Thanks, Mister Jender!
The 88th Anniversary: What have we forgotten? August 26, 2008
Today is the 88th anniversary of (some) women’s suffrage in the United States. Speaking to this fact, and connecting it to HIllary Clinton’s run for the White House is problematic, since both can be read as emblematic of the “whiteness” of American feminism. Nonetheless, Susan Faludi’s reflections on this and on the fact that Hillary Clinton is speaking tonight at the Democratic Convention have some important points.
In fact, there’s lots in her article that is worth remarking on, but her central point is particularly important. That is, there’s a cycle that feminists are experiencing again.
Suffrage was, like Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, not merely a cause in itself, but a symbolic rallying point, a color guard for a regiment of other ideas. But while the color guard was ushered into the palace of American law, its retinue was turned away.
In the years after the ratification of suffrage, the anticipated women’s voting bloc failed to emerge, progressive legislation championed by the women’s movement was largely thwarted, female politicians made only minor inroads into elected office, and women’s advocacy groups found themselves at loggerheads.
Among other things, the flapper succeeded the feminists, eerily like those young women today who think that the US is “post-gender.”
Today, the United States ranks 22nd among the 30 developed nations in its proportion of female federal lawmakers. The proportion of female state legislators has been stuck in the low 20 percent range for 15 years; women’s share of state elective executive offices has fallen consistently since 2000, and is now under 25 percent. The American political pipeline is 86 percent male.
Women’s real annual earnings have fallen for the last four years. Progress in narrowing the wage gap between men and women has slowed considerably since 1990, yet last year the Supreme Court established onerous restrictions on women’s ability to sue for pay discrimination. The salaries of women in managerial positions are on average lower today than in 1983.
Women’s numbers are stalled or falling in fields ranging from executive management to journalism, from computer science to the directing of major motion pictures. The 20 top occupations of women last year were the same as half a century ago: secretary, nurse, grade school teacher, sales clerk, maid, hairdresser, cook and so on. And just as Congress cut funds in 1929 for maternity education, it recently slashed child support enforcement by 20 percent, a decision expected to leave billions of dollars owed to mothers and their children uncollected.
Again, male politicians and pundits indulge in outbursts of “new masculinist” misogyny (witness Mrs. Clinton’s campaign coverage). Again, the news media showcase young women’s “feminist — new style” pseudo-liberation — the flapper is now a girl-gone-wild. Again, many daughters of a feminist generation seem pleased to proclaim themselves so “beyond gender” that they don’t need a female president.
I can’t verify all her facts, so please pitch in if you have other documented data.
Jill Biden’s “problem” doctorate August 24, 2008
Damn, I really want to like Joe Biden. And there are things to like a lot, like his writing of the Violence Against Women Act. Why does he have to keep saying stupid things? Why oh why? First there was that fabulous remark that Obama was the first “clean” and “articulate” African-American candidate. Now he says his wife is drop-dead gorgeous. And has a doctorate, which is a problem. I KNOW it’s meant to be a joke. And maybe it’s necessary to make such jokes in order to make voters comfortable with a woman with a doctorate. (But I doubt it, since Dr Rice should have them used to it by now.) But… Sigh. Why does he keep doing this shit? Legislative actions are indeed more important than utterances like these, but these do matter, and I don’t like them.
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Undecided? You might be wrong about that. August 22, 2008
From the AAAS’s Science,** (ht to the NY Times): People who declare themselves undecided may have non-conscious biases that are inclining them to a particular decision:
When deciding between choices, people usually feel as if they’re completely in control. They evaluate the criteria and weigh the available information before committing. And when that information doesn’t seem to tip the balance, they report that they are undecided. But psychologists know that decision-making is strongly affected by the unconscious mind. Might the unconscious mind of an undecided person already know what it will choose?
The answer is “Yes.” By using an implicit associations test, the researchers were able to predict the undecideds decisions with 70% accuracy.
So is this news to any feminist who has watched supposedly neutral people decide admissions, prizes or jobs? Probably not. But there are at least two points here worth noting: Now when a colleague talks about neurtrality, we can whip out Science! And it’s strong and recent evidence that the implicit association tests are connected to actual decisions.
For standard implicit association tests, try here.
(Note: for accuracy’s sake, I should note that the Times reports the study as principally concerned with the difference between people who could decide on examining the evidence and those whom the evidence left undecided. I read the report just as I was thinking of how I could convince a group of people to take seriously the idea that they might really be bigots (of the nicest, least conscious sort, of course). Hence, my take concerns evidence of bias of which one is not aware.)
**This is a press release; an editorial and the actual study require subscription or library access.
Surgical Tools and Hand Size August 22, 2008
It seems many surgical tools are still being made with male hands (generally larger than female ones) in mind. A new study argues that tools for smaller hands are needed (which would of course also help males with smaller hands). Strikes me as a nice example of the way that non-obvious barriers to women’s advancement may remain in place even once obvious ones have been removed. Also makes me really appreciate the additional barriers that a surgeon friend of mine undoubtedly had to face even once she got past the people (surgeons, in the UK) telling her that she shouldn’t be a surgeon because she’s a woman, and even after she’d convinced them (a lengthy battle) to allow her to work part-time in order to get some time with her daughter. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)
Maureen Dowd: fiction writer? August 20, 2008
Do you get this? An supposed opinion piece in the NY Time by MD is really a short bit of fiction that contains a comspiratorial meeting between H. Clinton and McCain. They toss back vodka and congratulate themselves on have done down Obama. Georgia was part of the plot, it turns out, since Bill convinced Putin to go for it.
At the end, Jesse Jackson shows up to get reassurance that it’s over.
Now, for sheer Hillary hatred MD gets top marks with, for example,
It would have been better to put this language in the platform: “A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”
So now she’s run out of opinons in which she can invest her ire, so she’s trying fiction?
(If you want to see our discussions of MD and HRC, you could try the search engine or just start here. It is not a pretty picture.)
My bet on what is going on? I think it’s the same ‘blame the woman” trope that we saw visited on Elizabeth Edwards.
O thanks, New York Review of Books August 18, 2008
The summer sale! A bit of sunshine in one’s mailbox. But followed by a cloud.
Out of the 42 books, only 4 are by women. One Edith Warton, one Tove Jameson and two picture books for the 3-7 year old crowd (Ester Averill and Ruth Kraus).
At 50% of the picture books authors, women clearly have a niche.
Olympic contender? Make sure your lipstick’s straight. August 14, 2008
The Olympics are well underway. How refreshing, Kira Cochrane writes here, to see women being celebrated for their hard won acheivements - their strength and grit and skill - rather than just being evaluated on the basis of their appearance.
She writes: ”we have become used to seeing that strange category - celebrity women - pictured constantly, relentlessly, their image before us for no other reason than that they happen to have headed out for a pint of milk with their makeup on skew-whiff. At Beijing we have seen the antithesis of that - we have been treated to the sight of ordinary women reaching extraordinary heights. … They aren’t on screen because they have starved themselves to a size zero - instead, their bodies are a celebration of strength.”
Indeed, she cites statistics showing just how infrequently (in the UK) images of sportswomen otherwise appear in the media:
“just 2% of articles and 1% of images in the sports pages of national newspapers are devoted to female athletes and women’s sports … Just 1.4% of sports photography featured women; and despite the fact our research only looked at the sports’ pages, there were more images of models, footballers’ girlfriends, the French president’s wife and a nun than of sportswomen.”
(these stats from the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation. See also the Women’s Sports Foundation, Both of these organisations campaign to make sport more accessible to girls and women).
Might this Olympic coverage help to change the way women are represented in the media, she asks? We can hope.
Articles like ‘World-class pin ups: olympic contenders for the gold medal in glamour‘, from the Independent’s supplement (shame!) won’t help.
And even Olympians, it seems, can’t avoid the horrible ‘circle of shame’-type treatment - see here (thanks reader Roberta).
You’re competing at the Olympics and your sports gear slips? Honestly, who cares.
Angie Zapata August 11, 2008
We are a bit late in responding to this trajedy. Angie Zapata was an 18 year old Latina transgender women. She was beaten to death by a man to whom she”d given oral sex.
I strongly recommend you not go to youtube to see the comments on this clip. Too many people seem to think murderous rage is a justifiable response.
From Brownfemipower:
An arrest was made in the murder of teenager Angie Zapata. Allen Ray Andrade admitted that he beat Angie with a fire hydrant after he discovered she was transgender. Allegedly, he admitted to police that after he beat Zapata, he thought he “killed it.”
One expects it was a fire extinguisher - jj.
Women in prison August 8, 2008
Also in the news today:
Ministers are also taking a new look at the system which has seen a sharp increase in women in prison in the last decade.
I found this article interesting but frustrating: the implication is that some women are getting unduly harsh sentences, the recommendation being that more community sentences rather than prison terms should be given. But one wonders: is this judgment of undue harshness because of:
a) a comparison with sentences given to men for comparable crimes (no comparative figures are given);
b) a recognition of some of the circumstances of vulnerability that has (sometimes) led women to break the law (this is briefly mentioned);
c) assumptions about women’s role in childcare (which they cannot provide if they’re in prison, and which is mentioned).
Haven’t had time to do any more digging on this, so just some thoughts…
Misogyny: Still Not OK August 8, 2008
Even if it’s directed at Cindy McCain. Even if it’s written by a woman at a progressive website. And, by the way, Cindy McCain actually would seem to be far more impressive than you’d ever know from most news reports.
Quick Guessing Game August 5, 2008
Three Presidential debates, one Vice Presidential. Moderators: Three white men, one black woman. Who gets the Vice Presidential debate?
Gender Stereotypes: UPDATED August 5, 2008
This video was found on Sociological Images, thanks to the Situationist. As the first site remarks, it is hard to tell whether the stereotypes are being parodied or accepted. It does not seem to have a single perspective on them. But it is a useful visual presentation of them, along with the overall idea that women are all alike, as men are also. It’s also silly enough to allow the kind of distance that a discussion of stereotyes needs.
On watching the video a second time, I’m having second thoughts about posting it.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Useful compilation or offensive?
Big Heads: The New Feminine August 3, 2008
As many of you may know, it’s been very well-confirmed that people react to newborns very differently based on their perceived sex. Stick ‘em in pink and they’re all tiny and delicate. Stick ‘em in blue and they’re strong and alert. Yesterday, Mr Jender took a phone call from a baby group friend, letting us know that his wife had just had a baby girl. She is, apparently, very large: over 9 pounds. And she has a huge head, far above the average. This was immediately followed by “She’s so delicate, so feminine!” Just more proof that anything at all counts as feminine, if you really want to think so. (New father went on to explain that he was feeling utterly baffled at how to deal with this new baby, because he knows how boys think, but not how girls think. Mr J politely tried to reassure him that it probably wouldn’t be all that different for quite a long time.)
Have you had similar experiences? Please do tell us about them in comments– these sorts of stories are always very useful for teaching!
(Typo edited– thanks Sally!)
Barefoot and pregnant? July 31, 2008
Well, in prehistoric times we weren’t wearing shoes and we - women at least - were getting pregnant a lot, one suspects. So…
So what? Well, a new version of the argument that we should be bearfoot and pregnant is in the forthcoming Scientific American Mind. You can see a free preview, but here are, as they say, the key concepts:
Rates of depression have risen in recent decades, at the same time that people are enjoying time-saving conveniences such as microwave ovens, e-mail, prepared meals, and machines for washing clothes and mowing lawns. People of earlier generations, whose lives were characterized by greater efforts just to survive, paradoxically, were mentally healthier. Human ancestors also evolved in conditions where hard physical work was necessary to thrive. By denying our brains the rewards that come from anticipating and executing complex tasks with our hands, the author argues, we undercut our mental well-being.
The examples make it clear that the article is best read as about affluent Western countries, and the US particularly.
We nuke prepared dishes rather than growing our own food and machine-wash ready-made clothes rather than sewing and scrubbing.
Machines for cutting the lawn also among the culprits. So the idea is that we evolved to wash clothes by hand and hand-mow our lawns? Hmmmmmm. That doesn’t sound right. The species closest to us evolutionarily wash their clothes in streams and hand-mow their lawns? That’s not quite right either. Chimps are out there slaving away? Well, maybe but not in the pictures I’ve seen.
The authors offer as evidence that you can get really zippy rats by making them forage for treats.
And they look at brain circuits which seem to link physical exertion with feelings of pleasure and well beings. OK, I’m actually quite a fan of that stuff, fMRI and all that, you know. But they seem to have to recognize that for us at least the exertion should be significant and meaningful, as presumably for rats also, at least in their terms. And that makes all the difference. And that may be why quite early on the things that machines now do were not generally done by those in a society with the power to avoid them.
I think the bottom line is that meaningful exercise can add to your sense of well being. And if you find mowing your lawn meaningful, go for it! Why I remember how my father used to come in on Saturdays feeling so happy from mowing…O, wait, that didn’t happen.
Well, I’m going to get my bowling partner organized. We now have brain science on our side, in addition to just about every health guru on TV. Or maybe find a good old-fashioned washing machine, so I can spend a day a week storing up good feelings. I can remember how my mother felt so happy after using hers… O wait. That didn’t happen either.
“China’s Female Artists Quietly Emerge” July 30, 2008
If you find the title above (from the NY Times) ominous, you’re right. First of all, though, it is puzzling. Why? Because this is their first anecdote:
On a February day in 1989, a young woman walked into a show at the National Gallery of Art here, whipped out a pellet gun and fired two shots into a mirrored sculpture in an exhibition called “China/Avant-Garde.” Police officers swarmed into the museum. The show, the country’s first government-sponsored exhibition of experimental art, was shut down for days.
The woman, Xiao Lu, is an artist. The sculpture she fired on was her own, or rather a collaborative piece she had made with another artist, Tang Song, her boyfriend at the time.
The international press saw a rebellion story. China’s political and cultural vanguard claimed a hero. The government reacted as if attacked. The renowned art critic Li Xianting has described the incident as a precursor to the Tiananmen Square crackdown four months later. Whatever the truth, Ms. Xiao made the history books. She was a star.
That’s not exactly quiet, is it?
In fact, the women artists are “emerging quietly” in so far as they are just not heard or seen:
She is the first and last Chinese female artist so far to achieve that status. Contemporary art in China is a man’s world. While the art market, all but nonexistent in 1989, has become a powerhouse industry and produced a pantheon of multimillionaire artist-celebrities, there are no women in that pantheon.
The new museums created to display contemporary art rarely give women solo shows. Among the hundreds of commercial galleries competing for attention in Beijing, Shanghai and elsewhere, art by women is hard to find.
Yet the art is there, and it is some of the most innovative work around, even as visibility remains a problem.
Rather like a long advertisement for the Olympics, the NY Times is discovering China these days. Or perhaps it has become a primer for all those parties. Still, many of its pieces are usefully interesting, and the one about artists is too, even if too much about their exclusion is dismally familiar. The women are also all, it seems, ambivalent about feminism and what they see as a very Western slant to it.
And the print above, in a private collection in China, will cost you between $25,000-$35,000.
Trans toilets July 30, 2008
There have been high profile cases on the matter of which toilets trans people should be able to use - see here, for instance.
A solution from Thailand: the ‘third sex’ toilets. This link is to a short video, explaining why a school in Thailand introduced a toilet for those pupils who considered themselves transsexual. The pupil interviewed seems quite content with the set up.
A model to be replicated? Or a risk of further marginalisation?
More on women and the US economy: UPDATED July 28, 2008
Today’s NYT letters to the editor have a number of authoritative voices discussing women and the economy. Here are some of the facts we should know about:
… low-income women and women of color … face multiple barriers to economic security: race, gender and class.
Today, despite decades of struggle for job access and pay equity, women are paid 77 cents for each dollar a man makes; the disparity is worse for African-American women, who earn 62 cents, and Latinas, who earn 53 cents.
Nearly 10.5 million women are single parents (as compared with 2.5 million single fathers). For them, opting out for any reason — like motherhood or education — is not viable.
.Sara K. Gould/President and Chief Executive/Ms. Foundation for Women
…
To the Editor:
…
These women (single women who are heads of household) have about one-half the income and less than one-third the wealth of other households. They make up 62 percent of the 5.8 million American families with children in poverty and are more likely to hold subprime mortgages. Many women from this category would like to leave the work force in order to take care of children or other family members but simply cannot afford to do so.
…
Linda Basch/President, National Council for Research on Women
To the Editor:
There is another compelling reason that women are leaving the work force: in addition to an unfriendly economy, many face a hostile work environment that fails to accommodate care-giving responsibilities.
Many women have jobs that do not offer paid sick days that we can use for ourselves or our children, no flextime, and only unpaid family and medical leave.
In addition, the Supreme Court took us backward last year in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, which made it more difficult for victims of wage discrimination to win justice by limiting when lawsuits can be filed.
…
Debra L. Ness/President, National Partnership for Women and Families
UPDATE:
NOW invites you to take action now to get legislation through to help women and families.
Women’s Work Choices: Post-feminism or Brutal Economics? July 27, 2008
In her post on girls’ abilities in mathematics, Jender said:
Prediction: if this comes to widely accepted, expect lots more stories about how girls are innately predisposed not to like doing stuff that involves maths– gotta explain the dearth of women in science and maths in such a way that nobody has to worry about it.
Turns out, no surprise, that that pattern of explanation is showing up elsewhere. Judith Warner in the NY Times remarks:
It has happened like clockwork. In the past two economic downturns, as job losses have forced women out of the workplace, a sort of angel has appeared to guide their way and re-label their unfortunate circumstances as virtuous “choice.”
Economists, sociologists and other academics who rigorously track workplace trends and work-life issues have been saying for years that this self-realized creature with her new, post-feminist home and hearth priorities, is a chimera.
So why or in what ways are being forced out? Warner’s explanations: Child-care costs equal one’s take home salary, the workplace is hostile, and/or one is let go. And recently the latter has become a particularly serious factor:
While prior recessions tended to spare women’s jobs relative to men’s, that trend has been reversed in the current downturn, thanks in part to women’s progress in entering formerly male industries and occupations, and in part to the fact that job sectors like service and retail, which still employ disproportionate numbers of women, have suffered disproportionate losses. And this — not a calling to motherhood — accounts for the fall, starting in 2000, of women’s labor force participation rates.
I can’t wait for the hiring figures for 2009 in philosophy to come out. Ours isn’t even a formerly male occupation.
There are two particularly nice features of Warner’s report. First, she stresses that the picture of women’s choices is being construction by in part ignoring the research of “economists, sociologists and other academics.” You know how that goes; let’s ignore the elites and say what we feel is true. Secondly, she links to a very recent congressional report that puts paid to the myth of choice and calls for some sensible remedial measures.
