Tag: gender

Posted on

50 shades of gender inequity

Not only does the gender wage gap have real staying power, but it’s alive and kicking in all 50 states.

As reported in Huffington Post, “according to a new report released earlier this week by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the gender pay gap — which had significantly narrowed since the 1970s — has slowly plateaued in recent years.

“Compiling data from the Census Bureau, the Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, AAUW calculated the median salaries for full-time employment in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the U.S., women are paid 23 percent less than men on average. Although down from a 2012 figure of 91 percent, Washington, D.C. maintains the smallest wage gap in the U.S., with women earning 90 percent of what their male counterparts do ($66,754 vs. $60,116). Also consistent with last year’s results, Wyoming came in last with women taking home a shocking 64 percent of men’s average earnings ($51,932 vs. $33,152).

“While it remains important to note that geography and local industry have a large influence on differing salaries, there are other major factors that come into play — namely education level, race/ethnicity and age. AAUW analyzed the pay gap by looking at full-time, year-round workers over the age of 15. Beyond comparing salaries of all men to salaries of all women, the report broke down wage imbalances between the sexes along three additional demographics: race/ethnicity, education level and age. Asian-American women had the largest gender wage gap while Hispanic or Latina women’s earnings were most comparable to their male counterparts.  Continue reading “50 shades of gender inequity”

Posted on

The museum gender gap

Women run just a quarter of the biggest art museums in the United States and Canada, and they earn about a third less than their male counterparts, according to a report released on Friday by the Association of Art Museum Directors, a professional organization. The New York Times reports that “The group examined salary data on the

images

217 members it had last year through the prism of gender, for the first time. The report noted strides made by women at small and midsize museums, with budgets under $15 million, often university or contemporary-art institutions. Here, women have basically achieved parity, holding nearly half of the directorships and earning just about the same as men. But the gap is glaring at big institutions, those with budgets over $15 million: Only 24 percent are led by women, and they make 29 percent less than their male peers.

“And just five of the 33 most prominent art museums — those with budgets greater than $20 million — have women at the helm. “There is a difference if a woman is running one of these big museums,” said Elizabeth Easton, director of the Center for Curatorial Leadership, a training program in New York that has helped place nine women in directorships, but none at the country’s most influential museums. “Those directors are the most loud and authoritative voices. It sets the tone.” Continue reading “The museum gender gap”

Posted on

Not just about girls

If this 5-foot high schooler could create anything, it would be a machine. “The machine would remove the sexist attitudes of boys,” Sophie tells me. Males walk in one end and come out the other free of macho thoughts. imagesShe laughs. As Richard Liu writes on MSNBC.com,

“That was after years of crying. Sophie had a tough childhood. She was the daughter that her parents gave away. Now the 14-year-old fights for gender equality, recently helping a friend with a 32-year-old man who was making advances.

“Sophie is part of Plan International’s “Because I am a Girl” campaign to empower and educate girls about their equal rights to education, health care, and violence-free environments. One of the campaign’s lessons is that the solution is not only in Sophie’s or other girls’ hands. Men and boys have a crucial leadership role in the fight for gender equality. One half of it. A half that is widely untapped.

“Noah, a high school graduate, is one exception. “I am part of society,” he says. “If I change, I change society.” Noah started a group for high school guys to speak out against gender violence. He believes the problem and solution starts with him – that stopping gender violence means stopping boys and men.

“Understanding gender inequality also means understanding political and economic power dynamics that favor men. Men control 81% of Congress. Men hold 95% of Fortune 500 CEO titles. Men occupy 70% of state judge seats. It’s men and boys (soon to be men) in the driver’s seat. It’s men who are obligated to help create change. This isn’t a gender war. Gender equality is not about women fighting men, about women taking from men, or men losing parts of themselves. When men speak out against gender inequality brought on by disadvantageous economic, cultural or legal contexts, it’s a declaration that equality must be the result of a joint – not antagonistic – leadership effort. Continue reading “Not just about girls”

Posted on

Facebook moves beyond female and male

You don’t have to be strictly a man or a woman on Facebook anymore.images

CNN today reports that “In a nod to the “it’s complicated” sexual identities of many of its users, the social network on Thursday added a third “custom” gender option for people’s profiles. In addition to Male or Female, Facebook now lets U.S. users choose among some 50 additional options such as “transgender,” “cisgender,” “gender fluid,” “intersex” and “neither.”

“Users also now have the ability to choose the pronoun they’d like to be referred to publicly: he/his, she/her, or the gender-neutral they/their. “When you come to Facebook to connect with the people, causes, and organizations you care about, we want you to feel comfortable being your true, authentic self,” Facebook said in a post on its Diversity page.

“An important part of this is the expression of gender, especially when it extends beyond the definitions of just ‘male’ or ‘female,’ ” the post continued. “So today, we’re proud to offer a new custom gender option to help you better express your own identity on Facebook.” Facebook said it worked with a group of leading lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organizations to come up with the new gender categories.”Facebook users from across the country have been asking for the ability to reflect their gender accurately, and today Facebook showed they have been listening,” said Allison Palmer, a former GLAAD vice president, who worked on the project with Facebook. Continue reading “Facebook moves beyond female and male”

Posted on

Non-binary gender roles

“I wouldn’t mind having a mustache to twirl,” says S.E. Smith, who likes to be referred to with the pronoun “ou” instead of she or he and her or him – and prefers seeing ou name in lowercase.

As SF Gate reports, “Smith was female-assigned at birth but doesn’t like to be viewed as a woman. But “male” doesn’t fit either. Smith identifies as “genderqueer,” a word whose definition lacks consensus, but is broadly described as someone who “does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both or a combination of male and female genders.”

“What does genderqueer look like? To Smith, who is 29 and divides time between Fort Bragg and Berkeley, expressing ou gender can mean slicking ou hair back, binding ou chest and sliding into a suit. And it can mean “dressing up in floofy things and heels,” as ou wrote for the website xoJane, where ou works as its social justice editor.

“In that article, Smith wrote that ou “felt a growing sense of wrongness” starting in elementary school, when sent out to play with girls. “I wanted to be with the boys; I wanted to be a boy – but not exactly.” Smith’s eureka moment struck in college when ou got in with a crowd of transgender people. “It’s OK not to be a girl or a boy, there’s a word for that. You’re genderqueer,” said a friend. Continue reading “Non-binary gender roles”

Posted on

Gender, race, schools and technology

When people talk about how to diversify the tech field, a common solution is, “Start earlier.”images

As discussed in a recent essay in The Atlantic, “Rather than focus on getting women and minorities hired at tech startups or encouraging them to major in computer science in college, there should be a push to turn them on to the discipline when they’re still teenagers—or even younger.

“It’s already too late,” Paul Graham, founder of the tech entrepreneur boot camp Y Combinator, said last month in a controversial interview. “What we should be doing is somehow changing the middle school computer science curriculum or something like that.”

“Right now, the “start early” strategy doesn’t seem to be working: The students doing advanced computer science work in high school remain overwhelmingly white and male. According to data from the College Board compiled by Georgia Tech’s Barbara Ericson, only a small percentage of the high-schoolers taking the Advanced Placement Computer Science exam are women. Black and Latino students make up an even lower percentage of the test-takers.

“Ericson’s analysis of the data shows that in 2013, 18 percent of the students who took the exam were women. Eight percent were Hispanic, and four percent were African-American. In contrast, Latinos make up 22 percent of the school-age population in the U.S.; African-Americans make up 14 percent. (I don’t need to tell you that women make up about half.) Continue reading “Gender, race, schools and technology”

Posted on

Oscar’s gender

In an ideal world, there would be no Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.No Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress either. In this hypothetical Hollywood, recognition is bestowed for the most masterful performance of the year—gender regardless.

But as Pacific Standards reports today, “Obviously, we don’t live in that world. Despite all the Jennifer

images

Lawrences and Melissa McCarthys, Hollywood is still dominated by a conspicuous gender bias. Swedish cinemas made news in November after several adopted the Bechdel test to identify gender bias in the material of various films—going so far as to exclude failing films from cinema lineups. It’s certainly a problem worth addressing, but perhaps the gravest examples of Hollywood gender bias lie behind the scenes.

“The New York Film Academy compiled this helpful infographic to illustrate some of the more shocking statistics. Among them:

  • In the top 500 films produced from 2007 to 2012, only 30.8 percent of speaking roles are filled by women.
  • Only 10.7 percent of those films featured a gender-balanced cast (half of the characters being female).
  • There are 2.25 working actors for every working actress in Hollywood today.
  • Ninety-one percent of working directors are male.
  • Eighty-five percent of working screenwriters are male.
  • Eighty-three percent of executive producers are male.
  • Ninety-eight percent of cinematographers are male.
  • Only 35 women were nominated for Academy Awards in 2013, as opposed to 140 men. There were no women nominated for directing, cinematography, film editing, original screenplays, or original scores.
  • Seventy-seven percent of voters in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are male. (Seventy-seven percent!) Continue reading “Oscar’s gender”
Posted on

Without sports ABC gains female viewers

The first initial in the ABC television network stands for “American,” but it might well stand for “asterisk.”imgres

Paul Lee, a top ABC executive, says the network is the most watched by the target demographic, “if you take sports out.” As the New York times reports, “this amounts to a footnote: “not counting sports.”

“Among the four big broadcasters, ABC has competed this fall with no help from the N.F.L. and virtually no help from sports programming at all.

“What does it mean for a network to try to survive on a largely sports-free diet? Mainly, it means building a lifeline to women. Television viewing is widely dominated by women — every broadcast network but Fox has a majority female audience, as do the vast majority of cable networks. The scale is unusually tipped at ABC, where much of its sports programming has moved to ESPN, which shares the same parent, the Walt Disney Company.

“About 62 percent of the ABC audience is female. (CBS is the next most female-skewed at 57 percent.) More strikingly, the top five most popular shows among women are on ABC, as well as seven of the 10 most popular. All of those shows have an audience that is more than 70 percent female. (No. 1 is “Grey’s Anatomy” with an audience just under 76 percent female.) Continue reading “Without sports ABC gains female viewers”

Posted on

Medicare reconsiders surgery rules

The federal Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that it will reconsider a longstanding denial of gender-confirming surgeries for transgender people on federally subsidized healthcare.

Since 1989, both Medicare and Medicaid, the federally-run health program for low-income families and individuals, have explicitly excluded the coverage of gender confirmation surgeries for transgender individuals, reports The Advocate images

“Under National Coverage Determination 140.3, the programs have been exempted from covering these surgeries, though the data cited in the government’s justification is based on a 1981 National Center for Health Care Technology report. “Because of the lack of well controlled, long term studies of the safety and effectiveness of the surgical procedures and attendant therapies for transsexuals, the treatment is considered experimental,” reads the report in its explanation for why such procedures are not covered by insurance. “Moreover, there is a high rate of serious complications for these surgical procedures. For these reasons, transsexual surgery is not covered.”

“A lot has changed since 1981, however. The American Medical Association and American Psychological Association have since issued statements in support of gender-confirmation surgeries as a medical necessity and acceptable treatment for those suffering from gender dysphoria.

“In a ruling released December 2, the Department of Health and Human Services Departmental Appeals Board declared that the current National Coverage Determination record “is not complete and adequate to support the validity” of the determination excluding coverage for gender-confirming surgeries. The board determined that the 1981 report, which reviewed medical and scientific sources published between 1966 and 1980, is no longer “reasonable in light of subsequent developments.”  Continue reading “Medicare reconsiders surgery rules”

Posted on

Millennial gender pessimism

About 75% of young women believe the US needs to do more to bring about equality in the workplace,images-1 a new study finds, despite a narrowing pay gap and steady employment gains for women at higher levels of business and government, reports an article in The guardian today.

“Those women remain as pessimistic as their mothers and grandmothers regarding gender equality in the workplace, according to the report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center.

“The study finds that women under 32 now make 93% of what young men earn, aided by women’s higher rates of college completion. But the analysis of census and labor data also shows the gender pay gap will widen for women by their mid-30s, if the experience of the past three decades is a guide.

“That widening gap is due in part to the many women who take time off or reduce their hours to start families. Other factors cited in the report are gender stereotyping, discrimination, weaker professional networks and women’s hesitancy to aggressively push for raises and promotions, which together may account for 20% to 40% of the pay gap.

“Even so, just 15% of young women say they have been discriminated against because of their gender. Continue reading “Millennial gender pessimism”

Posted on

Reworking the gendered business suit

imgres-1Breakthrough ideas often come from the least expected sources. For Daniel Friedman, the flash came from a woman named Rachel Tutera. Friedman makes custom men’s suits, mostly for corporate clients in his end of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

As the New York Times recently reported, “Ms. Tutera runs a blog called The Handsome Butch. When she wrote to him last year, seeking a sales job, she had a proposition: Why couldn’t Mr. Friedman, with his expertise in men’s suits, make them for women like her — not women’s suits, but the same gear he was making for guys, with the same masculine profile, but fitted to women’s bodies? It was a question he had never considered.

“In a coffee shop near his home the other day, he seemed still struck by the world that opened to him after that initial email.

“The whole thing is really strange, and sometimes I can’t — ” he said, his voice evaporating into the wonder of it all. He was not even sure how to identify Ms. Tutera, gender-wise. Was she transgender or just mannish? Sometimes it was hard to know such things. What he knew was that she had changed his life. “When we started this business, it was for money,” he said. “And now it’s not. It was the emotion, the excitement that people had, that became everything for the company. At least for me. You don’t expect to turn a corner and that’s what you’re going to find.”

“On another November morning in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, Ms. Tutera took a turn at describing what she brought to Mr. Friedman, 34, and his company, Bindle and Keep. Arriving from an appointment with her barber, Ms. Tutera, 28, who identifies herself as navigating “a very tiny space that exists between being a butch dyke and being a trans man,” wore a man’s cable-knit sweater and oxford shirt, her short hair plastered back on her scalp.

“I personally don’t ever put on women’s clothes,” she said. “I just can’t. Buttons are on the wrong side. I don’t know what size I am in women’s clothes. I feel I know how to dress in men’s clothes. I’m sure I could put on women’s clothes and not be completely freaked out, but I just wouldn’t want to.” For most of her life, Ms. Tutera said, this meant choosing between clothes that did not fit her physique and those that did not fit her sense of self. Then in 2010, she went to a tailor in Midtown to have a men’s suit made for her. It cost $1,500, a towering sum.

“I was trembling to be there,” she said. Where women’s clothing tends to accentuate the hips and breasts, she said, she wanted a silhouette like a man’s. She bound her breasts to make them less prominent (she has since had surgery to remove them). The suit turned out to be more than just an article of clothing, she told Mr. Friedman in her email. That moment started his education.“The suit really helped me in ways I never expected it to,” she said. “I hadn’t ever felt handsome before. I had put together these makeshift outfits for special occasions and always felt like I was being overlooked in some way. I felt like I was ready to be paid attention to. It brought me to the precipice of becoming who I am now.”

More at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/01/nyregion/custom-suits-to-make-transgender-and-female-clients-feel-handsome.html?pagewanted=all

Posted on

Men rule in Silicon Valley

At Pinterest, the four-year-old online bulletin board service that is valued near $3.8 billion, some 70 percent of the users are female.

But, as Reuters reports,  the company’s board of directors is 100 percent male:

“Male-heavy boards dominate in the start-up mecca of Silicon Valley, which prides itself on progressive thinking and putting talent first. A Reuters survey of the 10 top venture-backed start-ups, as measured by venture funds raised, shows that six do not have any women on the board, including Pinterest. And none has more than one.

images

“Reuters’ research relied on publicly available data and discussions with start-up executives and board members.

“The gender imbalance has been the norm for years despite some recent signs of change. Google, Facebook and Twitter all went public without a woman on the board. They are more diverse now.

“Big, established companies, by contrast, frequently have two or more female directors, based on the 10 largest U.S. tech companies by market value. All of the top 20 have at least one. The dismal record of start-ups when it comes to gender diversity was highlighted last month when Twitter came under fire for its all-male board on the eve of its public offering. On Thursday, the company announced that it had added former Pearson chief Marjorie Scardino to its board. Entrepreneurs and executives contacted by Reuters did not question the conclusion that there are few women directors at start-ups, but they frequently described it as unintended, and some such as Pinterest say their executive ranks are more balanced. Start-ups tend to blame the lack of women on their boards on factors such as their youth, their small boards, their single-minded focus on growth to the exclusion of other priorities, and a scarcity of women steeped in technology. Continue reading “Men rule in Silicon Valley”

Posted on

Gender diversity growing at colleges

The weekly meetings of Mouthing Off!, a group for students at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, always start the same way, reports a story in today’s Sacramento Bee.

“Members take turns going around the room saying their names and the personal pronouns they want others to use when referring to them — she, he or something else.images

“It’s an exercise that might seem superfluous given that Mills, a small and leafy liberal arts school historically referred to as the Vassar of the West, only admits women as undergraduates. Yet increasingly, the “shes” and “hers” that dominate the introductions are keeping third-person company with “they,” “ze” and other neutral alternatives meant to convey a more generous notion of gender.

“Because I go to an all-women’s college, a lot of people are like, ‘If you don’t identify as a woman, how did you get in?'” said sophomore Skylar Crownover, 19, who is president of Mouthing Off! and prefers to be mentioned as a singular they, but also answers to he. “I just tell them the application asks you to mark your sex and I did. It didn’t ask me for my gender.”

“On high school and college campuses and in certain political and social media circles, the growing visibility of a small, but semantically committed cadre of young people who, like Crownover, self-identify as “genderqueer” — neither male nor female but an androgynous hybrid or rejection of both — is challenging anew the limits of Western comprehension and the English language. Continue reading “Gender diversity growing at colleges”

Posted on

School dress codes and gender policing

Last month, the fifth grade parent group at my daughter’s school had the first of many conversations about how to mark our children’s transition to junior high, writes Marianne Mollman on HuffPost Gay voices:

“Unfortunately, the issue we discussed — whether the kids would be wearing caps and gowns at the end-of-year celebration — sidelined a much more important issue: what the kids would be wearing under these gowns. (My daughter’s school had sent out a notice to parents that boys must wear one thing and girls another.)

images

“For many children, a gendered dress code may be just another imposition by adults, and to some it may seem small compared with decisions related to bedtime, computer usage, and the precise meaning of the phrase “clean up your room.” But to others it is a big deal. Indeed, clothing is such an essential expression of who we are that international law recognizes it as a human right to wear what we want, barring reasonable restrictions for the purposes of safety or to protect the rights of others.

“And it is precisely because clothing can project our identity so concisely that the clothing associated with particularly stigmatized populations is vigorously policed around the world. For example, several European countries and some North American jurisdictions place restrictions on head coverings. These restrictions are closely linked to discomfort with Islam and are based on the negative and erroneous stereotype that Muslim women are “oppressed” and “submissive.” In fact, even where headscarves are not explicitly prohibited by law, women can be fired for wearing them, and many are discriminated against even before landing a job.

“Likewise, many jurisdictions enforce strictly gendered dress codes in public by either requiring specific attire or criminalizing cross dressing. These restrictions are tied to stereotypes about sexuality and sex. Continue reading “School dress codes and gender policing”

Posted on

Return of the gender gap

imagesFor decades, women scaled Gender Gap Mountain. Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. Congress passed the Equal Pay Act in 1963. Women attended law school to become lawyers, not paralegals – studied for the MCAT to be doctors, not nurses. They ascended to the C-Suite and filled corner offices.

As The New America Foundation reports today, “Turns out the Mountain has more than one peak – and its climbers today seem to be stagnating on a plateau. Recently, Debora Spar, the president of Barnard College and the author of the new book “Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection,” sat down with Liza Mundy, director of New America’s Work and Family Program to discuss why America still struggles with gender equality. Women now make up 67 percent of college graduates. Four in ten American families look to a woman as their primary breadwinner (and that number is rising, according to Mundy’s book “The Richer Sex”). And yet, at least in the very upper echelons of the professional world, women hold only 15-20 percent of leadership positions. Those numbers are mirrored in the federal government, where women occupy only 20 of 100 Senate seats, comprise 17.9 percent of the House, and have yet to wage a victorious presidential campaign. Why can’t qualified and competitive women get out of what Spar calls the “16 percent Ghetto”?

“Part of the answer, both Mundy and Spar suggest, lies in a persistent cultural expectation that women should be flawless, well-rounded robots. To illustrate the point, Mundy recalled interviewing a close friend of Hillary Clinton’s for a profile back in 1999. When she asked the source how Clinton achieved balance in the early years of her career—excelling as both a mother and full-time lawyer—the friend admitted that “she was an indifferent housekeeper.” The comment betrayed an outmoded, yet still-pervasive view of gender roles: Even when women work 60-hour weeks, they’re still to blame for dirty dishes. Somewhere along the way to equality, feminism became “perfectionism.”

“Rather than getting rid of the old expectations that feminism tried to liberate us from, we’ve actually held on to the old expectations – so that girls should be sweet, and pretty, and sparkly and princesses,” Spar said. “But we’ve added to them: and they should play soccer, and be really smart, and start their own NGOs.” Continue reading “Return of the gender gap”

Posted on

GLAAD reports on gender equity on TV

The total number of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender characters remains steady on U.S. television for a second year, but is represented more equally between males and females, gay rights group GLAAD said on Friday, according to Voice of America

“There will be 112 LGBT characters in regular or recurring roles on scripted television shows across the United States in 2013-2014, and half are played by women, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said, adding that it indicates networks are making more effort to diversify storylines.

“In 2012, the majority of LGBT characters tracked by the GLAAD report were male.

“Last year saw a record number of LGBT characters across U.S. scripted television, with 31 regularly on the five main primetime networks. GLAAD releases a report annually tracking gender and ethnic diversity on television over the past year and in the coming year. This year has seen a drop in LGBT characters on primetime networks due to the cancelation of shows such as “The New Normal” and “Go On,” with 26 regular LGBT cast members and 20 recurring. On cable television, LGBT characters rose to 42 from last year’s 35, HBO leading the way with 11 characters. LGBT characters featured in leading or recurring roles in new shows this year include Fox police comedy “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” NBC sitcom “Sean Saves the World” and CBS thriller “Under the Dome.”

“ABC and FOX were the only primetime networks to increase the percentage of LGBT roles in shows, and NBC came in last among the five primetime broadcast networks. While last year there were no regular transgender roles on primetime broadcast shows, “Glee” upgraded transgender character Unique to regular this year.”

 

More at: http://www.voanews.com/content/reu-gender-representation-equal-among-gay-us-tv-characters/1767718.html

Posted on

Toward a gender-neutral “O Canada”

imgresA group of prominent Canadian women have launched a campaign to make the English-language lyrics to Canada’s national anthem more gender-neutral, reports the BBC

“The group, which includes author Margaret Atwood and former Prime Minister Kim Campbell, objects to the line “in all thy sons command”.

“The women say a revision to O Canada’s lyrics would “encapsulate the equality of all Canadians”. In 2010, the government rejected a previous effort to change the words. The campaign, also backed by Senator Nancy Ruth and former Senator Vivienne Poy, calls on Canadians to encourage Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government to alter the official English lyrics to O Canada. They would change the line to “in all of us command”.

“The song was first performed in 1880, with several different versions of the lyrics emerging in the coming years, according to Canadian Heritage. The song took its current form in 1927, and was declared the nation’s official national anthem in 1980.

“The women say the English version of the song at one point contained the line “thou dost in us command”, with that line revised in 1913 to “in all thy sons command”. ‘Long overdue’ The proposed new lyrics coincide with the 100th anniversary of the revision and “have the same meaning” as the earlier version, the group, Restore Our Anthem said. “Restoring the anthem to reflect its original version is the simplest way to encapsulate the equality of all Canadians,” the group said on its website. Ms Atwood said the current official lyrics suggested “only male loyalty is being invoked”. “Restoring these lyrics to gender-neutral is not only an easy fix to make our anthem inclusive for all Canadians, but it’s also long overdue,” she told CBC News. The Canadian government, led by the Conservative Party, dismissed a similar request to change the anthem to more gender-neutral language in 2010. Continue reading “Toward a gender-neutral “O Canada””

Posted on

ADHD labels and gender

A girl with ADHD may be labeled Chatty Cathy — the enthusiastic school-aged girl who is always telling stories to friends. Or she could be the daydreamer — the smart, shy teenager with the disorganized locker, repots WebMD:

“But what happens when she grows up? Or when her ADHD isn’t diagnosed until she’s a woman? Is her experience different from what men with ADHD go through?

“In some people, the signs of ADHD seem obvious — fidgeting constantly, difficulty paying attention in school or at work, and leaving tasks unfinished. For others, particularly those without behaviors problems, ADHD may be more difficult to diagnose.   The symptoms of ADHD may mimic those of other conditions, and sometimes the signs are subtler and harder to distinguish. One psychiatrist, Daniel Amen, MD, believes that to get a truly accurate diagnosis of ADHD, it is necessary to look inside the…

“The issues adults with ADHD have mirror those in the population as a whole, says Stephanie Sarkis, PhD, a psychotherapist in Boca Raton, Fla. For example, she says men with ADHD tend to have more car accidents, suspensions in school, substance abuse, and anger and behavioral issues, compared to women with ADHD. But men are more prone to these kinds of issues in general, regardless of ADHD. Women with ADHD are more prone to eating disorders, obesity, low self-esteem,depression, and anxiety. But they do in the general population, as well.

” These challenges also often play out in different areas of their lives. Men with ADHD may have problems at work, unable to complete their tasks or getting mad too easily at subordinates, says Anthony Rostain, MD, professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Women, on the other hand, are more likely to see conflicts at home. Kathleen Nadeau, PhD, a clinical psychologist and director of the Chesapeake ADHD Center of Maryland in Silver Spring, says her female ADHD patients, especially mothers, come to her in a “constant state of overwhelm.” Continue reading “ADHD labels and gender”
Posted on

Students protest ban on gender-neutral housing

Last week, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students marched the mile from campus to the Board of Governors meeting site to protest the UNC System’s blanket ban, imposed by the board, on gender-neutral housing. InsideHigherEd reports that

“The new policy — which overturned the Chapel Hill Board of Trustees’ endorsement of the housing option —  was approved while students were away for the summer under the reasoning that “there are more practical ways” to make students “safe, comfortable and included,” the board chairman said.

images

“But it sparked outrage among advocates and campus officials concerned for the well-being of transgender students and others who would prefer to live outside traditionally designated pairs for college roommates.

“Among elite institutions, UNC’s move was unusual – many institutions are in fact moving in the opposite direction. There are now about 150 colleges that offer gender-neutral housing, according to a running count by Campus Pride. Granted, that’s out of more than 4,000 institutions – and it’s taken more than 20 years to get to this point.

“But for many of those campuses, whatever controversy ensued when men and women started living together has dissipated, and officials have moved on to more administrative-type policies. Last month, American University became the latest institution to cover gender reassignment surgery under its student health insurance policies.

“We’re seeing a progression. Trans students and allies have been working now for a number of years at many schools to create gender-inclusive bathrooms and gender-inclusive housing options, because those are pretty basic – to have a place to sleep and a place to pee,” said Genny Beemyn, director of the Stonewall Center at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the first campus to offer gender-neutral housing, back in 1992. (A recent settlement by the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights suggests colleges would be wise to provide these options.) “They’re looking now to address other important issues, and so gender in name documentation, hormones and surgeries are coming up more and more frequently for schools that have really begun to address transgender issues.” Continue reading “Students protest ban on gender-neutral housing”

Posted on

Asking the right gender questions

Last week the well-respected Urban Institute published a study on technology, teen dating violence and cyberbullying, writes Dana Beyer in today’s Huffington Post Gay Voices in a piece about the study’s approach (and those used elsewhere) to asking questions about gender identity .

“The numbers were pretty horrifying, and they were worse for LGBTQ youth, both as victims and perpetrators. As I was looking through the documentation to study how the research was structured, I noticed something very interesting about the intake forms. The first question was, “What is your gender? Male. Female. Transgender/gender-queer.” The fourth question was, “Of the following, which do you primarily identify as? Heterosexual/straight. Lesbian. Gay. Bisexual. Questioning. Queer. Other.”

“This is a very rational, modern presentation, following on what we’ve learned about the independence of the two human attributes — gender identity and sexual orientation — and the primacy of gender identity over sexual orientation as a biological and social phenomenon. Putting aside polyamory, you need to know who you and you partner are before you can categorize the dyad in relationship terms.

“This is also, in its way, a classical presentation, because most official forms ask for your sex after they ask for your name. The only difference here is that “sex” is replaced by “gender,” which means the same for legal purposes. But looking a little more closely, there has been, as a result of the deliberate attempt to include trans persons, the resulting creation of a third gender. This would not be out of place in many global cultures, including early Native American/Canadian “two-spirit” (“berdache”) traditions, the Fa’afafine of Polynesia, and the hijras of the Indian subcontinent. Today Australia, New Zealand, Nepal and Germany are four nations that allow a category of indeterminate sex for birth certificates. The globalization of our understanding of trans culture has influenced our actions here in the U.S. Often we are asked how we can make medical intake documents more welcoming, to indicate a culturally competent office that would attract LGBT folks. So over the years we’ve encouraged a number of changes, including replacing “husband/wife” with “spouse,” “mother” and “father” with “parent 1” and “parent 2,” and adding a line or box to be filled in next to the two basic sexes should someone want to choose another option or explicate a bit on the choice made. Continue reading “Asking the right gender questions”