Friday, December 21, 2012

Happy Holidays!

A couple members of the Girls Advisory Council share their experiences with GAC and API this past year, and what they look forward to in the coming year:


2012 has been an eventful year for GAC. This past year, we had many great opportunities to meet and interact with important and influential people. For example, I interviewed and introduced feminist activist leader Eleanor Smeal at the Equality Awards in April. Inspiring leaders like her are people I hope to continue to meet and learn from in the coming year. Because of everything I've done with GAC, I've learned a lot more of what it mean to be a leader and I've been able to apply that to many areas of my life.

--Sarah Hojsak


I joined GAC this year because I wanted to get a new experience and be more involved. Also because I wanted to learn more about Alice Paul because she is so inspirational and interesting! Thanks to GAC I learned that I can accomplish anything I really want. Alice Paul taught me to standup for what I believe in and that I can make a difference. In 2013 I hope to accomplish keeping my grades up. 

--Christina DeSalvo


The Girls Advisory Council helped out with API's Holiday Open House earlier this month by baking cookies:






Happy Holidays from the Girls Advisory Council!

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Women in Music


Music has been around since the beginning of time. It has the ability to influence us or to change our perception or mood.  Music is different in many cultures and performed many different ways. Women of all different ages have changed music over time.

Loretta Lynn is an American country-music singer-songwriter. Born in 1932, she is now 80 years old. She grew up in a very poor family with her father as a coal miner. Lynn sung all her life and taught herself how to play the guitar. She went on to win dozens of awards from many different institutions, including 4 Grammy Awards , 7 American Music Awards, 8 Broadcast Music Incorporated awards, 12 Academy of Country Music, 8 Country Music Association and 26 fan voted Music City News awards. She was the first woman in Country Music to receive a certified gold album. Known as “The First Lady of Country Music”, shes in more music Halls Of Fame than any other female recording artist. Loretta Lynn changed the face of country music. She was the first female in a male’s genre.

Not only are music performers important but also teachers who inspire and teach music. For instance, Julia Ettie Crane, an American music educator. She was the first person to set up a school, the Crane School of Music, specifically for the training of public school music teachers. Crane is one of the most important figures in the history of American music education. She was inducted into the Music Educators Hall of Fame in 1986.

Another influential woman in music is Ella Fitzgerald.  Ella contributed greatly to jazz music. Also known as the "First Lady of Song" and "Queen of Jazz", she was born April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia and died June 15, 1996. Ella’s mother died of a heart attack when Ella was 15-years-old. Abused by her stepfather, she was taken in by an aunt. On November 21, 1934, at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York she made her singing debut at 17-years-old. Fitzgerald later won 13 Grammy awards, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Medal of Honor Award, Presidential Medal of Freedom, National Medal of Art, first Society of Singers Lifetime Achievement Award (named "Ella" in her honor),  and the George and Ira Gershwin Award for Lifetime Musical Achievement. Fitzgerald was a “quiet but ardent” supporter of many non-profit organizations and charities, including the City of Hope Medical Center and the American Heart Association. In 1993, she established the Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, and it continues to fund programs that carry on Ella's beliefs.

All these women show that you don’t have to be a certain gender to be successful or make a difference. These women revolutionized music in their own ways and gave women the confidence to become artists. That’s the beauty of music; it can come from any person or place.

--Christina DeSalvo

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Women in Sports


The idea of sports has been around since the beginning of human existence, and is still considered one of America’s greatest pastimes. While sports have always been very popular, it appears that sports are geared mainly towards men. 

In 2010, a study conducted by the University of Delaware proved that men’s sports in the Olympic games receive much more media coverage than women’s sports do. In the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, men’s sports received about 23 hours of prime time coverage, while women’s sports did not even receive 13 hours. The University of North Carolina conducted a similar study about the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics. According to this study, women’s sports only received 47.9% of airtime devoted to the Olympics in 2004. This percentage only got lower in 2008, with women’s sports receiving only 46.3% of airtime. The Olympics are the world’s largest competition, and with only two genders competing, it only seems fair that each should receive 50% of the total airtime, but that is not even the worst part. The coverage of women’s sports mostly consists of sports that are considered socially acceptable for women to participate in, or sports where the female athletes are scantily clad. Sports like rowing, cycling, and fencing only make up 2% of the coverage of women’s sports in the Olympics.

Another example of sports being marketed more towards men is the Super Bowl, which is the championship game of the National Football League. The Super Bowl is often the most viewed television event of the year, and Super Bowl Sunday has become somewhat of a holiday. Even people who do not usually watch football or do not have a team who made the championship tune in to watch the event. The Super Bowl is also very famous for its commercials. These commercials are proof that these large sporting events are marketed towards men. Most of these Super Bowl commercials are about cars or beer, and contain female models in minimal clothing.

While sports seem to be mainly geared towards men, women have made great strides. During World War II many women had husbands that were away fighting in the war, and they decided to create a Women’s Baseball League, even though a sport like baseball was considered unladylike. Although the Women’s Baseball League is not very well known, these women made great strides for women in sports. Now there is Title IX, which says that women are allowed to participate on male teams.

One woman who worked to prove that women were just as capable to play sports as men was Billie Jean King, a tennis player in the 1970s. Bobby Riggs, another tennis player who was 55 years old at the time, claimed that females were inferior and that he could take on and beat any of the top ranked women in tennis, despite his age. Billie Jean King accepted his challenged, which lead to a highly televised event that was known of Battle of the Sexes. Bobby Riggs was incredibly confident with himself going in, after having easily beaten another of the top ranked women in the world, but this match was different. Billie Jean King beat him by a landslide, the game scores being 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.

Women like Billie Jean King proved that women are just as capable as men in sports. While women’s sports may not receive a lot of media coverage right now, things are slowly getting better. The United States women’s gymnastics team and Missy Franklin are just a few examples of female athletes who have worked incredibly hard and are very well known. Female athletes work equally as hard as male athletes do, and it’s about time that they started to receive the credit they deserve.

--Lara