Tag: gender
What is a Woman? Bibliography.
X chromosome MedlinePlus. https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/chromosome/x/#:~:text=Females%20have%20two%20X%20chromosomes,cells%20other%20than%20egg%20cells. Turner syndrome Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/turner-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20360782#:~:text=Turner%20syndrome%2C%20a%20condition%20that,to%20develop%20and%20heart%20defects. The Myth Of Biological Sex Kim Elsesser. 2020 6 15. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/06/15/the-myth-of-biological-sex/?sh=2099280e76b9
Say Latinx! Bibliography
Grammatical Sexism in Spanish Daniel Eisenberg. 1985. Journal of Hispanic Philology. https://users.pfw.edu/jehle/deisenbe/JHPcolumn/jhp093.pdf Gender neutrality in Spanish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_Spanish The subtle ways language shapes us Nayantara Dutta. 2020 10 6. BBC. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20201006-are-some-languages-more-sexist-than-others Language influences mass opinion toward gender and LGBT equality Margit Tavits and
House Republicans Seek To Shield Kids From Talk About Gender, Sexual Orientation
“A new proposal from congressional Republicans would define sexually-oriented material as “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects.” The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Johnson (R–La.) and co-sponsored by 33 Republican members of Congress, is called the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.”
Its purpose is to stop schools, libraries, and other institutions from exposing children under 10 years old to those topics, as well as preventing discussions or depictions of other sexually-oriented themes. It would do so by allowing civil lawsuits from parents if federal funds were used to facilitate such discussions. It would also block federal funding for “any program, event, or literature” involving such topics, whether at a school, a museum, a library, or any other institution. And it would also ban all federal funds for institutions with more than one violation in a five-year period.”
…
“the truly radical side here is the one that wants “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related subjects” to be off limits for kids.
There are certainly inappropriate ways to discuss these issues with young people, but there are also age-appropriate ways to do so. And it’s safe to assume such subjects may come up organically, without being a part of officially sanctioned curriculum.
Some kids will have gay or transgender parents or relatives. They may even have transgender classmates. And television, movies, and, pop culture are full of depictions of same-sex couples and discussions of gender identity. Kids will have questions about these things, and what are teachers, guidance counselors, and librarians supposed to do when they come up—simply say “we don’t talk about that”?”
…
“Johnson’s bill would open up schools, libraries, and other institutions to a bevy of lawsuits, since it creates a private right of action for parents “against a government official, government agency, or private entity” if a child under age 10 was “exposed to sexually-oriented material funded in part or in whole by Federal funds.”
Again, there’s something of a bait and switch going on here. Republicans can claim it’s just about not funding certain activities. Meanwhile, it’s inviting parents to sue if a grade school library that has received any money from the federal government includes any books with gay or trans characters.
The bottom line is that the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” is being promoted as a way to ensure federal money isn’t funding nude drag queen shows for kids, or programs centered on sexually-oriented content for children. But it’s actually broad enough to ban funds and allow lawsuits for a range of programs—like school libraries or age-appropriate sex education curriculum—that acknowledge sexual orientation or gender identity at all.”
Could the Gender Pay Gap Actually Be A Sign That Women Prioritize Socially Valuable Careers?
“The Wall Street Journal published a report analyzing data from 1.7 million college graduates examining how the gender pay gap manifests itself in the first few years of college graduates’ careers. They found that even for graduates with the same major, women often earned strikingly less than their male counterparts. For example, among Georgetown accounting majors, male graduates earned 55 percent more than female graduates just three years after graduation.
The data is “evidence that pay gaps between men and women often form earlier than is widely perceived,” says the Journal, adding that “economists who have long examined pay gaps between men and women cite the so-called motherhood penalty—referring to the perception that mothers are less committed to their jobs—and say this affects hiring, promotions, and salaries. Determining why those gaps appear earlier isn’t simple.”
However, is this picture as dire as it seems? Among several explanations the Journal gives, including internalized sexism and outright discrimination, is worker preference.
Take, for example, the University of Michigan School of Law, where the median male graduate out-earns the median female graduate by $45,000. “The school said that in the classes of 2015 and 2016, 237 men took jobs at law firms, while 158 women did. Fourteen men headed into public-interest jobs, whereas three times as many women did. The classes those years had slightly more men than women.” Women appear more likely to prefer notoriously low-paying public-interest law over a grueling job at a law firm. As one woman law grad, now a public defender, told the Journal, “With corporate law, I could make all the money in the world, but I’d rather get some kind of fulfillment from my job.””
…
“It is fair to examine why many of the jobs women prefer are paid less than the jobs men prefer, though much of this difference is self-explanatory: Working 40 hours a week at a nonprofit will not and cannot pay as much as working 80 hours at a consulting firm. However, other phenomena, such as the decline in salaries as a field becomes female-dominated, are worth critically examining. However, treating any pay gap as evidence of discrimination ignores the desirability of tradeoffs and choice. Assuming all types of jobs are available to all types of equally qualified workers, it is good that the workers can choose between various combinations of labor hours, monetary compensation, flexibility, and personal enrichment.”
Florida medical board moves to block gender affirming treatments for minors
“Florida’s medical board on Friday voted to begin the process of banning gender-affirming medical treatment for youths, a move that comes as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has become increasingly vocal in his opposition to such therapies.”
…
“The board also voted to start that process for requiring adults seeking such care to wait 24 hours before going forward with any medical procedures.”
…
“The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association support gender-affirming care for adults and adolescents. But medical experts said gender-affirming care for children rarely, if ever, includes surgery. Instead, doctors are more likely to recommend counseling, social transitioning and hormone replacement therapy.
The proposed rule is the latest step taken by the DeSantis administration to tighten regulatory controls over gender-affirming care. Florida’s Medicaid regulator is also considering a rule that would block state-subsidized health care from paying for treatments of transgender people.”
Race and Gender Checks Coming to a Boardroom Near You
“The Office of the New York City Comptroller was created in 1801 to be the chief auditor of local government and all its various financial activities. The comptroller’s top responsibilities, as bullet-pointed on the office’s website, are “conducting performance and financial audits of all City agencies,” “serving as a fiduciary to the City’s five public pension funds,” “providing comprehensive oversight of the City’s budget and fiscal condition,” “reviewing City contracts for integrity, accountability and fiscal compliance,” and “resolving claims both on behalf of and against the City.”
Or, you know, pressuring private companies to do race and gender checks.
On Thursday, New York Comptroller Brad Lander proudly announced that the city’s pension funds, with their estimated $263 billion under management, had successfully pressured four huge Wall Street firms (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and BlackRock), plus Ford Motor Company, to publicly disclose a “Board Matrix” containing the “self-identified gender, race and/or ethnicity of individual directors.””
…
“What Lander and the pension funds are explicitly saying is that not knowing the racial and gender self-identification of a company’s board candidate hinders the decision-making process on how to vote. All things else being equal, if Terry Smith self-identifies as a white male instead of a Latinx female, the diversity-valuing city of New York is assumed to be more likely to vote “no” on his candidacy. (One can only imagine where voters’ preferences would lie if the nominee refused to self-identify with either a gender or a race.)
There is something both farcical and creepy about this obsession with tracking other people’s (mostly) immutable characteristics and using the power of government to compel disclosure thereof. “Race and/or ethnicity” is a tautologically unscientific classification, not improved upon by the city’s suggested “best practices” categories of African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, white/Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American. What box should Tiger Woods check? Why are we asking individuals to join a group? What on earth does any of this have to do with providing an auditing function on a city government with a $100 billion budget and the highest taxes in the country?
Gotham is hardly alone in conducting race/gender checks on big business. Illinois since last year has required publicly traded companies based in the state to not only provide a board diversity report, but also a “description of the corporation’s policies and practices for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion among its board of directors and executive officers,” and “whether and how demographic diversity is considered” in senior hiring. A newer law imposes further diversity reporting requirements on any private company with more than 100 employees.
Maryland in 2019 passed a Gender Diversity in the Board Room law requiring publicly traded companies with sales higher than $5 million and nonprofits with budgets higher than $5 million to submit the gender information of their boards.
And just last month, a Superior Court judge struck down as unconstitutional a 2020 California law requiring publicly traded companies in the state to have on their boards at least one member who self-identifies as “Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Alaska Native, or…as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.”
The Nasdaq, meanwhile, has imposed board-composition requirements of its own (approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission) that could get noncompliant companies delisted as soon as 2023.”
Biden’s Plans To Fix the Pay Gap Won’t Actually Help Women
“evidence that this actually helps women is mixed. Meanwhile, such restrictions would have unintended consequences.
“For example, employers who can’t ask about prior salary might assume that a female candidate would accept less money than a man, because women make less on average,” as The New York Times has previously noted. In this scenario, a ban on salary history discussions could lead to women getting lowballed in job offers.
Salary history bans could also cost people—particularly women and younger workers—some job offers. It’s not hard to imagine an employer choosing to hire someone whose salary requirements seem slightly lower than an equally qualified candidate with higher requirements. In this case, prior salary disclosure could mean the difference between getting a job or not.
In other cases, where an employer has a strong preference for a particular candidate, the company may be prepared to offer a higher salary than the baseline in order to recruit them. Without knowing the candidate’s salary history, however, the employer may be lost as to what to offer. They might offer lower than the candidate currently makes, leading the candidate to reject the job that could have otherwise been a good fit.
Which is all to say that surely some women may actually benefit from past salary disclosure—especially now that young women are out-earning their male counterparts.
In general, letting employers and prospective employees exchange more information, not less, seems likely to lead to the best matches and the most satisfaction.”
…
“Today’s rhetoric about wider disparities in male and female incomes tends to 1) rely on research looking at incomes across professions and positions and 2) ignore explanations other than discrimination that might explain pay disparities—things like gender differences in types of work, work schedules, and years in the workforce. Politicians and media then use this distorted picture to spawn outrage and get kudos for addressing the issue, even if nothing they’re doing can actually “fix” the complicated causes behind disparities.
There may be a broader discussion to have about whether female-heavy industries are undervalued or how choosing to have children may harm women’s salary prospects more than men’s. But the issue is nowhere near the simplistic narrative that many modern progressives often make it out to be, in which sexist bosses and companies simply choose to pay women less than men for the same work and everything can be fixed with federal mandates.”
How an Equal Pay Law in Colorado Is Backfiring
“A new employee compensation bill in Colorado was supposed to help close gender gaps in worker pay. But the so-called Equal Pay for Equal Work Act could be making it harder for Colorado residents—regardless of gender—to find jobs.
The law—which was passed in 2019 and took effect at the start of this year—ushered in a range of rules regarding employee compensation, including new procedures for adjudicating sex-based wage discrimination complaints and new record-keeping, notice, and transparency requirements. Among these are a stipulation that employers must directly state a position’s pay (or a realistic pay range), benefits, and “any bonuses, commissions, or other compensation” as part of every job listing. Furthermore, companies are barred from asking prospective hires about their salary histories.
Thus, not only does the law open companies with Colorado workers up to new legal liabilities and administrative burdens, it also takes away some employer flexibility when it comes to attracting and setting pay for new hires. Many companies would prefer to keep compensation talk more private and, in such private discussions, to use previous salary as a guide to negotiations.
Understandably, some employers who can help it are opting out.
“This is a remote job except that it is not eligible to be performed in Colorado,” says an Airbnb listing for an accounting manager.
“This work is to be performed entirely outside of Colorado,” says an Ally Financial posting about a developer position.
“Work location is flexible if approved by the Company except that position may not be performed remotely from Colorado,” says one managerial job listing at Johnson & Johnson.
Century 21, Cigna, Drizly, Eventbrite, GoDaddy, Hilton, IBM, Nike, the PETA Foundation, Samsung, and a number of other big companies have posted similar notices.
Colorado resident Aaron Batilo compiled a list of them at the website ColoradoExcluded.com. So far, it includes job postings by 98 companies.”
Why Is There Such A Gender Gap In COVID-19 Vaccination Rates?
“the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that nearly 9.5 million more women than men have been vaccinated in the U.S.,1 and in the 42 states2 that collect gender data, a greater share of women are getting the vaccine as well. The magnitude of the gender gap varies from state to state but has hovered just below 10 percentage points on average over the past month.”
…
“The simplest explanation for the vaccine gender gap is that women got a head start. Among older Americans, who had early access to the vaccine, women outnumber men”
…
“those early restrictions on who could get the vaccine are gone now. The numbers remain imbalanced, however, so other factors must be contributing to the disparity as well.”
…
“COVID-19 isn’t the only health matter that men are less likely to be proactive about. Compared with women, they tend to see a doctor less often and use harmful substances like alcohol and illicit drugs more often; men also tend to eat less fiber and fruit, and they are even less likely to use sunscreen when compared to women. According to Dr. Jonathan Metzl, director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt University, men’s shorter lifespans are the result of the cumulative effects of poor health decisions, not physiology. “There’s no real biological reason that men die earlier,” said Metzl. “The things that make you a successful, cool, tough man in America are also inversely related to health and longevity.”
Researchers are nearly unanimous in their assertion that traditional masculinity — the idea that men should be self-reliant, physically tough and emotionally stoic — is a risk factor for men’s health. James Mahalik, an expert on masculinity and health outcomes at Boston College, studies how traditional masculinity gets in the way of health-promoting behaviors. His lab’s research on mask-wearing indicates that men who conform to traditional masculine norms have lower levels of empathy toward people who are vulnerable to COVID-19, and they are less likely to trust the scientific community. Mahalik suspects the same is true for their views about the vaccine.”
…
“women are typically held responsible for the health of others in ways that men are not: “Women know that if members of their family become sick, they’re the ones who will be responsible for caregiving.” Although vaccine distributors don’t track the gender of people who schedule vaccine appointments for family members, sociologists are concerned that women are taking on the brunt of this work — an extension of what has been called women’s “second shift.” Women’s greater responsibility for maintaining not just their own health but the health of others makes Reich suspect that women are more likely to be in contact with health services and seek out health-related information. Social expectations that women care for others and vigilantly monitor their reproductive health demand it of them.”
…
“gender differences in susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation: Early in the pandemic, men — particularly those who identified as conservatives — were more likely than women to subscribe to COVID-19 conspiracy theories.”