Women, Female | featured news

A woman's heart breaks more easily than a man's. Females are seven to nine times more likely to suffer "broken heart syndrome," when sudden or prolonged stress like an emotional breakup or death causes overwhelming heart failure or heart attack-like symptoms, the first nationwide study of this finds. Usually patients recover with no lasting damage.

Africa's first democratically elected female president, a Liberian campaigner against rape and a woman who stood up to Yemen's autocratic regime won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday in recognition of the importance of women's rights in the spread of global peace. The Norwegian Nobel Committee split the prize between Tawakkul Karman, a leader of anti-government protests in Yemen; Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first woman to win a free presidential election in Africa; and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia, who campaigned against the use of rape as a weapon in her country's brutal civil war.

Their views on the economy are relentlessly bleak, but America's so-called Walmart Moms -- the much-coveted working-class female voters whose support can swing an election -- do not blame President Barack Obama and have not given up on him.