the digital giraffe

All About Women
Our Woman of the Month Award for November, 2026, goes to Allison Janney, American actor, brilliant in The West Wing, superb in the new season 4 of The Diplomat.

In Bolotana, a village in Sardinia, Italy, a study has found that roughly 14% of women who reach the age of 70 will live to 100. This makes Bolotana second in the world after Hong Kong for female longevity. In Italy itself, the number of centenarians has more than doubled since 2009. The country boasts 724 people, mainly women, over the age of 105, and 19 older than 110. Viva Italia!

The New York Times reports that with the help of AI, women can now predict their 5-year breast cancer risk. The AI tool is called Clarity Breast, and its assessment is based on one recent mammogram. Clarity Breast, made by Everlywell, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last year. The test costs $249. and is not covered by insurance. It seems that the majority of breast cancers appear in women with no family history of the condition. The test does not detect cancer itself, but rather identifies the risk category. An average risk is defined as a score of below 1.7%. Between 1.7% and 3% is deemed intermediate elevated risk while over 3% is called high risk. Note that women who are having cancer treatment are not eligible for the test, nor are women who have genetic mutations putting them at high risk of breast cancer,

Science magazine reminds us that women, especially younger women, are disproportionately affected by pain disorders. This paper looks at recent advances in the field, looking at sex-specific pathways that initiate and amplify pain with the hope of more precise therapeutic choices. Unfortunately access to the complete study is limited although there are links to the research articles.

The Princeton University Press reviews "Monstrous Bitch", a book that looks at 4,000 years of women being demonized under the rubric of misogyny. Western cultural history especially reveals the insistence that women need to be dominated and controlled. Unfortunately that narrative reaches much farther back, for as long as the beginnings of a writing system. The demonization seems to have centered on women's voices, their wombs, and their sexual desires. One of the earliest representations comes from Old Period Mesopotamia with its stories about the demon Lamashtu, depicted as "lustful drinkers of blood, eaters of flesh, and seducers of men." Lamashtu turns into Lilith in Jewish culture, A1 in Arabic culture, Lamia in Greece, and eventually to witch in Roman stories. In Christianity, witches became employees of Satan. During the Enlightenment, we got vampires which were almost always female. The same attitude appears to persist throughout: men must be afraid of women, but women also must be afraid of women. New horror films seem to take a different approach: if women are bitches, so be it.

Eugenia Errazuriz was a powerhouse for the avant-garde in Europe, a patron, collector, and tastemaker. Artists described her as having "uncanny taste", an unerring eye for beauty. She made an imposing personna, with wild hats and towering high heeled shoes. She supported Picasso and Stravinski when others were horrified, introduced Schiaparelli, encouraged Braque, and imposed a severe element of austerity into interior design. A portrait of her by Sargent, shown here, is striking. Her brilliant dominance of the art and fashion world unfortunately was brought to a crashing end by World War II.

The female free-divers of Jeju Island, off the coast of South Korea, called the haenyeo, were Korea's first working mothers, with their work dating back to the 15th century. Some of the women are in their 80's. They free-dive more than 30 feet on a single breath, without oxygen tanks. Their goal is to collect sea urchins, abalone, and other shellfish which they sell to support their families. The divers have persisted in their work in spite of being mocked for doing low-class work. They are now being replaced by commercial fisheries.

Two museums, Madrid's Prado Museum and Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum have formed an alliance to restore the place of women in art history. The institutions plan to study the shared history between Spain and the Netherlands and give prominence to women artists, patrons and key figures. They will offer an international postdoctoral fellowship, beginning in 2027, to examine the Habsburg era, culminating in a major exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in 2029.

The World Health Organization reports that although women are predominant in Europe's health industry they earn 19% less per hour than do men. Women in health account for 77% of the workforce. The gender pay gap compounds over the years. The global healing field shows that women earn 24% less than men.

"When Women Were Birds" presents all the journals of Terry Tempest Williams' mother, bequeathed with instructions not to open them until after her mother had passed away. The startling revelation that all the journals were blank is but the first of many brilliant surprises to confront Williams, and her readers, as she takes us through a lyrical and loving journey into finding one's voice. Highly praised and admired, this is a special literary encounter. (Thanks to SR for this.)

Controversy has arisen in Spain when it was revealed that the Spanish Nutrition Agency has published menopause guidelines that were partially based on male studies. Topics like diet, nutrients, and healthy habits came from studies performed exclusively on men.

A new study examines how gender affects the results of endurance training on the liver. Using rats as models, the team discovered that female liver cells generated more proteins, while male liver cells tended to alter more of the pre-existing cells. The differences seem significant enough to influence how metabolic diseases appear and progress differently in women vs men.

A lollipop has been developed that can help blind women to independently discover if they are pregnant. Called Tact, the lollipop reacts to hCG, a hormone produced during pregnancy. If the user is pregnant, she will feel raised bumps on both sides of the flat lollipop. Roughly 4.8 million females in the U.S. have some sort of vision impairment. The test offers privacy when it is vital, as in an abusive relationship.

Be sure to email giraffe@giraffe.com with your suggestions, be they articles, videos, images, cartoons, music, or comments, so that we can share our celebrations and our concerns with each other.

Last updated November 1, 2026 - 32 years of monthly Web publication

Corinne Whitaker - Artist, Editor, Author, Poet, Sculptor, Publisher, Composer, Betaphysician, Chief of the Newanderthal Tribe

Best of Foster City 2016
Best of Palo Alto 2013

Golden Web Award, 2001 and 2000

Artist of the Month, Artisan Bazaar, 2000

Best in Cyberart Award, 1999

winner of BATech's "Catch of the Day"

winner of Fractal Design's "Artist of the Month"and "Image of the Day"

Featured Master Artist, Shadowart Galleries, 1997 and 1998

Guest Artist of the Month, Hampton Click Salon Online
Exhibit below from Virtual Gallery online