Systematically cited less than their male peers

More from that Washington Post article about the overlooking of female scholars of the Middle East when events are being organized. I ran out of time before.)

The problem isn’t going to fix itself, even though women are the majority at some graduate schools of international affairs now.

The paucity of women’s voices in public discussion comes not just from thoughtless conveners, but also from long-standing problems in the professional “pipeline” that carries individuals to the top levels of the field. Inequities in hiring and promotion often reflect, and help perpetuate, the unconscious bias of a male-dominated field. [Read more…]

150 events, not a single woman speaker

Are.you.kidding.

Last year, six leading Washington think tanks presented more than 150 events on the Middle East that included not a single woman speaker. Fewer than one-quarter of all the speakers at the 232 events at those think tanks recorded in our newly compiled data-set were women. How is it possible that in 2014, not a single woman could be found to speak at 65 percent of these influential and high-profile D.C. events?

They all figure it’s more of a guy thing? [Read more…]

Nobel laureates speak up for Raif Badawi

Good – another ratchet in the protests to Saudi Arabia about its brutal torture and rights-abrogation of Raif Badawi.

The international outcry over  restrictions on freedom of speech in Saudi Arabia escalated last night as an array of Nobel prizewinners published an open letter calling on the country’s academics to condemn the public flogging of the blogger Raif Badawi.

In their letter, passed to The Independent, the 18 Nobel Laureates urge their Saudi peers to be “heard arguing for the freedom to dissent” by standing up for Mr Badawi, whose case they say has “sent a shock around the world”. [Read more…]

51 percent of students

Shocking but not really surprising – more than half of students in public schools in the US come from families in poverty.

This week, the Southern Education Foundation reported that 51 percent of students in grades K through 12 received a free or reduced-price school lunch in 2013, meaning that their families lived on less than 185 percent of the poverty line. According to the Washington Post, it is “the first time in at least 50 years” that more than half of the country’s public school kids have qualified as low income. In 1989, the figure was under 32 percent. In 2006, it hit 42 percent, and by 2011, it had ratcheted up to 48 percent.

Why is it not surprising? Because poverty is official policy. We keep wages down as a matter of policy, we don’t have a national health service as a matter of policy, we don’t fund universal day care as a matter of policy, and on and on.

It’s how we roll.

 

Limited warranty

James Croft asked an interesting question in a public Facebook post.

Interesting question which came up at this Clergy Care Summit: what is a Humanist version of “Know that God Loves you?”

There’s a string of comments offering substitutes but they’re not fully convincing. My answer is that there isn’t one. (Ian Cromwell’s is good though – “We’re all in this together”. That has the advantage of being true, along with the disadvantage of being not nearly as comforting as the original.)

There can’t be a humanist or Humanist version of “Know that God Loves you” because people are free to project onto this imagined god the most perfect satisfying consoling love possible. They’re free to reconcile mutual impossibilities – God loves everyone infinitely, but/and God’s love for me is total and undivided and not distracted by God’s love for my siblings or my best friend or those people I hate or anyone. God doesn’t love God’s own self more than God loves me.

Humanism doesn’t work that way, so it can’t possibly offer anything equivalent to that.

It seems silly to pretend otherwise. We just can’t do the consolation thing the way religion does, because we’re constrained by reality.

 

 

This brand spanking new software

Originally a comment by Crimson Clupeidae on Quick to sneer.

Not to worry, we here at Islamo-Judeo-Xian software, Inc, LLC, GAWD, are working on an automated version of photoshop (we’re calling it Photochop, to avoid copyright issues).

This brand spanking new software will automagically edit all images in digital form (the retroactive paper version is pending tests of the new high powered laser satellite….) to not only edit out women, pigs, prophets, dogs, etc, that may offend any religious sensibilities*, but it will autodetect blogs, words, and even recipes written by women, pigs, prophets, dogs, etc. and make them appear to be written by manly burly manly men!

Our next release will offer an optional Hindu add-on package, but there is currently strong lobbying by a conflicting group of religious nutters….I mean, believers….who worship Saint Ronald of McDonald, and we are having some issues getting the software to comply with both.

*Sensibilities in this case, being those who make the loudest and most believable threats of violence, although offering more $$$ would potentially win out…..

Guest post: To the people at Liberty Counsel

Originally a comment by themadtapper on Honoring the Legacy, a press release by a right-wing group for Martin Luther King day claiming to be honoring King by promoting homophobia.

As I read over that press release, which reads like a fundie Mad Lib, I debated over what part to actually comment on.

I could comment on the inanity of comparing to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. those who seek to do the very thing that King fought against: denying goods, service, and basic dignity to a marginalized people whose only desire is to have the same opportunities of life, liberty, and happiness that white conservative Christians enjoy. [Read more…]

A groom, and a bouquet, and a set table—but no bride

The New Yorker has a piece by Ruth Margalit on the gradual disappearance of women in Israel – not disappearance as in being murdered and buried in an obscure place, but disappearance as in not being allowed to appear.

In 2008, a thirty-year-old religious woman named Rachel Azaria headed a slate of candidates for city council. Her team had arranged to mount an ad campaign on the back of buses in the city that would feature her picture. In order to finalize the details of the campaign, Azaria called Cnaan Media, the company in charge of Jerusalem bus advertisements. “We’ve already had a schedule, we picked out the bus lines, everything,” Azaria told me on the phone this week. She was about to close the deal when the company’s salesperson casually told her: “I just want to make sure you know that we don’t show women on buses in the city.” [Read more…]