A good case of understanding across cultures and species.
CfP: Dimensions of Pain May 9, 2009
Here’s an interesting call for papers, covering the topic guest-blogger Rugbyfan recently raised:
Dimensions of Pain
September 17-18, 2009
The Nordic Network
Gender, Body, and Health
in collaboration with Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland
The Nordic/Baltic Network Gender, Body, and Health is based at the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University,Sweden and had its first network meeting in January 2008. With the aim of achieving productive interdisciplinary work on issues concerning gender, body, and health, the network gathers researchers and practitioners from a number of diverse fields such as medicine, comparative literature, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, cultural geography, sports- and health sciences, psychiatry, social psychology, and history of science.
We now invite submissions for the third meeting with the network Gender, Body, and Health under the theme “Dimensions of Pain”. The meeting will be held at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Finland on September 17-18, 2009. We welcome submissions for papers, panels, and mini-workshops approaching issues within the overarching theme from a broad range of disciplines and fields of research.
Topics can include, but are not limited to:
- Pain and Bodily Integrity
- Pain and Identity
- Sexualized Pain
- Treatments of Pain
- Psychosomatics of Pain
- Representations and Discourses of Pain
- Stigmatizing Pain and the Pain of Stigmatization
- Healing and Cathartic Forces of Pain
One page abstracts are due July 1, 2009. Please submit your abstracts and direct any questions you might have to Lisa Folkmarson Käll, Center for Gender Research, Uppsala University (lisa.kall@gender.uu.se).
“Sisterhood” in the Legal Profession May 7, 2009
Reader Cassandra sent us a link to this article about “the end of sisterhood” amongst women lawyers. Among other things, it states that
Last year, in an American Bar Association survey, a majority of female lawyers under 40 expressed a preference for male bosses (the 1,400 respondents gave men higher marks for constructive criticism and keeping confidences). Moreover, in a University of Toronto study of U.S. workers released last fall, women who reported to a female boss claimed greater depression, anxiety, headaches, and other ailments than those who worked for a man.
I can’t help but think–and the author seems (I think?) to agree with me–that this sort of phenomenon isn’t so much proof of the ‘end of sisterhood’ as it is proof of the problem with the notion of sisterhood. Full disclosure: the term “sisterhood” makes me want to barf. I don’t need to have a love-in with random strangers in order to fight for what’s right. It’s not about bonding with my fellow women like family; it’s about justice. And this article illustrates the problem with thinking otherwise.
“As postfeminists, we are told that women are nurturers and that we are all in it together,” says California-based consultant Peggy Klaus, who conducts workshops for women in corporations and firms. “Women can accept hierarchy from men, they can tolerate their yelling and bad behavior.” But when women bosses cross the line, Klaus says, women take it very personally.
And of course we do…so long as we’re expecting our boss to act like our sister. It’s out-and-out sexism to expect a lawyer (for god’s sake!) to be a nurturer simply because she is a woman. “Sisterhood” should end. Down with it, I say.
Thanks, Cassandra!
Bad Parents Running Amok May 7, 2009
The bad parents are running amok! They’re everywhere you turn, talking about postpartum depression, confessing that their kids are addicted to SpongeBob, throwing their breast pumps in the garbage!
That’s the word from Salon.com. The author looks at two bad-parent books that have just hit the shelves: one by a mother (Ayelet Waldman), and one by a father (Michael Lewis) and notes the distinct similarity between the two. Tho Lewis claims to revel in his badness, while Waldman seems to agonise over it, the author concludes that the similarities in each of their experiences just go to show that parenting needs to be de-gendered. Probably right. But what struck me is that, even in this openly-bad-parent crazy, the edicts of the cult of the perfect mummy (which, I know, I bang on about; I shall continue until everyone sees what I see or somebody shuts me up) are still being respected; still being revelled in, even. It’s as if these “bad” mums are so very committed to perfect mummihood that they’re even willing to flog themselves publicly for their own shortcomings. After first thinking ‘oh goodie, fun and honest mum literature, at last!’ I now wonder whether “bad mums” aren’t just uber-competitive perfect mums, too perfect even to admit to their own perfection, lest they should appear to be finished striving. Ugh.
For contrast, if you’re in Britain (sorry, my American friends!), do catch this quite interesting documentary entitled “Kimberly: Young Mum Ten Years On” about a 24-year-old welfare mum in London who is struggling to keep custody of her second child, her first (born when she was 14) having been taken away from her by the state.
Maine and New Hampshire! May 6, 2009
Pow-pow! What a day! Maine’s governor has today signed into law a bill legalising same-sex marriage. And on the very same today, the New Hampshire Legislature have passed their own gay marriage bill, which now awaits a gubernatorial signature.
“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Baldacci said in a statement read in his office. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”
Read all about the state of gay rights in New England on NPR’s web site. (thanks, ARP!)
Women in science and technology: Recruiting and Retaining May 6, 2009
We’ve been discussing getting something like “fact sheets” going, and serendipitously I got the following request through my university:
I’m seeking experts who can discuss steps employers should consider to get and keep more women in the pipeline for science- and technology-related jobs. Are there cultural, institutional or other barriers that keep women from pursuing or maintaining science and technology careers? Are there steps colleges and/or employers can take to attract more women into science and technology degree programs? Is there any data available that shows whether men and women in science and technology fields value different things in an employment relationship, such as rewards, advancement opportunities, flexibility, etc.
I asked the writer for permission to post her request here. I hope people will jump in with their own ideas or ideas from discussions we’ve had here.
Considerations we can bring up may well end up in a publication by a standard news service (if I understand the situation), so it’s a good time for the discussions here to reach a perhaps different audience.
I’m going to start this off with a few observations. Please, do join in!
1. There’s a traditional story that women either aren’t interested in this stuff or they don’t have the aptitude for it. We have argued against this view quite a bit, including here and here. There’s good evidence that women also encounter unconscious biases in science and technology; see here, for example. We’ve looked some at countering such biases, and perhaps someone can find those posts??
2. One kind of severe problem for women is the sexism in such field. We looked at one example recently here. If you follow the links in that post, you might encounter a link to this short article. It describes some of the culture of techies that makes it less than friendly to women. The article also draws on the study described in Unlocking the Clubhouse, about the successful attempt to make Carnegie Mellon’s computer science department more women-friendly.
One of the factors we’ve described is the way in which women on research teams can get put into the lower , almost secretarial positions. It’s also the case that there’s some evidence that women enjoy less than men do the purely formal work – e.g., undertaking a task that has little meaning outside of itself.
When jj-partner was at a big corporate research lab, scientists were frequently required to undergo sensitivity training, and that made a huge difference, as far as I could tell.
There’s lots more. We looked at the childcare issue several times and perhaps someone can suggest our best on that. There’s more about salaries, motivation, etc. And there’s lots of room for new suggestions! Now I have to run to see a dean about a job!
Mental Causation: Another International Conference for Men? May 5, 2009
If you go to the Leiter page that mentions the conference discussed here, you might see the advertisement over to the right, about an international conference on mental causation. And if you follow the link, once again you’ll find a conference without women.
elp has composed a great letter to conference organizers of the Leiter-mentioned conference. A version of it is going off to another set of project leaders.
I’ve just been looking at a list of 32 women in philosophy of mind, many of the grad students at great places. What message goes out to them from something like the mental causation conference?
It’s THE place to be for legal philosophers May 5, 2009
Or so it is said. But not, sadly, for female legal philosophers. (Thanks, Mel!)
Internet under threat (sort of) May 4, 2009
There is a Telecoms Bill being debated in the European Parliament right now, its second hearing is on Wednesday 6th May. In its present form, it allows providers to limit the content, services, and applications that users can access. The Bill originally contained clauses to safeguard our access to the internet, but these have now been removed. The wiki campaign page has a lot more information.
And now for something quite different May 4, 2009
It’s been showing up in the news for a couple of weeks, but the story keeps growing as the number of donations increases. Now the Chronicle of Higher Ed is joining in on the remarkable story of the anonymous donations being made to US college and universities. The donations are for various sums, from two to ten million dollars, and at least 14 have been made so far.
And here’s the one thing all the recipients have in common: they are headed by women!
Zoe Williams Investigates: Bring Your Baby to Work May 4, 2009
The United States and Australia are the only two countries in the industrialised world that don’t have paid statutory maternity leave (there are exceptions in some US states). At least in Australia, though, your job is protected for a year; in America, even the leave protection only lasts for 12 weeks. It’s an astonishingly backward state of affairs, like discovering that France doesn’t have a postal service.
There’s apparently a new trend in America for companies–eager to ease the strain caused by a lack of paid maternity or paternity leave, limited maternity leave job protection, non-existent on-site childcare, and family-unfriendly working hours and absence policies–to allow employees to bring their babies to work. One can’t help but suspect that some crafty (childless) American businessperson heard about similar schemes, where many companies are allowing employees to bring their pets to work, and thought ‘hey great idea! This’ll solve our parental leave problems! It’s not like looking after a baby involves DOING ANYTHING. So why not let parents bring the babies here and get back to work?!’ A web site dedicated to the trend lists the following benefits of such a scheme:
williams and baby thurston hard at work
Lower Stress for Parents
Happier Marriages
Easier Breastfeeding
Easier Bonding
Lower Day Care Costs
Better Financial Stability
Socialized and Happier Babies
Parents Learn from Coworkers
Social Network for Parents
Less Postpartum Depression
Enables Starting a Family Earlier
Fathers More Involved with Babies
Right. Because nothing helps you bond with your baby like ignoring her while you work. Or maybe: nothing lowers parental stress like pissing off the coworkers. The always-genius Zoe Williams decided to test out the idea, and–along with two of her fellow Guardian columnists who also have babies–brought her six-month-old in for a day in the office. The results are hilarious in their perfect predictability. A totally genius way to shame women out of the workplace, if you ask me.
An argument for your critical thinking classes May 4, 2009
“The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against Torture,” Rice said at Stanford, before adding: “And so, by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”
Taken from here.
CFP: Arche graduate conference 2009 May 1, 2009
How to combine anonymous refereering with the aim of ensuring a good proportion of your speakers are women? I gather the organisers of this grad conference have thought hard about this one. Strategy: try to ensure diversity at the submission stage. I hereby convey their CFP. Do submit (or encourage your grad students to do so!):
Call for Papers
The Arché/CSMN Graduate Conference 2009
The University of St. Andrews, Scotland November 7
th – 8th, 2009
Keynote Speakers
Prof. Ernest Lepore (Rutgers)
Prof. Susanna Siegel (Harvard)
For the third Arché/CSMN graduate conference hosted by Arché at the University of St. Andrews, we invite high-quality papers in the areas of Philosophy of Language, Philosophical Methodology, Philosophy of Logic, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Action/Rationality and Moral Philosophy.
Deadline for submissions: September 1
st, 2009
All papers will have Arché, CSMN or University of St. Andrews staff respondents, and will be followed by open discussion. Applicants should submit the following for blind review:
1) A cover sheet including author name, title of paper, institutional affiliation and email address.
2) An abstract with no further information.
3) A paper suitable for a 40-minute presentation, and in any case no longer than 5,000 words, with no further information.
Electronic submissions are preferred. Papers can be submitted in .doc, .rtf, .ps, .txt, or .pdf format to the following address:
archecsmngc@googlemail.com.
Submissions in hard copy are also accepted. These should be sent to the following address:
Arché/CSMN Graduate Conference
Arché Research Centre
17 – 19 College Street
St. Andrews, Fife
KY16 9AL SCOTLAND
Accommodation and travel expenses for all graduate speakers will be covered.
For more information, please contact at
will be posted at:
archecsmngc@googlemail.com and more informationhttp://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~arche/acgc/ and
http://www.csmn.uio.no/events/2009/grad%20conference.xml
Religion in American May 1, 2009
The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.
More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
The numbers seem high, I think. (Added: even for the non-religious, the numbers seem very high. Perhaps it’s the reaction of frightened people, for which we have all too many people to thank.)
A good wife, defined May 1, 2009
by heroic Captain Phillips:
“She’s a good wife. She supports whatever I” decide, Phillips answered
John Kerry didn’t let this pass. Unfortunately, the way he objected leaves one with the impression that he’d say the same thing if he could. (To be honest, I think he was just making a clumsy attempt to register an objection without being too confrontational.)
“I couldn’t get away with that,” he noted, referring to his outspoken wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.
Thanks, Jender-Parents!
Let’s celebrate some good news! May 1, 2009
First, Carol Ann Duffy is the first woman to be named as Britain’s poet laureate which is truly wonderful.
And second (perhaps with slightly less national significance, but I found it very pleasing) BBC Radio 4′s ‘In Our Time’ yesterday was on astrophysics, and two of the three experts were women: Jocelyn Bell Burnell, pioneer of radio astronomy and currently visiting professor of astrophysics at Oxford Univeristy, and Ruth Gregory, professor of theoretical physics at Durham University.
Hurrahs all round, I say!
Why are there so few women in technology? May 1, 2009
It must be their innate lack of ability, as the tech community is doing everything they can to make them feel welcome– even using images of them in powerpoint presentations! Like this one, from this conference. Reading the comments also reveals such a sophisticated understanding of feminism that one is shocked, shocked, to learn that there are very few actual women at the conference. (Thanks, Lani.)
Update: Mr Jender tells me there were 6 women out of the 200 at the conference, and he’s referred me to this post on the topic by one of those women.
APA Committee on the Status of Women: JFP Employment Study May 1, 2009
This study has just come out. I’m having an insanely busy time and haven’t had to look through it, but we’d welcome your insights, observations, etc. Many thanks to all those who sent it in!
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