VA prodded to give more aid to female veterans

Kristine Wise remembers driving from San Diego to Victorville, Calif., to visit her brother and seeing haunting messages on the freeway…

By Tony Perry
Los Angeles Times

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Kristine Wise remembers driving from San Diego to Victorville, Calif., to visit her brother and seeing haunting messages on the freeway signs. Instead of the speed limit or the miles to the next town, she envisioned: Beware of Snipers. Watch Out for Bombs. 40 miles to Baghdad. Death Ahead. “It was horrible,” said Wise, who served in Iraq with the Army in 2003 and 2004.  The disturbing images are part of the anxiety and panic attacks she has suffered since serving as a supply clerk just as the insurgency was becoming proficient at killing Americans, with roadside bombs and suicide attacks.  In Iraq, her depression ran so deep that she wrote a suicide poem: “The pressure is too great / I’m going to crack and fall apart / … My casket is now fully covered, it looks nice.”  Sent back to Germany, Wise received psychiatric and medical treatment before she was honorably discharged in 2004, two years early.  Now 40 and a student at California State University, San Marcos, she is part of a growing phenomenon: women who have been traumatized by military service.  The number of female veterans being treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs has doubled in recent years and is expected to double again within a decade. The swift demographic change has prompted some veterans’ advocates to assert that the VA has not responded adequately to women’s mental and physical health-care needs.   read more…

Ending Violence Against Women Is a Foreign Policy Priority

Posted by Melanne Verveer / February 08, 2010

About the Author: Ambassador-at-Large Melanne Verveer serves as director of the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues.

No matter what country women around the world live in, no matter what religion they are, how much money they earn, or what age they are, they have at least one thing in common: They are potential victims of violence. Violence against women is endemic around the globe.  Violence can affect girls and women at every point in their lives, from sex-selective abortion and infanticide, to inadequate healthcare and nutrition given to girls, to genital mutilation, child marriage, rape as a weapon of war, trafficking, so-called “honor” killings, dowry-related murder, and the neglect and ostracism of widows — and this is not an exhaustive list.  Far too often, these acts go unpunished. Even when countries have laws on their books to criminalize violence against women, these laws frequently go unenforced. Even when individual cases are seen as the individual tragedies that they are, connections are too seldom made to the larger pattern of women’s global inequality and the worldwide lack of respect for their human rights.  Far too often, these acts are seen as family matters, and take place behind a veil of privacy. And far too often, efforts to punish these criminal acts are dismissed as being against national customs or traditions.   I want to make it clear: “culture” cannot justify the violation of human rights. Addressing violence against women is the responsibility and imperative of every nation. In terms of its moral, humanitarian, development, economic, and international security consequences, violence against women and girls is one of the major impediments to progress around the globe. We need the kind of serious and coordinated response to it that we give to other threats of this magnitude.   read more…

New Web site caters to female Marines

The Associated Press
Posted : Monday Dec 21, 2009 11:23:31 EST

JACKSONVILLE, N.C. — Four North Carolina sisters are launching a Web site to provide support for the very few and the proud: female Marines. The Daily News of Jacksonville reported Monday that the site, http://www.wherethedifferencebegins.com, will debut Jan. 1.  A Marine at Camp Lejeune, Tammie Martin, and her sisters — two retired military and one civilian — say they want to fill a need for nearly 13,000 active-duty female Marines. The Department of Defense says women make up about 6 percent of the Corps. The sisters say such a small minority means female Marines lack resources and need somewhere to turn for guidance and support.  The site will offer forums covering topics like education and deployments. Martin hopes the site will be used by recruiters to show potential female Marines they can be successful.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2009/12/ap_marines_females_web_site_122109/