U.S. Census data on women for Women’s History Month

Catch the latest blog post from the Connecticut State Data Center at the University of Connecticut.

http://blogs.lib.uconn.edu/outsidetheneatline/2014/03/04/facts-for-features-womens-history-month-march/

Did you know:

EARNINGS

$37,791
The median annual earnings of women 15 or older who worked year-round, full time in 2012. In comparison, the median annual earnings of men were $49,398. Source: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012, Page 7

South Korean “comfort women” being abused again. Time for honesty not revisionist history.

“Japan has leveled insults at them rather than offering an apology,” South Korean President Park Gyeun-hye told visiting US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last month.

This sounds all too familiar. Revisionist history. Blame the victims. If they wait long enough, they’ll all die and this will be over. Not.

Let’s be vocal about our support of these women.  If the situation was reversed, what would Japan expect from South Korea? How about standing in the “other’s” shoes for a while. Respect and honor for all people.

Peter Ford/The Christian Science Monitor

The abuse of “comfort women” has proved a particularly painful memory, not least because for nearly half a century it was repressed. Only in 1990 did the first South Korean women lift the veil of shame they had drawn over Japan’s forcible recruitment of an estimated 200,000 young women and girls to serve in military brothels.

Just 56 of the 239 women who publicly acknowledged their experiences are still alive.

The controversy has grown since Shinzo Abe became Japanese prime minister last February. Six years ago, during his first term as prime minister, he argued that there was no evidence that any of the “comfort women” had been coerced into prostitution. That contradicted the earlier finding of an official Japanese commission, and caused an outcry around Asia.

Read the article at: Korea to Japan: Time running out for ‘comfort women’ resolution

From HBR: “Feminine” Values Can Give Tomorrow’s Leaders an Edge (…good grief)

What to think about this kind of analysis and the descriptive terms they choose to use… And just who (read what “gender”) are those “leaders” that this article and research study are hoping to give this “edge”? Oy.

Are we perpetually stuck in this binary world of “feminine” and “masculine”? But then if we don’t label them as female traits, would that be more harmful to women’s forward (inch by inch) movement to equality? With the chart below, I can foresee that in a few years these valuable abilities may well be taken over by the patriarchy and it will be as if they (read men in power and the media that supports them) were always like that. I predict. Too many questions.

Curious as to how leaders could “think more like women,” we asked half our sample — 32,000 people around the world — to classify 125 different human characteristics as either masculine, feminine or neither, while the other half rated the same words (without gendering) on their importance to leadership, success, morality and happiness. Statistical modeling revealed strong consensus that what people felt was “feminine” they also deemed essential to leading in an increasingly social, interdependent and transparent world.

Check out this HBR Guest blog post.

The Complexities of Putting Ideals into Practice: Interview with Margaret Randall by Linda Ruutu

Films and feminists inspire. A University of Connecticut undergrad viewed The Unapologetic Life of Margaret Randall in a recent WGSS course at UConn and was moved to contact this amazing feminist activist to find out answers to some important questions. The result is this fine interview published in the Monthly Review.

Margaret Randall

Here is just a snippet in reply to a question about Margaret’s ability to transform personal injustices into broader social understanding. This question involved her struggle to regain her U.S. citizenship in the face of a denial because of the 1952 McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act.

So I felt an obligation to fight for those people as well as for myself. I knew it would be important to use my case to try to change immigration law in general. This intimate knowledge played itself out for me in a number of concrete ways. For example, throughout the years of my immigration case I was constantly made to feel that if I just said I was sorry, that I “would never write those things again,” it might help me win. I won’t say I wasn’t tempted from time to time. But I knew that I must stick to my conviction that I had a right to have written what I had written, to have expressed the opinions I had expressed — even when twenty years after the fact I might express them differently. I would wake every morning and recommit myself to defending the ideals in which I believed.

Here’s the link to the interview: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/randall240713.html

Robson on “Dressing Constitutionally”

Robson on “Dressing Constitutionally”.

Coming to your library soon!

At this time, this book is not published. Coming soon!

Updated: Guide to Global and Transnational Women’s Activism from Rutgers

Great guide!

Global and Transnational Women’s Activism from Rutgers University.

Transnational as well as country specific sites, organized by continent. Contains documents, publications, statistics, and much more from Women’s Activists around the world.

Very fine collection. Many thanks to Kayo Denda, Women’s Studies Librarian at Rutgers.

The many faces of *****-disciplinarity

Women’s Studies is implicated in all these types of ****disciplinariness. Can we actually say that Women’s Studies is a discipline? Meta-discipline more like. This type of vagueness is not an easy fit in most of our Academies of Higher Education. Been struggling with this in trying to determine the information skills needed by students in WGSS. Requires an Interdisciplinary method for Information Literacy. Any ideas?

Recently added WGSS Books

Here are a few of the new titles which have arrived in the past few months.

See the most current list at  New WGSS books.

Smith, B. G. (2013). Women’s studies: The basics. London: Routledge.

Collingwood, S. L., Quintana, A. E., & Smith, C. J. (2012). Feminist cyberspaces: Pedagogies in transition. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.

Runyan, A. S. (2013). Feminist (im)mobilities in fortress(ing) North America: Rights, citizenships, and identities in transnational perspective. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

Loomba, A., & Lukose, R. A. (2012). South Asian feminisms: Contemporary interventions. Durham: Duke University Press.

Herrin, J. (2013). Unrivalled influence: Women and empire in Byzantium. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Liu, L. H., Karl, R. E., & Ko, D. (2013). The birth of Chinese feminism: Essential texts in transnational theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Kronsell, A., & Svedberg, E. (2012). Making gender, making war: Violence, military and peacekeeping practices. New York, NY: Routledge.

Lacsamana, A. E. (2012). Revolutionizing feminism: The Philippine women’s movement in the age of terror. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers.

Fraser, N. (2013). Fortunes of feminism: From state-managed capitalism to neoliberal crisis.

Brown, H. A. (2012). Marx on gender and the family: A critical study. Leiden: Brill.

Chadwick, W. (2012). Women, art, and society. London: New York, N.Y.

Enke, A. (2012). Transfeminist perspectives in and beyond transgender and gender studies. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Phillips, L., & Cole, S. C. (2013). Contesting publics: Feminism, activism, ethnography.

Crawford, M. (2012). Transformations: Women, gender & psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.

King, D. L., & Smith, C. L. (2012). Men who hate women and women who kick their asses: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy in feminist perspective. Nashville, Tenn: Vanderbilt University Press.

Gutiérrez, . M. G. (2012). Presumed incompetent: The intersections of race and class for women in academia. Boulder, Colo: University Press of Colorado.

Dziedzic, N. G. (2012). Feminism. Detroit: Greenhaven Press.

New WGSS books

Brooklyn Museum: Writing Women Back Into History

Wikipedia has a gender problem. Alexandra Thom is heading up a project to add entries and substance to Wikipedia on all the women included in Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” which is permanently installed in the Sackler Gallery at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York. Not only are entries on the women of history lacking but female editors to Wikipedia are also much fewer than non-female. What’s up? It’s no surprise that men write mostly about men. Well, ladies, start your engines.

Thom writes, “The Dinner Party is an icon of feminist art, which features the names of 1,038 women in history…”

She found many of the names had only “stub” entries and almost 100 others had no mention at all. You can follow Alexandra’s project through the Brooklyn Museum blog starting with the two links below.

Brooklyn Museum: Community: bloggers@brooklynmuseum » Writing Women Back Into History.

Ending the ongoing cycle of omission

Bravo, Ms. Thom! Wikipedia is so heavily used by folks around the world. How many more women will your work inspire to become editors of Wikipedia to fill out this gross omission. I know I’m on board.

Sunday Fun: Gendered Fashion Rules. From Sociological Images

Sunday Fun: Gendered Fashion Rules.  The suit is ALWAYS an option.  Are we all right with this?