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How much do students text in class?

If you are leading a class and imagine that students seem more distracted than ever by their digital devices, it’s not your imagination. And they aren’t just checking their e-mail a single time.

A new study has found that more than 90 percent of students admit to using their devices for non-class activities during class times. Less than 8 percent said that they never do so, reports InsideHigherEd..

“The study is based on a survey of 777 students at six colleges and universities. Barney McCoy, associate professor of broadcasting at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, conducted the study and The Journal of Media Education has just published the results. Most of the students were undergraduates, and graduate students were less likely to use their devices for non-class purposes. Undergraduates reporting using their devices for non-class purposes 11 times a day, on average, compared to 4 times a day for graduate students.

“Asked why they were using their devices in class, the top answer was texting (86 percent), followed by checking the time (79 percent). e-mail (68 percent), social networking (66 percent), web surfing (38 percent) and games (8 percent).While students admitted to being somewhat distracted by their own devices and those of others, they reported advantages to using the devices in class. The top advantages they cited were staying connected (70 percent), avoiding boredom (55 percent) and doing related classwork (49 percent).Texting in class is a source of constant frustration to professors, but about 30 percent of students reported that their instructors did not have a policy on the subject. (Of course there is a chance some of those students didn’t read the syllabus.)

Continue reading “How much do students text in class?”

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kids don’t seem to be at school or work

images-1About 15 percent of American youths between the ages of 16 and 24 do not work or attend school, according to a new study released Monday and discussed on ThinkProgress: ‘ The report, from the Opportunity Nation coalition, underscores how economic mobility is increasingly out of reach for the millennial generation.

“These six million idle young people are concentrated in states with lower incomes and higher unemployment rates. In Mississippi and West Virginia, one in five young adults are idle. The worst states for youth opportunity are Nevada, Mississippi and New Mexico. Urban residents are also disproportionately affected; Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Houston, Philadelphia, New York, Atlanta, and Los Angeles each have more than 100,000 youths who are unemployed and out of school.

“These troubling numbers cannot be chalked up to laziness or lack of talent, Opportunity Nation notes. The economic recession and sluggish recovery have hit teens and young adults hard, squeezing them out of the workforce even as higher education becomes less and less affordable. Young workers who do manage to get a job are often the first to be laid off when businesses face budget troubles. This effect has lasted long past the initial financial crisis — youth employment sunk to its lowest level since World War II last year.

“Meanwhile, staying in school is becoming harder for many low-income Americans. Millions of teens from poor families have had to sacrifice their educations as parents lost their jobs in the recession or had to take on multiple low-wage positions to make ends meet. College is increasingly a pipe dream for this group, as tuition costs explode and financial aid stagnates. A record number of students are now in debt, but can’t find jobs that match their degree. Continue reading “kids don’t seem to be at school or work”

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Court to address death penalty and mental disability

The Supreme Court said Monday it would consider taking another step toward limiting the use of the death penalty, this time by trying to clarify the legal standard for who is ineligible for the ultimate punishment because of mental disability, reports the LA Times.images

“At issue is whether states such as Florida may disqualify anyone who scores above 70 on an IQ test. A score below 70 generally indicates mental disability.

“The justices agreed to hear the case of Freddie Hall, a Florida death row inmate who killed two people in 1978, but who was described as mentally disabled when he was a child and was deemed to be mentally retarded by the judge who sentenced him to die. Three years ago, Florida prosecutors said Hall had scored a 71 on a Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale test and therefore could be executed for his crimes. At other times he scored 73 and 80.

“His case figures to be the most important death penalty dispute decided during this court term. During the last decade, the court has limited the use of the death penalty by excluding those who were younger than 18 at the time of the crime or who suffered from a significant mental disability. But until now, the court has not intervened to clarify who qualifies for an exemption based on a mental disability. “It’s been 11 years, and this issue is still not settled,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Continue reading “Court to address death penalty and mental disability”

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Spanking and adolescent aggression

images-1A recent long-term study confirms that physical punishment of children contributes to later aggression, often manifest in teenage years

Looking at data collected in the early 2000s, the study reveals that a decade later such children have behavior problems. Not only did behabvior become a problem, but spanked children also had lower vocabulary skills,  as reported in a Reuters story today

“Think spanking will help teach an out of control child to stay in line? A new study suggests the opposite may be true. Researchers found kids who were spanked as five-year-olds were slightly more likely to be aggressive and break rules later in elementary school. Those results are in keeping with past research, said Elizabeth Gershoff. She studies parental discipline and its effects at the University of Texas at Austin. “There’s just no evidence that spanking is good for kids,” she told Reuters Health.

“Spanking models aggression as a way of solving problems, that you can hit people and get what you want,” Gershoff, who wasn’t involved in the new study, said. “When (children) want another kid’s toy, the parents haven’t taught them how to use their words or how to negotiate.” Despite mounting evidence on the harms tied to spanking, it is “still a very typical experience” for U.S. children, the study’s lead author said. “Most kids experience spanking at least some point in time,” Michael MacKenzie, from Columbia University in New York, said. “So there’s this disconnect.” His team used data from a long-term study of children born in one of 20 U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. The new report includes about 1,900 kids. Researchers surveyed parents when children were three and five years old about whether and how often they spanked their child. Then they asked mothers about their kid’s behavior problems and gave the children a vocabulary test at age nine.  Continue reading “Spanking and adolescent aggression”

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Academia built on slavery

Many U.S. universities were built on slave money.

Harvard, Princeton, Brown,  William and Mary, and Emory are a few names on the list, as discussed in an article in yesterday’s New York Times reviewing Craig Steven Wilder’s new book: Ebony and Ivory: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities:images

When Craig Steven Wilder first began digging around in university archives in 2002 for material linking universities to slavery, he recalled recently, he was “a little bashful” about what he was looking for. “Ebony and Ivy,” by Mr. Wilder, cites this ad for the sale of slaves by a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania. “I would say, ‘I’m interested in 18th-century education,’ or something general like that,” Mr. Wilder said. But as he told the archivists more, they would bring out ledgers, letters and other documents.

“They’d push them across the table and say, ‘You might want to take a peek at this,’ ” he said. “It was often really great material that was cataloged in ways that was hard to find.” Now, more than a decade later, Mr. Wilder, a history professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a new book, “Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities,” which argues provocatively that the nation’s early colleges, alongside church and state, were “the third pillar of a civilization based on bondage.”He also has a lot more company in the archives. Since 2003, when Ruth Simmons, then the president of Brown University, announced a headline-grabbing initiative to investigate that university’s ties to slavery, scholars at William and Mary, Harvard, Emory, the University of Maryland, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and elsewhere have completed their own studies. Continue reading “Academia built on slavery”

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Disability Awareness month

October is Disability History & Awareness month, a time to recognize and advocate for ongoing struggles for freedom and equality that involve the fates of millions of people. As a recent post in the Wisconsin Gazette puts the matter,

“It is really “our” struggle because any of us — due to injury, illness or quirky chromosomes — can develop a disability at any time.

“Many people are angry about the government shutdown and budget impasse, but among those  taking direct action have been members of the kick-ass disability rights group ADAPT.

“ADAPT is a network of activists who engage in direct action to assert the rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom and independence. It focuses on the de-institutionalization of people with disabilities and is incensed at government policies that hinder that process. Its slogan is “Free Our People!”

“On Sept. 30, hundreds of ADAPTers protested at the U.S. Capitol, while 20 stormed the office of House Speaker John Boehner. Their message: Don’t play politics with programs that assist people with disabilities to lead independent lives.

“Sixty activists, many in wheelchairs, were arrested at the White House. They had squeezed through barriers, chained themselves at the gates and refused to move. They were protesting Vice President Joe Biden’s broken campaign promise to meet with them about community living issues and a new regulation proposed by the Department of Labor that ADAPT believes will restrict the hours of home-care attendants and people’s rights to choose their own attendants. The regulation extends overtime pay to home-care workers, a long-overdue pay equity issue, supported by the Service Employees International Union. However, because Medicaid is not increasing reimbursement rates for home care, providers are likely to cut or cap the hours attendants work. This could lead to inadequate home-care services and the shift of some people back to institutional care, which is better covered by Medicaid. Continue reading “Disability Awareness month”

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The coming abortion war

Convinced Roe v. Wade can’t be overturned now, pro-life activists have passed laws in 12 states restricting termination after 20 weeks—about the time some fetal defects emerge.

These states, as well as the House of Representatives, have voted to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks

—the exact moment when some parents are just learning about severe or even fatal defects, reports Beth Reinhard in today’s edition of The Atlantic.

“Only Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas include exceptions for fetal impairment. And while these 20-week

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bans affect a tiny fraction of abortions—only 1.3 percent occur after 21 weeks, the benchmark used by the federal government—they predominantly target women who are carrying gravely impaired babies or whose pregnancies are putting their own health at risk. With very few exceptions, these are women who had every intent to carry their babies to term until forced, at five months pregnant, to make a swift and excruciating decision.

“Our experience has been that parents who have gone through this don’t talk about it,” Kyle says. “We wanted to tell our story for the people who didn’t feel like they could. A family friend said it was like joining a secret club that no one wants to join.”

“Banning abortions after 20 weeks represents the new frontier of the antiabortion movement, aimed at pushing past the boundaries set by the Supreme Court in 1973. The Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortions until a fetus is viable outside the womb, around 24 weeks. The antiabortion movement’s case for earlier restrictions is that a fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks, but the ultimate goal is much more sweeping: to send a legal challenge to the Supreme Court that would overturn Roe.

“The constitutional implications aren’t lost on Abbey Sanders, who emphasizes that she lives in Arkansas only because her husband is stationed there. She’s also seen him through deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. “I would have had to leave the state as a military spouse to get an abortion,” Abbey says. “That seems unfair when I don’t have a choice about where I live. I think it’s unconstitutional, and my husband supports and defends the Constitution on a daily basis.”

“There are also public-policy consequences. Half of the dozen states that have passed 20-week abortion bans—Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas—are in the South, which has the highest poverty and uninsured rates and the lowest median incomes in the country, according to the Census Bureau. That means families in these states are among the most disadvantaged when it comes to caring for unwanted and disabled children. Arkansas, for example, ranks near the bottom in unintended and teen pregnancy rates (46th), number of doctors per resident (44th), and public health as measured by obesity, smoking, and diabetes (48th), according to data from nonprofit organizations and the federal government. Nearly one in five people in Arkansas have no health insurance. About the same proportion are living below the federal poverty line. Continue reading “The coming abortion war”

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The Irvine Great Park

The housing market’s resurgence could jump-start one of Southern California’s most ambitious but long-stymied projects: Irvine’s Great Park.

imagesConceived more than a decade ago — and designed to span twice the size of New York City’s Central Park — the project has encountered one disaster after another, including the housing market collapse, the bankruptcy of lender Lehman Bros. and the elimination of the state’s redevelopment agencies, reports today’s Los Angeles Times.

“The slow pace of work has inspired sharp criticism, in part because Irvine spent almost all of the project’s initial allocation of $200 million on marketing, concerts, fairs and planning. Now, with the housing market in a healthy recovery, the project’s developer has offered to finance and build a big chunk of the park in exchange for the city nearly doubling the number of homes he can build.

“The way out of the economic mess is going to be public-private partnerships,” said Emile Haddad, chief executive of FivePoint Communities, the city’s development partner. “This is an excellent example.” Haddad has offered to build 688 acres of the park for $174 million, in exchange for City Council approval of an additional 4,600 homes. He already has approval to build about 4,900.

“The city would get a 176-acre sports complex — more than twice the size of Disneyland — a 45-acre park area known as the Bosque area, a 227-acre golf course, a 35-acre canyon and a 178-acre wildlife corridor set aside as a natural reserve. Jeff Lalloway, chair of Great Park Corp. and Irvine’s mayor pro tem, said he believes that the city and Haddad will strike a deal, though he has some concerns about the long-term operating costs of the park. “I am generally confident,” Lalloway said. For now, the first phase of Haddad’s Great Park Neighborhoods, one of the region’s largest residential developments, has begun sales on the northern edge of the future park. More than 700 homes are planned for this phase. In the first weekend the Pavilion Park neighborhood opened, an estimated 28,000 people toured model homes by eight home builders, according to FivePoint.Proceeds from the sale of homes will help finance the park. Much of the infrastructure needed — such as sewers and streets — would be shared between the park and the housing development and would be FivePoint’s responsibility to install. Situated on the site of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, the park site is now mostly a series of fenced-in, aging military structures and old runways. Only a fraction of the park has been built, including a free balloon ride and some other facilities.”

 

More at: http://www.latimes.com/business/realestate/la-fi-great-park-20131019,0,7290631.story

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Caregivers live longer

The common wisdom in the fields of medicine and social work has held that those who care for a long-term seriously disabled person have their lives shortened as a consequence. Compensating anecdotes are often rendered about increased empathy, fulfillment, and so on. But the overriding narrative is generally rather grim.

Now a new study tells the opposite story, as reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology: a large new study shows that caregivers live as long or longer than non-caregivers, although the kind of care (which seems crucial in such a discussion) it not directly discussed in the abstract available online.

“Previous studies have provided conflicting evidence on whether being a family caregiver is associated with increased or decreased risk for all-cause mortality. This study examined whether 3,503 family caregivers enrolled in the national Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study showed differences in all-cause mortality from 2003 to 2012 compared with a propensity-matched sample of non-caregivers. Caregivers were individually matched with 3,503 non-caregivers by using a propensity score matching procedure based on 15 demographic, health history, and health behavior covariates.

“During an average 6-year follow-up period, 264 (7.5%) of the caregivers died, which was significantly fewer than the 315 (9.0%) matched noncaregivers who died during the same period. A proportional hazards model indicated that caregivers had an 18% reduced rate of death compared with non-caregivers (hazard ratio = 0.823, 95% confidence interval: 0.699, 0.969). Subgroup analyses by race, sex, caregiving relationship, and caregiving strain failed to identify any subgroups with increased rates of death compared with matched non-caregivers. Continue reading “Caregivers live longer”

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College women drinking

imagesYesterday, Slate writer Emily Yoffe published a story on the importance of teaching college women that binge drinking raises their risk of being raped. It was a story your mom probably would have approved of—prescriptive, groaningly fuddy-duddyish (“it’s possible to have fun without being drunk”), with the cadences of a health education video, writes Emily Matchar in today’s edition of The Atlantic:

“But the basic point seemed to me indisputably sensible: College-aged women should be taught that moderating their alcohol use is an important tool in staying safe from sexual assault. In this age of beer pong and Jäger bombs, when 64 percent of college women drink more than the recommended weekly amount, this seems well worth repeating.

“The Internet, apparently, did not agree. Within hours of publication, the story was generating furious responses. The popular blog Feministing called the piece a “rape denialism manifesto,” and accused Yoffe of “blaming women for their own rapes.” Salon called the piece “rape apologia,” and said Yoffe was helping promote “rape culture.” Writer Jessica Valenti tweeted, “I hope Emily Yoffe can sleep well tonight knowing she made the world a little bit safer for rapists.” These responses are distressing. The link between drinking and the risk of sexual assault is indisputable. And teaching women this fact should be seen as empowering, not victim-blaming.

“As Yoffe wrote, sexual assault is horrifyingly common on college campuses. A full 20 percent of college women will be sexually assaulted before graduation (men are not immune either; 1 in 10 rape victims are male). Eighty percent of the time, alcohol will be involved. “Most sexual assaults occurred after women voluntarily consumed alcohol,” reported a study in theAmerican Journal of College Health. Another study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs showed that colleges with the most drinking had the highest rates of sexual assault. Continue reading “College women drinking”

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Cognitive therapy and depression

Cognitive behavioural therapy is more effective than standard care for people with hypochondria or health anxiety, say researchers writing in The Lancet.

As the BBC reported today, “In their study, 14% of patients given CBT regained normal anxiety levels against 7% given the usual care.

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“The researchers say nurses could easily be trained to offer the psychological therapy.  Between 10% and 20% of hospital patients are thought to worry obsessively about their health. Previous studies have shown that CBT, which aims to change thought patterns and behaviour, is an effective treatment for other anxiety disorders. But there is a shortage of specialists trained to deliver CBT, and as a result waiting lists can be long.

“In this study, 219 people with health anxiety received an average of six sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy while 225 received reassurance and support, which is standard. After periods of six months and 12 months, patients in the CBT group showed “significantly greater improvement in self-rated anxiety and depression symptoms” compared with standard care, the study showed. There was also a particularly noticeable reduction in health anxiety in the CBT group straight after treatment began.

“The therapy was delivered by non-CBT experts who had been trained in only two workshops.Study author Prof Peter Tyrer, head of the Centre for Mental Health at Imperial College London, said the results showed that hypochondria could be successfully treated, in a “relatively cheap” way, by general nurses with minimal training in a hospital setting. Reducing the anxiety levels of 14% of the CBT group might not seem a high figure, he said, but these were often people with serious problems who had sometimes spent thousands of pounds on private health assessments because of fears about their health. “Health anxiety is costly for healthcare providers and an effective treatment could potentially save money by reducing the need for unnecessary tests and emergency hospital admissions,” Prof Tyrer said. Writing about the study in The Lancet, Chris Williams from the University of Glasgow and Allan House from the University of Leeds, said the findings were “intriguing” but translating them into services was “problematic”. Continue reading “Cognitive therapy and depression”

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Police profiling of transgender Americans

The modern gay rights movement was born on June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn, on Christopher Street in New York City’s West Village, writes Jordan Flaherty in the first of a three-part series in Al Jazeera.

“Resistance broke out in response to a violent police raid against the gay community, and riots continued for several days. Many of the key leaders were transgender women, such as Sylvia Rivera, who had started her activism during the 1950s civil rights movement and continued until her death in 2002.

More than 40 years later, correspondent Christof Putzel and I returned to Christopher Street and found that even in a place long considered a haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, many LGBT individuals are still living in fear of police violence.

Mitchyll Mora, a young activist, said police had harassed him for dressing feminine, and his friends for not fitting into narrow gender roles.

“Christopher Street is a historic location, and it’s always been a haven for queer folks, especially young folks of color. But with gentrification, there’s been aggressive policing here, and that’s a really scary thing,” Moratold us. “It’s scary when safe spaces are taken away from us.”

It’s not just in New York City. A 2012 study [PDF] by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs found that transgender people across the U.S. experience three times as much police violence as non-transgender individuals. Those numbers are even higher for transgender people of color. Even when transgender people were the victims of hate crimes, 48 percent reported receiving mistreatment from the police when they went for help. Andrea Ritchie, an attorney specializing in police misconduct, told us that law enforcement sees policing gender roles as part of their work.

“I think most people are familiar with racial profiling,” she told us. “But I think people are less familiar with how gender is really central to policing in the United States. That includes expectations in terms of how women are supposed to look, how men are supposed to look, how women are supposed to act and how men are supposed to act.” Continue reading “Police profiling of transgender Americans”

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Improving adjunct working conditions

Collecting better data on adjunct employment on campus. Inviting adjuncts to participate in departmental

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meetings and curriculum design. Some of the biggest ways institutions can improve the working conditions of adjunct faculty are free or cost little, debunking a common argument against rethinking higher education’s changing faculty make-up, reports InsideHigher Ed on a new study.

“Or so argues a new paper from the Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success, a partnership between the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education and the Association of American Colleges and Universities to examine and develop the role of adjunct faculty.

“[Although] leaders in higher education do face budgetary constraints and uncertainty over future funding sources,it is a myth that resources are the sole reason that prevents us from ensuring that all our faculty members are adequately supported so they can provide the highest quality of instruction to their students,” reads Delphi’s “Dispelling the Myths: Locating the Resources Needed to Support Non-Tenure-Track Faculty.”

“The paper, written by Adrianna Kezar, director of the Delphi Project and professor of higher education at the University of Southern California, and Dan Maxey, Kezar’s research assistant, outlines a variety of practices institutions may adopt to better support all faculty – not just adjuncts – rated on a scale from “$” (free to marginal in cost) to “$$$$” (indicating a “more substantial” expense).

“Some obvious means of supporting adjunct instructors, who make up nearly three-fourths of the higher education work force — better pay, benefits — are costly. But others — such as enhancing data collection efforts to better track adjunct employment on campus, ensuring protections for academic freedom in faculty handbooks, and inviting adjuncts to participate in curricular discussions and governance – aren’t. Continue reading “Improving adjunct working conditions”

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Tough Guise II

In 1999 Jackson Katz headlined a documentary that powerfully revealed the mask of masculinity, a pretense of stoicism and readiness for violence that many men feel compelled to put on, at least part of the time, reports Sociological Images today:  “The film, Tough Guise: Violence, Manhood, and American Culture, became a staple in classes on gender across the country.

“Today marks the release of Tough Guise 2 and SocImages was given the honor of debuting an exclusive clip from the new film.  In the segment below, Katz explains that men aren’t naturally violent but, instead, often learn how to be so.  Focusing on socialization, however, threatens to make invisible the socialization agents.  In other words, Katz argues, men don’t just learn to be more violent than they otherwise would be, they are actively taught.

“He begins with the fact that the video game and film industries both take money from companies that make firearms to feature their products.  The U.S. military then uses the video game Call of Duty for recruitment and training.  It’s no use arguing whether the media, the military, or the gun industry are responsible for rates of violence, he observes, since they’re in cahoots.  These extreme examples intersect with the everyday, mundane lessons about the importance of being “real men” that boys and men receive from the media and their peers, parents, coaches, and more.

“This update of the original will tell the compelling story about manhood and violence to a new generation and remind older ones of the ongoing crisis of masculinity in America.”

 

More at: http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2013/10/15/tough-guise-2-a-new-film-on-the-ongoing-crisis-of-violent-masculinity/

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Google and evil

Last week, another distasteful use of your personal information by Google came to light:

The company plans to attach your name and likeness to advertisements delivered across its products without your permission.

Reported today in The Atlantic, “As happens every time the search giant does something unseemly, Google’s plan to turn its users into unwitting

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endorsers has inspired a new round of jabs at Google’s famous slogan “Don’t be evil.” While Google has deemphasized the motto over time, it remains prominent in the company’s corporate code of conduct, and, as a cornerstone of its 2004 Founder’s IPO Letter, the motto has become an inescapable component of the company’s legacy.

“Famous though the slogan might be, its meaning has never been clear. In the 2004 IPO letter, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin clarify that Google will be “a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains.” But what counts as “good things,” and who constitutes “the world?” The slogan’s significance has likely changed over time, but today it seems clear that we’re misunderstanding what “evil” means to the company. For today’s Google, evil isn’t tied to malevolence or moral corruption, the customary senses of the term. Rather, it’s better to understand Google’s sense of evil as the disruption of its brand of (computational) progress.

“Of course, Google doesn’t say so in as many words; the company never defines “evil” directly. But when its executives talk about evil, they leave us clues. In a 2003 Wired profile of the company, Josh McHugh noted that while other large companies maintain lengthy corporate codes of conduct, Google’s entire policy was summarized by just those three words, “Don’t be evil.” While there’s some disagreement about its origins, Gmail creator Paul Buchheit reportedly conceived of the slogan, calling it “kind of funny” and “a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.” Continue reading “Google and evil”

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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”

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Tales from the toy aisle

The majority of the Toys R Us Lego Isle is a very familiar shade of blue, copyrighted and trademarked, and gleaming under the florescent lights.In one brightly lit section, however, pink reigns supreme: the section full

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of toys marketed to little girls.

As discussed in today’s fbomb, “Most of these toys can be placed in at least one of three categories: luxury play (play that seems to serve no other purpose than to stimulate the girls’ imaginations in settings of extreme opulence and wealth), housework play (in which a child mimics doing household chores, including anything from an Easy Bake Oven to a baby doll to a plastic kitchenette), or interpersonal relationship play (in which a child is meant to identify with a doll of some kind, and she and other “dolls” are meant to interact). Many of these toys reinforce sexist and harmful ideas in girls that invariably inculcates passivity and conformism in adult women.

A classic example of sexist toys can be found in the “household maintenance” aisle of Toys R Us, win which things like toy brooms and dustpans are marketed specifically to girls. Such housework toys send the message that housework is traditionally feminine and expected of wives and mothers. Girls can use toy brooms to pretend they’re cleaning their family’s house or pretend to make her family dinner in a toy kitchenette. The fact that these toys exist is not an issue: some children (boys and girls alike) may actually enjoy pretending to cook or sweep. The problem lies in the fact that the vast majority of these items are being marketed to girls, not boys.

But it’s not just that gender-specific toys indoctrinate girls to do gendered work: many also teach young girls to covet lives of luxury, status, and indolence, which invariably set them up for failure, defeat, and despair. These “luxury” toys reinforce the disparity between what girls are taught to want and what they actually receive or are able to achieve. Girls are practically trained to expect these lavish lifestyles when the reality is that they will more than likely end up working for the rest of their lives, both at home and in the workforce. That is not to say that parents either have the choice of buying their children things like toy yachts or sitting their children to explain the details about living in abject poverty. Rather, especially given that in comparison to the rest of the world most Americans are incredibly blessed and privileged, the ideal lifestyle luxury toys encourage girls to aspire to is disproportionate to how most Americans actually live and could in fact be detrimental to the way girls view society and shape their own goals. Continue reading “Tales from the toy aisle”

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Shutting down mental health care

In recent days the news has been filled with reports of shutdown related injustices to families of fallen U.S. soldiers, patients in government cancer treatment programs, students reliant on federal aid. As Forbes Magazine reports, mental health care is also taking a hit.

“In the months leading up to World Mental Health Day, DC has been shaken by a series of violent events that ended with innocent lives lost and our country’s mental health services called into question. imgresDuring this same time period, Washington, DC has been consumed by a government shutdown, with lawmakers and policymakers trying to determine how to rein in our country’s financial burdens and overspending. Unfortunately, as federal and state governments look to cut budgets at every turn, mental and behavioral health services are often on the chopping block first. Financial cuts, compounded with US stigma often applied to mental health troubles and disparate access to services across the county, mean that those who need services most are often those left without proper care.

“August though October brought DC into the spotlight for many reasons, the saddest of which is the violence that was covered by mass media as two shootings occurred. In one case, Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old, perpetrated a mass shooting that left 12 people dead, in Washington’s Navy Yard. Previous to the shooting, it was reported that Mr. Alexis was treated at the VA for mental health issues including sleep disorders and paranoia, but had not lost clearance.

“Miriam Carey, also 34, reportedly had an unhealthy obsession with the White House when she drove her car into the White House gates and led police on a chase around DC before being killed. Although she had no reported psychosis or supposed violent intent, it was noted in the months leading up to the incident she believed that the President had been stalking her and might have suffered from postpartum depression. When killed by authorities on Pennsylvania Avenue, she had her 18-month-old child in the car.”

“Although societal stigma and knowledge of where to access behavioral and mental services are often barriers to care, budget cuts continue to make seeking care more difficult. Whether this be through decreases in available services, lack of providers due to poor reimbursements or less preventative actions in communities, the impact of mental health funding shortages is great. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, “increasingly, emergency rooms, homeless shelters and jails are struggling with the effects of people falling through the cracks due to lack of needed mental health services and supports.” Continue reading “Shutting down mental health care”

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In Iceland 1 in 10 will publish a book

imagesIceland is experiencing a book boom. This island nation of just over 300,000 people has more writers, more books published and more books read per head, than anywhere else in the world, reports the BBC.

“It is hard to avoid writers in Reykjavik.There is a phrase in Icelandic, “ad ganga med bok I maganum”, everyone gives birth to a book. Literally, everyone “has a book in their stomach”.

“One in ten Icelanders will publish one.

“Does it get rather competitive?” I ask the young novelist, Kristin Eirikskdottir. “Yes. Especially as I live with my mother and partner, who are also full-time writers. But we try to publish in alternate years so we do not compete too much.” Special saga tours – saga as in story, that is, not over-50s holidays – show us story-plaques on public buildings. Dating from the 13th Century, Icelandic sagas tell the stories of the country’s Norse settlers, who began to arrive on the island in the late 9th Century. Sagas are written on napkins and coffee cups. Each geyser and waterfall we visit has a tale of ancient heroes and heroines attached. Our guide stands up mid-tour to recite his own poetry – our taxi driver’s father and grandfather write biographies. Public benches have barcodes so you listen to a story on your smartphone as you sit. Reykjavik is rocking with writers. Continue reading “In Iceland 1 in 10 will publish a book”

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Goodbye Columbus

California could soon be the next state to do away with Columbus Day thanks to a bill proposed by Assembly member Roger Hernandez (D-West Covina), reports Huffington Post

“The Native American Day bill, or AB 55, would replace Columbus Day, which falls on the second Monday in October, with “Native American Day.” Assembly member Hernandez proposed the bill Monday.

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“Native American Day is already recognized in California. Gov. Ronald Reagan designated the fourth Friday in September for the day of remembrance in 1968, and it became an official state holiday in 1998. However, neither Columbus Day nor Native American Day are paid state holidays. Columbus Day used to be one for decades, until the recession moved California representatives to eliminate the paid holiday in 2009. Hernandez’s bill would reinstate the paid holiday, which would close down state agencies and give employees a paid day off, but rename it “Native American Day.” The September day of remembrance designated by Reagan would no longer be needed.

“We’re not trying to rewrite history,” said Assemblymember Hernandez in a phone call with The Huffington Post. “We just want to provide recognition and credit to the true discoverers of the land.” When asked about the fact that many Italian-Americans view Columbus Day as a cultural heritage celebration, Assemblymember Hernandez explained that the cultural contributions of an entire community should be viewed separately from the actions of one man. “Why replace it? That’s the day we honor Columbus for discovering the Americas,” said Hernandez. “And that’s very unfair to the original inhabitants.” He then went on to compare Native American Day to Holocaust Remembrance day. “When we honor the victims that have suffered from genocide in Germany, it isn’t to be anti-German,” he explained. “It’s to bring proper recognition to people who have suffered and been displaced. This bill is looking to do that for the original settlers in the Americas.”

 

More at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/columbus-day-native-american-day_n_2451999.html