Last Thursday’s forum on my book hosted by Demos, NCRW, Woodhull, and Ms. Foundation airs today from 9:30AM to 10:30 AM ET on Truth For A Change, Time Warner Channel 34, and streaming simultaneously 9:30 AM ET here: http://www.mnn.org (select channel 34).
The other week, my writers’ group got together with Courtney Martin’s writers’ group (Crucial Minutiae) for some professional and intergenerational exchange, and for fun. I met this fabulously vivacious woman there, Kimmi Auerbach. Kimmi’s reading from her new book, The Devil, The Lovers & Me: My Life in Tarot, tonight at Borders at Columbus Circle, at 7PM. Come one, come all!
Around the same time that GGM arrived in my mailbox the other week, I also received notice about these cool new resources:
1. The Barnard Center for Research on Women has assembled ephemera dating from 1970-1999 related to women’s sexual health–resource guides, newsletters, and pamphlets written for (and by) diverse groups of women. Addressing issues like safe sex, teenage pregnancy, lesbians, and AIDS, advancements in reproductive technologies, contraceptives, reproductive health, and forced sterilization, these are documents that have empowered women to make well-informed decisions about their own bodies since the dawning of feminism’s second-wave. The collection is online, here.
2. In May 2007, the American Psychological Association released the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, linking the phenomenon to some of the most common mental health problems in girls and women. You can read the executive summary here. (To request a copy, contact Leslie Cameron at lcameron@apa.org)
Pass it on 🙂
A nice summary of the article of the same title by David von Drehle appearing in the July 26 issue Time Magazine, sent via Steve Mintz, with my favorite line in bold:
“The Dangerous Book” – a best-selling celebration of boyhood past – has tapped into a larger anxiety about raising young men. Observers of the boy “crisis” contend that families, schools and popular culture are failing boys, leaving them restless bundles of anxiety – misfits in the classroom and video-game junkies at home. They suffer from an epidemic of “anomie,” one psychologist says, adrift in a world of change without the help they need to navigate. There are statistics to back up every point in the sad litany, but also people eager to flay nearly every statistic. For instance: Is it bad that more boys are in special education, or it is better that they are getting extra help from specially trained teachers? And haven’t boys always tended to be more restless than girls under the discipline of high school and more likely to wind up in jail? Ultimately, the subject of boys is a bog of sociology in which a clever researcher can unearth evidence to support almost any point of view. This field, like so many others, has been infiltrated by the left-right political noise machine: Our boys have become cannon fodder in the unresolved culture wars waged by their parents and grandparents. But with fresh eyes on fresh facts, more upbeat conclusions are apparent. Worrying about boys – reading and writing books about them, fretting over dire trends and especially taking more time to parent them – is paying off. The next step is to let boys really blossom.
I just learned that the forum that Demos, NCRW, Woodhull, and Ms. Foundation sponsored last week on my book will air this Thursday (Aug. 2) from 9:30AM to 10:30 AM ET on Truth For A Change, Time Warner Channel 34, and streaming simultaneously 9:30 AM ET here: http://www.mnn.org (select channel 34).
New York Times film reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz has an intriguing review of No Reservations (July 27). Seitz notes how while the Catherine Zeta-Jones’ character can’t quite figure out how to combine parenthood and work as a chef, the Aaron Eckhart character literally and metaphorically brings the little girl (Little Miss Sunshine‘s Abigail Breslin)into the kitchen. I smell a trend — and it’s one I like. In the August 6 issue of US Weekly–which, yes, I proudly on the plane last night, while my neighbor, a lovely intern who works at The Nation, poured through her glossy — there’s a feature on “Sexy Dads” that similarly posits Hollywood men as models for combining parenting and work. Now put that in your oven and bake it.
On a break from seriousness, here’s a pic Marco just sent me from our trip out west (aka “book tour”)…
Taking a moment away from BlogHer to note that tomorrow’s New York Times Magazine article, “Family-Leave Values” by Eyal Press, features the work of two stellar scholars, Joan Williams and Shelley Correll. Here’s a sneak-preview, courtesy of Steve Mintz of the Council on Contemporary Families:
The results, as reported in the May 2007 issue of The American Journal of Sociology, are striking. Among the volunteers, mothers were consistently viewed as less competent and less committed and were held to higher performance and punctuality standards. They were 79 percent less likely to be hired and, if hired, would be offered a starting salary $11,000 lower than nonmothers. Fathers, by contrast, were offered the highest salaries of all. Meanwhile, in the test run with real-world employers, the hypothetical female applicants without children were more than twice as likely as equally qualified mothers to be called back for interviews.
Sigh. The mommy gap is alive and well.
My mother and my 98-year-old grandmother drove me down to Navy Pier this morning (guess who drove), and I’m jumping in, in medias res, to one of the session I’ve most been looking forward to: “Earn Our Votes: What Questions Do Women Bloggers Want Candidates to Answer in Election 2008?”
The panel begins with a series of presentations by pollsters. Anita Sharma of Lake Research Partners is talking. So here we go:
In 2006, women decided the country needed a new direction. Women’s votes were key in VA, MO, and MT, where the races were close. Unmarried women, the fastest growing demographic in the US, were more likely to vote for the Dems in 2006. They are 47% of American women. Turnout among this group shot up in 2006.
Women’s agenda is broader than men’s: women are concerned about Iraq, but also child care, early education, equality for women, and the environment.
Independent and Dem women put health care at the top of their concerns, while Rep women put the war on top. Number 2 on Dem women’s agenda is Social Security, and number 3 is economy and jobs.
When asked about the importance of having a woman Speaker, over 1/2 of the women surveyed said it was important.
Will 2008 be the year of the woman president? Recent data published in the NY Times/CBS News poll, 70% of Dem women view Hillary favorably, while only 15% of Rep women do.
Hillary is most popular among single women (54% view her favorably. 39% of married women do.)
Totally interesting. But here’s where I really wake up: One of the panelists comments that married swing voters have trouble with Hillary because she, as a professionally successful married woman and mother, has been able to have it all. Say WHAT? Way to fuel the overblown mommy wars with false ammo.
But thank goodness. Jenn Pozner of Women in Media and News to the rescue. Jenn notes that media coverage may portray women as making decisions out of emotions like jealousy, but isn’t it important to also emphasize how women, more often, actually care about more than that and vote based on policy issues?
Panelist Sarah Simmons counters, “But the reality is that women are challenged by other women’s success.” Sigh. Meow. (Sarah served in the Office of Strategic Initiatives in the Bush White House, not that that’s relevant, just throwing it out there.) Lisa Stone poses the general question to the panel of pollsters, do women vote based on policy, or personality? The panelists answer: both.
Lisa Stone–a fabulous moderator and provocateur–asks if anyone in the audience would vote for a candidate based on her gender. Jenn Pozner notes aloud that NOW President Kim Gandy, who is here in the house, didn’t raise her hand. So Lisa invites Kim to speak. Among other smart responses, Kim speaks about the power of the mirror. She also says it’s important for our sons to see that women can be leaders. Hells yeah.
Time for breakout group, then off to lunch…I’m afraid this will be my last “live” post for now, as after the business sessions this afternoon, my parents are picking me up for some much-needed family time while I’m here. For old times sake, we’re heading to the Lincoln Park Zoo. But watch for more coverage of this and other sessions over at the BlogHer site.
