The National Organization for Women (NOW) is an American feminist organization. Founded in 1966, it is legally a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S. states and in Washington, D.C. It is the largest feminist organization in the United States with around 500,000 members. NOW is regarded as one of the main liberal feminist organizations in the US, and primarily lobbies for gender equality within the existing political system. NOW campaigns for constitutional equality, economic justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and racial justice, and against violence against women.

History

Background
Many influences contributed to the rise of NOW. Such influences included the President's Commission on the Status of Women, Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, and the passage and lack of enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (prohibiting sexual discrimination).

The President's Commission on the Status of Women was established in 1961 by John F. Kennedy, in hopes of providing a solution to female discrimination in education, work force, and Social Security. Kennedy appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as the head of the organization. The goal was to reconcile those wanting to advance women's rights in the workforce (such as advocates of the Equal Rights Amendment) and those advocating women's domestic role needing to be preserved (such as organized labor groups). The commission was a way to settle the tension between opposing sides.

Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique in response to her own experiences. She was a feminist long before her book, by educating herself and deviating from the domestic female paradigm. The book's purpose was to fuel movement to a women's role outside of domestic environment. Acknowledging some satisfaction from raising children, cooking, and rearranging house decor was not enough to suffice the deeper desire for women to achieve an education. The book is widely credited with sparking the beginning of second-wave feminism in the United States. It was published on February 19, 1963, by W. W. Norton. In an interview, Friedan specifically notes,There was no activism in that cause when I wrote Feminine Mystique. But I realized that it was not enough just to write a book. There had to be social change. And I remember somewhere in that period coming off an airplane [and] some guy was carrying a sign... It said, "The first step in revolution is consciousness." Well, I did the consciousness with The Feminine Mystique. But then there had to be organization and there had to be a movement. And I helped organize NOW, the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus and NARAL, the abortion rights [organization] in the next few years.

Founding
The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in 1966 by 28 women at the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women in June (the successor to the Presidential Commission on the Status of Women), and another 21 women and men who became founders at the October 1966 NOW Organizing Conference, for a total of 49 founders. Both conferences were held in Washington, D.C. The 28 women who became founders in June were: Ada Allness, Mary Evelyn Benbow, Gene Boyer, Shirley Chisholm, Analoyce Clapp, Kathryn F. Clarenbach, Catherine Conroy, Caroline Davis, Mary Eastwood, Edith Finlayson, Betty Friedan, Dorothy Haener, Anna Roosevelt Halstead, Lorene Harrington, Aileen Hernandez, Mary Lou Hill, Esther Johnson, Nancy Knaak, Min Matheson, Helen Moreland, Pauli Murray, Ruth Murray, Inka O'Hanrahan, Pauline A. Parish, Eve Purvis, Edna Schwartz, Mary-Jane Ryan Snyder, Gretchen Squires, Betty Talkington and Caroline Ware.

They were inspired by the failure of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; at the Third National Conference of State Commissions on the Status of Women they were prohibited from issuing a resolution that recommended the EEOC carry out its legal mandate to end sex discrimination in employment. They thus gathered in Betty Friedan's hotel room to form a new organization. On a paper napkin Friedan scribbled the acronym "NOW". The 21 people who became founders in October were: Caruthers Berger, Colleen Boland, Inez Casiano, Carl Degler, Elizabeth Drews, Mary Esther Gaulden (later Jagger), Muriel Fox, Ruth Gober, Richard Graham, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Lucille Kapplinger (later Hazell), Bessie Margolin, Margorie Palmer, Sonia Pressman (later Fuentes), Sister Mary Joel Read, Amy Robinson, Charlotte Roe, Alice Rossi, Claire R. Salmond, Morag Simchak and Clara Wells.

The founders were frustrated with the way in which the federal government was not enforcing the new anti-discrimination laws. Even after measures like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers were still discriminating against women in terms of hiring women and unequal pay with men. Women's rights advocates saw that these legal changes were not being enforced and worried that without a feminist pressure group, a type of "NAACP for women", women would not be able to combat discrimination. NOW was created in order to mobilize women, give women's rights advocates the power to put pressure on employers and the government, and to promote full equality of the sexes. It hoped to increase the number of women attending colleges and graduate schools, employed in professional jobs instead of domestic or secretarial work, and appointed to federal offices. NOW's Statement of Purpose, which was adopted at its organizing conference in Washington, D.C., on October 29, 1966, declares among other things that "the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings." NOW was also one of the first women's organizations to include the concerns of black women in their efforts.

Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray wrote NOW's Statement of Purpose in 1966; the original was scribbled on a napkin by Friedan. Also in 1966, Marguerite Rawalt became a member of NOW, and acted as their first legal counsel. NOW's first Legal Committee consisted of Catherine East, Mary Eastwood, Phineas Indritz, and Caruthers Berger; it was the first to sue on behalf of airline flight attendants claiming sex discrimination.

In 1968 NOW issued a Bill of Rights, which they had adopted at their 1967 national conference, advocating the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, enforcement of the prohibitions against sex discrimination in employment under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, maternity leave rights in employment and in Social Security benefits, tax deduction for home and child care expenses for working parents, child day care centers, equal and non-gender-segregated education, equal job training opportunities and allowances for women in poverty, and the right of women to control their reproductive lives. The NOW bill of rights was included in the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.

Lesbian rights
In 1969, Ivy Bottini, who was openly lesbian, designed the logo for NOW, which is still in use today. The first time lesbian concerns were introduced into NOW also occurred in 1969, when Bottini, who was then president of the New York chapter of NOW, held a public forum titled "Is Lesbianism a Feminist Issue?". However, NOW president Betty Friedan was against lesbian participation in the movement. In 1969, she referred to growing lesbian visibility as a "lavender menace" and fired openly lesbian newsletter editor Rita Mae Brown, and in 1970 she engineered the expulsion of lesbians, including Bottini, from NOW's New York chapter. In reaction, at the 1970 Congress to Unite Women, on the first evening when all four hundred feminists were assembled in the auditorium, twenty women wearing T-shirts that read "Lavender Menace" came to the front of the room and faced the audience. One of the women then read their group's paper "The Woman-Identified Woman", which was the first major lesbian feminist statement. The group, who later named themselves "Radicalesbians", were among the first to challenge the heterosexism of heterosexual feminists and to describe lesbian experience in positive terms.

In 1971, NOW passed a resolution declaring "that a woman's right to her own person includes the right to define and express her own sexuality and to choose her own lifestyle", as well as a conference resolution stating that forcing lesbian mothers to stay in marriages or to live a secret existence in an effort to keep their children was unjust. That year, NOW also committed to offering legal and moral support in a test case involving child custody rights of lesbian mothers. In 1973, the NOW Task Force on Sexuality and Lesbianism was established. Del Martin was the first open lesbian elected to NOW, and Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were the first lesbian couple to join NOW.

Activism

Anti-discrimination
NOW also helped women get equal access to public places. For example, the Oak Room held men-only lunches on weekdays until 1969, when Friedan and other members of NOW staged a protest. As well, women were not allowed in McSorley's Old Ale House's until August 10, 1970, after NOW attorneys Faith Seidenberg and Karen DeCrow filed a discrimination case against the bar in District Court and won. The two entered McSorley's in 1969 and were refused service, which was the basis for their lawsuit for discrimination. The case decision made the front page of The New York Times on June 26, 1970. The suit, Seidenberg v. McSorleys' Old Ale House (1970, United States District Court, S. D. New York), established that, as a public place, the bar could not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The bar was then forced to admit women, but it did so "kicking and screaming". With the ruling allowing women to be served, the bathroom became unisex. But it was not until sixteen years later that a ladies room was installed.

Carole De Saram, who joined NOW in 1970 and was later president of the New York chapter, led a demonstration in 1972 to protest discriminatory banking policies. She encouraged women to withdraw savings from a Citibank branch in protest of their practices, causing a branch to close. NOW led numerous similar protests, and in 1974, their actions led directly to the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)
Advocacy of the Equal Rights Amendment was also an important issue to NOW. The amendment had three primary objectives, which were:Section 1. Equality of Rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.Efforts were proven successful when Congress passed the amendment in 1972. However, simply passing the amendment in the two houses of Congress did not mean the work was finished. NOW had to direct the efforts of getting the amendment ratified in at least three-fourths of the states (38 out of the 50 states).

In response to opposing states denying the ratification of the amendment, NOW encouraged members to participate in marches and economic boycotts. "Dozens of organizations supported the ERA and the boycott, including the League of Women Voters, the YWCA of the U.S., the Unitarian Universalist Association, the United Auto Workers (UAW), the National Education Association (NEA), and the Democratic National Committee (DNC)."

As strong as the support was, it was to no avail to the opposition from various groups. These groups included select religious collectives, business and insurance interests, and most visibly was the STOP-ERA campaign led by antifeminist Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly argued on the premise that creating equality in the work force or anywhere else would hinder the laws that are instilled for the mere protection of these women. The safety of women was a higher priority than ensuring there is equality in financial and social scenarios. The predicament over the Equal Rights Amendment was not a fight between men and women who abhor men, but rather two groups of women advocating different perspectives on the nature of their lives. The rivalry was sparked in speeches, such as that of Schlafly who began her dialogue by thanking her husband for allowing her to participate in such an activity.

Even though the efforts did not prove to be enough to have the amendment ratified, the organization remains active in lobbying legislatures and media outlets on feminist issues.

Abortion
Abortion being an individual woman's choice has come into the forefront since the Supreme Court case of Roe v. Wade in 1973. The decision of the court was that it ultimately was the woman's choice in reproduction. However, according to the National Organization for Women, decisions following the 1973 landmark case had substantially limited this right, which culminated in their response to encourage the Freedom of Choice Act. The controversy over the landmark case ruling was initiated in the two cases, Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzales v. Carhart. These two cases consequently banned abortion methods after 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood and Gonzales v. Carhart both dealt with the question of whether the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was unconstitutional for violating the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment expressed in the Roe v. Wade case. This act ultimately meant that the concept of partial-birth abortion as defined in the Act as any abortion in which the death of the fetus occurs when "the entire fetal head [...] or [...] any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother" is banned. The Supreme Court ultimately decided 5–4 that it was not unconstitutional and did not hinder a woman's right to an abortion.

National Organization for Women claimed it was a disregard to a basic principle stemming from Roe v. Wade, which was to only have legislative restriction on abortion be justified with the intention of protecting women's health. Hence, the support for the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which primary purpose was to safeguard a woman's access to abortions even if the Roe v. Wade ruling is further disregarded. As of 2013, there are seven states that have made the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) state law. FOCA will consequently supersede any other law prohibiting abortion in those seven states. They are: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Nevada, Wisconsin, Maine, and Washington. In addition, Maryland, Nevada, and Washington were the only three states to adhere via ballot initiative.

Succeeding in the enactment of FOCA would ultimately mean fulfilment of three goals for the National Organization for Women. First, asserting a woman's reproductive right. Second, disseminate information to the public audience about threats posed in the two court cases mentioned above. Third, through the dissemination of information to the public, this in return would mobilize efforts to support female rights in multiple areas that will be presented in the future.

Women's Strike for Equality
On August 26, 1970, the 50th anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment which granted women the right to vote, NOW officially sponsored the Women's Strike for Equality, a nationwide demonstration for women's rights. Approximately 10,000 women took to the streets of New York City's Fifth Avenue for the strike and about 50,000 participants, mostly women, in total all throughout the country. Time described the event as "easily the largest women's rights rally since the suffrage protests". The organizers of the strike approved three main goals: free abortion care, 24/7 childcare centers, and equal opportunity in jobs and education. Other goals included passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, political representation, and no forced sterilization. Public reaction and media coverage were mixed. Many spectators called the demonstrators anti-feminine, "ridiculous exhibitionists," "a band of wild lesbians", or Communists, but the event was generally uninterrupted. The strike was a major success. Weeks after the event, NOW's membership rose by 50 percent, and a CBS News poll found that four out of five people had heard or read about women's liberation.

Core issues
NOW campaigns for constitutional equality, economic justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQIA+ rights and racial justice, and against violence against women.

Constitutional equality
NOW supports the Equal Rights Amendment and works to give women explicit protections in the United States Constitution.

Economic justice
NOW advocates for economic justice.

Reproductive rights
NOW supports safe and legal abortion, affordable birth control and other contraception, and reproductive health education.

Ending violence against women
NOW works to end violence against women.

Racial justice
NOW has been involved in the civil rights struggle since the 1966 and advocates for equal opportunities for women of color in all areas of society, such as employment, education & health care.

LGBTQIA+ rights
NOW supports LGBTQIA+ rights as one of its core issues. NOW president Terry O'Neill has said the struggle against transphobia is a feminist issue. NOW has affirmed that "trans women are women, trans girls are girls." In a further statement NOW said that "trans women are women. They deserve equal opportunity, health care, a safe community & workplace, and they deserve to play sports. They have a right to have their identity respected without conforming to perceived sex and gender identity standards. We stand with you." NOW has said that "'debate' about trans girls and women in school sports spreads transphobia and bigotry through the false lens of 'fairness'" that amounts to a hate campaign. NOW has further said that "waging a hate campaign against trans people is not feminist."

Goals
Betty Friedan and Pauli Murray wrote the organization's Statement of Purpose in 1966. The statement described the purpose of NOW as "to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men." The six core issues that NOW addresses are abortion and reproductive health services access, violence against women, constitutional equality, promoting diversity/ending racism, lesbian rights, and economic justice, with these issues having various sub-issues. The organization goes about creating these changes through laborious lobbying, rallies, marches, and conferences. NOW focuses on a variety of issues deploying multiple strategies, causing it to be an organization in which a comprehensive goal is envisaged and performed.

Priorities mentioned above were pursued to ultimately secure constitutional amendments guaranteeing these rights. Even though discrimination on the basis of sex was illegal, the federal government was not taking an active role in enforcing the constitutional amendments and the new policies. NOW sought to apply pressure to employers, local governments, and the federal government to uphold anti-discrimination policies. Through litigation, political pressure, and physical marches, NOW members held an authoritative stance leading to recognition in court cases, such as NOW v. Scheidler and Weeks v. Southern Bell.

NOW v. Scheidler revolved around the issue of racketeering to gain support for anti-abortion groups. NOW was suing the groups for utilization of violence and the threat of violence for garnering support. The violence varied from physical barriers into entrances of abortion clinic to arson and bombings of those clinics. The plaintiff accused the Pro-Life Action Network (PLAN) of unethically seizing the right of women to make decisions about their own bodies and argued that this right needed to be defended. The case was a success in terms of the class action suit "brought against terrorists by those they had terrorized".

However the case was dismissed based on the mere definition of racketeering because racketeering must have an economic inclination, and there was no evidence to prove PLAN had this financial intention. This does not mean it was not a significant case. It brought light and recognition to National Organization for Women and its goals. If anything, it galvanized the organization to strengthen its tactics.

Weeks v. Southern Bell had the same effect, but this is an example where those galvanized efforts proved beneficial. This concerned discriminatory practices against women in the workplace. Lorena Weeks, employee of Southern Bell, claimed she was being discriminated against via exclusion to higher paying positions within the company. Sylvia Roberts acted as her attorney, supporting Week's grievances with the accusation of the company's violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII is enabled to "protect individuals against employment discrimination on the bases of race and color, as well as national origin, sex, and religion". With this premise, Weeks, with the aid of Sylvia Roberts, succeeded in 1969 after making an appeal. The trial not only served as the triumph of National Organization for Women, but brought to life legislation made to the intentions of organizations, such as NOW.

Organizational media
NOW published a national newsletter, Do It NOW, beginning in 1970, edited by Muriel Fox. From 1977, the journal has been known as the National NOW Times ().

Presidents
The following women have led the National Organization for Women:

Betty Friedan, 1966–1970
Aileen Hernandez, 1970–1971
Wilma Scott Heide, 1971–1974
Karen DeCrow, 1974–1977
Eleanor Smeal, 1977–1982
Judy Goldsmith, 1982–1985
Eleanor Smeal, 1985–1987
Molly Yard, 1987–1991
Patricia Ireland, 1991–2001
Kim Gandy, 2001–2009
Terry O'Neill, 2009–2017
Toni Van Pelt, 2017–2020
Christian Nunes, 2020–present

Criticism
NOW has been criticized by various anti-abortion, conservative, and fathers' rights groups. During the 1990s, NOW was criticized by the Los Angeles Times for having a double standard when it refused to support Paula Jones in her sexual harassment suit against former Democratic President Bill Clinton, while calling for the resignation of Republican politician Bob Packwood, who was accused of similar assault by 10 women. The Jones suit was later dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright, ruling that Mrs. Jones' allegations, even if true, would not qualify as a case of sexual harassment. Jones appealed but later dropped her suit after reaching a settlement out of court for $850,000.  Judge Webber Wright later held President Clinton in contempt of court for giving "intentionally false" testimony about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky in the Paula Jones lawsuit, marking the first time that a sitting president has been sanctioned for disobeying a court order.

NOW is regarded as one of the main liberal feminist organizations in the US, and primarily lobbies for gender equality within the existing political system. NOW has been criticized for not supporting anti-abortion feminists. Some members, such as LA NOW chapter president Tammy Bruce left NOW, saying they oppose putting liberal and partisan policy positions above equality for all women. Tammy Bruce has attacked NOW for not doing enough to advocate for international women's rights, but instead attacking the George W. Bush White House for their conservative positions. Accusations of putting politics above feminism began in 1982, the year the ERA was defeated, when NOW, under President Judy Goldsmith, fiercely opposed Reaganomics and endorsed the Democratic opponent of Republican feminist Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick due to Fenwick's support of Ronald Reagan's economic agenda.

Additionally, Deborah Watkins, who was once the President of the Dallas Chapter of NOW, left NOW in 2003 to found, in the same year, the Dallas-Fort Worth Chapter of the National Coalition for Men, stating she grew tired of what she considered "hypocrisy" and "male bashing" at NOW.

NOW was criticised by Fox News' Megyn Kelly in 2014 for by putting Little Sisters of the Poor on their 'Dirty 100" list'.

See also
 Feminism in the United States
 List of presidents of the National Organization for Women
 List of Woman of Courage Award winners
 She's Beautiful When She's Angry - a documentary about the founders of the modern women's movement, including discussions of the National Organization for Women and some of its founders (Muriel Fox, Jacqui Ceballos and Rita Mae Brown)
 RightRides - A bus service that was recognized by the National Organization for Women

References

External links

 National NOW Times on WorldCat

Records
 A Guide to the San Antonio Chapter of the National Organization for Women Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries (UTSA Libraries) Special Collections.
 Additional Records of the National Organization for Women, 1970–2011. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
 Elaine Latourell Papers. 1970–1977. 8.42 cubic feet (9 boxes). At the Labor Archives of Washington, University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. Contains records from Latourell's service as a leader of the National Organization for Women between 1970 and 1980.
 Inventory of the Texas Chapter of the National Organization for Women Records, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries (UTSA Libraries) Special Collections.
 National Organization for Women (NOW), San Diego Chapter Records, 1964–1984 , San Diego State University Special Collections.
 National Organization for Women, San Jose/South Bay Chapter Records, San Jose State University Special Collections.
 National Organization for Women. Springfield (Mass.) Chapter, at Smith College.
 Records, 1959–2002 (inclusive), 1966–1998 (bulk). Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
 National Organization for Women, Maryland Chapter records at the University of Maryland libraries
 National Organization for Women, Rochester chapter records, Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation, River Campus Libraries, University of Rochester

1966 establishments in Washington, D.C.
Abortion-rights organizations in the United States
Feminist organizations in the United States
Liberal feminist organizations
Non-profit organizations based in Washington, D.C.
Organizations established in 1966
Second-wave feminism in the United States
Women in Washington, D.C.
Women's political advocacy groups in the United States
Equal Rights Amendment organizations

National Organization for Women


Jude the Obscure is a novel by Thomas Hardy, which began as a magazine serial in December 1894 and was first published in book form in 1895 (though the title page says 1896). It is Hardy's last completed novel. The protagonist, Jude Fawley, is a working-class young man; he is a stonemason who dreams of becoming a scholar. The other main character is his cousin, Sue Bridehead, who is also his central love interest. The novel is concerned in particular with issues of class, education, religion, morality and marriage.

Plot summary
The novel tells the story of Jude Fawley, who lives in a village in southern England (part of Hardy's fictional county of Wessex). He yearns to be a scholar at "Christminster", a city modelled on Oxford. As a youth, Jude teaches himself Classical Greek and Latin in his spare time, while working first in his great-aunt's bakery, with the hope of entering university. But before he can try to do this the naïve Jude is seduced by Arabella Donn, a rather coarse, morally lax, and superficial local girl who traps him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant. The marriage is a failure, and Arabella leaves Jude and later emigrates to Australia, where she enters into a bigamous marriage. By this time, Jude has abandoned his classical studies.

After Arabella leaves him, Jude moves to Christminster and supports himself as a mason while studying alone, hoping to be able to enter the university later. There, he meets and falls in love with his free-spirited cousin, Sue Bridehead. But, shortly after this, Jude introduces Sue to his former school teacher, Mr. Phillotson, whom she eventually is persuaded to marry, despite the fact that he is some twenty years her senior. She soon regrets this, because, in addition to being in love with Jude, she is horrified by the notion of sex with her husband. Sue soon asks Phillotson for permission to leave him for Jude, which he grants, once he realizes how unwilling she is to fulfill what he believes are her marital duties to him. Because of this scandal—the fact that Phillotson willingly allows his wife to leave for another man—Phillotson has to give up his career as a schoolmaster.

Sue and Jude spend some time living together without any sexual relationship. This is because of Sue's dislike both of sex and the institution of marriage. Soon after, Arabella reappears having fled her Australian husband, who managed a hotel in Sydney, and this complicates matters. Arabella and Jude divorce and she legally marries her bigamous husband, and Sue also is divorced. However, following this, Arabella reveals that she had a child of Jude's, eight months after they separated, and subsequently sends this child to his father. He is named Jude and nicknamed "Little Father Time" because of his intense seriousness and lack of humor.

Jude eventually convinces Sue to sleep with him and, over the years, they have two children together and expect a third. But Jude and Sue are socially ostracised for living together unmarried, especially after the children are born. Jude's employers dismiss him because of the illicit relationship, and the family is forced into a nomadic lifestyle, moving from town to town across Wessex seeking employment and housing before eventually returning to Christminster. Their socially troubled boy, "Little Father Time", comes to believe that he and his half-siblings are the source of the family's woes. The morning after their arrival in Christminster, he murders Sue's two children and kills himself by hanging. He leaves behind a note that simply reads, "Done because we are too menny [*sic*]." Shortly thereafter, Sue has a miscarriage.

Besides her grief and blaming herself for "Little Father Time"'s actions, Sue turns to the church that she has rebelled against. She comes to believe that the children's deaths were divine retribution for her relationship with Jude. Although horrified at the thought of resuming her marriage with Phillotson, she becomes convinced that, for religious reasons, she should never have left him. Arabella discovers Sue's feelings and informs Phillotson, who soon proposes they remarry. This results in Sue leaving Jude once again for Phillotson, and she punishes herself by allowing her husband sex. Jude is devastated and remarries Arabella after she plies him with alcohol to once again trick him into marriage.

After one final, desperate visit to Sue in freezing weather, Jude becomes seriously ill and dies within the year in Christminster, thwarted in his ambitions both in love and in achieving fame in scholarship. It is revealed that Sue has grown "staid and worn" with Phillotson. Arabella fails to mourn Jude's passing, instead setting the stage to ensnare her next suitor.

Themes
The novel explores several social problems in Victorian England, especially those relating to the institutions of marriage, the Church, and education. These themes are developed in particular through Hardy's use of contrast. For example, at the beginning of their relationship, Jude's Christian faith contrasts with Sue's religious scepticism, a contrast which is heightened even further by their later role-reversal. Although the central characters represent both perspectives, the novel as a whole is firmly critical of Christianity and social institutions in general.

Jude's trajectory through the story sheds light on the ambivalent and conflicting roles of organized religion in his life. Jude, from his origins in Marygreen, always found religion to be the endgame of an otherwise troublesome and uninteresting life. But, as seen through his systematic exclusion from the University of Christminster, Jude's dream of entering the church would prove to be unattainable, leaving him to pursue other, less fulfilling interests. A similar track can be seen in Hardy's treatment of the traditional institution of marriage. From the original pairing of Arabella and Jude to their eventual reunion, Hardy depicts marriage as an oppressive social necessity, propelling the characters into a downward spiral of unhappiness.

Although Hardy claimed that "no book he had ever written contained less of his own life", contemporary reviewers found several parallels between the themes of the novel and Hardy's life as a working-class man of letters. The unhappy marriages, the religious and philosophical questioning, and the social problems dealt with in Jude the Obscure appear in many other Hardy novels, as well as in Hardy's life. The struggle against fixed class boundaries is an important link between the novel and Hardy's life, especially concerning higher education and the working class. Although Jude wishes to attend the university at Christminster, he cannot afford the costs involved in studying for a degree, and he lacks the rigorous training necessary to qualify for a fellowship. He is therefore prevented from gaining economic mobility and getting out of the working class. This theme of unattainable education was personal for Hardy since he, like Jude, had not been able to afford to study for a degree at Oxford or Cambridge, in spite of his early interest in scholarship and the classics. Several specific details about Jude's self-directed studies actually appear in Hardy's autobiography, including late-night Latin readings while working full-time as a stonemason and then as an architect. However, unlike Jude, Hardy's mother was well-read, and she educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at age eight, and he attended school in Dorchester, where he learned Latin and demonstrated academic potential, until he became an apprentice at 16.

Another parallel between the book's characters and themes and Hardy's actual life experience occurs when Sue becomes obsessed with religion after previously having been indifferent and even hostile towards it. Like Sue Bridehead, Hardy's first wife, Emma, went from being free-spirited and fairly indifferent to religion in her youth to becoming obsessively religious as she got older. Since Hardy was always highly critical of organised religion, as Emma became more and more religious, their differing views led to a great deal of tension in their marriage, and this tension was a major factor leading to their increased alienation from one another.

Emma was also very disapproving of Jude the Obscure, in part because of the book's criticisms of religion, but also because she worried that the reading public would believe that the relationship between Jude and Sue directly paralleled her strained relationship with Hardy (which, in a figurative sense, it did).

Writing
Around 1887, Hardy began making notes for a story about a working-man's frustrated attempts to attend the university, perhaps inspired in part by the scholastic failure and suicide of his friend Horace Moule. From December 1894 to November 1895, a bowdlerised version of the novel ran in instalments in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, originally under the title The Simpletons, then Hearts Insurgent. In 1895, the book was published in London under its present title, Jude the Obscure (dated 1896). In his Preface to the first edition, Hardy provides details of the conception and writing history of the novel, claiming that certain details were inspired by the death of a woman (most likely his cousin, Tryphena Sparks) in 1890.

Reviews
Called "Jude the Obscene" by at least one reviewer, Jude the Obscure received a harsh reception from some scandalized critics. Among the critics was Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield; Hardy later claimed that the bishop had burned a copy. It has been suggested that negative criticism was the reason that Hardy stopped writing novels after Jude, but poet C. H. Sisson describes this "hypothesis" as "superficial and absurd".

D. H. Lawrence, an admirer of Hardy, was puzzled by the character of Sue Bridehead, and attempted to analyse her conflicted sexuality in his A Study of Thomas Hardy (1914).

At least one recent scholar has postulated that Jude borrowed heavily from an earlier novel, The Wages of Sin by Lucas Malet.

Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, in his introduction to a 1974 edition of the text, refutes the conventional reading of the novel as  'the tragedy of an oversexed peasant boy', instead examining the social background of the text and proposing it as a conflict between ideal and reality.

Film, TV, radio, theatrical, and podcast adaptations
The novel has been adapted into:

 A six-part television serial, Jude the Obscure (1971), directed by Hugh David, starring Robert Powell and Fiona Walker
 A feature film, Jude (1996), directed by Michael Winterbottom, starring Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet
 A two-part musical stage adaptation of Jude the Obscure by Ian Finley (book), Bruce Benedict (music), Jonathan Fitts (music), and Jerome Davis (lyrics), premiered at Burning Coal Theatre Company in Raleigh, NC in April 2012
 A podcast called "Obscure" where Michael Ian Black reads Jude The Obscure with commentary, was released in May 2018.
 The British playwright Howard Brenton wrote an updated adaptation of the novel, simply titled Jude, which premiered at The Hampstead Theatre in North London in May 2019. In this version, Jude is a free-spirited female Syrian refugee who works as a cleaner, her cousin is a male relative who becomes a radical Muslim, and she is regularly visited by a figure representing the Greek poet Euripides.
 The BBC Radio 4 series "Hardy's Women" (2020) featured a three-part adaptation of Jude the Obscure.

Citations

External links

1895 British novels
British novels adapted into films
British novels adapted into plays
English novels
British novels adapted into television shows
Novels by Thomas Hardy
Novels first published in serial form
Novels set in Berkshire
Victorian novels
Works originally published in Harper's Magazine
Novels about marriage
Novels set in University of Oxford

Jude the Obscure


In mathematics, the adjective Noetherian is used to describe objects that satisfy an ascending or descending chain condition on certain kinds of subobjects, meaning that certain ascending or descending sequences of subobjects must have finite length. Noetherian objects are named after Emmy Noether, who was the first to study the ascending and descending chain conditions for rings. Specifically:
 Noetherian group, a group that satisfies the ascending chain condition on subgroups.
 Noetherian ring, a ring that satisfies the ascending chain condition on ideals.
 Noetherian module, a module that satisfies the ascending chain condition on submodules.
 More generally, an object in a category is said to be Noetherian if there is no infinitely increasing filtration of it by subobjects. A category is Noetherian if every object in it is Noetherian.
 Noetherian relation, a binary relation that satisfies the ascending chain condition on its elements.
 Noetherian topological space, a topological space that satisfies the descending chain condition on closed sets.
 Noetherian induction, also called well-founded induction, a proof method for binary relations that satisfy the descending chain condition.
 Noetherian rewriting system, an abstract rewriting system that has no infinite chains.
 Noetherian scheme, a scheme in algebraic geometry that admits a finite covering by open spectra of Noetherian rings.

See also
 Artinian ring, a ring that satisfies the descending chain condition on ideals.

Mathematical analysis

Noetherian


Suleiman Nyambui (born February 13, 1953) is a former track athlete from Tanzania who specialized in various long-distance disciplines. Nyambui won the bronze medal at the 1978 All-Africa Games, the silver medal in 5000 metres at the 1980 Summer Olympics, and finished first at three consecutive marathons between 1987 and 1988. He holds multiple indoor national records of Tanzania in athletics.

Running career

Early life
Nyambui had dropped out of school after primary education. He became a fisherman in Ukerewe District in Mwanza Region, where his potential as a good athlete was spotted by the Region's Athletic Organization.  The organization helped in his training and afforded him facilities and guidance in making him a national and international athlete. He also had joined the Tanzania National Service before he went to train as a teacher.  He taught school at Bukumbi (20 miles from Mwanza City) before moving to the United States to study for his bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). Then he took a contract to train Bahraini athletes along with Canadian coaches Craig Taylor and Greg Peters from 1996-1998. After that he moved back to Tanzania.

Collegiate
He attended UTEP from 1978 to 1982, where, as an older athlete (he was 29 when he graduated), he won four straight NCAA titles in the 10,000 meters, one of only five Division I men to ever accomplish such a feat, and the only Division I man to win four straight indoor 1 mile championships. He also won three straight NCAA titles in the 5,000 meters while at UTEP and was the 1980 NCAA Cross Country champion. In a memorable Millrose Games race in New York in February 1981, Nyambui broke the world indoor 5,000 meter record with a 13:20.4, just ahead of Alberto Salazar who broke the American indoor 5,000 meter record.

Post-collegiate
Nyambui would go on to represent Tanzania in the men's 5000 metre race at the 1980 Summer Olympics, where he finished second behind only Miruts Yifter. After running shorter-distance races, Nyambui would go on to run several marathons, winning the Berlin Marathon on two occasions and the Stockholm Marathon in 1988.

References

External links
sports-reference

1953 births
People from Mara Region
Living people
Tanzanian male long-distance runners
Tanzanian male marathon runners
Athletes (track and field) at the 1974 British Commonwealth Games
Athletes (track and field) at the 1978 Commonwealth Games
Commonwealth Games competitors for Tanzania
Athletes (track and field) at the 1980 Summer Olympics
Olympic athletes for Tanzania
Olympic silver medalists for Tanzania
University of Texas at El Paso alumni
UTEP Miners men's track and field athletes
College men's track and field athletes in the United States
Medalists at the 1980 Summer Olympics
Berlin Marathon male winners
Olympic silver medalists in athletics (track and field)
African Games bronze medalists for Tanzania
African Games medalists in athletics (track and field)
Athletes (track and field) at the 1978 All-Africa Games

Suleiman Nyambui


Access to safe and adequate sexual and reproductive healthcare constitutes part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as upheld by the United Nations.

Most of the countries in Africa have some of the lowest rates of contraceptive use; highest maternal, infant, and child mortality rates; and highest fertility rates.

Approximately 30% of all women use birth control, although over half of all African women would use birth control if it were available. The main problems that prevent the use of birth control are limited availability (especially among young people, unmarried people, and the poor), high cost, limited choice of birth control methods, lack of knowledge on side-effects, spousal disapproval or other gender-based barriers, religious concerns, and bias from healthcare providers.

45% of pregnancies that occur among adolescents in Africa are unplanned. It is estimated that 1 in 3 pregnancies that are unintended in Africa, occur among girls between the ages of 15 and 19.

There is evidence that increased use of family planning methods decreases maternal and infant mortality rates, improves quality of life for mothers, and stimulates economic development. However, according to CHASE AFRICA, a charitable organisation that promotes healthcare and education for women in Kenya and Uganda, approximately 1 in 5 women who want family planning cannot access it.

Public policies and cultural attitudes play a role in birth control prevalence.

Prevalence

In Africa, 24% of women of reproductive age have an unmet need for modern contraception. Low rates of contraceptive use are most prevalent in Sub-Saharan African countries.

Research undertaken in 2007 led by Akinrinola Bankole, found that correct and consistent condom use by those aged 14-19 was found to be 38% in Burkina Faso, 47% in Ghana, 20% in Malawi and 36% in Uganda.

In Uganda, NGOs are trying to make contraceptives more available in rural areas. According to a 2008 study done by Ike Nwachukwu and Obasi in Nigeria, modern birth control methods were used by 30% of respondents.

The Demographic Health Survey (DHS) of 2013 revealed that a mere 2% of sexually-active girls, between the ages of 15 and 19, use contraceptives. 23% of the girls in this age group have children.

In 2022, BMC Public Health conducted a study that examined contraceptive-use among school-going adolescents across nine Sub-Saharan African countries. Not using condoms during sex was most notably associated with being younger, having limited to no parental support, being sexually inexperienced, or having multiple sexual partners at once. Although, across the nine countries, more than 50% of sexually-active participants had used a condom at their last sexual encounter. Over a third used other methods of contraceptive for their last sexual intercourse. The highest rate of contraceptive-use was found in those from Namibia, and the lowest prevalence was found to be in Tanzania. The study concluded that there remains a great need for substantial intervention into contraceptive-use.

Use of contraception is also reported to decline each year a young woman ages.

Namibia, with a contraception-use rate of 46% in 2006–07, has one of the highest rates of contraceptive-use in Africa. Senegal, with an overall rate of 8.7% in 2005, has one of the lowest.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, extreme poverty, lack of access to birth control, and restrictive abortion laws result in approximately 3% of women to have unsafe abortions.

Limited contraceptive-use contributes to an exponential rise in population across the continent. The United Nations has predicted that by 2050 the population will more than double.

Factors Contributing to Prevalence

A growing population, limited access to contraception, limited availability in different contraceptive methods, perceived or actual cultural stigma and religious judgement, poor quality of sexual and reproductive healthcare, and gender-based barriers, each contribute to the high "unmet need" for contraception in Africa. There needs to be consistent and effective provisions of modern contraceptives for the improvement of family planning.

There is a correlation between parental support and guidance, and the sexual health and use of contraception in young women.

In Eastern Africa, the unmet need is attributed to socioeconomic variables, including the family planning program environment and reproductive behaviour models. Data collected in the late twentieth century, suggests that high fertility rates in Sub-Saharan African countries, compared to other developing countries, is due to "the inter-related factors of early childbearing, high-infant mortality, low education and contraceptive use, and persistence of high fertility-sustaining social customs."

Referring to family projects that are underway in the Democratic Republic of Congo, an advisor to the United Nations Population Fund, Frederick Okwayo, stated that "the logistics of providing care is difficult because of the bad infrastructure." A lack of infrastructure, resulting from minimal governmental funding and a limited number of health clinics in some areas, create prominent barriers to accessing birth control.

An analysis of birth rates and fertility in Ghana, found that without effective contraception, "the total number of children a woman bears is principally a function of the age at which childbearing begins." The study finds that pregnancies which occur in childhood and adolescence can be prevented by contraceptive-use.

Some of the factors identified that prevented use of modern birth control methods in a 2008 study in Nigeria were "perceived negative health reaction, fear of unknown effects, cost, spouse's disapproval, religious belief and inadequate information." According to a study titled, 'Equity Analysis: Identifying Who Benefits from Family Planning Programs', the main factors that contribute to the unavailability of family planning information and modern birth control methods are low education level, young age, and living in a rural area. A 1996 study that included couples in both urban and rural Kenya who did not want have a child, yet were not using birth control, found additional factors that limited birth control use to be traditional practices, such as "naming relatives" and a preference for sons who can provide more financial security to parents as they age.

Until the 1990s, contraception and family planning were associated with fears of eugenic ideology and population control, which narrowed the scope of behavior-change communication and distribution of contraceptive devices.

Patriarchal ideologies that are fostered by traditional cultural and religious beliefs, and primarily undermine the worth of female autonomy and the validity of female agency, greatly contribute to a reduction of contraceptive-use.

Fatimata Sy, who directed the Ouagadougou Partnership that launched in 2011 to increase the use of modern contraception across Africa, explained that the biggest hindrances to the movement were religion, social and gender norms and cultural taboos.

Interestingly, men are frequently cited as a major factor preventing adequate birth control access in Africa. They reinforce many societal and cultural ideologies that block women from choosing and accessing sexual and reproductive healthcare. Male adolescents were also among the highest of those who used no contraception during sexual intercourse.

John Magufuli, who was president of Tanzania from 2015 to 2021, strongly advised women to not use birth control or any other family planning method. He stated that those who do are "lazy" and "do not want to work hard to feed a large family". He also declared that women were not allowed to return to education after they had become pregnant, reinforcing a 1960s law that banned young mothers from attending state school education.

In the cities of Nairobi and Bungoma in Kenya, major barriers to contraceptive use revolve around sexual partners unable to agree on the contraceptive method and their reproductive intentions. Approximately 33% of wives in Nairobi and 50% of wives in Bungoma desired no more children, compared to 70% of husbands wanting around four or more children than their wives wanted.

A 2013 study in Kenya and Zambia shows a correlation between ante-natal care use and post-partum contraceptive use which suggests that contraceptive use could be increased by promoting ante-natal care services. A 1996 study in Zambia again cites the importance of educating both men and women and states that single mothers and teenagers should be the primary focus of birth control education. Of the 376 women recruited after giving birth at a hospital, 34% had previously used family planning, and 64% had used family planning a year after giving birth. Of the women who did not use family planning, 39% cited spousal disapproval as the reason. 84% of single mothers had never used family planning before and 56% of teenagers did not know anything about family planning. A 1996 Kenyan study suggests the need for modern contraception education that promotes quality of life over "traditional reproductive practices."

Birth Control Methods
In most African countries, only a few types of birth control are offered, which makes finding a method that fits the reproductive needs, of a couple or an individual, difficult. Many African countries had low access scores on almost every method. In the 1999 ratings for 88 countries, 73% of countries offered condoms to at least half their population, 65% of countries offered the pill, 54% offered IUDs, 42% offered female sterilization, and 26% offered male sterilization. Low levels of condom use are cause for concern, particularly in the context of generalized epidemics in Sub-Saharan Africa. The use rate for injectable contraceptives increased from 2% to 8%, and from 8% to 26% in Sub-Saharan Africa, while the rate for condoms was 5%–7%. The least used method of contraception is male sterilization, with a rate of less than 3%. 6%–20% of women in Sub-Saharan Africa used injectable contraceptives covertly, a practice more common in areas where contraceptive prevalence was low, particularly rural areas.

Cultural Attitudes toward Family Planning
In Northern Ghana, payment of bridewealth in cows and sheep signifies the wife's obligation to bear children, which results in an ingrained expectation toward a woman's duty to reproduce. As a result, men often perceive contraceptive-use as an indicator of their wife's infidelity or promiscuity.

Child and forced marriages, a human rights breach that remains particularly high in Sub-Saharan African countries, limit female autonomy and often result in a culture that prevents women and young girls from feeling in control of their reproductive health. The possibility that women may act independently, either toward healthcare or socially, is also regarded as a threat to the strong patriarchal tradition.

Recently however, attitudes toward child marriages have improved, particularly in Nigeria, with many discussing the social and emotional disadvantages this can cause.

According to a 1987 study by John Caldwell, large families are seen as socially favourable and infertility is viewed negatively. This can cause a paradoxical use in birth control, where it is used to increase birth intervals, rather than to limit family size.

Physical abuse and reprisals from the extended family pose substantial threats to women. If the wife used a contraceptive method without the husband's knowledge, violence against women was considered justified by 51% of female and 43% of male respondents. Women feared that their husband's disapproval of family planning could lead to the withholding of affection or sex, and even lead to divorce.

In areas that have communal grazing areas or "tribal tenure," Danish economist Ester Boserup, found that large families are desirable because more children means more productive capability. This would result in higher social status and increased wealth for the father.

Pragmatically, having more children decreases the mother's workload, and is deemed as an additional benefit for the urban African home. Boserup suggests that large families are regarded as indicators of a man's wealth and high social status.

This is the opposite for the large majority in African countries, who live in rural areas or agricultural communities that have private-land ownership. For these communities, having a larger family can in fact be viewed negatively. Private landowners do not need to rely on financial support from children in old age or in crises because of the high-profitability of their land. As such, opting for family planning can be less stigmatised.

In other Sub-Saharan African cultures, spousal discussion of sexual matters is discouraged. Friends of family and in-laws are used by proxy for spouses to exchange ideas or issues relating to reproduction. Other forms of communication to convey sex-related messages, include music, wearing specific waist beads, acting in a certain way, and preparing desired meals. A man may also use contraception as a nonverbal indicator of his feelings. Therefore, effective communication and reduced stigma between partners may improve family planning attitudes only when it is more efficient than, or augments the effectiveness of, other forms of communication.

Effects

In 1992, the executive director of the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), James Grant, stated that "Family Planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race."

Use of modern birth control methods has been shown to decrease the female fertility rate in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Health

Africa has the highest maternal death rate, which measures the death rate of women from pregnancy and childbirth. The maternal mortality ratio in Sub Saharan Africa is 1,006 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. A study by Rebecca Baggaley et al. suggests that increasing access to safe abortion would reduce maternal mortality due to unsafe abortions in Ethiopia and Tanzania. Alexandra Alvergne et al. argue in their study, 'Fertility, parental investment, and the early adoption of modern contraception in rural Ethiopia', that an increase in usage of family planning increases birth spacing which consequently decreases infant mortality. Although, there was no observed effect on overall child mortality, possibly due to a recent overall decrease in childhood death rates among both contraceptive users and non-users.

Having unprotected sex in nearly all countries of Africa, especially at an early age, is associated with an increased risk of acquiring sexually transmitted diseases, most prolifically being HIV and AIDS. In Eastern and Southern parts of Africa, 1 in 4 adolescent girls and 1 in 5 adolescent boys between the ages of 15 and 19 tested positive for HIV in 2021-2022. Increasing condom use in Africa would decrease rates of HIV transmission.

Social

According to Stephen Gyimah, women who have their first child at a younger age are less likely to finish school and will be likely limited to low-paying career options. Research suggests that a desire to continue with their education is one of the largest reasons that women use birth control and terminate pregnancies.

Since birth control is not widely available, beginning a family at a young age is additionally correlated with a higher overall fertility rate. Alexandra Alvergne states that another benefit of longer birth intervals due to contraception use is an increase in parental investment and proportion of resources dedicated to each child.

Two notable reasons for married women opting to use birth control are: to plan birth spacing and postpone pregnancies in order to achieve their desired family size.

Economic

An increase in the use of family planning results in economic improvements; women are more likely to stay in work and have the socio-economic foundations to support the development of their children. Family planning results in an estimated 140-600% return on investment due to a reduction in health care spending and the fostering of financial agency. A study titled, 'The Economic Case for Birth Control in Underdeveloped Nations', published in 1967, argues that decreasing the birth rate in countries with high fertility levels is crucial to economic growth and that "one dollar used to slow population growth can be 100 times more effective in raising income per head than one dollar to expand output."

Since the majority of African countries have high fertility rates relative to the rest of the world, it is clear that most African countries have not undergone a demographic transition. In other parts of the world, there is evidence that economic growth increases after a country undergoes demographic transition. This is due to more women working, greater parental investment in children in terms of education and attention, and longer, more productive working life due to health improvements. Although other improvements in public health are necessary to fully undergo a demographic transition, it cannot occur without family planning. It is unclear, however, how exactly the demographic transition will affect society in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Some believe that one economic downside to using birth control and preventing pregnancy, is the possibility that parents will not have enough successful, living offspring who can support them in old age. This is a prominent concern among parents in Sub-Saharan African countries.

South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe have successful family planning programs, but other central and southern African countries continue to encounter difficulties in achieving higher contraceptive prevalence and lower fertility rates. Socioeconomic class can be defined as an inequity in relation to mortality and morbidity. The disparity in the use of contraception between the upper and lower classes has remained the same despite overall improvements in socioeconomic status and expansion of family planning services.

Change

Public policy
The BMC Public Health inquiry into the use of birth control methods among sexually-active adolescents, surmised that to improve on overall contraceptive-use, "the development of country-specific sexual health education and youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health interventions that target risky adolescents and promote adolescent-parent effective communication" would be needed.

Recently, a new approach that promotes spousal discussion of contraception has been proposed as a policy strategy to narrow the gender gap in wanting to have children. Men are usually the decision makers on birth control use, and therefore should be the targeted audience of educational campaigns. Discussion between spouses is expected to increase contraceptive use. This is because a reason women cite for not using contraception, is an expected concern of their husband's disapproval.

At the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, an emphasis was made on human lives rather than statistics when considering the impacts of population increase, with a particular emphasis on improving healthcare and reproductive rights in Sub-Saharan Africa. Recommendations were made to governments in countries throughout Africa, to prioritise sexual and reproductive health services and make family planning universally accessible.

In 2000, the London Summit on Family Planning attempted to make modern contraceptive services accessible to an additional 120 million women in 69 of the world's poorest countries by the year 2020. The summit hoped to eradicate discrimination or coercion against girls who seek contraceptives.

The United Nations created the 'Every Woman Every Child' initiative in 2010 to assess the progress toward meeting women's contraceptive needs and modern family planning services. Setting their initiative through goals of expected increases in usage of modern contraceptive methods, acts as an indicator of the effectiveness of these interventions.

The World Health Organisation actively encourages sexual and reproductive health rights for all women and girls, and recognises a need for effective, and sustainable policies or interventions which can produce this. Sustainable and Development Goals (SDG), run by the United Nations, has set a target to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services (particularly in the form of family planning and birth control) and strives to implement these within the health policies and programmes of members states. 54 African countries are part of the United Nations, including Burkina Faso, Ghana and Rwanda.

One of the Millennium Development Goals is improving maternal health. In developing countries, the maternal mortality rate is fifteen-times higher than in the developed regions. The Maternal Health Initiative called for countries to reduce their maternal mortality rate by three quarters by 2015. Eritrea is one of the four African countries to successfully achieve some or most of the Millennium Development Goals, resulting in a rate of less than 350 deaths per 100,000 births.

Ethiopia
In recent years, the Government of Ethiopia has worked hard to improve healthcare in line with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. It has been reported that by prioritising the health, education and socio-economic prospects of their citizens, there has been a significant reduction in the country's birth rate. The United States government, through the form of USAID, has helped strengthen family health in the country, in the form of "quality reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health services".

Rwanda
After the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, the country's healthcare system underwent major changes that led to a 60% increase in contraceptive-use.

A start-up called Kasha, allows citizens in Rwandan villages to order condoms and contraceptives via text message and delivers them with a moped.

Niger
There has been wide media support in the promotion of contraceptive-use in Niger, a country in West Africa.

Athletes, celebrities, and prominent political figures have used their status to speak out on, and encourage the use of, contraception in the country.

L'Association des Jeunes Filles pour la Santé de la Reproduction (AJFSR) (The Girls' Association for Reproductive Health), was established in 2020 to create campaigns and workshops raising awareness and education for girls and women in Niger. Kadiatou Idani, the president of the group believes "[r]eproductive health is a taboo subject. But girls have sexual and reproductive rights, [and] they need to know about them".

Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso implemented a national free healthcare policy in 2016, for women and children under 5. This involved the free distribution of contraceptives.

Between 2013 and 2018 government expenditure on healthcare, particularly sexual and reproductive, increased by 30%.

Tanzania
The first female president of Tanzania, Samia Suluhi Hassan, has made a pledge to improve access to birth control in the country. Hassan believes that birth control access will help improve Tanzania's economic prospects, and urges women to want and to have less children.

Improvements
Contraceptive use among women in Sub-Saharan Africa has risen from approximately 5% in 1991 to approximately 30% in 2006.

In the 2020 Family Planning report (FP2020), written by the United Nations, it stated that between 2012-2020 there was a 66% increase in the number of women and girls who used modern contraception. The report also informed that in Central and West Africa women who use birth control as much as doubled, and in Eastern and Southern Africa, the increase was up to 70%.

Gyimah reports that fertility rates are declining in some African countries, particularly Kenya, Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Ghana. The decrease in fertility rates in Ghana is largely attributed to investment in education that has caused an increase in age at first birth and improved job opportunities for women.

See also

 Women in Niger
 Women in Nigeria
 Birth Control
 Women in Tanzania
 Female Rights Movement
 Family planning
 Reproductive Rights

References

Health in Africa
Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sexuality in Africa
Women's rights in Africa

Birth control in Africa


The Lucky Bag is the term for the United States Naval Academy yearbook dedicated to the graduating classes. A traditional Lucky Bag has a collection of photos taken around the academy and photographs of each graduating officer along with a single paragraph describing the individual written by a friend. While no one knows for sure, it is speculated that it is named after the "lucky bag" that contains the possessions of sailors who lost items at sea.

Each year every midshipman and graduating officer receives a Lucky Bag, and every edition of the Lucky Bag is archived by both the Naval Academy and the United States Naval Academy Alumni Association.

History

Every man-of-war, you know, has her Lucky Bag, containing a little of every thing, and something belonging to every body.

For variety of contents, a regular Lucky Bag may vie with the caldron that witches boil and bubble "at the pit of Acheron."

 horse of middy and waister's sock,
 dresses of a cat mouse game
 Purser's slops and topman's hat,
 Boatswain's call and colt and cat,
 Belt that on the berth-deck lay,
 In the Lucky Bag find their way;
 Gaiter, stock and red pompoon,
 Sailor's pan, his pot and spoon,
 Shirt of cook and trowser's duck,
 Kid and can and "doctor's truck,"
 And all that's lost, and found on board,
 In the Lucky Bag is always stored.''''

"This bag," Mr. Editor, which I am about to overhaul, has been open for fifteen or twenty years. The facts collected about the Navy during that time — hints dropped by messmates — opinions, notions, &c., have, been picked up and carefully preserved in this "bag." Before I proceed though, to arrange from this medley of the "bit o' writin" for you, mm, I must in good earnest bespeak the indulgence of your readers, and seriously invite their attention to the facts which go to show a link to 10 pages,

Matthew Fontaine Maury, USN, used the term "Lucky Bag", and defined it, long before the United States Naval Academy was created. Matthew Maury wrote many articles about the "Lucky Bag" and called the articles, "Scraps From The Lucky Bag". It was information on Naval reform in all its venues and more. This is well known by serious historians. The use of term goes back further than 1820 in the United States Navy and back to the British Navy. Read the link to see a typical "Lucky Bag Scrap" on US Naval Reform. The United States Naval Academy, to a huge extent, was created due to Matthew Maury's "Scraps From The Lucky Bag" that were published under noms de plumes in newspapers, copied, and passed around in flyers in and outside of the USN to stir people to action for changes in the Navy and transcribed by William Maury Morris for these modern times.

The lucky bag is also defined as a where loose items from a ship are stored until being returned to the owner. According to the 1940 edition of The Bluejacket's Manual (a handbook for U.S. Navy enlisted personnel), "The lucky bag'' is a place where the police petty officers stow for safe-keeping effects that are found adrift about the ship. All clothes, etc., found about the decks are placed in the lucky bag. When clothes are piped down, the police petty officer attends and takes care of all clothes not called for and places these in the lucky bag. All effects in this bag belong to the person who lost them. At frequent intervals the lucky bag is opened and the effects distributed to the owners. Where persons have been guilty of carelessness in leaving their effects adrift, they are placed on the report."  According to the log of the USS Yosemite, on June 24, 1898 several sailors were given 72 hours extra duty for having an article in the lucky bag.

Sources

External links

United States Naval Academy
Yearbooks

Lucky Bag


The Toy Shoppe is a 1934 short animated film produced by Walter Lantz Productions and is one of the many with the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. While the film was originally released in black and white, a colorized version was released in 1984.

Plot
Oswald works as a toy maker in his shop where children buy his wares or just look at him through the shop's window creating them. A mischievous rat pops out of a hole in a wall, and is startled when he comes upon a toy leopard he thinks is real. The leopard is attacked until sand pours from its wounds onto Oswald who is working under the injured toy. Oswald shoos away the rat by throwing a doll head at the rat.

Later that night, Oswald turns out the lights, closes his shop, and heads to bed above the shop. Alone, two dolls resembling a Dutch boy and a Dutch girl come to life, turn on the lights and start to play music from a turnstile. Other toys start to parade and play. When the Dutch boy and a Dutch girl doll dance near a large box, a jester promptly captures and takes her onto higher shelves. A co-co bird from a nearby clock starts bothering the jester. The jester puts down the girl doll in an attempt to assault the co-co bird but a large flock springs out of the clock and pushes the jester off his perch. The boy doll manages to lure the jester into a vice. The jester strikes at what looks like a doll's head but is actually one knob end of the vice; he is crushed.

After tossing the jester to the floor, the toys celebrate loudly. Oswald is wakened and goes to the workshop and finds all is as he had left it except for the broken jester on the floor. He believes the damage was the work of the rat and ponders how to get rid of the rodent. Later, the Dutch boy and Dutch girl went back to the chest.

Colorization
Universal was given a chance to have some of their black and white cartoons colorized. The film The Toy Shoppe was used for the testing. For undisclosed reasons, Universal turned down the colorization offer, making the colorized version of the short extremely hard to find.

References

External links
 The Toy Shoppe at the Big Cartoon Database

1934 films
1934 animated films
1930s American animated films
1930s animated short films
American black-and-white films
Films directed by Walter Lantz
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons
Universal Pictures short films
Films about toys
Walter Lantz Productions shorts
Universal Pictures animated short films
Animated films about rabbits and hares

The Toy Shoppe


The Daurian redstart (Phoenicurus auroreus) is a small passerine bird from temperate Asia.  The species was first described by Peter Simon Pallas in 1776.

Description and systematics
Its length is 14 to 15 cm and its weight is 11 to 20 g.

Like all typical redstarts, they are strongly sexually dimorphic. Breeding males have a grey crown and nape with lighter forehead and crown-sides, a black face and chin, brownish mantle and wings and a large white wing patch; the chest, lower back and rump are orange, and the tail is black with orange sides. Juvenile males are similarly patterned but much duller and less clearly marked.

Females are warm brown above, paler below, have an orange rump and tail sides, and have a large white wing patch similar to the males. Bill, eye, legs and feet are black in both sexes.

It was formerly classed as a member of the thrush family (Turdidae), but is now generally considered to be an Old World flycatcher (Muscicapidae). This species is divided into two subspecies, the eastern P. a. auroreus and the western P. a. leucopterus.

It belongs to a close-knit Eurasian clade which also includes the black redstart (P. ochruros), Hodgson's redstart (P. hodgsoni), the white-winged redstart (P. erythrogastrus) – which may be especially closely related to P. auroreus – and perhaps the Ala Shan redstart (P. alaschanicus). These all diverged during the latter part of the Late Pliocene and the earliest Early Pleistocene, some 3–1.5 million years ago, during onset of the Quaternary glaciation.

Distribution and ecology
It is found in Manchuria, southeastern Russia, northeastern Mongolia, central China and Korea. It is migratory; P. a. auroreus winters in Korea, Japan, southeast coastal China and Taiwan, and P. a. leucopterus in northeast India and parts of Southeast Asia.

Daurian redstarts favour open forests, forest edges, agricultural margins, and are also commonly found in parks and urban gardens. They are reasonably confiding and often allow humans to approach quite closely before moving off. It breeds in the summer months, with a mated pair of the nominate subspecies having been encountered in early May.

Widespread and rather common, this bird is not considered a threatened species by the IUCN.

Gallery

References

External links

Daurian redstart
Daurian redstart
Birds of China
Birds of Korea
Birds of Manchuria
Daurian redstart

Daurian redstart


JumpStart Typing is a personal computer game intended to teach typing skills to kids aged seven to ten. The game reuses the cast of JumpStart Adventures 3rd Grade: Mystery Mountain.

The game is set at Sparks Stadium, where keyboarding Olympics take place between the Sparks Team and the Galaxy Gladiators. When Polly Spark gets mad at Coach Qwerty, who didn't like her "untapped typing talent" and consequently kicked her off the team, she locks him in the Trophy Room. When Botley reminds her of how much her father wanted to win a new trophy for the Trophy Room, Polly decides to let Coach Qwerty out, but it turns out that her power cards needed to unlock and open the Trophy Room need to be recharged.

The user must therefore coach the Sparks Team in Qwerty's place and recharge Polly's power cards through taking timed typing tests. At the beginning of the game, the user takes a diagnostic test to determine the words per minute goals that need to be reached to activate the power cards.

Keyboard Training Center
The Keyboard Training Center is run by Polly and includes the locked Trophy Room, the Technique-O-Tron and the Test-O-Matic. The Technique-O-Tron provides two humorous movies, made in a style to suggest they were made in the mid-20th century despite featuring modern computer keyboards, that teach the user about the "home row" keys and correct typing posture. The Test-O-Matic features lessons and timed typing tests. It is through taking the timed typing tests that the user attempts to reach the words per minute that activate the power cards.

The games
Outside the Keyboard Training Center, Botley joins the user for the games, which the user plays to win gold, silver and bronze medals. Winning these medals do not lead to the freeing of Coach Qwerty. Naturally, the user has a limited amount of "strength" to play the games and, if the "strength bar" gets too low, it must be restored through taking lessons and timed typing tests in the Keyboard Training Center.  Botley may have been voiced by a new person, but he still seems the same, and none of the robots from JumpStart 3rd Grade are seen. The games are as follows:

Roller Racer - The user helps a Sparks player skateboard down a track and avoid hitting obstacles or the mischievous Track Trickster by typing the letters that appear on them.
Keyboard Kicks - In this foosball-esque game, the user types the letters that activate a row of Sparks players, so that they will block the ball away from the Sparks' goal. Thus Sending the ball right at the Galaxy Gladiators' goal 10 points were needed to be scored in the game to win
Trail Blazer - The user helps fifty Sparks snowboarders make it to the bottom of a mountain by typing the letters that appear above each of them.
Cliff Hanger - The user types the letters on different ledges to help the Sparks player climb to the top of Mount Keys, while avoiding Wall Crawlers, who throw balls of slime down on the climber.
The Fans Go Wild - The user types the letters on cards held by fans so that they turn over and form an animated message. Ms. Winkle, Polly's schoolteacher from JumpStart 3rd Grade, appears to be part of the crowd. This is the only activity in which a medal is not earned.

The Closing Ceremony

After Qwerty is freed, Polly apologizes for locking him in the Trophy Room and argues that he should consider the fact that she took part in freeing him and coaching the team. He tells her that "if it takes locking me in the Trophy Room to get you to practice your keyboarding skills, then so be it" and decides not to tell Professor Spark about the incident. At the Closing Ceremony, the Professor, left with the impression that Qwerty was "mysteriously locked in a Trophy Room throughout the games," presents a trophy to the user, since Botley informed him that the user was primarily responsible for the Sparks Team winning over the Galaxy Gladiators.

As in JumpStart 3rd Grade, the storyline ends here, but the user can continue playing the games.

Production

After the merge of Knowledge Adventure and Davidson & Associates, Jan Davidson began cross-developing products between the Glendale and Torrance centers and the first Knowledge Adventure product to be produced in Torrance was JumpStart Typing. Led by executive producer Mike Albanese and producer Michele Lichtenstein, JumpStart Typing was declared to be "more JumpStart than JumpStart." This effectively ended any speculation that a JumpStart title could not be produced outside of Glendale. Indeed, Albanese went on to assume the role of Vice President of KA Glendale towards the end of his tenure at what was then Cendant Software.

Critical reaction
Discovery Education praised its educational and entertainment value, saying it was best suited for practicing typing rather than learning the basics, and would appeal to children who enjoyed fast-paced games.

References

 AllGame review
 Software Informer review

External links

1997 video games
Typing video games
Children's educational video games
Windows games
Classic Mac OS games
Video games developed in the United States

JumpStart Typing


The giant Thyrsus is a mythical figure from Tyrol. He is said to have lived in Leithen close to Reith.

Thyrsus is mentioned in the legend of the giant Haymon. According to tradition, Thyrsus was stronger, more dexterous and half a head taller than Haymon.

Background
In the Germanic mythology, Thürse, Thürsus, and Thurse are names for prehistoric giants. The hrimthurs, who are made of frost and ice, are descendants of the world's giant Ymir.
In the legend of the giant Haymon, however, Thyrsus is a proper name.

Tradition
The cause of the dispute between the two giants Haymon and Thyrsus is reported differently:
One tradition tells that Thyrsus felt provoked by the immigrating Haymon ("Rheinländer" which means man from the river Rhine), because Thyrsus had already lived for ages in the Upper Inn Valley.

Another tradition reports of a sudden destruction of Haymon's castle during one night.
Whilst one reported variant provides no reason for the sudden destruction, another variant says that it was Haymon's human neighbors who destroyed his castle. Then, they knowingly accused Thyrsus to be the perpetrator.

The fight between the two giants was reported to have taken place close to the hamlet Thyrschenbach - today: Dirschenbach.
During the fight, Haymon stabbed a deep wound into Thyrsus' heel with his sword, so that a fountain of bright blood poured out. Thyrsus took a turf, stuffed it into the wound, and fled into Karwendel. The many blood, which he had lost, leaked into the rocks. Haymon followed him and reached him close to the hill Leitner Kogel. There Haymon slew Thyrsus. The last words of the giant Thyrsus should have been: "Blood spray! Be good for man and beast! (Spritz Bluet! Sei für Viech und Menschen gut!")"

Only long time later, local farmers found the healing Thyrsusblut - named Dirschenblut - in the rocks of the Karwendel mountains (cf. Tyrolean Shale Oil).

Miscellaneous
At the time of plague, Thyrsus once fell ill. In order not to infect the rest of the villagers, he retreated into the cellar of his house. Thus his village was spared from the plague.

The house vis-à-vis the Chapel of the Holy Saint Magnus in Reith (almost Leithen) is said to be Thyrsus' house.

Books
Michael Unterwurzacher (Ed.), Im Reich des Patscherkofel: Sagen und Fakten rund um Innsbrucks Hausberg und das Südöstliche Mittelgebirge, Books on Demand, 2009
Michael Forcher, Der Riese Haymon, Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck, 2007
Wolfgang Morscher, Berit Mrugalska-Morscher, Die schönsten Sagen aus Tirol, Haymon Verlag, Innsbruck, 2010

External links
 "Wie Haymon den Riesen Thyrsus erschlug" at Sagen.at
 "Die Sage vom Riesen Haymon" at Haymon.at
 "Der pestkranke Thyrsus" at Sagen.at

Giants
Germanic mythology
Tyrol (state)

Thyrsus (giant)


A catkin is a slim flower cluster (a "spike")
which is usually wind-pollinated. Sometimes it is insect-pollinated. They have many flowers arranged closely along a drooping central stem. Usually, they are unisexual.

They are found in many plant families, including the Betulaceae, Fagaceae, Moraceae, and Salicaceae. The catkin flower arrangement has arisen at least twice independently by convergent evolution, in the Fagales and in Salicaceae.

References

Flowering plants

Catkin


Georgy Frantsevich Millyar, sometimes spelled Milliar (; 7 November 1903 in Moscow – 4 June 1993 in Moscow), was a Soviet and Russian actor, best known for playing evil spirits in Soviet fairy tale films, including the witch Baba Yaga in films such as Vasilisa the Beautiful, Jack Frost, Fire, Water, and Brass Pipes and The Golden Horns.

Biography
Georgy Millyar was born into a wealthy family of Franz de Milieu, a French bridge builder working in Russia, and Elizaveta Zhuravlyova, a daughter of an Irkutsk goldminer. Millyar's father died when he was almost three. Before the outbreak of World War I, he and his widowed mother had moved from Moscow to Gelendzhik. After the October Revolution, Millyar's family was left without relatives and means of living, their apartment in Moscow and a house in Gelendzhik were soon nationalized by the Bolsheviks. Millyar's mother was prudent enough to remove the "de" particle from her and her son's last name to conceal their French origin and then change it to Millyar. Even though Georgy Millyar was able to speak fluent French and German, he never mentioned this fact in any official documents.

After the October Revolution, Georgy Millyar worked as a props man at a Gelendzhik theater. He always dreamed of becoming a professional actor and memorized all the roles played at his theater. In 1920, Millyar made his first incidental appearance on stage when one of the actors fell suddenly ill. His debut was a success, and from then on he was asked to substitute on a regular basis. In 1924, Georgy Millyar, already a well-known provincial actor, entered an Acting School for Juniors at Moscow Theater of the Revolution (today's Mayakovsky Theater). Subsequently, he played different roles in numerous stage plays.

Prominent Soviet film director Aleksandr Rou played an important part in Georgy Millyar's acting career. He invited Millyar to star in a film adaptation of a Russian fairy tale, Wish upon a Pike (1938). From that moment on, their cinematographic partnership and friendship lasted for over 30 years. Millyar acted in all Rou's films. Among his roles are Kashei the Deathless, Baba-Yaga, king Goroh, king Chudo-Yudo, a demon etc. Throughout his career, Georgy Millyar played thirty major roles, took part in the dubbing of seventy movies, and voiced over a hundred cartoons. He died in 1993, 2 years after the Dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Selected filmography

References

External links

 Georgy Millyar

1903 births
1993 deaths
20th-century Russian male actors
Male actors from Moscow
Honored Artists of the RSFSR
People's Artists of the RSFSR

Russian male film actors
Russian male stage actors
Russian male voice actors
Russian people of French descent
Soviet male actors
Soviet male film actors
Soviet male stage actors
Soviet male voice actors
Burials in Troyekurovskoye Cemetery

Georgy Millyar


Arthur Twidle (?1865 to 26 April 1936) was an English illustrator and artist best known for his illustrations of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books.

Born in Rotherhithe, Surrey, in 1865, Arthur Twidle was the son of Alfred Twidle (a journeyman cooper and his wife Rachel (née Smith), who had married in 1855.  In 1881, following the death of his mother, Twidle was living with an uncle and his occupation was described as draughtsman in wood.

In 1885, Twidle married Annie Elizabeth Mason at St. Olave, Southwark. In  1891, the family—now including Annie Elizabeth (b. 1887) and Arthur (b. 1888) -- were living in Dulwich.

On the death of Sidney Paget, who had illustrated Conan Dolyle's Sherlock Holmes stories in The Strand magazine, Twidle became one of Doyle's regular artists. He  illustrated many of Doyles's later works  including  the Doyle  'Author's Edition'. Over many years, Twidle's illustrations appeared in Annie S. Swan's Magazine, The Strand, The Red Magazine, the Girl's Own Paper, and elsewhere. He was a prolific illustrator for the Boy's Own Paper, particularly of historical subjects. He also illustrated for the Religious Tract Society and Frederick Warne & Co.

According to a brief obituary in The Times, "Mr. Twiddle did most of his work in black-and-white and water-colour he exhibited paintings in oils at the Royal Academy and was well known for his mural paintings, panels and pastels."

References

External links

Arthur Twidle

English illustrators
19th-century English painters
English male painters
20th-century English painters
People from Rotherhithe
1860s births
1936 deaths
19th-century English male artists
20th-century English male artists

Arthur Twidle