Are you going to be poor when you're old?

Are you saving for your retirement? No? Wish you were? Will get round to it eventually? Time to start thinking about the future: The Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER) says that millions of US women may run out of retirement savings.

A report published by the Society of Actuaries, and sponsored by WISER, concludes that men and women generally perceive the risks associated with retirement in a similar way, but that there are significant differences in how they experience those risks. Because women live longer than men (at least 5 years on average), there is a greater risk of exhausting assets: put simply, they are going to be retired longer. Women are also not giving enough thought to the costs of long-term care in their older years. Married couples need to give more thought to preserving benefits for a surviving spouse, and not just thinking about their joint plan for retirement. Today, one third of women over age 62 are collecting social security benefits based solely on the earnings of their spouse.

To see a paper summarizing the the survey findings, go to http://research.soa.org/WomensShortReportfinal.pdf

Read more about the Society of Actuaries complete survey at http://preview.tinyurl.com/39zsaq

It ain't sexy, but it's important. Think about it. Do you want to be poor when you are old, ladies?

Did You Know USA is Doing Well in Women's Soccer World Cup? No? No Surprise.

The FIFA Women's World Cup is taking place in China during the month of September. Here's the official website - http://www.fifa.com/womenworldcup/index.html - which will tell you all you need to know about the standing of different teams in the competition. At the time of writing, USA ties top of Group B, England is second in Group A, Australia ties with Norway at top of Group C, and Brazil is top of Group D.

With this big event going on, you might expect to see some news coverage of the US team's success thus far. I had no idea it was happening till I was chatting with a "Soccer Mom" at a match this weekend. So I checked out some internet sites. Not on Fox News. To give credit to CNN, it includes the World Cup on its soccer landing page (though below and smaller than a story about a men's soccer tournament that hasn't even started yet). New York Times also features it, below a story about (men's) college football. In contrast, the Guardian newspaper (UK) features a story about the England team's success in the competition on its homepage as its leading sport headline; though the Times of London buries it on the sports page. (And that when the story is about England beating Argentina which, just a few years ago, in the post-Falklands War world, would have been a leading headline). (All pages accessed on 9/17/07.)

This highly unscientific sampling suggests that we can't conclude that the failure to highlight the women's soccer competition is just cultural: that the US media outlets aren't interested because soccer is still a young sport in the USA, whereas the UK media outlets are accustomed to covering soccer as one of the main national games. Alas, it seems that our media outlets are still inclined to neglect the achievements of our professional sportswomen.

Well, now you know about the competition, you can look out for the coverage!

It is a well-researched fact that involvement in sports is good for girls' self-esteem and all-round success - hence the passionate support that Title IX gets from women in the sporting world. I've recently become aware of a new media outlet which aims to promote a greater presence of healthy images of women and girls, aimed mainly at middle and high school girls: Athletic Girl Productions. Check out their website at www.girlsarechampions.org. Founder and President Lisa Izzi, a former gymnast and Stanford Coach, has created this organization with the aim of presenting healthy, positive images and role models to counterbalance the prevailing "be thin", "get your appearance fixed", "skinny is glamorous" culture.

It may be an uphill struggle, but I applaud Lisa and her colleagues for taking this on.

Ultra Thin Models: To Ban or Not?

This week is London Fashion Week. To mark the occasion, its organizer, the British Fashion Council, has issued a report stating that fashion models should be at least 16 eyars old, and be regularly screened for eating disorders. The report estimates that up to 40% of models may have eating disorders, compared with 3% of the population.

Last year, two extremely thin models died, prompting the Madrid Fashion Week shows to ban ultra-thin models; however, the British Fashion Council's report does not recommend that the excessively thin should be kept off the catwalks. The British government had been pressing for that. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell is reported (at www.telegraph.co.uk) as commenting: "The fashion industry is hugely powerful in shaping the attitudes of young women and their feelings about themselves," she said. "Teenage girls aspire to look like their role models. If their role models are healthy it will help inspire girls to be the same."

The Hairless Adolescent

The New York Times (9/14/07) ran an article about Nair's new hair removal product aimed at young teens: "Nair Pretty". This is what the website has to say in introduction to the product - its the "why you have to do this" sell:

"So you're at an age when the childhood fuzz is becoming thicker and coarser hair. It's time to give some serious thought to removing it. If you've never dealt with hair removal before, it's natural to feel a little bit nervous. But you'll soon see, getting smooth, silky skin with Nair® depilatories is simple – and a fun way to treat yourself right!"

According to the NYT article, the product is aimed at middle schoolers, from about age 10. Why should a 10, 11 or 12 year old be giving "serious thought" to removing body hair? Like the vast majority of women, I've done a bit of hair removal here and there in my time, so I'm not a po-faced opponent of it altogether; but why are we so keen to start encouraging our girls to focus on the way they look, and to spread chemicals over their skin in an attempt to retain the outward appearance of younger childhood, at such an early age?

I see that the Teen Health section of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation's website has an in-depth article comparing seven different ways to remove hair from your legs - http://www.pamf.org/teen/health/femalehealth/hairremoval.html. I was a bit surprised to see a hospital website covering this in such a ra-ra way. Incidentally, you consumers out there, it concludes that using the Nair products is one of the least effective ways of maintaining hairlessness. Hot wax at a salon wins. Of course, that costs more money than a tube of "Nair Pretty". Maybe this is an opportunity to encourage teens into saving their allowance... deferred gratification... and all that.

There doesn't seem to be a lot of research out there on this specific subject: if you know of a good article, let me know. In the meantime, you could try Marika Tiggeman and Sarah J. Kenyon, "The Hairless Norm: The Removal of Body Hair in Women" Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 39 (11-12) December 1998 pp. 873-885. Tiggeman and Kenyon's study looks at the hair removing practices among 129 female university students and 137 female high school students. It found that 92% of them were removing hair, and that they removed hair regardless of whether they self-identified as feminist or not. The writers conclude that hair removal is so common as to be hardly worthy of comment, but that it reflects on the stereotyping view of women's bodies as unacceptable in their natural form.

There is a thoughtful posting on this subject/Nair announcement at the Feminist Law Professor blog (see link on left). As the writer, Bridget Crawford, says, "you can be unstoppable — at any age — and have hairy legs."

Do girls like pink because primitive women needed to find ripe fruit?

A new study out of Newcastle University in England says that females really do have a stronger preference for pink than males do. Apparently everyone likes blue, but women tested in the study showed a preference for the "pinker end of the spectrum." No surprise there for the parents of small girls, but I still want to blame the marketeers for giving the girls no choices but pink! Have you seen the back-to-school stuff filling the stores? Pink, pink, pink.

The study involved 208 people age 20-26, with a mixture of British caucasians and recent immigrants to Britain from mainland China. The researchers speculate that female preference for reddish hues may have arisen from sex-specific specialization in the evolutionary division of labour - specifically that women, as the gatherers, needed to develop a way to identify ripe fruits or edible red leaves. Interesting that the researchers do not consider for a moment that women might have been hunters. The old dichotomy of Man-the-Hunter and Woman-the-Cave Keeper lives!

Of course, the study does not control for the impact of all those years of being dressed in pink, sold pink toys, shown pinkly dressed TV heroines, etc etc. Barbie is big on pink. Is the study really just showing how effective all that pink marketing has been? I'd also like to see what the results would be for a group of 70 year olds. Do people outgrow pink? (And, yes of course I am writing this while wearing a pink shirt!)

To read more about the study, take a look at www.sciencedirect.com and search for the article "Biological components of sex differences in color preference" by Anya C. Hurlberta and Yazhu Linga.

Thank goodness for Hermione

I promise no spoilers for any readers of the Harry Potter series who haven't finished Book 7 yet; but suffice it to say that the thinking and action of Hermione is very important to the outcome of the Potter series. I am delighted that my kids are reading a series with such strong female characters. There has been some criticism of the female characters in Harry Potter, but that criticism seems rather unfair to me. Who could say that Professor McGonegall, Mrs Weasley, Tonks, Fleur Delacourt, and Hermione are not strong, intelligent, brave women? And Ginny, Luna, and Hermione are there in the thick of the fighting in Book 5, as effective as any of the boys. Yes, Mrs Weasley is a homemaker but in the end (no comment allowed - spoiler)... Yes, Hermione is always the worrier who thinks about the worst possible outcomes, but isn't her decision to....(no, another potential spoiler). Even the evil Dolores Umbridge has her (twisted, sadistic) strong side.

My feeling is that Book 7 put the feminism firmly and centrally in the Harry Potter series. You'll have to read it to find out why.

There are lots of articles out there on the Potter websites about this issue. Here's a few chosen at random: You can start with this fan-written editorial on MuggleNet - http://www.mugglenet.com/editorials/editorials/edit-trixstar01.shtml
Then here's a short article setting out some of the pros and cons - http://atheism.about.com/od/harrypotter/i/women.htm
- and another about stereotypes particularly in the Order of the Phoenix - http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2003/08/harry_potter_an.

No more on Harry Potter!

At the movies

Are you interested in how women and girls are portrayed in the movies? And how often they appear - or fail to appear - as significant characters?

Can't wait to see the new Harry Potter movie - I have to admit to being a HP fan, almost as keen as my kids. I wonder whether Hermione will have a strong role in this film? One of the things I found disappointing about the very first movie (Sorcerer's Stone) is that a key moment showing Hermione's intelligence and importance - when she solves the logic puzzle - was missed out.

Last week I saw "Ocean's Thirteen". Not bad, an old-fashioned heist movie. I thought the character played by Ellen Barkin was pretty interesting: good to see an older woman in a role where she is being authoritative as well as sexy (and not at all mumsy).

On the way into the movies, I took in posters for "The Comebacks" and "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry". Neither are in the theaters here yet, so I haven't seen them, but the posters made me worried about them! "The Comebacks" showed a sexily clad woman bending over and peeping over her shoulder (oh come on you advertising geniuses, this is really lazy - and don't tell me it's some kind of humorous retro reference to Playboy) while I suspected that the Chuck/Larry film could just be cringe-worthy.... Well, we'll have to see.

The organization See Jane has produced some interesting work on how often G rated movies have female protagonists. Turns out that 75% of characters are male; and male and female characters are very likely to be portrayed in a gender-stereotyped way. Males are more likely to be aggressive, and less likely to be parents. Stereotypes about non-whites also abound, plus they are often the villains - and girls and non-whites are more likely to be comic relief or side-kicks. Take a look at the See Jane website for more info - www.seejane.org

Happy Birthday Title IX

Title IX turned 35 years old on June 23rd. Happy Birthday! Title IX is a short statute which bans sex discrimination in any federally-funded education program. It applies to any part of federally-funded education, but has been most successfully and widely been put to use in the field of athletics: for example, since 1972, the number of female high school athletes has increased from about 290,000 to 2.9 million. Much of that increase can be directly attributed to the impact and influence of Title IX.

To read a short report issued by the Stanford Center on Ethics on the current status of Title IX in athletics, go to this link: http://ethics.stanford.edu/titleixconference/

Creepy doll dressing sites for little girls

I have just been playing with the creepiest website aimed at young girls. I've got to have a rant about it.

Yesterday's New York Times (June 6, 2007) ran a story about interactive websites aimed at girls, including a number of sites that allow users to dress dolls. What a great idea, eh? Something that is designed to engage girls in using technology. My daughter is a real doll lover, so I thought I'd take a look - maybe she could use one of them.

Yikes. Feminism fails again, it seems. Society has obviously learned nothing.

Take a look at www.cartoondollemporium.com and try making a few of the dolls. Just about every "doll" I looked at was:
- skinny
- slender-waisted in a Barbie-esque way
- strongly featuring breasts, even on the ones with no hips which are obviously meant to be young girls
- wide-eyed or pouting
- posed in a vulnerable or "come hither" stance
- and I could go on!

I had two favorites. The first was "Belle of the Ball". This snake-hipped young chick comes dressed in underwear (nudity is, at least, not an option) and you add all kinds of clothes to her. By the time I had added a see-through skirt, laced-up corset, long black gloves, fishnet stockings, sparkling hair ornament, big earrings and high heeled shoes I had created - a hooker. No other way to describe it. Then I spotted the "Prom Date" option. Hmm. Yes, you can add a protective male to "escort" this girl to her big night. Should I choose the Michael Jackson lookalike? How about the foolish creature in a silver suit who is giving her demeaning bunny ears behind her back? No, I decided on the dapper guy with his arm slung protectively around her shoulders. (It made me think of the early humans exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History, which assumes - without any evidence - that two sets of tracks must have been created by a big male protecting a smaller female.)

My second favorite was "Greek" (by "Deborah") who is listed under the "Seasonal" category. This is the Christmas Hooker. You have to see it to believe it: the Santa girl in stockings.

There was only one contributing artist whose "dolls" were even slightly acceptable: "Sandra", recently arrived in the USA from Sweden, who was displaying more feminist (and maybe European?) sensibilities. Her women have breasts, not balloons. Some of her dolls are doing stuff: she has a female knight, and a female viking, for example. She has real characters, like Oprah and Hillary Clinton: and they are presented in regular kinds of women shapes. Applause to you, Sandra.

Haven't we learned anything? As a mother, I can see that my daughter would love to play with a website like this. It is a really fun idea to have all these options, bright colors, fashion ideas and so on. But does it have to be a meat market of virtual flesh? Do we have to offer the kids such a demeaning set of choices?

Go take a look at that report on the sexualization of girls by the American Psychological Association that I mentioned a couple of posts ago. This stuff really harms our girls.

That Goodbye Time of Year

The end of the academic year is upon us at Stanford, and so we are saying goodbye to some of our community. Yesterday, our undergraduate research assistant said goodbye till 2008 - she is off on an exciting, and much sought after, fieldwork program. We hope she'll be back at the Institute in the future, with a whole load of new skills and great stories.

Today, we had a special lunch to say goodbye to this year's Graduate Dissertation Fellows. We usually have seven "GDFs", but this year we had 10, through the generosity of Adina Paytan. Adina is currently an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth Sciences, but will also be leaving Stanford this Summer. We will be sorry to see her go, as she has been a strong supporter of the Clayman Institute, and is very active in pursuit of equal treatment for women in the STEM fields. (That's science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, for those uninitiated to the jargon.) Adina had some spare money to use on student activities and she decided that the best use for it was to support more young scholars. We could only agree, and we were delighted that she gave the money to our GDF program.

Each year, we give each GDF a stipend of $3,000, and they benefit from monthly meetings where they can share work in an interdisciplinary setting and, perhaps even more importantly, in a safe space where they can ask all kinds of questions and show their ignorance about different fields of research in the knowledge that no one will laugh at them or think less of them. (Needless to say, as their facilitator, I model this behavior for them, as I rarely know anything about anything they are talking about.... And they all know so much!) We really wish we could give our GDFs a larger stipend. I've been looking at other fellowships around Stanford, and find that they go up as high as $30,000 in some cases - with tuition fees paid - and with office space. Wow. We've got some way to go..... Luckily graduate students apply for our fellowship program because of its prestige, and not for the money.

Our GDFs are working on some incredible research, from Mukta Sharangpani's study of violence of all kinds against women in India, to Brooke Ricalde's consideration of the relationship between human capital, social capital, financial capital and gender in Peru's small business sector, and Michelle Zamora's examination of female knowledge and leadership in Mexica tradition and culture. They shared some powerful work at our informal meetings during the course of the year and I, for one, am much better educated as a result! I think Mukta's chilling descriptions of methods of infanticide may live with me forever.

Each year, the GDF group leaves me with at least one highly memorable fact or theory that I just have to share with others. I have to say that my favorite so far is Tiffany Romain's description of the annual "Frozen Dead Guy" festival in the town of Nederland, Colorado. Tiffany was studying cyrogenics and the practice of freezing eggs and embyros for reproductive use, but this story about the town that is proud to acknowledge the frozen man kept in a local shed just took the blue ribbon. (And it's really true - see http://www.legendsofamerica.com/CP-FrozenDeadGuy.html for the story of Grandpa Bredo Morstoel, who died in 1989 and has been frozen ever since. If you want to find out about the festival, visit http://www.nederlandchamber.org/FrozenDeadGuyDays/index.html.)

OK, I digress. I just love that story, I've told it lots of times. People find it so hard to believe.

I'm really thrilled to say that four of this year's GDFs are leaving Stanford for full-time employment: Kjersten Whittington moves to Reed College as an Assistant Prof in Sociology; Sapna Cheryan becomes an Assistant Prof at the University of Washington in Seattle; Nikki Slovak will be teaching at Santa Rosa Community College; and Brooke Ricalde will be our ambassador for gender analysis at McKinsey, the management consultancy. Jessica Payette, Karen Rapp, Kari Zimmerman, Michelle Zamora, Mukta Sharangpani, and Lalaie Ameeriar will be continuing their studies at Stanford. You can read more about their work on our website at http://www.stanford.edu/group/gender/FundingOpportunities/GradDissertCurrentFellows.html.

We have loved having all of them at the Institute this year.

Are you raising your daughter to be an over-pressured sexy supergirl?

I bet that's not a question the parents out there get asked very often!

On the plane back from the NCRW conference in Atlanta, I read two reports of great interest to parents of girls - in fact, to anyone who cares about how girls view themselves, and the role they will be taking in society as they get older.

First, "Report of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls." (May 2007). It's an easier read than it may sound! You can download a copy from: www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html
- or request a printed copy from Leslie Cameron at the APA on lcameron@apa.org

It has all kinds of interesting things to say about a huge range of influences on how girls see themselves (and are seen by others) from toys that encourage a sexualized view of women and girls (think Bratz), through the media and advertising, to the new fashion for "sexy" underwear for little girls (the prime example being a little girl in a thong, an article of clothing that started life as stripper wear....).

The second report comes from Girls Inc, which is a great organization with many effective programs to ensure girls, especially from disadvantaged backgrounds, have higher self-esteem and more opportunities. The report, "The Supergirl Dilemma: Girls Grapple with the Mounting Pressure of Expectations", is an analysis of a survey that examined the beliefs of about 3,000 people (girls, boys, and parents). It asked, for example, whether the respondents believe it is true that teachers think it is less important for girls to study math; or whether girls should make marriage one of their life goals. The study looks at girls in 3rd to 12th grade. It is available as a PDF on their website, www.girlsinc.org. Well worth a look.

One of the great things about being at the NCRW conference was the chance to meet so many of the researchers who are creating wonderful research on gender issues in all areas of life, from domestic violence and reproductive rights to workplace issues and international development. I plan to share some of this with you over time, and hopefully wet your appetite for some unguided exploration of what women's studies and gender research can offer to all of us, whether we are parents, employers, students, politicians, service providers, or just plain curious.

Into a brave new world?

I spent most of the week at the National Council of Research on Women's annual conference in Atlanta, representing my employer, Stanford University's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. There's always a bunch of take-aways from something like that - read this book, connect with that other center, did you know about XYZ? - but one of the suggestions was, try a blog. So here I am, inspired by one of the young students commenting that email is "sooooo twentieth century".

Hey, I'm not 40 yet y'know.

I'm going to use this blog to talk about the work of the Clayman Institute and share some of the great research that is out there on women and gender, especially gender issues in science.

Got gender? Yup, you do.