What it is: The Cleft by Doris Lessing is a novel about a Roman man who tells the story about the beginning of humanity, which consists of only women. They live communally and conceive babies through moonlight. Suddenly a baby boy is born, and eventually their society changes to establish, embrace, and struggle with gender roles. The…
Today is International Women’s Day. It was first established in the early 1900s, and since then has been a day designated for the fight for equality of the sexes. From the 19th amendment granting women the right to vote to the Lilly Ledbetter Act backing equal pay, legislation in the United States has been slowing…
Roll the opening credits. Enter Average Troubled Male. Average Troubled Male has a mediocre, meaningless life. He feels trapped in his job and either hates his friends or has none. He can’t see the fun in anything, and he’s on the road to depression. What does he need? A) To get out of his cubicle…
Goodreads recently published an infographic entitled “Sex and Reading: A Look at Who’s Reading Whom” with stats collected by 20,000 male users and 20,000 female users of the site. The takeaway is this: men and women each primarily lean towards reading their own gender. Yet those first two circles are troubling–only 20% of a female’s…
Women face a variety of external struggles in the workplace–undermining comments from chauvinistic bosses, dress codes based on women’s modesty, sexual harassment, fighting for equal pay and maternity leave, the “mommy track,” underrepresentation in STEM fields–but bright women face an additional internal struggle that starts from a young age. Psychologist Carol Dweck conducted a study of…
You’ve already read about the time my Tinder date pulled out a gun, but that night was relatively late in my Tinder “career.” Before I even considered meeting anyone I met on the app, I flicked through a ton of guys and had conversations with a good handful. A lot of those people were really…
Pop culture loves to glorify men who love their women au naturale (Drake and Bruno Mars, anyone?). In response, researchers in the UK have studied this preference. The study is problematic: small sample, biased methodology, condescending analysis of the results. The comments section emphasizes that women don’t necessarily wear makeup to please men. Instead, many commenters argue,…
Last week I wrote about the Bechdel test, which asks a few basic questions about any given movie to begin evaluating feminine roles in film. Women, however, aren’t the only underrepresented and compartmentalized group in the mainstream American film industry. While modern laws prevent discrimination in workplaces and schools based on age, race/national origin/ethnic background, religion,…
Think about the last movie you saw. Were there two or more female characters? Did they talk to each other about something besides men? The Bechdel test, created by Alison Bechdel, examines female roles in movies by asking three questions: Are there two or more women in the film? Do they talk to each other?…
Last night, I discovered the #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter. I have never seen 140 characters at a time be used so powerfully. haven't thought about anything important today? read the #YesAllWomen tag. or I'll just retweet them all for you. — Sabina (@submurina) May 25, 2014 There’s been a lot of debate about hashtag activism recently,…
Victim to Charm 