Women Want ...

I never commented about the New York Times Sunday Magazine article about "What Women Want" because I a) didn't read the article because I felt it would only make me mad, and b) Jill said everything much better than I could say it. Here is my advice: The article doesn't say anything particularly new, so instead you should read Mary Roach's much more awesome book, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. That is all.

Legislation Affecting Women: Bush v. Obama

All I have to say is that Jill's post is genius.

Lilly Ledbetter's Act

The very first bill Obama signed into law is a law about pay equity. That's pretty astonishing on one level -- that the very first priority for this administration is to ensure women who experience pay discrimination have an opportunity for legal recourse.

On the other hand, the bill is minor. It corrects a definition of when pay definition occurs. It doesn't prevent pay discrimination, it just allows an opportunity for objection. It also comes at the same time that Obama himself requested that funding for increased access to birth control be removed from a bill (sure, I understand the political argument for removing it, but I think by bending on this now he'll find it much harder to fight for this kind of stuff, including other kinds of health care reform, down the road) that's designed to stimulate the economy.

Women, especially women of color, are heavily burdened by work and family responsibilities. Finding work life balance for women is so difficult, and there is little support put in place, either by employers or by the government. I want to be happy for the passage of this bill, but it's also frustrating to see such a minor bill celebrated. We still have such a long way to go.

Women in the Priesthood

I haven't seen Doubt, but I understand it deals with some of the sexism in the Catholic Church in addition to the questions about child abuse perpetrated by priests. I just ran across this story from last month (via Skepchick) about a priest, Roy Bourgeois, who is fighting for women to be allowed into the priesthood.

Catholicism has long held some stereotypes about men and women in faith. Bourgeois is attempting to say that women can be spiritual guides just as well as men. He's gotten a great deal of support from the Catholic community (including this letter) and continues to be ignored by the Vatican.

It's not surprising that the Vatican is entrenched in stereotypes or that they're unwilling to consider women for the priesthood, but it does make me wonder what the Church would be like if more women were given higher positions in the Church. Would the Church still have such a strong anti-birth control stance? Would they still block aid to women in the developing world over disagreements about abortion? Perhaps, but it's hard to say what impact a diversity might have in an organization.

Secretary of State or Sexy Crimefighter?

Via Matt and Spencer, this is a doozy. The National Interest has decided to portray three extremely qualified, professional women in public offices as, you guessed it, a spinoff of Charlie's Angels. Matt astutely puts it this way:

Hillary Clinton graduated from an elite law school, was a staffer on the Hill, a partner in her husband’s successful political career, a United States Senator, and a formidable presidential candidate before becoming Secretary of State. Susan Rice is a Stanford graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, a McKinsey consultant, a National Security Council staffer, the youngest-ever Assistant Secretary of State, top foreign policy hand on a winning presidential campaign before becoming Barack Obama’s UN Ambassador. Janet Napolitano was a federal prosecutor, a state Attorney-General, and a twice-elected governor before taking the helm at the troubled Department of Homeland Security.

Naturally, The National Interest thinks an analogy to the sexy crimefighters of Charlie’s Angels would be an appropriate analytical frame.

This goes to show that no matter how accomplished or professional a woman is, she is often depicted in a sexualized way.

Teens Not as Risque as Some Might Have You Think

Yesterday the New York Times had a story about teens and sex. Thank goodness it's not another article about how teens are having more sex and we really need to be teaching them not to. Instead, the article attempts to counter all those myths about how teens are hypersexual.

In fact, the article argues that teens today are less active sexually than they have been in the past. But what's interesting is the grammatic switch the Times presents:

A 2002 report from the Department of Health and Human Services found that 30 percent of 15- to 17-year-old girls had experienced sex, down from 38 percent in 1995. During the same period, the percentage of sexually experienced boys in that age group dropped to 31 percent from 43 percent.

Apparently girls "experience sex" but boys are "sexually experienced." Awesome. (h/t)

Soundly, though, the article points out that teen pregnancy isn't up because teens are having more sex, it's because they're having more unprotected sex. This is probably brought about by all the preaching about how unreliable condoms are. But in the words of former surgeon general Dr. Jocelyn Elders, "I think we need to get over our ideas about how condoms will break. We know condoms will break, but the vows of abstinence break far more frequently than latex condoms."

Lilly Ledbetter's Fight

Today I have a piece up in Comment is Free about how the legislation touted by many as a big achievement for closing the pay gap, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that Obama is expected to sign this week, is merely one of many things Obama needs to do to right the Bush legacy. To really address pay discrimination, more action needs to be taken:

The Ledbetter act is certainly legislation to be celebrated by feminists and equal rights advocates everywhere, but in many ways the legislation is just one remedy in a long list of injustices done in the last eight years and a minor step up in the battle for equal pay. After all, the law only returns to what was practiced before the court's decision and gives women the right to sue.

On average, women still earn less than 80 cents for every dollar a man earns, and the gap becomes even greater for women of colour. The kinds of legislation that might address that pay gap are much more difficult battles to fight. To examine paycheque discrimination in a real way, we need to begin to think about greater pay transparency and more family-friendly workplace policies.

Go ahead and read the whole thing.