Recently a Russian lawmaker asked his Parliament to consider allowing women two days paid leave every month when they menstruate.  The said Russian is quoted as saying “during their period of menstruation most women experience psychological and physiological discomfort.”  He then went on to say that in some cases women are so discommoded they require an ambulance.  This rather over egged the pudding and took from his argument somewhat, I thought.

Needless to say, any comments I saw in response to the Russian lawmaker were entirely dismissive of his suggestion, which was regarded as sexist and silly.  I mean to say, women are not in any way put out by the arrival of the monthly bleed.  Periods are a breeze.  Ever since the invention of tampons, we can even go swimming and horse-riding while bleeding.  And sure with a reasonable supply of Solpadeine or Nurofen, you don’t feel a thing.  Right?  I mean, admitting that periods often make you feel really crappy is letting the sisterhood down, right?  That would be a sign of weakness, a sign that we are.... well less macho than the guys.  Right?

One of our supporters has written a letter to the editor of the Irish Independent:

"To the Editor of the Irish Independent,

While using your website for my daily news update a sub-heading on the menu took my attention.

Woman.

Clicking on it, it brought me to a page titled ‘independentwoman.ie’.
As a 19-year-old Irish female I feel the need to question this website and its placement on the Independent website. The website includes celebrity news, fashion, beauty, diet and ‘Love&Sex’. I am sure there are many women who would love these topics but they are not for me. In relation to women I’m interested in women’s rights, women in business and in sport. None of this is featured on the website in front of me. If I had wanted to read the topics provided I would have clicked on Lifestyle.

On Friday, Broadsheet.ie featured an opinion piece about abortion that was published in the Wexford People newspaper last week. While the article has received national attention and astute criticism from the Broadsheet readership, discussions of a woman’s right to choose in forums such as this are a case of preaching to the converted.

The Wexford People should be made aware that opinion pieces such as Walsh’s are not simply inflammatory and biased, but derogatory and potentially damaging to women.

Walsh believes that the availability of abortion ‘on demand’ could create a situation where “women could be free to have an abortion in all circumstances if they unexpectedly became pregnant. For example, a woman might be due to go on an exclusive foreign holiday but an unexpected pregnancy could interfere with her plan and how she might look on the beach. Or there could be an unexpected pregnancy in the run up to a family wedding, ruining the chances of fitting into a very expensive dress.”

There’s definitely a time and a place for a video released as an attempt by the EU Commission to get more girls into science. The time for “Science: It’s A Girl Thing” a 53-second cringe featuring overly-sexualised minors strutting around in safety goggles and minidresses , salivating over how bubbling flasks and chemical formulas always lead to neon make-up is never, and the place is nowhere. By Naomi Elster

As one blogger put it "The EU Commission may as well have put a lipstick on a string, and filmed 18 year old models doing a belly crawl after it from the nail parlour (or wherever they would normally be) to the lab bench." I’ve never seen a video so ill-received – a barrage of response videos have appeared on YouTube, and Twitter and Facebook are awash with criticisms, from both official sources, such as Ben Goldacre (author of Bad Science), Nature (the most prestigious science journal), and most of my friends – fiercely intelligent female scientists who I have studied and worked with and learnt from are rightfully angry. As one friend put it “It’s nice to know Marie Curie slowly irradiated herself to death so we could watch a bunch of fashion models play with molecular models while not wearing lab coats.” (Marie Curie was the scientist who discovered radiation, paving the way for a number of important developments including chemotherapy).

Cross-posted from Ms Spats's Sartorial Dispatches, 24th April 2012

Ms Spats has been preoccupied with her weight since she was eleven years of age, and estimates that she thinks about food and the width of her hips at least ten times a day.  If you allow for at least 60 seconds per thought that means that she has effectively wasted 73,000 minutes of her life which works out at about 50.69  days, or at least a month and a half .

These are some of the diets that Ms Spats has been on, and the effects of same:  The cabbage diet (,unattractively fragrant) the cigarette and diet coke diet (surprisingly giddy), the wine and chocolate diet (very good fun, at least in the short term), the bread and water diet (she fantasised she was in the female version of The Count of Monte Cristo), the no carb diet (bad breath making), the calorie counting diet (excellent for increasing numeracy skills), the pining diet (headwrecking), the pizza diet (calories consumed at one sitting, at the end of the day - nauseating ), the caffeine pill diet (palpitations), the raw food diet (very expensive) , the fruit diet (gassy),  the liquid diet (either fruit juice, slimfast or water sugar and lemon), the body confounding diet-(where you over consume one day, underconsume the next, in an attempt to trick the body into continuing to lose weight); The South Beach Diet ( Atkins less cholesterol with a garnish of fruit) and plain old starvation.