Sports Direct under fire for 'Girl Stuff' toy cleaning set Emily Gosden – Published 06 January 2014 03:05 PM SportsDirect has come under fire for encouraging sexism after selling a toy set of cleaning products branded “It’s Girl Stuff!”. The set, which includes a dustpan, brushes and spray bottle, is sold in a bright pink packaging adorned with flowers and a “female” sign. The retailer, controlled by Mike Ashley, was tight-lipped about the product on despite a growing backlash online. Twitter users have reacted with dismay to images of the toy set, made by manufacturer Kandytoys and being sold for £5 on the SportsDirect website. One, Em Murphy-Wearmouth, a director at Octopus Communications, described it on the social media site as “outrageous” and “the most disgusting sexism I have seen targeting young girls”. Louise Mensch, the former Tory MP, joined the backlash, writing: “Wow. ”I just wouldn’t label it girl’s stuff – it’s just so unnecessary and restrictive for both boys and girls.” A spokesman for SportsDirect declined to comment.
100 Women: 'Why I invented the glass ceiling phrase' Image copyright Marilyn Loden The term "glass ceiling" refers to the sometimes-invisible barrier to success that many women come up against in their careers. Management consultant Marilyn Loden coined the phrase almost 40 years ago but says it is still as relevant as ever. I first used the phrase "glass ceiling" in 1978 during a panel discussion about women's aspirations. It was a struggle to sit quietly and listen to the criticisms. True, women did seem unable to climb the career ladder beyond the lowest rung of middle management, but I argued that the "invisible glass ceiling" - the barriers to advancement that were cultural not personal - was doing the bulk of the damage to women's career aspirations and opportunities. I was an experienced HR professional in the telecoms industry, and yet was often told by my male boss to "smile more". On the occasions when there was more than one woman manager at a meeting, there were usually comments made if the two sat together.
Watch A Student Totally Nail Something About Women That I've Been Trying To Articulate For 37 Years Lily Myers: Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass. She says she doesn't deprive herself, but I've learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork. In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate. Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it's proportional. It was the same with his parents; as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, round stomach, and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking, making space for the entrance of men into their lives, not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I have been taught accommodation. You learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much. still staring at me with wine-soaked lips from across the kitchen table.
After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids — Quartz at Work In March 2007, Spain introduced a national policy granting most new fathers two weeks of fully paid paternity leave. The policy proved exceptionally popular, with 55% of men eligible in the first year opting to take the paid time. The amount of leave covered by the program was doubled in 2017 and expanded to five weeks in 2018, with additional increases expected between now and 2021. Economists studying the effects of the original 2007 policy examined what happened to families that had children just before and just after the program began, and found differences in the outcomes. While the early cohort of men who were eligible for paternity leave were just as likely to stay in the workforce as the men who weren’t eligible, they remained more engaged with childcare after their return to work, and their partners were more likely to stay in the workforce as well.
Children at play: The war on pink There is a resurgence in response to the wash of pink aisles for little girls, by those who object to the gendered way toy marketing is being done, writes Judy Crozier. PINK FILLS THE GIRL-AISLES of toy stores, because everyone knows what little girls want, what little boys want. Isn’t that so? We know the categories from which to choose — boys have go-get-‘em toys like trucks, things you can build, models of muscle-bound heroes or villains. Girls have domestic toys — the tiny ironing board, the dolls, the little toast rack. They have dolls to dress in swanky clothes; they have dolls’ houses So that’s clear. Many of us don’t think that’s so. Way, way back when I was a new mother, we visited a family with two young boys. The boys’ mum turned to me, raised her eyebrows and said: “I just don’t know what they do with them for hours!” I looked at those little plastic figures scattered amongst the sandals and socks, and it came to me: "Well, after all, what did we do with dolls?’" She looked at me:
Barred from wearing glasses, Japan's working women take to Twitter Many Japanese women are fighting for the right to wear eyeglasses to work, a new front in the growing movement that demands an end to the prescriptive beauty standards faced by female employees. The hashtag “glasses ban” started trending on Twitter on Wednesday, after Nippon TV aired a story about companies that require female employees to wear contact lenses instead of glasses. One post decrying such policies racked up almost 25,000 retweets. あのな、目が悪い人って裸眼だと常にこんな視界になるわけよ。 One Twitter user said she was told by her previous employer that glasses didn’t appeal to customers, while another said she was compelled to endure the pain of wearing contact lenses while recovering from an eye infection. “The emphasis on appearance is often on young women and wanting them to look feminine,” Banri Yanagi, a 40-year-old sales associate at a life insurer in Tokyo, said in an interview. The prohibition on glasses by some firms is the latest flash point for professional women in Japan.
'Too Much Estrogen': The Golden Globes, Chris Christie and Men Who Don't Want to Share Culture | Soraya Chemaly Brit Hume thinks Chris Christie is paying for a "feminized atmosphere," in which his naturally tough guy (read: male) behavior has been erroneously cast as bullying. Meanwhile, the NY Post's film critic Kyle Smith's take on the Golden Globes was that there was just "too much estrogren." These are just this weekend's examples of men having a hard time-sharing culture. Sounds an awful lot like my 3-year-old brother, who used to chant, "Mine! Mine! "Guys [like Christie] who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct, kind of old-fashioned tough guys," explains Hume, "Run some risks." Smith, in the meantime, thinks that the Globes should have just been called "Girls." You can't argue with the way people feel. The Globes red carpet and crowd shots suggested a nice gender parity, everyone seemed to have a spouse or a date, usually of the opposite sex. Horrors. First, let's put Smith's disgust in context. Likewise, Hume's casual concerns about "feminized atmosphere."
Van Badham battles the Brosphere: On women, trolls and the Australian media in 2013 Social media is the new democracy of Australian opinion. Not so long ago – like, you know, the dark ages of the 1990s – participation in the contemporary political discourse was a privilege of, well, privilege. If you didn't have the time and money yourself to create your own publication and distribute it (hello, The Chaser!), you had to wait for an established media brand to anoint you with a platform. The selection process of the latter were, of course, drawn from the unacknowledged, systemic prejudice that talks about "merit" even as it seamlessly restocks its ranks of middle-class, white men. Now, one no longer requires a broadsheet masthead above a headshot to claim a public media platform, and Twitter is the new distribution. Participating in this discussion and its activism is exhilarating. Trolling is happening because there have never been so many women visibly engaged in public nation-making debate as there are online. Here's what to do when they strike: Remain calm.
When God Was a Woman When God Was a Woman is the U.S. title of a 1976 book by sculptor and art historian Merlin Stone. It was published earlier in the United Kingdom as The Paradise Papers: The Suppression of Women's Rites. It has been translated into French as Quand Dieu était femme (SCE-Services Complets d'Edition, Québec, Canada) in 1978 and into German as Als Gott eine Frau war in 1989. Possibly the most controversial/debated claim in the book is Stones' interpretation of how peaceful, benevolent matriarchal society and Goddess-reverent traditions (including Ancient Egypt) were attacked, undermined and ultimately destroyed almost completely, by the ancient tribes including Hebrews and later the early Christians. The book is now seen as having been instrumental in the modern rise of feminist theology in the 1970s to 1980s, along with authors such as Elizabeth Gould Davis, Riane Eisler and Marija Gimbutas. See also[edit] References[edit] Philip G. External links[edit]
What Does it Mean that Most Children's Books Are Still About White Boys? | Soraya Chemaly This article is updated from a version published earlier this year in Role/Reboot. One day when my daughter was in third grade, she had to explain to a classmate what sexism was. Four kids -- two boys and two girls -- had been put in a reading group together, given a basket full of books and asked to talk about them and decide together which one they wanted to read and discuss. As they went through their choices, the boy picked up a book whose cover showed an illustration of a woman in a hoop skirt. He quickly tossed it aside. "Do you know how many books with boys in them I read?" Frankly, today, I'm pretty certain that what she, a 9-year old, told her classmate was more than most adults can muster. Do you know what percentage of children's books feature boys? 57% of children's books published each year have male protagonists, versus 31% female. This is true of racial and ethnic diversity as well. The same statistics are reflected in television programming. What was that?