Female Supremacy Articles - Page 29
Women are getting more beautiful
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
The Sunday Times
July 26, 2009
FOR the female half of the population, it may bring a satisfied smile. Scientists have found that evolution is driving women to become ever more beautiful, while men remain as aesthetically unappealing as their caveman ancestors.
The researchers have found beautiful women have more children than their plainer counterparts and that a higher proportion of those children are female. Those daughters, once adult, also tend to be attractive and so repeat the pattern.
Over generations, the scientists argue, this has led to women becoming steadily more aesthetically pleasing, a “beauty race” that is still on. The findings have emerged from a series of studies of physical attractiveness and its links to reproductive success in humans.
In a study released last week, Markus Jokela, a researcher at the University of Helsinki, found beautiful women had up to 16% more children than their plainer counterparts. He used data gathered in America, in which 1,244 women and 997 men were followed through four decades of life. Their attractiveness was assessed from photographs taken during the study, which also collected data on the number of children they had.
This builds on previous work by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, who found that good-looking parents were far more likely to conceive daughters. He suggested this was an evolutionary strategy subtly programmed into human DNA.
He cited two findings from the Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a US government-backed study that is monitoring more than 15,000 Americans. The measurements include objective assessments of physical attractiveness.
One finding was that women were generally regarded by both sexes as more aesthetically appealing than men. The other was that the most attractive parents were 26% less likely to have sons.
Kanazawa said: “Physical attractiveness is a highly heritable trait, which disproportionately increases the reproductive success of daughters much more than that of sons.
“If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable, it logically follows that women over many generations gradually become more physically attractive on average than men.”
In men, by contrast, good looks appear to count for little, with handsome men being no more successful than others in terms of numbers of children. This means there has been little pressure for men’s appearance to evolve.
The findings coincide with the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution first described the forces that shape all species.
Even he, however, might have been surprised by the subtlety of the effects now being detected by researchers looking into human mating.
The heritability of attractiveness is widely accepted. When Elizabeth Jagger became a model, her mother, the former model Jerry Hall, said: “It’s in her genes.”
Women may take consolation in the finding that men are subject to other types of evolutionary pressure.
Gayle Brewer, a psychology lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire, said: “Men and women seek different things in their partners.
“For women, looks are much less important in a man than his ability to look after her when she is pregnant and nursing, periods when women are vulnerable to predators. Historically this has meant rich men tend to have more wives and many children. So the pressure is on men to be successful.”
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Fixing the Economy? It's Women's Work.
By Katty Kay and Claire Shipman
Washington Post
Sunday, July 12, 2009
While the pinstripe crowd fixates on troubled assets, a stalled stimulus and mortgage remedies, it turns out that a more sure-fire financial fix is within our grasp -- and has been for years. New research says a healthy dose of estrogen may be the key not only to our fiscal recovery, but also to economic strength worldwide.
The sexy new discussion in policy circles around the world, thanks to the recession, is whether a significant shift of power from men to women is underway -- or whether it should be. Accounting giant Ernst & Young pulled out charts and graphs at a recent power lunch in Washington with female lawmakers to argue a provocative bottom line: Companies with more women in senior management roles make more money. The latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine sweepingly predicts the "death of macho." Economists at Davos this year speculated that the presence of more women on Wall Street might have averted the downturn. Adding to this debate is the fact that the laid-off victims of this recession are overwhelmingly men.
All those right-brain skills disparaged as soft in the roaring '90s are suddenly 21st-century-hot, while cocky is experiencing a slow fizzle.
The numbers make a compelling case. The studies Ernst & Young rounded up show that women can make the difference between economic success and failure in the developing world, between good and bad decision-making in the industrialized world, and between profit and loss in the corporate world. Their conclusion: American companies would do well with more senior women.
And it's not only one study, but at least half a dozen, from a broad spectrum of organizations such as Columbia University, McKinsey & Co., Goldman Sachs and Pepperdine University, that document a clear relationship between women in senior management and corporate financial success. By all measures, more women in your company means better performance.
Pepperdine found that the Fortune 500 firms with the best records of putting women at the top were 18 to 69 percent more profitable than the median companies in their industries. McKinsey looked at the top-listed European companies and found that greater gender diversity in management led to higher-than-average stock performance.
Is there a magic number of women? In some cases, it's just three. Catalyst, a research firm focused on women and business, found that Fortune 500 companies with three or more women in senior management positions score higher on top measures of organizational excellence. In addition, companies with three or more women on their boards outperformed the competition on all measures by at least 40 percent.
It's time to admit the obvious. Men and women are different, and our management styles are different. Research by the University of Pittsburgh and Cambridge University, among others, finds that some of those differences are intrinsic, thanks to hormones.
Gender stereotypes aren't politically correct, but the research broadly finds that testosterone can make men more prone to competition and risk-taking. Women, on the other hand, seem to be wired for collaboration, caution and long-term results.
According to a 30-year study of fund managers released last month by the National Council for Research on Women, female investors and professional money managers used more measured strategies. They didn't take huge risks, but they also didn't lose big. Their returns were consistent. Men took larger risks and wound up with results that varied more widely. A study by the French Fund association found that funds managed by women had more consistent results over one-year, three-year and five-year measurements. Female-managed funds weren't usually top performers, but they were never at the bottom.
Whatever the future, we hardly need to explain why, after all the trouble the testosterone-infused Wall Street culture brought us, a bit of that caution would be a healthy ingredient in our financial mix.
If that all seems too touchy-feely for left-brainers, here's more hard math. The "diversity prediction theorem" is part of the most cutting-edge thinking about best business practices. Scott Page, an economist at the University of Michigan, uses mathematical models to demonstrate that a diverse group will solve a complicated business problem better than a homogeneous group. In fact, diversity is even more important than expertise. In other words, a bunch of white male brainiacs won't usually reach the best conclusions.
There's a sound business reason why Norway now mandates that corporate boards be 40 percent female. Why Iceland, after its embarrassing financial mess, put major banks and its government in female hands. And why Hermes, the only French company to outperform expectations during the recession, also has, you guessed it, a management structure dominated by women.
Americans aren't so enamored of social engineering, of course, so how do we get to that profitable mix? To us, the answer is clear. Professional women have been leaving the workplace in droves, and we need to stop the brain drain. Recent studies show that almost a third of professional women opt out at some point in their careers and, strikingly, that MBAs are more likely than lawyers or doctors to choose to stay home with their children.
Beyond a certain point, many women find that the costs to family of a high-octane career are just too great. We need to recognize that the glass ceiling is in part a self-imposed, defensive perimeter. But we can't afford to have women take themselves out of the running for top slots. And the only way to prevent that is changing the workplace to allow us the freedom to fit in our personal lives.
Luckily, that freedom makes economic sense, too. That's why companies such as Wal-Mart, Capital One, Best Buy, Sun Microsystems and Sara Lee, to name just a few, say they have glimpsed the future of work and have decided it's an extremely manageable place. They've discovered that allowing people to work the way they want -- from home; at night; from the sidelines of the soccer field -- actually increases productivity. Best Buy found that changing the work rules boosted productivity by an average of 40 percent.
And though progress is slow, women are negotiating nontraditional paths to senior management. Witness Sara Lee's chief executive, Brenda Barnes. As a PepsiCo executive vice president, she left corporate America for seven years to raise her children. Her return is a singular achievement, but it suggests a future in which careers can move in waves, not straight up, or straight off of, a ladder.
Corporate America, take the first step toward economic recovery. Open your minds and offices to new ways of working and succeeding. Not because you are nice guys -- but because it will help the economy and your bottom line.
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Mistresses of the Universe
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
New York Times
February 7, 2009
Banks around the world desperately want bailouts of billions of dollars, but they also have another need they’re unaware of: women, women and women.
At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, some of the most interesting discussions revolved around whether we would be in the same mess today if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters. The consensus (and this is among the dead white men who parade annually at Davos) is that the optimal bank would have been Lehman Brothers and Sisters.
Wall Street is one of the most male-dominated bastions in the business world; senior staff meetings resemble a urologist’s waiting room. Aside from issues of fairness, there’s evidence that the result is second-rate decision-making.
“There seems to be a strong consensus that diverse groups perform better at problem solving” than homogeneous groups, Lu Hong and Scott E. Page wrote in The Journal of Economic Theory, summarizing the research in the field.
A fascinating British study supports that conclusion with evidence from the drool of financiers. The researchers, using the saliva of male traders, tracked natural variations of testosterone in the morning and the amount of profits they earned for the firm that day.
“We found that a trader’s morning testosterone level predicts his day’s profitability,” reported the study, published last year in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Higher testosterone meant more risk-taking and, usually, more money.
On its own, that might suggest that men have an advantage on the trading floor. Yet the same study also suggested that elevated testosterone levels could lead to greater assumption of risk; high testosterone levels “may shift risk preferences and even affect a trader’s ability to engage in rational choice.” In other words: when male traders crash ... boy, they crash.
So could it be that the problem on Wall Street wasn’t subprime mortgages, but elevated testosterone?
It’s important to be skeptical of some of the research: often it seems to be conducted or studied by those who have strong views about gender. And it’s generally true that research conducted on matters pertaining to fairness or social justice rarely has the rigor of research conducted on, say, particle physics.
Yet the number of studies reaching similar conclusions from different directions is striking.
One of the shortcomings of any system of men sitting in front of screens making financial bets was reported last year in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, in case you missed your copy. That study found that men are particularly likely to make high-risk bets when under financial pressure and surrounded by other males of similar status.
As for women, their risk-taking was unaffected by this kind of peer pressure.
The study’s authors point to an evolutionary hangover. Across cultures, women prefer high-status men, while a woman’s reproductive prospects depend much less on her social status. Thus, when men of similar status gather, they jockey for an edge and jostle for the alpha role — and try to get ahead with high-stakes gambles.
On the plus side, boasting about these financial bets might make a great pickup line. On the downside, the bank goes bust.
A greater gender balance could reduce some of these unhelpful consequences of male herding. After all, we also saw some unexpected gains from the balance resulting from women’s suffrage.
Skeptics have noted that the first president elected after women got the national vote was Warren Harding — an embarrassment to female voters ever since. Yet a remarkable study published recently in The Quarterly Journal of Economics by Grant Miller of Stanford University indicates that female voters did have a profound and positive impact.
Professor Miller examined states where women won the vote before national enfranchisement. He found that when a state gave women the vote, politicians there quickly began behaving differently — in particular, devoting about 35 percent more money to new public health programs. These programs were seen as a priority for women, and the politicians wanted to curry favor with them.
The same happened at the national level: the 19th Amendment of 1920 was followed a year later by the Sheppard-Towner Act, a landmark public health measure, because members of Congress believed that was what women wanted. The upshot of all this was a sharp decline in child mortality, with Professor Miller attributing 20,000 fewer deaths nationally each year to the impact of women’s suffrage.
I’m skeptical of any effort to force banks to accept more women (one woman on the board for every $100 million handout?). But looking at the evidence of how homogeneous groups go astray, let’s all hope that banks seek a little more diversity on their own — just as desperately as they’re seeking bailouts.
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As Layoffs Surge, Women May Pass Men in Job Force
By CATHERINE RAMPELL
New York Times
February 5, 2009
With the recession on the brink of becoming the longest in the postwar era, a milestone may be at hand: Women are poised to surpass men on the nation’s payrolls, taking the majority for the first time in American history.
The reason has less to do with gender equality than with where the ax is falling.
The proportion of women who are working has changed very little since the recession started. But a full 82 percent of the job losses have befallen men, who are heavily represented in distressed industries like manufacturing and construction. Women tend to be employed in areas like education and health care, which are less sensitive to economic ups and downs, and in jobs that allow more time for child care and other domestic work.
“Given how stark and concentrated the job losses are among men, and that women represented a high proportion of the labor force in the beginning of this recession, women are now bearing the burden — or the opportunity, one could say — of being breadwinners,” says Heather Boushey, a senior economist at the Center for American Progress.
Economists have predicted before that women would one day dominate the labor force as more ventured outside the home. The number of women entering the work force slowed and even dipped during the boom years earlier this decade, though, prompting a debate about whether women truly wanted to be both breadwinners and caregivers.
Should the male-dominated layoffs of the current recession continue — and Friday’s jobs report for January may offer more insight — the debate will be moot. A deep and prolonged recession, therefore, may change not only household budgets and habits; it may also challenge longstanding gender roles.
In recessions, the percentage of families supported by women tends to rise slightly, and it is expected to do so when this year’s numbers are tallied. As of November, women held 49.1 percent of the nation’s jobs, according to nonfarm payroll data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. By another measure, including farm workers and the self-employed, women constituted 47.1 percent of the work force.
Women may be safer in their jobs, but tend to find it harder to support a family. For one thing, they work fewer overall hours than men. Women are much more likely to be in part-time jobs without health insurance or unemployment insurance. Even in full-time jobs, women earn 80 cents for each dollar of their male counterparts’ income, according to the government data.
“A lot of jobs that men have lost in fields like manufacturing were good union jobs with great health care plans,” says Christine Owens, executive director of the National Employment Law Project. “The jobs women have — and are supporting their families with — are not necessarily as good.”
Nasreen Mohammed, for example, works five days a week, 51 weeks a year, without sick days or health benefits.
She runs a small day care business out of her home in Milpitas, Calif., and recently expanded her services to include after-school care. The business brings in about $30,000 annually, she says, far less than the $150,000 her husband earned in the marketing and sales job he lost over a year ago. “It’s peanuts,” she says.
She switched from being a full-time homemaker to a full-time businesswoman when her husband was laid off previously. She says she unexpectedly discovered that she loves her job, even if it is demanding.
Still, her husband, Javed, says he and their three children — who are in third grade, junior college and law school — worry about her health, and hope things can “return to the old days.”
“In terms of the financial benefit from her work, we all benefit,” he says. “But in terms of getting my wife’s attention, from the youngest daughter to our oldest, we can’t wait for the day that my job is secure and she doesn’t have to do day care anymore.”
Women like Ms. Mohammed find themselves at the head of once-separate spheres: work and household. While women appear to be sole breadwinners in greater numbers, they are likely to remain responsible for most domestic responsibilities at home.
On average, employed women devote much more time to child care and housework than employed men do, according to recent data from the government’s American Time Use Survey analyzed by two economists, Alan B. Krueger and Andreas Mueller.
When women are unemployed and looking for a job, the time they spend daily taking care of children nearly doubles. Unemployed men’s child care duties, by contrast, are virtually identical to those of their working counterparts, and they instead spend more time sleeping, watching TV and looking for a job, along with other domestic activities.
Many of the unemployed men interviewed say they have tried to help out with cooking, veterinarian appointments and other chores, but they have not had time to do more because job-hunting consumes their days.
“The main priority is finding a job and putting in the time to do that,” says John Baruch, in Arlington Heights, Ill., who estimates he spends 35 to 45 hours a week looking for work since being laid off in January 2008.
While he has helped care for his wife’s aging parents, the couple still sometimes butt heads over who does things like walking the dog, now that he is out of work. He puts it this way: “As one of the people who runs one of the career centers I’ve been to told me: ‘You’re out of a job, but it’s not your time to paint the house and fix the car. Your job is about finding the next job.’ ”
Many women say they expect their family roles to remain the same, even if economic circumstances have changed for now.
“I don’t know if I’d really call myself a ‘breadwinner,’ since I earn practically nothing,” says Linda Saxby, who assists the librarian at the Cypress, Tex., high school her two daughters attend. Her husband, whose executive-level position was eliminated last May, had been earning $225,000, and the family is now primarily living off savings.
Historically, the way couples divide household jobs has been fairly resistant to change, says Heidi Hartmann, president and chief economist at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
“Over a long, 20-year period, married men have stepped up to the plate a little bit, but not as much as married women have dropped off in the time they spend on household chores,” Ms. Hartmann says. This suggests some domestic duties have been outsourced, as when takeout substitutes for cooking, for example. And as declining incomes force families to cut back on these outlays, she says, “women will most likely pick up the slack.”
A severe recession could put pressure on these roles.
“It has definitely put a strain” on my marriage, says Debbie Harlan, an executive assistant at a hospital system in Sarasota, Fla. Four months ago, her husband closed his 10-year-old independent car sales business, and the couple have been asking their children to help with bills. “So far we’ve worked through it, but there have been times when I wasn’t sure we could.”
The Mohammeds say things are not as stressful as they were the last time Mr. Mohammed lost his job. He has been helping out with the cooking and with paperwork for his wife’s business, and she says she works to prop up family morale.
“Things are not happy in the house if I blame him all the time, so I don’t do any of that anymore,” Ms. Mohammed says. “I know he is doing his best.”
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Men 'out-performed at university'
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News education reporter
Sunday, 7 June 2009
Female students are ahead of men in almost every measure of UK university achievement, according to a report from higher education researchers.
A Higher Education Policy Institute report shows that women are more likely to get places in the top universities and go on to get better grades.
Women also outnumber men in high status subjects, such as law and medicine.
The institute's director, Bahram Bekhradnia, says the cause of this gender gap remains uncertain.
Women have been entering university in greater numbers than men in recent years - with the participation rate for young women standing at 49%, compared with 38% of young men.
'Good degrees'
The study disproves the notion that men dominate in the most highly-regarded subjects and institutions.
It found that women are taking more places at prestigious Russell Group universities and on the most sought-after courses.
The only exception is for Oxford and Cambridge, where men and women are now level.
There are also still some subject areas, such as courses related to maths, physics and technology, where men are in the majority.
But the overall picture shows a consistent trend in women substantially outnumbering men.
There are more women on part-time and full-time courses and women account for a higher proportion of younger and mature students.
In degree grades, women are more likely to gain "good degrees" - taking first class and upper seconds together - while men are more likely to gain lower seconds and thirds.
However male students still maintain a narrow lead in firsts - 13.9% to 13% of those who graduate.
According to the report, women's greater success in gaining university places and achieving better degrees extends across different social classes and ethnic groups.
Exam barrier
But finding the cause for this is less straightforward.
"We just don't know," said Mr Bekhradnia.
The introduction of GCSEs in the late 1980s coincided with the time that girls began to overtake boys in academic achievement.
However the report also shows that the greater success of women in education is a global pattern - suggesting it is more than the local circumstances of particular types of exam.
Another factor suggested in the gender gap is that boys' academic performance is weakening as much as girls' is improving.
A science test taken by 11 and 12-year-olds in the mid-1970s had been successfully passed by 54% of boys and 27% of girls.
When the same test was taken in 2003, the scores for both boys and girls had fallen to 17% - a much more rapid decline for boys.
While young women have been entering university in greater numbers and achieving academic success, too many young men have been underperforming, suggests the report.
And while there is still a "mindset that continues to see males as advantaged and females as disadvantaged... that is emphatically not the case in higher education".
In response to the report, a spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, said: "This government is committed to ensuring that everyone with talent and ability to succeed should be given the opportunity to do so whatever their background, gender or race.
"It is essential that we continue to tackle differences in aspirations, which is why outreach programmes such as Aimhigher seek to engage and inspire young boys to go to university through targeted activity around sport, science and music."
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Why boys can't keep up with the girls
By Lee Elliot Major
guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 9 June 2009
Is the future female? Ten years ago I wrote an article for the New Statesman magazine predicting as much, on the back of figures showing women for the first time making up the majority of university admissions – a transformation from the exclusive preserve of white, middle- and upper-class males that made up academe as little as 50 years ago.
This week, a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) has once again documented the relentless rise of girls in the educational stakes. Females now outperform males on just about every higher education indicator, at every university in the land (with the exception of Oxbridge entry, where the sexes remain tied), and in most degree subjects.
The impact of disadvantage on educational opportunities is the primary concern of the Sutton Trust. But the educational gender gap has also emerged as a worrying trend. Female pupils outnumber males two-to-one, for example, on our university summer schools, the week-long visits to encourage more non-privileged students to consider elite research universities. Our annual surveys of 11- to 16-year-olds, meanwhile, show that boys consistently lag behind girls in their aspirations to go onto higher education.
As is often the case in education, such trends reflect inequalities set in train early in life. Girls are already on average two months ahead of boys at the start of primary school. The lack of male role models in these formative years is striking. Studies show that mothers, not fathers, are much more likely to read to their children in the home. Most of the teacher common rooms in our primary schools meanwhile remain male-free zones.
The Hepi authors also argue that the introduction of GCSE exams, based more on coursework than one-off tests, has favoured female styles of learning. The report challenges the "mindset that continues to see males as advantaged and females as disadvantaged". The authors even liken education policy makers to the incompetent generals of the first world war – unwilling to raise their heads above the trenches to recognise that the battle of the sexes has been turned on its head. This macho imagery, however, has triggered a backlash among feminist academics as give-away signs of deep male insecurities or, as one put it, "castration anxieties".
But one of the most shocking aspects of the evidence is that boys' educational achievement is actually going backwards as girls reach new academic heights. One telling statistic is that at a time of expanding higher education, university participation rates have been falling for males: if boys matched girls in degree enrolments, the government would almost instantly meet its target of getting 50% of young people into some form of HE.
Yet the female detractors of the report have a point. The educational advancement of women has not as yet translated into female participation at the very top echelons of society. A case in point is the world of politics. Last week's accusations by the former Europe minister Caroline Flint that the prime minister's inner cabal of male advisors excluded senior female politicians may seem like bitter parting shots. But for all the talk of Blair's Babes, New Labour's reign will be remembered for the big beasts of the male variety.
Ten years ago, I speculated that the upward wave of highly educated females could create a world where most doctors, lawyers, lecturers, perhaps even chief executives and cabinet ministers, are women. In fact, little has changed. Surveys by the Sutton Trust documenting the educational backgrounds of leaders in different professions have shown this time and time again: there is little sign of male domination of the most powerful positions on the wane.
But the sheer weight of numbers suggests that it must be only a matter of time before hierarchical professions such as medicine and law are "feminised" – and hopefully for the better. Could it be that the downturn in the economy places an even higher premium on good degrees in the jobs marketplace, enabling more women to launch careers that go all the way to the top? Could it be that future female leaders smash the male-dominated networks that cling onto power so successfully, limiting social mobility in the UK? It will certainly take more than a decade for this to happen.
However, we must not lose sight of the stark underperformance of boys – particularly those from the poorest backgrounds. There are deep-rooted cultural forces at play – a "macho anti-intellectualism" that surfaces particularly during early secondary school. The need for role models is absolutely key. More dads in the primary school classroom would help to combat negative stereotypes of those who do well at school – early in children's lives.
We also need to review whether alternative tests (such as the US-based SAT) or alternative teaching methods in schools would be better suited to boys (this is, after all, an era of "personalised learning"). Finally, it has been suggested that we simply broadcast to all those under-achieving males that university campuses are currently dominated by the opposite sex. Advocates of this approach argue that it would be a win-win situation for both sides of the educational divide.
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Women are achieving better grades at university, study finds
By Joanna Sugden
From The Times
June 8, 2009
Women are outperforming men at university according to research by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI).
The study shows that female students of all ages and social and ethnic groups now outstrip male undergraduates in almost every subject including law and medicine. They are also more likely to go to leading universities and achieve better grades.
More than 49 per cent of women now go on to higher education compared to 37.8 per cent of men who study for degrees.
Women have almost reached the Government’s target of half of all young people becoming graduates, but the low percentage for men drags the overall figure down.
Researchers found that the gap between the sexes is widening most dramatically between the poorest.
They argue that GCSE exams, which heavily favour female styles of learning, exacerbate the differences in performance later in life. They warn that plummeting achievement among young men risks creating a disillusioned and excluded male generation — particularly among the working class.
The number of women undergraduates first overtook men in 1992-3 and they now outnumber male students at every university except Oxford and Cambridge, where the balance is about level.
The strides taken by women in higher education have been matched by soaring numbers of men underperforming, the report suggests.
The study says that the situation reflects a “mindset that continues to see males as advantaged and females as disadvantaged.” It concludes: “Whatever the truth in society at large — that is emphatically not the case in higher education.”.
Women are outclassing men at university, according to research by the Higher Education Policy Institute. They are also outstripping men in most subjects, including law and medicine, and are more likely to go to leading universities.
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Economist: girls actually better than boys at maths
By Lewis Page
Posted in 'Science'
30th May 2008
An economist in America has published research stating that girls have at least as much innate mathematical ability as boys. Paola Sapienza contends that the fact of girls almost always doing worse in maths exams results mainly from sexual discrimination.
"The math gender gap can be eliminated, and it is indeed eliminated in some countries," says Sapienza. "Our research indicates that in more gender equal societies, girls will gain an absolute advantage relative to boys."
Sapienza and her co-authors reached their conclusion by looking at boy-vs-girl maths performance in different countries, and checking this against various measures which indicate how sexually equal each country is believed to be.
The maths test figures used were from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), set up by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The PISA data included standardised test results from some 276,000 children in forty countries.
As for equality, various figures were used, most notably the Gender Gap Index from the World Economic Forum. This is worked out according to various measures, such as the support given to working mums, proportion of women who work, females in politcs etc. A value of zero GGI indicates "inequality" (males totally dominating; women do no work, earn no money, don't appear at all in politics etc). A GGI of 1 equals "equality" (women just the same as men in these areas).
Presumably there could exist a condition where the GGI approached infinity, in which the zero state was reversed and men were totally crushed. However, no country has even achieved a rating of 1 yet; in every nation on Earth, according to the GGI, women are disadvantaged to some degree.
Sapienza and her colleagues noted that in Iceland, girls actually beat boys by a small margin on the PISA maths tests. Iceland scores high on womens' lib, at GGI 0.78. By contrast, Turkey - where the men keep their women firmly under the thumb (GGI 0.59) - showed girls lagging. The top four countries for gender equality are all in northern Europe: Sweden, Norway and Finland are the only ones which beat Iceland. (You can see the latest rankings in pdf here).
"As a European, I'm not surprised that the top countries are the northern European," said Sapienza - who comes from Italy herself.
QED, then. In the northern-Euro countries, where the human race is most nearly approaching gender equality - though not by any means there yet - girls are already outstripping boys at maths, as they often do in non-mathematical subjects. In the gender-equal society of the future, girls really could be expected to trounce the chaps on all suits. Men just aren't as intelligent as women.
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FOXSexpert: Understanding S&M
By Yvonne K. Fulbright
April 23, 2009
Who does these kinds of things?
For many, the term “sadomasochism” (S&M) conjures up images of whips, chains and leather. It seems like an underworld of incomprehensible eroticism. How can pain can be pleasurable? Who could possibly enjoy this act? And just what exactly does S&M entail?
Believe it or not, S&M is all around us in the mildest forms. You don’t have to go to an S&M club to find it. For example, radio stations regularly play songs that hint at S&M.
Remember Aqua’s seemingly ‘innocent’ “Barbie Girl” song, which was a smash hit in 1997?
“Make me walk. Make me talk.
Do whatever you please.
I can act like a star.
I can beg on my knees…”
Then there’s Madonna’s “Erotica:"
“I don’t think you know what pain is.
I don’t think you’ve gone that way.
I can bring you so much pleasure.
I’ll come to you when you say…
I’m not going to hurt you – just close your eyes…”
It is the tension between power and surrender – being overpowering or giving into authority – that’s the thrill. Lovers feel empowered as they eroticize each other, both becoming objects of desire in their dominant or submissive role.
Humans are further enticed by S&M because it offers:
— The opportunity for self-exploration, including learning one’s limits;
— Personal freedom and heightened sexual release;
— Feelings of being desired;
— The opportunity for greater connection and intimacy;
— The possibility of out-of-body sex.
S&M is particularly arousing for those in powerful positions, like high-ranking executives, doctors and police officers who are looking to lose themselves in a submissive role. A "Playboy" sex survey once found that 5 to 10 percent of Americans engage in S&M behaviors for pleasure occasionally, while "The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior" found that 14 percent of men and 11 percent of women have had some S&M experience.
Defining S&M
During sadomasochism, the sadist partner, (a.k.a. Dom, Domme, dominant, top, master or mistress) delivers pain or humiliation to the masochist (submissive, sub, thrall, bottom or slave) partner. The masochistic partner likes being degraded, it gives them erotic pleasure. They enjoy giving up control to the dominant.
The power exchange is given more focus than the sex itself, with some sessions occurring without sex. The couple instead has real or simulated acts in which one person humiliates, beats or binds the other. Though most S&M’ers prefer either sadism or masochism exclusively, some take turns playing the top or bottom.
The sexual exchanges are referred to as scenes, plays or sessions. Key elements include: dominance, submission, discipline, punishment, bondage, sexual role-playing, and power exchanges. Interestingly enough, some behaviors currently labeled S&M have been found in ancient marriage manuals, like Vatsysayana’s original Kama Sutra, which was written in 450 A.D.
Sex acts can range in intensity, anything from hot candle wax drips to bondage to spankings to pinching and scratching to hair-pulling. Some also like verbal abuse and humiliation, saying derogatory, degrading, and even cruel things to each other, all in the name of fun. Other behaviors that are practiced and enjoyed include fetish behavior, whipping, and master/slave role-playing.
The bulk of S&M play involves only as much pain as a person can handle. This will vary from person to person. Stimulation never exceeds what the senses can handle.
Since most of us are raised with romantic notions of sex and making love, the idea of pain and sex as a combination can be a bit hard to grasp. But it happens all the time during rough sex: Some lovers may have bites, bruises or hickeys the next day.
When the body experiences pain, it reacts with a surge of its natural opiates, namely the neurotransmitters dopamine and endorphins. These neurotransmitters are similar to morphine. Both decrease the pain’s intensity while producing a comforting, trance-like high that takes the conscious self away from the pain.
Safety First
It’s important to remember that S&M practitioners are guided by the mantra “safe, sane and consensual.” They are well aware of the need for boundaries, trust, and equality in a relationship, so as not to threaten one’s safety. Efforts are guided by rules, so as not to dehumanize one’s partner and to keep things safe by:
1. Negotiation: The submissive should always discuss his or her needs, wants and limits with the dominant beforehand.
2. Having a safe word: A memorable word should be chosen by the participants so that if physically or psychologically distressed, the word acts as a red light when called out to halt all activity.
3. Talking about what’s going to happen so that you know each other’s boundaries and what is being consented to.
4. Educating yourselves about certain S&M practices before trying them. Read a good book, surf the Internet or check out an S&M workshop in your area that can you get started safely. Qualified Professional Dominants can also help.
Dr. Yvonne K. Fulbright is a sex educator, relationship expert, columnist and founder of Sexuality Source Inc. She is the author of several books including, "Touch Me There! A Hands-On Guide to Your Orgasmic Hot Spots."
