The National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC) Wins Award

I know that break has started and everyone has scattered but in the off chance anyone checks the blog over break, The National Museum of Women in the Arts received the Simone de Beauvoir Prize for Women’s Freedom. I know its a newer museum and thought I would put it on everyone's radar for future historical women adventures.

Here's more information:
New York Times
NMWA Press Release
NMWA's Homepage

Happy Holidays!

Campus Sexual Assault Bill

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, one of the members of congress who have been working on the Campus Sexual Assault Bill since June, has made a statement in the wake of the online circus surrounding the Rolling Stone article and subsequent retraction about a rape of a U.Va. student, Jackie.

Here's a one-page summary of the bill:

Here's a video of Gillibrand's remarks today (she references the Rolling Stone case at 4:40 and another co-sponsor, Senator McCaskill, talks about it at the beginning):

Research on how to talk about bias

You might be interested in this piece that appeared in yesterday's New York Times, co-written by Sheryl Sandberg, that reviews recent research on effective ways to talk about bias. I found these findings to be interesting and relevant to our discussions.

Working women and freezing eggs

This article I found seems aimed at women like Sheryl Sandberg and her audience in Lean In. Funny enough, I actually know this doctor. I met her through a family friend when I was curious about going pre-med, especially in the realm of women's health, and got to talk to her a bit. What's very intriguing to me is that by the time she was able to actually practice (after undergrad, med school, residency, then more than one fellowship for her specialty in endocrinology), she was in her nearly-mid thirties, a time when women are urged to think about the ticking clock. So she then had to fit having three kids into her busy schedule of running a practice and doing publicity for women's reproductive options on local news and such. Like Sandberg wrote, women are really coming into their careers around the same time that they are told they are running out of time.

This came up in another class of mine (a Russian literature one), and my professor told me that communist Russia actually pushed for women to enter the workforce first, and thus had many women become mothers in their thirties. Nowadays, women typically have children at age 22 (why is not as clear). I would argue that the US would push back the societally constructed age for motherhood to 40 if possible, but 35 poses a biological stop sign. I mentioned (before reading this article), that if it was the norm to freeze eggs, then women would definitely wait until their forties to have children. And now look at what Facebook and Apple are paying for their employees!

It will be interesting to see how reproductive technologies change our norms as we grow older. Will egg freezing become a big thing? Who know?

Does Politics Need Gender Quotas—for Men?

I am anticipating that we will probably be talking about quotas next week, so here's an article from the Atlantic that gives a different spin on it.

Maureen Dowd's Original Critique

The article we read about Lean In referred to an op-ed by Maureen Dowd...so I figured I should probably read that. I think the article we read accurately described her issues with Lean In, but I want to dig a little deeper into what the book tries to be and how it is critiqued. I think Dowd's comments are accurate and I appreciate her analysis, but I also feel like she takes the book as a type of manifesto. I don't think we can do that. I think that reading it as a memoir, as Sandberg's experiences and as Sandberg's advice to a very specific group of women is the most valuable way to read it. I'm not saying that's how we should have to read it, but I think discounting on the basis of a failed manifesto means that we avoid some of Sandberg's most influential points and best advice.

Ferguson/past indictment of a female officer

Here's the video I mentioned yesterday in class - it gives a brief summary of Ferguson, background, and why it matters (the mention of the indictment of an officer is at 2:40).

I did very minimal investigation into the case mentioned, and found this report on what happened, and this report that actually has the video from the police car dash cam of the incident.

Turns out that the indictment was because the officer didn't follow proper protocols, and the shooting resulted in an injury, not a death. Nothing of what I've read so far analyzes the issue from a gender perspective, but I'd like to look further.