Global Gender Gap report - ranking Economic participation and opportunity; Educational attainment; Political empowerment; Health and survival.

Rankings for 2007 - Sweden wins, which surprises me not one whit; the UK comes in eleventh, and the USA ranks 31 (well ahead of France and Italy, but outranked by Columbia, Namibia, and South Africa). Since arriving in the US five years ago, I've been continually shocked by the lack of gender equality, and depressed to see how little the inhabitants realise it (obviously; they've grown up with it. They think it's normal). It was sort of nice to see that that's not entirely anecdotal.

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NY Times article During Pregnancy, Starving for Two - interesting window on micro-managing women's bodies during pregnancy. You must gain weight. But not too much weight. This apparently based on correlation between obesity and complications during pregnancy; one might be excused for thinking there's more to it than that. Officials complain that 70% of women Don't Comply With Guidelines; could there be a reason other than "women are contrary and stupid"? I wonder.

Comment section mildly interesting - loads of MY PREGNANCY STORY gubbins divided into I DID THIS AND IT WAS GREAT and I DIDN'T DO THIS AND IT WAS FINE, some "ugh fatties are gross AND kill babies," a few "interesting that you lecture women about being healthy and still host ads for flat stomachs," and a sprinkling of "women are so irresponsible no wonder everyone's fat and gross EXCEPT ME."

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Interested to see The Deadly Toll of Abortion by Amateurs - Worldwide, there are 19 million unsafe abortions a year, and they kill 70,000 women...mostly in poor countries like Tanzania where abortion is illegal, according to the World Health Organization...According to Unicef, unsafe abortions cause 4 percent of deaths among pregnant women in Africa, 6 percent in Asia and 12 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.

[A quoted medic] went on, “We as medical personnel think abortion should be legal so a qualified person can do it and you can have safe abortion.”
- yes, NY Times! Well done.

Incidentally, not enough people are calling the Tiller thing terrorism.

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And then My Brief Life as a Woman - chap has to take hormone therapy for prostate cancer.

On hot flashes: he thinks it's an under-reported condition. And it’s certainly under-represented in the arts. Where are the great hot flash novels or movies? How come there’s not a Web site or magazine called “Hot Flash Monthly”?

Because it's NOT A MEN THING, dear. Who was it said that if men got periods, tampons would be cool, and flow jokes would go alongside fart jokes as bar talk? IT'S TRUE. Menopause is a Wimmin Thing, so we don't talk about it, because real people don't get menopause.

I had never had to worry about my weight, and I began to understand why media aimed at women and girls obsess over weight so much. It was strange and unsettling not to be able to tell my body, "No..."

Ah, empathy.

But he finishes up with shrugging off being female as hormonal and mysterious...we men don’t have the semblance of a clue, and some tired cliches about how women are so unpredictable, but they're not making it up, chaps! I've been there! which left me with the distinct feeling that this article could have been so much more.
liv: ribbon diagram of a p53 monomer (p53)

From: [personal profile] liv


The "hormonal and mysterious" bit: did you know that in mammals, testosterone gets metabolized to oestrogen in the male brain? And that it's high levels of brain oestrogen that are responsible for nearly all the male behavioural effects in animals, and very, very likely in humans too? (Not the secondary sex characteristics like body hair, muscle development, voice pitch etc, but all the aggression and sexual instincts and everything like that.) I learned this at a PhD defence ceremony the other week and it sort of blew my mind a bit. Not that I was ever a gender essentialist anyway; blaming discrimination on hormones is no better than blaming it on chromosomes, but I think that's really fascinating.
lavendersparkle: Jewish rat (Default)

From: [personal profile] lavendersparkle


If you want to feel even more appalled read about a US program which experimented with starving poor non-white pregnant women without their informed consent.

I really believe that men hate women most when we are pregnant. On a micro-level pregnancy is a key time for the beginning and escalation of domestic violence. On a larger level, obstetrics is the least evidence based area of medicine, women are economically penalised for pregnancy and birth and women are blamed if we can't struggle through all this to achieve some narrow definition of what's deemed to be best for the baby in their particular time and culture. People would rather criminalise addicts who become and stay pregnant than provide treatment programs suitable for pregnant women.

From: [identity profile] zevabe.livejournal.com


On a larger level, obstetrics is the least evidence based area of medicine

Is it possible that part of that is the high risks involved in doing randomized clinical trials on pregnant women? And the 18 year statute of limitations?
lavendersparkle: Jewish rat (Default)

From: [personal profile] lavendersparkle


That doesn't really explain it. Lots of medical practices in reality can't be tested in randomised clinical trials, but you still get more nonsense in obstetrics. Take episiotomy. For a couple of decades it became routine in the US to cut the vagina of any woman attempting a vaginal delivery. This was introduced without any evidence that it improved outcomes and when the practice was examined, it was found that it was unnecessary and could do more harm than good in all but a few specific situations. Meanwhile millions of women had had their genitals cut and had to deal with that healing whilst caring for a newborn for no reason. Even if you can't do randomised trials, examining the comparative results from different approaches before introducing a pointless procedure might have been a good idea.

From: (Anonymous)

xlQzRUpcpktVNhg


Great post your a Pro. Ive been shrecaing for this info and so many blogs failed to give a decent solution. Your a life saver

From: (Anonymous)


As someone who has grown up in the US, I'd be interested in reading some examples of the gender inequality you describe. Anecdotal evidence is fine. I'm just curious to what extent our experiences have matched up and whether you may have noticed some things that I take for granted.

From: (Anonymous)

thFcdDAnNTppj


Good aewsnr, Maha. Nagarajan Sivakumar's question shows that it was baited and biased by the fact that he switched genders in a bid to portray equality. Better luck next time, Nagarajan !
.

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