A segment from Fox News simultaneously containing a stunning (though, perhaps, unsurprising) level of sexism, and a wonderful response from Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. What’s especially telling about this exchange is that Kelly is rightly, intelligently, factually, and articulately, taking Erick Erickson and Lou Dobbs to task–and they seem to fail to grasp this. More than once, she’s met with giggles from her interlocutors.
A partial transcript is available here.
a taxi cab
In a case about whether to allow New York City Taxis to use E-hail apps, which allow passengers to summon a taxi by using the app on their phone, the judge points out how this app may reduce the degree to which taxi drivers discriminate by passing over some fares.
“At least on its face, the program appears better aimed at avoiding discriminatory passenger selection,” she wrote. “The driver must accept an e-hail without knowing the passenger’s identity or destination.”
It is hard to know which parts of “Academia’s indentured servants” posted on 
Aljazeera, and written by Sarah Kendzior, to quote because I find the whole thing so quotable. So here are a couple of important bits that I hope will encourage you to read it all.
On April 8, 2013, the New York Timesreported that 76 percent of American university faculty are adjunct professors – an all-time high. Unlike tenured faculty, whose annual salaries can top $160,000, adjunct professors make an average of $2,700 per course and receive no health care or other benefits.
and
On Twitter, I wondered why so many professors who study injustice ignore the plight of their peers. “They don’t consider us their peers,” the adjuncts wrote back. Academia likes to think of itself as a meritocracy - which it is not - and those who have tenured jobs like to think they deserved them. They probably do – but with hundreds of applications per available position, an awful lot of deserving candidates have defaulted to the adjunct track.
An Op-Ed by Catherine Rottenberg: “Hijacking feminism”
“Yet the ideal for both women [Sheryl Sandberg and Anne-Marie Slaughter] remains the same – having a very successful career and a heteronormative family and being able to enjoy them both.
This, unfortunately, is how the “truly liberated” woman of the 21st century is increasingly being construed. What is particularly troubling about this feminist moment – especially since both women espouse liberal ideals – is exactly how little emphasis either Slaughter or Sandberg ultimately places on equal rights, justice or emancipation as the end goals for feminism.”
“ Zillah Eisenstein calls this imperial and trickle-down feminism.”
“As I’ve just told @alicetiara, the comments on any article about feminism justify feminism. That is Lewis’s Law.”
A recent article entitled, “Donglegate: Why the Tech Community Hates Feminism” referenced Lewis’ Law, which is explained above. What do people think?
Also, I really hope the article linked above is mistaken about the increased popularity of MRAs.
Also also, Lewis’ Law, if sound, definitely applies to the article linked above.
Yesterday I was watching the Melissa Harris Perry (MHP) Show and legal scholar Kenji Yoshino talked about a possible paradox at play in regards to the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling on Prop 8 (and the other case that no one seems to reference by name). He brought up the following point: a group has to have a significant amount of political power in order to even make it to the Supreme Court, who will rule on whether they are being discriminated against. This can be restated as,
“A group must have an immense amount of political power before it will be deemed politically powerless by the Court.”
I can’t find the exact clip, though here is Sunday’s MHP show. And since I was forced to search the internet for another mention of Yoshino’s quote, I stumbled across a law review article he wrote on the topic (no pay wall!).
Today I was reminded of this paradox as I logged onto Facebook and was greeted with a newsfeed awash in red and pink:
a pink equals sign on a red background
(more after the jump)
The U.N. (Development Program) released the 2013 Human Development Report (and the 2012 Human Development Index within it) a few days ago. It incorporates data from 2012 for the latest Gender Inequality Index (on pages 156-159). This index reflects gender inequality along three dimensions – reproductive health, empowerment, and the labor market – as rated by five indicators: maternal mortality and adolescent fertility for reproductive health, parliamentary representation and educational attainment for empowerment, and labor force participation for the labor market.
Of the 186 countries ranked in the 2012 Human Development Index, 148 of those countries are ranked in the 2012 Gender Inequality Index. The U.S. ranks #42, the U.K. ranks #34, Canada ranks #18, Australia ranks #17, New Zealand ranks #31, and South Africa ranks #90.
Also out of those 186 countries (for the 2012 Gender Inequality Index…), Netherlands ranks #1, Sweden ranks #2, Denmark and Switzerland rank #3, Norway ranks #5 (though as you might expect, Norway ranks #1 overall in Human Development), Finland and Germany rank #6, Slovenia ranks #8, France ranks #9, Iceland ranks #10, Italy ranks #11 and Belgium ranks #12.
In addition, out of those 186 countries (for the 2012 Gender Inequality Index…), India ranks #132, Saudi Arabia ranks #145, Afghanistan ranks #147, and Yemen ranks #148.
Click here for a PDF of the full 2013 Human Development Report.
Click here for a webpage with frequently asked questions (and answers) about the Gender Inequality Index.
Unfortunately, the link (to a PDF file) for details on how the latest Gender Inequality Index is calculated does not currently work. Click here in case it starts working.
Click here (and then click on “2012” toward the right side of the page) for a webpage that provides a possibly more straightforwardly ordered listing of countries in the 2012 Gender Inequality Index (though some parts of the ordering seem different from the ordering indicated in the 2013 Human Development Report).
What do readers think? All sorts of data here for all sorts of comments…
Also, in case anyone is interested: “The Google Public Data Explorer makes large, public-interest datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. As the charts and maps animate over time, the changes in the world become easier to understand.”
Here is a webpage for this tool.
Readers can find some basic Google Public Data Help for using the tool here.
A while ago I complained about a TV series that seemed to be glorifying a bunch of rich white men as the people who made America.
And a short while ago Fem Phil posted about the PBS documentary, Makers: Women Who Make America.
In case anyone missed it on TV, you can watch the whole thing (yup all 3 hours) here or here. (The first link doesn’t contain commercials, as far as I can tell. Apologies if the video doesn’t work everywhere. I tried searching Youtube as well but couldn’t find another version.)
And if anyone ever followed Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy, she is still occasionally throwing out a blame or two, in between blogging about the various ailments her horses suffer from. She points out some irony regarding the commercials for the documentary:
“Despite the title, during the station break a voiceover described the doc’s subject as “women who ‘helped’ shape America.” Women are helpers, yo, just in case this film causes you to forget that for a moment.”
And in classic Twisy fashion, she helpfully suggests,
Here, Voiceover, let me “help” you kiss my entire ass.
(If it’s not obvious, I miss IBTP.)
I haven’t watched the documentary yet, but I’m hoping it’s good. Twisty links to a few articles on it in her post. And Chris Hayes talked about it some on his Feb 9th show–you know, the one where he devoted the WHOLE TWO HOURS to the women’s movement (both local and global, past and present.) The show, while containing a few awkward kumbaya moments, had some of the best dialogue I’ve seen about how to address the women’s movement without slipping into American-centric white middle class feminism. (If you can watch MSNBC shows, you can watch it here by hovering over “recent shows” on the left and finding Feb. 9th.)
Melissa Harris-Perry (left) and Sarita Gupta (right) on Up with Chris Hayes
As if these awesome dinosaur leggings weren’t reason enough to love Etsy, First Bond Capital reports on its blog that Etsy nearly quintupled its number of women engineers in just a year through a series of smart decisions and innovative methods. [See the coverage of this in The Atlantic, too.] In particular, Etsy aimed for more junior hires but helped to train those hires by providing them with grants to enroll in Hacker School. Etsy CTO, Kellan Elliott-McCrea, reckons their approach wasn’t just equity supporting — it also helped the company to recruit better and more economically. The post should be required reading at all universities and tech companies. Here’s a taste:
Etsy… had a substantial “boys versus girls” dynamic, where engineers (mostly male) sat on one side and the women on the other… It was a broken system that required changes on both sides of the house…. Simply saying that you value diversity internally isn’t enough – there’s just no reason for an outside observer to believe you if they come and see a scarcity of women in the organization.
Thanks, Mr. Jender!
It’s difficult to know where to start with this. The bare facts, as reported by the BBC website, are that an eighty-year old woman was left without food, water, or medication for nine days after the company responsible for her care was raided and shut down by the UK Border Agency. Sadly, she later died in hospital. The agency, it seems, had been illegally employing folks without papers, although I don’t think that much has been officially confirmed. There are so many things about this tragedy that make me angry. First off, care work is one of the most poorly paid jobs going. A 2010 report by the Low Pay Commission found that 9% of care workers were paid less than the minimum wage. Many were not being reimbursed for their travel costs. No surprise there, as caring has been – and still is – associated with women, and what has traditionally been considered ‘women’s work’ is always more poorly paid than traditionally masculine roles, no matter how important it may be. In addition, few care workers are union members, and as private companies have taken over – and made to compete for – the provision of care, this has led to reduced pay and poorer working conditions. Second, migrants without papers are one of the most easily exploited groups of people – lacking any official means to support themselves, they have to take any work they are offered, and their illegal status means that they have no power over their pay or working conditions. They cannot join a union to fight for a better deal, and they cannot complain if their jobs fail to meet the legally required standards. Third, the existence of such a vulnerable group of people, living in the shadows of our society, makes it harder for those with papers. Their pay and working conditions are driven down by the exploitation of illegal migrants, and they must now compete for work with people who can be paid less, made to work longer hours, and so on – people whom, from a certain perspective, it makes more sense to employ. And there we have it: a matrix of oppression, which leads to the various sufferings of care workers, folks without papers, and those who require care.
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