This report details the Independent Women’s Forum’s projects related to women’s rights, democracy promotion, and nongovernmental organization capacity building in Iraq over the last two years. The report examines in detail the positive role women have played in stabilizing Iraq and how the promotion of women’s human rights advances the country’s total well-being.
The American Promise: the dream of being a country that provides its citizens with limitless opportunity and where people enjoy a high quality of life in terms of health, safety, income, and well-being. America has made great strides in fulfilling this promise. As detailed in this report, Americans are better off today than any other time in history.
As Congress considers how to boost the economy, they should begin by ceasing behavior that harms the economy: this means ending wasteful government spending and reforming entitlement programs to reduce the government's implicit debt.
Two years ago the government of Afghanistan and the international community outlined the terms of the Afghanistan Compact as a framework for cooperation and action to build a stable and secure Afghanistan. Much has changed over those two years-not all for the better-particularly regarding security.
Afghanistan's poppy cultivation is not only having a dire impact on its neighbors and the international community, but is currently affecting the lives of several thousand Afghans within the country, particularly women and children.
This paper aims to educate young women about how small decisions made at young ages can affect their financial freedom for decades to come. Women are outnumbering men in universities and participating in increasing numbers in the work force, but a strong understanding of financial matters is also important for long-term financial stability.
It is essential that Iraqi women continue to play a vital role in their emerging democracy. Through their active participation in their government and civil society they must work to maintain their human rights to be governed by civil—not religious—courts and statutes in matters of family law such as divorce, inheritance, and child custody.
Media coverage of the Congressional debate about reauthorizing the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has focused on the program’s supposed beneficiaries: children from low-income families. Yet the debate about SCHIP has implications far beyond this one program. This debate is really about the future of America’s healthcare system
In a recent op-ed, Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) suggested that policymakers should consider eliminating the wage cap on Social Security payroll taxes in order to solve the program's looming financial crisis.i However, eliminating the wage cap will not meaningfully change Social Security's financial problems, and it would be a significant tax increase on millions of working Americans and small businesses.
Americans are regularly warned about the new “epidemic” threatening its citizens: obesity. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has purported that more than 66 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, and that obesity-related deaths top more than 400,000 per year. These alarming statistics are used by politicians to justify new regulations taxes, and government programs that discourage Americans from unhealthy eating.
The Independent Women's Forum warns that passage of the proposed Baucus-Grassley tax increase on publicly traded partnerships, which has been introduced before the U. S. Senate (S. 1624), could have a profoundly negative effect on the American economy, and not just for the rich.
IWF visiting fellow Krista Kafer reveals in her newly released paper, "Taking the Boy Crisis in Education Seriously: How School Choice Can Boost Achievement Among Boys and Girls," girls are actually outperforming boys in most academic measures.
The report, entitled Five Ways to Improve Healthcare for Women, was undertaken by the IWF, a non-partisan group that studies women's issues, because women make the majority of health care decisions in the U.S and because many women recognize that our flawed, one-size-fits-all system does not, in fact, fit them.
As Iraq and Afghanistan embark on the path to democratization, they still face many challenges and suffering. With persistence and determination, the women of Iraq and Afghanistan are slowly gaining more rights and influence in the government.
With ethanol leading the alternatives for energy, learn more about its production and use.
