Category Archives: Gender Equality

“They are indistinguishable”

NPR: Math Looks The Same In The Brains Of Boys And Girls, Study Finds.

“There’s new evidence that girls start out with the same math abilities as boys.

A study of 104 children from ages 3 to 10 found similar patterns of brain activity in boys and girls as they engaged in basic math tasks, researchers reported Friday in the journal Science of Learning.

“They are indistinguishable,” says Jessica Cantlon, an author of the study and professor of developmental neuroscience at Carnegie Mellon University.

The finding challenges the idea that more boys than girls end up in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) because they are inherently better at the sort of thinking those fields require. It also backs other studies that found similar math abilities in males and females early in life.”

NPR: New Study Challenges The Assumption That Math Is Harder For Girls. “Research shows that when boys and girls as old as 10 do math, their patterns of brain activity are indistinguishable. The finding is the latest challenge to the idea that math is harder for girls.”

“Geary says differences seem to show up later and involve very high-level math tasks. His own research has found that in most countries, female students perform just as well as male students in science-related subjects. Yet paradoxically, Geary says, females are less likely to get degrees in fields like math and computer science if they live in wealthier countries with greater gender equality.”

“Women I meet every week assure me that they are never going to feel perfectly safe again”

Slate: Why I Haven’t Gone Back to SCOTUS Since Kavanaugh. “Some things are worth not getting over.” By Dahlia Lithwick.

“It is not my job to decide if Brett Kavanaugh is guilty. It’s impossible for me to do so with incomplete information, and with no process for testing competing facts. But it’s certainly not my job to exonerate him because it’s good for his career, or for mine, or for the future of an independent judiciary. Picking up an oar to help America get over its sins without allowing for truth, apology, or reconciliation has not generally been good for the pursuit of justice. Our attempts to get over CIA torture policies or the Iraq war or anything else don’t bring us closer to truth and reconciliation. They just make it feel better—until they do not. And we have all spent far too much of the past three years trying to tell ourselves that everything is OK when it most certainly is not normal, not OK, and not worth getting over.
[…]
Sometimes I tell myself that my new beat is justice, as opposed to the Supreme Court. And my new beat now seems to make it impossible to cover the old one.”

Link via MetaFilter.

“She says she felt a duty to shine a light on the darkness so many young women have to go through.”

BBC News: Chanel Miller: Stanford sexual assault survivor tells her story. “What do we know about Emily Doe? We know she was sexually assaulted by Brock Turner outside a frat party at Stanford University, California, one night in January 2015. She was found unconscious and partly-clothed, near a dumpster.”

“He would get a six-month term, for sexually assaulting an intoxicated victim, sexually assaulting an unconscious victim and attempting to rape her.

He would serve three months and be put on probation for three years, ending this month. Judge Aaron Persky, who was later removed from his post, cited Turner’s good character and the fact he had been drinking.

Much of the coverage at the time also focused on the fact Turner was a star swimmer.

What do we know about Chanel Miller? Maybe you don’t know a lot, yet. If you’ve read the victim impact statement she addressed to Turner, which went viral when she was still known as Emily Doe to protect her anonymity, you’ll know she is brave and articulate.

Here is what you should know about Chanel.”

Buzzfeed News: Here’s The Powerful Letter The Stanford Victim Read To Her Attacker. (6 June, 2016)

“A former Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in jail because a longer sentence would have “a severe impact on him,” according to a judge. At his sentencing Thursday, his victim read him a letter describing the “severe impact” the assault had on her.”

“When, exactly, do abortion opponents think life begins?”

The New York Times – Opinion: Life Begins at Conception (Except When That’s Inconvenient for Republicans). “It’s almost as if abortion bans aren’t actually about “life“ at all.” By Molly Jong-Fast.

“But what are we to make of what happened on Feb. 22, when a 24-year-old woman from Honduras went into labor at 27 weeks pregnant and delivered a stillborn baby at an ICE detention center? According to ICE, “for investigative and reporting purposes, a stillbirth is not considered an in-custody death.“ Where were the cries of outrage from pro-life corners? Do some lives begin at conception and others don’t? Is an immigrant fetus less of a person than a citizen fetus?

Many pro-choice pundits make the argument that abortion opponents are hypocrites for their lack of concern about maternal health and early-childhood programs, and they are. But these inconsistencies about when “life“ begins are far more revealing. The idea that fertility clinics should be allowed to end “life“ in the pursuit of resolving infertility is wholly illogical; the notion that an in-custody stillbirth at 27 weeks is not a death, but that an abortion at six or eight weeks is a murder punishable by up to 99 years in prison, requires wild feats of mental jujitsu.

It’s almost as if the Republican Party considers “life“ to be a completely arbitrary notion. It’s almost as if this isn’t actually about “life“ at all.”

Link via MetaFilter.

“[R]efusing to accommodate pregnant women is often completely legal”

The New York Times: Miscarrying at Work: The Physical Toll of Pregnancy Discrimination. “Women in strenuous jobs lost their pregnancies after employers denied their requests for light duty, even ignoring doctors’ notes, an investigation by The New York Times has found.”

“One evening in January 2014, after eight hours of lifting, Erica Hayes ran to the bathroom. Blood drenched her jeans.

She was 23 and in the second trimester of her first pregnancy. She had spent much of the week hoisting the [Verizon] warehouse’s largest boxes from one conveyor belt to the next. Ever since she learned she was pregnant, she had been begging her supervisor to let her work with lighter boxes, she said in an interview. She said her boss repeatedly said no.

She fainted on her way out of the bathroom that day. The baby growing inside of her, the one she had secretly hoped was a girl, was gone.

“It was the worst thing I have ever experienced in my life,“ Ms. Hayes said.”