Tag: women

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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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You’ve not come a long way baby

In 1968, the Phillip Morris Company launched a memorable campaign to sell Virginia Slims, a new brand of cigarettes targeting women, itself a new phenomenon. It had a brand-new slogan: “You’ve come a long way, baby.

As a thoughtful piece by Ruth Rosen in today’s edition of Le Monde explains, “The company plastered it on billboards nationwide and put it in TV ads that featured women of the early

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twentieth century being punished for smoking. In all their advertising, smoking was equated with a set of traits meant to capture the essence of women in a new era of equality — independence, slimness, glamour, and liberation

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“As it happened, the only equality this campaign ended up supporting involved lung cancer. Today, women and men die at similar rates from that disease.Still, women have come a long way since the mid-twentieth century, and it’s worth considering just how far — and just how far we have to go.

Once upon a time

“These days it may be hard for some to believe, but before the women’s movement burst on the scene in the late 1960s, newspapers published ads for jobs on different pages, segregated by gender. Employers legally paid women less than men for the same work. Some bars refused to serve women and all banks denied married women credit or loans, a practice which didn’t change until 1974. Some states even excluded women from jury duty.

“Radio producers considered women’s voices too abrasive to be on the air and television executives believed that women didn’t have sufficient credibility to anchor the news. Few women ran big corporations or universities, or worked as firefighters and police officers. None sat on the Supreme Court, installed electrical equipment, climbed telephone poles, or owned construction companies. All hurricanes had female names, due to the widely held view that women brought chaos and destruction to society.

“As late as 1970, Dr. Edgar Berman, a consultant to presidents and to Medicare, proclaimed on television that women were too tortured by hormonal disturbances to assume the presidency. Few people ran into women professors, doctors, or lawyers. Everyone addressed a woman as either Miss or Mrs, depending on her marital status, and if a woman needed an abortion, legal nowhere in America, she risked her life searching among quacks in back alleys for a competent and compassionate doctor.”

 

Complete story at: http://mondediplo.com/openpage/you-ve-come-a-long-way-baby-or-have-you

 

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The Magdalene laundry slave women

imgresAs if the Catholic Church doesn’t have enough problems.

As many as 15,000 Irish women and girls were reportedly held in slave-like conditions in nunneries, where they were held against their will and forced to work in laundries without pay under harsh conditions through the late 1990s.

Originally established to incarcerate Protestant women and girls, the laundries became prisons run by Catholic nuns to house “fallen” women or those “troubled” with problems like learning disabilities. It seems God works in mysterious ways. Continue reading “The Magdalene laundry slave women”

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Bad habits cause more cancer in men

These days men die five years younger than women, typically expiring at 76  as women live to 81. For the longest time the leading reason was heart disease. But now things are changing. As todays’ Guarding reports:

“Men are 35% more likely to die

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from cancer than women, with men’s drinking and eating habits, late diagnosis and advances in breast cancer treatment cited for the stark differential.

An analysis of the most recent UK deaths from cancer found that 202 out of every 100,000 men died from cancer in 2010 compared with 147 per 100,000 women.

“When sex-specific forms of the disease are excluded, such as prostate, testicular and ovarian cancer, the gender gap is even wider, with men 67% more likely to die. And when only working age people are looked at men under 65 have a 58% greater chance of dying than women of the same age. The sexes’ respective likelihood of death varies depending on the type of cancer. Men are almost three times as likely as women to die of oesophageal cancer and almost twice as likely to die from liver cancer.

The figures come from a new report produced by Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the Men’s Health Forum (MHF) and the National Cancer Intelligence Network, called “Excess cancer burden in men”, which is published on Tuesday at an MHF conference. It has prompted calls for men to adopt healthier lifestyles and the NHS to do more to spot cancer in men earlier.

“There are a variety of potential explanations for the difference. “The reasons for the increased risk of cancer in men versus women are not completely understood but experts believe that lifestyle is important. Men are more likely to drink alcohol and be overweight, and in the past they were more likely to smoke. All three are significant risk factors for a range of cancer types,” said a separate men’s cancer briefing, produced by CRUK and also released on Tuesday.

“Ciaran Devane, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support, said the stark difference was alarming. He highlighted late diagnosis as a key factor and cited the fact that 24% of men with prostate cancer visited their GP at least three times before their disease was identified, compared with 8% of women with breast cancer, according to the National Cancer Experience Survey. In 2011 CRUK estimated that 45% of all cancers in men could be prevented if men stopped smoking, ate a healthier diet, drank less and weighed less.”

 

For more, see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/29/men-cancer-deaths-greater-women

 

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Strong public support for women in combat

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say that, given the opportunity, they would vote “for” allowing women to serve in combat roles.These results are from a Gallup survey conducted just after U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the Pentagon is lifting the ban on women serving in direct combat. Gallup states that:”The findings, from a quick-reaction poll conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking on Jan. 24, also show that men and women are equally likely to favor allowing women to serve in combat roles.

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“There are modest partisan differences. Democrats, including independents who lean Democratic, are more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to support allowing women to serve in combat — 83% vs. 70% — although clear majorities from both parties favor it. Those who are younger are more likely to favor the policy than are those who are older. Among those aged 18 to 49, 84% favor the policy, compared with 63% of those aged 50 and older — a difference of 21 percentage points. Continue reading “Strong public support for women in combat”

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Non-western feminist reading

“Too often ‘feminism’ is understood through a western lens, and this includes African-American and Latino feminism, as practiced in the academy,” reads an item re-posted on Because We’re Still Oppressed,”which continues:  “Positions at the margins of feminism, developed from theoretical frameworks that do not rely on western epistemology are necessary to disrupt the theoretical assumptions that we have grown too comfortable with.

“Further, it is my intention that, as this list circulates tumblr through reblogs, more texts will be added to it so that space can be made for voices that are all too often unheard, new voices can be added to the feminist “canon,” and we can recognize the very real need for feminisms that arise in contexts outside the american and the western theoretical.”

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Maria Lugones “On the logic of pluralist feminism” in Pilgrimages

Alison Bailey “Locating Traitorous Identities” (about how privileged should proceed)

Uma Narayan, Chapter One, “Contesting Cultures: ‘Westernization,’ Respect for Cultures, and Third-World Feminists” in Dislocating Cultures (about what is really western about our (eastern) feminism)

bell hooks “Sisterhood: political solidarity among women” in FEMINIST theory

Sumbul Ali-Karamali, “Women in Islam: Marriage, Divorce, Polygamy, and that Veil Thing” inThe Muslim Next Door

Amina Wadud “Rights and Roles of Women” in Qur’an and Woman

Azizah al-Hibri “The Nature of Islamic Marriage” in Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective

Birdwhistell, Joanne D. 2007. Mencius and masculinities: Dynamics of power, morality, and maternal thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Butnor, Ashby. 2001. Self and social engagement in Zen Buddhism and Western feminism. East-West Connections 1(1).

Dalmiya, Vrinda. 1998a. Not just “Staying Alive.” Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research 15 (3): 97-116.

 

Complete list at: http://oppressedbrowngirlsdoingthings.tumblr.com/post/41260621801/non-western-feminism-a-list

 

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Women to serve in combat

imgres-1 “Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is lifting the military’s official ban on women in combat, which will open up hundreds of thousands of additional front-line jobs to them, senior defense officials said Wednesday,” reports the New York Times.

“The groundbreaking decision overturns a 1994 Pentagon rule that restricts women from artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles, even though in reality women have frequently found themselves in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where more than 20,000 have served. As of last year, more than 800 women had been wounded in the two wars and more than 130 had died.

“Defense officials offered few details about Mr. Panetta’s decision but described it as the beginning of a process to allow the branches of the military to put the change into effect. Defense officials said Mr. Panetta had made the decision on the recommendation of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Continue reading “Women to serve in combat”

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Women making (some) more movies

“Claire Danes Flaunts Post-Baby Body” was the headline ABC News chose to begin its Golden Globe online coverage. Then there was all the media fuss about what many thought Jodie Foster was going to say.

But if one looks beyond the headlines to the past year’s statistics, women have been some discernable gains in the notoriously male-dominated movie industry.

Last year nearly 10 percent of the top box office earners were made by women directors, nearly double that of 2011.Similar statistics characterize overall

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employment in the entertainment industry, with UC San Diego’s Celluloid Ceiling report saying that women now account for 11 percent of movie jobs of all kinds.

Obviously it’s going to be a long haul, as discussed in a recent New York Times article:

“The storyteller’s gender matters. When more than nine-tenths of movies are made from the male perspective, Continue reading “Women making (some) more movies”

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Monogamy is overrated, research shows

imgresThis may sound like an old Henny Youngman joke, but long-term couples are not the world’s happiest people. Nor are they the least happy. In fact, a new study appearing in

Personality and Social Psychology Review says that monogamy doesn’t really matter very much at all. As Salon reports,

“Researchers looked at consensual non-monogamy — relationships in which both adults agree to have multiple sexual or romantic partners — among gay couples and found nearly identical levels of satisfaction as those in monogamous partnerships.

“Men reported that their open relationships accommodated their intimacy needs as well as their desires for sexual diversity. Continue reading “Monogamy is overrated, research shows”

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China’s growing gender gap

imgresThe now well-known gap between the male and female population in China continues to widen. Increasingly, the growing number of men is raising questions about what it might mean for the nation’s future – and it’s long term stability.

“Three decades after China implemented its contentious one-child policy, coupled with a lingering cultural preference for boys and the advent of cheap and accessible ultrasound technology, the country’s skewed gender ratio has only gotten worse,” reports todays GlobalPost. “Social scientists in China say the upcoming census results could reveal a gender ratio of 122 boys born for every 100 girls. Under natural conditions, there are typically 105-106 boys for every 100 girls.” Continue reading “China’s growing gender gap”

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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”

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Why women are driven from academic research

“The number of women studying science and engineering at undergraduate and postgraduate levels has increased markedly in recent decades.” says the webiste Oikos. ” However females have lower retention rates than males in these fields, and perform worse on average than men in terms of promotion and common research metrics. Two key differences between men and women are the larger role that women play in childcare and house work in most families, and the narrower window for female fertility. Here we explore how these two factors affect research output by applying a common ecological model to research performance, incorporating part-time work and the duration of career prior to the onset of part-time work. The model parameterizes the positive feedback between historical research Continue reading “Why women are driven from academic research”

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Why women bosses pay themselves less

This is a tricky issue. A recent article in Forbes tries to understand why women executives pay themselves less than comparable male managers –– the same 76% seen elsewhere. One answer is that female-run businesses are often smaller. But studies correcting for that difference have found the same pattern. Before we write this off to internalized oppression, let’s consider one other answer, a more poignant and important one. Successful women may have a different value system, one less driven by competition, greed, and instant gratification. Women seem more willing to think about the interests of everyone in a company, and not just themselves.  Studies show that women also seem more oriented to long-term goals. See “Even When Women Write Their Own Checks, the Gender Pay Gap Persists” by Meghan Casserly. Continue reading “Why women bosses pay themselves less”

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Half the Sky to launch online game

Half the Sky now is going digital with a new online game. In early 2013, the movement to empower women and girls continues with a new adventure on Facebook. This new game is part of a growing effort on the part of game developers (Zynga, in this instance) to partner with groups working for social change.  Half the Sky Movement: The Game is inspired by the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide and brings players first to a small village in India to meet Radhika. The press release says that “Over 300 million people play online social games each month, and their demographic profile cuts across gender and age groups. In the game, Radhika will take players on a global journey, from India to Kenya, Vietnam, Afghanistan and the U.S. In her transition from oppression to opportunity, she must find her voice in her own house and gain financial and social independence. Players start with very little, but as they complete quests to help Radhika and other girls and women, Radhika becomes a community leader. Whether helping a girl in the village to buy a bicycle that will take her to school, or fighting off an international gang of sex traffickers, Radhika becomes a force within her world. Continue reading “Half the Sky to launch online game”