Yet another country beats the United States to electing a woman President. Costa Rica has elected Laura Chinchilla as their next President. Thus Costa Rica joins India, Pakistan, Israel, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Liberia and Chile, to name just a few, in accepting a woman as a democratically elected leader. This is one way that the US remains a bit backwards.

Laura Chinchilla is fairly right wing in my book. Pro-free market (which is fine up to a point), anti-abortion and anti-marriage equality, she wouldn't be my first choice for President. Her predecessor and mentor, Oscar Arias, supported legislation to separate church and state in Costa Rica. Chinchilla's views make me wonder if she will be more right wing than Arias. Somewhat paradoxically, Chinchilla's party, the Partido Liberación Nacional, is a member of the Socialist International, which makes it's free-market stand seem a bit at odds with its supposedly socialist claims. It should be noted that there was an even more right wing candidate in the running, so Chinchilla would qualify as "centrist" to many.

As a minor aside, Costa Rica has been developing into one of the greenest and happiest nations on earth. It ranks third in terms of Environmental Performance Index, along with Sweden, Iceland and Switzerland (sadly, the US ranks 63, along with Paraguay, Brazil and Venezuela). And Costa Rica came out on top in terms of Happy Planet Index. And, I will add, they are the source of one of my favorite hot sauces: Iguana Mean Green Jalapeno sauce.

Viva Costa Rica!

The lovely @CruelSecretary twittered Is Angelina Jolie the Next Feminist Icon? :: Media and Technology :: AlterNet to me this morning. Let's say that I stopped taking seriously not just Naomi Wolff but Virginia Richmond as well after I read this part:

A quarter of American households are headed by single parents, often portrayed as sad, poverty-stricken and pathetic, and Jolie turned that it into a "fairly radical, vision... that made the relationship seem tender, glamorous, and complete, father figure or no father figure in the picture." She re-framed single motherhood "from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice."

Why I was a bit ticked-off about this? Well, before there was Angelina Jolie the "children collector" and proto-feminist icon, I reckoned we had Josephine Baker more than three generations ago.

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Why would anybody call Kim Gandy and especially NOW a sell-out to the feminist movement. Oh right, this is the same Kim Gandy and somewhat same NOW (as in NOW-PAC) which decided to do the incredibly rare presidential candidate endorsement and go for Obama-Biden instead of McCain-Palin.

The New Agenda may have a seemingly level-headed and non-partisan spokesperson in Amy Siskind --who seems to get way more air-time on FOXNEws, CNN, MSNBC and prime-time news shows as the go-to feminist than all the executive directors of Planned Parenthood, NOW and NARAL combined. The truth is, "The New Agenda" wants feminists to endorse ANY WOMEN CANDIDATES even if they push anti-women government policies like Sarah Palin. If not, they're called traitors and smeared first in the blogosphere and, mark my words, later on mainstream media.

That's why they're trying to derail Kim Gandy's candidacy as Director of the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau. Here's the email Amy Siskind sent out to her bloggers so they could get ready on the offensive :
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Tonight we had a rather provocative #fem2 discussion over privilege, patriarchy, raising boys, identity politics and feminism over Twitter. You can find the discussion through Twitter Search.

I helped facilitate the discussion by opening it with this vignette about kids (it actually happened a couple of weeks ago):

i have two boys and the oldest asked the other day, "mommy, what's a feminist? why are you a feminist?"

i told my boys that i am a feminist because i don't believe women are lesser beings than men.

the 8yr old turns to me and says, "but i don't believe women are less than men, can boys be a feminist too?"

i said, you believe women should have the same rights as men under the constitution? and so my boys declared themselves "feminists"

We had a great discussion about the new generation of boys, girls ruling the playground and whether I believed if Benicio del Toro was a feminist (LOL! Some of us where also ranting about the SAG Awards).

Talking about how to raise boys to be feminists, @phdinparenting sent us a link to a post she has on the subject. Raising A Feminist inspired and spooked me at the same time. Canada declared women "persons" in 1929. Mindbloggling considering my father was born in 1926.

Which takes me to the closing of the twittercast.
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Fem2.0 will launch a series of weekly Twittercasts, starting this Sunday at 10 PM EST, as a build-up to the Fem2.0 conference on February 2, 2009, in Washington DC.

When: Weekly, on Sunday nights at 10 PM EST

Topics:

January 11 What Does Feminism Mean to You?
January 18 What Topics Should Fem2.0 Cover?
January 25 Why Should Men Be Feminists?
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On the 2nd of February, we're expecting more than 200 women to descend on George Washington University for a one day conference on women, feminism and technology.

This is the beginning of a conversation started between different people about the tide of change happening to all kinds of activism, especially in the feminist front. Blogs have become one of the most powerful points of discussion and organizing among a not just a new age of feminists but a new technological tribe of feminists that cross ages, ethnicity, race, ability and even gender itself.

I was in the middle of some of these conversations about the present, past and future of feminism and felt that there was a need to get the veterans and the noobs, the geeks and nerds, the men and women and all the different "tranches" of what we today call "Feminism" in the United States, throw them in a room and just have them shake hands and start conversations, collaborations or debates.

It is my hope that Feminism 2.0 is the first of annual meetings where feminists of all kind can come together to celebrate and air, vent and dream, rinse and repeat

It's why we need your help to spread the word. We need media partners : People who will advertise the event on their blogs, spread the word on their mailing lists, twitter the hell out of what happening, make it a thing on Facebook and MySpace.

If you take the code and decide to help spread the word about Feminism 2.0, please leave your name and a link to your blog in the comments section or use the private message feature at the foot of this post. We want to link back to your blog and acknowledge your contribution.

Ad codes after the jump.
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