At first I thought this was some sort of a tardy April Fools spoof but in fact, it’s true. The breast cancer charity Susan G. Komen has entered into a year long partnership with fracking company Baker Hughes.

And get this: the company is selling 1,000 pink-painted drill bits as a “reminder of the importance of supporting research, treatment, screening, and education to help find a cure of the disease. They’re donating $100,000 to the charity.

Why are drill bits, hydraulic fracturing, and breast cancer awareness an odd combination? Let’s take a look at the irony: Some research has found links between cancer and the chemicals used in fracking. The chemicals injected into deep rock formations in order to allow gas reserves to migrate into wells, includes possible carcinogens like benzene, formaldehyde, sulfuric acid, and more.

According to Breast Cancer Action:

A 2011 study by the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce identified over 700 chemicals used in fracking, including dozens of “chemicals of concern.” Of these chemicals, Benzene, Acrylamide, Ethylene Oxideiii, Bisphenol Aiv, and formaldehydev are well-known carcinogens with proven links to increased risk of breast cancer. Fracking also involves the use of endocrine disrupting chemicals such as lead and Di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate that can lead to increased reproductive problems and breast cancer.

Strangely, Susan G. Komen’s website also includes a section entitled “Environmental Chemicals Are A Breast Cancer Risk”. However, a spokesperson at Susan G. Komen said that “the evidence to this point does not establish a connection between fracking and breast cancer.”

The response on the move has been, as expected, furious. According to Breast Cancer Action, “many people have wondered whether these pink drill bits are satire and whether The Onion came up with it. Unfortunately, no and no.” In fact, the fracking company even advertises their move under the tagline “Doing Our Bit for the Cure”.

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Image: tanakawho

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In mainstream media stories about women’s issues, men are quoted much more than women or even relevant organizations.

The past year has been a politically turbulent one for women’s issues with restrictive legislation over women’s health being proposed and passed in many states. The presidential election is heating up and print and online media is filled with news about all of these changes. With all of the debate, it would seem important to get women’s perspective on issues related to abortion, birth control and Planned Parenthood, yet a recent study shows that men are dominating the conversation in the mainstream media, with very little input from women or even the impacted organizations.

The 4th Estate studied the 2012 election coverage from November 1, 2011 to May 1, 2012, for a total of 2,750 print articles and TV segments that contained 50,754 quotes. And the numbers show that women’s voices are very, very faint, if they’re heard at all. The study reviewed 35 major national publications, including USA Today and the New York Times, and when talking about abortion, men owned 81 percent of the quotes, with women at 12 percent and organizations at 7 percent.

The numbers are only slightly better for stories about birth control (men 75, women 19, orgs 6), Planned Parenthood (men 67, women 26, orgs 7) and women’s rights (men 52, women 31, orgs 17), but overall women are extremely underrepresented in national media on issues about women. From this, it’s easy to see how so many of these measures are being not only proposed, but pushed through.

In Michigan, where some of the most restrictive birth control/abortion legislation is making its way through the legislative process, many women and organizations that came to the legislative session to ask questions and participate were not allowed to speak or ask anything. Two female Democrat Representatives were banned from speaking after they protested the bill and Rep. Lisa Brown said, ““I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.”

Although women are all but missing from those venues, there have been a few victories. In February, during the time the 4th Estate was studying election coverage, women did manage to make themselves heard when the Susan G. Komen Foundation tried to quietly sever ties with Planned Parenthood. The resulting uproar caused the charity to quickly reverse itself. While an overwhelming number of new legislative measures impacting women have passed in many states, some have been defeated.

Since men clearly control the conversation about women’s issues in the media, it’s no surprise that they control the conversation about other election topics, as well, including the economy and foreign policy. On general topics, men had 76 percent of the quotes in USA Today, 67 percent in the Washington Post and 65 percent in the New York Times. Major media has similar ratios and top TV news shows snubbed women even more with Hardball listening to men talk 81 percent of the time and Fox News, 77 percent.

Another study, The OpEd Project, found that out of 7,000 columns it reviewed from September 15, 2011 to December 7, 2011, women penned 33 percent of online opinion columns, 20 percent of print columns and 38 percent of college publication columns. The good news is that female authors are gaining ground. The study reports, “Overall we have seen approximately a 6 percentage point increase in some of the nation’s top commentary outlets in traditional media. This represents a 40 percent increase for women compared to women’s representation six years ago.”

If women aren’t represented in national media and our female lawmakers are punished like schoolchildren, what chance do women have? Brands understand that social media is a formidable tool for expressing opinions, and have learned to listen to consumers (which include women). Maybe politicians (especially those who use new media tools) will learn to listen, too. When the government ground to a halt over Planned Parenthood funding, women took to Twitter. And, while they don’t have a traditional national media platform, independent female bloggers/writers, especially mothers, are a huge presence on the internet.

In this election year, with so much at stake, women must be heard not only on women’s issues, but all issues to present all sides. Women make the majority of household purchasing decisions, we are more than half of college graduates and are half the workforce. We’ve shown that we do have an opinion (Komen), but now we need to work harder than ever to be heard through smaller channels, social media, and any other method at our disposal. Only then can the conversation include everyone, and decisions be made with the input of all citizens.

 The 4th Estate

Image: UMWomen, SMirk, Leader Nancy Pelosi

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We are embracing social media as a medium to voice our opinions. But are we protesting injustice or promoting hate speech?

A few weeks ago, a small internal announcement by a nonprofit turned into a firestorm, when Susan G. Komen decided to sever ties to Planned Parenthood. When the news broke, the social media response was stunning. The cacophony of online voices overwhelmed the Komen foundation and we all know what happened next – they reversed themselves (to a point), to stem the criticism to popular opinion.

The strength of our voices on social media continues to grow, as we see the effect of ordinary people coming together online from different locations, different situations and different walks of life to protest or champion an issue that speaks to them. Brands have been burned by disapproval and Change.org launches new causes people can rally behind every day. This trend, more than any other, gives amazing insight into how (social media-savvy) members of society think and feel about products, policies, politicians and pundits.

For Good

In many ways, it’s heartening to see people protest fees by Bank of America and support women’s access to affordable health care, go against big corporations and the current political tide. However, it was surprising to see people react so strongly to Komen’s decision, given the landslide of measures limiting women’s reproductive rights passed in 2011. If you went strictly by the political climate, you would think an announcement like that would be greeted with cheers.

GOOD’s Nona Willis Aronowitz commented that in many cases high-profile politicians’ beliefs and agendas were not at all an accurate portrayal of how the majority of America feels. She laments that “When politicians do something that ticks us off, we have a hard time harnessing the kind of public protest we’ve seen this week. Usually, we don’t even try. Politicians, in turn, have noticed. Whereas Komen’s image is everything, politicians assume that, unless you’re giving millions, they can get away with almost anything.”

The latest backlash was against Rush Limbaugh after he called Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for testifying in favor of employer-supplied health insurance covering birth control. He followed up by saying that if she and other women wanted affordable birth control, they should have to post videos of themselves having sex on YouTube to justify the expense and “pay back” those who are (ostensibly) footing the bill for their raging sex life.

This exchange is double-edged. At a time when words like “slut” and “bitch” are so common and overused and women like the Kardashians and female members of the Jersey Shore cast are more recognizable, and more powerful role models than Sheryl Sandberg or Tina Brown, it seems like just one more assault on women’s health, image, and character.

It was more of what Rush gets paid millions to do – be insulting, ignorant, and incite misogynist or (insert offensive –ist word here – racist, sexist. etc.) crowd mentality and fan the flames of listeners’ fears, hatreds and insecurities. The Daily Beast’s Kirsten Powers points out that plenty of pundits on the other side of the aisle are just as guilty of taking tacky personal potshots at high-profile women in the past. And nothing happened then.

So when people actually rose up and protested, it was gratifying. On the other hand, it means that as a society, we’ve become so accustomed to this attitude and language, that Limbaugh probably thought nothing of spouting these sentiments on air. Fortunately, the power the everyday person has (women and men) is still financial. Brands and corporations have learned to take social media opinion seriously, and now there are consequences. Translated, Limbaugh has lost a landslide of advertisers.

For Evil

About a year ago we noted that people, cloaked in internet anonymity, felt free to express vicious and callous sentiments even in the wake of natural disasters, and so goes it today. After these two surprising uprisings, the pendulum swung back. A small, spoiled but vocal subset of our next generation of leaders threw a tantrum, stomping their feet and spewing more hatred online because President Obama declined to speak at Columbia for commencement.

When President Obama chose to speak at Barnard instead, several Columbia students (a university affiliated with Barnard) went online to attack their sister school for being chosen. And this time, the attacks were just as vicious, if not more, from female Columbia students toward the all-women Barnard, and went far beyond “slut.”

“Try using your Daddy’s hard-earned cash in a respectable way if you want to be an ACTUAL role model for women,” wrote one female Columbia student. “Unlike Barnyard financial leeches, I have NO intention of pursuing a Mrs. Degree. I came here to make myself successful, not try to plead at the knees of a Columbia boy to marry her.”

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Susan G Komen cuts off Planned Parenthood using a lame excuse and tries to claim it’s not political.

Shame on the Susan G. Komen Foundation. The organization blankets this country with all manner of pink marketing baubles proclaiming to care about women’s health, yet on January 31, SGK announced that it will cease future grant funding to Planned Parenthood, an organization that arguably does more for women’s health than any other by serving women without health care.

For SGK to claim that their focus is women’s health education and prevention and then to cease to support an organization dedicated to it is completely hypocritical, especially since it has a long history of funding Planned Parenthood. The LA Times reports that “over the last five years, Planned Parenthood has provided about 4 million breast exams and referrals for 70,000 mammograms nationwide. Funding from Komen covers about 170,000 of the breast exams and 6,400 mammogram referrals. Although mammograms and biopsies are referred out, Planned Parenthood doctors manage their patients’ cases.”

SGK tried to wriggle out of it by saying that they recently adopted criteria that prohibits the organization from funding any other that is under federal investigation, and conveniently, Planned Parenthood is the subject of a witch hunt launched by Cliff Stearns (R-Fla). To hide behind this technicality only highlights the fact that they are buckling to pro-life pressure. It shows that their concern is not women’s breast health in its entirety, but aligning itself politically behind a single issue that has nothing to do with breast cancer.

And that, Kivi Leroux Miller points out, is a giant branding mistake for which there is no going back now, ever. Before this, SGK managed to occupy neutral ground in the abortion debate, allowing them to appeal to women and sponsors on both sides of the issue, but now they have taken sides and unleashed “an entirely avoidable and deeply regrettable controversy.”

It started when SGK hired Karen Handel, an anti-Planned Parenthood, pro-life advocate, as VP for public policy in April 2011. Then Stearns launched an investigation into PP in September 2011, and soon after there was a new policy in place that conveniently cut funding to PP. Three sources within SGK told The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg that SGK manufactured that policy specifically to exclude PP, who seemed to be caught completely off guard by this decision.

After Susan G. Komen’s death, her sister, Nancy Brinker, vowed to do everything in her power to end breast cancer forever. Funding Planned Parenthood and its education and prevention services is within SGK’s power, and by ceasing funding, it just took a big step backward in the fight.

Planned Parenthood has taken all of this abuse and funding cuts, and for what? Because they provide a legal service that makes up 3 percent of their services? (And no federal or SGK funds go toward abortions, by the way.) All this does is punish millions of women who rely on Planned Parenthood – the vast majority of whom are not there for an abortion.

What will happen if funding continues to decline for Planned Parenthood and the organization is finally forced to close its doors? Will pro-life advocates calling for the demise of PP feel righteous when all the low-income or unemployed women and men, uninsured adolescents, recent college grads and freelance and contract employees who can’t afford full health care coverage have nowhere to go for competent health care?

As the numbers of the uninsured grow to not only encompass the poor, but creep into the middle class, this attack on PP demonstrates an extreme lack of compassion for a large number of people in this country. Boiling all these arguments down to one issue and mounting a relentless assault on an organization because they provide one service is to be willingly blind to all the other facets of women’s health care. For SGK to place its own political agenda above its stated mission is selfish, especially knowing full well how much PP relies on their funding.

SGK should really rework those marketing materials to say: “We race for the cure for women who can afford not to go to Planned Parenthood.” In big pink letters.

image: ladybugbkt via Flickr cc (some rights reserved)

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