On Monday the President of the United States is sitting down with Steve Grove from CitizenTube and will be answering a series of questions generated directly from their Youtube channel. They have about eight video questions up right now, but none of them are from women.

There are currently more than 51 million single, separated, divorced, or widowed women in the United States.  Unmarried women are also one of the fastest growing demographic groups. 

Today’s workforce is comprised of employees with diverse family structures and changing life responsibilities. The prevalence of single workers and their diverse life circumstances means that workforce policies should address their needs.  Indeed, we need to pay attention to the different ways that women are living their lives, and establish policies that will enable unmarried women to take care of themselves and their families. 

Today’s panel entitled Work Policies and Single Women: An Examination of the Work Issues Facing Single Women, With or Without Children will explore how the continuum of single women are challenged by work policy issues?

Page will be joined by moderator, Marcia G. Yerman, Huffington Post; Lisa Maatz, Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, American Association of University Women; and Melanie Notkin, Founder  of the blog Savvy Auntie.

Be sure to tune into Fem2.0 blog radio here at 11:30 am to hear the panel.

Tonight is an historic occasion as the nation’s first African American President will deliver his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and the American people.  In response, the editorial team at Alternet has released their advice for the issues that President Obama should address, including the economic hardships of unmarried women.

Fem2.0 continues its campaign to change the public discourse around work and life issues with its second in a series of blog radio interviews.  Today’s topic: Work/Life and Men.

Work/life is NOT just a women’s issue, as men are navigating rapidly changing gender roles and relationships in the family and the workplace.

Join with some of America’s leading experts as they discuss the problems, possibilities and policies surrounding fathers in the workplace.

To listen to the panel lease tune into Fem2.0 blog radio here on TalkShoe.

Today marks the start of Fem2.0’s campaign to change the public discourse around work and life issues.

The campaign begins with a series of blog radio interviews. 

Today’s first panel is entitled: “The Three Faces of Work/Family Conflict – Can Americans Care For Their Families Without Losing Their Jobs?”

The panel includes BlogHer Co-Founder Elisa Camahort Page, our friend and colleague Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, and Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California – Hastings.

Please tune into Fem2.0 blog radio here on TalkShoe.

WVWV’s poll confirms what other polls and reporting demonstrate, that on the issue of health care, voters in Massachusetts did not vote to send a message against health care reform.  Overall, health care reform was tied with taxes and spending as just the third most important issue to voters.  More importantly, voters who said their vote was primarily about health care voted 46 to 35 in support of reform.  Among the RAE who said their vote was primarily about health care—the margin was 52 to 29 in favor of reform. 

Other polls produced similar findings:

TP post about WVWV’s post-election poll shows that RAE voters must be engaged and cannot be expected to simply show up and vote.

The results of our post-election poll offer clear evidence that the voting in Massachusetts is a continuation of trends that WVWV first reported last November after the elections in New Jersey and Virginia: decreased turnout among Rising American Electorate (RAE) – women, youth, African Americans, and Latinos; Republicans beginning to make inroads with some traditionally Democratic voters; the existence of the “marriage gap,” and a striking disconnect between voters who voted for and still support President Obama and their electoral participation.

Below are the topline numbers from WVWV’s post-election poll for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts.

Please see the accompanying memo for an analysis of the results.

In these tough economic times, every little bit can help.  As we have noted here at WVWV, the recession has hit women, and especially unmarried women, particularly hard.  And so, while it’s largely a symbolic gesture, this year’s Little Black Dress auction  —which will donate the proceeds from the auctioning of Hollywood celebrities’ red carpet dresses to an organization that helps out of work women—seems particularly poignant.

The website Fem2.0 is launching a campaign to shift the public narrative around work/life.  The campaign, Wake Up, This Is the Reality!, aims to change the way our society talks about work, to shift the story away from privileged “balance” and corporate perspectives to one that reflects the reality on the ground for millions of Americans and American families.

WVWV is supporting the campaign and will be part of a blog talk-radio series and a blog carnival aimed at raising awareness about the societal transformations affecting our work and social lives in the hopes of getting elected officials to make public policies that match the realities of today’s workforce and families.

Currently, only two states, Virginia and Kentucky, permanently disenfranchise all felons upon conviction.  And now, several civil rights and faith-based groups have joined together to ask Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to issue an executive order restoring the voting rights of individuals currently denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction.

Momentum to change felony disenfranchisement laws across the country has been growing and many states now have laws that automatically restore voting rights for citizens upon their completion of a prison sentence, parole, or probation.  However, such laws still have a significant impact on political participation in this country.

No one should be disenfranchised because they are afraid that registering to vote will make their whereabouts known to their abuser. The voting rights of survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, harassment and stalking must be protected. 

In late December 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice approved a new law passed in Georgia designed to protect the confidentiality of certain voters who have been or may be subjected to violence.  The Georgia VoteSafe Program allows certain registered voters who have been, or may be, subject to acts of family violence, stalking, or who currently reside in a family violence shelter to keep their address confidential.

There are currently twenty-one states that could learn a lesson from Georgia and adopt a safe vote program of their own.  Here’s hoping they do so before the 2010 elections.

New data from the U.S. Census demonstrates that “old-school” methods for voter registration are still very much relevant.  In fact, registration by mail was the third most frequently used method of voter registration by people who registered to vote in 2008.  Moreover, in looking at registration by specific groups, we find that mail registration is particularly prominent among certain demographics.  Overall, these data confirm what WVWV has demonstrated over the last three election cycles: mail remains an important tool for registering people to vote.