research

NCRW Plenary – Post #4

Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women, reminds us that 16% is not great, but that we are moving steadily. However, we’re moving not because some critical mass has been reached in society but rather because there are women like those here who have been funding and running campaigns.

Gandy notes that women’s unemployment is rising faster and our median earnings are falling faster (esp single mothers) than men’s, and it’s affecting us longterm, in terms of savings. This demographic, this one that is hurting most, is going to be the one to decide this election. Whichever candidate can reach out to them is going to win.

NCRW Plenary – Post #3

Kathy Bonk, Communications Consortium Media Center, offered as a sidenote that she hitch-hiked in college and got involved in the Shirley Chisholm campaign! But that’s not what she’s talking about here. Snippets from her comments:

“What’s been very painful for me is that in the past 2 election cycles, the only ‘women’s issue’ that’s up for debate seems to be abortion. It wasn’t always that way. If we’re going to do anything for women, we need to move away from personality and back to issues.”

“’Values voters’ is a code word for evangelicals. But I too am a values voter. We should shift the debate so that we look at feminists—and not just evangelicals—as values voters.”

“We can’t loose ground on abortion. In Colorado, there’s a ‘personhood’ referendum on the ballot—meaning the antis are advocating that personhood starts with conception. But abortion issues can’t be all.”

Note: Bonk was involved in spearheading a public opinion poll called “Moving Forward”, which polled voters on their ideas for an agenda that’s not just about abortion but a broader range of issues. She’s got data, if anyone is interested in following up.

NCRW Plenary – Post #2

Among her many other projects and accomplishments, Barbara Lee, of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, helped the Center for American Women and Politics with a study on women as governors. Snippets from Lee:

“Whether it’s for President or governor, it is the highest glass ceiling of all. Ann Richards once said of media coverage of women: ‘If you’re single, you couldn’t get a man. If you’re divorced, you couldn’t keep a man. If you’re a widow, you’ve killed a man.’ The same holds true with women candidates.

The White House Project was created to create a climate of acceptance for women running for office. Our most recent study asked voters to rate incumbent women governors. Voters rate women govs higher than male counterparts on managing a crisis, problem-solving, and getting things done. Once they’ve seen the women in action, they like them. But the hard part is getting them elected.

Women still face double burdens—they must be viewed as both likeable and capable. Voters tend to meld these qualities for men. Women must prove that they’re qualified whereas men are just assumed to be. Everything about a woman candidate has to be ‘just right’—her hair, her husband, her hemline.”

Headbands, Monica, Cleavage-gate anyone?

NCRW Plenary – Post #1

Ruth Mandel, Eagleton Institute of Politics, is moderating. Snippets from Mandel:

“This year I’ve been reading nonstop about this emotionally, analytically demanding election. When you start your professional career at something called the Center for American Women and Politics at a time when women were fewer than 5 percent of all elected leaders in the country, and then you watch someone run and be taken seriously as a potential presidential nominee by one of the major parties, that, certainly, is coming a distance. But we still have a long distance to go. We’ve started this year at the Center by looking at that number 16 – 16 women in the Senate. That’s not even a quarter. Thirty-seven years after we opened the Center, what does this mean? Sixteen used to be a good number – sweet 16. Not so sweet anymore when we think about that as a level that we’ve seen to arrive at in the political leadership arena after so many years, so much work, so much effort.”

Later, Mandel lists the questions on everyone’s minds:

“What was the impact of gender on HRC’s race? What will HRC do next? What should she do next? What will HRC’s voters do next? What has she achieved beyond this campaign? What’s the legacy of the campaign? Has HRC’s run opened paths for women going into politics? Or has it deterred women from deciding to run, after seeing how she was treated? Why didn’t more young people see HRC’s run as something they wanted to be a part of?”

Last night I went to a 90th birthday party for NCRW’s founding president Mariam Chamberlain (pictured here, in blur, being toasted by a current Mariam Chamberlain Fellow). I felt the love, and I waxed nostalgic for my days doing program work for this amazing network.

And now I’m here at the opening plenary of NCRW’s annual conference, in the Kimmel Center just south of Washington Square Park, the conference I used to plan.

The room is packed. NCRW president Linda Basch takes the podium noting that this year, an election year, they are focusing on what they’re calling The Big Five: economic security, education, immigration, violence, and health. She talks about “that pernicious 16” – the 16% of women in corporate officer positions, the 16 women in Congress. (And I just learned that women are also 16% of the military, 16% of police and fire departments, and 16% of law firm partners. Eerie, that same number each time. What up?!)

Catherine Stimpson (aka Kate to friends), Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at NYU and former NCRW board chair, had emergency dental surgery yesterday but is looking sharp. She’s up there doing the host’s welcome, speaking of this network’s sense of “gritty realism” and “unreasonable hope.” Next comes NCRW Board Chair Eleanor Horne, who reminds the crowd of our need to remind everyone not here that even though a woman ran for prez not all is hunky dory. She asks participants to not just “confer” here these next few days, but to go out and act.

Nicole Mason, Director of Research and Policy Initiatives at NCRW, who I know has been eating breathing and sleeping (or rather, not sleeping) this conference for the last year is last, and now here we go. The next bunch of posts are snippets from the opening plenary, “Stir It Up: Women’s Activism Reframing Political Debates.”

Ok, I’m in ridiculously good company this weekend. Don’t miss out on the year’s premiere conference for researchers, policy analysts, gender thinkers, women leaders, and activists. The opening plenary this Thursday (4-5:45pm) is free and open to the public:

Stir it Up: Women’s Activism Reframing Political Debates
The possibility of a woman or an African-American presidential candidate has galvanized voters and moved citizens to become more actively engaged in the political process. It has also provided real opportunities to place women’s issues and concerns on the national agenda. Join leading experts, thought leaders, and advocates as they discuss how issues need to be framed so they influence political debates at local, state, and national levels, and strategies for ensuring that women’s voices are heard and their votes counted in the upcoming election.

Featured Speakers:
Ruth Mandel, Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University (Moderator)
Kathy Bonk, Communications Consortium Media Center
Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women
Barbara Lee, Barbara Lee Family Foundation
Diana Salas, Women of Color Policy Network at NYU
Marie Wilson, The White House Project

And here’s the list of the rest of the speakers at the conference:

Mimi Abramovitz, Hunter College
Liz Abzug, The Bella Abzug Leadership Institute
Amy Allina, National Women’s Health Network
Patricia Antoniello, Brooklyn College
Veronica I. Arreola, University of Illinois at Chicago
Margaret Bailey, Rochester Institute of Technology
Subha Barry, Merrill Lynch
Linda Basch, National Council for Research on Women
Kathleen Barnett, ICRW
Julia Beatty, Twenty-First Century Foundation
Kathleen Barnett, International Center for Research on Women
Taina Bien-Aime, Equality Now
Elodie Billionniere, Arizona State University
Lynn Bolles, University of Maryland, College Park
Kathy Bonk, Communications Consortium Media Center
Kristin “KB” Bowman, Columbia College
Vicki Breitbart, Planned Parenthood of New York
Jaweer Brown, Planned Parenthood of New York
Connie Buchanan, Consultant (formerly with the Ford Foundation)
Victoria Budson, Harvard University
Charlotte Bunch, Rutgers University
Tamara L. Burk, Center for Engaged Learning
Johnella Butler, Spelman College
Kathryn Peltier Campbell, Association of American Colleges and Universities
Hope Campbell, Anti-Violence Project, New York
Timothy Casey, Legal Momentum
Amanda Cassel, Women’s Foundation of California
Lybra Clemons, American Express
Ellen Chesler, Hunter College
Carol Cohn, Boston Consortium on Gender, Security, and Human Rights
Elizabeth Colton, International Museum of Women
Aimee Meredith Cox, University of Michigan
Kimberle Crenshaw, Columbia University
Jane Daniels, Luce Foundation
Anisha Desai, Women of Color Resource Center
Brittany Denitzio, College of New Jersey
Patricia Deyton, Simmons School of Management
Bonnie Dill, University of Maryland
Catherine Dixon-Kheir, Alignment Strategies
Sharon Doherty, The College of St. Catherine
Stephanie L. Drahan, University of Massachusetts
Ana Duarte McCarthy, Citigroup
Rosanna Durruthy, Aequus Group
Kirsten A. Elling, University of Michigan
Patricia Eng, Ms. Foundation for Women
Joan Entmacher, National Women’s Law Center
Jessica Fields, San Francisco State University
Michelle Fine, CUNY Graduate Center
Susan Forde, University of South Florida
Gisela Fosado, Barnard Center for Research on Women
Andrea D. Friedman, Global Justice Center
Ellen Friedman, College of New Jersey
Stacie Geller, University of Illinois, Chicago
Paula J. Giddings, Author Ida: A Sword Among Lions
Lilyane Glamben, The Sister Fund
Sangita Gopal, University of Oregon
Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice
Cheryl D. Gray, The College of New Jersey
Autumn Green, Family Economic Initiative, Boston
Michele Rene Gregory, York College of the City University of New York
Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Spelman College
Connie Sutton, NYU
Carol Hardy-Fanta, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Bill Harvey, University of Virginia
Katherine Henderson, Texas A&M University
Rita Henley Jensen, Women’s eNews
Silvia Henriquez, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice
Rebekah Heppner, University of South Florida
Ines Hernandez-Avila, University of California at Davis
Lyndi Hewitt, Vanderbilt University
Sarah F. Hill, The Human Rights Initiative of North Texas, Inc
Mary Hopps, The College of New Jersey
Eleanor Horne, Educational Testing Service
Evelyn Hu-deHart, Brown University
Hae Ja Shin, Dongseo University
Janet Jakobsen, Barnard College
Annalisa Jenkins, Bristol-Myers Squibb
Carol Jenkins, Women’s Media Center
Cheryl Johnson, Miami University of Ohio
Heather Johnston Nicholson, Girls Inc.
Kate Kahan, National Partnership for Women and Families
Erika Kates, Wellesley College
Don Kulick, New York University
Helen LaKelly Hunt, The Sister Fund
Barbara Lee, The Barbara Lee Family Foundation
Tobe Levin, University of Frankfurt
Janet E. Malley, University of Michigan
Ruth Mandel, Rutgers University
Courtney Martin, feministing.com
C. Nicole Mason, National Council for Research on Women
Lisa McClain, Boise State University
Kathleen McHugh, University of California, Los Angles
Caryn McTighe Musil, Association of American Colleges and Universities
Monique Mehta, Third Wave Foundation
Soraya Mekerta, Spelman College
Elaine Meyer-Lee, Saint Mary’s College
Shari Miles-Cohen, American Psychological Association
Yuriko Mita, Merrill Lynch
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Syracuse University
Meredith Moore, Weil, Gotshal, & Manges LLP
Linda Moran, Cox College of Nursing and Health Sciences
Sandra Morgen, Pennsylvania State University
Roweena Naidoo, The Women’s Foundation of Colorado
Kimber J. Nicoletti, CARe: Communities Against Rape Initiative
Anne Marie Nicolosi, The College of New Jersey
Catherine Orenstein, The Op-Ed Project
Ramona Ortega, Women of Color Policy Network at NYU
Rupal Oza, Hunter College
Heather Panahi, MassNOW
Eesha Pandit, MergerWatch
Judy Patrick, The Women’s Foundation of California
Linda Perkins, Claremont Graduate University
Ros Petchesky, Hunter College
Marj Plumb, Women’s Foundation of California
Katie Quan, Cornell University/University of California, Berkeley
Dina Refki, State University of New York at Albany
Ashley Reichelman, College of New Jersey
Jane Roberts, 34 Million Friends of UNFPA
Brenda Ross, Cottey College
Sue V. Rosser, Ivan Allen College
Ariella Rotramel, Rutgers University
Anne Runyan, University of Cincinnati
Larry Ruisi, Credit Suisse
Elizabeth A. Sackler, Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum
Lynda M. Sagrestano, University of Memphis
Judith R. Saidel, State University of New York at Albany
Kimberlee Salmond, Girl Scouts of the USA
Rebecca Salonen, Godparents Association
Kathy Sanders-Phillips, Howard University College of Medicine
Ruth Schwartz Cowan, University of Pennsylvania
Cynthia Secor, NCRW Board of Directors
Donna Shavlik, American Council on Education
Deborah Siegel, Woodhull Institute
Jael Silliman, Ford Foundation
Ellie Smeal, Feminist Majority Foundation
Taleigh Smith, Mothers on the Move
Donna Stewartson, University of Massachusetts,Boston
Catharine Stimpson, New York University (NYU)
Taleigh Smith, Mothers on the Move
April de Stefano, University of California, Los Angles
Carla Stokes, Helping Our Teen Girls in Real Life Situations, Inc
Ivy O. Suriyopas
Donna Tambascio, Wellesley College
Mary Thom, Author
Deborah Thomas, University of Pennsylvania
Gloria Thomas, American Council on Education
Gosia Tomaszewska, MassNOW
Suzanne Tomatore, City Bar Justice Center
Virginia Valian, Hunter College
Sarah VanHooser, Vanderbilt University
Sia Vang, The College of St. Catherine
Kathleen Vermazen, Women’s Media Center
Delores M. Walters, National Council for Research on Women
Susan Wefald, Ms. Foundation for Women
Seth Wessler, Applied Research Center
Patricia Williams, Columbia University
Marie Wilson, The White House Project
Ludmilla Wikkeling-Scott, National Minority AIDS Council
Jane Wishner, Southwest Women’s Law Center
Lisa Witter, Author, Fenton Communications
Melinda Wolfe, American Express
Gina Wood, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies
LaLa Wu, The Bella Abzug Leadership Institute
Diana Yadria Salas, Women of Color Policy Network
Joy Zarembka, Break The Chains Campaign, Institute for Policy Studies

More info on the conference here.

In case you missed the article by Tamar Lewin in this weekend’s NYTimes, here’s the newsflash: Girls’ Gains Have Not Cost Boys. It’s amazing to me that we need a report to prove this. But kudos to the researchers over at the American Association of University Women who pulled it together. Maybe now the boy-crisis warriors can finally cool down.

In 1992, you may recall, the AAUW released a landmark report on how girls are shortchanged in the classroom, causing a national debate over gender equity. Then came the Christina Hoff Sommers of the world, arguing that efforts to help girls have come at boys’ expense. Echoing research released two years ago by the American Council on Education and other groups, the new report says that while girls have for years graduated from high school and college at a higher rate than boys, the largest disparities in educational achievement are not between boys and girls, but between those of different races, ethnicities and income levels.

The AAUW report looks at many indicators of educational achievement, including dropout and disciplinary rates. It analyzes data from SAT and ACT college entrance exams and the National Assessment of Education Progress, known as the nation’s report card, as well as federal statistics about college attendance, earned degrees and other measures of achievement. Researchers concluded that:

— A literacy gap in favor of girls is not new, nor is it increasing. Over the past three decades, the reading gap favoring girls on NAEP has narrowed or stayed the same. Nine-year-old boys scored higher than ever on the reading assessment in 2004; scores for 13- and 17-year-old boys were higher or not much different from scores in the 1970s. A gender gap still exists favoring boys in math, especially among 17-year-olds on the NAEP.
— The percentages of students scoring at higher levels of proficiency on the NAEP are rising for both boys and girls.
— Students from lower-income families — families with incomes of $37,000 or less — are less likely to be proficient in math and reading. Gender differences vary significantly by race and ethnicity.
— There is virtually no gap between boys and girls entering college immediately after high school.

AAUW’s study does show female students outperforming male students in some measures. Women have earned 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees since 1982 and outperformed boys on high school grade-point averages. In 2005, male students had a GPA of 2.86 and girls, 3.09.

From 1978 to 2004, among students age 13 and 17, white males scored higher on average than white females on 10 of 18 tests. For Hispanic students, 13- and 17-year-old males outscored females on three of the 18 tests. There was no gap among African American girls and boys.

Check out coverage in the Washington Post as well (No Crisis For Boys In Schools, Study Says: Academic Success Linked to Income).

Yes, boys are in trouble. But up with girls does not mean down with boys. Copy that? Let’s hope this new study might put that silly argument to rest.

And thank goodness they are. In an earlier post I commented on the CCF panel on hooking up and wrote about the scarcity of research on adolescent sexuality. Well, I just learned that researchers at the Wellesley Centers for Women have been following a sample of Gen Y kids* through six grade and, over the next year, new research from the study will look at children’s friendships, adolescent romantic relationships, puberty and adolescent health, risky behavior and aggression, school achievement, the black-white achievement gap, and more. For more info on the study, click here. And to sign up for the WCW’s e-newsletter, try here.

*Gen Y is that cohort name for children born to Boomer parents between 1981-1995.

In case you missed it, Emily Bazelton offers a reality check in “Hormones, Genes and the Corner Office,” her NYTimes review of Susan Pinker’s new book, The Sexual Paradox: Men, Women, and the Real Gender Gap. Bazelton begins with the question: “Why do girls on average lead boys for all their years in the classroom, only to fall behind in the workplace? Do girls grow up and lose their edge, while boys mature and gain theirs?” She goes on to critique Pinker’s answer–which, basically, sounds like a version of biological difference feminism. Some snippets from Bazelton’s review:

Because of their biological makeup, [Pinker] argues, most women want to limit the amount of time they spend at work and to find “inherent meaning” there, as opposed to domination. “Both conflict with making lots of money and rising through the ranks,” she points out. Pinker is surely right to contest what she calls the “vanilla male model” of success — “that women should want what men want and be heartily encouraged to choose it 50 percent of the time.” Or that when employers say jump, employees should always say how high. Even as they work fewer hours for less status and less money, on average, more women report that they are satisfied with their careers. Maybe men might well think the same if more of them felt they could cut back. But Pinker’s difference feminism doesn’t really allow for that possibility. She is a believer: “The puzzle is why the idea of sex differences continues to be so controversial,” she writes.

Bazelton concludes that “In her zeal, Pinker veers to the onesided.” To wit:

She doesn’t acknowledge that some of the research cited in her footnotes is either highly questionable as social science (Louise Story’s 2005 article in The New York Times, for instance, about her survey of Ivy League women’s aspirations)….Pinker omits the work of scientists who have shown that sex-based brain differences pale in comparison to similarities. We shouldn’t wish the role of sex differences away because they’re at odds with feminist dogma. But that doesn’t mean we should settle for the reductionist version of the relevant science, even if the complexity doesn’t make for as neat a package between hard covers.

Ah yes, that old bugaboo called EVIDENCE. Of course, since I’m a junkie for pop writing on sex and feminism, and since Pinker uses the word “Extreme Men” and I’m dying to know what she means by the term, I’ll find my way to this book and will let you know if I agree with Bazelton’s take, or if there’s more there of interest from which we can learn. But on many levels, it sounds like one those looking for fact-based analysis might veer elsewhere.

An endorsement from Christina Hoff Sommers kind of confirms it for me. Sommers lauds the book thusly:

“Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox is meticulously researched, brilliantly argued and thoroughly persuasive. It moves the debate over sex differences to a new level of sophistication.” — Christina Hoff Sommers, author of Who Stole Feminism? and The War Against Boys

Oh boy.

I may late to this one, but just had to share this awesome takedown, complete with (surprise!) facts, of that awful backlash porn last month in The Atlantic called “Marry Him!”, via Bella DePaulo recently at HuffPo. Writes Bella:

Gottlieb buys into just about all of the myths about singles that I debunk in my book, Singled Out. She believes, for example, that singles are interested in just one thing – getting married. She warns that even if they have great jobs, their jobs won’t love them back. She thinks that if single women wait too long, the available men will all be “damaged goods.” Most of all, she seems to believe that single people are miserable and lonely, and that the cure for what ails them is to get married.

Science demurs. A study in which thousands of people have been followed for 18 years (and counting) shows that people who get married enjoy, at best, a brief and tiny bubble of happiness around the time of the wedding (a honeymoon effect); then they go back to being as happy or as unhappy as they were when they were single. Moreover, only those who marry and stay married experience the early blip in happiness; those who marry and then divorce are already becoming less happy, not more so, as the day of the wedding draws near. (See Chapter 2 of Singled Out.)

The words “lonely” or “alone” occur a dozen times in “Marry Him.” Gottlieb seems to be channeling Bridget Jones’s fear of ending up “dying alone and found three weeks later half-eaten by an Alsatian,” only without the humor. I’ve studied the scientific research on loneliness in later life (Chapter 11 of Singled Out). It shows that no group is LESS likely to be lonely in their senior years than women who have always been single. Gottlieb also believes that mothers who settle, regret that they did, and then divorce, will still be better off financially than if they had never married. The science does not support that, either.

So there.

(Thanks as ever CCF for the heads up.)