In a perfectly “free” labor market, everyone theoretically has the right to exchange work for commensurate compensation. But a free market is not necessarily a just one. And when the commodity is sex, how free is too free?

Sex work, and its attendant culture wars, have moved over time from traditional brothels of urban lore to online marketplaces, raising new questions about private and public freedom. In the digital world, how should trust and power be negotiated between provider and client, both encircled by systemic gender and economic inequities?

Washington’s Old Boys’ club still has its knickers in a wad over the deficit “compromise,” but women across the country can breathe a slight sigh of relief this week. The White House just issued health reform guidelines that will mandate insurance plans to provide birth control to women at no extra cost. The measure is long overdue, part of an array of preventive services recommended by the Institute of Medicine for improving women’s health. But the promise of broader contraceptive access coincides fittingly with the debate over the nation’s budget woes, because birth control is an economic issue.

When I first picked up the book “Rumpus Women,” I had to admit I had a moment of wondering why. In this modern era of blogging, personal essays by women are easy to come by, and in fact, we are absolutely swimming in them. Why go to the effort of cracking a book?

Well, this wonderful book reminded me why.

When last we visited the Alaskan All-stars, aka the the Superstar Snowbunnies, the Thrillas from Wasilla, Sarah was shootin’ elks on her reee-aliteee teevee show and Li’l Bristol had jest ’bout won the dancin’ show.

Well now it’s almost Valentine’s Day and time to check in on the family.

What matters to young women? Are we feminists? What do we care about? How are these things different in different areas of the country? These are the issues addressed by 26-year-old Nona Willis Aronowitz and her childhood friend, Emma Bee Bernstein in their new paperback Girldrive. The two authors drove across the country and interviewed 200 young women, along with some of the mothers of their interviewees, and the mothers of Second and Third Wave Feminism.

Women are roped into judging each other’s sexual behavior and controlling each other’s lives because we’re led to believe it’s our only realistic source of control.

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Ombudsman Andy Alexander of the Washington Post wondered this morning why women readers are abandoning the newspaper even faster than men.

Barack Obama announced this week that the US would be sending 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. (No word on how many private contractors would be accompanying them.) He did not explicitly use the Afghan women as justification, but many politicians have, claiming that we cannot leave the women to their fate.

It’s still close enough to Labor Day to offer a Labor Day-ish post. I’m offline this week but wish all of you a belated happy Labor Day!

When we think of 20th century U.S. women’s movements, the events that come to mind are the feminist battles of the 1960s and before that, the suffragettes of the early 20th century.

But in between those two eras, working women were not silent.