What I Learned in 36 Hours With the World’s Most Powerful Women
Dayna Evans, New York Magazine
Normally, a long flight is hard to get excited about. For this all-female trip, though, we’d pack our bags in a heartbeat. Evans spent 36 hours with a group of women entrepreneurs who traveled to and attended Marie Claire magazine’s Power Trip Summit for female leaders in San Francisco. Along the way, she learned some important lessons about women in power, foremost among them “women need not abide by a predetermined set of rules in order to make it to the top.”


The Hidden Histories of Maps Made By Women: Early North America
Laura Bliss, City Lab
“Mapmaking spans genders, centuries, cultures, and technologies,” Bliss writes here, yet the women of the cartography world have often gone unsung and unseen.. To rectify that, City Lab is releasing a series of articles about female cartographers. In part one, we are introduced to remarkable women and see their beautiful maps of locations in North America. Dating as far back as the 17th century, these pieces chart how women have shaped the map-making world from the very beginning. Part two looks at 19th century female mapmakers in America.


Sext and the Single Girl
Cindi Leive, The New York Times Book Review
This review of “Girls and Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape” by Peggy Orenstein we get a look at teenage girls in today’s “hook-up” culture. Orenstein’s work centers on 70 interviews with young women between the ages of 15 and 20, which together show that young women’s sexual experiences often have little to do with their own pleasure or comfort, and much to do with pleasing men. “The interesting question at the heart of ‘Girls and Sex’ is not really whether things are better or worse for girls. It’s why — at a time when women graduate from college at higher rates than men and are closing the wage gap — ­aren’t young women more satisfied with their most intimate relationships?” Leive writes.


Bolivia’s Cholitas: Female Wrestlers Put Discrimination in a Stranglehold
Dan Collyns, The Guardian
In the Bolivian capital of La Paz, stylized wrestling is popular with both locals and tourists. But here women are taking to the ring, donning long pollera skirts and eye-grabbing jewels as they do dramatic (friendly) battle. The women who take part refer to themselves as “cholitas,” a term once used to deride the indigenous women of the area. And their bold displays have had positive effects for women, The Guardian reports. “We show that a woman can do whatever she puts her mind to,” wrestler Mery Llanos tells Collyns.

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