’s equality, and women’s equality and reproductive freedom, before the Court split them apart,” and imagine what might have been had the Supreme Court decided Struck v. Secretary of Defense in 1972.
posted by ocherdraco
on Feb 21, 2012 -
3 comments
Since the spring of 2010, all-volunteer units called
Female Engagement Teams have been doing what male soldiers can't:
speak with women and children in rural Afghani communities, both to gain information and to foster trust. These soldiers may carry M4 rifles, but their toolkit includes
sidewalk chalk and jump ropes, too. The FETs, trained for this specific mission grew out of more ad hoc programs like
the Lioness program for traffic checkpoints in Iraq. "The FET mission to me is so critical that if I had to exchange blood for it, I would,"
said Sgt. 1st Class Sawyer Alberi, an FET team leader for the National Guard. "The FET mission is nested very closely in the COIN mission, and unless you do it, you're not doing the whole COIN mission." First Lieutenant Quincy Washa, platoon commander for the Female Engagement Team with Regimental Combat Team 1,
describes the teams' role. Despite the apparent importance of the FETs' work, the program is still an experiment;
it is unclear whether it will continue after the current teams' deployment.
posted by ocherdraco
on Jan 3, 2011 -
21 comments
