Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., will chair a new Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Human Rights, Democracy, and Global Women's Issues, her office announced Feb. 5. It will be the first Senate subcommittee to include a specific, global focus on women.
Boxer said the subcommittee would address the "overlooked issue" of violence against women.
"Too often, we turn our eyes away as women are persecuted, abused and treated as second-class citizens. But even the most conservative historians have noted that when women are given the freedom to live up to their full potential, society as a whole flourishes," Boxer said.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof praised the subcommittee's formation on his newspaper blog.
"Issues like trafficking and maternal mortality and sexual violence finally seem to be getting some traction ..." he wrote. "The new Senate subcommittee reflects all this progress and presumably under Senator Boxer will accelerate it."
Boxer also introduced the International Women's Freedom Act of 2009 on Jan. 13 [HR 606]. Sponsored in the House by Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., the bill would establish a State Department office on international women's rights headed by an ambassador-at-large and a federal commission reporting to Congress and the president on international women's rights.
Sources: Women's e-news, ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship blog
