Sadia Khatri is determined to change the lives of women and girls in Pakistan—one tea-sipping, snacking, strolling, bicycle-riding excursion at a time.  The story of Sadia, a native of Karachi, Pakistan’s most populous city, and her activism began with her decision to go to college in America. Sadia landed at Mount Holyoke, a prestigious, all-women’s college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Sadia’s American experience changed her life. It seems possible that the sense of empowerment brought back to Pakistan by this one young woman might end up changing the lives of thousands of women and girls in cities across Pakistan.

Sadia’s epiphany came to her after she returned to Karachi and realized that the lifestyle she’d enjoyed as a woman in America, particularly the freedom to go out alone with no purpose other than to enjoy being out in a public space, shed a harsh light on the constrained lives of women and girls in her hometown. As Sadia explains, male-dominated traditions, misperceptions about safety for women, and both subtle and overt social mores dictated that females have a male companion or chaperone accompany them in public spaces—whether that be a male friend, a father, or a brother. As a budding feminist and a young woman who had experienced the unfettered freedom of women in America, Sadia was seized with a passion for change.

Fueled by a new sense of self-confidence and a belief in the collective organizing they’d discovered in America, in 2015 Sadia and Atiya Abbas, a friend who had also observed on her own travels the contrast between the freedoms of women living abroad and the cramped lives of women in Pakistan, founded the feminist collective Girls at Dhabas.

The framework for their public protest is simple but brilliant and effective. Dhabas, which are popular, casual roadside cafes for locals and truckers, are places where men traditionally gather to drink tea, snack, and socialize. These are public spaces where the lone woman or girl traditionally was not welcomed. Girls at Dhabas encourages women to venture out alone to interact with public spaces, like the dhabas, in order to erase the fear of being out alone and to build a level of comfort with utilizing the public spaces in their cities.

Relying on personal narratives, storytelling, and social media, the Girls at Dhabas movement has created connections and strengthened the resolve of women to reclaim their right to public spaces in cities across Pakistan. The collective has either inspired or helped young women in other cities reclaim public spaces by staging their own actions, like organizing all-women cricket matches and collective bicycle rides.

Humay Waseem, a bicyclist participating in a group inspired by Girls at Dhabas called Islamabad Girls on Bikes, explained her new-found feelings of freedom to a Western news service: “I drive on these roads all the time but this was maybe the first time I got to experience them while biking … I loved the feeling of freedom with the breeze in my hair.”

As Sadia explains in the video below, the transformation of the perception of public space and who has permission to be there is freeing not just for women but for men as well. As she says, “the more we step out and the more we start getting comfortable in these spaces—not just for us does it get normalizing but also for the men.”

American influence

In this upside-down era of Trumpism where intolerance has been elevated to the highest levels of government, it’s easy to forget about the value of encouraging artists, academics, scientists, and students, like Sadia, to come to the U.S. and soak up the influence of America’s cultural and intellectual diversity. Think about how just one young woman’s experience of being in America has inspired thousands of women to find the courage to embrace a new definition of their rights as women in a place more than eight thousand miles away. Sadia’s experience and the fervor she developed for women’s rights is a shining example of the best of America and what the projection of American values and influence used to look like on the international stage.

What America is losing

How many more smart, motivated men and women, like Sadia, are out there? Given the opportunity, how many more will carry back to their countries the values of democracy, free speech, equal rights, and an open and diverse society that represent the best of the American experiment?  Sadly, we may never find out. The current harsh rhetoric and restrictive policies and intentional delays on immigration and visa allocation have cast a shadow over the numbers of individuals seeking to attend, do research, or teach at American institutions of higher learning.

The facts are telling an irrefutable story of America’s loss. Following years of significant growth, the number of international students attending colleges and universities in the U.S. has declined precipitously. According to data from the U.S. State Department, the total number of F-1 visas—the visas that enable international students to attend school full time anywhere in the U.S.—declined from approximately 644,000 in 2015 to 394,000 in 2017.

The economic loss is significant as well. During the 2017-2018 academic year, international students attending American institutions of higher learning in states across the country contributed approximately $39 billion to the economy as a whole, helped to support the challenged budgets of colleges and universities from coast to coast, and contributed to supporting more than 455,000 jobs.

Loss of influence. Loss of dollars and jobs. Loss of access to the international brain bank. Loss of opportunity to influence the next generation of organizers and leaders like Sadia. This is not what winning looks like.

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As we in the U.S. watched the federal government shut down because of one man’s fixation on a border-wall boondoggle meant to exclude desperate families fleeing violence and poverty, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, an estimated 3.5 to 5 million women forcefully demonstrated that exclusion is not the only reason to build a wall.

Here’s the story of how millions of brave women came together to demand gender equality, respect, and inclusion by using their bodies as the building blocks to form a 385-mile-long human chain. They called their wall the Vanitha mathil, or the women’s wall.

The story begins in September 2018, when India’s supreme court overturned a centuries-old ban that forbade women of reproductive age from entering the Sabarimala Temple in Kerala. The Sabarimala Temple is an important annual pilgrimage destination for more than a million Hindus. Although the supreme court’s decision was groundbreaking, it failed to alter long-held religious beliefs about the impurity of women’s bodies. It also failed to stop the day-to-day shaming and discrimination of menstruating girls and women—who are forbidden to prepare food or even to step foot in a temple.

Since the ruling, the Hindu nationalist party and religious hardliners have ramped up their intimidation tactics. Female pilgrims have been attacked. Women between the ages of ten and fifty have been prevented from entering the temple. Journalists have been denied access and pushed out of the area. Police charged with protecting female worshipers have been battered with stones.

Women of all ages responded by pulling out their most powerful asset—themselves. Does their response sound familiar to those of you who took to the streets for women’s marches following the 2016 election? Or ran for office in 2018? Or decided to override guilt and shame to speak out about discrimination, intimidation, or sexual assault?

On New Year’s Day 2019, Karala’s women’s wall became the largest gathering of women demonstrating in support of gender equality in India’s history. The next day, two 40-year-old women under police protection entered Sabarimala Temple and offered their prayers. In defiance of the court, after the women left the temple was shut down for a cleansing ritual.

Speaking on behalf of the local government’s intention to uphold the court’s decision and reflecting on the clash of women’s demand for equal treatment and the intransigence of traditional religious beliefs, KK Sahilaja, minister for social justice in Kerala and a participant in the women’s wall, pulled no punches. “We stand for gender equality,” she said. “Those saying that women are impure should be ashamed of themselves. How can they say women are impure in front of God.”

I am not a Hindu, nor do I feel a connection to any religion. But that doesn’t matter. I recognize in the faces of the women and girls of Kerala the same determination of all women to fight for our right to be included.

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Every year, just as the summer is nearing its end, the world remembers. We remember the unconscionable use of the world’s deadliest weapons—nuclear weapons—seventy-three years ago, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This year, unlike in the years past, we no longer should be comforted solely by “never-agains” in speeches and statements of government officials marking the event. This year, for the first time in world’s history, there exists a credible and widely supported framework to deliver on the promise of the nuclear-weapons free world. A group of bold women played an essential role in its delivery.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (the Ban Treaty) came into existence in July 2017. This ambitious document spelled out a commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. It banned the making, testing, possession, use and threat of use of nuclear weapons.

More than 120 countries participated in its drafting, most of them from the global south – including the small island states whose populations are still reeling from the consequences of nuclear testing. Absent were, unsurprisingly, nine possessors of nuclear weapons (U.S., U.K., France, China, Russia, Pakistan, India, North Korea and Israel) and their respective allies (including almost all NATO members).

As of now, more than sixty states have signed onto the Treaty and fourteen have ratified it, slowly inching closer towards the goal of 50, when the treaty would become operational.

The road to the Treaty’s existence was a culmination of political courage and skillful diplomacy. But it is also the result of the decades of tireless advocacy by civil society movements, like the International Coalition to Ban Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recognized with a Nobel Peace Prize last year for its work.

ICAN follows the long line of anti-nuclear efforts which span as far back as the invention of the atomic bomb itself. They feature a diverse cast of characters, movements and well-meaning individuals from the U.S. and abroad. They have included environmentalists, hippies, young people, lawyers, physicians, scientists, and even committed nuns – Sister Megan Rice who broke into the high-security nuclear facility in Tennessee as an act of protest being among the most well-known.

Women have played an integral part in anti-nuclear activities in the U.S. and across the world. They organized and attended protests, produced scholarship and were instrumental in pushing for past diplomatic breakthroughs on nuclear testing ban treaties. They were also key to bringing about the Nuclear Ban Treaty.

Many of the civil society activists who took part in negotiations were women. ICAN’s leadership is made up of passionate and committed women and led by Beatrice Fihn, a proud mother of two. Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the nuclear blast in Hiroshima, also played an outsized role in speaking against nuclear weapons. She was a constant presence in the halls of the UN headquarters for the past several years, sharing her story of survival and lobbying diplomats to support the Ban.

Women were well represented in many country delegations negotiating the Treaty. The diplomats from Ireland stood out in this regard, for their team was composed solely of female Ambassador, experts and policy advisers. Despite this, women remain grossly underrepresented in disarmament diplomacy

Women who have delivered the Ban Treaty and are now working to mount a large coalition to ensure the Treaty ratified by as many countries as possible.  Their work should be supported, the role they played in bringing about the Treaty should be celebrated more widely known.

At a time when the number of social justice causes calling for our attention is ever-increasing, we must prioritize the call of the anti-nuclear weapons activists. Responding to their calls will  provide for safety and  security of our planet for many years to come.

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This fall, “single ladies” interested in ensnaring a man can take a course at St. Louis Community College, listed in the catalogue as “Girls’ Night Out:  “Marry Me Dishes.”

I stumbled onto this when the 2016 St. Louis Community College Continuing Education catalogue arrived in my mailbox. I’m not making this up. This is not an Onion story or a spoof. And if the course title wasn’t enough, things got even wackier when I read through the description. I can only hope that the course instructor wrote this with a wink, as a joke that we’d all get. But, living in Missouri as I do, and knowing how conservative some of our citizens are [We have a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage], I doubt that there’s any irony intended.

I invite you to judge for yourself. Here’s the verbatim wording of the class description. It’s listed, by the way, in the Personal Enrichment section of the catalogue. Read into that what you will…

Girls Night Out: “Marry Me Dishes”

Calling all single ladies! Say “goodbye” to the single lady status! Learn to prepare “marry me” dishes that will have him “put a ring on it!”  Start off the evening with a bacon-beer cheese dip that is perfect for his next tailgating event or home game party. We’ll prepare “marry me chicken”—a skillet Sicilian Chicken with a sun-dried tomato garlic-cream sauce that will impress your honey! Our lobster mashed potatoes will wow your man the next time you make his favorite steak. Finish off the night with the ultimate sweet for your sweetie—the deal-sealing “marry me” ultimate loaded chocolate chip cookies! There will be plenty of tasting plus you can take home any leftovers [bring a container]….

The class description doesn’t include this, but I wonder if participants will be climbing into a time machine and going back to 1956 during the 6:30 – 9:30 pm class period. That would seem to be a requirement, as the notion that “girls” need to attract men via their cooking skills is a giant leap backwards in social expectations.  [Not to mention that, according to this description, men like their steaks and have tailgating parties, while the women’s jobs, apparently, are to stay in the kitchen, anticipating their men’s needs, preparing their food, impressing them with their womanly cooking skills, and waiting for them to propose marriage.]

And, what if there’s a guy who likes to cook? Can he take this course? Who might he attract–gawd forbid?

The last time I saw a stereotype like this, it was written on the cover of my mother’s favorite cookbook [she’s 102 now, but it was her standby in our family’s kitchen.] Its title was: “The Settlement Cookbook: The Way to a Man’s Heart.”  It was first published in 1903.

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“Grandma” is a trifle of a movie with the socially redeeming characteristic of portraying an accepting attitude toward  abortions. Unlike most Hollywood films, broadcast-TV dramas and even many independent productions aimed at a mainstream audience, this movie normalizes abortion—portraying it as the legal medical procedure that it has been since 1973.

That’s different, because in so many movies depicting reproductive decision-making, the preferred outcome is that the woman, after some soul-searching (or pressure from parents, ministers, friends or even the father) decides to keep the baby. I’m not sure whose preferences are being expressed there, but that seems to be the “acceptable,” “uplifting, “feel-good” ending chosen by the majority of movies tackling—or just touching on—this subject.

The Grandma of this film is played by Lily Tomlin [a women’s rights advocate in “real life”] who is clearly comfortable in the role of the no-nonsense, wise-cracking, pot-smoking truth-teller. She gets embroiled in her teenage granddaughter’s quest for an abortion when she’s asked to contribute $500 to cover the fee for the procedure.

What sets this movie apart is that there’s no moralizing, no lecturing the granddaughter about the evils of terminating a pregnancy [except for some nasty harassment by anti-choice demonstrators awaiting her in the clinic parking lot]. The main characters—Grandma, the granddaughter and her uptight mother—all treat the abortion as a legal, non-shameful part of the healthcare landscape. No one is particularly overjoyed that the granddaughter has become pregnant—but neither do they scold her for making the personal choice to end her pregnancy. No one loves the idea of the abortion, either. Grandma remembers her scary, illegal abortion in the years before Roe v Wade. The granddaughter clearly feels nervous about the procedure and maybe even a bit conflicted about going through with it. It seems to me that those are the normal emotions that one would have when faced with the situation. She’s certainly not cavalier about it, as anti-reproductive zealots would have us believe is the case for women seeking abortions.

So, although the movie has some moments of gratuitously slapstick comedy [Grandma smacks her granddaughter’s jerk of a boyfriend in the nuts with his own hockey stick], it redeems itself by at least trying to present a sympathetic view of how abortions actually take place in real-world women’s clinics. [This is especially timely as politicians attempt to undermine, using faked and misleadingly edited videos as “evidence,” the work done by Planned Parenthood and other women’s clinics to help women get legal abortions as well as other critical reproductive health services.] I appreciated the filmmakers’ depiction of the clinic’s staff as caring and understanding of the difficult emotions a young pregnant woman might be feeling.

“Grandma” probably won’t win many awards—in fact, when anti-reproductive-rights activists figure out what’s in it, it may generate boycotts, protests and attempts at public shaming.[ It’s worth noting that, in my part of the world, this movie is being shown not at the big-box multiplexes, but at an independent cinema, where it’s less likely to draw attention to itself.]

It’s just such a sad commentary on the nature of contemporary political (and artistic) dialogue that a movie with a calm, matter-of-fact message about abortion is the exception to the rule.

The post “Grandma” offers a refreshing, accepting view of abortion appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m way past the age when worrying about menstruation is a big part of life. But I’ll never be too old to be outraged by the way men have—for millennia—cursed, shunned, denigrated and mocked women regarding the female, monthly reproductive cycle. So, while Donald Trump’s attack on Megyn Kelly is despicable, it’s not that unexpected or uncommon.

And, though I have aged out of the tampon era, I still vividly recall the anxiety that my period sparked every month: Did I have a tampon in my purse, just in case? Would I have an unusually heavy flow that might leak out and stain my clothes? At the time, I didn’t understand that those fears were part of the societal shame attached to menstruation. But they were.

Years after I reached puberty and was already fully immersed in my monthly, shame-tinged routine, I learned about the Orthodox Jewish practice of “family purity,” which dictated that a married Orthodox couple could not have sexual relations during the woman’s menstrual period. Among religious Jews, that dictum was taken as a matter of course, and because it was so far removed from my way of life, I didn’t think much about its implications. Even later, I learned about the many other religions and societies that had similar practices—all of which characterized women, because they bled monthly, as “unclean.”

I heard the “riding the rag” jokes. I joined in with the other girls who used code terms, like “the curse,” and “my little red friend” rather than call menstruation by its real name. I worried, like others back in the day when we wore “sanitary belts” and pads, that someone might notice the extra bulge created by a Kotex pad and figure out my embarrassing personal secret—that I was having my period.

It was only in the consciousness-raising 1970s that it began to dawn on me that it was absurd to allow myself to feel embarrassed by the natural rhythm of my reproductive cycle. And since then, my outrage has only grown.

Today, I can’t help but wonder how so-called “pro-life” Republicans can claim to value the lives of fetuses, while mocking the reproductive cycle itself. How can you be “pro-life” but anti-uterus and vagina?

So, I take great pleasure when I read that, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s disgusting remarks, women have been live-tweeting their periods to him using the hashtag #periodsarenotaninsult.

@realDonaldTrump — on the third day of my period AND still a functioning member of society! Who knew?!”

@realDonaldTrump Just finished menstruating. I still don’t like you. Guess it had nothing to do w/ my period,”

@realDonaldTrump I’m getting my period this week. I’ll make sure to keep you updated,

@realDonaldTrump Its called a vagina and you came out of one, thanks to her period! #periodsarenotaninsult oops!

And I find it very heartening to read that, as a protest against period shaming, Kiran Gandhi ran the London marathon without a tampon, allowing herself to finish the race with menstrual blood staining her running pants.

It’s also encouraging to see that Rupi Kaur managed to shame Instagram for deleting her photo depicting a situation that many women experience during their menstrual cycles—blood-stained pants. She reposted it on Facebook, and it went viral. I applaud Kaur’s effort to take these images, which she says, “are natural to women, but taboo to society, and make them normal again.”

Several teenaged girls I know have recently begun their periods. I wish that they could celebrate their entrance into womanhood—as girls in some societies do, with “moon ceremonies.” But I know that, instead, they are already feeling the embarrassment that our society still attaches to this critical—if, admittedly, inconvenient—aspect of being a woman. I can only hope that, during their reproductive years, American society will grow up a bit, too, and let women be women without shame.

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I just walked a half mile to a Subway restaurant, and it was the most stressful experience of my recent experience. Because I am a woman.

Sometime around 7:30 pm, I decided I wanted something to eat. Recently, I’ve been back at Webster University, living in the dorms while training for work before the rest of the students come back and classes begin. Since it’s technically still summer, though, there are no food options available on campus, so I looked for cheap food places nearby to fill my stomach. Subway is only a half-mile (a ten-minute walk, according to Google Maps) from where I was staying, so around 7:40 pm, I took off in that direction, thinking it was a close enough distance I didn’t need to bum a ride—I would be back really quickly.

By 7:43, just as I was leaving the residence area, I started to become a little nervous, realizing sunset was rapidly approaching. When I saw the first person on the street, I quickly pressed my keys between my fingers, as Law and Order plots started whispering through my mind. It wasn’t too hot or muggy, but I had started sweating profusely. I was beginning to mentally kick myself for not bringing the pepper spray I usually carry with me; my parents insisted I buy it so that when I’m walking home from night classes at 9:30 pm by myself, I am “safe.” I became hyper-aware of everyone and everything around me; the sound of every rabbit and squirrel running through a bush startling me and making me jump. I smiled tensely at everyone I saw, wary of anyone in arms-reach.

I should take a moment to note that this is by no means a shady or sketchy area in which I was walking; much of it was actually on or right by campus. I’ve never seen anyone suspicious around campus or in that vicinity; the area was well-lit, there were shops and apartments up and down the entire stretch of road I was walking. There was even a sidewalk for the convenience of walkers. And yet, still, I felt unsafe.

By the time I got to Subway a few minutes later, I was just relieved to be able to let my guard down for a second. And you can be sure that as I was leaving the restaurant, food in hand, I put the key between my fingers again and had several plans running through my head that, if I was approached maliciously, I would throw my drink at them and run, or I would knee them if they were too close or stab with the key. or I could run into that shop because I knew the staff well and they would help me. It was frightening. Halfway to campus– a quarter of a mile away– I was literally praying for my safety as I walk-ran. And by the time I got back to campus, I was almost shaking from the adrenaline flowing through my veins, thanking God that I was safe.

Again, there was no reason for most people to feel afraid in that situation. Literally none. But I’m a woman. And walking by myself close to nightfall for any length of time just gives me a moment to put into practice the litany of things I’ve been told to do to protect myself from the ever-present threat of an attack. All the little self-defense things I had picked up rushed through my brain as I realized I had violated the number one rule by walking alone by myself too close to nightfall.

The reason I’m sharing my experience is that I know it’s not a novel one– too many women can identify with it. In fact, it’s probably reasonably normal in comparison to many other women’s stories.

And, honestly, that kind of terror is part of the college experience for too many women. But that doesn’t mean it’s a four-years-and-done kind of thing; it’s forever. It is a terrifying, paralyzing fear always lying at the back of our minds, always questioning our choices and making us doubt that an even slightly risky decision (like going ten minutes away for Subway) could keep us safe.

Women are constantly threatened by the existence of men around them because all women have felt terrified for their safety, simply because they were alone. I dare you to find a woman who hasn’t. And that is indicative of a far larger issue within our society: Women never truly feel safe in their own company, always looking for a threat on the horizon, living a life dominated by fear.

And perhaps now you’re looking in this article for the quick 30-second fix to this problem, so you feel like you have done your part. But it’s not that easy. Honestly, I wish I had one for you. I really do, I really, really, really do. But it’s not that easy.

The post Walking in a “safe” neighborhood sparks fears shared by all women appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Most people are aware of the problems associated with the color pink.If you walk down the aisles at Toys “R” Us you will find at least one aisle that appears to be the victim of an exploding case of Pepto-Bismol. Everything is pink.

This is a somewhat new phenomenon. I’ve never been fond of that particular shade even as a child. I made sure nothing I owned was pink and, that wasn’t difficult to do back when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Today’s girls have a much more difficult time avoiding the pinkification factor. Anything marketed to young females has to be bathed in it.

The problem, however, is far worse than battling a single color. Simply put, girls are no longer in style. Manufacturers oust female characters when using familiar pop culture subjects. The Justice League will often forget to show Wonder Woman. The Avengers will only highlight the male members. I recently read an article in the Pigtail Pairs & Ballcap Buddies Blog about a shopping trip looking for Big Hero 6 fabric to turn into pillows. To their dismay, all of the fabric choices left out two of the six heroes. Naturally, they were the female members of the team. When the shopper wrote to the manufacturer to ask why, she received a letter that said boys didn’t want girls on their merchandise because, and I quote, “…eeeww girls! Yuck! Haha”. With the help of a write-in campaign from the blog’s readers, the manufacturer promised to change.

It reminded me of a similar experience I had last year. I went to the Milwaukee County Museum and, as I always do, I dropped by the gift shop on my way out. I love the museum gift shop. It always has fascinating things like fossils, rocks, toys, games, books and much more.

On this particular trip I found an amazing group of figures representing mankind’s evolutionary voyage. It included Australopithecus afarensis, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis, and Homo sapiens sapiens. They are a handsome bunch, and yet something was terribly wrong. I wondered why there was not a single female in our evolutionary history. Not even the most famous skeleton ever found — Lucy the Australopithecus — is represented. In fact, on nearly every television show that purports to show evolution, Lucy is spotlighted and then it’s all men from then on, no matter how many female skeletons have been discovered. I think it is fair to say that among thinking people it can be agreed that women did play a part in evolution.

The Evolution of Man figures [shown above] are a product of Safari Ltd. so I sent them an email. After discussing how much I enjoyed the figures I made a request:

“I do have one suggestion for a future set, if one occurs. Don’t take the title ‘Evolution of Man’ so literally and include a couple of females. I have it on good authority that females did exist in prehistoric times. If nothing else, you could model the Australopithecus on Lucy. And if you make the Homo Erectus female, one could avoid all those bad, dirty jokes when introducing them to people who are not as familiar with our ancestors. Most of all, it’s important for our daughters to feel represented. There is a tendency to pretend only males existed in prehistory, with the single exception of Lucy. In film, books, and TV one is far more likely to see males in every recreation with, at most, a blurry female cooking way in the background. You have an opportunity with these figures to let little girls feel connected to our past.”

Within a few days I received a response:

“Dear Joanna,

Thank you for your email. We enjoy receiving emails from Safari Ltd. customers and fans alike. Any information they can share with us, allows us to make products that they will enjoy.

I’ve forward [sic] your suggestion onto [sic] our product development team. […]

If you have any other suggestions, please do not hesitate to contact us at any time.

Thank You,

Stacie “Beavs” Beavers
Data & Market Analyst
Toy Workshop

Although she certainly didn’t promise anything, I hope that they would at least think about including females in some of their toy sets in the future. The evolution set remains unchanged, but I did see a female pilot in a different series.

Please don’t take everyday sexism for granted. We need to write letters. We need to tell the people who make the toys that girls deserve every bit as much attention as boys. We need to tell them there are more colors in the rainbow than pink. We need to remind them “Princess” is not the only female profession. We need to demand that female characters in established teams have to be represented in merchandising.

It may seem like a small thing, but there is nothing inconsequential about it. Normalizing girls as being “icky” and unworthy of inclusion will follow the children who learn that lesson for the rest of their lives, male and female.

The post Hey, toy makers: Where are the non-princess girls? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Nicolas Kristof, columnist for the New York Times, encourages his readers to express their views on his commentaries. But where are the women? How many post their opinions?

Recently Kristof suggested that his readers look at a blog posting on his site by Emma Pierson, “How to get more women to join the debate.”  (Pierson is a student currently studying statistics at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University). She has discovered a major gender gap when reviewing comments made on The New York Times website.

Women were clearly underrepresented in my data. They made only a quarter of comments, even though their comments got more recommendations from other readers on average. Even when they did speak up, they tended to cluster in stereotypically “female” areas: they were most common on articles about parenting, caring for the old, fashion and dining. (Women got more recommendations than men on most of the sports blogs, but they still made, for example, only 5 percent of comments on the soccer blog.)

It seems unlikely that these effects are confined to The New York Times; studies of online commenting find broad signs of inequality. (While women are well-represented on some websites, like the image-sharing site Pinterest, these sites do not tend to focus on expressing and defending opinions. Online forums that do often have mostly male commenters: examples include Wikipedia edit pages, the social news site Reddit, and the question-answering sites Quora and Stack Overflow.)

These differences, according to Pierson, “may have profound implications for media, gender equality, and even our democracy.” She says, “When one gender is underrepresented, the views that are heard will not fairly represent the views that are held.”

She notes that even when the topic is sexual assault, the majority of comments come from men and the reason may be that women fear being harassed online. When women do comment, it tends to be in reference to typically “female” subjects such as parenting, fashion or caring for the elderly. But when people share a remark made by another, the comments from the women, even those written on a sports blog, are highly recommended and receive positive responses.

Pierson notes that most online comments do not win prizes for “profundity, and that

“…while we focus instinctively on how to get women to talk more, there’s another possibility: that men should talk less.”

She also offers some practical ways to encourage more women to add their comments to online forums:

There are also ways online newspapers specifically might increase female participation. Increasing the number of women writing articles might increase the number of women commenting on articles. Women are underrepresented among newspaper reporters, and in my data, articles written by women had a higher percentage of comments from women, even when I controlled for the section of the newspaper in which the article appeared. Telling women that their comments received more recommendations might also encourage them to comment more; previous studies have found that women are less likely than men to persist in commenting when their comments do not receive positive responses.

So women, follow Pierson’s advice, start tapping on those computer keys and “don’t worry too much about whether your comment is worthy of Cicero” or whether “your comment is inane.”

The bottom line: “Our democracy will function better if we get a gender-balanced sample of stupidity.”

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I think by this point we all know I think feminism is absolutely fantastic- I mean, women’s empowerment is human empowerment! And I think we should all celebrate it and praise it to everyone we meet and be super excited and scream it from rooftops and shout it on radio stations and paste it like literally everywhere and just feminism out everything…

But some people take it too far- and you know based on that last statement that it really is too far– by capitalizing on that and using feminism to make themselves money. Female empowerment should not be a gimmick for your company to sell more shampoo or makeup or chocolate or whatever you’re actually advertising.

As much as I like Pantene’s #ShineStrong movement and the videos they have put out for it, I feel it detracts from the message to end all the “feel good and be brave and you and more power to you” with “and then come buy our shampoo and make your hair look gorgeous so all the men in your life can see you powerfully whip your hair.” Excuse me; what?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOjNcZvwjxI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzL-vdQ3ObA

Ditto, Covergirl’s #GirlsCan and Nike Women’s Voices

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ighxU1vYw

I guess Verizon is slightly better for not advertising makeup or shampoo or other make yourself beautiful for the guys products, but still, Verizon isn’t “Inspiring Her Mind” with their phones, so they shouldn’t be advertising feminism as a product they’re selling.

Ditto Always’ #LikeAGirl

Don’t get me wrong, I think all the videos are absolutely fantabulous. I love that Verizon wants more women in STEM fields; that Always wants “‘run like a girl’ to also win the race;” that Pantene wants women to stop apologizing for who they are and for the world to stop double standards and labels that demean women; that Nike wants women to not fear the criticism of their male colleagues; that Covergirl wants to show that women can do anything and everything they want. I just don’t think it should all be in the name of “help us make us money.”

On the other hand, Snickers tried (maybe) to empower women with this commercial, but fell terribly far from the mark. Really? Are you (Snickers) saying men, when normal, could never shout empowering and positive things to women- that men, in their natural state, are actually just degrading catcallers? Well great job, then, Snickers, for demeaning men and women in just one minute.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSO_525Cuzw

At the same time, at least they’re trying. Hardee’s obviously isn’t. It looooves objectifying women. And Axe, too. Axe’s entire campaign for its body spray is that if men wear Axe, they’ll get hundreds of scantily clad women flocking to them from across oceans.

So thank you, companies celebrating feminism, even if you’re doing it in a slightly flawed manner. And companies that treat women like pieces of meat (with breasts), up yours..

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