The Femitist = Feminism + Scientist
This is a journal for a Women's Studies class I'm taking at SDSU in San Diego, CA. Although it is intended for the class, I appreciate any feedback or discussion.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
The above shit pertains to WHITE women, says nothing of the way earnings, wealth, and power are segregated by race. Let’s make a few changes.
- Blacks, regardless of gender, earn less than whites, regardless of gender, in 100% of occupations.
- Only 11 black men ever have been president/CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Ever. Of those 11, only 6 remain in their positions. None of them have been black women.
- Regardless of education, the median wealth of single black mothers is $5. Five dollars.
- Same Degree, Same Job:
- White male: $43,500
- Black male: $32,992
- White female: $34,788
- Black female: $30,264
Domestic Violence Law Repealed By Lawmakers In Topeka, Kansas
Want to beat your wife? Just move to Topeka, Kansas.
To save money, they decriminalized domestic violence but they still passionately prosecute marijuana.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?
Wow…this isn’t related to science but it is terrible and disgusting.
Women in science? Universities don't make the grade
Despite years of trying to improve the number of women undergraduates in science and engineering, a new study shows most universities are failing. Not only are women lagging behind their male classmates, efforts to close the gap too often focus on students instead of faculty and institutional structures.
National Science Foundation changes workplace to boost women | Reuters
The National Science Foundation (NSF) will give researchers more workplace flexibility in a move to boost women’s role in the sciences, the White House said on Monday.
Jane Goodall Talks Women In Science
When an 11 year-old Jane Goodall first began telling people in 1945 that she wanted to go to Africa, her declaration was often met with laughter. Goodall, who loved apes ever since infancy, when her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee named Jubilee, was rebuked for many reasons: “We didn’t have any money and World War Two was raging … but mostly because I was a girl — I was the wrong sex,” she told The Huffington Post. Her family, she said, told her, “Jane get real. You know girls don’t do this kind of thing, living with animals in the forest.” Now 77, Goodall has become the world’s leading expert on chimpanzees. She travels 300 days out of the year, and holds five professorships, 24 degrees and more than 60 awards. And she doesn’t think being a woman kept her from “doing this kind of thing” at all. “In fact,” said Goodall, “my gender, I think it helped me.”
Drawing parallels with many of our discussions in class, women are dangerously underrepresented in science. And even when women are involved, they are usually paid less than men, given fewer opportunities and subjected to discriminatory masculine-dominated scientific vocabulary (as discussed in African Women Pursuing Graduate Studies in the Sciences: Racism, Gender Bias and Third World Marginality).
Consistant with the era she grew up in, Jane Goodall faced many roadblocks to entering the field of Zoology. However, in some ways, Goodall feels that being a woman helped her. She was largely ignored by men because they didn’t respect her enough as a female scientist to see her as competition.
Her gender worked in her favor, too, in her interactions with African communities, she said. She was doing field research in Tanzania just a year after the country gained independence and found that while there was a mistrust of white men who had controlled the country under colonialism, “They didn’t see me as a woman being a threat — they were much more likely to help me achieve what I wanted to achieve.”
Jane’s story has similarities and differences to Evelyn Hammonds in the article Never Meant to Survive: A Black Woman’s Journey. Because of her white privilege, Jane did not have to work as hard as Evelyn did, but she did still have to work twice as hard as a comparable man and deal with a lot of sexism out in the field, especially in the African communities she works in.
Like Evelyn, Jane Goodall is a revered scientist today and one of the most respected scientists in her field. Hopefully we can learn from their stories as a culture and work to advance women and minorities in science. Despite being “born the wrong sex”, Jane Goodall conquered all odds and pushed us further as a human race. Without her contributions we wouldn’t know nearly as much as we do about non-human primates. And since modern humans are evolved from primates, we wouldn’t know nearly as much about ourselves either.
On Monday, the world reacted to King Abdullah’s announcement that women in Saudi Arabia will be allowed to participate in municipal elections.
“ At a glance, it certainly sounded like terrific news—what, after all, is a more direct emblem of the march of progress than the right to vote? But while the announcement may represent some very marginal progress, Saudi Arabia remains one of the worst places on earth to be a woman. Because the country’s ruling regime is, nominally at least, an American ally, the plight of Saudi women doesn’t receive nearly as much attention in Washington as it should. But it is truly one of the human rights catastrophes of our time.”
-The Editors, The New Republic. “Saudi Women Can Now Vote. But Their Plight Remains a Calamity.”
Mukhtaran Bibi
Interesting Womens’ Rights advocate from Pakistan. She was a victim of gang rape who not only survived but took legal action against her attackers.
Increase in diabetes: ‘A public health emergency in slow motion’ - Chicago Sun-Times
This article is related to class discussion on 9/13 regarding women, race and prevalence of disease. In class we discussed that blacks and black women in particular are more likely to get diseases, have diseases untreated, suffer major complications from disease and die from disease when compared to whites.
This is due to a combination of:
- Poverty
- Discrimination
- Ignorance resulting from poverty and discrimination
- Fear of doctors and the medical “establishment” as a result of years of abuses dating back to times of slavery and still continuing today in the inner cities.
As we discussed in class, my research confirms that “sensitive groups” (class on 9/13) are much more likely (25.34%) to contract diabetes then majority groups.
I researched figures on race, gender, age and diabetes in the US from the NIH (source) with some interesting results:
The NHW (non-hispanic white) group has the highest overall prevalence of diabetes, but most of this is Type 1 (genetic) diabetes. Whites constitute a very small percentage of Type 2 diabetes. The two racial groups with the highest prevalence of Type 2 diabetes overall are AI (American Indians) at around 40% and NHB (non-hispanic blacks) at around 37%.
As our government continues to look for places to save money, public healthcare and education continues to be cut. But as education and healthcare are cut, diabetes, obesity and other preventable conditions increase (direct linear correlation). Since these conditions are highest among the poorest populations, populations that traditionally receive government aid, it would seem common sense that it is to everyone’s benefit to focus on health education programs and preventative care in the inner cities. Not only will it save lives, but it will save millions.
Comparing diabetes rates between whites and blacks by State (source), I found that overall, black Americans are 25.34% more likely than whites to have diabetes. The states with the most disparity between the races are:
- West Virginia (46.5%)
- Nebraska (43.4%)
- Oregon (43.2%)
Oregon was a surprise to me because it is a relatively developed and liberal state.
Rick Perry Under Fire by Republican Rivals for Requiring HPV Vaccine for Girls - NYTimes.com
This video relates to women’s rights and women as a protect class (class discussion 9/13). It also relates to the reading “Histories of the Human Subject” by Stephen Epstein.
Republicans, through making HPV vaccination a political issue, are literally killing women to “protect” them. They are convinced that HPV vaccination will cause people to be extra promiscuous, so instead they prefer them to get HPV. They know that HPV leads to cervical cancer which leads to death, but the religious right sees this as a consequence of “sin” (or sex outside of marriage).
The Republican candidate Michele Bachmann has gone as far as suggesting that the HPV vaccination causes mental retardation, despite the evidence that overwhelmingly suggests that it does not (source).
So, like the exclusion of women from research in the interest of protecting potential babies, this Republican wedge issue literally lets women contract HPV and cervical cancer in the interest of protecting them. It takes away their freedom to protect them.
Religious dogma, emotion and ignorance seem to be key factors as well.
The fact that Rick Perry required the vaccine in Texas should be celebrated, not protested. The fact of Merck lobbying him to approve the legislation is irrelevant; even if one female life can be saved by preventing HPV it was a good measure. And in the long run, it will save the government money. One shot is a lot cheaper than chemo.
Video from Young Turks
Video from Jay Leno
