How many slaves work for you?

Find out here what your slavery footprint is.

What you do is answer the questions about the foods you eat, the clothes you wear, the kind of house you have, the stuff you own etc, and based on reports from various organisations and an algorithms for the score of a large number of products and product groups, you get an estimate.

They define slavery as follows:

Anyone who is forced to work without pay, being economically exploited, and is unable to walk away. Note: Forced Labor, also known as involuntary servitude, may result when unscrupulous employers exploit workers made more vulnerable by high rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, discrimination, corruption, political conflict, or cultural acceptance of the practice. Immigrants are particularly vulnerable, but individuals also may be forced into labor in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labor, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually exploited as well.

They provide tips on how to diminish your slavery footprint, too. A very good initiative, I think!

You can follow Slavery Footprint on twitter here.

Via Adinda Akkermans @nrcnext

Kukla on Implicit Bias

Make sure to check out Rebecca Kukla’s awesome post on implicit bias.

 

(What a great round of guest-blogging, Rebecca!)

Climate for women in empirically-informed philosophy of mind

Fascinating and disturbing. Eric Schliesser writes:

John Schwenkler has been doing an on-line survey, and the initial data is disturbing. As Schwenkler points out: “Men are more likely than women to believe that there are sizable numbers of women who have prominent positions in the field, and less likely than women to believe that there are not. Men are more likely than women to believe that women in the field are taken seriously, treated respectfully, and included in networking opportunities, and less likely than women to believe that this is not so.” If the full results follow this pattern then it suggests that in this sub-field men are not allowing themselves to notice significant frustration (anger/inequity, etc) among their female peers. (I see no reason to think that this sub-field is atypical.)

The survey is still open, so do go participate if this is your field!

Feminism and Halloween Costumes

Take Back Halloween: A costume guide for women with imagination is a great resource for feminists looking for costume ideas, including Ada Lovelace: “Ada Byron Lovelace (1815-1852) was one of the most remarkable visionaries in the history of science. Her friend Charles Babbage invented the Analytical Engine to crunch numbers; it was Ada who realized that it could do much more. She saw that a mechanical device—a computer, if you will—could solve all kinds of analytical problems, as long as … ” and Assae Yaa: “Asase Yaa is the earth goddess of the Asante people in Ghana. She created human beings and receives them back into her body when they die; she is also the mother of the gods. There are no temples to her, for the earth itself is both her body and her temple. There are also no standard anthropomorphic depictions of her, which means we’re free to come up with our own costume. Our design is a blend of inspirations: the kente cloth and fabulous gold jewelry of Ghanaian royalty …. the green plants and sparkling gems that are the gifts of the earth; and the libations that farmers pour out to Asase Yaa in their fields.”

Readers of this blog will also enjoy Skepchick’s take on the usual array of Halloween costumes for women, I Don’t Want To Be A Sexy Halloween Anything.