Luke directed my attention to this article from the New York Times. The general premise of the article is that an increasing number of men are out of the labor force. Here is a quote:

Millions of men like Mr. Beggerow — men in the prime of their lives, between 30 and 55 — have dropped out of regular work. They are turning down jobs they think beneath them or are unable to find work for which they are qualified, even as an expanding economy offers opportunities to work.

About 13 percent of American men in this age group are not working, up from 5 percent in the late 1960’s. The difference represents 4 million men who would be working today if the employment rate had remained where it was in the 1950’s and 60’s.

I am ambivalent about this trend. On the one hand, I see it as a product of economic restructuring, where working class and poor men are losing job opportunities because of the loss of factory jobs and the rise in incarceration. On the other hand, there is a big part of me that wonders if we are seeing some of the signs of the new patriarchy where the big battle will be over leisure time. Even though women still do not receive equal pay, it seems like it is going to be very difficult to get middle class women “back into the house.” So since we can’t keep women out of the labor force, what can men do to keep the upper hand? Work us like crazy?

Well, I think this phenomenon is the new trend. I am seeing this in my own life and with many of my friends. An increasing number of young women like myself are the primary breadwinners, which is no problem, except for the fact that we end up working full time, doing most of the housework, kin work, consumption work, and care work. In fact, the article notes that many men who are out of the labor force are not raising kids, which significantly contrasts them with unemployed single women. In fact, many of these men are single. It is not readily apparent if they were single when they first lost jobs or opted out of the labor force. It is entirely possible the loss of a job and the subsequent time out of the labor force contributed to the break-up of their relationships.

However, I do think there is a significant difference between men in the lower class and the working class, and their middle and upper income counterparts. Factory jobs, once populated with working class men, are going overseas. The number of men with felony convictions has also increased in large part due to the war on drugs, and upper income men are not the targets of the war on drugs (even though they are no less likely to use drugs). Lower income Black men have been hardest hit by the war on drugs, and it should come as no surprise that they are overrepresented in the number of men who have been out of the workforce for an extended period of time. This is where I have some sympathy with men who are out of the labor force. Getting a job with a high school education or a felony conviction isn’t easy, and it is getting harder by the minute. I also think it is nice to see men who are opting out of the labor force to do child care and other types of family work. In these cases, the families are often middle class, the women out earn their male counterparts, and the couple has invested more in the woman’s paid labor.

What troubles me is the cases where men opt out of the labor force and put the pressures of both paid labor work and family work on the shoulders of women. Some of the men in the article said that they didn’t want to take jobs that were “beneath” them. In some ways I can understand not wanting to take a pay cut or a downgraded job, but I get the distinct sense that women are way more likely to take jobs that are “beneath” them. It’s one more example where women are expected to make the sacrifice. This is where I think we are seeing the new patriarchy. The men who are out of the labor force and relying on their female partners for everything even if the couple can’t pay their basic bills, even if the women is working all day and all night. It is almost like women are expected to be the mother’s and father’s for their children and male partners. It’s almost like some men are doing this just because they can. I know of a case where a women worked full time for years so her husband could pursue his writing. She coordinated everything and paid for everything, so he could fulfill this dream, and he made very few sacrifice for her. Women need leisure time to, and we need people to make sacrifices for us, just as many of us do for others. I think most women don’t mind hard work. We just want to see our hard work matched by our partners.

So is this the new patriarchy or economic restructuring? My sense is that the increasing number of men out of work is the product of both. What do you think?

Ann at Feminist Law Professors directed me to this excellent Katha Pollitt piece about the two leading generals in the Mommy Wars:

Caitlin Flanagan, scourge of upscale working mothers, meet Linda Hirshman, champion of same. You’ll like each other, you have a lot in common: a bomb-throwing writing style, a gift for oversimplification and a deep conviction that your life is the one true path to happiness and glory. […] Here’s another thing you two agree on: Whatever women are doing wrong is feminism’s fault.

In the article itself, Pollitt spends relatively little ink on Flanagan, instead concentrating on Hirshman, who Pollitt finds some good in - but still criticizes.

Hirshman’s weakness is her assumption that the social problem of women’s inequality can be solved if enough women make the right individual decisions. She mocks “the same old public day-care business that has gone nowhere since 1972.” But really, isn’t the stay-home vogue at bottom a response to the fact that society has failed to adapt to working mothers? Isn’t choice feminism itself a way of dealing with the whole complex range of resistance to women’s equality, by throwing up your hands and saying, Let each woman make her own tradeoffs? Unlike Flanagan, who wants women to give up the struggle, Hirshman wants individual women to fight harder and smarter, and that’s great. But it only goes so far. If better personal decisions could bring about gender equality, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today.

I agree with this critique of Hirshman. But I’d add another weakness: her unkindness. Her writing - especially in the initial Prospect piece that made her a household name (well, among certain households!) - has a sneering tone which makes it unpalatable not only to many stay-at-home mothers, but also many people who are friends of stay-at-home mothers. Hirshman - and Pollitt- are right to say that feminism shouldn’t blindly condone all choices made by women. And one choice we shouldn’t condone is Hirshman’s choice to be gratuitously cruel to women who have chosen, or “chosen,” stay-at-home motherhood.

Pollitt also writes:

“Choice,” moreover, assumes people have, and know they have, real alternatives. But what if the “choice” is the forced, or at any rate predictable, result of a lot of previous choices you didn’t realize you were making?

This reminds me of this old cartoon of mine, which - despite the lame-ass drawing - is imo one of the best political cartoons I’ve done:

By the way, Pollitt - who is my favorite non-academic feminist writer - has a new book out. Anyone who wanted to take this as an occasion to hit up my Amazon wish list, please feel free. :-P

PLEASE NOTE: Comments at “Alas” are sometimes heavily moderated. If you’d like to avoid all that, you can leave a post on the same post at Creative Destruction.

In a recent post about affirmative action in India we had a relatively good discussion going in the comments section, but what I realized is that most people don’t have a real understanding of what affirmative action is and how it is actually implemented. Of course, the reason most people don’t know what it is or how it is used is because most people have never sat on a university admissions committee, or they have never been responsible for making hiring decisions in a corporate or educational setting. Having been involve in a few hiring decisions and having been on an admissions committee, I have a little experience, I thought I would share a little about how these committees work. One of the first things that people should know is that affirmative action is used not only for race. Other factors such as national origin, gender, veteran’s status, and age. (For the sake of brevity, I’m only going to discuss hiring, and not admissions.)

When most universities (not all but most) hire faculty members, they asked that job candidates send their resumes directly to the head of the search committee or the head of the department. Once applications are received candidates are sent a small postcard asking about their basic demographic information, including race and gender (and often a few other questions…like how did you hear about the job, are you a veteran and so on).  That card is then sent back to the human resources department or affirmative action compliance office on campus. The search committee does not see this card, and the race and gender of candidates is never given to the hiring committee.

In the mean time, the hiring committee reviews applications. In both of the committees I have been on there was an initial screening that weeded out unqualified candidates and less qualified candidates. How did we decide who was qualified? It depended on the particular search, but several key issues were…did they have the right area of study, could they teach the classes we were looking for, were they committed to research (at the research school), did they have publications, and would they be done with their dissertation or at least very close to being done. At this stage race and/or gender were not discussed much at all because it was evident that the candidates were not qualified for the particular position described. Once we had a “long short list,” which consisted of our top 10 (or so) candidates. We went through their files more thoroughly to look for other possible problems or prospects that may have been overlooked. In one case, we ended the search because we only had 1 candidate who we thought was qualified for the position. This person was a person of color, but we knew that bringing in one person would not pass the muster with the compliance office or the higher level administrators. There is a strong expectation that at least 3 candidates be brought in for an interview, and there were not 3 in the applicant pool who were qualified. In both cases we did discuss race once we had a long short list (The were not many substantive discussions of gender, as women candidates were well represented in the departments.) Both departments had a severe underrepresentation of racial minorities…one department had all Whites, the other had 3 people of color. People on the committee did not agree about how much of a factor race should play, but it was unanimous on both committees that it would be “good” if we ultimately hired a person of color since the department was not diverse.

But there was a major obstacle when it came to considering race; we did not know the race of the candidates. For the most part it is easy to figure out what gender people are from their applications, so it would be untrue to say that the process is gender blind. Race can sometimes be determined from a close look at the application, and in some cases a references letter would let people know the race of the candidate. In the committees I was on, many people thought they knew the race of the candidates but were wrong in several cases. I say this because I have met some of the candidates after the fact since the world of sociology is relatively small. (I suspect this would not be the case in corporate settings where resumes and applications are significantly shorter and have significantly less information. It is not unusual to have applications that are over 30 pages, including references, teaching evals and so on.) So unless it was readily apparent from the application, we could not determine race, which makes it very difficult to use race as a factor in the hiring process.

Once the top candidates are announced, their names are passed on to the university’s affirmative action compliance or human resources office. The office checks the race and gender of the applicants based on the cards returned to them…many of these are not returned and they are optional. The compliance office usually approves the search. The final candidates might not be approved if the department has a long history of not bringing in diverse applicants. If a search is not approved, the compliance office may ask the department to try to increase the diversity of the applicant pool by extending the search or advertising in other outlets. If the department still doesn’t get a diverse group of candidates, then the search could continue as is or be extended. The whole process of revising a search is rare, but not unprecedented.

Once candidates get to campus they go through a long interview process (which I think is the part of the process that is most opened to racism or sexism). I can say that some people in the interview process strongly believed that if two candidates were equally qualified that candidates from underrepresented minority groups should be offered the position. However, few people thought two candidates were equally qualified. After the interview, most people had a clear favorite candidate, and the department ranked candidates 1-2-3 and decided if they were hirable. It is very difficult get people 20 some people to agree so this part of the process is very difficult. The reason I think the part of the process is most opened to racism is because race seems to dramatically impact how candidates are viewed face to face. But people are allowed to have their biases and do not have to give any particular reason as to why they oppose a candidate. Since the particular hiring committees, I was on didn’t result in hires, I can’t say exactly how the process would have played in those particular cases.

This is actually why I think affirmative action is not particularly powerful at ending discrimination. It is very limited in its scope. In the cases I have seen the only real stop gap on discrimination is the compliance office. This office also does a very good job at tracking hiring trends, which lets a school know if there is a pattern of exclusion, but as far as the decisions, people are pretty much left up to their own devices to decide on which candidates that they like, which of course means that they still have their biases.

I give this very long drawn out discussion to let people know how affirmative action in hiring actually works in at least one real life case. There are no quotas and no hiring requirements. In fact, quotas have been illegal since 1978, when the US Supreme Court ruled that quota based affirmative action was not constitutional (See University of California Regents v. Bakke 1978). So what constitutes affirmative action? Here are a few examples taken from sociologist Barbara Reskin’s book The Realities of Affirmative Action:setting goals and time tables, identifying under utilized talent, using recruitment methods that reach the whole pool of candidates, fully utilizing employees skills, forging alliances with school and community groups to increase pool of possible workers, monitoring sex and race differences in hiring and promotions, self evaluation, advertising as an equal opportunity employer.

What is fascinating about most of these techniques is that they have little or nothing to do with the application review process. Instead they focus more on reaching the full applicant pool, and monitoring overall trends in recruitment. The notion that White applicants or male applicants are put at the back of the pool or ignored is incorrect. Additionally, the idea that women, Blacks, Latinos, or American Indians are put at the front of the pool and some how treated better is also incorrect. In fact, many of the biggest supporters of affirmative action are White business owners and educational leaders, who are mostly male. Most businesses have voluntary affirmative action programs. There have never been laws passed or executive orders issued requiring any type of affirmative action in hiring or promotions for private companies. The reason big businesses want affirmative action is because they benefit tremendously from a diverse workforce, and the impression (often false impression, but image counts) that they do not discriminate. If affirmative action was harmful to Whites, why would White business owners institute affirmative action policies on a voluntary basis.

Having been involved in a few hiring committees and one admissions committee I can assure people that affirmative action doesn’t exclude Whites, especially those highly qualified Whites. In fact, my personal sense is that the very limited scope of most affirmative action programs allows discrimination to remain firmly entrenched in the hiring and promotions process. But it is important for people to know exactly how a hiring process works in order for htem to understand the realities of affirmative action.

I’m not posting this entry at Rachel’s Tavern, but it will be posted at Ally Work if you would like to help me debate with some affirmative action opponents.

Some time during all of the time that the Duke rape scandal first erupted there was an interesting exchange in the comments section on my blog. A reader linked to this article, which includes the following quote:

Black and Asian women with bachelor’s degrees earn more money than similarly educated white women, and white men with four-year degrees still make more money than anyone else.

My immediate reaction was, no Black women don’t earn more than White women; where does this data come from? So I decided to go to the Census data and see what it revealed. Sure enough the 2004 Census reveals similar numbers, but I was still convinced that something was wrong with this picture. Then it hit me. What this measure does is compare all college educated men and women whether they are in the labor force full time, part time, or not at all. Are college educated Black women really faring better than their White female counterparts in the labor force? The answer is no. In fact, this is a great example of how statistics can be misread and or misleading.

In order to understand what is wrong with using this measure it is important to think about the idea of statistical controls. These figures did not control for the woman’s involvement in the work force. A slightly better comparison would be to look at people who are of similar education, and a similar labor force status. So I decided to look at only those college educated workers who were in the labor force full time year round. When you compare similarly situated women and the gap between White women and Black women reverses, so White women in this position are earning more. The table also shows that this holds true for those women with a high school education.

So what is going here? The explanation is actually simple. White women are more likely to be out of the labor force or in the labor force part time. This is largely because White women are frequently married to White men, who are the highest earners. White men’s much higher incomes make it feasible for White women to be less connected to the labor force, compared to Black women.

Another interesting thing to note about these charts is the position of Black men. College educated Black men earn more than all women, including White women, but they earn less than Asian, Latino, and White men. However, this pattern does not hold true for Black men with high school or less. Less educated White women earn more than less educated Black men.

Lately, I have heard several recent discussions insinuating that Black men are in a better economic position that White women; however, I think overall White women tend to be in a better financial position than Black men. I say this because the data in the two charts above reflects personal income. The vast majority of people do not live alone…they live in households or families.. The Census Bureau defines households and families as two different sets of living arrangements. Here is a quote:

Household A household includes all the people who occupy a housing unit as their usual place of residence. Family A group of two or more people who reside together and who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption.

Since the majority of Black men are married to or living with Black women and the vast majority of White women are married to or living with White men, their living situations are probably best measured by looking at household or family measures as the two tables on the right do. The first table looks at family incomes for both single mother households and married households, and it is not disaggregated by education.

The next table covers households. In this table I looked a four person households, and only those household where the head of household had a college degree or higher. It is evident from these tables that Black and Latinos fair particularly poorly compared to their Asian and White counterparts. While individual income is useful at gauging discrimination against individuals in the labor force, it is not as useful when examining the actually living conditions of people. The only people who this measure would be applicable to is people who live alone (this group is growing, but even many single people have roommates or others they share homes with

So let me get back to the main point here……Black women are not fairing as well as White women when it comes to their financial situation, and this difference cannot be explained away by the higher rate of single parenthood or lower level of education. When Black women and White women have similar levels of education and a similar position in the labor force (full-time, part time, or unemployed ), White women earn more (I actually did look up income for unemployed women, and unemployed White women do have more income coming in.). Unfortunately, the AP report mentioned in the beginning of this article failed to take account of the fact that many college educated White women are working part time or are taking time out of the work force, especially if they have a White male partner who is a high earner. This case is a prime example of how statistics can be misleading. Many people who read that article are probably convinced that Black women are truly fairing better in the job market than White women, but it is not so.

(Sorry that the graphs are so ugly….I’m having a hell of a time learning this program.) If you want to look up data on income, the following link has the data used in these graphs.

This is also posted at my blog Rachel’s Tavern.

The Journal of Marriage and Family has released a study by sociologist Noelle Chesney that indicates that cell phones are detrimental to family relationships. I am becoming increasingly anti-cell phone for this reason. The need to have to be constantly available is incredibly stressful after a while. I think it may be a good idea for families to turn off their phones at certain times of the day as a method of dealing with the invasiveness of this technology.

I haven’t read the article in full just the summaries of it, but I wonder if the author connects this with what Arlie Hochschild calls the reversal of family and work cultures. In her book the Time Bind, Hochschild argues that the division between home and work has changed and many people are finding work to be more relaxing than home. I personally felt this way over the last year or so. When I am teaching, my job is great and very relaxing–I’m able to forget the stressful things like paying bills, but as soon as I leave it is a different story.

The cell phone enters this picture because it becomes impossible to tune work or family out. Having your family call you at anytime on your cell phone can create conflicts. For example, I have had meetings at unexpected times, and if anyone calls my cell phone, they are not going to get me. The person calling is expecting me to be free and suddenly when I’m not available the person gets worried calling every line. This is completely unecessary stress. For some reason we are not able to treat cell phones like home phones.

I also suspect that this problem is much greater for women than it is for men. I can’t speak for other women, but I feel it really makes finding a space of our own, where we don’t have to organize, manage, and care for others, very difficult. I wonder about this with computers too (E.g.–suddenly we have to send photos of little Joe, Joe to Grandma everyweek.). I know this would be an even greater problem if I had kids; in fact, I get a little agitated when I see preteens checking in with parents on their cell phones. In this sense, the cell phone becomes a kind of surviellance tool, so we can keep up with each other. Then there is the whole language of protection and safety–cell phones make us safer, blah, blah, blah.

I know the work/family issues have been played out over and over again in feminist literature, but I think the role of modern communication technologies has been undertheorized, and the more I think about this the more I feel like these technologies are just one more way to exercise social control over women (children and employees too). In a way this is more of a rant, but I do frequently feel this way about my cell phone and some of the other communication technologies. Am I too much of a conspiracy theorist? Do you think this is true?

Here’s a recent article from Inside Higher Education about a new study examining the wage gap between female and male professors. The study itself sounds useful, but what interested me is all the dubious assumptions about the wage gap embedded in the article (and perhaps in the study itself).

Explaining the Gender Gap in Pay

Why do female professors earn less than male professors? Some charge that gender bias is at play, while others insist that once factors such as experience are accounted for, the gaps aren’t consequential.

There may be truth to both views, according to research findings presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association by Paul D. Umbach, an assistant professor of higher education at the University of Iowa.

An example of how the media misrepresents stories in order to seem “objective.” It’s not true that the study found “truth to both views.” The controversy is between those who say “human capital factors account for part of, but not the entire, pay gap” versus those who say “human capital factors account for all of the pay gap.” This study found that about two-thirds of the pay gap could be attributed to human capital factors, but almost a third could not be.

Far from finding “truth to both views,” as the article reported, this study supports the feminist view and refutes the “human capital accounts for everything” view. But saying that would have compromised the faux-objectivity news writers specialize in.

Umbach used a series of databases to calculate the gender gap in pay over all, and then to account for all kinds of factors other than gender bias that may contribute to the salary gap. In the end, he found that looking at those factors decreases the size of the gap, but that it remains meaningful.

Leaving all factors out, the mean salary for women in the professoriate was 21.8 percent less than that for men. Add all the possible explanations and their impact, and the gap shrinks to 6.8 percent.

Before anyone says “6.8%” isn’t much, imagine coming into work tomorrow and being told that they’ve decided to give you a 7% pay cut. And remember, that’s an average pay gap. But in practice, the pay gap tends to get larger over the course of a career (see the discussion of “cumulative causation” in this post); so what starts out as a small and relatively managable pay gap can grow very large by the end of a career.

For example, the mean differential favoring men was $12,649 in English literature, $24,845 in chemical engineering, and $23,294 in economics. But these comparisons included men and women at all stages in their careers … so the senior faculty members with higher salaries (and who are more likely to be men) tilt the sample significantly.

What’s not being counted here? Benefits. This arguably means that this study will underestimate any pay gap, because more seniority, and higher rank, is commonly linked with higher-value benefits.

So then Umbach ran a series of analyses designed to compensate for that and other factors. Years of seniority were factored in, as were books and articles written, career patents, whether the person was receiving outside support for research, professorial rank, and the general job market in the discipline (based on percentage of new Ph.D.’s who are employed), among other factors. When all of those factors were added, the gap still remained, at 6.8 percent.

There are not clear explanations for the gap, leaving open the possibility that bias is at play, Umbach said.

It’s true that bias is a possible explanation for part or all of the unexplained 6.8%. What bothers me is the implicit, unjustified assumption that the “explained” factors can’t themselves reflect bias. But if job discrimination against women exists in academia, is there any reason to assume that sexism has nothing at all to do with factors like who gets grants for outside support, and whose articles are published?

For instance, they list “rank” as one of the factors that explains pay. But if bias exists, one likely way for gender bias to be expressed is that men might be more easily promoted to full professor positions. By implicitly assuming that “rank” and other human capital factors are discrimination-free zones, this study’s design may overlook significant forms of gender bias.

Another example is the assumption that women get paid less because women spend less time working and accrue less experience. This is no doubt true, but causation also goes in the other direction: women work less because they get less reward for working. (This is called a “feedback effect.”) To some degree, then, women’s lesser experience is not only a cause but also a result of gender bias.

But he said that other parts of his study suggest that the bias may not be a simple preference for men, but may relate to biases based on disciplines and on how faculty members spend their time.

For instance, Umbach found that as the proportion of females in a discipline increases, the mean salaries drop … for men and women.

This is something feminists have long argued, and that many other studies support. Gender wage discrimination is not just (or even primarily) a matter of women being directly discriminated against, but instead a matter of work done primarily by women being undervalued. In this way, even men who work in underpaid female-dominated occupations could be said to be hurt by the gender wage gap.

Another factor that negatively correlates with salaries is the percentage of time spent teaching: The greater a discipline’s time spent on teaching, the lower its salaries … for men and women. The more outside research funding, the higher the salaries.

In one respect, Umbach said, those findings don’t suggest bias because male and female faculty members in the discipline are affected equally. But when these figures are coupled with other studies suggesting, for example, that female professors may spend more time on teaching, questions are raised about underlying bias.

“We know that women tend to be employed in disciplines with a lot of other women, in disciplines without as much funded research, in disciplines with more time teaching,” he said. “Is the reward structure more male? Are we creating structures that reward men?”

I’d say that worries about “structures that reward men” are legitmate, but have to be extended beyond what this article discusses. One major reason for women’s on average lower wages is that women who are mothers tend to spend less time in the workforce (both in terms of years in the workforce, and in terms of how many hours worked per year) while they take care of their children. As I wrote in an earlier post, many feminists believe that in a non-sexist society, fathers and mothers would share equally in childcare - or at least, that fathers would take on a larger degree of childcare than they do now. Therefore, any “parenting wage penalty” in a nonsexist society would be split more evenly among men and women. The fact that women are virtually the only ones hit by the parenting wage penalty doesn’t prove that sexism no longer exists; on the contrary, it shows that sexism still matters, and has a big negative impact on women’s wages. (It also has a negative impact on men’s contact with their families.)

But to take it a step further, arguably that there’s a “parenting wage penalty” at all is a sign of sexism. Why isn’t the workplace designed to accommodate parenthood? The American job market was designed for men - in particular, it was developed in a society in which workers were had a wife at home to take care of the kids. Society has changed, but our jobs haven’t, and that works to the disadvantage of all working mothers (and to mothers who would like to work, but can’t find a job that will give them the flexibility they need to combine work and motherhood). Isn’t it sexist to expect mothers to fit into a work system that was designed for a Father Knows Best family?

(This post has been cross-posted at Creative Destruction. If you have trouble posting comments here, try the cross-posted version.)

Hi everyone. My name is Kortney Ryan Ziegler and I currently blog over at blac(k)ademic. Amp has generously opened up his blog for me to guest post for a few days. I wanted to kick start off my time here with a posting about HIV/AIDS and how it is disproportionately affecting black women. I hope you enjoy.
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Think back to the mid-80’s during the Reagan era when HIV/AIDS surfaced and was linked to gay white men. As hundreds of them began to fall ill and die, a widespread panic ensued, resulting in mobilizing the white gay community in attempts to educate people in protecting themselves. Now fast forward to 2006. The new face of AIDS is no longer the young, white, gay promiscuous male–black women are now becoming, if we aren’t already, the group with the highest incidents of HIV/AIDS in the United States, with the War on Drugs, the prison industrial complex and the conditions of poverty to blame.

Poverty is inextricably linked to the high numbers of HIV/AIDS cases amongst black women, as it has provided fertile ground for our increased vulnerability to infection. A number of women are subjected to living in sub-standard public housing, are receiving sub-standard educations, and are working a number of jobs, but barely make enough to survive. This increased susceptibility to psychological and emotional stress has seen more black women turn to intravenous drugs as a mode of escape from these harsh realities. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important to realize that a large number of black women are getting HIV/AIDS from intravenous drug use with contaminated needles, and not the mythological “down low” phenomenon the media keeps telling us to believe. Subsequently, the feelings of hopelessness coupled with a low-self esteem also drives some young women to have multiple sex partners without using protection–leading to an exposure of a number of STD’s.

Access to healthcare is key to the prevention of future HIV/AIDS cases in young black women. However, since about one in three black women have no health insurance, there are little opportunities for routine checkups that could identify STD’s or their exposure to the virus itself. Furthermore, without healthcare, black women who are infected with the virus are left to be diagnosed in advanced stages of the disease and if pregnant will inevitably transmit the virus to their children–infecting a new generation of young blacks to repeat this cycle. Even if a black woman has HIV/AIDS and has some form of healthcare, private or public, her economic status will determine rather or not she is able to afford the expensive treatment and medications that are used to manage the virus. This can be an added expense of up to $30,000 a year. Moreover, black women who do have access to healthcare might encounter barriers that prohibit sufficient attention due to institutionalized racism that results in lowered quality care from medical establishments.

In addition to the conditions of poverty, male partners who are products of the prison industrial complex–which is a breeding ground for the virus, are infecting black women with HIV/AIDS. Currently, a large number of our nations jails restrict inmates from having access to condoms and safe sex instruction, which heightens the risk of transmitting the disease to their female partners outside of prison. Furthermore, the violent nature of the prison industrial complex constantly puts the lives of young men at risk through contact with contaminated bodily fluids.

How can we end this destructive epidemic that is systematically killing young black women AND men?

I personally think there needs to be more focus on sex education in the black community aimed at adolescents and adult women. Such education would need to be culturally specific since HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects blacks. This education would need to rely on instructing women how to effectively use condoms and when and how to get tested when they have multiple sex partners. Secondly, discussions about self-esteem and female empowerment must take place within black communities. Instruction in self-empowerment will help black women affected by the conditions of poverty to increase their self-awareness without feeling the need for male capitulation. Third, there needs to be more attention given to the disease aside from the yearly black aids day. Grassroots activists and politicians of all colors need to address the multiple factors that are leading to the infection and spread of HIV/AIDS amongst black women. Many argue that the reason that the number of cases of HIV/AIDS has decreased amongst whites is because of a mass movement that provided education and deterred further stigmatization of the virus and those with the virus. It is long past due for our movement to take shape to combat the general apathy shared by a large number of blacks in fighting and acknowledging that the virus is not just a “gay disease.” Last, I think the media has a powerful potential to create counteractive images of the AIDS epidemic. We are combated with powerful media images daily that subject black women to roles similar to that of worthless prostitutes–these ideas have infiltrated the psyche of young black men and women, and I believe have forced some of us to adopt those roles as truth. We can use the media, such as blogging, to educate as many folks as possible about how the virus is contracted and spread, also to inform people of the services that are available for women who are living with the virus.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic must be at the center of a current black mass movement, similar to how black civil rights were at the forefront of the movements in the 60’s. That same type of grassroots activism that has given blacks, women, and lesbians/gays more mobility to move within America must be replicated in combating this threat to our lives and it is up to all of us–activists, politicians, religious leaders, and intellectuals alike, to be more straightforward about the virus and its effects within our community.

Much attention has been focused on Africa as a dying continent from HIV/AIDS, and that is rightly so. However, black women in the United States deserve the same amount of attention directed towards them and their HIV/AIDS death sentence. This virus disproportionately affects us and is prohibiting our community from experiencing longevity…we have nothing to lose but our lives if we continue to sweep this issue under the rug.

This posting is also posted on my blog.

In the days after 9/11 I was glued to my TV, watching what seemed to be the same cable news stories over and over and hoping that someone was going to tell me why this happened. The only refreshing new stories were the ones that followed heroes…the everyday folks who risked their lives to save others. Indeed there were many 9/11 heroes, but I quickly became frustrated at how few of those who were portrayed as heroes were White women or men and women of color. I just kept thinking; the rest of us are heroes too. Certainly, the firemen and police officers who died trying to save people in the World Trade Center were heroes, but the media and many average Americans seem to be much more content with white men as heroes. In fact, because of our race and gender stereotypes white men are constructed as brave, bold, dependable, powerful, righteous, and strong…all of the makings of a hero. Certainly the rest of us have many of those traits too, but what keeps our heroism out of sight? The contrast in the construction heroes in the aftermath of World Trade Center and Hurricane Katrina reveal how much racism and sexism shape our definition of heroism.

One of the biggest factors is the occupational segregation that makes jobs filled primarily by White men heroic occupations. The best example of this would be the New York City fire department. In a city where about 23% of the population is white and male, 92% of the firefighters are white men. This is not a reflection of personal preferences, many women and minority fire fighters have faced harassment and discrimination. What makes this even worse is that the number of Black and Latino firefighters in New York has decreased since the 1960s…yes it has decreased. The police department fairs somewhat better, but still does not reflect the ethnic make-up of the city.

After 9/11 the racial and gender make up of the fire department was very obvious to any outside observer who watch the numerous pictures of heroes. On that day, out of over 300 firefighters only 12 Latino firefighters, 12 Black firefighters and no women fire fighters died. What was even more telling was the controversy that emerged over a proposed statue to honor the firefighters who died. The statue was based on the now famous photo of three White firefighters who raised the US flag in still smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center. The controversy erupted, when artists designing the statue want to deviate from the photo by having a multiracial group of firefighters depicted in the statue.

The media and many of the Americans consume it also contribute to this problem by anointing White men as heroes and ignoring others. One of the heroes was a black woman flight attendant Cee Cee Lyles, who called her husband and provided some of the information about what was going on www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20011028f… target=”_blank”>Flight 93, which later crashed in Pennsylvania.

While her story was mentioned it never inspired the same media coverage as those of the Whites who died. Media outlets know that Whites make great victims and heroes, and they actively seek them out, when they anoint heroes in the wake of tragedy.

Now we have had another major American tragedy. Much of the city of New Orleans is destroyed, and the search for heroes is much different. Unlike 9/11, the media as had not had the convenient White male heroes for a few reasons. First and foremast the racial makeup of the city and the first responders was not as White as it was in New York. Rather than anointing the police as heroes, reporters noted that many police disappeared, and they admonished the Black police chief for this. A quick google search on Katrina heroes produces interesting results. The three groups most commonly mentioned–hospital workers; people rescuing animals, and the coast guard included numerous women. No political leaders, a la Rudy Giuliani, few mentions of police officers, and very few stories telling the stories of specific people. To many Americans, the working class Blacks of New Orleans make great victims, but they don’t make great heroes like White male stock brokers, politicians, firefighters, and police men.

No the heroes in New Orleans are not the usual suspects. Their mayor and the governor are not White men, and they are being held up to more scrutiny than Giuliani and Pataki (some of it rightfully so, but still much more). Everybody knows President Bush in his fly over analysis of the Superdome was not a hero. The police were unable to patrol the city given the mass destruction, and most of the middles class White men that fit the mold of our commonly held stereotypes were almost nowhere to be found, and because the usual suspects are not available the media and many Americans have been forced to look outside the mold for heroes. This has really created a dearth of heroes; I’m not saying there are no heroes, but the New Orleans heroes have been nearly invisible compared to the 9/11 heroes

Two young African American males really exemplify New Orleans heroism. One is 6 year old Deamonte Love, who helped to take care of his younger siblings and neighbors when they were separated from their parents, a tall task for a small child. Another hero was Jabbar Gibson, who commandeered a bus and drove over 50 people to the Astrodome, even though he had never driven a bus before. Even though Gibson helped evacuate people when no one else was, people had a hard time seeing him as a true hero. The local media even speculated about what the legal ramificationswould be since Gibson took the bus.
The good news is that many people realize that Gibson is a hero, in spite of the limited media coverage. In fact, someone has started an online petition to award Gibson with a scholarship and the Presidential Medal of freedom.

Heroes come in many forms, and our ability to see and create heroes is often related to racism and sexism. Who gets to be a hero? What do you think could be done to reframe heroism and overcome the racism in sexism in the media and in the structure of our occupations?

There was an article in today’s Sunday Star Times Sunday magazine that was interesting and not completely misogynist. I almost died of shock (for non-New Zealanders Sunday’s speciality is that it no longer calls it’s ‘beauty’ section ‘beauty’ or even ‘health’, but maintenance. I’ve no idea what you’re supposed to be maintaining with blue eye-shadow).

The article was looking at rates of depression in parents, and particularly among mothers. What I really liked about the article is that it showed how depressing and isolating the work of child rearing can be in our society, and that saying that the work is hard wasn’t an attempt to devalue it.

Too often feminists are blamed for devaluing the work of raising children. All they said was that society didn’t value the work, and that the way child-rearing was done was extremely isolating and hard.

Unfortuantely it’s as true now as it was then. I like a lot of Betty Freidan’s analysis in The Feminine Mystique, but disagree with her conclusions. While increased access to childcare, and the opportunity to do paid employment has helped some children, it doesn’t solve the problem. Those who stay out of the paid workforce are still isolated, and those who work outside the home are still doing all the unpaid work they would before, only with less time.

Earlier last century children were seen as a duty, now they’re seen as a luxury, I think we could do better. I don’t often imagine the world that I’m trying create, maybe I don’t do it enough. But I do know how raising children would be resourced (and I’m not talking about money, because I think a first step to the world I’m talking about would be ending capitalism).

I believe that all the resources required to raise children should be provided collectively, not individually by the parents. Raising children should be recognised as important work, and whether it’s done collectively or individually, it should be seen as a contribution to society as important as any other. At the same time anyone in a parental role should be able to do other work that they enjoy, or are good at, or see as important, and in then their children would be looked after collectively.

This is why I find arguments about staying at home vs. working very frustrating. Neither individual choice is going to make a slightest bit of difference, and it’s stupid to fight over the limited resources available when what we actually need to do is smash the whole pie (or something).

Also posted on my blog

1. Larry Summers is a mirror of the lefty-basher’s soul.

March 8th is Blog Against Sexism Day

Only 2 or 3 Days Left To Submit To The Next Carnival of Feminists!

Suffragettes and Disability Rights
Michael Bérubé discusses the historic ways suffragettes were abused with, and committed abuses with, anti-disabled rhetoric. This is a must-read post, imo, as is an earlier post discussing the intersection of race and disability in American history.

Greatest Hits from Antonin Scalia’s “living textualist originalism”
Terrific post from LGM reviews some of Scalia’s more striking hypocrisies.

How To Steal An Election
Entertaining and historically-informed article actually an excerpt from Andrew Gumbel’s book Steal This Vote! about cheating in American elections. Gumbel is a lefty, but that doesn’t prevent him from recognizing that the “Bush stole the 2004 election” claims don’t have much substance to them.

Walking Women To Their Destination After Dark
Happy provides an excellent feminist analysis of this social habit.

One Good Day

Why Health Savings Accounts Will Suck
Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings makes the case very well.

Comparative Funerals: Coretta Scott King and Betty Friedan

About Those Danish Cartoons. No, Really - About The Cartoons Themselves.

Offensive Cartoons From America
Who’da thunk it? Something funny in Cracked. Curtsy: Crooked Timber.

The Dark Side of Public Sectarian Schools

White Teacher Suspended For Saying “Niggah” In Classroom
I think the suspension is justified - not because the teacher is necessarily racist, but because he displayed such staggeringly bad judgment. Incompetence is justification enough for the suspension.

Cathy Young on False Rape Accusation
Good post discussing the implications of a beyond-any-doubt false rape accusation.

Mary Schweitzer has a webpage on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Also known as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.), or Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS). Mary Schweitzer, a CFS sufferer’s advocate, is one of the best writers about CFS on the internet; even if you think you have no interest in CFS issues, her essays may change your mind.

Sweden Plans To Be “Oil-Free” by 2020

Keeping Men’s Jobs Male

Then I said that a woman’s right to choose was nobody else’s goddamn business. This got their attention.

Western Union Quits the Telegraph Business

Past Bush Administration Cheerleader Admits Guantanamo Is Inexcusable

Housework Blogging
Belle, Pandagon, Ezra, Lawyers Guns and Money, Matt and Majikthise weigh in. Apologies to those I missed. Of all of these, Amanda’s is the most “must-read,” in my opinion.

PrisonSucks.com: Links to research about abuse of women in prisons
I’m putting the link in here because I think there might be a future post in it, and I don’t want to lose the link.

Holocaust Denier Professor Creates Stir at Northwestern

Theorizing Breasts

On Ambivalence Towards Critical Thinking

Israel plans to build ‘museum of tolerance’ on Muslim graveyard
Are they really that clueless, or just incredibly sarcastic? Via Jesus’ General.

The Happy Feminist on “Ladies First” and the Titanic

New To The Blogroll: Beyond Choice
Alexander Sanger Margaret’s grandson has an interesting blog about abortion politics.

Michael Bérubé Rips Apart David Horowitz
If I were a better person, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much.

Warren Ellis and Joss Whedon Provide Fan Service, Oh My Yes They Do
If you don’t know who both those people are, then I’m geekier than you. Curtsy: Crooked Timber.

FAT RELATED LINKS
What the heck, there were a bunch of these - mostly swiped from Big Fat Blog - so I thought I’d give ‘em their own section.

New JAMA Study Finds No Link Between Obesity and Lifespan In Americans Over 50

The State of The F-Word
Interesting article takes a look at the various books that have used the word “fat” in the title in the past year. Curtsy: Big Fat Blog.

FatShadow on Celebs Who Lose Weight
Yet another smart, sensitive, and annoyingly difficult to sum up in a single sentence post from Tish.

The Average Sized Privilege List
AKA “The Thin Privilege List.” This isn’t new, but I’m not sure I’ve ever linked to it, and I should have.

A Modest Proposal: The Next Viagra

“Obesity Epidemic” Overblown, Conclude UCLA Sociologists

The link is to a press release about this interesting and nuanced study pdf link by Abigail Saguy. Her webpage includes links to a number of interesting-sounding papers, including a few about sexual harassment and this one pdf link about media coverage of fat and health issues. Curtsy: Big Fat Blog.

New To The Blogroll: Fat Chicks Rule
How did I not know Lara Frater had a blog?

Links for y’all to check out - and I’ve gotta say, damn, there are a lot of really good links here.

As always, the thread is open to anything folks want to post - feel free to self-promote, too.

By the way, if you have a link you’d like other “Alas” readers to see, or just something you’d like to say that isn’t on-topic in one of the other threads, please feel free to post it in these “link farm” posts.

What do people think of these big “link farm” posts? Do you like them? Would you like them better if I split each one up into a whole bunch of one-item posts instead?

Anyway, here’s some stuff I’ve read today and really liked. Note that the stuff in quote marks is written by the people I’m linking to, not by me.