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.

Talking to young girls about gender

When I was home for Thanksgiving I recorded a talk I gave a few weeks ago to submit for a job application. Given that it is about gender representation in media and young girls as storytellers, I wanted to get one take of me actually giving the speech to a young girl. So, one evening I sat down with my eight-year-old neighbor, Malin. She has two older brothers who she fights endlessly with, loves sports (hockey is her favorite at the moment), and is exceptionally good at math. When I arrived at her house I explained to her what I was trying to do. I let her help me set up the camera, showed her how to change the white balance and let her play with the focus. When we finally sat down I told her briefly about the talk, explaining some concepts and why it was important. Then, I proceeded to give the talk just as I would to an older audience. There is a whole section of the talk about girls seeking out leadership opportunities and I explain that of all the kids who want to be president when they grow up, only 19% of them are girls. I then casually mention that there has never been a girl president. Malin stops me. "Wait, wait, wait," she says, "YOU ARE SAYING THAT THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A GIRL PRESIDENT IN THE WHOLE 100 MILLION YEAR HISTORY OF ALL OF AMERICA?!?!?!?!"

I didn't really know what to say. Nobody had ever stopped me in the middle of my talk before. I tried to explain, "Well, America hasn't been around that long... It's only been a few hundred years... I mean colonial America... Because, yeah, America itself has been around for a long time... And, yeah, no girls presidents. Ever."

The next question I was equally unprepared for: "Why?" she probed.

I responded with "That's just the way it is. But it is going to change soon."

For some reason I didn't feel comfortable explaining to her gender roles and expectations. It became clear to me that she did not see any of that yet in the world. I asked her, "Do you want to be president?"

"Of course!" she responded.

"Good," I told her.

This is why I love young girls (in the totally non-creepy way). Nobody is born into the world with a pre-conceived notion of who or how they are supposed to be. If anything, young girls are in a unique position to critique what society is telling them about who they are supposed to be. I felt guilty even telling Malin all of this because, really, I should have just been encouraging her to do and be anything she wanted instead of telling her about this legacy she had to change in order to achieve her dreams. I finished the talk and had a conversation with her about what she can do to become president one day. I asked her about all the ways she's a leader. I told her to keep developing those skills so that she CAN be president one day. Young girls now are going to grow up to be the next leaders. For some reason, I feel such and obligation to the girls in my life to teach them about the history of women who have fought for them and about how they are so important in this world. But, after this conversation with Malin I felt like I had diminished a part of her--by telling her about this history I had all of the sudden planted this idea in her head that she couldn't do it because nobody had done it before.

Having this conversation with her was a good experience for me. Next time I have the opportunity to have a conversation like this with a young girl, I think it will be important for me to not assume they feel or think a certain way and instead just listen.

Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person

Hey All! I just came across this article called Explaining White Privilege to a Broke White Person and it covers a lot of interesting topics about the intersectionality of race/gender/sexuality etc. I think these are important things to remember and reflect on, especially in light of all the controversy surrounding Ferguson right now. Also, the author mentions that the work that made him realize his privilege was Peggy McIntosh's "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" !!!!

Ferguson and Feminism

As we all face our outrage after the Grand Jury's failure to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson, I invite you all to look at the killing of black youth through a different lens than we perhaps typically do. This article and many others strive to show that this is an issue of reproductive rights, a so called "women's issue". As we have discussions of intersectional feminism, it is important to consider the many perspectives and experiences of different feminist issues. As terrifying as the implications of the Grand Jury's decision yesterday are to me, I will never be able to understand that fear as a black mother, terrified to lose her child to racist, unprovoked, violent attacks. We all deserve to make reproductive choices about having or not having children, but that needs to come with certainty that those children will not be feared and attacked for the color of their skin.

The New York Times article about cooking dads

The New York Times posted a short article about an increasing number of dads who spend a decent amount of time in their kitchen.

Some interesting facts and statements of the article include,

# A study reported that 42% of men and 68% of women spent time cooking on any given day. Although a large gap still exists, it has been shrinking.

# However, a male interviewee also said that people are still surprised to know that he is the primary cook of his family.  

Good for Lego!

Lego Wins Everything


So I'm avoiding writing at least three essays right now and I think I've found the end of the internet. In the process, I found this! I read it out loud to a friend and they asked what year it had happened. The answer? 1974. So hey...good for Lego for promoting gender equality for the last forty years!

"Marry someone who will take care of the kids"

An interesting article from Slate that was posted the other day:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/11/18/harvard_business_school_study_it_s_not_kids_but_husbands_that_hold_women.html

In in, women across generations grapple with their role in the professional world and how that fits in with their family/husband's career. The trends of women who are more career-focused is definitely a move away from the suburban housewife problem we saw in Collins' book, and men are increasingly feeling less like their career should take precedence and have more of a role in child-care and housework.

However, there's still a problem with women who are "mommy-tracked" in their jobs by their bosses. In terms of the ERA, could it help these women who seek to have their own career as well as a family at home?

Social Experiment on Domestic Abuse

Article 4 of Redstockings Manifesto, which states that women cannot oppress men, reminded me of a social experiment that I watched a while ago. It was an experiment to find out how differently people would react to a man abusing a woman and a woman abusing a man. At the end of the video, it says something along the lines of "violence goes both ways" and I thought that was particularly eye-opening, as I've only considered it as a one-way thing until now.

Feminism only works when we consider both genders by the same standards, and I think assuming that men wouldn't be oppressed by women ironically reinforces our conditioned thoughts that women are weaker and therefore inferior beings.

A Civil Rights movie! ... all about MLK

I went to a movie over the weekend, and saw this trailer:

As soon as I realized it was about Civil Rights, I got really excited and hopeful... But then it went on to appear as though the entire movie is about King and his efforts. I really hope I'm wrong. If the trailer is an accurate representation of the movie, then the only thing women do it act as wives, or as participants and supporters of the movement, but most definitely not as organizers. Ugh. Because I couldn't remember anything about marches in Selma, I looked in Freedom's Daughters to see what Olson had to say. The bit on the marches was in a chapter we didn't have to read (ch 20). And, no big surprise here, but women were a huge part of making the marches happen - including Diane Nash! Apparently, Nash and her husband were the ones who told MLK that Selma was a good place, and he eventually agreed. Anyways, here is yet another example of the dominant narrative prevailing in a situation where an amazing story could be told - one that includes everyone who worked to make change (I mean, how interesting would a movie be on the life of Diane Nash?!).

Celebrities as Representatives of the Feminist Movement

Just like Tracy, I like to go on Buzzfeed occassionally and I've been noticing a lot of stuff on Taylor Swift and her 'conversion' to feminism. It's great that there's one more person in the world that advocates for equal gender rights, but I think our focus on celebrities can be somewhat dangerous and misleading. The feminist movement used to be characterized by people like Alice Paul, Fannie Lou Hamer, Diane Nash, or Patsy Mink as its key figures/leaders who dedicated their lives to the betterment of women, and I think it's somewhat of a degradation to let singers and actors speak for the movement and its agenda without even fully knowing its history. I am not saying that people who work in the entertainment industry are not respectable; I just don't think they have the expertise to be representatives for such a broad movement. In fact, they do a great disservice to feminism when they are misinformed, as shown in this article. Celebrities like Lana Del Rey, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga have distanced themselves from the label, stating that they are not 'man-haters'. As people that many young women look up to, these simple characterizations will prove to be a detriment to the advancement of equal gender rights by equating feminism with man-hating.

What do you guys think about celebrities standing in the forefront of the feminist movement? Do you think they can be effective spokespeople?

How Women Use Fashion to Assert their Power

This NYT article was written in response to the recent opening of the "Women Fashion Power" exhibit at the Design Museum in London, and discusses how fashion can be a tool for women, especially those in politics.  It cites examples of powerful women such as Wendy Davis and her Mizuno sneakers, and argues that fashion empowers women rather than belittles them.  The idea that women seem to be criticized more than men for their image is something that we've touched on in class, and is an interesting way in which our society views female politicians differently than male politicians.

Here's a quote from the article:
"Indeed, in a Daily Beast article last year about Ms. Davis and her sneakers, the liberal pundit Sally Kohn wrote that noting what women wear “undercuts the leadership of women and quashes their voice.” It seems to me, however, and this exhibition shows, that the situation is the opposite: What women wear is an embodiment of their voice, and identifying it helps identify their agenda (as it does with men, for that matter). "

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/fashion/the-women-fashion-power-exhibition-at-the-design-museum-in-london.html?rref=style/international&module=Ribbon&version=origin&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=International%20Style&pgtype=Blogs

If Men In Politics Were Described Like Women In Politics

So when I can't sleep at night, I browse through BuzzFeed. And I stumbled across this. I found it humorous, and reading some of these felt kind of strange, because we don't talk about men in politics this way. So why do we about women?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/if-men-in-politics-were-described-like-women-in-politics

The Gender Gap in Voting

It is no surprise to anyone, I think, that older (white) men are key to Republican victories. Thinking more about our discussion of the election, this article gives a nice breakdown of both age and gender gaps in voting the other day. I am generally very intrigued by the victory of various female GOP candidates, particularly since we still see women tending to vote for Democrats.

This also makes me curious about how the gender gap may or may not change in the future. We see more general support for "women's issues" from the left, but perhaps increased female GOP representation will cause that to shift and will lead to a decrease in the gender gap. The Republicans know how important older men are to their success, but the party that lacks organization and diverse support is definitely trying to reshape its image and identity, and in turn gain support from a variety of demographics. It may be up to these new female GOP representatives to narrow the gender gap in voting.

Lena Dunham wants you to vote! (and voting selfies)

As I was looking up women in the midterm election results, I came across this Glamour Magazine article, titled, " Will Women Turn Out to Vote in Tomorrow's Midterm Elections?  Democrats are Counting On It."  The article outlined some of the "women's issues" that we have been discussing in class, and interestingly had its own "Glamour Poll" of whether or not you were going to vote.  Here were the results:

This makes me wonder the reasons why the 8.57% said no!

Also, the article had a link to a video from a partnership of Lena Dunham and Planned Parenthood (link directly to video here).  I thought this was an interesting partnership between Dunham and PP, as Dunham seems to be using her celebrity status to further her political views, and PP is leveraging their partnership with Dunham to get the attention/support of her fans.  

On another note, here's the CNN article titled, "Selfies at the ballot box illegal?"  The article also has the celebrity selfies at the top, just like we talked about in class (look, even Kendall Jenner voted!  If a Kardashian can vote, so can you.)