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As a number of readers emailed us to point out, yesterday was International Women’s Day, designed to highlight both women’s accomplishments and the persistence of gender inequality worldwide. Ben Buursma noticed an ad in an Indonesian newspaper celebrating International Women’s Day and marketing “Books to empower all women,” though it turns out what they empower women to do is “look into the minds of men” and “find, keep, and understand a man”:

Emma M. H. sent in a link to the the White House Council on Women and Girls report on the status and well-being of U.S. women on a variety of social indicators. Interestingly, while both men and women are waiting longer to get married, the gender gap in age at first marriage has remained relatively constant for decades:

Men are more likely to be either married and never-married, while women currently more likely than men to be divorced or widowed:

Over time, the percent of women who have never given birth has gone up, particularly for the 25-29 age group, though in the last decade there has been a slight downward trend for women aged 30-44:

One note about that graph: the report uses the phrase “had a child” and “childbearing,” so I think this data would include women who have adopted children but never given birth.

I was surprised to see that rates of Cesarean sections have gone up in the past decade:

Women are now outperforming men in terms of educational attainment, earning the majority of bachelor’s degrees, though notice the number of degrees in engineering/computer science earned by women hasn’t increased since 1998:

However, women still make less than men at each level of educational attainment:

The report has lots more data on family life, work, education, health, crime, and so on. I’ll post on other topics in the future.

Finally, Ben N., Kay C., Gregory S., and Dave Z. all sent in this video starring Daniel Craig that highlights global gender inequality (though unfortunately I can’t find any reference that provides sources for the statistics in the video, so take it for what it’s worth):

I submit to you Lady Gaga’s new music video for “Born This Way.” Have at it! Is Lady Gaga breaking new ground? Or is this a strategic ploy to be played more or less constantly in every gay bar in America? Or something else? What do you think?

See also a previous post on Lady Gaga’s disability imagery and my cynical and controversial post critiquing the Gaga-inspired site, Born This Way.  Oh, and that dude with the skeleton face, we totally featured him in a post about the self-fulfilling stereotype.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The word “proletariat” “proletarian” refers to a member of the working class of a capitalist society, or the “proletariat.”  Combining the word with “precarious,” economist Guy Standing coined the term “precariat” to try to describe the reality of low wage workers in our modern, global economy.

In the ten-minute segment below, sent in by Jordan G., an interview with Standing is complimented by interviews with workers and activists in Britain.  He explains that new international labor markets have weakened the power of labor and strengthened that of employers.  The result is more jobs that are part time, with unpredictable hours, low wages, and few benefits.  This has been good for employers in that the risk inherent in capitalist enterprises has been transferred to the workers.  For example, if the hotel isn’t full, then the managers simply bring in fewer housekeepers.  This is hard on housekeepers, but easy on hotels.  Workers’ lives, then, are increasingly precarious, thus the term “precariat.”

Found at The Guardian via Global Sociology.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

What is a norm?  How important is it that we follow them?  And what happens when we break one?

Nathan Palmer, a lecturer at Georgia Southern University and founder of the blog Sociology Source, recruited his entire class of 262 students to go into the world and do nothing (an idea he borrowed from Karen Bettez Halnon).  It was sort of like a flash mob in which absolutely nothing happens.

Palmer’s aim was to reveal a norm (in this case, that we all must always be doing something), expose his students to the feelings one has when breaking a norm (even a consequence-less one like this), and show them the range of reactions that observers have to norm breaking.  And he recorded the whole thing for us:

Read Palmer’s entire write-up of the experiment at Sociology Source.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Some of you may have heard about the anti-Muslim protest outside a charity event in Orange County on February 13th. A local chapter of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Relief, a Muslim charity organization that raises money for women’s shelters, food pantries, disaster relief, and other humanitarian work, sponsored a fundraiser at the Yorba Linda Community Center.

Chrissy Y. sent in a video of the protest. It includes chants of “Go back home!”, “USA!”, and “terrorist!” amid loud boos as individuals walked into the center. At around 3:10 a woman accuses a man of beating his wife and being a child molester. Between the conflation of Muslim with being inherently un-American, the conflation of all Muslims with terrorists, and the reliance on the stereotype of Muslim men as brutal oppressors of victimized women, it is an ugly, ugly example of anti-Muslim sentiment:

We’ve posted previously on the tendency of the U.S. media to ignore the rest of the world (in favor of Britney Spears), even changing the cover of magazines sold in the U.S., but not elsewhere, in ways that coddle our ethnocentrism.

Given this phenomenon, this four-minute clip from a Russia Today news program (in English) is particularly striking.  The reporter notes that the U.S. media is covering the ongoing foreign political protests more thoroughly, and with more positive enthusiasm, than it has the protests in Wisconsin.

Thanks to Abby Kinchy, fellow UW-Madison alum and Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, for the tip.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Melissa sent in a trailer for the video game, inFAMOUS2.  The game features a white male protagonist who is advised by a bad influence and a good influence.  Melissa notes that these are a black woman dressed skimpily and a white woman dressed (relatively) modestly, respectively.  So here we have, again, an affirmation that black is bad and white is good.

Screenshot:

Trailer (2 minutes):

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Joanna S. sent us a link to an application designed by Jonathan McIntosh where one can “re-mix” toy commercials aimed at boys versus girls.  You choose the visuals of one and the sounds of another, and have fun watching the wackiness.  We can’t embed the fun results, but you might enjoy visiting and playing a few for fun.

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.