Archive: Apr 2009

I’ve been rather quiet around here these past few and am soon to jump back on the horse (or in the saddle, or however that phrase goes). Just wanted to throw out a quick one, courtesy of the CCF listserv, from today’s WSJ:

Money Matters Can Make or Break Marriages by Jeff D. Opdyke

Even in the best of times, couples regularly argue about finances. But at this juncture, when so many Americans are feeling stung and frustrated by a weak economy, a housing-price collapse, and a stock-market crash, it’s particularly critical that newlyweds — and even long-time spouses — are on the same page when it comes to money.

Sigh.  Note to world: though Marco’s job situation is still precarious, we are going strong, in our 9th month of marriage.  I chalk it up to open communication, giving each other lots of space in which to unfold, and of course our kitten, Tula, who keeps it real.

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Over at TalkingPointsMemo, the TPMCafe Book Club features a fabulous book discussion about Jessica Valenti’s The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women. I was thrilled to see the dialogue–and the book–at TPM. Jessica at TPM satisfies my political news junkie and my feminist blog junkie all at once. Posts from diverse thinkers advance the dialogue: Women as Goalies…Sending a Message, Doing it Better…Bristol Palin and Two Kinds of Virginity…America’s obsession with Women’s Sexuality: Prescription for Change?

But Jessica’s latest commentary, Wanna Know Where the Purity Myth Is: Start with TPM Readers, should not be missed: She does a pithy close reading of comments that were left on the page: Here’s an example of a comment and Jessica’s analysis.

“Shooter242, for example, believes that the virgin ideal is in place because of ‘the simple idea that guys want to marry women they can trust’ and that a virgin has ‘the discipline and foresight to retain something she considers valuable.’ Shooter actually proves my point – why is it that a woman who has sex is someone not to be trusted? Or that in this day and age, someone can still talk about ‘retaining’ virginity and chastity as ‘valuable’ as if it was a commodity.”

For pure pleasure, read the whole thing.

–Virginia Rutter

One of my most vivid memories of first grade is when Mrs. Gerry wouldn’t let me have a counting strip. It had lily pads on it and a frog at zero. When I got up to get in line to get my counting strip, Mrs. Gerry told me to turn around and sit down. “You don’t need one.” I was embarrassed to have my math skills announced like that to the class. But she was right, I didn’t need it. That was the start of my math nrrd status.

Last week I had my daughter at my office because of report card pick up. Yes, in Chicago, that means the kids have the day off so teachers can focus on parent conferences. She loves being at my office because I have a white board and I let her draw all over it. Normally she draws pictures, but this time she was doodling math problems. I turned around and saw that she was trying to add 15 to 20 and had figured it out. How did my kindergarten daughter figure this out? Well, she drew counters. First 15 then 20 more and counted them up. I also noticed that she wrote the problem out vertically, so I thought it was a good time to teach her how to add double digits. I drew boxes around the right column and told her to add those numbers, then did the same with the left column. I knew it would work because there was no carrying involved.

She looked at me like I was a genius. Then she asked me to write some more problems for her to do on the white board. Yes, I was proud.

The first thing I did when I got to the WAM! Conference at MIT on March 27th was to buy her a MIT sweatshirt. I buy her shirts from almost every campus I visit. Even though I work at a university, I want her to know that college is part of the plan and that there are so many more options than just the one mommy works at. While I was flooded with college brochures in high school, I had no idea how to navigate them. I threw the MIT one in the garbage because I didn’t think it was worth it to apply just to be denied. I want to keep that mentality from rooting itself in my daughter’s head. One of her favorite sleeping shirts is from Spellman.

So while I am a math nrrd and it is obvious that my daughter has some great math skills, I know that parents and teachers are key to making a skill into a passion. The next day when I was busy working when she asked me to write some math problems for her. “Some big ones!” So I did. And I did again when she was done and wanted more.

Girls have caught up with boys in math test scores and I give us parents a lot of credit for it. We stopped listening to naysayers who said math is a boy thing. We listened to feminists who said, hell no! We encouraged our daughters to explore the numbers dancing in their heads. It’s easy to be jaded and think that kids don’t listen to us, even as early as kindergarten. But we need to remember that we can still wow them with simple math magic. You never know where that might lead them.

Now to figure out how to teach her about carrying numbers in a way that keeps me looking like a genius.

I’ll be offline for the next few days, observing Passover and eating lots of matzah. I have no idea who “Matzah Woman” is (not in the Hagaddah, last I checked), but I just had to post this. Image cred here.

May all beings, everywhere, be free!

So this just well may be my favorite annual report out there, and it’s just out now: Unconventional Wisdom: New Data, Trends, and Clinical Observations about Equality in American Family Life and Gender Roles

In it, experts from the Council on Contemporary Families review key recent research and clinical findings on gender and equality. In preparation for the Council on Contemporary Families’ Twelfth Anniversary Conference at the University of Chicago at Illinois, April 17-19, 2009, CCF surveyed its members about their “most important or surprising research results and clinical observations related to topics being considered at the conference.” The resulting report provides a snapshot of what some of the nation’s leading authorities are seeing in their research and clinical practice. Check it out:

1. Does marital quality decrease when couples need to negotiate the division of household chores and child-care?

Researchers and clinical psychologists Philip and Carolyn Cowan report that marriages suffer most when couples fail to talk through these thorny issues. On average, having a child leads to a long-term decline in marital satisfaction. But couples who have more egalitarian relationships can avoid these problems, first when they jointly plan for and welcome the birth of a child, and second, when they minimize the tendency to slip into more traditional gender roles after the child’s birth. Still, the closer couples move toward equality, report conference presenters Marc and Amy Vachon, the less likely they are to focus on quantifying who does which chores. Good to know, huh?!

2. Women feel more work-family conflict than men, right?

Not any longer. A just-released report from the Families and Work Institute, “Times Are Changing: Gender and Generation at Work and at Home,” shows that as men have increased the amount of time they spend with young children over the past 15 years, they are now experiencing more work-family conflict than women.  Welcome to our world, dudes.

3. What’s happening to the traditional double standard?

It’s been to a great extent reversed in middle school, according to researcher Barbara Risman. Forty-five years ago, studies showed that the school culture was suppressing girls’ natural talents and aspirations by the time they entered middle school. At age 10 or 11, girls stopped speaking up in class and even started “playing dumb” to attract boys. They often chose not to compete in sports or to develop their bodies for fear of being teased as tomboys. Risman’s new study of middle-school children in the 21st Century shows a remarkable reversal of this pattern. Being a top-flight athlete is now considered part of the “ideal” girl package, and girls are very willing to compete with boys in the classroom. Today it is young boys who are afraid of showing off how smart they are and who feel they have to suppress their interest in certain activities for fear of being taunted as “gay.”

4. But the double standard is still alive and well in college, says Stanford University researcher Paula England.

While women have gained some sexual freedoms, they risk harsher judgments than men do if they proceed beyond “making out” in a hook up. And when activity does progress beyond making out, there is a striking “orgasm gap” between males and females-it is worse than the sex gap in pay! “Men get more than their share of the orgasms while women get more than their share of the bad reputations,” notes England, who is currently interviewing students across the country about changing sexual practices and norms.

5. In another finding, sexual health researcher Adina Nack discovered that women who are diagnosed with an STD ultimately develop improved sexual communication with their partners and are better able to discuss their own needs and wishes as well as insist on safe health practices.

In still more data-driven observations from family experts, you can learn about important and surprising research on family, gender, economics, and sexuality from the past year. The report is available here.

WANT MORE UNCONVENTIONAL WISDOM? CHECK OUT CCF’s CONFERENCE “Relationships, Sexuality, and Equality” — I’ll be there! Here’s more:

The Council on Contemporary Families 12th Anniversary Conference,
“Relationships, Sexuality, and Equality: How Far Have We Come?” (April
17 and 18, 2009 at the University of Illinois, Chicago) includes the
following panels, presenting new research and best practice findings on
these timely topics:

*Work-Family Balance for Women and Men
*Gender Convergence in Families and Intimate Relationships
*Gender in the Next Generation
*The Marriage Go-Round – A Special preview of his forthcoming book with Andrew Cherlin
*Women, Men and Equality: What the Election Taught Us

You’ll hear Jeremy Adam Smith discuss his study on role-switching
between husbands and wives, including interviews with dads forced into this
position by lay-offs. At a time when men have experienced more than 80
percent of layoffs since 2007, we have a growing number of families with
stay-at-home dads and breadwinner moms. The entire work and family panel
offers fresh perspective on families in a time of recession.

In the “Next Generation” panel, noted psychologist Diane Ehrensaft will
discuss the growing phenomenon of children telling their parents
that they are not the gender stated on their birth certificate or are
not able or willing to play within the culturally defined binary boxes
of “girl,” “boy.” They might be transgender; they might be gender
fluid; they might be a “Prius”-a hybrid half boy-half girl; or they
might be a “gender smoothie”–a synthesized blend of male/female.
What do we know about how parents can best handle these situations?

For a detailed conference program, visit www.contemporaryfamilies.org.
Accredited journalists seeking complimentary registration should contact
Stephanie Coontz, Director of Research and Public Education, Council on
Contemporary Families: coontzs@msn.com. Phone: 360 556-9223.

Check out this article in the LA Times, Recession Hits Male Workers More, which offers all sorts of theories about the big gender split we’re seeing:

A bona fide “man-cession” invites all sorts of social theories: Maybe women are cheaper to keep on the payroll because they tend to make less. Maybe women are better communicators, which helps shield them from the ax. Maybe women feel they have more to prove, so they get retained for trying harder.

To hear economist [Mark] Perry tell it, two factors far outweigh those theories.

This recession started with a crash in the housing market, and construction is about as male-dominated as it gets: 88%, Perry says. Manufacturing also took a dive: It’s 70% male. The male bastions of the financial-service sector got whacked too: Testosterone-heavy trading desks ain’t what they used to be, post credit crunch.

Meanwhile, practically the only major sectors holding their own are education and healthcare, which run 77% female combined. “Those differences account for quite a bit of it,” Perry said.

The other big difference: higher education.

Since 1981, women have earned far more bachelor’s degrees, collecting 135 for every 100 awarded to men, Perry said. At the master’s level, the “degree gap” is an even wider 150 to 100. Because unemployment among college graduates stands at 4.1%, less than half the rate of high-school grads, those sheepskins count.

And with so many more men getting pink slips — a misnomer, these days — women will make up a rising share of the labor force.

The article goes on to cite our friends Catalyst and others, noting that even with women making such dramatic gains, their numbers in business leadership are hardly skyrocketing.  Turns out neither higher education nor the economic devastation of traditional male strongholds are making all that much difference when it comes to cracking the glass ceiling.  Yet.

(Thanks to Catalyst for the heads up!)

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Oi. 8.5. That’s our unemployment rate now. For a clear and comprehensive view of what is going on with unemployment–including the rates for men (8.8 percent), women (7.0 percent), African Americans (13.3 percent), Hispanics (11.4 percent), whites (7.9 percent)–read Center for American Progress’s Heather Boushey’s report, “No Good News for Workers.”

Read through to the part about how many discouraged workers there are–people who no longer check in as unemployed–and then read on to the part about average number of hours per week people are getting. At 33.2, it is the lowest ever since these data were first collected in 1964!

On Monday, Deborah Siegel gave a talk on the “Gender Shakeup at the Recession” at Framingham State College and that’s on our mind: add this factlet to the shakeup list and ponder: the gap between men’s and women’s unemployment, Boushey reports, is the highest its been since 1949.

Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research points out that, “the disproportionate job loss in construction and manufacturing is reflected in the sharp gap that has opened up between the unemployment rates for men and women.” Baker also covers the unemployment numbers–and he includes a discussion of the accelerating rate of unemployment among college graduates. It is worth a read to get the whole picture.

-Virginia Rutter

Time for some serious talk about men’s violence. I’ll break it down to make a difficult point really simple.

Number one: Men’s violence against women is a men’s issue.
Number two: Prevention is the best solution.

It’s been almost two months since Chris Brown’s infamous and brutal attack on Rihanna. With our three-second Twitters, four-second sound bites, and a five-second news story shelf lives, it’s like this assault happened a million years ago. It’s so easy to collectively forget and move on to the Next Big Story.

But think back to the leaked police photos of 21-year-old popstar Rihanna’s bruised and swollen face. Although her bruises may have faded along with our collective voyeurism, a crucial issue remains.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that 1.3 million women are victims of assault by an intimate partner each year. Do the math. That works out to nearly two-and-a-half women assaulted every minute, typically by a boyfriend or husband.
We live in a culture that shrouds these facts of violence in secrecy, silence, and misunderstanding. We’re taught to confuse abuse with passionate love. Our culture links violence with romance with lines like, “Baby, I only hit you because I love you” — the kind of relentless refrain we see repeated in mainstream movies, TV, magazines, and music.

If a celebrity woman stays in a violent relationship, or gets back with an abusive guy, the takeaway for most people is that that male violence is not so bad. This insidious message, comments journalist Katha Pollitt, reinforces ideas that male violence is a natural part of life, and something in which women are complicit by provoking it, using it, even liking it.

This is dangerous misinformation. It contributes to a culture that normalizes violence and is accustomed to looking the other way, even with the rates of abuse so astronomically high.

But here’s the thing. Whether we’re talking about two megastars in Hollywood or the couple living right next door, we might scratch our heads and ask, “If he’s abusive then why does she stay?”

It’s a fair question. But the wrong one. The question that goes to the heart of the matter is Why does he hit?

Men are certainly victims of domestic assault. But the vast majority of cases are women hurt by men’s hands, words, and control. Direct service agencies and hospital samples indicate that men commit nearly 90 percent of domestic abuse. Yet, ironically, we’re trained to think of abuse as a woman’s issue. When we’re talking about male violence against women, says violence-prevention educator Jackson Katz, we’re really talking about a men’s issue.

This isn’t about blaming men. The point is more profound and the goal more constructive than that. The most effective way to end violence against women is to stop the problem before it happens. Doing so means we need men on board. We need men taking responsibility, getting in on the conversations about male violence, and refusing to be silent bystanders to the problem.

Rihanna and Chris Brown are high-profile cultural icons. Millions of fans look to them as trendsetters and culture creators. With media giving so much attention to their personal lives, the couple’s private relationship has powerful public impact.

The Rihanna-Chris Brown fan base skews young. So does abuse. Girls and women between the ages of 16 and 24 are more likely than any other group to be in abusive relationships. The NCADV reports teen dating violence is one of the major sources of violence in adolescents’ lives. A full 20 percent of dating couples report some type of violence in their relationship. Teen dating violence is particularly insidious because it happens at a time when young people are navigating intense relationships, sorting out their values, and laying emotional roadmaps for their futures.

A recent study of Boston teens that found nearly 50 percent of the 12-to-19-year-olds surveyed blamed Rihanna for getting hit. But this isn’t just about pop-star punditry. The issue literally hits at home. According to the Boston Public Health Commission, 71 percent of the teens they questioned said arguing is a normal part of relationships and 44 percent said fighting in relationships is routine.

This is startling.

So let’s seize this cultural moment to keep talking — really talking! — about masculinity, violence, and pop culture. Honest conversations across communities about male violence against women are crucial for the safety of teenagers at risk, for children who witness abuse, and for survivors everywhere. We need to start talking across communities because men’s violence against women is a men’s issue. And prevention is the best solution.

My latest at Recessionwire.com is now up: A Security of Her Own. In this one, I unveil my current plans for dreaming big…and face up to the fact that, given our respective industries,  if financial stability is going to happen any time soon, it might be up to me.

Busy month for the Global Exchangers!

This month we’ve been extra busy at the Global Exchange – Tonni’s finishing up at ESADE and Gwen took off for fieldwork in the Dominican Republic and Haiti – so we’ve only had time to compile a roundup of interesting links to studies and articles that we’ve recently come across. Please feel free to leave additional links in comments!

ActionAid recently released a report on the rise of “corrective” rape of lesbians in South Africa.

AWID has a really cool project that highlights 10 case studies from around the world where women mobilized to make a difference.

The folks over at Gender Action just came out with a report that provides a much-needed analysis of the gender dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction.

Along these lines, UN-INSTRAW are doing some amazing things as part of their Gender, Peace & Security project, including a project on <a href="gendering security sector reform in Haiti (more on this from Gwen in the future).

Following the headlines on the G20 meetings in London, check out this Q&A with Rosa Lizarde of Global Call to Action Against Poverty’s (GCAP) Feminist Taskforce on the implications of the G20 meeting for women. (These are the same people who have coordinated the incredible Poverty Hearings and Women’s Tribunals – one of which Gwen was lucky enough to attend in New York last fall.)

And finally, for those interested in issues of translation, please consider answering the Call for Book Reviews for the Graduate Journal for Social Science’s special edition Lost (and Found) in Translation.

See you at the end of April!

Gwen & Tonni