Skip to main content

Diigo Home
Home/ Groups/ XD3102 - Gender Studies
Rss Feed
Sort By: Most Recent | Popular Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics | Images Simple Middle
Weiye Loh

The Dangers of Reading Mark Simpson (with apologies to regular QRG readers) «... - 0 views

quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/...ologies-to-regular-qrg-readers

Feminism Misandry Metrosexuality

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 May 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 20 May 12
     
    feminism is fuelled by misandry and a need to present men as the oppressors of women.
Weiye Loh

"Power to Asia's Women" by Vishakha N. Desai and Astrid S. Tuminez | Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...power-to-asia-s-women

Gender Equality Asia Feminism

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 May 12 - No Cached
  • Data for indicators of women’s leadership in Asia, though limited, show that the Philippines, Australia, and New Zealand are consistently among the top performers. With the addition of economic and occupational parameters – such as women in senior management positions, promotion rates, remuneration, and wage equality – these countries are joined by Singapore, Mongolia, Thailand, and Malaysia.
  • Some of the Asian economies with the highest human development rankings, such as Japan and South Korea, are among the worst in terms of women in senior management, wage equality, remuneration, and political empowerment. Singapore and Hong Kong, too, display significant gender gaps in leadership, despite high human development.
  • Weiye Loh on 19 May 12
     
    few women in Asia make it to the top. Social norms undervalue girls and women, with sex-selection abortions resulting in an estimated 1.3 million girls per year not being born in China and India alone.
    CommentsStill, women have benefited from Asia's economic development. According to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2011, rising prosperity has narrowed gender inequality in many countries. Women are making progress in health, education, economic opportunity, and political empowerment, which they can leverage for future leadership.
Weiye Loh

Victim Feminism Speaks! « Guardian Watch - 0 views

graunwatch.wordpress.com/...victim-feminism-speaks

Feminism Whatabouttehmenz Misandry

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 May 12 - No Cached

  • I responded to this horrendous paragraph in Moore’s piece:

    ‘Still, we all get bamboozled with the choices women now have. Despite everyday stories of violence and abuse against women, we are now to refer to prostitution as “sex work”. I still await the dinner party where middle-class parents tell me: “Tom is doing his law conversion but even though Charlotte hasn’t done her Sats she already says she want to do sex work! We always knew she was entrepreneurial.” (my emphasis).

    I said:

    ‘as a woman who refuses the role of ‘victim’ I find this article insulting.

    How can I assert my agency with people like Ms Moore demanding that I fit into the ‘poor little victim’ box like a good little girl?

  • feminists on twitter silenced men critics, with the witty hashtag #whatabouttehmenz . But as Mark Simpson wrote in his article about misandry being the acceptable prejudice, this is a very sexist tactic:
  • It’s a rather telling phrase because it tries to project the child­ish­ness of the peo­ple deploy­ing it against the ones they want to shut up. Iron­i­cally, it also seems to depend on the ‘patri­ar­chal’ notion of sham­ing the whin­ing boy who doesn’t just sup it up ‘like a man’.’
Weiye Loh

Shelley Bridgeman: Women pathetically cling to different titles - Life & Style - NZ Her... - 0 views

www.nzherald.co.nz/...article.cfm

Language Feminism Singapore

shared by Weiye Loh on 12 May 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 12 May 12
     
    I passed through Singapore twice last month and that's why I read a few issues of The Straits Times. Readers are invited to write in to Singapore's English-language newspaper. The rules for doing so are set out in small type. Evidently, women must "indicate Miss, Ms, Mrs or Madam."

    What the? Never mind that "Ms" was invented in order that the archaic "Miss" and "Mrs" may be consigned to the history books but, hey, the ladies in Singapore have another option just in case, you know, they happen to be in charge of a house of prostitution - or something.

    But seriously, how can we expect men to take our titles seriously if we can't decide what's appropriate and what's not? Even if you remove "madam" from that robust smorgasbord of options from which people of the fairer gender may choose, it's kind of pathetic to have to decide between three different titles. Isn't it, ladies? Must we really cling onto relics from another era?
Weiye Loh

Singapore Feminism: Fertility and Transnational Immigration « Women Suffrage ... - 0 views

womensuffrage.org/?p=1013

AWARE FDW Feminism

shared by Weiye Loh on 12 May 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 12 May 12
     
    Only recently have Singapore's feminists championed domestic workers. Considerable media attention on abusive working conditions has prompted them, as in Canada, to connect racism, disadvantaged international domestic workers, and women's disproportionate responsibility for caregiving. Protest is led by the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) - a nationally recognized women's organization, which since its formation in 1985 has actively rallied for gender equality in education, marriage, employment and reproductive rights. AWARE aligns itself closely with Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), a non-governmental organization campaigning for the 'Day Off campaign' aimed at encouraging employers to voluntarily give domestic workers a day off a week ("Day Off", 2011). TWC2 has also joined with the National Committee of UNIFEM Singapore and the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economic (HUMO) to demand government remedy. Their demands have brought occasional redress. On March 6th, 2012, a new law required all employers to give their foreign domestic workers a day off per week starting January 1, 2013 (Tan 2012). Feminists will need to monitor its impact.

    Fertility and immigration in Singapore as elsewhere have always been connected to nation-building. They simultaneously raise questions about women's rights and the relations among different groups of women. Today the feminist movement in this island-nation has begun to address such concerns and join similar protests across the region and the world.
Weiye Loh

Ruth Barcan Marcus: Philosopher - NYTimes.com - 0 views

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...woman-fighter-philosopher

Philosophy Gender Stereotype Academia Yale-NUS

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Apr 12
     
    When she returned to Yale in 1973, Marcus was one of only two tenured women in the faculty of arts and sciences. In a recent correspondence, the scholar and M.I.T. professor Margery Resnick, a junior colleague at the time, described Marcus's role among the women on campus:

    Ruth and I were constantly asked to serve on "how to" panels for undergraduate women. "How to be a female professional," "How to have a husband and profession," "How to be a professional woman with children," etc. … I remember one panel at which a student asked: "But how can you be assertive, direct and professional and still have the men in the department like you?" [Ruth answered:] "You can't. Whether you smile and bring them coffee, or you demand to be treated equally, they will not like you. So my only advice is to speak your mind, be yourself, and be professional"… Ruth was a constant supporter of every woman faculty member who got in trouble because of her ideas ….[She] gave us hope that things could change.
Weiye Loh

Ozy's Law | No, Seriously, What About Teh Menz? - 0 views

noseriouslywhatabouttehmenz.wordpress.com/...ozys-law

Misandry Misogyny Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • This isn’t to say that in any given case, the misandry and misogyny are necessarily equivalent. Sometimes they are, other times one or the other definitely predominates. But they’re always paired. Often they’re just an unspoken assumption, something people are taking for granted as axiomatic. The problem is that it’s possible to question one half of an unspoken assumption without even really examining the other half.
  • you get women who (rightly) complain about the wage gap without seeing how men are made into “success objects”. You get men who complain about the stupid-manchild-husband trope in media, without seeing that it always comes with the humorless-killjoy-wife trope. You get people unable to see past their own sense of grievance to look at how the system that’s hurting them is hurting other people.
  • Feminism has been having this problem for a while, and is only starting to engage with it. More and more feminists are realizing that men’s issues have gone undiscussed for a long time, and are too intricately bound up in women’s issues to be ignored any longer. This is evidenced by, for example, the existence of this blog and the many incoming links to it from prominent feminist spaces. I think that’s a good trend and one to encourage, especially given how, if we’re taking Ozy’s Law as true, most feminism has been effectively blind in one eye. A lot of ugly stuff and a lot of pain has gone unnoticed by a movement dedicated to unpacking and examining the stuff that used to go unnoticed. That’s not good, but at least it’s starting to change.
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Apr 12
     
    It is impossible to form a stereotype about either of the two primary genders without simultaneously forming a concurrent and complementary stereotype about the other.

    Or, more simply: Misandry mirrors misogyny.
Weiye Loh

Hen: Sweden's new gender neutral pronoun causes controversy. - Slate Magazine - 0 views

www.slate.com/...onoun_causes_controversy_.html

Gender Gender Stereotype Gender Equality Feminism Sweden Language Gender Neutrality

shared by Weiye Loh on 28 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Ironically, in the effort to free Swedish children from so-called normative behavior, gender-neutral proponents are also subjecting them to a whole set of new rules and new norms as certain forms of play become taboo, language becomes regulated, and children's interactions and attitudes are closely observed by teachers. One Swedish school got rid of its toy cars because boys "gender-coded" them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys. Another preschool removed "free playtime" from its schedule because, as a pedagogue at the school put it, when children play freely "stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented. In free play there is hierarchy, exclusion, and the seed to bullying." And so every detail of children's interactions gets micromanaged by concerned adults, who end up problematizing minute aspects of children's lives, from how they form friendships to what games they play and what songs they sing.
  • Weiye Loh on 28 Apr 12
     
    . In a recent interview for Vice magazine, Jan Guillou, one of Sweden's most well-known authors, referred to proponents of hen as "feminist activists who want to destroy our language." Other critics believe it can be psychologically and socially damaging, especially for children. Elise Claeson, a columnist and a former equality expert at the Swedish Confederation of Professions, has said that young children can become confused by the suggestion that there is a third, "in-between" gender at a time when their brains and bodies are developing. Adults should not interrupt children's discovery of their gender and sexuality, argues Claeson. She told the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, that "gender ideologues" have managed to change the curriculum to establish that schools should actively counter gender roles.
Weiye Loh

"Cancer by the Numbers" by John Allen Paulos | Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...cancer-by-the-numbers

Data Interpretation Statistics Cost Benefits Harm Cancer Screening Health

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Apr 12 - No Cached

  • The USPSTF recently issued an even sharper warning about the prostate-specific antigen test for prostate cancer, after concluding that the test’s harms outweigh its benefits. Chest X-rays for lung cancer and Pap tests for cervical cancer have received similar, albeit less definitive, criticism.

    CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe next step in the reevaluation of cancer screening was taken last year, when researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy announced that the costs of screening for breast cancer were often minimized, and that the benefits were much exaggerated. Indeed, even a mammogram (almost 40 million are given annually in the US) that detects a cancer does not necessarily save a life.

    CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe Dartmouth researchers found that, of the estimated 138,000 breast cancers detected annually in the US, the test did not help 120,000-134,000 of the afflicted women. The cancers either were growing so slowly that they did not pose a problem, or they would have been treated successfully if discovered clinically later (or they were so aggressive that little could be done).

  • Weiye Loh on 25 Apr 12
     
    It is difficult to communicate medical risk to a large audience, especially when official recommendations conflict with emotional narratives. That is why, when the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) in 2009 presented its guidelines for breast cancer screening, which recommended against routine screenings for asymptomatic women in their 40's and biennial, rather than annual, mammograms for women over 50, the public responded with confused fury.

    Illustration by Paul Lachine
    CommentsThe key to understanding this response is to be found in the nebulous zone between mathematics and psychology. People's discomfort with the findings stemmed largely from faulty intuition: if earlier and more frequent screening increases the likelihood of detecting a possibly fatal cancer, then more screening is always desirable. If more screening can detect breast cancer in asymptomatic women in their 40's, wouldn't it also detect cancer in women in their 30's? And, if so, why not, reductio ad absurdum, begin monthly mammograms at age 15?
Weiye Loh

Networking and pay: Contact sports | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/21538162

Network Gender Equality Work Income Divide

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • , there is only a marginal pay difference between men and women when it comes to non-executive directors, and no difference in the effectiveness of their networks. It is possible that this reflects pressure for “gender quotas” on corporate boards. Women are able to find their way onto shortlists for lower-paid, non-executive positions. But that’s not where the real power lies.
  • Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 12
     
    Among executive-board members, women earn 17% less than their male counterparts. There are plenty of plausible explanations for this disparity, from interruptions to women's careers to old-fashioned discrimination. But the authors find that this pay gap can be fully explained by the effect of executives' networks. Men can leverage a large network into more senior positions or a seat on a more lucrative board; women don't seem to be able to.
Weiye Loh

Christian Groups Take Issue With Anti-Bullying Laws - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ligious-freedom_n_1406757.html

Bullying Religion Christianity Homosexuality

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 22 Apr 12
     
    Anti-bullying backlash doesn't only come from Christian groups. Orthodox Jewish and Christian groups came together in Toronto last year to protest an anti-bullying measure "as a vehicle to indoctrinate children into embracing a new sexual revolution." It focused on the measure's call to establish a gay-straight alliance, and add support for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities.

    "To force, especially Christian, classrooms or schools to have homosexual clubs would, of course, be an affront to their family values," said Charles McVety, president of Christian Canada College. "And what does this have to do with bullying? Nothing."
Weiye Loh

"How Much Should Sex Matter?" by Peter Singer and Agata Sagan | Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...how-much-should-sex-matter-

Sex Gender Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • wherever homosexual relationships are lawful, the obstacles to gay and lesbian marriage would vanish if the state did not require the spouses to state their sex. The same would apply to adoption.
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Apr 12
     
    one may wonder whether it is really necessary for us to ask people as often as we do what sex they are. On the Internet, we frequently interact with people without knowing their gender. Some people place high value on controlling what information about them is made public, so why do we force them, in so many situations, to say if they are male or female?
    Is the desire for such information a residue of an era in which women were excluded from a wide range of roles and positions, and thus denied the privileges that go with them? Perhaps eliminating the occasions on which this question is asked for no good reason would not only make life easier for those who can't be squeezed into strict categories, but would also help to reduce inequality for women. It could also prevent injustices that occasionally arise for men, for example, in the provision of parental leave.
Weiye Loh

Barbara Kay: Women are not always the 'gentler sex' | Full Comment | National Post - 0 views

fullcomment.nationalpost.com/...are-not-always-the-gentler-sex

Rape Gender Stereotype Feminism Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • McGill professor of Social Work Myriam Denov, who did her Phd thesis on female sex offenders, notes, as recently as 1984, a study proclaimed that “pedophilia does not exist at all in women.”
  • According to a 2004 U.S. Department of Education mass study of university students, 57% of students reporting child sexual abuse cited a male offender, and 42% reported a female offender. Interestingly, 65% of the survivors of female abuse who opened up to a therapist, doctor or other professional were not believed on their first disclosure. Overall, 86% of those who tried to tell anyone at all about their experience were not believed.
  • According to a 1996 report from the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (NCCAN), about 25% of child sexual abuse is committed by women, but that figure may be low, because survivors are far more conflicted and shamed in admitting abuse by their mothers than by fathers.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • In one study of 17,337 survivors of childhood sexual abuse, 23% reported a female-only perpetrator and 22% reported both male and female. A U.S. Department of Justice report finds that, in 2008, 95% of all youths reporting sexual misconduct by staff member in state juvenile facilities said their victimization experiences included victimization by female personnel, who made up 42% of the staff.
  • Dr. Paul Federoff, a forensic psychiatrist and Co-Director of the Sexual Behaviors Clinic at the Royal Ottawa Mental Health Centre, says that “there are a lot of women who do sexually abuse children, but they get away with it.” Daycare centres, schools and homes make propitious terrain for predators. One study found 8% of female perpetrators were teachers and 23% were babysitters.
  • There are three types of female sex offenders: those who are predisposed to it and will abuse very young children, exactly like men; those who are “male-accompanied,” like Karla Homolka (alive and well, and the mother of three children in Montreal); and the “teacher-lover” type, like the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau, who seduced and, after a stint in prison, married her former student.

  • Victorian chivalry and 21st century feminism would seem to make strange bedfellows, but in their equally unrealistic characterization of women as the always “gentler sex,” they condemn both male and female victims of female-perpetrated abuse to silence and second-class social status.

    To err is human. Are women fully human? Then stop treating them like saints or permanent moral infants.

  • While the first two types are universally detested, the third type is problematic, because it is often assumed, even by law enforcement, that older women cannot coerce sex, or that teenage boys are flattered and empowered by an older woman’s sexual mentorship. Boys do act out their confusion and anxiety differently than girls do, but that doesn’t mean many of them aren’t damaged by the relationships, or that the law should be applied to women abusers with any less rigour.
  • Weiye Loh on 11 Apr 12
     
    Most rapists were subjected to some form of sexual abuse in childhood. A startling amount is perpetrated by females. Peer-reviewed studies conclude that between 60-80% of "rapists, sex offenders and sexually aggressive men" were sexually abused by a female.
Weiye Loh

Miss Representation: A Review | the kent ridge common - 0 views

kentridgecommon.com/?p=14581

Representation Media Gender Stereotype Feminism

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • the thing that unsettles me most about Miss Representation is its glaring lack of sufficient representation for women of color, women with disabilities, and women of less privilege than the well-to-do upper-middle class CEOs, politicians, and celebrities that we see on screen. As professors and students alike pointed out in the panel discussion after the film, one can’t help but wonder if this approach is entirely too self-defeating. While the film’s aim is to point out the misrepresentation of women in the media, does it misrepresent women in the process of doing so?
  • The staggering statistics about how much of the media industry is owned and controlled by men and how lacking the industry is in gender equality is equally shocking.
Weiye Loh

The Absurd Myths Porn Teaches Us About Sex | | AlterNet - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...yths_porn_teaches_us_about_sex

Pornography Sexuality Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12
     
    Young people who have learned about sex from watching porn have a treasure trove of sadly mistaken beliefs and misconceptions about sexuality.
Weiye Loh

BBC News - The Afghan girls who live as boys - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/...magazine-15262680

Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12 - No Cached

  • Ms Rahfhat's husband, Ezatullah Rafhat, thinks having a son is a symbol of prestige and honour.

    "Whoever came [to our house] would say: 'Oh, we're sorry for you not having a son.' So we thought it would be a good idea to disguise our daughter, as she wanted this too."

  • The tradition has existed in Afghanistan for centuries. According to Daud Rawish, a sociologist in Kabul, it may have started when Afghans had to fight their invaders and for this women needed to be disguised as men.

    But Qazi Sayed Mohammad Sami, head of the Balkh Human Rights Commission, calls it a breach of human rights.

    "We cannot change someone's gender for a while. You cannot change a girl to a boy for a short period of time. It's against humanity," he says.

    The tradition has had a damaging effect on some girls who feel they have missed out on essential childhood memories as well as losing their identity.

    For others it has been good experiencing freedoms they would never have had if they had lived as girls.

    But for many the key question is: will there be a day when Afghan girls get as much freedom and respect as boys?

  • Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12
     
    For economic and social reasons, many Afghan parents want to have a son. This preference has led to some of them practising the long-standing tradition of Bacha Posh - disguising girls as boys.
Weiye Loh

Gender 'not a big issue', Workplace Success, Singapore Jobs, Job Resources - STJobs - 0 views

www.stjobs.sg/...52661

Gender Equality Glass Ceiling Power

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12 - No Cached

  • Ms Tan Gek Khim, senior director at the Management Development Institute of Singapore, said glass ceilings, if they exist at all, should have been shattered long ago.

    'Women should not stifle themselves by harbouring negative perceptions. They should not let the proverbial 'glass ceiling' hamper them in their aspirations for higher positions,' she says.

    'Such perceived constraints serve only to perpetuate the weaknesses of women.'

    Ms Monica Sun, president of Henkel Singapore and Malaysia and its vice-president for the adhesive technologies unit in South-east Asia, adds: 'I believe the glass ceiling can be only oneself.

    'If a woman has an aspiration, and if she is determined and if she works hard, then the ceiling is where she sets it for herself.'

  • Companies do not have separate requirements for female and male leaders, though men need to fight the natural tendency to hire another male in a senior position as that provides a level of comfort and familiarity, says Ms Kerry Condon, recruitment firm AMS' head of client services for Asia Pacific.

    'Having women in leadership roles signals that this is an organisation... that is looking to cultivate a culture of collaboration.'

    Ultimately, it is the leader's capabilities that matter, regardless of gender.

  • Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12
     
    GENDER diversity has become the latest catchphrase in corporate circles with much lamenting about the lack of women numbers.

    For some women in power, gender and the glass ceiling are not always big issues in their business life.

    'Don't make every issue out to be about gender,' says Ms Teo Lay Lim, Accenture's country managing director for Singapore and managing director for Asean.

    Being a female leader in a male-dominated world, for instance, is not a gender issue to her.

    'Seniority in any job is tough as the scope and complexity of your role will change, your span of control is broader and there will be more moving parts in your day-to-day position.'

    Women who moan about the glass ceiling might be better off taking charge and defining their own destinies.
1 - 20 of 399 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page
Apply to join this group
Move to top