Articles in Category: Women In the News

Women Surfers Take To The Big Waves

women-surfers.jpgWomen have surfed some of the biggest and scariest waves known to man. They have challenged the towering peaks at the break called Mavericks in northern California. They have elbowed into the crowded wave lineup on Hawaii’s North Shore.

They have pulled into heavily loaded barrels of water at Teahupoo in Tahiti. But they had never had their own big wave contest — until Wednesday.

With a smattering of locals and members of the news media, flocks of pelicans, a spouting gray whale and some of the best male riders in the world looking on along the central Oregon coast, three women charged down 20- to 25-foot-high waves in the first female heat of the Nelscott Reef Big Wave Classic, one of five stops on the male-dominated Big Wave World Tour.

Fittingly, Keala Kennelly, a 32-year-old from Hawaii, took the first drop down a wave and went on to win the Top Chick trophy over Savannah Shaughnessy of California and Mercedes Maidana of Argentina in what was a casual competition on a rare clear November day.

 

How Much Time For This Kind Of Crime?


Update January 23, 2011:
The petition and letter-writing  campaign referred to below were partially successful. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger granted clemency on January 2, 2011, to Sara Kruzan, a woman who, at the age of 16, shot dead George Gilbert Howard, her alleged pimp. Schwarzenegger commuted Kruzan’s life sentence without the possibility of parole to life to 25 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole, saying that her life sentence was “excessive." She is still in jail.


Update (November 2010):
you are invited to help free Sara Kruzan who has spent 16 years in a US prison for the murder of her pimp, who molested and prostituted her from the age of 13. Click here to sign one such petition.  Residents of USA can send a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger here.

Susan notes (November 2009):
this moral dilemma leaves me torn: a young girl kills the ruthless and manipulative pimp who has entrapped and abused her. She is then sentenced to life in prison without parole for his murder. I'm 100% against violence and killing; and yet, somehow, something doesn't seem right... It feels to me like she has gone from one prison to another...


Sara Kruzan was 11 years old, a middle school student from Riverside, California, when she met a man -- he called himself GG -- who was almost three times her age. GG took her under his wing; he would buy her gifts, take her and her friends rollerskating. "He was like a father figure," she recalls in the video below.

Despite suffering severe bouts of depression as a child, until then, Kruzan was a good student, an "overachiever" in her words. But her mother was abusive and addicted to drugs; as for her father, she had only met him a couple of times. So, more and more, GG filled in...



This Blog ROCKS! Nuff Said.


AWR today celebrates 1,000 posts on its Facebook page,

300+ amazing role models,

100+ brave stories & adventures,

200+ riveting TED talks,

100+ inspirational articles,

200+ thought-provoking blog posts,

 and so much more. We ROCK!


Rock (v): astonish, astound, daze, dumbfound, jar, pitch, reel, roll, shake, shock, stagger, stun, surprise, sway, swing, tilt, tip, toss, wobble.


Women rock. In every sense of the word. Each and every one of us is special in her own way. And all of us are connected, through shared experience and common challenges. AWR is an online oasis for amazing women (and those who appreciate them).

Amazing Women Are Everywhere!

    (Because EVERY woman is amazing.)


Women Tech Team Invents Soccer Ball That Generates Electricity

julia-silverman-jessica-lin-jessica-matthews.jpgSmall-scale, hand-cranked generators that power lights and radios are practical in places where there’s no electricity.

But they’re not a whole lot of fun. Four undergraduate students at Harvard University decided to harvest the kinetic energy of soccer, the world’s most popular sport, instead.

After just 15 minutes of play, their sOccket ball could provide families in sub-Saharan Africa—where less than 25 percent of the population has access to reliable electricity—with 3 hours of LED light, a clean, efficient alternative to kerosene lamps.

Indian Women Learn To Read Watching Music Videos

watch-and-learn.jpgTiny, sun-soaked Khodi on the western coast of India’s Gujarat state is the kind of village where cattle still plough the fields and women fill clay pots with water from the village well.

In the past few years, however, the town has been changing: Thatched mud huts are slowly giving way to sturdy, single-story concrete blocks; farmers conduct their business on cellphones. The state buses, which until a decade ago were only filled with men, are now crammed with women. Enrollment in the local school has soared.

These changes can be attributed partly to India’s recent economic liberalization, which has raised incomes and brought unprecedented growth across the country. But in Khodi, there’s another, more unlikely contributor: the soaring local literacy rate, courtesy of music videos.