Penmanship is now 'handwriting' as Washington state removes gender bias in statutes 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.
Susan Sarandon: 'Feminism is a bit of an old-fashioned word' | From the Observer | The Observer Susan Sarandon photographed in Los Angeles for the Observer by Steve Schofield 2013. Photograph: Contour by Getty In Arbitrage, you play the wife of a multi-millionaire hedge fund manager who is stronger than she first appears. It's not the usual character arc for a female support role – was that part of the appeal? Arbitrage Production year: 2012 Country: USA Cert (UK): 15 Runtime: 107 mins Directors: Nicholas Jarecki Cast: Brit Marling, Laetitia Casta, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Tim Roth More on this film Absolutely and I was also taken by Nicholas Jarecki's enthusiasm and passion, and Richard Gere, I've known forever and I got to work with him. I think that what happens in a long relationship [like the one in the film] – and the longest I've ever had was 23 years – is that people have assumptions and firm habits in the way they relate to each other. You're known for playing strong women… Except I don't particularly think of them as strong. Would you call yourself a feminist?
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.
What happened when I started a feminist society at school I am 17 years old and I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality, and am under no illusion about how far we are from achieving it. Identifying as a feminist has become particularly important to me since a school trip I took to Cambridge last year. A group of men in a car started wolf-whistling and shouting sexual remarks at my friends and me. I asked the men if they thought it was appropriate for them to be abusing a group of 17-year-old girls. For those men we were just legs, breasts and pretty faces. Shockingly, the boys in my peer group have responded in exactly the same way to my feminism. After returning from this school trip I started to notice how much the girls at my school suffer because of the pressures associated with our gender. I decided to set up a feminist society at my school, which has previously been named one of "the best schools in the country", to try to tackle these issues. Our feminist society was derided with retorts such as, "FemSoc, is that for real?
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.
Representing gender in children's reading materials would a boy have been shown with flowers in the 1970s? Are girls and boys portrayed differently in children’s reading materials today than in the past? During the 1970s and 80s, studies of children’s reading materials found that males not only featured more than females but also they tended to take the lead roles and were more active than their female counterparts, who were often restricted to traditional stereotyped roles. Many of these earlier studies of gender in children’s reading material analysed the texts based on their content, which meant that researchers made their own judgements about what was sexist and what was not. Now, however, advances in computer and electronic technology mean that ‘corpus linguistics’ can be used to analyse texts more systematically. Macalister based his study on New Zealand’s School Journal, a multi-authored journal of prose, drama and poetry, published and distributed to New Zealand school children every year.