Seven times as much government handouts go to corporations as to poor women and children, according to a new ad campaign by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, and the National Welfare Rights Union.

For example, in 1992 Sunkist Growers received $10 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Why? This corporate giant allegedly needed taxpayer money to advertise its products abroad! Bristol-Meyers received $32 million from taxpayers to develop the drug Taxol, and was then allowed to sell the drug at 6-8 times to cost of producing it — thus making the consumer pay twice. General Motors was given $110.6 million in government subsidies to create jobs. Their response? Laying off 25% of their U.S. workers. Archer Daniels Midland gets a 54¢ per gallon tax credit kickback when ethanol gas is sold — resulting in $550 million for the company. To see the ads, visit our web site, .

Twenty million more people may be registered to vote by the November 1996 elections, thanks to the National Voter Registration Act ("Motor Voter" act).

The Motor Voter act requires that voter registration be offered at driver’s license agencies, public assistance agencies, and through a national mail-in registration form. As a result, many of the new voters are likely to be young people, whose views tend to be the most feminist, and poor people, who are disproportionately women.

In 1995, 5.5 million people used voter registration at driver’s license agencies and 4.2 million used the mail-in form. But registration of poor people is lagging. In 1995 only 1.3 million people were registered at public assistance agencies. In some states, less than 20% of public assistance recipients were registered.

For more information on how you can help more people become registered to vote, contact Human SERVE at (212) 854-4053.

Twice as many elderly women are poor, compared to elderly men. This is partly because women generally receive much less in pensions than men. To remedy this problem, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun (D-IL) has introduced a pension reform bill that would allow divorced women and widows to more easily receive the benefit of their husbands’ pensions.

Currently, because of job segregation that keeps women in lower-paying jobs, many of which do not offer pensions, and because more women than men choose to work for no pay in the home, women receive half the amount of pensions that men receive. This is especially pronounced among divorced women and widows, who sometimes lose most or all of their pension income when their husbands depart.

Moseley-Braun is the first woman Senator to be a permanent member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over pensions.

One-quarter of women worldwide are injured or killed by complications during pregnancy and childbirth, according to the first comprehensive study of maternal deaths in a decade.

The United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF) new report, Progress of Nations, reported that almost 600,000 women die of pregnancy or childbirth — 20% more than UNICEF had predicted — every year, including 75,000 women who die trying to abort themselves. Many experts believe the number of women who die of illegal botched abortions is vastly under-reported. Other common causes of death include hemorrhage and infection.

The report states that the low status of women in many countries, which prevents women from receiving proper nutrition and medical care, is the cause of many of these injuries and deaths. In the United States, one in 3,300 women dies in childbirth, compared to only one in 7,300 in Canada.

Can public universities use race as a factor in admitting students? That question is still unanswered as the Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling banning the consideration of race when admitting students to public universities.

The lower court ruled that a program at the University of Texas Law School which evaluated white and minoritiy students separately was unconstitutional. But even before the ruling, the university had abandoned the program. The lower court ruling applies only to public universities in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter said in a statement that the Court must wait for a case in which the affirmative action program being challenged was still in effect, before ruling on whether public universities can use race or national origin as a factor in admissions.