women – Page 7

Bias Keeps Americans From Voting For Candidates Of Color And Women

30Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Bias Keeps Americans From Voting For Candidates Of Color And Women

When Americans vote this fall, the candidates on their ballots will not reflect the diversity of the United States. Despite recent gains, women and people of color still do not run for office as frequently as white men. In part, this is because they face skepticism about their electability. When former Rep. Katie Hill launched her campaign for Congress in 2017, for example, Democrats told her a woman couldn’t win in her California district. In Alabama, meanwhile, when Adia Winfrey was exploring a 2018 run for Congress, a senior party official told her there was “no point” continuing with her nascent campaign. The problem? As a Black candidate, she seemed unelectable. And in Michigan, 2018 congressional candidate Suneel Gupta, an Indian-American, heard similar concerns. As Gupta recount...

Political Violence And Abuse Of Women In Congress Undermines American Democracy

21Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Political Violence And Abuse Of Women In Congress Undermines American Democracy

From plans to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s being called a “f—ing b—” by her colleague Rep. Ted Yoho, it’s been a nasty year for women in American politics. Now, some women who’ve been targets of such misogyny want to put this problem on the congressional agenda. On Sept. 24, House Democrats Rashida Tlaib, Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Jackie Speier introduced a resolution – a largely symbolic congressional statement that carries no legal weight but provides moral support on certain issues – recognizing violence against women in politics as a global phenomenon. House Resolution 1151, which is currently under consideration by the House Judiciary Committee, calls on the government to take steps to mitigate this violence in the United State...

Newly Published Study Shows Women Politicians Responsive To People Who Reach Out In Time Of Need

19Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Newly Published Study Shows Women Politicians Responsive To People Who Reach Out In Time Of Need

Women politicians are more responsive than men when people come to them seeking health care and economic support, our newly published study on gender and government responsiveness reveals. Our research, conducted in 2017, was published in the Journal of Experimental Political Science in August. For our experiment, we posed as citizens of different genders and emailed a request for help to a total of 3,685 national legislators in France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay. In Europe, we asked for assistance signing up for unemployment benefits. In Latin America, we requested help getting medical care without health insurance. The response rate ranged widely, from 6% in Mexico – where government accountability to citizens is a docum...

Here’s How Companies Can Prevent Women From Losing Decades Of Workplace Progress Due To COVID-19

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

BUSINESS, Journalism

Here’s How Companies Can Prevent Women From Losing Decades Of Workplace Progress Due To COVID-19

American women have made strides in the workplace over the past half-century in terms of earnings, employment and careers – in no small part thanks to the efforts of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The COVID-19 pandemic risks undoing many of these gains in a matter of months. Without concrete action, I believe a generation of women may never fully recover. One group of women who are at particular risk are those in professional fields. While fortunate enough to have quality jobs, many are being forced by the increased demands of child care to reduce working hours – or to stop working altogether. Mothers have always handled more of a household’s child care than fathers have, but it has become further lopsided since lockdowns began earlier this year. As a result, more than one in fou...

Failure to shore up state budgets may hit women’s wallets especially hard

30Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION

Failure to shore up state budgets may hit women’s wallets especially hard

States are seeing enormous budget shortfalls because of the coronavirus pandemic, and the consequences for teachers and other public school employees could be dire. At least 640,000 education jobs in state and local government vanished between February and August 2020. The states, which provide an average of about 47% of U.S. public school funding, are cutting school spending because their tax revenue is declining and they have no easy recourse to balance their budgets; unlike the federal government, states can’t just print money. Negotiations continue around another pandemic relief bill, which would include money for states to spend on public education. But lawmakers have passed no measures since May, when the House of Representatives passed a US$3 trillion coronavirus relief bill that ...

Women equal men in computing skill, but are less confident

4Apr

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IN OTHER NEWS

Women equal men in computing skill, but are less confident

In the workplace, women are now as good as men when it comes to computing performance, but there is still a gender gap when it comes to confidence, according to our new research. As professors of business, we studied how well men and women in midlevel business jobs performed on computing tasks. We also asked them to rate how they thought they did. Study participants were randomly assigned basic, intermediate or advanced problems on laptops, tablets or mobile devices, while seated, standing or walking slowly. We found no difference in the performance between men and women in the total number of questions answered correctly or the time taken to answer the questions. In only one scenario did men perform slightly better – while completing a basic task, on a tablet, while seated (76.3% corre...

Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, HEALTH & WELLNESS

Pregnancy during a pandemic: The stress of COVID-19 on pregnant women and new mothers is showing

Pregnancy is stressful, to say the least, but COVID-19 brings new challenges to parents of newborns. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has identified pregnant women as a vulnerable population. If infected, they are more likely to be hospitalized and require ventilation and their risk of preterm birth goes up. Economists predict that the U.S. may have at least 500,000 fewer births because of the pandemic. Deciding not to become pregnant during a pandemic is understandable, particularly in the U.S., as it is one of five countries worldwide and the only country classified as high-income by the World Bank, that does not mandate paid maternity leave for non-federally employed workers. As scholars who study prenatal and postnatal stress, maternal nutrition and the brain developmen...

Latin American women are disappearing and dying under lockdown

24Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19

Latin American women are disappearing and dying under lockdown

It’s a pandemic within the pandemic. Across Latin America, gender-based violence has spiked since COVID-19 broke out. Almost 1,200 women disappeared in Peru between March 11 and June 30, the Ministry of Women reported. In Brazil, 143 women in 12 states were murdered in March and April – a 22% increase over the same period in 2019. Reports of rape, murder and domestic violence are also way up in Mexico. In Guatemala, they’re down significantly – a likely sign that women are too afraid to call the police on the partners they’re locked down with. The pandemic worsened but did not create this problem: Latin America has long been among the world’s deadliest places to be a woman. Don’t blame ‘machismo’ I have spent three decades studying gendered violence as well as women’s organizing in Lati...

Racism linked to cognitive decline in African American women

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

Racism linked to cognitive decline in African American women

African Americans have higher rates of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease than white Americans. Chronic stress, associated with cognitive impairment and reduced volume in the brain’s memory area, could be a culprit. But racism may be one of the ultimate causes. And for African American women, the problem may be particularly pernicious. We are epidemiologists at Boston University. Our work is focused on the Black Women’s Health Study (BWHS), a landmark investigation that has followed 59,000 African American women since 1995. Previous data from our study showed that racism experiences are associated with increased risks of premature birth, obesity, Type 2 diabetes, uterine fibroids, adult-onset asthma and insomnia. More recently, we wanted to see how racism might impact cognition in African...

Brain scientists haven’t been able to find major differences between women’s and men’s brains, despite over a century of searching

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

Brain scientists haven’t been able to find major differences between women’s and men’s brains, despite over a century of searching

People have searched for sex differences in human brains since at least the 19th century, when scientist Samuel George Morton poured seeds and lead shot into human skulls to measure their volumes. Gustave Le Bon found men’s brains are usually larger than women’s, which prompted Alexander Bains and George Romanes to argue this size difference makes men smarter. But John Stuart Mill pointed out, by this criterion, elephants and whales should be smarter than people. So focus shifted to the relative sizes of brain regions. Phrenologists suggested the part of the cerebrum above the eyes, called the frontal lobe, is most important for intelligence and is proportionally larger in men, while the parietal lobe, just behind the frontal lobe, is proportionally larger in women. Later, neuroanatomists...