How to close the female orgasm gap

In middle school sex ed classes, drawings of female anatomy often don’t even include the clitoris, as if women’s reproductive function is somehow separate from their pleasure. Female pleasure remains taboo and poorly understood.

This silence has real consequences. Almost 30% of college-age women can’t identify their clitoris on an anatomy test, according to a study from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Another survey by the UK gynecological cancer charity, Eve Appeal, finds that women are more familiar with men’s bodies than their own: while 60% could correctly label a diagram of the male body, just 35% of women correctly labeled female anatomy. (For the record, men scored even worse.)

Lack of sexual health knowledge is associated with lower rates of condom and contraceptive use. It also contributes to pleasure disparities in the bedroom. While gay and straight men climax about 85% of the time during sex, women having sex with women orgasm about 75% of the time and women having sex with men come last at just 63%, research from the Kinsey Institute shows. The reasons for this “orgasm gap” are surely multifaceted, but we can start to address it by talking more about the importance of women’s pleasure.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/09/female-orgasm-gap-sexual-iq?

97% of childcare workers are female, but gender inequality not an issue??

This week the Fair Work Commission put an end to a five year battle by unions for a 35% pay increase for childcare educators.

The unions had been arguing that gender inequality is seeing such work undervalued.

But according to the Commission, gender inequality is not an issue. In dismissing the unions’ application, the Commission claimed they had failed to provide “any evidence whatsoever” that gender inequality was behind childcare work being undervalued.

That’s despite the fact 97% of childcare educators are female, and earning significantly less than the rest of the population. These workers take home an average $21 an hour, about half the average hourly wage in Australia. “You can earn more money working in a supermarket,” educator Kylie Grey told the ABC.

The ruling now looks set to see childhood educators going on strike on March 27 in order to demand the government help fund equal pay.

The below quote from Lisa is telling:

If educators all leave, what will we do as a country when there is no one left to care for the children? It may just be women’s work, but like all women’s work you sure as hell will notice when it is no longer done.

https://womensagenda.com.au/uncategorised/gender-inequality-not-an-issue-despite-97-of-childcare-workers-are-female/

The ‘motherhood penalty’ stings no matter how much governments do

The fact is that kids still hurt a woman’s earnings and career options, significantly more so than they hurt the earnings and careers of men. And no amount of affordable childcare (although that would certainly help) and paid parental leave can account for the massive cultural shift that’s needed.

The motherhood penalty affecting a woman’s earnings can start immediately, especially with one in two mothers in Australia saying they have experienced discrimination related to duties, pay or other conditions while pregnant or shortly after having a baby. As we’ve seen in example after example on Women’s Agenda, pregnant women are made redundant. They’re overlooked for promotions. They’re penalised during pay negotiations because they’re going on leave. They’re seen as being less committed to their work.

Following pregnancy, it’s estimated that mothers returning to work after 12 months of parental leave will suffer a wage penalty of 7%, which will later increase to 12%. That penalty increases again with every subsequent child she has. For Dads, it’s different. A number of studies have found that fathers can often see their earnings increase after having children.

Of course the ramifications run deeper that the immediate wages lost from all of the above. The loss of earnings women experience around the time they have children often becoming irreversible – resulting in them retiring with half the superannuation of men.

https://womensagenda.com.au/uncategorised/the-motherhood-penalty-stings-no-matter-how-much-governments-do/

Winter Olympics: women’s long race to parity

The proportion of women at the Winter Olympic Games reached 40% in 2010, after a slow but consistent increase over time, rising from only 4% in 1924 to over 25% in 1992 . The sharpest rise was noticed in the 1990s, when female athletes started to finally gain approval to compete in traditionally male sports, such as biathlon or ice hockey.

In 2018, the percentage of women taking part in the Games is 43%.

As more events were opened to women, most countries sent more female athletes to the Olympics.

Some, though, didn’t follow the trend. Three nations, Brunei, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, banned women from competing altogether until the 2012 Summer Games in London, and have yet to send a female athlete to the Winter Olympics.

Even in disciplines where female athletes have achieved equal participation, many of their events have different durations and distances, stereotyping women as weaker and less skilled than men.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/ng-interactive/2018/feb/08/winter-olympics-womens-long-race-to-parity?

Women working for Wellcome Trust ‘earn 21% less than men’ on average

Women working at Britain’s largest charity earn 21% less on average than men, gender pay gap figures reveal.

The Wellcome Trust, one of the world’s biggest funders of biomedical research, is the latest major institution to make public its record on gender and pay under new government rules.

The pay imbalance at Wellcome is linked to a disproportionate number of men in the top jobs, rather than men and women being paid different salaries for doing the same work, the charity said.

The figures showed that while women make up 64% of Wellcome’s workforce, they represent a minority in the top pay quartile and this imbalance was greatest at the very top tier of pay. The median difference in pay between men and women was 20.8%, above the national median of 18.1%. The most dramatic difference was in mean bonuses, where men earned 78.8% more than women on average.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/feb/07/women-working-for-wellcome-trust-earn-21-less-than-men-on-average?

Women Seeking Safety: BWSS Forum on Violence against Women, Children and the Law

The assumption that there is value in shared parenting time even if a father is abusive is a dangerous one and can have fatal consequences.

“Women are hesitant to use the family court system to expose his violence in the fear that she will be punished by shared parenting time and decision, that she will be viewed as speaking ill of the father or trying to limit his access to the children, or on occasion accused of alienating the children from the father. When in reality her only goal is to protect her children from an abusive man. Yet the court, in particular the family court, has the authority and ability to air on the side of caution to believe the women and restrict or deny his access to the children. Instead what we hear over and over again is although they believe there was violence in the home directed to the mother, this should not dictate his ability to be a parent to his children. YES, it does mean he should not have access to his children. Yes it does mean he is not capable of being a good father to his children. And this 100 percent means that shared parenting time not only continues to put her safety at risk but the safety of her children is also at risk. Men who resort to hurting or killing their children do so because they have lost control over hurting her and therefore will hurt, what is most important to her, her children”, Summer Rain Bentham, BWSS Manager, Indigenous Women’s Program.

“At present time, the false notion of gender neutrality has lead to the belief that both parents are equally situated and share equal parenting abilities. Men have power in society and this is reflected in their power over women. Women continue to be the primary caregivers of children. After separation and divorce, many women are relegated to a position of relative poverty which is held against them as it is demonstrated repeatedly through our experience that the legal system will hold women accountable to patriarchal standards but are unwilling to hold fathers to female standards when it comes to parenting. Gender neutrality and standards based on it may appear to be democratic and fair but in reality, this concept pretends that social inequalities between women and men do not exist” , Angela Marie MacDougall, BWSS Executive Director, BWSS Open Letter to Minister Eby.

https://www.bwss.org/women-seeking-safety-bwss-forum-violence-women-children-law-2/

The problem with women eating crunchy chips?

And I dare say that the ‘crunch’ chips make when you’re eating them is not high on the list of key grievances affecting women in 2018. Nor is the fact that flavour gets stuck to fingers as you’re attempting to dive down to collect those last few broken chips at the bottom of a pack.

But PepsiCo, parent company of Doritos, has felt the need to deny it will be releasing “female-friendly” chip product following a global backlash to CEO Indra Nooyi’s comments on the Freakonomics podcast that women eat and enjoy chips differently to men, and that female-friendly chip packaging could be on its way, with the company getting ready to “launch a bunch” of such products soon.

According to Nooyi, women are looking for snacks with a “low crunch” sound, that we can enjoy with less flavour sticking to our fingers, and in packaging that can fit in our purses.

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/problem-women-eating-crunchy-chips/

‘Most of the children still have parents’: behind the facade of a Bali orphanage

An orphanage using the name of an Australian Bali bombing victim has been accused of sourcing children with living parents from a remote island to help solicit donations from western tourists.

Former volunteers and staff, in interviews with the Guardian, said up to five tour groups could be moved through the orphanage each day, bringing donations, potential sponsorships, food and gifts.

Only a handful of the children are orphans, despite the institution marketing itself as an orphanage for more than a decade.

In recent months, as pressure mounted in the Australian parliament to stop orphanage tourism, the institution rebranded itself as Jodie O’Shea House. The word “orphanage” has been removed from parts of its website.

The formal complaint alleged the centre was operating without a proper licence, and helped facilitate an adoption to a western tourist.

The Guardian has seen photos of the baby who was allegedly adopted and a copy of the passport of a Canadian man who staff said took the child.

“The baby was just gone,” a former worker, Tim*, said. “Someone very quickly adopted the baby. I think he is from Canada, and I’m not happy with that part.”

The complaint also alleged lax child protection measures were putting children at risk. Tourists had been able to take children on unaccompanied trips away from the orphanage, the complaint said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/05/most-children-still-have-parents-bali-orphanage?

Freemasons are blocking reform, says Police Federation leader

Reform in policing is being blocked by members of the Freemasons, and their influence in the service is thwarting the progress of women and people from black and minority ethnic communities, the leader of rank-and-file officers has said.

Steve White, who steps down on Monday after three years as chair of the Police Federation, told the Guardian he was concerned about the continued influence of Freemasons.

Critics of the Freemasons say the organisation is secretive and serves the interests of its members over the interests of the public. The Masons deny this saying they uphold values in keeping with public service and high morals.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/dec/31/freemasons-blocking-reform-police-federation-leader

That’s patriarchy: how female sexual liberation led to male sexual entitlement

The right for women to escape the passive sexual role obliged of them by culture – the imperative to do so in the cause of women’s liberation – is at the heart of Greer’s demands in her 1970 manifesto, The Female Eunuch.

In Australia, married women could not apply for passports without their husband’s approval until 1983. Britain did not make marital rape illegal until 1991.

But what has happened in the intervening decades is that sexual freedom has become another realm of women’s experience for patriarchy to conquer. As soon as older feminists had won sexual liberation, patriarchy reframed it as sexual availability for men.

The flipside to the destigmatisation of sex for women has been a sense of patriarchal entitlement to sex with women, which is why the painful conversation about consent in our new era of “freedom” must be confronted. One in 10 women, as opposed to one in 70 men, report they’ve been coerced into sex, the vast majority by an intimate partner.

And ubiquitous female sexualisation has manifested a reality in which young women find themselves in unwittingly sexualised situations all the time. Young women are right to feel that destigmatised sex has enhanced their traditional patriarchal status as sex objects, not liberated them from it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/02/thats-patriarchy-how-female-sexual-liberation-led-to-male-sexual-entitlement?