An Urgent Message:

ALERT! Over the past few years, vital data has been deleted, buried, distorted, or has otherwise gone missing from government websites and publications.

The National Council for Research on Women has begun to document how these changes and exclusions affect women's lives in a new report, entitled MISSING: Information About Women's Lives. The MisInformation Clearinghouse continues this work, by gathering new information through the MisInformation Blog and a Resource Exchange. We invite researchers and concerned citizens to join us by submitting the addresses of web pages where the good, accurate information about women and girls we need is now MISSING - as well as links to alternate websites where that information can be found. Together, we can work to restore and maintain the integrity of women's research.

"The information that is excluded in making societal choices is as important as the information that is included. When information is excluded, whether deliberately or through indifference, policy choices are skewed at the expense of freedom and justice for all." -Martha Farnsworth Riche, former Director, U.S. Census Bureau (From the Afterword to MISSING: Information About Women's Lives)

DID YOU KNOW? . . .

• SCIENCE IS BEING QUESTIONED - Scientific data on the effectiveness of condoms in preventing AIDS has been called into question on government websites and abstinence touted instead.
• CRUCIAL OFFICES HAVE BEEN DISBANDED - Front-line offices designed to assure that the concerns of women are addressed in policy development, such as the Office of Women's Initiatives and Outreach in the White House, have disappeared.
• THE PUBLIC IS BEING MISLED - Chief actuary of the Medicare program Richard S. Foster was ordered not to provide requested information to Congress on the actual cost of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, while government- produced television ads have masqueraded as news reports about expanded Medicare coverage.
• SCIENTIFIC PANELS ARE BEING STACKED. . .
• INFORMATION RESOURCES HAVE BEEN ABANDONED. . .

Read more in MISSING: Information about Women's Lives, a report available for download from this site.