The U.S. Department of Labor is reporting the hard news that our unemployment rate is just under 9 percent. If you think that's bad, take note of Spain, a country experiencing a 17 percent unemployment rate that's rising. But unemployed Spaniards aren't sleeping ...

Thank you to our readers and stumble-upon visitors for making the first month of the CT women's blog a success! Here are the top 10 posts you read and responded to since Her.meneutics launched on Thursday, April 2:

(ten) "Your Responses: AIDS in Uganda," by LaVonne ...

Last night Indian American girl Kavya Shivashankar, 13, won the televised Scripps National Spelling Bee and its $40,000 prize after rattling off the letters in Laodicean (pronounced lÄ-ˌä-dÉ™-ˈsÄ"-É™n). ...

I admit that for a while I was hooked on certain reality TV shows, but I've pulled the plug on several as of late, keeping my viewing list a lot shorter. (However, I've kept Deadliest Catch on the list because I can't get enough of men battling the Bering Sea ...

The other day, a friend of mine was telling me about a recent trip she took to the park with her preschoolers.

...

"I would have said something," I told my friend. A park may be a public, outdoor place, but I still don't want people blowing smoke all over my children. ...

I'm very grateful to have been asked to join the list of contributors to Her.meneutics. I have worked as a full-time religion reporter, but I also veer off into related topics, such as a piece I did for Mother's Day on women who decide not to abort their handicapped ...

"Pregnancy and childbirth kill more than 536,000 women a year, more than half of them in Africa," writes Denise Grady from Tanzania in the May 24, 2009, New York Times. Her article, "Where Life's Start Is a Deadly Risk," contrasts the World Health Organization's ...

If you are one of the 28.8 million people who watched American Idol's season finale Wednesday night, you already know that Kris Allen, the 23-year old worship leader from Conway, Arkansas, beat out Hollywood rocker and musical theater vet Adam Lambert for the ...

Earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Senate approved state budget SB 850, which includes severe reductions in funding for the arts for the upcoming fiscal year. The budget, which passed by a 30-20 vote, cuts funding for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts from ...

This spring may mark another race - besides last weekend's Preakness Stakes - that finds a female crossing the finish line in first place.

Since Associate Justice David Souter announced May 1 that he would be retiring from the Supreme Court, pundits and Court watchers ...

In 1993, when Christine Todd Whitman was the Republican candidate for the governor of New Jersey, her views on abortion were muted at best. I recall being cautiously optimistic as I voted for my state's first and only female governor. By the time she ran for a ...

A few weeks ago, a friend's ten-year-old daughter came home from school, turned to her mother with a frown, and speaking low, so as to stay out of earshot of a younger sibling, asked, "Mom, what does the word ?contraception' mean, and what does a sponge have to ...

I didn't see this one coming. K. and I had been talking about her sex life. We had arranged to meet before a sexual abstinence event at a church in Michigan. I was there interviewing young people for a book project on evangelical abstinence campaigns, and K. travels ...

Years of women being taught to develop a positive body image may actually be hurting them. A recentstudy in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology surveyed 81 Philadelphia-area women who fell along all points on the body mass index scale. Conducted ...

The same feature that has made Craigslist so popular - namely, unlimited free advertising - has brought the decade-old website under heavy criticism for providing unmonitored forums for prostitution in its 570 city hubs. After several state representatives met ...