Category: Inequity

Generation X women are screaming in silence

We thought we could have both thriving careers and rich home lives and make more and achieve more than our parents, but most of us have gained little if any advantage.

Gen Xers entered life with “having it all” not as a bright new option but as a mandatory social condition.

Put simply: having more options has not necessarily led to greater happiness or satisfaction. “By many objective measures, the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years,” the authors of an analysis of Census-style data wrote a decade ago as Generation X entered middle age. “Yet we show that measures of subjective wellbeing indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men.”

In 2017, another major study found that the two biggest stressors for women were work and children, with a compounding effect on those contending with both. We bear financial responsibilities that men had in the old days, but are also saddled with traditional caregiving duties.

Source: Generation X women are screaming in silence

Sexism in the Academy

Given that women have been the majority of the undergraduate student body in many countries for the last three decades, one can no longer argue that equality can be achieved by simply waiting for young female scholars to emerge at the end of the academic “pipeline.”

Given that so many female scholars drop out, they often become overqualified research assistants for their partners, which may be a reason why married men actually publish more than single men or women and achieve tenure faster. That men rarely make sacrifices to help their scholarly wives is possibly why so few tenured female professors ever marry or stay married. More than half are divorced or have never wed, and few have children. Yet 70 percent of their male peers are married and have children. Childless single women are actually more likely to get tenure than childless single men.

Source: Sexism in the Academy | Issue 34 | n+1

Female scientists’ pages keep disappearing from Wikipedia – what’s going on?

A deletion battle over a black female chemist’s biography has put Wikipedia’s gender gap in the spotlight.

Critics point to stats that they claim show that Wikipedia is biased against women and female scientists in particular. Only 18% of the 1.6 million biographies in the English Wikipedia are about women. The figure is lower for people tagged as scientists – 16% of almost 150,000 articles.

‘[Notability is] a very, very difficult subject,’ says Roger Bamkin, co-founder with Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight of Women in Red, a Wikipedia project that aims to increase the number of women’s biographies. ‘When editors are arguing against notability, people will say, “Well, it’s men who are rejecting women as subjects” – and that may be true. Nine out of 10 editors are men.’

Source: Female scientists’ pages keep disappearing from Wikipedia – what’s going on? | News | Chemistry World

A Victory for Female Athletes Everywhere

This overwhelming dominance by male-bodied athletes over female-bodied athletes is not the result of culture, resources, training or gender identity. Rather, it is the result of having male gonadal sex, specifically testes and bioavailable testosterone in the male rather than the female range. Even non-elite male-bodied athletes, including boys, can and do routinely surpass the very best female athletes. When we compare the latter two groups—the best elite females against non-elite boys and men—the performance gap is small but collectively determinative. . . .

[B}iologically male athletes—however they identify—don’t have to be elite to surpass even the very best biologically female athletes. And it doesn’t take a sea of them to obliterate the females’ competitive chances at every level of competition. If only a very small sub-set turn out to identify as women, we will be overwhelmed.

Source: A Victory for Female Athletes Everywhere – Quillette

Why the figures on women’s super are not always what they seem

While a number of measures appear to show that the superannuation balance gender gap is closing, a look at the the raw figures will show you the opposite.

[W]omen in Super CEO Sandra Buckley said there were still significant problems for many women in building super.

“The structural inequities in the superannuation system that make it harder for women to accumulate super have not been removed or improved,” Ms Buckley said.

“Namely, the $450 monthly threshold before super is payable still exists, super is not paid on Paid Parental Leave, and super is based on income earned so unpaid work (caring responsibilities) does not attract super or ‘caring credits’ as they are referred to in other countries.

“One-third of women are retiring with no superannuation and single women aged 55 and over are the fastest-growing cohort of homeless.

“These facts do not indicate that there will be any improvement in the gender super gap for many years.   

Source: Why the figures on women’s super are not always what they seem

Barack Obama: ‘Women are better leaders & old men need to stand aside’

Obama said that during his time in the White House, he’d regularly mused about what a world run by women would look like.

“I’m absolutely confident that for two years, if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything… living standards and outcomes.”

Source: Barack Obama: ‘Women are better leaders & old men need to stand aside’

Women feel better when they work with other women

Our results clearly show that the unpleasant feelings during work are not merely a by-product of being a numerical minority. Because work organizations and the wider society value men and qualities associated with masculinity more than they value women and femininity, women’s affective well-being suffers from being a minority, whereas men’s affective well-being is not affected.

Source: Women feel better when they work with other women

President Carter’s 23 Steps to Advance the Rights of Women and Girls – The Forum on Women, Religion, Violence & Power

By The Carter Center’s Human Rights Program In his book “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power,” Jimmy Carter identifies 23 actions to advance the rights of women …

Source: President Carter’s 23 Steps to Advance the Rights of Women and Girls – The Forum on Women, Religion, Violence & Power

Men feel stressed if their female partners earn 40% or more of the income

Men are happier when both partners contribute financially – but get stressed when their female partner earns 40% of household income.

Gender identity norms clearly still induce a widely held aversion to a situation where the wife earns more than her husband.

Source: Men feel stressed if their female partners earn 40% or more of the income