• -
  • Letters to the Editor
  • Interviews of, and Articles about, Sonia
  • In its June 27, 2020, issue, the Sarasota Herald Tribune contained a letter from Sonia about the desegregation of Sarasota's beaches resulting from many years of struggle by Sarasota's black community. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's Letter to the Editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune appeared on Feb. 28, 2019. In it, she complains about the fact that schools in Sarasota County don't teach women's history. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's Letter to the Editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune appeared on Mar. 31, 2018. In it, she complains about finding a 2-inch stick in a can of sauerkraut and of the lack of action by the supermarket involved and the Florida Dept. of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune appeared on Oct. 9, 2017. In it, she discusses the fact that President Trump's attacks against football players who kneel during the playing of the National Anthem goes against the spirit of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision. Read the letter.
  • Sonia's letter was the lead-off letter in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's "Letters From Our Readers" section on Dec. 15, 2016. This letter congratulated the newspaper for its four-part series called "Bias on the Bench." The paper did a one-year investigative research project that revealed that judges' decisions in Florida were influenced by race, gender and politics. Read the letter.
  • Sonia’s Letter to the Editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune complaining about its publication of a sexist and ageist column by columnist Frank Cerabino, April 26, 2014. Read the letter.
  • Sonia writes in response to the "We Have What It Takes" column in the Aug. 24 edition of SRQ Daily. Read the letter.
  • Sonia’s comments to Rita Henley Jensen, editor in chief of the online Women’s eNews, critical of the July 25, 2013, laudatory and false article about the late journalist and anti-Semite, Helen Thomas. These comments were published in the Women’s eNews on Aug. 6, 2013. Read the letter.
  • Sonia’s letter to the editor of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune seeking a solution to the low income of Sarasota’s young artists was published on July 9, 2013. Read the letter.
  • In its Sept./Oct. 2012 issue, the Cornell Alumni Magazine contained a letter from Sonia about the need for people to eat a predominantly-vegetarian diet. Read the letter.
  • On July 12, 2012, Sonia wrote a letter to editor Myra Kovary that she published on her Occupied New York Times blog on July 12, 2012. Read the letter.
  • On March 3, 2011, Sonia’s letter to the editor concerning the lack of secular options in substance abuse programs at the Sarasota County Jail appeared in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Read the letter.
  • On Sunday, August 1, 2010, Sonia wrote a letter to the editor to The Washington Post about the July 28 front-page article "After son's birth, a 'horrid' discovery," about an incident at a Virginia hospital. Read the letter.
  • On May 18, 2010, HeraldTribune.com published Sonia's letter to the editor about Kathleen Parker's column, "Gender and Geography". Read the letter.
  • On October 9, 2009, The Forward published Sonia's letter to the editor about paid maternity leave. Read the letter.
  • On August 27, 2009, The New Canaan [CT] Advertiser, published Sonia’s letter to the editor about her dear friend and mentor, the late Dr. Ida Davidoff.  Read the letter.
  • On November 16, 2008, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune published Sonia's letter to the editor about holding president-elect, Barack Obama, to his promises on paid family leave. Read the letter.
  • In its December 3, 2006, issue, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune contained a letter from Sonia about the four months in 1988 she spent working for Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi. Read the letter.

Interviews of, Articles about, and Books that Include Sonia

Articles about Sonia are also contained in the section on Belgium.

Sonia Pressman Fuentes

Letters To The Editor

Sonia’s letter to the editor of SRQ Daily was published on August 28, 2013.
Women Still Fight For Rights
 
Thanks for printing the superb column by Susan Nilon commemorating Women’s Equity Day in SRQ Daily.

I knew Alice Paul, one of the most charismatic leaders of the suffrage movement, and have been a women’s rights activist since 1963, so I know where of Susan speaks. I, too, looked forward to attending the Women’s Equity Day luncheon at the Hyatt Regency to commemorate the formal adoption into the U.S. Constitution of the 19th Amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote.

I must take issue, however, with one statement Susan made when she wrote: “It is women who are their own worst enemy.” I don’t think there is any factual basis for that statement. Certainly, there are some women, Phyllis Schlafly is an outstanding example, who oppose rights for women. But to write that “women are their own worst enemy” is hyperbole. First of all, no movement has ever gotten the support of 100 percent of those it was meant to help. Second, the legal rights that women have achieved since the mid-1960s is mind-blowing. (See my recent discussion of the various federal and state laws and executive orders giving women rights since the mid-1960s on a website for women in science at: http://www.nature.com/scitable/forums/women-in-science/sonia-pressman-fuentes-on-rights-of-us-105744258.)

Of course, feminist men have worked with women to achieve these aims but women were and remain in the forefront of the movement to provide equal rights without regard to gender.

We have not yet achieved all our goals and the fight goes on. The Equal Rights Amendment needs to be added to our Constitution, the U.S. needs to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, and we need to pass additional laws, such as the Paycheck Fairness Act and laws requiring employers to make reasonable accommodations to the needs of pregnant employees. Our population as a whole, including politicians in both major parties, needs to realize that women’s rights are here to stay and they need to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The “enemy,” however, is not women, but men and women and a society that continue to provide unequally for the majority of its population. —Sonia Pressman Fuentes, speaker and author of Eat First: You Don't Know What They'll Give You,
The Adventures of an Immigrant Family and Their Feminist Daughter, in response to the "We Have What It Takes" column in the Aug. 24 edition of SRQ Daily.