girls

SO EXCITED bout this: Girls Write Now will be featured some time this week on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams reported by national correspondent Amy Robach.  Tune in or set your DVRs to see some familiar faces! And please spread the word!

NBC Nightly News airs daily at 6:30 PM Eastern/Pacific, 5:30 PM Central. Check out your state’s local listings.

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.

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.

As GWP readers know, we’re celebrating Women’s History Month this March. When my 8-year-old daughter came home from school with an assignment to write a biography about a woman from history, with the understanding that it could be a sports figure, a celebrity, a writer, a politician—any woman–I was at first dismayed. But I then grew excited about finding some strategies that can improve this month-long celebration of women’s history. I know we can do better, and I know girls deserve better!

For starters, the open-ended nature of the assignment overwhelmed my daughter. “Mom, how can I choose?” More important—from my perspective at least—how many women has her curriculum introduced as possible subjects for this assignment? The answer: not many. So while the field of choice was wide open in theory, having encountered few “important” women in school she really didn’t have many possibilities to consider.

Equally troubling to me: are a sports figure and a politician the same type of historical figure? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against athletes or politicians, but I do think that assignments signal educational values. Given the curriculum’s limited attention to women’s history, should my daughter be in the position to decide which life will define it?

But I’m writing to offer some suggestions for reinventing women’s history month, not to complain about it. In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about the balance between identifying problems versus creating solutions within feminism ever since I read Courtney Martin’s provocative analysis of a New York Times op-ed here.

So here goes:

Five Things You Can Do to Reinvent Women’s History Month

1. Volunteer to Talk in a School or Girl-Serving Group. Whether or not you have school-aged children, schools and nonprofits would welcome your expertise (and yes, if you are a GWP reader, I mean you). And I do mean welcome—with open arms! Most teachers love classroom guests, and kids love a break in the routine. You don’t have to give an academic talk, just a few highlights about an important woman you admire or about why women’s history matters. You still have time to make a difference this month, and if not, volunteer in April (or May, or September).

2. Share Your Ideas for Assignments with Teachers. Now I’m talking to the parents out there. If I have a casual moment with my daughter’s teacher (at pick up time one day, maybe) I will mention my thoughts about how she could make this assignment stronger (read: “more feminist”). Having a short list of “important” women from which to choose, and talking with the whole class about all of them, for example, would teach the whole class a bit more women’s history.

3. Advocate for Curricular Reform. I know, this is a steep hill to climb, but I’m in this race for the long haul. We can make interventions like the ones I mention above right now, but we really need to find new, inclusive approaches to teaching history (and English, and math, etc.). That can only happen when we have some broader thinking about K-12 curricular reform.

4. Write Feminist Children’s Literature. Again, I’m dreaming big. The list of “women’s history month” books at my public library was bleak. It included books on pioneers, explorers, and aviators. Well, okay. But I can tell you that those topics seem pretty foreign and uninteresting in my daughter’s media-saturated world where she uses “text” as a verb even though she doesn’t have a cell phone. We need some better books, and we need some that make history seem lively, relevant, and fun.

5. Talk with Girls (and Boys) About Women’s History. This is not exactly the same as my first suggestion. When this assignment came up I was struck by the fact that my daughter and I rarely talk about the need to recognize—or even study!—women’s accomplishments. That seems a little crazy to me, especially given that my own background is in women’s studies. Yet it’s easy to go along with the status quo, and my daughter is proud of her success in school. What would it mean to suggest that school is leaving some important things out? Whether or not you have children, I’m sure you encounter school-aged children in your family or among your social network. I think we can all do more to talk about what gets left out, and why it matters.

What would you add to my list? And in case you’re wondering, my daughter wrote about Michelle Obama, definitely my kind of “important” woman who is making history every day.

Everyone should take a look at this fascinating article at the New York Times on the phenomenon of teenage girls sticking by Chris Brown after his beating of Rihanna. According to the article:

In a recent survey of 200 teenagers by the Boston Public Health Commission, 46 percent said Rihanna was responsible for what happened; 52 percent said both bore responsibility, despite knowing that Rihanna’s injuries required hospital treatment. On a Facebook discussion, one girl wrote, “she probly ran into a door and was too embarrassed so blamed it on chris.”

I caught a clip of Oprah where Oprah opined that women who return to abusive relationships do so because low self-esteem makes them think that they can’t do better, or that they “deserved” the beating. She was speaking to a teenage girl in her audience who had argued that if Rihanna had gotten back together with Chris, she must have done something to deserve the beating and knew it. As Oprah tried to explain a more complex psychology behind the relationship, the girl adamantly shook her head “No.” I was pretty shocked by this response at the time. The Times article seeks to shed some light on this, but raised from childhood with the mantra that “guys never hit girls no matter what,” I’d be interested in further ideas as to why why teenage girls are being so supportive of Chris Brown.

This review comes to GWP courtesy of Jenny Block, author of Open: Love, Sex and Life in an Open Marriage.  You can read more about Jenny’s work at www.jennyonthepage.com

My Little Red Book
Edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
Twelve (Feb. 2009)

I wanted to like this book. I really did. I love the idea of it, women sharing stories about something that we’re not “supposed to” share stories about. The problem is that without stories from every corner of the globe, every generation, every rung of the socioeconomic ladder, and so on, what you end up with is redundancy.

And that is precisely the problem with Rachel Kauder Nalebuff’s My Little Red Book, I’m afraid. The material would certainly be terrific for an article, preferably written by a remarkable writer gifted with profound insight. And there certainly are a few pieces that were wonderful, like Patty Marx’s curt “Can I Just Skip This Period?” and Ellen Devine’s raw and humorous “Hot Dog on a String.” But for the most part, the pieces were generally the same.

more...

Happy Women’s History Month from Science Grrl! But for this post, you can call me Engineering Grrl, even though the only thing I’ve ever engineered is how to make all the pieces of an IKEA furniture piece fit where they need to fit.

Why am I Engineering Grrl this month? Because I’m participating in the fifth annual Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering! It’s a live webcast and teleconference that ran continuously from noon on Wednesday, March 11 through Noon Thursday, March 12, 2009.

Archives from the 2008 Marathon feature presentations originating from points worldwide, with North America leading off, followed by South America, China, India, South Africa, and Europe. Topics included tips on heightening awareness of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics issues among pre-college, college, and young career women, and examining issues such as retaining women in college engineering programs and the workplace.

The schedule demonstrates how engineering for and about women can be discussed around the world in 24 hours. Doesn’t that just blow your mind? I was excited about what would be discussed from the perspective of Africa. I’ve known plenty of women engineering students who hoped to take their engineering skills to Africa to work toward alleviating suffering from drought by crafting new irrigation systems or bioengineering drought-proof seeds.

I’ve found that many women engineering students think this way– They wonder how they can help the world with their engineering skills. Yes, they “ooh and ah” at rockets but most of the women I’ve met who study engineering are thinking with both their brains and hearts. Of course, it’s not just women: Engineers without Borders, which involves both male and female engineers, is one of the fastest growing student groups on college campuses. National Engineers Week Foundation makes a point to have a “humanitarian” group listing.

When people ask me how I try to convince girls to take an interest in engineering, I reply that I don’t. I ask them what their interests already are and then point out the science, technology, engineering and math could encompass those interests. Does she want to have her own cosmetic line? Well I point out that she should have a solid chemistry background (you don’t want her to turn out like Frenchie from Grease!) and perhaps even a bioengineering background to help smooth out wrinkles, keep mascara from running and make bronzers natural, but also glittery.

There’s not much in this world that hasn’t been handled by an engineer. We just need to see it and help our girls see it too.

Earlier this month, my colleagues at the National Council for Research on Women asked advocates and scholars working on issues affecting girls’ lives–along with girls themselves–to address the national conversation on girl’s needs, desires, and rights. What would they like to see changed? Some links to their responses, below.

Navigating Girlhood to Womanhood from New Moon’s Nancy Gruver

Twelve-year Old Calls for Better Educational Opportunities for Girls, by Hannah

Dear Arne Duncan—Not Everyone Learns the Same Way! by Sylvie, grade 5

Young Obama Campaign Worker Wants Equal Opportunities to Pursue Her Dreams, by Ashley, age 14

With New President, Young Girl Sees Chance for the End of Racism, by Nkem, age 10

Discrimination Can Happen “Anywhere, Anytime, to Anyone”, by the Girls Editorial Board of New Moon

See Dad, by Joe Kelly

Lyn Mikel Brown Counters the “Mean Girl” Onslaught with Strength-Based Programs

Allison Kimmich Advises Obama to Connect Policy to Parenting

GIRLS FORUM: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, by Courtney Macavinta, founder and CEO of Respect Rx

GIRLS FORUM: Kathy Cloninger–Developing Girls of Courage, Confidence, and Character

Naked women. What’s not to love, right?
Well…Let’s talk about Frank Cordelle.

Cordelle is a photographer with a long-running exhibit he calls The Century Project. It’s a collection of pics — nude girls and women ages birth through 100. (Get it? One hundred years of naked women = The Century Project.) The line-up for 2009 includes shows at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, Rhodes College in Memphis, and the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, VA.

The pics are supposedly a celebration of the naked female body in a variety of shapes, sizes, races, and ages. Each photo comes with a little story about the featured female. Many of these “moving personal statements,” as Cordelle calls them, are first-person blurbs about overcoming abuse, eating disorders, etc.

Cordelle’s Mission Statement describes his exhibit as a project that “aims more generally to stimulate thought and discussion about subjects that are often taboo in our culture, or otherwise too personal, too painful.” An 8-year-old girl certainly has lots to tell us. But why does she have to do it in the nude?

Visual artist Karen Henninger comments, “if men REALLY got the issues, they would refrain — as in take a break — from female nudity. There is NO need for men to do female nudity — unless it SERVES them. It’s pretty much a mainstream art thing. Female nudity is acceptable and will get you attention. So much for art being a place of ‘creativity,’” Henninger says. Check out the Met. Or any other museum. As the Guerrilla Girls have noted for years, themes of female nudity melded with rape or sexual assault — regardless of how the art is intended — have been a constant theme in art history. Think Rubens’ Rape of Europa or Hayez’s Susannah at her Bath. Depicting women naked, vulnerable, or linked in some way to abuse has been “a constant way for women to be portrayed” in the art world Henninger comments.

But back to Cordelle.

The problem is not female nudity or female sexuality. The problem is that The Century Project uses naked female bodies, eating disorders, and abuse in ways that promote voyeuristic interest. While childhood nudity should be free and joyful, in our culture that’s a big challenge because girls are already hypersexualized at younger and younger ages. As a result we — as a culture — often don’t know how to see a naked female body (regardless of age) other than in sexualized terms. Is she available? Arousing? Sexually interesting? Or not?

I am anti-censorship. I’m a huge fan of feel-good sexual exploration and the freedom to accept our own bodies on our own terms.

The Century Project is not it.

It’s the same old-same old: girls’ and women’s naked bodies on display. I saw the exhibit and talked to the photographer. For the most part, the “moving personal statements” moved me to want to vomit. The exhibit visually exploited women and put their stories on display for no apparent productive end.

Check the photographer’s website and see what he has to say under the FAQ “Why Women?” I remain unconvinced that he gets the issues. Cordelle’s explanation for exhibiting naked female bodies reinforces assumptions about women as different and needing special attention or unique protection. There’s something really off about it. He puts girls and women on display while claiming concern for our well being. Really, Frank: Don’t.

And P.S., Therese Shechter (Trixie Films) has continued this convo over at the blog American Virgin. Drop by and take a look!

From time to time, we put your comments into posts. Here’s one I couldn’t pass up, from Girls Education and Mentoring Services’ (GEMS) Patti Binder, who blogs at What’s Good for Girls. Patti’s resilience story inspires me right back. –Deborah

Hey Deborah!

I have been thinking of you– your honesty about what’s happening and your ability to write about it on a day to day basis are really amazing and inspiring. No doubt you and Marco are resilient and will have what it takes to get through this on the other side, perhaps even in a better position. If I can do anything– let me know! I’d be happy to!

The recession sucks– and it amplifies everyone’s fears. In the non profit world, where I live, the loss of state contracts in the wake of Paterson’s proposed budget, the increased competition for foundation dollars as their endowments take hits, or close all together in the case of Picower and Jeht– (all of their money was tied up in Madoff) we are now all “bunkering down” in your words, running numbers, strategizing, crying, hoping, praying, and as always, working, working, working, and remembering the reason we do the work– the girls we serve.

Sometimes I feel my mind running all of the terrible what if scenarios..and I feel like its what people used to say about terrorism, you know, if you are afraid to go outside then “they’ve won already.” I wasn’t one to be wrapped up in fear and paranoia around the terrorism thing, but I do feel that its good to stop obsessing and worrying (but thinking and strategizing) or “they will have won already.” I refuse to let the Madoffs and the Bushes and the Cheneys win in my personal world–

ramble, ramble…at any rate, thinking of you!

Patti