Stephanie Coontz makes all the so-called relationship, marriage and family experts from the conservative thinktanks look like the frauds that they are. Her most recent book, Marriage - A History, is a masterpiece of scholarly research made accessible to the general public through great writing.

Today, in a Guardian column, she uses the 45th anniversary of the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique to revisit its impact.  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Echidne has a great article over at Alternet regarding the non-sensical and stupid thesis that there are few women in politics because they do not have the ambition, drive and thick skin to face the political world. In other words, states the stupid thesis, they have an inner glass ceiling. This is idiotic, of course, Echidne lists all the relevant arguments, so, just go read, ok? Then come back and read some of the background I have to offer on this.

According to Paxton and Hughes (2007), women represent approximately half of the world’s population but only 16% of national parliaments. Of 190 countries, only 7 have women as head of the government. Women are 9% of ambassadors to the United Nations, 7% of the world’s cabinet ministers and 8% of the world’s mayors. In politics and government, the gender gap is extremely wide and well represents the global persistence of patriarchy.

In addition, in no country do women make half of the parliament even though a few countries come very close (See table). Interestingly, some countries of the global South seem to do a better job than some Western countries when it comes to promoting women in politics. After all, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Indonesia and Chile have or have had female presidents; in contrast, France and the United States have not.  Read more 

(Hideous table alert)

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Via Context Crawler, thanks to a new article in the American Sociological Review, we should revisit the zombie meme of Opt-Out, the already-debunked idea that women are leaving the workforce to return to homemaking responsibilities. It is a meme that won’t die (hence, the zombie part) because it seems to validate the social conservative and "family values" crowd that women REALLY belong at home with their children and if everyone understood and abide by that, the entire society would be better off.

The correlated belief is that the family is the base institutional structure of society, which has not been true in several centuries, as Stephanie Coontz has aptly demonstrated. But then, social conservatives and "family values experts" are never really bothered by facts and truth. After all, they still maintain that abstinence-only program and virginity pledges work, despite the evidence.

But back to the Opt-Out myth.  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Elizabeth Pisani’s The Wisdom of Whores - Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS is a great book (along with a great website). Elizabeth Pisani is an epidemiologist with years of experience working on HIV/AIDS (or sex and drugs, as she puts, which sounds a lot, well, sexier) at a variety of agencies, including UNAIDS. The book is the story of her frustrations at the way the international community, national governments, NGOS and AIDS activists have dealt with the epidemics, as well as her hopes in some of the progress made.

I got interested in the book when I read an interview Pisani gave to the Guardian. The interview kinda billed the book as a controversial work where Pisani would be the mean lady who said people got AIDS because of their stupid behavior and not enough was being done because of political correctness. So, I was ready to get really pissed off with the book. That has not been the case at all.  Read more 

Since this is Mother’s Day in the US, let’s note that the NGO Save the Children has created an index of the best and worst places to be a mother. Also check out their great multimedia presentation. It’s a great resource. Save the Children based their index on the following criteria:  Read more 

I know a lot of Hillary supporters refer to her speech at the UN Women’s conference in Beijing in 1995. So, today, I decided to take a closer look at the whole speech, especially in the context of Senator Obama’s remark on abortion and the need to respect the anti-choice position (just like we should respect and understand anti-LGBT positions). Again, remember, this speech was delivered 13 years ago, on one of these trips that Hillary took where she just shook hands with officials and watched little girls dance (snark). The audio is embedded below, otherwise, I selected a few excerpts (the full text is here, with video as well).

 Read more 

CBS Poll: Gender Matters More than Race:

Voters are slightly more likely to say that a woman candidate faces more obstacles than a black candidate when it comes to presidential politics even as they see racism as a more serious problem for the nation overall, according to a new CBS News poll. Thirty nine percent of registered voters said a woman running for president faces more obstacles while 33 percent said a black candidate does.  Read more 

So I had a nice afternoon with an area blogger who went with me and a friend to see the Josephine Baker exhibit at the Smithsonian. I had a couple of thoughts while there.

Inky Oceans have been spilled on the woman, and I’m no expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I came away from the experience feeling very much “la plus ca change…” First off: so did she enjoy some gay sex or not? You wouldn’t really be too clear on that from the exhibit, which made little sense to me in this very gay town and with all the gay people who were there (like, 70%). They mentioned how she was a “groundbreaker” in terms of race, gender and sexuality, but left out the details for the last part. Um, why?  Read more 

I’m on the road this week, forgive the light posting. But just to inflame some readers: what do you think? Are women smarter than men? Would you hate me if I said, “yes” most of the time? In all seriousness, I’ve never seen a poll unlike this one. For some reason, women seem to dislike war and pillage more than men. Why is that?

70 percent of women and 58 percent of men now oppose the war in Iraq.

That’s outside the moe. Tell me why you think this should be.

I found this interesting. I don’t have an opinion about the validity, but for what it’s worth she doesn’t sound like a winger.

“Women have an eight-lane superhighway for processing emotion, while men have a small country road,” she writes. Men, however, “have O’Hare Airport as a hub for processing thoughts about sex, where women have the airfield nearby that lands small and private planes.”  Read more