Sociological Images

Cross-posted at Family Inequality.

I have criticized sloppy statistical work by some international feminist organizations, so I’m glad to have a chance to point out a useful new report and website.

The Progress of the World’s Women is from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. The full-blown site has an executive summary, a long report, and a statistics index page with a download of the complete spreadsheet. I selected a few of the interesting graphics.

Skewed sex ratios (which I’ve written about here and here) are in the news, with the publication of Unnatural Selection, by Mara Hvistendahl. The report shows some of the countries with the most skewed sex ratios, reflecting the practice of parents aborting female fetuses (Vietnam and Taiwan should  be in there, too). With the exception of Korea, they’ve all gotten more skewed since the 1990s, when ultrasounds became more widely available, allowing parents to find out the sex of the fetus early in the pregnancy.

The most egregious inequality between women of the world is probably in maternal mortality. This chart shows, for example, that the chance of a woman dying during pregnancy or birth is about 100- 39-times higher in Africa than Europe. The chart also shows how many of those deaths are from unsafe abortions.

Finally, I made this one myself, showing women as a percentage of parliament in most of the world’s rich countries (the spreadsheet has the whole list). The USA, with 90 women out of 535 members of Congress, comes in at 17%.

The report focuses on law and justice issues, including rape and violence against women, as well as reparations, property rights, and judicial reform. They boil down their conclusions to: “Ten proven approaches to make justice systems work for women“:

1. Support women’s legal organizations

2. Support one-stop shops and specialized services to reduce attrition in the justice chain [that refers to rape cases, for example, not making their way from charge to conviction -pnc]

3. Implement gender-sensitive law reform

4. Use quotas to boost the number of women legislators

5. Put women on the front line of law enforcement

6. Train judges and monitor decisions

7. Increase women’s access to courts and truth commissions in conflict and post-conflict contexts.

8. Implement gender-responsive reparations programmes

9. Invest in women’s access to justice

10. Put gender equality at the heart of the Millennium Development Goals

I’m back! I was in the middle of moving and just overwhelmed with everything. Anyway. Talking Points Memo posted a link to an article at Slate about income inequality in the U.S., and particularly the increasing proportion of total U.S. income earned by the very rich. Timothy Noah refers to the “great compression” as a time period when income concentration among top earners dropped significantly, and argues that in the past three decades we’ve seen a “great divergence,” with increasing income inequality hitting levels not seen since the Great Depression:

A slideshow accompanies the article, providing more info on the changes Noah discusses. A few examples (the slideshow provides the data source used to create each image):

Even among the very rich, we see increasing divergence, with the super-ultra rich, the top 0.1% of earners, now making 8% of all U.S. income:

A comparison to some other countries (I don’t know why these specific nations were chosen for the comparison):

Keep in mind, this data includes only income. Wealth — the worth of all assets, including retirement and savings accounts, stocks, homes, cars, and anything else of value — is much more unequally distributed.

Congress is about to be embroiled in a major debate about whether to extend the tax cuts on high incomes; as both sides weigh in, here’s some context to keep in mind:

The effective tax rate is what people actually pay, as opposed to what their tax rate theoretically is. While we’ve certainly seen a large drop since the late ’70s, Noah argues that, compared to other economic changes, the effective tax rate hasn’t affected the rise in income inequality much. It plays a role, yes, but changing the tax rate on the very rich doesn’t affect the overall distribution of income a huge amount, in part because the effective rate, what people end up actually paying, generally ends up being smaller than what they theoretically owe based on the stated tax rate, once you take into account deductions, write-offs, loopholes, and so on.

So…happy post-Labor Day!

Courtesy of FiveThirtyEight, this graph shows the increase since 2001 in the number of people worldwide who live in jurisdictions where gay same-sex (or homogamous, if you prefer) marriage is legal. As of 2010, roughly 250 million people live in such areas (each column represents the total number for that year, broken into individual colors to show the number in each region):

The spike in 2008 is due to the California courts recognizing same-sex marriages, so the U.S. data pushed the total number upward; that, of course, was quickly reversed by Prop 8, so that bump disappears in 2009. Currently within the U.S., same-sex marriages are legal in Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., while apparently New York, New Mexico, California, and Rhode Island don’t allow them to be performed but recognize those performed elsewhere (a friend of mine who lives in Rhode Island couldn’t marry his boyfriend there, but drove a half hour from their home into Massachusetts to do so and then went home, where his out-of-state marriage was then entirely legal). California recognizes those same-sex marriages that occurred between June and November 2008, before Prop 8 passed. Within Europe (which is all thrown together here, unfortunately), as far as I know the specific countries where it’s legal are Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Iceland), with Portugal and Iceland both doing so this year. In Mexico, same-sex marriages are legal only in Mexico City, but if performed there, must be recognized in other areas. And Argentina became the first country in South America to legalize them just last Thursday. (I’m not including domestic partnerships and other arrangements that are somewhat equivalent to, but clearly distinguished from, marriage here; adding those would certainly increase the number significantly.)

This is a small percentage (about 3.7%) of the total global population of nearly 7 billion, and they are highly concentrated in (Western) Europe and North America, with those in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America largely excluded. But the global pattern is a slow but steady rise over time just over the past decade in the recognition of same-sex marriages.

My new friend Kraig H. sent along an interesting photo project, called Lugar Común (Common Place), designed to disrupt our acceptance of established social hierarchies. The photographers, Justine Graham and Ruby Rumié, took pictures of 50 pairs of women — maids and their employers — located in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia.

To disrupt the hierarchy inherent in their relationship, Graham and Rumié had them dressed alike, without accessories, and sitting in identical poses.   By doing so, they allowed both women to “…look at the camera with the same pride, with the same openness” (source).  The viewer is not told which woman is which.

They also asked each pair to sit across from one another and look in each others’ eyes. Even though some had known each other for 30 years or more, Graham said that all of the pairs had trouble looking at each other in this way:

Antonio M. and Miguel both sent in this commercial for a bank that ran in Argentina:

Honestly, I don’t even quite know what to say. I mean, it’s not subtle with the sentimentality and “yay for tolerance!” message, but it’s so rare to see transgender individuals depicted as anything other than ridiculous or disgusting that I watched it a couple of times and then just sat here and thought “Holy crap. Look at that.”

Often when I see companies touting their tolerance/eco-friendliness/good-neighborliness, I suspect it may be a marketing ploy with little change in actions or policies behind it–you can, for instance, celebrate Black History Month by putting up signs in your business and doing nothing else, and there’s little cost. It occurred to me after I watched the commercial that in this case the bank professed a type of tolerance that wasn’t risk-free to it. Saying your business is eco-friendly, or celebrates a civil rights hero from the past, or honors Carnival or Christmas or a local athletic team or the marching band, isn’t likely to make many people angry, which is why businesses usually stick to such safe issues. I’m by no means an expert on Argentinian culture and attitudes toward the transgender community; I’ve read that Argentinians are more accepting of people who are transgender, but I’ve also read that this acceptance is often over-exaggerated and that anti-gay and anti-transgender attitudes still exist, particularly outside of urban areas. Anyway, I assume that an Argentinian business might suffer some negative consequences from an ad like this that so openly and unequivocally advocates for acceptance, and I think it’s sort of fascinating that they decided to run it anyway.

Thoughts? Insights? Anybody know what the Argentinian transgender community thinks of the ad? Or what people in the U.S. think of it, for that matter?

(NEW!) Jody B. sent in this Progressive insurance ad, which appears to feature a gay couple:

Of course, there’s no clear evidence they’re supposed to be gay, but the one guy is wearing a shirt with what is sort of a rainbow-stripe motif, and there are two men together who aren’t talking about girls, sports, or beer, so apparently many viewers are interpreting them as a gay couple, and presumably Progressive intended that to happen, though perhaps not.

NEW! Tawny T. sent in this video from Stockholm Pride 2009 that questions how heteronormativity affects both gay and straight individuals–by making gays and lesbians invisible in many cases, and in expecting people to follow rigid gender models (i.e., to not act hurt on the athletic field) to prove their heterosexuality: