Susan notes: According to Wikipedia, The New York Post is the 13th oldest newspaper in the United States, and the sixth largest by circulation. It's owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

The New York Post editor fired after speaking out against a cartoon depicting the author of the president's stimulus package as a dead chimpanzee has sued the paper. And as part of her complaint, Sandra Guzman levels some remarkable, embarrassing, and potentially damaging allegations.

Guzman has filed a complaint against News Corporation, the New York Post and the paper's editor in chief Col Allan in the Southern District Court of New York, alleging harassment as well as "unlawful employment practices and retaliation."

As part of the 38-page complaint, Guzman paints the Post newsroom as a male-dominated frat house and Allan in particular as sexist, offensive and domineering. Guzman alleges that she and others were routinely subjected to misogynistic behavior. She says that hiring practices at the paper -- as well as her firing -- were driven by racial prejudices rather than merit

According to the complaint:

"On one occasion when Ms. Guzman and three female employees of the Post were sharing drinks at an after-work function. Defendant Allan approached the group of women, pulled out his blackberry and asked them 'What do you think of this?' On his blackberry was a picture of a naked man lewdly and openly displaying his penis. When Ms. Guzman and the other female employees expressed their shock and disgust at being made to view the picture, Defendant Allan just smirked... [N]o investigation was ever conducted and the Company failed to take any steps to address her complaints."

Read the full Huffingtom Post article by Sam Stein here.

Malalai Joya, a 31-year-old activist and politician, was once called “the bravest woman in Afghanistan” by the BBC.

During the Taliban years, she defied her country’s rulers by running underground girls’ schools. After the Taliban’s fall, she helped start an orphanage and a medical clinic, and eventually became the youngest member of Afghanistan’s legislature.

She has been fearless in taking on the warlords who populate the government of Hamid Karzai—declared the presidential victor Monday after a runoff election was canceled—so much so that in 2007, her political opponents voted to suspend her from parliament on the grounds that she had “insulted” the institution.

Calling for her reinstatement, six female Nobel Peace Prize laureates compared her to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi, describing her as “a model for women everywhere seeking to make the world more just.”

Related links:
Malalai Joya (Politician/Activist)
Afghanistan's Bravest Woman
Malalai Joya On Wikipedia
Photo @ Tom Stoddart / Getty Images

A Swiss investment company plans to raise awareness about the shortage of women on corporate boards around the world and generate returns for its investors in the process, The New York Times’s Julia Werdigier reports from London.

Naissance Capital, based in Zurich, is to start the Women’s Leadership Fund in January, which will invest exclusively in companies whose boards include women, or take minority stakes in companies that do not “understand the need for greater female representation” and use it as leverage to push through changes.

R. James Breiding, a co-founder of Naissance Capital and a former director of Rothschild Corporate Finance, said the fund was created after several studies showed a correlation between the number of female directors and a company’s performance.

“We feel companies that select and recruit people on merit should do better,” Mr. Breiding said. “Having greater diversity and independence of opinions helps.”

The fund’s board includes Kim Campbell, the former prime minister of Canada; Cherie Blair, a lawyer and the wife of Tony Blair, the former British prime minister; and Jenny Shipley, the former prime minister of New Zealand. Naissance has lined up $200 million from institutional investors and individuals to invest in 30 to 40 companies around the world, and plans to increase the size of the fund eventually to about $2 billion.

Naissance, which was founded in 1999 and specializes in what it calls “niche investment opportunities,” is one of a handful of firms that have created funds over the past three years to invest in companies with female senior executives.

Click here to read the full story on The New York Times

Two women, both seriously ill with low chances of survival, occupied the same hospital room.

One woman was allowed to sit up in her bed for an hour each afternoon to help drain the fluid from her lungs. Her bed was next to the room's only window. The other woman had to spend all her time flat on her back.

The women talked for hours on end.

They spoke of their husbands and families, their homes, their jobs, their involvement in community service, where they had been on vacation...

Every afternoon, when the woman in the bed by the window could sit up, she would pass the time by describing to her roommate all the things she could see outside the window. The woman in the other bed began to live for those one hour periods where her world would be broadened and enlivened by all the activity and colour of the world outside.

Susan notes: Four months ago the world watched as one young woman died in the streets of Tehran. Four months later her mother, and the world, still mourn Neda's death.

The night before she was killed on the streets of Tehran, the woman the world would come to know simply as Neda had a dream. "There was a war going on," she told her mom the next morning, "and I was in the front."

Neda's mother had joined her in the street protests that erupted after Iran's disputed June 12 presidential election. But on that fateful morning, she told her daughter she couldn't go with her. As Neda prepared to leave, the mother was filled with anxiety.

"I told her to be very careful, and she said she would."

More than four months after Neda's death, her mother, Hajar Rostami, described the pain her family has endured and how grateful they are to millions across the world who have hailed Neda as a martyr -- a symbol of freedom for Iran. She spoke with CNN by phone in her native Farsi from her home in Tehran a few days ago.

"As a message to everyone, I really want to thank the whole world," she said. "And I don't really know how to thank them, so I ask of you: Please find the right words for me.

"I can't tell you how much it has warmed our hearts, how much it's helped us."

There is a Farsi expression that describes a grieving person's need to talk about the pain in her heart, to empty her soul. And that's what this is: a mourning mother who for months has wept and cried -- and remained silent about her daughter's killing, until now.

"This is a pain that will never heal," she said in a gentle, hushed tone.

Click here to read the full story:
By Wayne Drash and Octavia Nasr
CNN

Earlier this year, Kanju Chowk Elementary School in Swat was targeted by Taliban militants simply because the teachers are women and the pupils are girls.

The head teacher, Parveen Begum, gives us a tour of what they left behind. She covers most of her face with a white shawl, and treads carefully over the debris in beaded leather slippers.

"This used to be the classroom for our very youngest pupils," she says, as we look into a room of mangled chairs and desks, littered with shredded exercise books.

"All the girls cried when they saw what the militants had done to it."

Parveen says that when the Taliban took control of Swat, she started receiving threatening letters.

"They said if we didn't close the school they would blow it up with all of us in it," she says. "We were scared, but we stayed open."

Then a group of Taliban militants visited Parveen at the school in person.

"They told us we could stay open if we all wore burkas, even the little girls," she says. "We did that, but they blew the place up anyway."

More than 300 schools in Swat were damaged in this way.

It was a systematic effort by the Taliban to stop girls getting an education, and one of the main ways they chose to put pressure on the government.

But the Taliban are not in charge here any more and, in spite of immense difficulties, lessons at Kanju Chowk have restarted.

Click here to read the full story on BBC News

It's in the early 2000s in London. Roz Savage sits on a commuter train, brooding about her seemingly perfect life: husband, corporate career, big house, little red sports car.

Skip ahead several years: She's 38, single, homeless – and alone on the Atlantic, in a 23-foot carbon-hulled rowboat. Here's the strange part: She has never been happier.

The environmental activist has chronicled her transition from her “cubicle days” as a consultant to ocean adventurer in Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean, released this month.

She lost 30 pounds, battled rogue waves and once had to be rescued during those 3,000 miles and 103 days at sea. Through it she gained personal satisfaction and a commitment to protecting the planet. And she's not stopping there.

Next spring, Ms. Savage will embark on the final leg of a three-stage bid to become the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean. She speaks to The Globe and Mail about pushing boundaries.

Click here to read the full story:
By Hayley Mick
The Globe and Mail