SEOUL -- In a full-page newspaper advertisement headlined "I Am a Bad Woman," Hwang Myoung-eun explained the trauma of being a working mom in South Korea.

"I may be a good employee, but to my family I am a failure," wrote Hwang, a marketing executive and mother of a 6-year-old son. "In their eyes, I am a bad daughter-in-law, bad wife and bad mother."

The highly unusual ad gave voice to the resentment and repressed anger that are common to working women across South Korea.

In a country where people work more and sleep less than anywhere else in the developed world, women are often elbowed away from rewards in their professional lives. If they have a job, they make 38 percent less money than men, the largest gender gap in the developed world. If they become pregnant, they are pressured at work not to take legally guaranteed maternity leave.

Thanks to gender equality in education, the professional skills and career aspirations of women in South Korea have soared over the past two decades. But those gains are colliding with a corporate culture that often marginalizes mothers at the workplace -- or ejects them altogether.

Women who do combine work and family find themselves squeezed between too little time and too much guilt: for neglecting the education of children in a nation obsessed with education, for shirking family obligations as dictated by assertive mothers-in-law, and for failing to attend to the care and feeding of overworked and resentful husbands.

Labels: children, gender differences, Marriage, South Korea, women, work/family policy

posted by Eve at 1:44 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Sexist pet peeve: the persistent myth that women are all privately obsessed with producing tiny widdle babies. Working to debunk that assumption is a recent National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy study [PDF] which surveyed thousands of young Americans, aged 18 to 29, about their thoughts and perceptions about pregnancy. Guess which group is more likely to be “pleased” at an unplanned pregnancy? It’s not the one with the silently weeping ovaries.

In order to gauge the “surprise fetus” reaction, NCPTUP researchers first isolated survey respondents who claimed it was “very important or somewhat important for them to avoid pregnancy right now.” Then, researchers asked them how they would feel about an unplanned pregnancy:

If you found out today that (you were/your partner was) pregnant, how would you feel: Very upset, a little upset, a little pleased, very pleased, wouldn’t care.

Results: Staggeringly gendered! Forty-three percent of young men responded that they would be “a little pleased” or “very pleased” by the news; only 20 percent of women answered the same. Men also proved more comfortable with an unplanned pregnancy at an earlier age: Thirty-four percent of men 18-19 said they would be pleased. By the time they reach age 20-24, 42 percent of men said they would be pleased. And over 50 percent of men aged 25-29 would be pleased by the news. Remember: this is only among men who deemed it “important” that a pregnancy not occur at this junction.

Meanwhile, the percentage of women who would be “pleased” by an unplanned pregnancy stays steady at a low 16 percent all the way from age 18 to 24. By the time women reach the 25-29 age range, the percentage of “pleased” women soars to 29 percent. Despite the jump, women in their late 20s still lag behind their male counterparts by 22 percentage points. I don’t know: Perhaps our joy is muted by the fact that unexpected pregnancies tend to put us ladies out a touch.

Labels: culture, gender differences, heterosexual couples, men, pregnancy, women

posted by Eve at 1:33 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The onslaught of megaselling relationship books like Elizabeth Gilbert's "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage," which sits at No. 9 on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list for the week of Feb 19, and Lori Gottlieb's "Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough," which is at No. 18, might lead you to believe that female commitment-phobes and uberpicky daters are the modern obstacles to relationships and marriage.

Yet a 2007 poll by Meredith, a research and marketing company, found that 73% of women born between 1977 and 1989 place a high priority on marriage. That sounds right to me. It's an attitude that surfaced again and again in the interviews I conducted with young women for a book project on the long-term unmarried relationship. Unlike our boomer and hippie mothers who broke the rules of the '50s, my generation is marriage-minded. But society's messages to young women are so mixed that the path to that goal has been obscured and, at times, blocked. Those of us in our 20s and 30s know that dating—and getting into a relationship that leads to marriage—is at turns ambiguous, arduous, perplexing and often heartbreaking. ...

The more pressing dating issue for young women today is not that they are skeptical about marriage or too choosy, but that their potential spouses are in less of a hurry to tie the knot than they are. A 2005 poll, "Coming of Age in America," which surveyed 18- to 24-year-olds, found that women had the edge on eagerness: 55% said they would like to be married in the next five years, compared with only 42% of men.

Labels: committed relationships, culture, dating, gender differences, heterosexual couples, Marriage, men, women

posted by Eve at 11:56 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The gender gap on campus — about 57% female, 43% male — is troubling, but it's not getting any worse, a report says today.

Men have consistently represented about 43% of enrollments and earned 43% of bachelor's degrees since 2000, says the report by the American Council on Education, a higher-education organization.

It doesn't offer solutions on how to narrow that gap, but it suggests policymakers and educators can have the greatest effect by focusing efforts on Hispanics. Just 9% of Hispanic young men have earned a bachelor's degree, the lowest attainment level of any group studied. Among Hispanic young women, 14% have earned a bachelor's.

Given that Hispanics represent the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, "raising the attainment rate of Hispanic men — and women — looms as one of the most significant challenges facing American education," says report author Jacqueline King, assistant vice president of ACE's Center for Policy Analysis. The group has been slicing and dicing gender data since 2000.

Labels: gender differences, men, race, universities

posted by Eve at 1:40 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Rachel Downtain is a telecommunications project manager who says her friends would describe her as tall, slender, fit and active. Not someone you'd think would fail to find a mate. Yet, of late, Ms. Downtain has been sifting through sperm-donor Web sites. This is not her first choice for how to start a family, but at 35 she says she's quickly running out of options.

Ms. Downtain's story should sound familiar. In recent months the spike in college-educated women deciding to have a husbandless family has become a magazine staple. The New York Times Sunday Magazine devoted a cover story to the issue. There's been a 145% rise in unmarried births among college-educated women since 1980, more than twice the increase in such births among women without college educations. That's just births; adoptions are another outlet for women seeking families on their own. But there's a largely unexplored part to this story: Why is this happening?

Part of the answer is found in a Pew Research Center report released this week: A sea change in relationships is taking place as everyone adjusts to the new reality of women being better educated and in some cases more preferred than men in the workforce. Especially unsettling to some men is their role as second-best earner in the family. As the Pew report documents, 22% of men with "some college" are now outearned by their wives, up from 4% in 1970. ...

There's no single answer to the "why" question, but social scientists agree that the education mismatch Ms. Downtain experiences with men is a significant player behind the increase in college-educated women choosing single motherhood.

Labels: gender, gender differences, heterosexual couples, men, out-of-wedlock births, single parenting, women

posted by Eve at 10:34 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Beagy Zielinski is a German-born 28-year-old stylist who moved to New York to study fashion in 1995 and stayed. Just before Christmas, she broke up with her blue-collar boyfriend, who repaired Navy ships.

“He was extremely insecure about my career and how successful I am,” Ms. Zielinski said.

An analysis of census data to be released Tuesday by the Pew Research Center found that she and countless women like her are victims of a role reversal that is profoundly affecting the pool of potential marriage partners.

“Men now are increasingly likely to marry wives with more education and income than they have, and the reverse is true for women,” said Paul Fucito, spokesman for the Pew Center. “In recent decades, with the rise of well-paid working wives, the economic gains of marriage have been a greater benefit for men.”

The analysis examines Americans 30 to 44 years old, the first generation in which more women than men have college degrees. Women’s earnings have been increasing faster than men’s since the 1970s. ...

The education and income gap has grown even more in the latest recession, when men held about three in four of the jobs that were lost. The Census Bureau said Friday that among married couples with children, only the wife worked in 7 percent of the households last year, compared with 5 percent in 2007. The percentage rose to 12 percent from 9 percent for blacks, among whom the education and income gap by gender has typically been even greater.

“I’m not married, I would like to be married, and my friends are all in a similar situation,” said Dr. Rajalla Prewitt, a 38-year-old psychiatrist in New Jersey. “We’re having difficulty finding someone where there’s a meeting of the minds, where we can have the same goals and values.”

“Particularly, African-American men who are educated want a traditional home where they are the breadwinner,” said Dr. Prewitt, who is a black woman.

Labels: culture, gender differences, Marriage, men, race, women

posted by Eve at 4:39 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...In Western Europe in 2009, the life of a Roman Catholic nun seems bizarre – all very well as the subject for, say, the comedy Sister Act (which has just been turned into a West End musical), but nothing to do with anyone’s real life. And what’s equally extraordinary is that the community Colbran is joining is, in these days of dwindling interest in religious worship in general, and in being a nun or monk in particular, almost brand new.

Labels: Catholic Church, gender differences, religion

posted by Eve at 12:19 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...They asked more than 1,300 young Minnesota adults about their most recent sexual encounters, their self-esteem and their emotional well-being. Interestingly, only about one-fifth of the subjects said their last encounter was casual. But their overall emotional status was no different than the four-fifths who said they were in committed relationships with their most recent sexual partner. ...

The researchers surveyed 1,311 young adults in Minnesota, pulled from a group they began following years ago as part of a major ongoing research study in adolescent health and nutrition. All the people in the study were sexually active and answered a series of survey questions about their last sexual encounter, depressive symptoms and self-esteem.

The researchers divided the responses by how the subjects described their most recent sexual encounter. About 25 percent said it was with a committed partner, 55 percent said it was an exclusive dating partner, 12 percent said it was with a close, but not sexually exclusive, partner, and 8 percent said it was a casual acquaintance.

That breakdown fits with other similar surveys of young adults, Eisenberg said.

But what was different is that they found no differences in reports of depression or self-esteem, regardless of gender or the type of most recent sexual encounter, she said. ...

They did find some differences among the groups. Black men, for example, were more likely than white men to describe their last sexual encounter as casual. And twice as many men as women said their last sexual encounter was casual - 29 percent compared to 14 percent.

That difference raises the obvious question: How can there be twice as many men having casual sex as women? The answer, Eisenberg said, most likely lies in cultural norms that make it more acceptable for men to describe their sexual encounters as casual.

"Young women have more of a tendency to characterize it as more special than, perhaps, the man did," she said.

Labels: committed relationships, gender differences, premarital sex, sex, universities

posted by Eve at 2:20 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

What sound is most likely to wake a sleeping woman? An infant’s wail — and that is true whether or not she has children of her own.

What sound is most likely to wake a sleeping man? A car alarm going off, followed by the howling of the wind (not a baby) and the buzzing of a fly. A crying baby is not even on the list of the 10 most sleep-disturbing sounds for men.

Those are the results of research by the British company Mindlab, which combines neuroscience and marketing (and which conducted this particular study at the behest of a “nighttime flu tablet” manufacturer). Volunteers in a sleep lab were attached to an electroencephalography machine, and a variety of recorded noises were played. The EEG recorded disturbances in brain activity in response to each.

Labels: babies, gender differences, men, women

posted by Eve at 10:15 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The pregnancy was easy, the delivery a breeze. This was the couple’s first baby, and they were thrilled. But within two months, the bliss of new parenthood was shattered by postpartum depression.

A sad, familiar story. But this one had a twist: The patient who came to me for treatment was not the mother but her husband. ...

Up to 80 percent of women experience minor sadness — the so-called baby blues — after giving birth, and about 10 percent plummet into severe postpartum depression. But it turns out that men can also have postpartum depression, and its effects can be every bit as disruptive — not just on the father but on mother and child.

We don’t know the exact prevalence of male postpartum depression; studies have used different methods and diagnostic criteria. Dr. Paul G. Ramchandani, a psychiatrist at the University of Oxford in England who did a study based on 26,000 parents, reported in The Lancet in 2005 that 4 percent of fathers had clinically significant depressive symptoms within eight weeks of the birth of their children. But one thing is clear: It isn’t something most people, including physicians, have ever heard of.

Labels: animal research, Fathers, gender differences, men, mental health, pregnancy

posted by Eve at 5:02 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The State of Our Unions monitors the current health of marriage and family life in America. Produced annually, it is a joint publication of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia and the Center for Marriage and Families at the Institute for American Values.

The 2009 State of Our Unions makes clear that money matters for contemporary American marriages. In particular, this edition of The State of Our Unions answers the following questions:

* How is the Great Recession affecting the institution of marriage, as measured by changes in marriage and divorce rates in the U.S.?
* How do family finances—especially credit card debt and family assets—shape the quality and stability of contemporary married life in America?
* What do evolutionary psychology and the contemporary study of finance have to tell us about the best division of financial labor for husbands and wives?
* Is the Great Recession likely to foster egalitarian relationships between husbands and wives?

Labels: culture, divorce, economics, gender, gender differences, Marriage, National Marriage Project

posted by Eve at 4:59 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...These are the kinds of questions asked by anxious parents and, increasingly, academic researchers. Boyhood studies—virtually unheard of a few years ago—has taken off, with a shelf full of books already published, more on the way, and a new journal devoted to the subject. Much of the focus so far has been on boys falling behind academically, paired with the notion that school is not conducive to the way boys learn. What motivates boys, the argument goes, is different from what motivates girls, and society should adjust accordingly.

Not everyone buys the boy talk. Some critics, in particular the American Association of University Women, contend that much of what passes for research about boyhood only reinforces stereotypes and arrives at simplistic conclusions: Boys are competitive! Boys like action! Boys hate books! They argue that this line of thinking miscasts boys as victims and ignores the very real problems faced by girls.

But while this debate is far from settled, the field has expanded to include how marketers target boys, the nature of boys' friendships, and a host of deeper, more philosophical issues, all of which can be boiled down, more or less, to a single question: Just what are boys, anyway?

Labels: adolescence, boys, childhood, children, culture, gender, gender differences

posted by Eve at 4:05 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...It is striking, then, how comparatively rarely children are mentioned as an argument in favor of gay marriage. The issue is framed as a debate over equality and justice, of personal freedom and the relation of church and state, not about what is good for kids.

That’s partly because, until relatively recently, we didn’t know much about the children of same-sex couples. The earliest studies, dating to the 1970s, were based on small samples and could include only families who stepped forward to be counted. But about 20 years ago, the Census Bureau added a category for unwed partners, which included many gay partners, providing more demographic data. Not every gay couple that is married, or aspiring to marry, has children, but an increasing number do: approximately 1 in 5 male same-sex couples and 1 in 3 female same-sex couples are raising children, up from 1 in 20 male couples and 1 in 5 female couples in 1990.

This growth, coupled with the passage of time, means there is a large cohort of children who are now old enough to yield solid data. And the portrait emerging tells us something about the effects of gay parenting. It also contains lessons for all parents. ...

In most ways, the accumulated research shows, children of same-sex parents are not markedly different from those of heterosexual parents. They show no increased incidence of psychiatric disorders, are just as popular at school and have just as many friends. While girls raised by lesbian mothers seem slightly more likely to have more sexual partners, and boys slightly more likely to have fewer, than those raised by heterosexual mothers, neither sex is more likely to suffer from gender confusion nor to identify themselves as gay.

More enlightening than the similarities, however, are the differences, the most striking of which is that these children tend to be less conventional and more flexible when it comes to gender roles and assumptions than those raised in more traditional families. ...

Heterosexual couples might want to pay attention to these results. While the gay-marriage debate is playing out on the public stage, a more private debate is taking place in kitchens and bedrooms over who does what in a heterosexual marriage (takes out the trash, spends more time with the kids, feels free to head out with their friends for a beer). The philosophical underpinnings of both conversations — gay marriage and equality in parenting — are similar, in that both focus on equality for adults (in the case of heterosexuals, mostly wives). But even if parents who seek parity do so for their own sanity and in pursuit of their own ideals, might it not also be better for their children?

Labels: culture, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, gender, gender differences, heterosexual couples, parenting

posted by Eve at 12:15 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Angela Carter once said that "paternal parentage is often clouded in a way that maternity is not." She was talking about Wise Children, her novel concerned with the slippery, unknowable nature of paternity.

The essential mechanics of reproduction have always put women at an advantage in any question over parentage. We know the truth, whatever it may be, about our offspring; men just have to take our word for it. But in the time since Wise Children was published, this imbalance has shifted. For some women, the idea of maternity is suddenly not so assured.

Last month, Carolyn Savage from Ohio handed over her baby to its biological parents. She had been implanted with the wrong embryo after a mix-up at a fertility clinic. This came after a number of other IVF errors. In June, a couple from Cardiff were told that their last remaining frozen embryo had been mistakenly implanted in another woman, who had since had it aborted. In the same month, it was revealed that a white Northern Irish couple had given birth to a mixed-race baby, after being given the wrong sperm. And the instances go on. A Californian woman was awarded $1m in 2004 after a fertility specialist gave her the wrong embryo and hid the mistake until the baby was 10 months old. A white New Yorker gave birth to a black baby in 1998, sparking a complex, two-year legal wrangle between the two couples for visitation rights.

In vitro fertilisation is a booming industry. Around 12,500 babies a year are born in the UK as a result of IVF. More than 36,000 women a year attend the UK's 136 clinics for treatment. That's a lot of embryos in a lot of petri dishes in a lot of freezers. You can see how the occasional mistake happens: all it would take is a technician's moment of inattention, the phone ringing, a colleague asking a question, and – just like that – the wrong petri dish is plucked from the shelf and a terrible, private tragedy is set in motion.

The number of cases which come to light is small but it begs the question: just how many of these slip-ups go undetected? ...

One fertility counsellor – who does not want to be named – says that she deals with an increasing number of people who fear that the clinic may have made a mistake. "It's an issue for a lot of couples, particularly the women. Mothers need to be sure of that bond and it's not uncommon to experience doubt."

Labels: Artificial Reproductive Technology, gender differences, IVF, motherhood, parenting

posted by Eve at 7:59 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

I’ve been mulling over a recent news story from Australia that someone sent to me. It’s a rather complicated tale.

Ms. Fabian and Ms. Halifax (they only give last names in the story) were in a relationship for about seven years. During that time, each of them gave birth to a child. Ms. Halifax used sperm from a family friend, identified as Mr. Dalton. That child is now seven. Ms. Fabian used sperm from an anonymous donor. That child, a girl, is the subject of the litigation. She is now three.

The two women separated when the daughter was 20 months old. At the time they lived in Queensland, but at least Ms. Fabian, and perhaps both, were from New South Wales. Ms. Fabian now wants to return to New South Wales.

Her request to move is being opposed not only by her former partner, Ms. Halifax, but also by a gay male couple. According to the newspaper story, this couple “cannot be named,” but one of them is apparently the donor for the other child, which would mean he is Mr. Dalton. An Australian court has determined that she should not move while the requests of the various parties are considered. ...

I cannot help but contrast this with the evidence women asserting claims to be de facto parents produce. You can find at least half-a-dozen cases that I’ve discussed on the blog–some where the women won and some where the women lost. But win or lose, the evidence offered by the women I’m thinking of is qualitatively different. It’s far more about the hands-on care offered than about the public acknowledgement.

In truth, it seems to me that the men are claiming rights on a basis akin to holding out. Perhaps that is not so surprising. If you go back and read that earlier post (and the ones that follow) you will see this is a historically male path to parenthood. It makes me wonder if this legacy of gendered family law will find its way into the legal regulation of decidedly modern families.

Labels: Australia, de facto parenting, Fathers, gender, gender differences, Julie Shapiro, motherhood

posted by Eve at 3:45 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Feminism made women miserable. This, anyway, seems to be the most popular takeaway from "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness," a recent study by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers which purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972. Maureen Dowd and Arianna Huffington greeted the news with somber perplexity, but the more common response has been a triumphant: I told you so. ...

As for the particular happiness study under discussion, the red flags start popping up as soon as you look at the data. Not to be anti-intellectual about it, but the raw data on how men and women respond to the survey reveal no discernible trend to the naked eyeball. Only by performing an occult statistical manipulation called "ordered probit estimates," do the authors manage to tease out any trend at all, and it is a tiny one: "Women were one percentage point less likely than men to say they were not too happy at the beginning of the sample [1972]; by 2006 women were one percentage more likely to report being in this category." Differences of that magnitude would be stunning if you were measuring, for example, the speed of light under different physical circumstances, but when the subject is as elusive as happiness -- well, we are not talking about paradigm-shifting results.

Furthermore, the idea that women have been sliding toward despair is contradicted by the one objective measure of unhappiness the authors offer: suicide rates. Happiness is, of course, a subjective state, but suicide is a cold, hard fact, and the suicide rate has been the gold standard of misery since sociologist Emile Durkheim wrote the book on it in 1897. As Stevenson and Wolfers report -- somewhat sheepishly, we must imagine -- "contrary to the subjective well-being trends we document, female suicide rates have been falling, even as male suicide rates have remained roughly constant through most of our sample [1972-2006]." Women may get the blues; men are more likely to get a bullet through the temple.

...Our research is simply about documenting a fact: since the 1970’s, women’s self-reported happiness has fallen, relative to that of men. This seems paradoxical, given the tremendous strides made by the women’s movement. We report this fact, test that it is a robust finding, and suggest that future research may help sort out whether it reflects how the women’s movement affected women’s hedonic state; whether it reflects the differential impact on women of some broader social trend; or if instead it is telling us something about the (un)reliability of happiness data. ...

Oh, and she forgot to mention something else: The same trend that is evident in these data is also evident in the Virginia Slims Poll, the Monitoring the Future Survey, and in Europe, in the Eurobarometer. Last week, Chris Herbst reminded us of another dataset, the DDB Needham Life Style Survey. And guess what? Those data also show a significant trend decline in women’s life satisfaction.

Now, there’s still a real debate to be had about whether this trend is important. Ehrenreich says,

Differences of that magnitude would be stunning if you were measuring, for example, the speed of light under different physical circumstances, but when the subject is as elusive as happiness — well, we are not talking about paradigm-shifting results.

This is a judgment call, but one best made with some knowledge about the determinants of happiness. It turns out that average happiness in a population is a rather stubborn thing and that this is a very large shift, relative to other things that affect average happiness.

For instance, the relative decline in women’s happiness that we document is about equal to what you would see if the unemployment rate rose from 4-1/2 percent to 13 percent, or if women’s incomes had fallen by over 30 percent. (See more, here.)

Ehrenreich is a fine rhetorician though, and she doesn’t miss a beat. She suggests that our study “purports to show that women have become steadily unhappier since 1972.” Purports? No, Barbara, we demonstrate that in half a dozen separate datasets, women’s reported well-being has fallen relative to men.

Here’s a challenge: find a single dataset that points in the opposite direction, and we’ll donate $1,000 to your favorite charity. And we’ve made it easy for you — start by downloading all of our raw data here.

Labels: culture, feminism, gender differences, men, mental health, women

posted by Eve at 3:36 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...The study’s participants indeed were university students; 353 undergraduates (61 percent of whom were female) answered a questionnaire that asked them about their alcohol use, impulsivity, religiousness, spirituality, and sexual practices. The statements on spirituality, which were ranked by level of agreement, included “In the quiet of my prayers and/or meditations, I find a sense of wholeness,” and “Although individual people may be difficult, I feel an emotional bond with all of humanity.”

The study found that spiritual men weren’t sexually affected — in fact, their frequency of sex decreased. The researchers figure men might not view spirituality as sexual because they biologically don’t think of sex as a gateway to emotional intimacy.

For women, however, spirituality was the strongest predictor for the number of sexual partners, the frequency of sex, and the tendency to have sex without a condom.

“It is possible female young adults yearn for greater connectedness with other humans,” Burris writes. “Spirituality, at least for women, could be considered a risk factor.” ...

But is it really spirituality that makes women more sexual, or does spirituality just imply an open-mindedness that manifests itself through sex?

“Research suggests that spirituality provides predictive utility over and above personality traits such as conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness,” Burris told LiveScience. “So while it may be the case that spirituality is correlated with other variables that show similar relationships with human sexuality and sexual practices (such as openness to experiences), the relationship we observed, in my opinion, cannot simply be explained away by other variables.”

Labels: culture, gender differences, men, religion, sex, women

posted by Eve at 5:34 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Will Major League Baseball teams be able to recognize gender-specific holidays, such as Mother's Day? Some teams may decide to forgo promotions that recognize the holiday in light of a lawsuit against the Oakland Athletics.

The A's just lost a $510,000 suit that alleged the club discriminated against men by giving away reversible bucket hats and tote bags only to adult women who attended the game on Mother's Day of 2004, according to The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog.

The plaintiff's lawyer, Alfred Rava, has filed about 40 anti-male discrimination suits in the past, according to the Journal. Aside from the suit against Oakland, the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have also been served in recent years for holding similar promotions.

Labels: discrimination law, gender differences, motherhood

posted by Eve at 2:57 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Insisting on their religious and academic freedoms, Catholic educational institutions are seeking exemption from a provision in the new Magna Carta of Women banning the dismissal of unwed mothers from employment or school.

Monsignor Gerardo Santos, national president of the Catholic Educational Association of the Philippines (CEAP), said the CEAP would ask that a provision on such an exemption be inserted into the new law’s implementing rules and regulations. ...

Women’s rights activists have said that under the new law, unwed mothers who are kicked out can file a civil case and sue for damages while government officials who dismiss them can be sanctioned under administrative and civil service laws.

Santos insisted on the Catholic schools’ right to have an unwed pregnant student or employee go on leave “after due process,” or to enforce other disciplinary action.

Labels: Catholic Church, culture, discrimination law, gender differences, out-of-wedlock births, Philippines, religion, religious liberty, single parenting

posted by Eve at 3:54 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Parenthood is pushing mothers and fathers in opposite directions on political issues associated with social welfare, from health care to education, according to new research from North Carolina State University.

“Parenthood seems to heighten the political ‘gender gap,’ with women becoming more liberal and men more conservative when it comes to government spending on social welfare issues,” says Dr. Steven Greene, an associate professor of political science at NC State and co-author of the study. Greene and Dr. Laurel Elder of Hartwick College used data on the 2008 presidential election from the American National Election Studies to evaluate the voting behavior of men and women who have children at home. Parents who have grown children were not part of the study. ...

Greene and Elder had previously looked at similar data for elections going back through 1980, and their new research shows that the trend is strengthening for men with children to become more conservative, while the trend for moms to become more liberal is holding steady.

Labels: gender differences, parenting

posted by Eve at 2:15 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Boys are up to three times more likely to be treated for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as girls; and the prescription of antipsychotic drugs to children — mostly boys — has gone up by 600 percent in the last few years, says psychologist Anthony Rao.

Has boyhood become an illness?

Mr. Rao, author of "The Way of Boys: Raising Healthy Boys in a Challenging and Complex World," thinks we're treating it as such.

"The problem really isn't the boys," Mr. Rao says. "It's our expectations of them."

Young boys need frequent breaks for physical play and release; they often read and write better standing up than sitting down; many find eye contact threatening; and they naturally prefer "doing" and "seeing" over "listening" and "talking," he says.

But little of what they crave in terms of learning styles and physical needs fits into the traditional preschool or school day, where physical education and active recess time are at an all-time low. ...

"Ours has become a culture where we medicate a range of behaviors even in kids as young as 2 and 3 years old," says Dr. Jerome Groopman, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a staff writer for the New Yorker.

Labels: childhood, children, gender differences

posted by Eve at 1:42 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

After my post about people’s fondness for other people’s partners, (“Do Single Women Seek Attached Men?”), more than 300 Lab readers weighed in with their anecdotes and theories. Now here’s some more guidance from the expert who coined the term for this practice: mate poaching.

David Buss, a professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of many books, including the “Evolution of Desire,” the 1994 book that introduced the term “mate poaching,” and the forthcoming “Why Women Have Sex,” co-written with Cindy Meston. His paper with Dr. Meston about the 237 reasons for having sex inspired a most lively discussion here at the Lab last year.

Dr. Buss told me that he tried to come up with a less pejorative term than “mate poaching” but wasn’t able to find one. Here’s his reaction to the debate that’s been going on at the Lab, along with some findings about men who poach:

John Tierney’s piece on mate poaching clearly struck a powerful chord, evoking an amazing array of excellent insights and personal experiences. As someone who has published on the topic in articles and in books, I thought I’d add my two cents to the discussion.

A couple important distinctions are worth introducing. The first is the distinction between poaching for short-term sexual encounters versus poaching for more committed mateships. The first scientific study of mate poaching (Schmitt & Buss, 2001) found that substantially more men (60%) than women (38%) admitted to having attempted to poach an already mated person for a sexual encounter. The sex difference was smaller for long-term mate poaching, but still present—60% of the men and 53% of the women.

Similar sex differences have been discovered in the most massive cross-cultural study of mate poaching ever conducted [by my colleague David Schmitt], which involved 16,954 participants from 53 different countries. So although the study reported by Tierney highlighted the interesting finding for single women, available evidence suggests that men are more likely than women to mate poach, or more likely to admit to it, a sex difference especially pronounced for sexual liaisons.

Labels: committed relationships, gender differences

posted by Eve at 8:48 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Researchers have debated for years whether men or women are likelier to engage in “mate poaching.” Some surveys indicated that men had a stronger tendency to go after other people’s partners, but was that just because men were more likely to admit engaging in this behavior? Now there’s experimental evidence that single women are particularly drawn to other people’s partners, according to a report in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by two social psychologists, Melissa Burkley and Jessica Parker of Oklahoma State University.

Noting that single women often complain that “all the good men are taken,” the psychologists wondered if “this perception is really based on the fact that taken men are perceived as good.” To investigate, the researchers quizzed male and female undergraduates — some involved in romantic relationships, some unattached — about their ideal romantic partner.

Next, each of the experimental subjects was told that he or she had been matched by a computer with a like-minded partner, and each was shown a photo of an attractive person of the opposite sex. (All the women saw the same photo, as did all the men.) Half of the subjects were told that their match was already romantically involved with someone else, while the other half were told that their match was unattached. Then the subjects were all asked how interested they were in their match.

To the men in the experiment, and to the women who were already in relationships, it didn’t make a significant difference whether their match was single or attached. But single women showed a distinct preference for mate poaching. When the man was described as unattached, 59 percent of the single women were interested in pursuing him. When that same man was described as being in a committed relationship, 90 percent were interested. The researchers write:

According to a recent poll, most women who engage in mate poaching do not think the attached status of the target played a role in their poaching decision, but our study shows this belief to be false. Single women in this study were significantly more interested in the target when he was attached. This may be because an attached man has demonstrated his ability to commit and in some ways his qualities have already been ‘‘pre-screened” by another woman.

Labels: committed relationships, gender differences, men, universities, women

posted by Eve at 6:37 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

What's in a name? Apparently a lot, especially if it's your last name.

About 70% of Americans agree, either somewhat or strongly, that it's beneficial for women to take her husband's last name when they marry, while 29% say it's better for women to keep their own names, finds a study being presented today at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco.

Researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah asked about 815 people a combination of multiple choice and open-ended questions to come up with the findings. ...

Hamilton says that about half of respondents went so far as to say that the government should mandate women to change their names when they marry, a finding she called "really interesting," considering typical attitudes towards government intervention. "Americans tend to be very cautious when it comes to state intervention in family life," she says.

Labels: culture, gender, gender differences, Marriage

posted by Eve at 1:30 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

More female than male same-sex couples have chosen to marry since Swedish homosexuals were granted the legal right to marry on May 1st, 2009.

Thirty-seven female couples have tied the knot since May, compared to 11 male couples, according to figures from Statistics Sweden (SCB).

In addition, the number of children of same-sex couples registered as under Sweden's domestic partnership law has increased tenfold over the last decade.

At the end of the 1990s, fewer than 70 children lived with parents who were registered domestic partners. In 2008, 749 children lived with same-sex couples who were registered partners.

A large majority of these children have two mothers, with 706 living with female same-sex couples, compared to 43 who have two fathers.

Labels: Europe, gay marriage, gender differences, parenting, Sweden

posted by Eve at 12:06 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

What is a mancession, you ask? It's not this. It's a recession that hurts men much more than women, and we are allegedly in the worst mancession in recent history. Eighty percent of job losses in the last two years were among men, said AEI scholar Christina Hoff Summers, and it could get worse.

Here some graphs provided by Mark Perry, an economist from the University of Michigan who coined the term mancession that, with any luck, is not long for our world. Unfortunately this trend doesn't look to be reversing itself any time soon.

Labels: economics, gender differences, men

posted by Eve at 5:08 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...Although women are still having a relatively tough time getting elected in general -- they represent just 17 percent of the members of the U.S. Congress -- Congresswomen, as opposed to Congressmen, are more plentiful in areas where the male-to-female ratio is higher. ...

Nine of the 25 most male-dominated districts (36%) most recently elected a woman to office, as compared with 4 of the 25 most female-dominated districts (16%). This alone is somewhat interesting -- however, it actually conceals the strength of the relationship because female-dominated districts are more likely to vote Democratic, and Democratic-leaning districts are more likely to elect women to office regardless of their sex ratios.

Labels: gender differences

posted by Eve at 3:37 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

The data have been collected and analyzed and the determination made: Women are less happy than they were 35 years ago, less happy than men, and the gap between men’s and women’s happiness is growing. The National Bureau of Economic Research released the report [PDF] in May, and according to its researchers, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, this decline in happiness is pretty much true for women across the board in industrialized nations.

But women can be CEOs, politicians, and college presidents. They are better paid and have more visibility and opportunity than they did 30 years ago, so why are women less happy?

Stevenson and Wolfers speculate that perhaps it’s the overall decrease in social cohesion, or increased anxiety and neuroticism. Or maybe now that women have multiple roles, they are satisfied in one role, but miserable in another, bringing down their overall sense of happiness. Maybe the women’s movement raised expectations for women, and their lives don’t measure up to those expectations.

Labels: culture, feminism, gender differences, religion

posted by Eve at 8:01 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...The role reversal caused by men's job losses is one byproduct of the economic downturn that has many news outlets, if not outright cheering, at least tentatively applauding. In her online column for Forbes, Elisabeth Eaves likened stay-at-home mothers re-entering the workforce to more-permanent Rosie the Riveters, commenting, "thanks to the recession, we may be at just such another socio-sexual inflection point." New York Times contributor Lisa Belkin wondered if women might finally become the majority of American workers, suggesting that such a development would be a "silver lining" in these dark times. One Salon writer celebrated the possibility that the "long-awaited redistribution of domestic labor might prove crucial in finally evening the professional playing field," while another wondered whether the financial crisis could turn out to be "accidentally feminist."

It isn't just the media promoting the idea that increasing numbers of mothers putting in more hours in paid work represents progress for women. Left-leaning think tanks, as well as the Obama administration, are also undertaking efforts to further the trend the recession began. In mid-April, the Center for American Progress announced that it is teaming with the University of Southern California and Time Magazine to explore the impact the recession has had on women. While acknowledging that being the family breadwinner may be a burden to some mothers, Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the center and project co-editor, said that it can also be "an opportunity." On April 22 she informed Congress that the rising unemployment of men has provided many working moms much-needed domestic help.

That may seem a rather callous perspective to out-of-work men, but Ms. Boushey's take is perfectly appropriate to "A Woman's Nation," a venture that John Podesta, the CEO of the Center for American Progress, promises will consider "the central question of the role government, business, and faith organizations, as well as individual women and men should play in supporting women's role now in the workforce…. " Given how many of the center's former employees work for the Obama administration, it's little surprise how closely the project dovetails with a March 11 executive order forming a White House Council on Women and Girls that aims to increase women's employment in various male-dominated industries.

There's only one problem with all these efforts to support mom in her new financial-provider role, and Ms. Hemmert presents a stark picture of it. However empowered the media, the think tanks and the White House tell her she should be, she is profoundly unhappy to have changed places with her spouse. "I don't like coming home and seeing him in my apron," Ms. Hemmert says while watching her husband make dinner. She reacts with outright revulsion to the phrase "Mr. Mom," and her mouth hardens into a thin line when her husband explains that it isn't necessarily a man's job to earn a living for his family, that a man can also be "the person who handles children and sets up play dates."

Ms. Hemmert admits that she sees her own parental job as something separate and different from her husband's, and she not only resents him for usurping her role but has lost some respect for him. "I'm a woman, and I want to be a mother first," she states simply.

To be fair, many women who found themselves in Ms. Hemmert's position wouldn't experience the same level of displeasure and disappointment in their husbands that she expresses. But research indicates that most do share her desire to be a mother first and an earner second. And they, too, prefer a husband who's more interested in bringing home the bacon than in cooking it.

Labels: economics, family policy, gender differences, motherhood

posted by Imapp Staff at 5:38 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...The average age of American men marrying for the first time is now 28. That's up five full years since 1970 and the oldest average since the Census Bureau started keeping track. If men weren't pulling women along with them on this upward swing, I wouldn't be complaining. But women are now taking that first plunge into matrimony at an older age as well. The age gap between spouses is narrowing: Marrying men and women were separated by an average of more than four years in 1890 and about 2.5 years in 1960. Now that figure stands at less than two years. I used to think that only young men -- and a minority at that -- lamented marriage as the death of youth, freedom and their ability to do as they pleased. Now this idea is attracting women, too.

In my research on young adults' romantic relationships, many women report feeling peer pressure to avoid giving serious thought to marriage until they're at least in their late 20s. If you're seeking a mate in college, you're considered a pariah, someone after her "MRS degree." Actively considering marriage when you're 20 or 21 seems so sappy, so unsexy, so anachronistic. Those who do fear to admit it -- it's that scandalous.

How did we get here? The fault lies less with indecisive young people than it does with us, their parents. Our own ideas about marriage changed as we climbed toward career success. Many of us got our MBAs, JDs, MDs and PhDs. Now we advise our children to complete their education before even contemplating marriage, to launch their careers and become financially independent. We caution that depending on another person is weak and fragile. We don't want them to rush into a relationship. We won't help you with college tuition anymore, we threaten. Don't repeat our mistakes, we warn. ...

This is not just an economic problem. It's also a biological and emotional one. I realize that it's not cool to say that, but my job is to map trends, not to affirm them. Marriage will be there for men when they're ready. And most do get there. Eventually. But according to social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, women's "market value" declines steadily as they age, while men's tends to rise in step with their growing resources (that is, money and maturation). Countless studies -- and endless anecdotes -- reinforce their conclusion. Meanwhile, women's fertility is more or less fixed, yet they largely suppress it during their 20s -- their most fertile years -- only to have to beg, pray, borrow and pay to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s. Although male fertility lives on, it doesn't hold out forever, either: Studies emerging from Europe and Australia note that a couple's chances of conceiving fall off notably when men pass the age of 40, and that several developmental disorders are slightly more common in children of older fathers.

Of course, there's at least one good statistical reason to urge people to wait on the wedding. Getting married at a young age remains the No. 1 predictor of divorce. So why on earth would I want to promote such a disastrous idea? For three good reasons....

Labels: culture, divorce, gender differences, Marriage

posted by Eve at 11:23 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Married lesbian couples in New York City can now be listed as parents on birth certificates as soon as their children are born.

Before, the women would have to go through an adoption process to be listed as the official parents. ...

The city says married male couples still will need to adopt their children in order to be officially declared their parents.

Labels: adoption, gay marriage, gender differences, New York

posted by Eve at 9:34 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...But I digress. This is about gay sex in particular. And the fact that gay men, like it or not, are being asked - implicitly or explicitly - to shut up about sex while the GMM forges on. Even as gay sexual life, such as it is, continues on its way. I hear from a friend that several single gay men found themselves being hit on by gay couples looking for threesomes - at a gay marriage convention. I know, from the constant swinging of the doors of my neighbourhood bathhouse, and from my conversations with friends, that there's plenty of gay sex going on all around me.

I'm sad about how much of gay sexual culture is being made to go away while the adults play at respectability in order to win the marriage game. I wonder: After gay marriage is won, will we talk more openly about what married gay men actually do with and to each other? Or will we have completely forgotten how to have those conversations?

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay/straight differences, gender differences, open relationships, sex

posted by Eve at 1:40 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Men who drool over the Victoria's Secret catalogue may be risking more than a glare from their main squeeze - they may earn a one-way ticket to hell. But at least they'll be in the company of women who boast about their shoes.

According to The Times of London, a recent survey reported in the Vatican newspaper reveals that while Catholic men and women both sin, they do so in very different ways. For men, lust, gluttony and sloth are the offences most often committed. For women, it's pride, followed by envy and anger.

The analysis of church confessions, conducted by a Jesuit priest, revealed telling gender differences and has created a sensation in Britain, where it was widely reported yesterday.

Labels: gender differences

posted by Eve at 10:24 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Here’s a bleg asking what happened the last time you ordered a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. I’m particularly interested in whether you were asked a toy question and how it was framed.

Here in Connecticut, when I drive through, I’m sometimes asked whether the toy is for a boy or a girl. Sometimes they ask “Do you want a boy’s toy or a girl’s toy?” Sometimes they don’t ask any toy question (because they have a one-size-fits-all toy).

How do you feel about these questions? McDonald’s has to balance giving detailed information about toy promotions that change every few weeks against the difficulties of training and wanting to keep the line moving. But the lawyer in me also notes that several states prohibit sex discrimination at public accommodations.

Labels: gender differences

posted by Eve at 2:53 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Here in the great evergreen-and-gray metropolis of Portland, Ore., we like to think of our city as a thriving wonderland of forward thinking. We prefer our urban planning carefully considered, our light-rail and bicycle routes plentiful, our indie musicians erudite and inscrutable, and our movie theaters stocked with beer—progressive policies, all. So when we kicked off 2009 by swearing in Sam Adams, as the first openly gay mayor of a major American city, the occasion left a lot of us pretty pleased with our nonchalant open-mindedness: "Oh, did we just make civil rights history? Funny, we weren't even paying attention." But the back-patting didn't last long. Within weeks of taking office, Portland's new mayor found himself embroiled in a scandal so lurid and combustible that it resembles a plotline from The Young and the Restless. Which now leaves Portland as an innovator of something quite different. The Adams imbroglio may be the first true 21st-century political sex scandal: one that only a gay politician could survive. ...

To demonstrate the first way it's different, let's ask the obvious question: How would the Portland public react if Adams were straight and Breedlove were a teenage girl? The answer is, we'd see this as a garden variety, morally black-and-white sex scandal, and Adams would be jobless faster than you can say "McGreevey." After all, there's a massive double standard in how we think about the age of consent. When an older man courts a teenage girl, it's predatory and sleazy; but when it's a teenage boy receiving advances, gay or straight, we have trouble believing he's being wronged. (Indeed, Breedlove was aggressively chasing Adams; he even has a dog named Lolita.) Critics see the movie The Reader, wherein a 36-year-old Kate Winslet beds a 15-year-old boy, and they speak of a "tender sexual awakening," as every straight man in the theater (including me) thinks, "I would have sold my siblings into bonded labor to sleep with Kate Winslet when I was 15, you little bastard." Portray a 36-year-old man and a 15-year-old girl, though, and you're in … well, Lolita territory—no mercy there. Some have argued that if Breedlove were female, straight men would be high-fiving Adams, but this is preposterous. We'd understand the attraction—and when you peruse Breedlove's unbelievably porny Myspace pics, you can certainly see what was on Adams' mind—but we wouldn't excuse the behavior. "Yes, she's hot," we'd say, "but they call it jailbait for a reason. You don't touch underage girls, period." The male-male relationship brings a moral gray area that helps Adams.

And let's add another factor to this ethical calculus: For better or worse, the under-40, hyper-liberal Portlanders who make up Adams' support base automatically err toward nonjudgment when it comes to gay culture. Essentially, the years of school lessons on tolerance are coming to the fore; we were taught not to judge the lifestyles of those who aren't like us, and we're not inclined to start now.

Labels: culture, gay/straight differences, gender differences

posted by Eve at 11:44 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

..."Fluidity is not a fluke," sexologist Lisa Diamond told the Times. Of the women who told Diamond that they were lesbian, only one-third reported attraction solely to women. The other two-thirds felt genuine, periodic attraction to men.

This means that, if we were all honest in our labeling, the majority of women would need to call ourselves "bisexual" or "queer," instead of "straight" or "gay," as we do. The research says that there are far more women attracted to people of both sexes than there are women who are attracted to only one sex. If only one-third of lesbians are completely women-centered when it comes to desire — and only two percent of the country is lesbian — then that is a tiny number, about 2 million.

Of course, being a lesbian is about more than desiring other women. It is also about a female-centered culture, about consensus building, about emotional bonds with other women. That is what we mean, usually, when we talk about a lesbian "community" — and why lesbian communities often have such a different feel than gay male ones.

Labels: desire, gender differences, lesbians, women

posted by Eve at 5:32 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT