anythings.org

Via Anna:

Younger women arrive at a new office pumped up on Suze Orman and you-go-girl self-empowerment, and are quickly deflated by the necessary drudgery of copying and collating. Older women, who have paid their dues dealing with sexism and grunt work for decades, are chagrined that younger women assume they can just show up and take over. Commence an intergenerational clash.

Paula Bruno, the 43-year-old founder of a financial blog for women called Chicks and Balances, has noticed this dynamic developing more frequently. “There’s this influx of young women who don’t understand all the baby steps necessary in order to make it to the top,” she says. “I’m glad they have confidence, but boy do I wish they also had the savvy to realize that they can be pretty offensive to the veterans when they clearly don’t expect to play by the rules.”

I don’t agree with everything Courtney Martin says in this article. Our generation is, actually, quite entitled - at least in the way this article claims we are. The millennials (born in the 1980s to 2000s) are go-getters: they have the skills, knowledge, and ambition to get it done, so of course they grunt and groan when they are placed in positions much below their caliber because of their limited experience or age. It’d be like trying to run for President when you’ve only been a Senator for one term… Opps.

Yes, this is an intergenerational conflict, but it not what Martin claims it is. She puts all of the burden on the younger generation’s ambition, and not on the lack of communication between generations. The problem is the older generation doesn’t understand the younger generation can do so much more, and that they want to do so much more because they have the skills, expectations, etc. The younger generation doesn’t understand that the older generation expects them to put in their dues before they can get the good assignments, positions, etc: they feel entitled because they have a fancy degree and were told by their parents that they could do anything they wanted.

So, yes, there is a sense of entitlement on the younger generation’s part, but there is also a skewed perspective on what your job requires of you, and what is expected of you as someone entering the workforce for the first time.

Justifying the anger of the older generation by saying they had to fight through grunt work, etc, to get where they are today is totally unfeminist. Working women have been fighting to make the workplace safer and more beneficial to women for decades, and not just because they wanted it better for them, but because they wanted it better for themselves, and future workers. The problem is, of course, they’re threatened by a 22 y/o fresh out of college who knows who to work 3 operating systems, manually code web pages, dabble in graphic design, put together a decent article for the company newsletter, handle registration for events, control travel arrangements, AND copy, fax, print, and scan. Oh, and she can do it all in half the time.

While you can justify some of the jealous or anger on the younger generation’s aptitude with technology, that’s not always true. You can’t make the generalization that every older woman is not good at computers while their younger counterparts are. I have met 50 y/o computer genii and 21 y/os who can’t even find the on button. It’s not an age gap that causes the differences in technology, it’s the individual and whether they are willing to adapt to new technologies, and whether or not they like to use computers.

That financial blogger she quotes is a moron. Last time I checked, doing work above your pay grade, but within your skill level (and with permission), was not “against the rules”, it just makes people uncomfortable because you’re willing to do more work for less pay, making them and their big salary disposable. Unless you’re coming to work naked and doing that, I don’t see a rule violation here. And, the last time I inquired, doing an extra project to prove you have skills was not verboten: it was good business sense.

The only part of the article that is based on research actually holds a lot of truth, and explains why millenials (not just female ones) have difficult entering the workforce after college:

Jean Twenge, a psychologist and professor at San Diego State University, explains the mentality of 20-somethings in the workforce in her book Generation Me as wildly ambitious, not great at taking criticism, hungry for praise, and constantly craving flexibility. In other words, all that self-esteem education has had the nasty side effect of making younger women seem too big for their Blahniks.

Besides Martin’s snarky remark and incorrectly based assumptions, that paragraph is spot on.

When trained correctly, a millenial worker can be the best person on your team. When you pair that ambition with a nasty attitude, they can be the bane of your existence.

I’m going to go with a huge resounding no, but some people seem to think that feminism has convinced women that their careers are more important than children, and that women are losing out on motherhood because of it. I’m more inclined to believe this is people blaming feminism for their poor decision making skills. Rebecca Walker, child of Alice Walker, wrote the most god awful article I’ve ever seen, where she effectively blames feminism for her bad relationship with her mother, and for all the problems women are having when they try to conceive later in life:

Then I meet women in their 40s who are devastated because they spent two decades working on a PhD or becoming a partner in a law firm, and they missed out on having a family. Thanks to the feminist movement, they discounted their biological clocks. They’ve missed the opportunity and they’re bereft.

Feminism has betrayed an entire generation of women into childlessness. It is devastating.

But far from taking responsibility for any of this, the leaders of the women’s movement close ranks against anyone who dares to question them - as I have learned to my cost. I believe feminism is an experiment, and all experiments need to be assessed on their results. Then, when you see huge mistakes have been paid, you need to make alterations.

Now, see, this is what bothers me. Feminism has not told women to forgo having babies in favor of their careers. It has suggested that they take their careers into consideration when planning a family - and this is not a suggestion they have made only to women, they have made their suggestion to everyone. As with many other movements, the ideal is not necessarily executed properly when practiced by the masses.

In the end, it really does come down to make a choice: taking the time off to have a baby in the middle of your career and risking the loss of promotions, etc, or waiting until you’ve reached your goal and then taking the time off, risking that you won’t be able to have a baby. No matter how equal our society becomes, this will still be an issue for women that isn’t necessarily one for men. Feminism hasn’t forced women to wait until they are 40 to have children, it has simply made them realize that children do not have to come first. Their marriage, career, or other aspect of their life can come before children, as long as they have had the common sense to plan it out ahead of time.

Of course, that’s a totally different situation than deciding to have a child at 42 when you never wanted one before.

Via Feministe.

This is amazing. The women in Kuwait are taking some huge steps towards personal freedom. From Women’s eNews:

If Salwa Al-Jassar wins an election on May 17, she could become one of the first women to win a place in Kuwait’s 50-seat National Assembly.

But the 49-year-old Al-Jassar emphasizes that a woman’s right to run for office–legalized just three years ago–and her ability to do so are two different things.

A standard qualification for any politician in the heavily clannish process, she says, is membership in one of the country’s prominent families.

And for the 28 women running in this election–which will replace a government dissolved by the emir in March–that’s doubly true.

“My family’s support will take care of 70 percent of my campaign since I come from an elite but a traditional family of Kuwait that has the social power,” Al-Jassar said in a recent interview in her office in Hawally as she fixed her black headscarf on her Persian blue shalwar suit. “If a family does not support, then voters’ common argument is why should we support?”

You should definitely read the full story. One bit I found to be interesting was how they connected family support to our presidential election:

“I ask why Mr. Clinton stands beside Hillary Clinton during her speeches,” she says, referring to the presidential candidate. “It is because if you want to appear strong, you have to be strong from within; within your family.”

I think it’s interesting to see how family support plays a role in elections across the globe, and not just here in America where it’s about picture perfect political families.

I wish all 28 women the best of luck in the May 17th elections!

Not shockingly, each of the presidential candidates issued a statement yesterday about the California Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the gay marriage ban. Even less shocking: all 3 candidates oppose gay marriage. Which, to be honest, is a position I understand for Obama and Clinton because the percentage of people in America who support gay marriage fluctuates to be a little more or a little less than 50%. But nevertheless, here are their statements in the court’s decision.

Sen. Obama:

Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as President. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.

Sen. Clinton:

Hillary Clinton believes that gay and lesbian couples in committed relationships should have the same rights and responsibilities as all Americans and believes that civil unions are the best way to achieve this goal. As President, Hillary Clinton will work to ensure that same sex couples have access to these rights and responsibilities at the federal level. She has said and continues to believe that the issue of marriage should be left to the states.

The only thing positive I found in Clinton’s quote was the bit where she claims that she will work for access to rights on the federal level for gay couples who can’t marry because their states are too conservative. Clinton and Obama’s statements are the reason I can’t consider them “liberal” candidates in this election. I’m disappointed in them both, but I had to get behind the lesser of two evils.

And, the most painful, Sen. McCain:

John McCain supports the right of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution sanctioning the union between a man and a woman, just as he did in his home state of Arizona. John McCain doesn’t believe judges should be making these decisions.

My favorite part is the bit where McCain says he doesn’t believe that judges should be making these decisions. But you know, something tells me that if this decision upheld the gay marriage ban, he wouldn’t have made that statement. If the California Supreme Court had ruled that abortion could not be performed in California (which would never happen), he would have issued a statement thanking the judges for making the “right” decision. I’m sorry, but, how is someone running for president when they don’t understand the function of the judicial branch of the government?

Ultimately, I am a feminist because I believe in two things: equality and choice. Equality for all people, regardless of what labels are applied to them by themselves and society, and choice for all people, so they are able to live their lives as close to their dream as possible. That also includes to the choice to reject equality and remain oppressed or inferior if that is what you truly desire. This includes the choice to be anti-choice (or pro-life, if you will), as long as your opinion on the matter does not infringe upon my choice - and legal right - to obtain an abortion. I don’t expect everyone to be feminists, but I do believe that feminism can benefit the world as a whole. I openly admit that this is a very idealistic belief, and I’m fine with that. So you can imagine my disgust when people try to tell me that feminism isn’t about equality and choice for all people - that it’s about women having power over men.

I was innocently browsing through flickr today when I found this atrocity. It appears as though this woman (whose only interest listed is: My man is the most important thing in the world. As it should be for every woman. I’m luck y that he lets me use his computer to share my views, I’m even more lucky that he approves of them, and that he allows me to not only have them..but share them.) hates feminists because instead of continuing with the original mantra of feminism (equality, aka my mantra, which belongs to the majority of the movement), she believes that feminism’s main goal is to obtain power over men.

Feminism doesn’t wish for equality amongst the sexes…no not any more. Like I said, feminists today have pissed over that ideology; they now want POWER over men.

So why did feminism fail? The failure of feminism was assured the moment it took its name. I do not have anything against the original goals of feminism, namely the equality amongst the sexes; I simply oppose modern feminism as a METHOD of attaining such goals. The method is suggested by its NAME and DEFENITION [sic], namely the elevation of the females. Its not called ‘equalism’ or ‘egalitarianism’ its called ‘feminism’ and there-fore [sic] tries very hard to argue the ‘greatness of the female’ in an extremely defensive fashion, in the hope of bringing females up to male levels of respect and cultural treatment- something that we supposedly don’t have. You may ATTEMPT to rebut this statement by arguing that the goal of feminism to simply promote equality. The name infers an emphasis on the female, and there-fore [sic] the female becomes the focus and the greatest element of the movement. Equality is apparently the preferred by product and goal of feminism but it sought though through an emphasis of the ‘greater female’.

Of course the name of the movement is “feminism”. That’s because the movement began in an effort to obtain equal rights for women. While the early feminist movement may have been flawed, it was coined feminism (and not equalism or egalitarianism) because men already had the rights women were fighting very hard to have. Since then, the feminist movement has evolved beyond rights for women. Almost every single feminist I know is also in support of gay rights and equal rights for all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religion, etc. The feminist movement is not just trying to win legal rights, it is also trying to remove sexism from our society. Where’s the harm in that?

Could you imagine trying to change the name of the feminist movement as a whole? It would be like trying to rename “Catholicism” to “Jesusism”. People simply wouldn’t go for it. Feminism, the name, the word, the verb, inspires a particular image in people’s minds. For some, like this person, it is a negatively skewed image. But for others, like myself, it inspires solidarity and confidence that someday I will be able to be a bridesmaid in a wedding for a gay couple from Alabama who just adopted their first child. Changing the name of a social movement won’t really do much to shed any negative images: the haters and the nay-sayers will still be there.

Potentially my favorite:

An equality movement for all those suffering, oppressed, silenced, forgotten and hurt regardless of race, colour, creed or sex. Not just those with ovaries. It is time to forget about feminism for in the rapidly unifying world culture we have run out of time to make a difference. Feminism has to be forgotten NOW for EGALITARINISM [sic] to survive.

Which, really, if she paid any attention to the majority of the feminist movement and not just the extremist fringe, she would that is what feminism is about. Of course, every major social group has its extremist fringe - take Mormons for example. They’ll never live down their past of polygamy and no one will let them forget that some fundamentalist Mormons still practice polygamy today. The same goes for sexuality and sexual object choice. Almost every person on this earth will, at one point in their life, have sex. Some people choose to take that sex without permission, others prefer sex with people (or… things) that either cannot consent (because they’re goats) or they are haven’t even hit puberty. We do not condemn the act of sex in its entirety simple because of an extremist fringe. Even the fundamentalist Christians still revere sex, if only for reproductive purposes to create a “quiverfull” of children.

While it is fun to giggle about fringe “feminazi” feminists, it doesn’t make any progress for women, and it certainly does not make promise for the feminists who aren’t women, or who are women, but identify as lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, black, African, Asian, etc first, rather than as woman first. Even I have, from time to time, enjoyed a laugh at the expense of so-called feminazis. However, I have also enjoyed a laugh at the expense of fundamentalist Christians and Mormons; cults; individuals fulfilling the stereotype of their particular gender and/or race without a concern for how ridiculous they look; extremist men’s rights groups; Neo-Nazis; and many other extremist groups. Of course, when I think of the scary fundamentalist Christians who burn down abortion clinics, I do not associate them with all of Christianity. They are a separate group entirely from my nice Christian friends who respect my right to choose as much as they respect their right to not have an abortion.

This is the problem ~Clair~ has run into: she has chosen to associate all of feminism with the fringe man-hating movement. It’s a choice she made, albeit a pretty poor one.

I think if she read these words said by Ani Difranco, she’d have a better understanding on the modern feminist movement and its intentions and goals. Feminism isn’t just for women anymore. Feminism is for everybody.

I think what we need to do is to understand feminism as a prerequisite to saving the environment, to ending war, to ending racism. We need to understand that feminism is not for women, it’s for humanity. Patriarchy does not work for men - they go and get killed in wars. Patriarchy hurts all of us. Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked ‘other’.

I don’t want power over men. I don’t want power over anyone else. I want power over myself, my thoughts, and my body. I want the ability and the legal right to marry whomever I wish and have as many abortions or as much sex as I’d like, with any consenting adult I wish. I want to be able to make the choice of whether or not I submit to my husband and have 12 children and remain a stay at home wife. Feminism is letting me make these choices.

The Kentucky Senate has passed a bill that, if passed in the House, will ban universities and state agencies from offering benefits to the partners of gay and lesbian employees.

Even worse than the actual decision is the way the Courier Journal describes those who voted against it. One was labeled a “homosexual” after his only quote in the article. The entire article is riddled with quotes about why people felt this ban should be passed. Of course, the big shocker, religious values played a huge part. Vernie McGaha, R-Russell Springs, the bill’s sponsor, said:

“I do not recognize domestic partnerships as being a correct thing. My Bible teaches against it.”

Of course, the ridiculous thing behind it all, is that it hurts the Universities in the area. It also hurts the students, who may not get a top quality education in Kentucky because the University couldn’t recruit one expert due to their sexuality and lack of available partner benefits.

University presidents have opposed the bill, saying it hurts their ability to recruit researchers and professors.

University of Louisville trustees voted in 2006 to become the state’s first public university to extend health-insurance benefits to unmarried domestic partners, including homosexuals. the University of Kentucky followed suit, and Eastern Kentucky University is looking at the issue.

Nearly 300 universities and colleges across the country, and more than half of the Fortune 500 companies, provide such benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights advocacy group based in Washington.

“Our position is and remains that we are hopeful the legislature will allow the universities to have the flexibility to make health-care decisions for their employees and their families,” UK spokesman Jay Blanton said.

U of L spokesman John Drees said the bill would make it difficult to work toward its goal of becoming a top metropolitan research university — a goal the General Assembly set in 1997.

“If you want to compete with the best universities and the best corporations, you need to be able to offer the same types of benefits they offer,” he said.

This just SCREAMS DISCRIMINATION! I never understood why sexuality was such a difficult thing for people to comprehend discrimination of. Religions are constantly fighting for their right not to be discriminated against, and yet, that is a chosen identity. Identities that you are born with, such as gender (unless you change it), race, etc have been protected from discrimination for quite awhile… but sexuality has not. And that’s because the church has people believing that homosexuality is a choice, and therefore a sin:

They also see a homosexual orientation as being a choice. Because they see this “behavior” as wrong (at one point, it was criminal) and preventable, they view the LGBT community as asking for special rights that allow them access to the insitutions that privilege heterosexuals. The process goes something like this: if sin as a choice, and homosexuality is a sin, then homosexuality must be a chosen path. This argument is, essentially, flawed because it is based on the idea that being LGBT is a choice. (For the sake of time and length, I am not going to go into LGBT as being inborn v. chosen v. environmental debate. My reasons for this are because the Christian Right does not, so I do not need to do so to deconstruct their argument.)

Religious identity is a choice. And according to the Christian Right, being “a homosexual” is also a choice. If religious identity wasn’t a choice, it would be assigned in the ways that gender and race are. Religion is, however, a chosen identity.

Religion is, also, protected by the Consitution. Sexuality is not. This is special rights. The Christian Right’s response to this accusation is that they are not special rights because the designers of the Consitution put them in there, so they shouldn’t be removed. While it is true that religion was added into the Consitution and is protected by law, this response to the argument that religious identity does not dodge the issue of special rights. This still doesn’t answer the question of why religion gets protection but sexuality does not.

Chosen identity or not, there is simply not reason whatsoever that a person’s “choice” to be gay (or straight!) should lead to discrimination in every aspect of their life. The right to marry, secure health care from a partner, safe work environments and protection from employment discrimination, adoption, child custody, and more, are all rights that are not granted to LGBT individuals at the federal level. Instead, they are granted on a case-by-case basis.

My advice? Move to California. It’s nice.

I fight like a girl who refuses to be a victim.
I fight like a girl who is tired of being
IGNORED and HUMORED and BEATEN and RAPED.
I fight like a girl who’s sick
of not being taken seriously.

[Source, full text poem]

Equality is an abstract concept. I don’t believe that it is something that can easily be defined. But apparently, every year, the World Economic Forum thinks it can easily define gender equality. This year, the evaluated 128 countries. The WEF just released the Global Gender Gap Report for 2007. According to their website, it measures gender equality across the following four areas:

1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio

I sat and stared at these categories for awhile and tried to figure out what about them it was that bothered me. It took me some time and a lot of thinking, but then I realized it. And it was so obvious. They didn’t even consider choice. And I’m not talking about pro-choice or anti-choice, I’m talking about the choice to excel economically or to be a stay at home father.

You can’t measure choice. And if you can’t measure choice, how can you measure equality?

A huge part of equality is the fact that you get to choose what you do with your equality. Yes, there is 20% female labor force participation in Saudi Arabia… but is it because they want to be in the work force, or is it because they have to? In the 7 countries I looked at closely (Sweden #1, Ireland #9, United Kingdom #11, Canada #18, United States #31, Saudi Arabia #124, Yemen #128) the workforce participation of men always exceeded that of women. Mozambique, which was rated #1 in Economic Participation and Opportunity (#43 overall, #120 in educational attainment), in contrast, has 85% of women but only 35% of men in the labor force population. This is also the same country that received the worst score possible on polygamy, an extremely poor score on legislation preventing violence against women, and a mid-range score on genital cutting (the report says “female genital mutilation”). How much do you think choice has to do with women being members of the labor population?

Studies such as these rely heavily on statistics and the use of surveys, which, to a point, delivers the facts. But the statistics deliver facts in a very scientific way. This study doesn’t taken into account the satisfaction people feel towards their gender equality - or lack thereof. While it is a huge step that studies like this are being done, they have yet to catch up with the things that are most important when it comes to equality. The study does make for a very interesting read, and I do encourage you to read it… but do so with a grain of salt. Statistics only give you the numbers, they don’t give you the satisfaction people feel in regards to their home, finances, government, or overall quality of life.

I feel that I should also mention the statistical profiles on each individual country mention nothing about gay marriage.

For those interested in the study, other information provided in individual country reports are:

• Mean age of marriage for women
• Fertility rate in births per woman
• Year women received the right to vote (which they list as 1965 in the United States…)
• Overall population sex ratio
• Maternity and Childbearing: births attended to by skilled health staff, contraceptive practices among married women, maternal and infant mortality rate, length of paid maternity leave, maternity leave benefits, provider of maternity coverage, adolescent fertility rate.
• Education and Training: percentage of female primary, secondary, and tertiary teachers
• Employment and Earnings: female and male adult unemployment rates, women in non-agricultural paid labor, ability of women to rise to position of enterprise leadership
• Basic Rights and Social Institutions: paternal versus maternal authority, “female genital mutilation”, polygamy, existence of legislation punishing acts of violence against women

Sweden (0.815*), the #1 ranked country on overall gender quality, also received the best score possible in all the Basic Rights and Social Institutions categories and the statistical equivalent of gender equality in terms of Educational Attainment (but they did not rank #1 for this).
* 0.00 = inequality, 1.00 = equality