I though it important to clarify the main definitions of change that has taken place, embracing women, leading further to equality. This was prompt by the image of Donna Gottschalk, her viewpoint and voice from a female perspective, being a feminist. Feminist and its history refer to the re-reading of history from a female perspective. It is not the same as the history of feminism, which outlines the origins and evolution of the feminist movement. It also differs from women's history, which focuses on the role of women in historical events. The goal of a feminist and the history is to explore and illuminate the female viewpoint of history through rediscovery of female writers, artists, philosophers, etc., in order to recover and demonstrate the significance of women's voices and choices in the past. Two particular problems which feminist history attempts to address are the exclusion of women from the historical and philosophical tradition, and the negative characterization of women or the feminine therein; however, feminist history is not solely concerned with issues of gender per se, but rather with the reinterpretation of history in a more holistic and balanced manner. "If we take feminism to be that cast of mind that insists that the differences and inequalities between the sexes are the result of historical processes and are not blindly "natural," we can understand why feminist history has always had a dual mission-on the one hand to recover the lives, experiences, and mentalities of women from the condescension and obscurity in which they have been so unnaturally placed, and on the other to reexamine and rewrite the entire historical narrative to reveal the construction and workings of gender." -Susan Pedersen This site is then useful in exploring the image because Donna Gottschalk, has through writing, art and voice of the past address not only the exclusion of women in traditional history, but the negative characteristics placed on the LGBT communi

A report, released by the UN Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, outlines "a pattern of human rights violations… that demands a response," and says governments have too often overlooked violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Homophobic and transphobic violence has been recorded in every region of the world, the report finds, and ranges from murder, kidnappings, assaults and rapes to psychological threats and arbitrary deprivations of liberty. LGBT people are often targets of organized abuse from religious extremists, paramilitary groups, neo-Nazis, extreme nationalists and others, as well as family and community violence, with lesbians and transgender women at particular risk. "Violence against LGBT persons tends to be especially vicious compared to other bias-motivated crimes," the report notes, citing data indicating that homophobic hate crimes often include "a high degree of cruelty and brutality." Violent incidents or acts of discrimination frequently go unreported because victims do not trust police, are afraid of reprisals or are unwilling to identify themselves as LGBT. The report - prepared in response to a request from the UN Human Rights Council earlier this year - draws from information included in past UN reporting, official statistics on hate crimes where there are available, and reporting by regional organizations and some non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In the report, Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, calls on countries to repeal laws that criminalize homosexuality, abolish the death penalty for offences involving consensual sexual relations, harmonize the age of consent for heterosexual and homosexual conduct, and enact comprehensive anti-discrimination laws. This site is useful in exploring the Donna Gottschalk image, because it not only embraces freedom of speech, and women inequalities but gender inequalities too. The photo t

I was shocked to have read this quote, populated by the United Nations, but the truth hurts - "No society treats its women as well as its men." This is the conclusion from the United Nations Development Program, as written in its 1997 Human Development Report [source: UNDP]. Almost 50 years earlier, in 1948, the United Nations General Assembly had adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which specified that everyone, regardless of sex, was entitled to the same rights and freedoms. The 1997 Human Development Report, as well as every Human Development Report that followed, has highlighted that each country falls short of achieving that goal. The severity of the shortfall varies by country; Nordic countries such as Sweden, Norway and Iceland, for example, are routinely hailed as having the smallest gender gaps. In the developing world, however, women face unfairness that can be hard to fathom. In this article, 10 examples of gender inequality are examined - 10: Professional Obstacles 9: Limited Mobility 8: Violence 7: Feticide and Infanticide 6. Restricted Land Ownership 5: Feminization of Poverty 4: Access to Health Care 3: Freedom to Marry and Divorce 2: Political Participation 1: Education Attainment This site is useful in exploring this week's image largely because it is breaking free and bringing to surface the lack of basic rights compared to those of the male gender that women has had to fight for. Heidi Beckles

American women have struggled historically against certain paradigms of inferiority that all women experience. The female identity is different according to each culture and their customs, but many cultures are based on a patriarchal past where men exercise more power than women. Women worldwide experience subjugation in the form of jobs, education, sexuality and reproductive choice. American women have strived to overcome these stereotypes and have gained a position of near equality in many societal constructs. In the United States today, men and women enjoy almost equal social standing. Women can and do vote, own businesses, hold political office and have a full spectrum of rights. Even though they hold powerful jobs and play valuable roles in a variety of social constructs, the paradigm of the American housewife still exist. With the above mentioned it is important to know that western culture is prevalent worldwide and imposes both the positive feminist ideals and the conflicting negative media messages on third world and developing countries. The impact of Western culture in the specific realm of feminism and female stereotypes globally establish common goals and difficulties for all women. As a dominant culture, the United States must be aware of the media messages it shares with the rest of the world and the examples it promotes as not all are accommodating with other cultures. This site is useful in exploring the image because it paints exactly what the poster of Donna Gottschalk holds, denying women equality, but at the same time practicing America's freedom of speech and expression, forbidden by women in many countries. It's funny that women worldwide continue to experience subjugation in the form of jobs, education, sexuality and reproductive choice. Those countries worldwide that strive to be like us, from a moral point of view should without a doubt accommodate all positives attributes that the America culture places impact, leading to

Are women in the media only portrayed as sex icons? Statistics Show a Massive Gender Imbalance across Industries. This site touches on some really central issues women in our society are collectively faced with, - with no fear change in the near future. The Women's Media Center has provided dismaying statistical data on the status of women in U.S. media. The report draws attention to the striking underrepresentation of women who determine the content of news, literature, and television and film entertainment, as well as the negative portrayal of women in entertainment television and film. As a consequence, the role of women has had major societal effects, including gender inequity. MissRepresentation.org, an organization that "exposes how American youth are being sold the concept that women and girls' value lies in their youth, beauty and sexuality," is campaigning to shed light on this issue and empower women and young girls to challenge the limiting media labels and recognize their other potentials. The goal of MissRepresentation.org is to expose how media influences youth in America into believing that youth, beauty and sexuality are the driving forces behind a girl's values. The media is a powerful instrument of change and change can only occur once we are able to see the type of force this tool has cast on society. It's up to us women to use the force of media to influence positive change and correct the representation of women. Lastly, stated in this article by Marie Wilson, Founding President of The White House Project, an organization that seeks to get more women into elected office, says, "You can't be what you can't see." This site is useful in exploring this week's image because it describes the leading force that drives the culture of society and the accepted notions constructed towards "woman"; the media. Heidi Beckles

That book," Doug says, caused "a lot of bad blood" in his family. "That writer, Jimmy what's-his-name," never told the family he was writing a book, "exploited" them for profit, and "humiliated" them by laying bare the difficult reality of their lives. While the Burroughs family worked in the field, Agee and Evans stayed back at the house. The family assumed they were simply lazy, but later learned from the book that the "spies" spent their days poking through drawers to record every spool of thread, scrap of fabric, and clip of newsprint they discovered within. That was invading their privacy. This site really helps explain a lot of how people of lower class were manipulated, misused and how people of different skin tones other than black also dealt with the same harsh realities in America. Heidi Beckles

The son of Allie Burroughs swore he would never do what he's doing right now (an interview)," says Charles Burroughs. Tall and broad with a bald pate and those familiar gray eyes. Blue shirt, khaki pants, aviator glasses. Thick, flat fingers, grit under the nails. He has come reluctantly to meet me after work at a Waffle House in Tuscaloosa. Still angry after all these years at how a writer and a photographer on assignment for this magazine moved into his house when he was just a boy, 4 years old (he remembers the day), and stayed for weeks, and while the family was working in the fields, snooped around in dresser drawers and under beds, and took notes, and took pictures, and shared what they had taken with all the world. James Agee and Walker Evans gave us a lasting image of the Depression; Charles Burroughs and his family got squat. This site lets you in to the confusion and heart ache of the children of Allie-Mae Burroughs, the psychological aftermath the children has endured in their working situations. It also expresses how Charles Burroughs parents worked and just never had a chance, in a mostly African American area, making some 5.50 and dropping to 5.15 and hour if late to work once, or ever have to leave before the line shuts down for the day, to support a family. It also touches on the editors from Fortune who sent Agee and Evans south wanted them to write about poor whites. That they found their subjects in Hale County was more than a little perverse. Most of the county's people, and an even higher percentage of the poor people, were and are African American. This site also gives incite into the black society in this era i.e. - one Yolanda Robinson, who worked in quality control for a seafood company, is a sharecropper's granddaughter and is black. She won prizes for elocution in high school, joined the Navy, married young, and was widowed in her 20s. On her second stint at the catfish plant, had hoped she'd never have to

As the Great Depression took hold of America, the people living and migrating seek the American dream i.e. job security, instead they experienced hard times. Their reality was to what was to come was not the reality these additional pictures depict. Ton's of people were homeless, and shacked up as to provide shelter. The images also give the idea as to how landlords capitalized on small spaces housing plenty, sometimes without proper sanitation systems; a tenement situation, divided to house. This site relates to the image of Allie Burroughs, because it shows that much of America experienced this aged look due to the Great Depression, where the government missed other areas that needed economic help; and people in the south to me suffered the most. The tenement situation, also relates to what the Burroughs living situation. In addition, Allie and other women in this era, could have faced more inequality, like rape due to overcrowding. Eric Lott would explain this as the class structures that formed with the onset of the new economic system as a result, rather than a cause, of the historical events that led up to it, hence my other post of labeling Allie Burroughs as a hillbilly. Heidi Beckles

When I first looked at this photo, the first thing that came to mind was the image of a hillbilly. As I searched the web for information about the photo I remembered visiting the tenement museum in the Lower Eastside, one of the things I remembered was Hard Times and the New Deal of the early mid 1930's. The New Deal came up when I typed in hillbilly in Hale County Alabama, which lead me to this site about Roosevelt and the New Deal. Since the onset of the Great Depression-initiated by the crash of the stock market in the fall of 1929-over $75 billion in equity capital had been lost on Wall Street, the gross national product had plunged from a high of $104 billion to a mere $74 billion, and U.S. exports had fallen by 62 percent. Over thirteen million people, nearly 25 percent of the workforce, were now unemployed. In some cities, the jobless rate was even higher. Caught in a web of despair, thousands of shabbily dressed men and women walked the streets in search of work, or a bit of food, doled out from one of the hundreds of soup kitchens set up by private charities to keep the wage-less from starvation. FDR's response to this unprecedented crisis was to initiate the "New Deal" - a series of economic measures designed to alleviate the worst effects of the depression, reinvigorate the economy, and restore the confidence of the American people in their banks and other key institutions. While the New Deal did much to lessen the worst affects of the Great Depression, its measures were not sweeping enough to restore the nation to full employment. Critics of FDR's policies, on both the right and the left, use this fact as a reason to condemn it. Conservatives argue, for example, that it went too far, and brought too much government intervention in the economy, while those on the left argue that it did not go far enough, and that in order to be truly effective, the Roosevelt Administration should have engaged in a far more comprehensive program of dire

This portrait was made by Walker Evans during the summer of 1936 when he and writer James Agee were on assignment for Fortune magazine. Their story on tenant farmers in the South was finally released as a book in 1941, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men". Critics of the time hailed the "naked realism" of Evans' stark portrayals, which would become iconic representations of American farming communities stricken by poverty during the Great Depression. This site is useful because it takes you in on the individual in the photo itself, allowing you to see the reverse effects of an unstable economy, in America where opportunity is to be boundless, especially for people that were considered the minority in this era.

On my search to discover other facts about Park's I came across, that she had a prior encounter with James Blake the bus driver who demanded Mrs. Park's to give up her seat. Rosa Parks was removed from Blake's bus in 1943 after she refused to enter through the back of the bus after paying in the front. Then in 1957, weeks after her arrest Mrs. Parks lost her job because of the boycott, although personnel of the department store said it was not so. Rosa Park's and her family was then forced to moved from Montgomery Alabama, to Detroit Michigan after receiving death threats, and her husband being forced to quit his job due to the fact that his wife was the main cause of the boycott. In 2005 on the 1st of December Rosa Park's passed in Detroit. Transportation authorities in New York City, Washington, D.C. and other cities in the US symbolically left the seats behind bus drivers empty to commemorate Parks' act of civil disobedience. This site is useful in exploring this week's image because it shows that Mrs. Park's decision to not give up her seat was based on prior facts of ill-treatment. This site also paints how change can affect societal norms, towards what is initially right for all. Heidi Beckles

Rosa Parks is quoted as saying, "I thought about Emmett Till, and I could not go back. My legs and feet were not hurting, that is a stereotype. I paid the same fare as others, and I felt violated." Many of us know about the story of Emmitt Till, and plenty of us do not. The year of 1955 and prior year's race was largely marginalized by class, but probably more by nationality, as Roderick A. Ferguson states in his excerpt "Race. Queer formations are excepted when one is white but not queers of color. According to freedom's relation to unfreedom to modern ethics, different permutation of morality continue to shape social formations (Roderick A. Ferguson). To Emmitt Till, a 14 year old African American teenager, I find that this was and still is the case in the year of 2013. I won't go into detail of how this young boy on vacation was damaged, but his murder and the trial became largely energy serge for moral courage, that Mrs. Park's used along with other ill treatment's she experienced to stand her ground. The Emmett Till case was a spark for a new generation to commit their lives to social change; as stated by historian Robin Kelley. Robin Kelley also states that the case was not just about the murder of a teenage boy, but about transforming the south so that no one would have to die like Mr. Till. Civil rights activists used the murder of Emmett Till as a rallying cry for civil rights protest, transforming a monstrous crime into a springboard for justice. The Montgomery Bus Boycott followed closely on the heels of the case. This site adds to this platform the importance of understanding how history can spark reactions in our society, and further shape our society. Heidi Beckles

The US Supreme Court to the case of Rosa Park's, actually never got a chance to hear Mrs. Park's case. Rosa Park's was arrested on charges of misdemeanor disorderly conduct, and appeared before judge John B Scoot. Her lawyer Fred Gray, immediately filled an appeal, but then realized that her case would not be upheld in the Alabama court system for years. Although Mrs. Park's case did not make it to the Supreme Court, her experience on the Montgomery Bus, largely aided the African American community to organize the bus boycott.  Four attorney's decided on a strategy in dealing with the bus segregation issues. Fred Gray, Thurgood Marshall, Robert Carter and Charles Langford, with a plan of action approached three other women (Aurelia Browder, Claudette Colvin, Susie McDonald and Mary Louise Smith). These women had also experienced abuse form the Montgomery bus system.  The women became plaintiffs in a federal civil action law against the city and Mayor W.A. Gayle. Affirming the District Court ruling without issuing a written opinion, the US Supreme Court denied the cities petition. Racial segregation on buses within state boundaries became outlawed, the city of Montgomery received an official order to desegregate buses in 1956. Although the four attorneys, and including the other four women may have provided legal change, this write up point out how Mrs. Park's determination, dignity and courage catalyzed the national Civil Rights Movement.  Heidi Beckles 

Because of Rosa Park's fearless defiance towards the bus driver that placed her in jail, an act that was a social norm at this time, the NAACP was able to take on her case with success of getting it to the Supreme Court, to end these segregation laws, which forced people of color to yield to people of white skin whenever a seat is needed. The individuals which were part of the NAACP and The Women's Political Council were powerful in drafting three demands for the bus company: that seating is available on a strictly first-come, first-served basis; that drivers conduct themselves with greater civility to black passengers; and that black drivers are hired for predominately black routes. On refusal of the bus company to comply with the stated demands as I've pointed out above, the Montgomery Improvement Association was formed and elected as president was Martin Luther King. With subsequent campaigns by King, the boycott lasted a whole year. King defended injunction of the M-I-A. Rosa Park's case was ruled in favor by the Supreme Court, and on the 21 of December 1956 bus segregation had ended. Martin Luther King joined Ralph Abernathy and other boycott leaders for a ride on the first desegregated bus. This site is useful to this image because it points out the rigorous and at times dangerous processes in fighting for equality. It is also useful because it briefly explained in this era the leaders involved like Mr. King and Mr. Abernathy. I have always thought that Mrs. Parks fought the battle of jail time and making a difference in her time mostly by herself.

It takes a lot of courage to stand up for something that is morally right, especially in a time when standing for what's right was not popular, due to the results that would follow after. Rosa Parks in the year of 1955, as many know it, kept sitting to stand up for what's right, and furthermore human rights. Although she was jailed and fined, her bravery helped society in many ways, like the end of the segregated transportation law posed by Jim Crow. Mrs. Parks did not care about the odds against her nor the criticism; in an era of ample bias against people of color. This sites content is useful in exploring week two's image of race in America, because it places focus on how change "can" happen with just one person, in the toughest of social times. A focus on courage not just for self help but for all (as Mrs. Parks was a member of the NAACP; an organization up in arms with the Jim Crow laws) who were the victims and the conscious or unconscious offenders, a social movement that was another zenith to the ascent of man. Heidi Beckles