Oppression of women, and of boys, in Afghanistan

This article describes a depressing phenomenon amongst the Pashtun in Afghanistan: Women are viewed as either so inaccessible, or so unclean (it seems to vary) that they cease to be viable objects of sexual desire for many men. The men turn instead to boys, many so young that real consent isn’t possible. And this all seems to be widely accepted in the culture. You might think there’s a bright spot to this: surely it constitutes acceptance of homosexuality. But you’d be wrong: homosexuality is still vilified, but defined in such a way that men having sex with boys doesn’t count.

A nice illustration of the ways that various oppressions can interconnect, and help to sustain each other, sometimes in surprising (if depressing) ways. (Thanks, Jender-Parents!)

Childcare at Conferences: How to do it (2)

This post is the second in what I hope will be a continuing series of posts in which conference organisers who have been able to arrange childcare for participants explain how they did it. (Here‘s the previous one.) If you or someone you know is organising a conference, they can come to this series for ideas. And if you’re trying to convince someone that it is possible after all to arrange childcare at conferences, you’ve now got a place to direct them!

Laurie Paul writes:

I have child care available at every conference I organize, and I explicitly encourage people to bring families. (Often, I am also able to arrange a discounted hotel rate for family members not participating in the conference.) There are two ways I’ve set up child care. The first way is to arrange for interested graduate students at my university to babysit, and the second way is to find a local, high quality child care service that has a register of sitters. Either way, I put everyone who is bringing children in touch with each other, and they arrange for small-group babysitting with the graduate student(s) or professional babysitters. It is easy, family-friendly, and gives the conference a great vibe.

The babysitting takes place in and around the conference venue: I only select venues that have a lot of activities for kids available (a beach, a dude ranch, local parks or a campus mall where kids can run around, etc.) I should also note that I think it is totally fine to have kids playing quietly in the back of the room while the paper is being discussed.

I followed up by asking whether liability or insurance concerns are ever raised about the childcare, since these are often cited as reasons not to try t provide it. Laurie responded:

I think liability concerns are only appropriate when the conference formally runs childcare. We do it by making it extremely easy for parents to hire babysitters themselves, and also for them to hire babysitters as a small group. So officially there is no liabiiity because the conference is not providing the sitter. Officially, it is the the parents who are hiring the grad students, or who are using the professional service.

Laurie noted also, in a follow-up, that one doesn’t need to have her fabulous venues in order to offer childcare:

A university setting that has green areas would be fine for the sort of arrangement I described–eg, it would work for something on campus here at UNC, and would have worked at Arizona too. Some campuses might not work well, but then the organizer should try and find another spot for the conference, or arrange with the parents for some sort of outing for the kids: for example, one parent and a couple of child minders take 4-5 kids to the zoo one day, a different parent goes with the kids and minders to a park the next. The parents usually work as a coop, and agree among themselves to share out responsibility. If there are 6 or 8 parents involved, it is very easy.

She also noted, however, that her fabulous venues are not so impossibly pricey as they might seem:

My venues are not as pricey as you might think. I negotiate prices so that all meals are included, so the overall cost ends up being about the price of an APA (or maybe even less!!) once you account for APA meals and registration. And it’s way more fun.

So now we’ve got the materials to make a feminist argument for holding conferences at beach resorts. What more could one want?

(More seriously: Since APAs are out of price range for many people, especially now, it probably is a good idea to consider the venue alternatives Laurie rightly mentions– trips to the park, etc.)