Joy of Resistance will present its sum-up and response to Donald Trump's first 100 days in office, from a feminist perspective.

We'll also respond to Trump's recent 'natalist' statements, in which he pur to ports encourage women to 'have more babies' and offered women who do, some 'bonuses' as 'rewards' if we comply.  We will give Trump a detailed 'report card' on these ludicrously inadequate offerings which do not begin to compare to the many benefits and supports for motherhood/parenthood that women receive in other, actually advanced countries!

To put them in the REAL context of what women would actually need to get from the government in order to be able to solve problems that keep us from having more children--problems like the need for affordable childcare, paid family leave of  adequate length of time, universal healthcare, a shorter work week (at the same pay) and more--all demands by women that are actually being met in manyd\ other countries!

Our vehicle for this discussion will be the marvelous interview we conducted with Jenny Brown, author of "Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight Over Women's Work." Brown discusses the 'hidden' concern with the birth replacement rate in this country, which her research has shown to be the real cause of why our reproductive rights are being taken away in the U.S.! She puts these events in the context of how governments all over the world, including Italy, Japan, Russia, Sweden and France are dealing with low birth rates and replacement of the population--which is always about approaching women to have more children--and how gcovernements respond either 'with the carrot or with the stick'. The 'carrot' is about making it easier for women to have children by providing support and the stick is about denying women the right to control their fertility by removing reproductive rights. In the U.S. the latter seems to be the approach!

We will open the phone lines later in the show so that listeners can offer their opinions on this material. The number to call is (212) 209-2877.

The show will also contain topical music.

JENNY BROWN'S BIO

Brown began studying radical feminism with Gainesville Women's Liberation (GWL), which was founded in 1968 and was the first women's liberation group in the South. She also worked with the Redstockings of the Women's Liberation Movement, developing the Redstockings Archives for Action, a repository of women's liberation history and activist [7][8][9] In 2009, GWL and Redstockings collaboratively founded National Women's Liberation (NWL) and Brown became the national organizer of the new group. She was a leader in the campaign to make the Morning After Pill available 'over the counter' and was a plaintiff in the suit that helped to accomplish that aim.
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In 2019, Brown published Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women's Work,[12] in which she argues that the legal impediments to contraception and abortion access, rather than being discounted as products of prudish religious values, are better understood as a struggle over labor. The book argues that the ruling class, fearing the economic consequences of a declining birth rate, restricts access to contraception and abortion, intending to push more women into performing the labor of bearing and raising children. But women, she concludes, are engaged in a sort of labor strike––refusing to perform that labor in a world where they lack affordable healthcare, affordable childcare, paid work leave, job protections, and reliable male partners.