Posts Tagged gender
Femivores
More lefty liberals writing about their friends from the New York Times.
Fascinating – read it here.
Femivorism is grounded in the very principles of self-sufficiency, autonomy and personal fulfillment that drove women into the work force in the first place. Given how conscious (not to say obsessive) everyone has become about the source of their food — who these days can’t wax poetic about compost? — it also confers instant legitimacy. Rather than embodying the limits of one movement, femivores expand those of another: feeding their families clean, flavorful food; reducing their carbon footprints; producing sustainably instead of consuming rampantly. What could be more vital, more gratifying, more morally defensible?
Add comment March 18, 2010
Workforce Changes = Societal Changes
What will our families’ economic structure look like in 5 years, 20 years, when I’m old and gray? All Americans (citizens of most of the world?) think about these things more frequently than we ever thought possible, I’m sure.
As planners/strategists/what-are-we-calling-ourselves-these-days, it’s our job to do it a bit more thoughtfully, perhaps with a bit of detachment even.
Before the Great Recession whirled into our lives, girls were already attending and graduating from university at higher rates. In something like 30% of dual income households, the ladies were already bringing home the larger paycheck.
With this in mind, one of the more interesting threads to ponder (to my potted mind) is what, if any, changes will occur within male-female relations as a result of mens diminished earning capacity. Will we all finally GET BEYOND money as equaling power in a relationship? Will “the gold-digger” varietal of our species veer towards extinction? (fingers crossed, small prayer, nod and done!)
A bit of fodder for the mental hamster wheel, my pretties:
Read this phenomenal Atlantic piece on how today’s economic situation will change the future of manhood.
Last Friday, the Labor Department released payroll information and yep, it’s official, more women are working in the US than men. This blog post in the NYT digs into the data.
And then head over to a University of Chicago professor’s article that pulls apart some of the data surrounding government entitlement payments by generation. It’s sure to make the senior set uncomfortable. There aren’t any comments up as of my posting here, but I imagine there will be in short order.
Add comment February 24, 2010
Baby Let’s Not Fight
An average couple has 135 tiffs a year, a new UK study has found.
According to the survey by Esure home insurance, couples spend 40 minutes a day on average arguing about household chores.
And the biggest cause of domestic dispute is leaving clothes strewn around the house, the study of 1,000 men and women found.
Add comment January 12, 2010
Bike Ladies
One of my favorite bike shots from The Sartorialist
From Scientific American:
Although bike lanes painted on streets and automobile-free “greenways” have increased ridership over the past few years, the share of people relying on bikes for transportation is still less than 2 percent, based on various studies. An emerging body of research suggests that a superior strategy to increase pedal pushing could be had by asking the perennial question: What do women want?
In the U.S., men’s cycling trips surpass women’s by at least 2:1. This ratio stands in marked contrast to cycling in European countries, where urban biking is a way of life and draws about as many women as men—sometimes more.
Women are considered an “indicator species” for bike-friendly cities for several reasons. First, studies across disciplines as disparate as criminology and child rearing have shown that women are more averse to risk than men. In the cycling arena, that risk aversion translates into increased demand for safe bike infrastructure as a prerequisite for riding. Women also do most of the child care and household shopping, which means these bike routes need to be organized around practical urban destinations to make a difference.
“Despite our hope that gender roles don’t exist, they still do,” says Jennifer Dill, a transportation and planning researcher at Portland State University. Addressing women’s concerns about safety and utility “will go a long way” toward increasing the number of people on two wheels, Dill explains.
Add comment October 16, 2009
Check Out WireTap Magazine
The website WireTap is new-found favorite of mine. Heavy on advisers from Current TV, The Nation, and AlterNet, the site is a great platform for young (appears to be mostly college age) writers / content creators from the most diverse backgrounds I have ever seen in a single site. If you need to understand what young adults care about about, how they define their worlds, this site should be a regular stop in your information gathering missions.
Below is an excerpt from a recent perspective piece I enjoyed. Topics often include reactions to current events around the globe, stories about race, gender and identity. I also like that the students are paid for their submissions.
The 1996 launch of “Sex on Tuesday” at the University of California, Berkeley– birthplace of the 1960s national student activist movement — triggered the campus newspaper sex column phenomenon.
Within a few years, the sex column had spread to campuses across the country, becoming the “most publicized, electrifying, and divisive phenomena in student journalism,” in the words of Dan Reimold, leading expert on the student newspaper sex column.Reimold estimates that “during any given semester more than 200 sex and dating columns are being published in U.S. student newspapers, magazines, and online outlets…. What’s most important here is perspective. In the mid-nineties, the number of student sex columns: zero.” In addition to increasing student readership, the proliferation of student sex columns has drawn national attention.
Entertainment is usually a key reason behind the publication of sex columns, but the writing is not all about fun. These controversial pieces have proved battlegrounds for the rights of the student press and “appropriate” subjects for publication (ironically, only increasing their popularity and fueling the movement).
Add comment October 12, 2009
The Ladies Are Concerned
Reported in today’s AdAge, featuring the spot on analysis of Marti Barletta:
Even though they have arguably fared better in the recession, women are more pessimistic about the economy than men, according to a 300-person survey by Performics, part of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center.
While men appear to have improved their outlook on the economy, women have not.
The unit’s “2009 Online Buyer Economic Trend Study” reported that 53% of women said their situation is worse than a year ago. By contrast, only 38% of men said they are worse off than a year ago.
The trend is interesting, considering unemployment among women is more than two percentage points lower than it is for men, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Men, by many accounts, have born the brunt of the job cuts.
But the divergence is more eye-opening when you consider the rule of thumb that women are responsible for more than 80% of household spending. And that “chief purchaser” role may actually be contributing to the pessimism.
73% of women said the recession has fundamentally changed the way they think about saving and spending money vs. 57% of men.
According to the survey results, 55% of women expect to spend less in the next 60 days, vs. 37% of men. And 41% of women expect to spend less on household essentials in that time period, up from 34% in April.
“If we can’t get women to feel more hopeful and confident about the future, it’s going to have significant implications,” said Marti Barletta, the author of “Marketing to Women” and CEO of TrendSight Group.
Add comment August 28, 2009
Boy Code
From Psychology Today…
Kids are fascinated by creatures of the opposite sex, but strongly averse to them. As in, “ewwwww.”
Once children are about 6 years old, they begin to set up a code of behavior that discourages friendships between boys and girls. “It’s a way for them to avoid dealing with things that are too complicated,” says Alan Sroufe, the William Harris professor of child psychology at the University of Minnesota.
In one study, 10-year-olds who were videotaped while at summer camp were caught co-mingling just 4 percent of the time they were observed. And those who did so were promptly taken to task by their peers. One boy made the grave mistake of loaning a radio to a girl and then, in a move that far worsened his situation, venturing into the all-girls tent to retrieve it. As he emerged from enemy territory, the boys broke into a chorus of “Oooh, you like her!” and, “Why are you with the girls?”
“He had to immediately hit each boy who had teased him,” Sroufe says. “Kids have elaborate rituals for setting and policing gender boundaries.”
The irony is that sex segregation seems to prepare children for good cross-sex relations as teens. Sroufe found that the very kids who maintained gender boundaries at 10 were more effective at communicating with the opposite sex as adolescents.
By following the divisive code, he speculates, kids solidify their status in their same-sex peer group. They may also strengthen their one-on-one friendships, which teach them the communication skills they need when they begin to befriend mysterious souls of the opposite gender.
Add comment July 21, 2009
It’s Official: Gender Bias in the Theater
I wish I had been at the findings presentation of Emily Glassberg Sands this week. She conducted three separate studies and apparently the examination was championed by the playwright Julia Jordan, who has been speaking out about the huge disparity between the number of shows by men that are produced and the number by women. Here is the link to the full article in the New York Times today and there you can also download a copy of the researcher’s full paper. Once I’m unburied from boxes, I will bury myself in it.
This is just a teaser – go read the whole thing!
When more than 160 playwrights and producers, most of them female, filed into a Midtown Manhattan theater Monday night, they expected to hear some concrete evidence that women who are authors have a tougher time getting their work staged than men.
And they did. But they also heard that women who are artistic directors and literary managers are the ones to blame.
That conclusion was just one surprising piece of a yearlong research project that both confirms and upends assumptions about bias in the playwriting business.
Add comment June 25, 2009
Thoughts on ‘For Sotomayor and Thomas, Paths Diverge at Race’
Sonia Sotomayor at Princeton
This story ran on the front page of the New York Times a couple of days ago. As I read it on the subway, I was struck by what I felt was missing. I waited a day or so and went back to the article online to view the comments section – would there be anything in there other than “Thomas is superior, but she’s a bum” and vice versa commentary?
Not surprisingly, there is a bunch of that sort of thing, and some thoughtful observations. I was surprised to NOT see ONE mention of gender. Men and women are literally wired to respond to challenges in their environment differently – which is not to say that all men will behave one way and all women another way in situation X. (Marti Barletta dissects this component of gender with such a clear, interesting perspective. She gives many examples of the differences between Man Culture and Woman Culture, the way in which we communicate and make decisions, and why smart marketers need to be respect these nuances. If you get a chance to hear one of her lectures/talks, jump at the opportunity!)
Leaving out any speculation about Sotomayor and Thomas’ intellectual capacities, who had to overcome more, their “worth” as Justices, their politics etc, I think it is fair to say that when faced with an insulting verbal confrontations (“surely you can’t be qualified for a job here”) Sotomayor behaved as a woman (used to being questioned and second-guessed, she fought back hard after gathering the support of her community’s authorities. She believed she had every right to be treated as an equal and she was willing to demonstrate that others thought so too) and Thomas as a man (he received the full force of the insult as it was intended and regarded having to disprove it as a further humiliation. He said he was worthy, he should be allowed to demonstrate this without asking others for permission.)
As I read the comments section this evening, I was reminded of a funny and telling anecdote I was told on a first date (it was an online meet-up and went nowhere.) When I shared with my date that I did a lot of research around gender differences in communications style and behaviors, he looked me in the eye and said “I can tell you everything you need to know about the differences between men and women.” He is a VC guy and he told me a story about the people he funds.
“A woman has a first meeting with me and my team. She brings in 8 sets of documents, tabbed and marked where appropriate, gives us her pitch in which she asks for $500,000 in order to grow her business by 20% annually. It’s a sound, solid proposal and I say to her, ‘what can you do if I give you $2,000,000?’ and more often than not she will tell me thanks but no thanks, what she needs is the $500,000. When I need $2 million, I’ll ask you for it.”
“OK. Now for scenario 2. I have a meeting with a man who has approached me because ‘he can make me money.’ He pulls out a couple of pieces of paper (and yes, there has even been a napkin!) and starts talking about the great idea he has to revolutionize or create something, how he’s got a buddy who can help with some part of the manufacturing/initial set-up, perhaps even cut us a deal, and how this brilliant idea is going to make a LOT of people a LOT of money.”
“Sometimes,’ continues VC man, “there is something fantastic there in that nugget. So I say to him, how much do you need and he says ‘$10 million should get us off to a good start.’”
I laughed, he laughed, said of course he was simplifying but the premise is true.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Add comment June 9, 2009
Didn’t We Know This Already?
Newsflash: Intelligent women have better sex
I love these REALLY official-looking research results that crop up in papers and websites. Call me crazy, but emotionally intelligent people probably have better EVERYTHING – relationships, jobs, friendships, spiritual lives.
Find a way to work this into conversation twice today.
Women blessed with ‘emotional intelligence’ – the ability to express their own feelings and read others – have better sex lives, research shows.
Those most in touch with their feelings have twice as many orgasms as inhibited sorts, the study found.
The finding could help lead to new ways of counselling the 40 per cent of women who find it difficult or impossible to fully enjoy sex.
Researcher Tim Spector, of King’s College London, said: ‘These findings show that emotional intelligence is an advantage in many aspects of your life including the bedroom.
Professor Spector quizzed more than 2,000 female twins, aged between 18 and 83, about their sex lives.
The women were asked to rate their ability to reach orgasm on a seven-point scale, ranging from ‘never’ to always’.
They also filled in a questionnaire designed to gauge their emotional intelligence and covering traits like self-expression, empathy and contentment.
1 comment May 11, 2009
