Tag: gender

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A “Ministry for Men” Proposal

Getting unfairly greater pay for equal work, having too much responsibility, occupying a disproportionately large number of leadership positions – might this be more than men can handle? Jenna Price comments in today’s Canberra Times that there may be a solution in a “Ministry for Men”images-4

“For that matter, I might just have a go at it myself.

“And if I were the Minister for Men, there are some clear areas where I could make a difference. Blokes wouldn’t have to shoulder the responsibility for occupying 90 per cent of all the board seats in the top 200 companies listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. That’s far too much of a burden for any one group.

“I’d slash wages for men, so they wouldn’t have to be paid more to do the same work as women any longer. Why advocate for a pay cut? Because the gender pay gap is a trick to restrict mens’ roles. When you get paid more to do the same work as someone else, it leads to all sorts of expectations. It leads to the expectation that men will never want to stay home with their kids – or work part-time – or take time off to care for their elderly parents. We know that’s just not true any more; and we can’t pigeonhole men any longer. They’re men, not pigeons*, and they have a right to live their lives as God intended. Continue reading “A “Ministry for Men” Proposal”

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On transgender military service

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s announcement just weeks before leaving office that he would bring an end to the policy of excluding women from combat assignments surprised, well, everyone. To call this move historic is to put it mildly. Today’s Huffington Post carried the following article on the last frontier’s of military equality: the ability of transgender service people to serve openly:Unknown

“Not long after that, he made history again, bringing a measure of equity to the benefits offered to same-sex military families before leaving D.C. to return to his much-loved walnut farm in California. History will remember Panetta’s tenure at the Defense Department favorably for these decisions to change policies that no longer reflected the reality of our wars or, just as importantly, the values of our nation.

“As a woman veteran, I was elated with these changes. As the wife of a woman veteran (my wife Danyelle was a West Point classmate of mine and served as an Army officer with honor and distinction), I felt encouraged by them.

“But as a transgender veteran, and an advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) service members, veterans and their families, the changes that Secretary Panetta brought about in his last days in office have left me emboldened. Here’s why: As the combat exclusion for women comes to an end and open service for gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans edges closer to truly equal service, it becomes more and more obvious that there is no longer any rational basis on which to bar qualified transgender people from serving in our armed forces. Continue reading “On transgender military service”

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Reflections on Islamic feminism

In some Muslim circles, the “f” word (feminism) raises as many tensions as eyebrows, immediately conjuring images of the dominating, angry, family-hating woman, writes Rachelle Fawcett in todays Al Jazeera.images

“But like other images that come to mind upon mention of any label – including the image of the oppressed woman that often comes to mind when one hears “Muslim” – this gut reaction is based on stereotypes that may be true in a very specific historical and social context, but does not hold water when compared to a larger reality, and therefore does not justify the hostility that follows.

“While popular Islamic rhetoric touts the liberation of women with the coming of Islam over 1,400 years ago, to continually return to this story does nothing to alleviate women’s suffering today except by going back to the beginning, starting with Islam’s foundational text, the Quran. Continue reading “Reflections on Islamic feminism”

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Arizona reverses again to worse law

Last night the Arizona House Appropriations Committee passed a new version of the notorious “Bathroom Bill.”

SB1045 makes it against state law for local governments to pass laws or regulations which ensure access to public access to “privacy areas” based on “gender identity or expression,”  reports Huffington Post.

“It nullifies existing laws that do, and states that business owners can’t be held accountable if they deny access to an individual if the individual’s gender expression doesn’t meet the business owner’s approval. Almost as appalling was the designation of this bill as an emergency measure. Continue reading “Arizona reverses again to worse law”

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David Bowie’s androgynous legacy

The new David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum was already a hot ticket even before the show opens to the public this weekend. “David Bowie is” shows how, in the 1970s, David Bowie’s passport to fame was his daringly ambiguous gender presentation. But in a piece on today’s BBC asks, did appearances deceive?imgres-2

“These days Dylan Jones is editor of British GQ magazine and very accustomed to living the high-life. But in July 1972 he was an ordinary 12-year-old living with his parents in an ordinary part of Kent. Then one evening, his life changed.”I can picture the exact moment: my father was away and my mother was out in the garden,” he says. “So I was alone in a terrace house in Deal watching Top of the Pops.”Normally it would have been a forgettable Thursday but I was about to be astounded. It was the first time we were exposed to Ziggy Stardust in all his androgynous glory. Continue reading “David Bowie’s androgynous legacy”

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Smith college transgender confusion

imgres-1As colleges and universities adopt increasingly inclusive stances toward transgender students, some institutions are finding themselves confused by an array of contradictory laws and government policies nationwide. As Huffington Post reports,

“An exclusive, women’s liberal arts college has rejected a transgender applicant because a government financial aid document still registers her as male.

“Calliope Wong, a student at Amity Regional Senior High School in Connecticut,posted a picture of her official rejection letter to Tumblr on March 10. Signed by Smith College’s Dean of Admission Debra Shaver, the letter thanked Wong for her application but said that “Smith is a women’s college, which means that undergraduate applicants must be female at the time of admission.” The problem, according to the letter, is that Wong’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) identified her as male. Continue reading “Smith college transgender confusion”

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Here come the Arizona bathroom police

If you think you might need to use a public restroom while you’re out and about, you might want to make sure you have your birth certificate handy, reports the Arizona Daily Star.imgres-2

“A House panel will consider legislation today to make it a crime to enter a public restroom designated for one gender or the other if you are “not legally classified” on your birth certificate as a member of that sex. The measure, SB 1432, also would apply to showers, baths, dressing rooms or locker rooms marked “men” or “women.” Continue reading “Here come the Arizona bathroom police”

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The rise of women in college

imgres-4March is women’s history month. So what better way to honor women than by taking a look at one area in which they are leading the way: education.

Women now outnumber their male counterparts in college and earn more bachelor’s degrees by a 30% to 22% margin, according to the October Bureau of Labor Statistics. MSNBC reports that “In 2011, more than30 million women received. While women have achieved parity in fields such as medicine and the law, they lag far behind men in engineering and physical science degrees. Continue reading “The rise of women in college”

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Heteronormativity in school

It’s commonly thought that teenagers these days are so much more hip about gender and sexuality than their parents ever more. But this perception can obscure the facts that concepts of “normality” and  “fitting in” still drive much of the culture of the young, As discussed today in Huffington Post:

“Popularity in middle and high school operates as a heterosexist reward system. Who “fits in” and who does not has a great deal to do with heterosexuality and gender conformity, which makes it difficult for LGBTQ kids to engage in the school social scene. For adolescents, school is (significantly) about social connections, social possibilities, social hierarchies and navigating through them. A great deal of school social life is about reinforcing the “normalcy” of heterosexuality and marking those considered to not measure up as “weird” or “less than” in some way. Continue reading “Heteronormativity in school”

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Revising video games to empower girls

imgres-2The world of video games has a long history of damsels in distress. It’s the go-to framework for endless heroic adventures where fabulous male heroes journey to save [insert female captured by villain here].

One of the earliest of these is the classic tale of a plucky, mustachioed plumber on a vertical, girder-climbing quest to save his lady Pauline from the barrel-throwing primate Donkey Kong, reports NPR today. ” It was the game that would set the stage for a long series of Mario adventures where his princess would continue to be captured and wind up “in another castle.” Continue reading “Revising video games to empower girls”

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Changes in gender and addiction

imgres-1The worse women have it, the better off they are. This is the lesson we might draw from looking at one (and only one) global trend: addiction.Salon.com reports that “Worldwide, women have always had lower rates of drug and alcohol use and dependence than men. Butas women’s access to opportunities grows along with a nation’s affluence, this gender gap begins to close. In fact, just as women often outstrip men in the classroom and office if given the chance, they have already forged ahead in the abuse of certain substances. It may not be the most celebratory way to mark International Women’s Day (March 8), but the fact is, equal rights have their penalties.

Continue reading “Changes in gender and addiction”

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Today’s literary gender gap

UnknownMale authors and reviewers continue to take a disproportionate slice of the literary pie, according to new research which reveals that publications including the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the New Yorker all show a considerable bias towards men, reports todays edition of The Guardian Continue reading “Today’s literary gender gap”

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“The Civil rights issue of our time”

urlAs America continues to grow and morph as a social melting pot of differences, the issue of civil rights of each group rises to the forefront of our attention and becomes a matter to which law enforcement personnel must adjust. We adjusted during the ’60s and ’70s, evolving to recognize the rights of women and African Americans. We also evolved during the ’90s to recognize the rights of lesbians and gays. Law enforcement, often the social leadership of American society, has also become diversified with the addition of women and minorities, as well as gay and lesbian officers, within their ranks. Continue reading ““The Civil rights issue of our time””

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Gender bias in online games

Verbal abuse is a pandemic in the online gaming community.And while it affects all sorts of gamers, there’s a select brand of vitriol reserved for women who venture into voice chat. For an interesting article on this phenomenon, see themarysue.com, excerpted as follows: ” This is an oft-discussed issue, and we still don’t have a good understanding of the root causes, or of what we can do to alleviate it. But some recent academic research provides a interesting (and sobering) look at how persistent the problem is.imgres-2 Continue reading “Gender bias in online games”

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Make room for daddy

In a world in which we share an ethical imperative to value all people, this means finding a place for everyone. Consider the plight of today’s fathers. Well, not all of them, but think about the semi-evolved ones who actually think about and participate in domestic life and are willing to set aside a bit of gender privilege.imgres-5-4.21.40-PM-218x150

It turns out those fathers – the good guys, relatively speaking – have been getting mocked and bullied by mainstream media and advertising, and some of them are getting a bit weepy about it. Hence, today’s piece in the New York Times about a group of daddy bloggers who are talking about their “feelings” about it all Continue reading “Make room for daddy”

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Jailbreak the Binary

Tired of that nasty M/F gender thing? How about all binary thinking?

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A new Google Chrome app will replace any gender-specific pronoun with a neutral one and will deal with a lot of other words as well.

We installed “Jailbreak the Binary” and tested in out by searching the words “woman” and “man,” coming up with the following hits: “Person (Wikipedia),” “People.com,” “Top 99 People of 2013,” “People’s Issues, Advice and Personal Stories,”, “People’s Basketball”…  Okay, so you get the idea. Then we tried the words like “maid,” “father,” and, once again, no gender whatsoever. And when we went to look up one of our favorite newsgroups, “Feminist Philosophers,”  the search yielded the correct link, but translated it as “Androgynous Philosophers.”

We think it’s great someone came up with this. The only problem is that you need to remember to turn the thing off when you need to return to the gendered world. The description from Google reads:

View the world without gender.

Based off of “Jailbreak the Patriarchy” by Danielle Sucher, but with gender neutral pronouns and as many gender neutral other words as well.   Takes all instances of ‘male’, ‘female’, ‘he’, ‘she’, and as many other gendered words and swaps them for gender neutral versions.   When ‘OFF’ is displayed on the icon then the extension is off.

Find it at: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jailbreak-the-binary/mmdlclbfhplmbjfefngjbicmelpbbdnh

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The boss and his baby

“If you work for a company run by a male chief executive whose wife is about to give birth to a child—particularly his firstborn—you might want to cross your fingers they have a daughter” reports today’s Wall Street Journal.  ” And if you’re a male worker, you might get the short end of the stick no matter the gender or birth order.”

“The gender of a male CEO’s children is significantly linked to the salary of

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his employees, according to new research from Aalborg University economics professor Michael Dahl, University of Maryland Smith School of Business professor Cristian Dezso and Columbia Business School professor David Gaddis Ross. Presented Friday at the annual American Economic Association meeting here, the analysis suggests some explanations for the linkage, but doesn’t draw absolute conclusions. Continue reading “The boss and his baby”

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Speech style and gender performance

A researcher at the University of Colorado has presented new evidence

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on how word pronunciation affects gender recognition among listeners.

While this may not be a great revelation to those who provide or receive speech training for gender reassignment, the story has significance in further documenting the social construction of gender identity.

The story appears on a noteworthy site called RedOrbit (see link below) on science and health. According to the study, “the style of a person’s speech may help listeners guess their gender just as much as the high or low pitch of their voice.” The researcher examined transgendered people during transition to figure out how humans associate gender categories with different characteristics of speech. Continue reading “Speech style and gender performance”

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Women as breadwinners in North Korea

“In the past, our husbands would bring home rations, and we’d live off that,” says Mrs. Kim. “Now there are no rations, and the women support the families. If we don’t make money, they starve, so life is hard for women.”

It’s no secret that in many nations women are outpacing men in education and the workplace, despite being paid less. Indeed, a continuing revision of gender roles koreanseems to be occurring across a wide variety of cultures, often for varying reasons. Today’s npr.org features a story on women and the workplace in North Korea:

“Imagine going to work every day and not getting paid. Then, one day, you’re told there’s no work to do — so you must pay the company for the privilege of not working. Continue reading “Women as breadwinners in North Korea”

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College gender gap widens further

Women are a third more likely to go to university than men, according to a new report, widening the gender gulf in higher education. The Guardian reported today that”

“Demand for university places fell in terms of applications (-8.8%) and acceptances (-13%) when higher fees were introduced for students this October. But the fall in the number of young men applying was about twice that of young women, with entry rates for both at 24.6% and 32.5% respectively. Continue reading “College gender gap widens further”