52 Women

Website Message

2007-01-27T12:57:00.000-05:00

I am transferring web hosts during the next week and the site may be temporarily down at some point.

Sorry for any inconvenience.

Smearing Hillary I

2007-01-26T15:59:00.000-05:00

Remember how I posted on the day that Hillary Clinton officially announced her run for president that we could start counting the hours until the Right wing started running Lady MacBeth stories?

Michelle Malkin never disappoints.

I knew it would be her or Coulter first.

Hillary TV: SNL "the Old Double Standard"

2007-01-21T17:20:00.000-05:00

Post-Abortion Syndome??

2007-01-22T16:47:00.000-05:00

As yet another anniversary of Roe v. Wade passes today, my hometown paper ran an article on Christian pastor from Operation Outcry doing "abortion-recovery counseling".

The quotes:

Abortion-recovery counselors like Arias could focus on why women don’t have the material or social support they need to continue pregnancies they might not want to end. They could call for improving the circumstances of women’s lives in order to reduce the number of abortions. Instead they are working to change laws to restrict and ban abortion.

...the idea that abortion is at the root of women’s psychological ills is not supported by the bulk of the research. Instead, the scientific evidence strongly shows that abortion does not increase the risk of depression, drug abuse or any other psychological problem any more than having an unwanted pregnancy or giving birth.

It's Not Just Partisan

2007-01-20T13:36:00.000-05:00

The AP reports that while Katrina victims were suffering, Karl Rove was behind the scenes calculating the angles as usual.

Quote from Mike Brown, former head of FEMA:

Unbeknownst to me, certain people in the White House were thinking, "We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it. We can't do it to Haley (Barbour) because Haley's a white male Republican governor. And we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana."

This is the mentality of our leadership.

Hillary: "I'm In"

2007-01-20T09:42:00.000-05:00

She announces here.

Keep your eyes peeled for the women that will come out to bash her on non-issues such as her marriage and the no-no of being a woman and ambitious at the same time. I'm thinking we'll hear something along the lines of Lady MacBeth.

Girl on Girl Violence

2007-01-18T09:20:00.000-05:00

It is harmful enough when girls and women judge each other for not having the right handbag, right shoes, right clothes and right hair and attack and demean each other on those basises. When three teenage girls of North Babylon High beat up a fellow classmate and posted it on the internet we could clearly see that girls desperate for attention and validation are now physically attacking other girls to gain rank.

Rosalind Wiseman from my film "Running in High Heels" appeared on Larry King Live last night to talk about it. Transcript here.

This is hardly an isolated case. A quick search on YouTube shows assaults here and here. Thankfully, we are still civilized enough that we don't see rapists and murderers taping and posting their crimes online. Is it that we don't take simple assault seriously enough?

Shameless Self-Promotion Tuesday

2007-01-14T21:07:00.000-05:00

I'll be appearing this Tuesday at Wellesley College working with the students (who are in the midst of suffering through winter classes) as we try to sort out why women are so disproportionally underrepresented in public political debate.

Not in Front of the Children

2007-01-04T21:18:00.000-05:00

When Islamic fundamentalists act out, quite often people will comment that not all of Islam is fundamentalist and women-hating. However, there is no disputing that Islam is disinguished by certain barbarities some of its practioners promote and others simply tolerate while holding their noses. You will never see a Christian leader or Jewish Rabbi give a performance showing the banality of evil towards women as clearly as this in an Islamist's guide to beating your wife.

Following WW II, the average moderate German who remained in Europe lived out the century in shame for standing by while evil took over the voice and soul of their country. With the voice and soul of Islam on the line as it becomes a worldwide force, where will average moderate Muslim be in the next quarter century?

Women in C-Suite Seats

2006-12-21T18:38:00.000-05:00

My home town paper ran a good article on the dearth of women at the top:

No one disputes that more women have highly visible roles as chief executives. During the past year alone, several women joined the ultra-exclusive C.E.O. club, taking the reins at large, prominent Fortune 500 companies. In June, Irene B. Rosenfeld was named the chief executive of Kraft Foods, a job that once eluded her earlier in her career at Kraft; she joined a competitor before she returned to the company. Two months earlier, Patricia A. Woertz jumped from the Chevron Corporation to become chief executive at the chemical giant Archer Daniels Midland. Those two anointments were followed by Indra Nooyi’s ascent to the top seat at PepsiCo.

Even so, those women remain statistical anomalies. And the complex question of why women remain so underrepresented in the corporate suite yields a variety of possible answers. A number of women leave their careers — sometimes by choice, sometimes not — to focus on rearing families. The remaining pool suffers from a lack of networking or mentoring programs, others contend.

Many other women end up in dead-end staff positions, says Ilene H. Lang, president of Catalyst. “Women are almost two and one half times as likely to be channeled into staff jobs like H.R. and communications than into operating roles where they would be generating revenue and managing profit and loss,” Ms. Lang says. “When more women hold line positions, there will be more women top earners and C.E.O.’s.”

Analysts and executive women also say that one of the biggest roadblocks between women and the c-suite is the thick layer of men who dominate boardrooms and corner offices across the country. “The men in the boardroom and the men at the top are choosing and tend to choose who they are comfortable with: other men,” Ms. Bartz says.

Women — particularly those who have made it to the top — may also shoulder some of the responsibility for the dearth of female C.E.O.’s. There is little consensus among them over how to approach the topic of women in power, or, in fact, whether the issue should even be addressed. Representatives of nearly all of the Fortune 500 female chief executives contacted for this article said that their bosses were either “too busy” or did not want to participate in an article about female C.E.O.’s. They said that these executives preferred to be acknowledged for their accomplishments, rather than for being women.

What "Pro-Lifers" Don't Get

2006-12-20T09:30:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press reports:

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.

"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."

"The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds," Finer said.

Under the Bush administration, such programs have received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

"It would be more effective," Finer said, "to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active -- which nearly everyone eventually will."

Goodbye Jeane Kirkpatrick

2006-12-08T10:37:00.000-05:00

Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was the first woman appointed to serve as Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations and also as a member of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet and National Security Council, died in her sleep last night. She was a graduate of Barnard and Columbia. (She also was a recipient of the Medal of Freedom back when receiving the Medal actually had something to do with job performance.)

George Washington University has posted an interview Kirkpatrick gave on the effort of d'Etente in her time. The Acton Institute has one up in which Kirkpatrick is quoted saying "Democracy is the only good form of government" with the caveat " I don’t think that means that we ought to send troops around the world overthrowing governments". It just goes to show that American Conservatism used to be a different thing altogether than it is today.

As a woman, she was a first but not the last.

More at my home town paper and the American Enterprise Institute where she was a fellow.

Madam President Watch: Obama Happens

2006-12-05T10:54:00.000-05:00

It's going to be interesting.

Christianists & Science

2006-12-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

While many Christianist groups and their favored (former) elected officials maintain that birth control harms women the AP reports that RU-486 has been found to block the breast cancer gene in mice genetically designed to have breast cancer. While it is not suggested that RU-486 would in any way become a treatment for breast cancer, it has lead to another inroad in understanding how the hormone progesterone contributes to the cancer.

Madam President Watch

2006-12-01T11:43:00.000-05:00

Lifetime Television and Redbook conducted a poll of men and women showing that the majority of Americans think there will be a female president by 2016. While this poll by Opinion Research Corporation is not on as solid of footing as the Gallop-conducted poll on behalf of Rutger's Center for American Women and Politics which concluded that 38% of Americans do not even consider the country ready for a female president, it does touch upon a major point of Running in High Heels:

"Perhaps the harshest critics of women leaders are women themselves."

Sorry for the shameless self-promotion. It's Friday.

Modern Problems

2006-11-29T13:55:00.000-05:00

CNN's Anderson Cooper filed this piece today on honor killings in today's Turkey as part of the coverage of the Pope's visit.

That the interviewees are rendered anonymous by their burqas once again cements the dehumanization of burqa wearing women.

A Liberal Outing of a Liberal Bias

2006-11-29T22:48:00.000-05:00

Alternet is running a column today on biased reporting on the subject of working mothers by working mothers employed in the MSM .

Off-kilter news reporting on the reasons women leave jobs, laced with amateur psychology and traces of biological determinism, have been creating a false impression about women's employment patterns, says an attention-getting report last month by the Center for WorkLife Law, a research and advocacy group at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

"'Opt Out' -- or Pushed Out? The Untold Story of Why Women Leave the Work Force," released Oct. 17, analyzed 119 newspaper articles (excluding commentary) about women leaving the paid work force between 1980 and 2006. A great deal of this journalism, the authors find, understates the severity of the economic consequences for women who are forced out of jobs by inflexible employers and those who believe working mothers are bad for the bottom line.

Most insidious, says the report, is that reporters often depict women abandoning the workplace as a matter of their personal preference, not a symptom of a nationwide crisis for which employer rigidity and lack of family supports are largely to blame.

Bottom line: Reporter self-interest distorts the story (which is also why most men without personal investment in the subject wouldn't even cover this subject.) The resulting picture that is painted is usually drawn from women who are overwhelmingly white and in white collar, managerial-level jobs (which is only 8% of American women.)

The full report, "Opt Out" or Pushed Out?: How the Press Covers Work/Family Conflict— The Untold Story of Why Women Leave the Work is available from the Hastings College of Law here.

The Tao of Paris Hilton

2006-11-29T08:10:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of Betty Glass at the University of Nevada.

Oklahoma is NOT OK

2006-11-28T17:32:00.000-05:00

Conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan put this photo up on his blog today as part of his Christianist watch. Some of the nuggets of ignorance from the billboard's sponsors:

1. Birth control is harmful because it creates a sex on demand attitude.
2. It does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
3. It contributes to sexual addiction.
4. It causes abortions.

I think if Thelma & Louise had it to do over again they wouldn't just drive around Texas, they'd be circumventing Oklahoma too.

The UN's 16-Day Campaign

2006-11-28T10:42:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the United Nations kicked off a two week and two day campaign to raise awareness about global violence against women. From the Secretary General's report:

The role of stereotypes and sociocultural patterns of behaviour was addressed by the Committee in the inquiry into the abduction, rape and murder of women in and around Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The Committee emphasized that changing “a structural situation and a social and cultural phenomenon deeply rooted in the consciousness and customs of the population … requires a global and integrated response … aimed at transforming existing sociocultural patterns” and “eradicating the notion that gender violence is inevitable”.

The same could be said for honor killings and FGM, of course.

Internet Justice: OJ and eBay

2006-11-24T15:35:00.000-05:00

When greedy sellers tried to make some blood money auctioning off now-rare copies of OJ Simpson's "If I Did It", they were met by mobs on the internet who delivered a form of Wild West justice. Bidders flooded listings with phony bids shutting down auctions altogether. Even if these creepy sellers lack a conscience, you think they would have learned a lesson about the last week. If public disgust can force Judith Regan and Rupert Murdoch to refrain from profiteering from murder, then maybe the idea is a no-go. Here's one of the listings from a user called Soup414.

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN RECALLED AND WILL NOT EVER HIT THE SHELVES. (COLLECTORS ITEM)

IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE, IF YOU WANT IT. BE THE HIGH BIDDER

DON'T E-MAIL TO ASK ME WHERE I GOT IT.

DON'T ASK ME TO END AUCTION EARLY.

AND SAVE YOUR NASTY COMMENTS, YOU CAN'T OFFEND ME!

Since this eBayer can't be offended, I guess one can feel free to log into eBay and select the "Contact Member" button and email him/her with comments here. eBay users love feedback.

Conference Determines FGM "Unlslamic"

2006-11-24T12:24:00.000-05:00

At a conference in the Egyptian capital Cairo, Muslim scholars from around the world have called for female genital mutilation to be banned and those who carry it out to face punishment.

"Our mission today is not easy, because we're fighting against rumors and habits and traditions and ideas that have been established for long centuries," said Moushira Khattab, secretary general of Egypt's National Council for Childhood and Motherhood, which is headed by the wife of Egypt's president, Suzanne Mubarak.

Arabist.net has the story here. Haaretz.com reports here and the BBC has it here.

Women's Studies: Nirvana 101

2006-11-22T08:16:00.000-05:00

I know this is going to anger the Women's Studies community but, nonetheless, as a reader of several Women's Studies forums and listservs, it is obvious that Women's Studies departments are not focused they way they should be on education that advances women to the point that Women's Studies departments themselves become obsolete. Some departments may in fact be completely bereft of the notion that the existence of Women's Studies is based on the precept that academia is dominated by male perspectives and that specialized territory for women need be carved out for balance. But they've got so far that they have forgotten that Women's Studies was not created to combat racism or globalization or colonialism.

When Women's Studies was born in 1970 at San Diego State University, it was born out of the right recognition that women were excluded for higher eduction and all the rewards that go with it. However, as of 2004, women received fifty-eight percent of bachelor's degrees in the United States compared to only thirty-five percent in 1960.

Consider it a victory. Women's Studies was effective. Women are no longer excluded.

While Women's Studies instructors are clearly against the spread of Men's Studies departments , they fail to recognize that their subject in its current state is extremely vulnerable to poaching. More importantly, it is not in the interest of the original intention of Women's Studies for departments to focus on issues of the body, racism, LGBT, cultural anti-colonialism. Racism, anti-colonialism, and gay issues are not concerns inherent to women only. They are human concerns and the American Men's Studies Association, founded in 1991 with legitimate branches at a few schools such as Hobart and William Smith Colleges, duplicates much of the same territory.

Now it is time for all Women's Studies departments to aggressively shift towards a specialization in leadership training. In order to close the wage gap, turn domestic violence and rape into vastly unacceptable cultural taboos, and balance out women's representation in government, women have to govern. In order to address all the issues that Women's Studies and feminism was created to address, women have to take the next massive step and be able to lead - both women and men.

Yesterday, Boston University's College Republicans established a "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition" scholarship highlighting the huge amount of special interest funding in academia directed at non-Caucasians. Granted, it's something we expect College Republicans to do and not an finessed tactic but it raises a legitimate question: Is the playing field still as unequal as it once was? If not, how should the remaining inequalities be addressed?

Iron Rita and the Limits of Freedom

2006-11-21T08:56:00.000-05:00

Of all the things that Islamic terrorism has done to affect Western thinking, probably the most profound thing it has done is to force the West to redfine the limits of freedom. "Free" is a huge part of the Western identity and this identity crisis is likely to last into the next decade. In America it's been dealt with badly so far with on-going struggles with gay marriage, abortion, and highly questionable detainee programs. Still the question remains: What and where do you limit personal freedoms?

How about the burqa? Last week, Holland became the first country to ban the burqa. Said Immigration Minister "Iron Rita" Verdonk, her cabinet

"finds it undesirable that face-covering clothing - including the burqa - is worn in public places for reasons of public order, security and protection of citizens. From a security standpoint, people should always be recognizable and from the standpoint of integration, we think people should be able to communicate with one another".

Meanwhile, the Pope is heading to Turkey. One of the agenda items he is pushing is the notion of reciprocity: If Muslims demand freedom to practice their religion and religious traditions in Western countries then Christians (in this case the Pope's primary concern) must be free to practice their faiths openly in Muslim countries.

By extension, this applies not just to Christians but all westerners. I should be able to wear my red burqa t-shirt (courtesy of Tennessee Guerilla Women) in Mecca, if you want to wear your burqa in Amsterdam.

It's called Quid Pro Quo, which some Latin translations read as "I give, so that you give."

Fox on Fox on OJ

2006-11-20T16:19:00.000-05:00

Can Fox cover itself? Worth keeping an eye on...

52 Women

Website Message

Smearing Hillary I

Hillary TV: SNL "the Old Double Standard"

Post-Abortion Syndome??

It's Not Just Partisan

Hillary: "I'm In"

Girl on Girl Violence

Shameless Self-Promotion Tuesday

Not in Front of the Children

Women in C-Suite Seats

What "Pro-Lifers" Don't Get

Goodbye Jeane Kirkpatrick

Madam President Watch: Obama Happens

Christianists & Science

Madam President Watch

"Perhaps the harshest critics of women leaders are women themselves."

Modern Problems

A Liberal Outing of a Liberal Bias

The Tao of Paris Hilton

Oklahoma is NOT OK

1. Birth control is harmful because it creates a sex on demand attitude.
2. It does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
3. It contributes to sexual addiction.
4. It causes abortions.

The UN's 16-Day Campaign

Internet Justice: OJ and eBay

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN RECALLED AND WILL NOT EVER HIT THE SHELVES. (COLLECTORS ITEM)

IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE, IF YOU WANT IT. BE THE HIGH BIDDER

DON'T E-MAIL TO ASK ME WHERE I GOT IT.

DON'T ASK ME TO END AUCTION EARLY.

AND SAVE YOUR NASTY COMMENTS, YOU CAN'T OFFEND ME!

Conference Determines FGM "Unlslamic"

Women's Studies: Nirvana 101

Iron Rita and the Limits of Freedom

Fox on Fox on OJ

52 Women

Website Message

Smearing Hillary I

Hillary TV: SNL "the Old Double Standard"

Post-Abortion Syndome??

It's Not Just Partisan

Hillary: "I'm In"

Girl on Girl Violence

Shameless Self-Promotion Tuesday

Not in Front of the Children

Women in C-Suite Seats

What "Pro-Lifers" Don't Get

Goodbye Jeane Kirkpatrick

Madam President Watch: Obama Happens

Christianists & Science

Madam President Watch

"Perhaps the harshest critics of women leaders are women themselves."

Modern Problems

A Liberal Outing of a Liberal Bias

The Tao of Paris Hilton

Oklahoma is NOT OK

1. Birth control is harmful because it creates a sex on demand attitude. 2. It does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases. 3. It contributes to sexual addiction. 4. It causes abortions.

The UN's 16-Day Campaign

Internet Justice: OJ and eBay

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN RECALLED AND WILL NOT EVER HIT THE SHELVES. (COLLECTORS ITEM)IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE, IF YOU WANT IT. BE THE HIGH BIDDERDON'T E-MAIL TO ASK ME WHERE I GOT IT.DON'T ASK ME TO END AUCTION EARLY.AND SAVE YOUR NASTY COMMENTS, YOU CAN'T OFFEND ME!

Conference Determines FGM "Unlslamic"

Women's Studies: Nirvana 101

Iron Rita and the Limits of Freedom

Fox on Fox on OJ

1. Birth control is harmful because it creates a sex on demand attitude.
2. It does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases.
3. It contributes to sexual addiction.
4. It causes abortions.

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN RECALLED AND WILL NOT EVER HIT THE SHELVES. (COLLECTORS ITEM)

IT'S PRETTY SIMPLE, IF YOU WANT IT. BE THE HIGH BIDDER

DON'T E-MAIL TO ASK ME WHERE I GOT IT.

DON'T ASK ME TO END AUCTION EARLY.

AND SAVE YOUR NASTY COMMENTS, YOU CAN'T OFFEND ME!