How have adults and young people weathered the worldwide economic downturn? This two-minute 12-second video shows that young people have been harder hit by joblessness in almost all OECD countries:
From the OECD Factblog.
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.
Breastfeeding is widely believed to carry significant health advantages for infants and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) would like to see all mothers breastfeed their children for at least 12 months, with no supplemental food for the first six.
Breastfeeding, however, is a big job. Even if a newborn takes to breastfeeding without any problems (some mothers struggle mightily with less-than-cooperative infants), mothers must feed their children around the clock (they now recommend every two hours, 24-hours a day for newborns). If it takes a half hour to settle the baby down and fill it up, you’ve got an hour and a half before the next feeding time.
Mothers who have the privilege to stay home with their babies — for three, six, or even twelve months — then, are going to find it much easier to follow the AAP guidelines. For mothers who return to work, those who work in flexible positions that award some degree of autonomy and respect will also be more likely to continue breastfeeding. In other words, a lawyer with a private office and a work schedule under her own control can stop several times a day and express milk to bring home to her child; in contrast, a woman working the cash register at McDonald’s with a boss hovering over her doesn’t have the same autonomy or privacy and may be forced to give up breastfeeding.
It shouldn’t be surprising, then, that breastfeeding rates are higher among more educated women and White and Asian women. Both of these variables tend to correlate with class privilege:
There are some interesting things, however, that don’t correlate with this class thesis. First Hispanic women are more likely to breastfeed than White women and people with less than a high school education are more likely to breastfeed, especially at six and 12 months, than people with a high school education.
I can think of some reasons why… I’ll let you discuss it in the comments.
Borrowed from Philip Cohen’s Family Inequality Blog. For more data on rates of breastfeeding, including U.S. state comparisons and changes in rates over time, see here.
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.
Crossposted at Jezebel.
Ajax was searching for majors on College Board, a website aimed at helping people get into and through college. She wanted to search for colleges with women’s studies majors and when she typed “women” into the keyword field, the search function returned two majors: women’s studies and fashion design.
This would make perfect sense if the search function returned only women’s studies since it has “women” in the name and all. But fashion design? It suggests that somehow fashion design has been marked as a major-for- or about-women, but no other major has.
What about, say, history? Nope, no women in that.
Psychology? Well, there is a Psych of Women class. But, otherwise no.
Economics? Don’t make me laugh!
Queer Studies? Afro-Am? Wait? Women are gay!? And black!?
Politics? Oh honey, don’t worry your pretty little head about it!
Literature? Oh yeah! We forgot literature! Let’s slap a “women” tag on that one and call it a day.
UPDATE: Brenden L. went to the website and typed in men. Guess what he got?
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.
Kevin I. sent in a great short clip instructing women workers newly employed in industrial factories during World War II on how to do their hair to maximize safety. It assumes both ignorance and vanity on the part of women and speaks to the lack of efficiency caused by efforts to remain attractive on the line. Pretty great:
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.
Stan S. sent us a recent research report by Economist Kent Gilbreath. He presents data illustrating gender differences in the starting salaries of college graduates with different majors, as well as data on the way in which gender differences have changed between 1998 and 2008. The findings are in the direction you might expect, but with quite a bit of variation!
First, Gilbreath summarizes the data. Of all of the majors he surveyed, males have higher starting salaries 63% of the time; women have higher starting salaries in the remaining 37%:
Here are the details by major; net differences (far right column), when positive, reflect how much more money men are making than woman and, when negative, reflect how much more money women are making than men (the variation is quite amazing!):
And here’s the data for the sciences, though the format is off:
Gilbreath then looks at change in the gender difference between 1998 and 2008. Again, a summary shows that, in 58% of the cases, men’s advantage over women is growing and, in the remaining 42%, women’s advantage is growing:
The details show which majors have shown a better growth rate for men or women. A positive average annual growth rate (far right column) is a gain for men over women and a negative one is a gain for women over men.
This is great data because it shows that, overall, men receive higher starting salaries than women, and their advantage is growing, but the advantage that accrues to men is not even. It depends, very much, on what their major is.
Anyone see any interesting trends or have any stories from the field?
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 30-second video below powerfully illustrates the spread of high joblessness rates from January 2007 to January 2010 (map by Latoya Egwuekwe; data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics).
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.
For this past Christmas my niece received The Three Musketeers “Barbie” and “Ken.” The series really pushes the idea that girls and women can be physical dynamos… and yet. I photo’d their boxes because of the thought bubble in the corner of each.
The boxes:
Barbie’s thought: “This riding outfit is the cutest!”
Ken’s thought: “I want to be an inventor!”
I’m just sayin’, is all. We’re not making this stuff up.
Thanks to my sister, Holly, for noticing and pushing the boxes into my hands, saying “you will love this!” Indeed.
NEW (Mar. ’10)! Katie P. found these boy and girl onesies for sale. The boy version reads “I’m Super” and the girl version… “Super Cute”:
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 clip below is the trailer for a movie, The Code of the West: Alive and Well in Wyoming, that appears to be part documentary, part travel/tourism advertising, and part morality play. It emphasizes the moral superiority of a simple, truly “American” life lived in the great outdoors:
The clip is a great example of the way we socially construct both places and times. Wyoming, a stand in here for “The Old West,” is mythologized as a place where people haven’t changed much. Just as they were in the old days, they are steadfast, hard-working, and follow an impeccable honor code.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t great people in Wyoming, but it’s always wrong to say that something is always true (see what I did there?). Further, today it is likely that many people work indoors in blue and white collar jobs and have little time to soak in the big sky that supposedly inspires such wholehearted goodness. But the “idea” of Wyoming nonetheless privileges the cowboys (however many are left) over the office jocks.
Further, as Rachel at The Feminist Agenda writes “omit[s] a huge chunk of history”:
In cowboy country, there was one group of people with whom we never honored our word or felt bound by a firm handshake. If your skin was brown, all bets were off. We would make agreements with you, sealed by a handshake and a written contract, which we would disregard the minute it became convenient for us. Our word was worthless if your skin was brown and your culture didn’t look like ours.
Of course Rachel makes the same mistake here that the film makes: There were (white) cowboys who would honor a handshaking with an American Indian. We shouldn’t demonize the past/a people any more than should romanticize it/them. Still, Rachel’s point stands: in the big scheme of things, the new Americans were not honorable by any measure.
The fact that the romanticization of The Old West wins out over its demonization is part of the larger revisionist history that the United States encourages (in school, in politics, and in popular culture). There is what power looks like: to the victors go control over the narrative.
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.
