Our (occasional) Monday gender issue focus: Yesterday, at the Nantucket Film Festival, I watched the HBO documentary, The Case Against 8. Documenting the court battle against California’s Proposition 8, the film introduced me to a memorable group of people that included 2 same-sex couples who wanted…
Our Monday gender issue focus Married or single, weekends and weekdays, men have more leisure time than women. Imagine a typical weekend. Yes, mom might spend a bit less time watching the kids and dad does do more housework. However, when it…
Our Monday gender issues focus Combine 1 great read, 2 crucial issues and 3 memorable women (2 who really existed) and you get The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. Through a lens that focuses on slavery and women’s rights, The…
Our Monday Gender Issues Focus When people ask how much children cost, they expect to hear a dollar total. For women, though, the cost can be much more. First, I did check the dollar total. According to the US Department of Agriculture, in 2012, covering…
For millennia, men have tried to stop women from learning to read. Before we look back, I wanted to share these World Bank maps that let us see the status of female literacy, 2009-2013 Female Literacy in Developing Nations: Worldwide ratios of female…
Our Monday Gender Issue: Having a woman as the king of an African fishing village can make a big difference. During 2008, a secretary who works at Ghana’s Washington DC embassy got a middle of the night call at her…
Our Monday Gender Issue: Last year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had long opposed female quotas on corporate boards, capitulated. Ms. Merkel’s labor minister, a physician and mother of 6, held firm to demands that her boss accept quotas. Merkel…
Our Monday Gender Issue: In the February 10th issue of the New Yorker, I read “Pronoun Envy” by Anne Carson. Here is the beginning: Pronoun Envy “is a phrase coined by Cal Watkins of the Harvard Linguistics Department in November…
In 1970, only 5% of the musicians in a symphony orchestra were women. By 1997, the proportion had risen to 25%. The reason was the blind audition. Performing behind a screen that prevented any gender identification, woman were evaluated and…
The NYC Miss Subways competition was about a lot more than pretty “girls” (as they were called). To become Miss Subways for a month, applicants had to submit a picture to the John Robert Powers Agency. From perhaps 1000 applicants,…
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