Written Word for Nerd

Natalie Angier writes an important article on the new USA Administration's potential impact on women in science, In ‘Geek Chic’ and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science. An excerpt:

Surveying outcomes for 160,000 Ph.D. recipients across the United States, the researchers determined that 70 percent of male tenured professors were married with children, compared with only 44 percent of their tenured female colleagues. Twelve years or more after receiving their doctorates, tenured women were more than twice as likely as tenured men to be single and significantly more likely to be divorced. And lest all of this look like “personal choice,” when the researchers asked 8,700 faculty members in the University of California system about family and work issues, nearly 40 percent of the women agreed with the statement, “I had fewer children than I wanted,” compared with less than 20 percent of the men. The take-home message, Dr. Mason said in a telephone interview, is, “Men can have it all, but women can’t.”

Check out the work the Rosalind Franklin Society is doing for women in science.

Dream for Women

Antigone Magazine's Dreams for Women postcard art project is launching it's 2009 Dreams for Women calendar featuring postcards submitted by men and women around the world! The calendar seeks to help raise money for The Antigone Foundation and for other women's organizations around the world. As part of this launch, we have created a video in which men and women share their dreams for women equality.

The Project:

Featured in Ms. Magazine, in the International Women’s Museum, and on Feministing.com, the postcard art project has attracted worldwide attention and interest, garnering media attention and submissions from as far away as Japan, Germany, Brazil, France, Portugal, Romania and Los Angeles. The Dreams for Women art project asks women and men of all ages to depict their hopes and dreams for women (examples include “I dream of a world with more female leaders” and “I dream of a world where no woman is seen and not heard”) by painting, drawing, writing, sketching or decoupaging them onto a postcard.

Inspired by the popular mail-art project PostSecret.com, a postcard art project that encourages people to send in their secrets, Dreams for Women strives to be a feminist PostSecret. Instead of asking what your secrets are, the project wants to know what your dreams for women are. The Antigone Foundation began receiving submissions in January 2008 and has received hundreds of submissions so far. Their YouTube videos, which showcase the project, have also received thousands of hits.

The project, which is coordinated by a small group of dedicated young women ranging in ages from 20-24, is committed to envisioning progress for women around the world. According to founder Amanda Reaume, dreaming is essential to change: “the postcards we have received and continue to receive keep expanding our vision of the future, and keep adding more voices to the conversation of what that future will look like for women.”

The project was started out of a desire to encourage women and men to envision a better future for women and to help fund work towards that future. Dreams for Women has thus launched a fundraising calendar. The calendar, featuring 12 postcard submissions from around the world, will be sold for $20 and is available via Antigone Magazine’s blog www.antigonemagazine.wordpress.com.
Indeed, the project hopes to raise money to officially launch the Antigone Foundation, a non-profit, non-partisan organization that will encourage young women to get involved in leadership, politics and activism. The organization will continue the work started by Antigone Magazine, a publication about women, politics, leadership and activism that started at UBC and has since expanded to a national subscription base, as well as, to the University of Toronto.

But the organization also hopes to help raise money for other women's organizations around the world. They will be selling the calendars in bulk at a discounted price so that other women's groups can use it for fundraising. Groups who buy any amount over 10 copies for fundraising purposes will pay only $10 per calendar. They will then be able to resell the calendar for $20 and raise money for their organizations. For more information please e-mail antigonemagazine@hotmail.com or check out their website here:

http://antigonemagazine.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/its-here-the-dreams-for-women-2009-calendar-is-here/

Going for the Glory

Ah, Beuaty Pageants. We love to hate them, don't we? And for good reason. One reason why I so despise them is their perpetuation of women competing against each other physically. It's rare to walk down the street and come across a woman who smiles back at me. There's usually avoided glances, the "up and down," and a furrowed eyebrow if I make eye contact and smile (and once in a while an utterly surprised look of recognition and a big grin, back). We need to stand together! We need to care for each other and encourage one another and honour the way we all look; fat, skinny, tall, short, pimples or porcelein.

Puerto Rico's representative for the Pageant, Ingrid Marie Rivera, had her clothes peppersprayed by jealous contestants in an effort to discourage her from continuing. Ultimately the chemical caused a rash which, incidently, did not stop Rivera. Good for her... she continued on smilin' and won the pageant (and off to Donald Trump's Miss Universe she flies). Something of interest I note in the article, though, is this:

The 24-year-old broke out in series of ugly blotches and a rash after coming into contact with the contaminated evening dress.

Were they blotches or ugly blotches? What a slanted, leading comment!
And there's there's this little note:

The part time model had to strip off her clothes while assistants applied the treatment.

Oooh! You mean the beauty queen got neh-kid!? And HOT - assistants applied a treatment! Just imaGINE! That face... getting a naked treatment. Excuse me, but is this necessary journalism? Talk about sensationalist writing. Sabotaged Pageant leads to sexy nude backstage rubdown!

This is just a gross article that misses the point that competitions like this only perpetuate the problem of woma(e)n vs woma(e)n.


Start a Revolution! Love eachother! Let's smile at eachother and celebrate our bodies and our talents and our friendships.