Putting Gender Front And Center
March 9, 2021
The Good News
- Fully vaccinated Americans can safely visit unvaccinated family, CDC says (ArsTechnica)
- 12-year-old helps more than 1,600 people get vaccines after building a website to help seniors (CBS)
“The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.” — Audre Lorde
Putting Gender Front And Center
(Joshua Roberts via Getty Images)
Yesterday was International Women’s Day, first observed in 1911 in Austria, Denmark, Germany, and Switzerland, and now a global holiday celebrated annually on March 8th to commemorate the cultural, political, and socioeconomic achievements of women.
This significant day was chosen by President Biden to issue two executive orders. One directs his new Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, to suspend, revise, or rescind changes made to Title IX by Betsy DeVos, former education secretary during the Trump administration.
Title IX is a 1972 law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in federally-funded schools. In 2017 Devos reversed sweeping Obama-era rule changes that provided increased protections for victims of sexual assault on college campuses. She expanded the rights of those accused of sexual assault, limited the way colleges and universities can investigate the allegations, and narrowed the definition of sexual harassment. The DeVos rule became permanent in 2020 when a federal judge dismissed lawsuits filed in an attempt to stop the changes from taking effect.
The Trump administration was successful across multiple areas of policy — not only in education, but housing, employment, and health care — in narrowing the definition of sex discrimination so that it does not include protections for transgender people. Efforts begun in the previous administration to establish a White House council on gender equality were dismantled. Trump’s justice department filed a lawsuit seeking to block transgender students from participating in girls’ high school sports.
One of Biden’s first acts in office was to sign an executive order establishing gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes under federal discrimination laws. Biden’s justice department quickly retracted its support for a Trump-era lawsuit seeking to block transgender students from participating in girls’ high school sports.
Biden’s second executive order, signed Monday, establishes a Gender Policy Council that reports directly to him, and requires the participation of almost every cabinet secretary. Facilitating that mission is his order that a review and assessment be undertaken of any rules that could allow “discrimination on basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.” (NYT, WaPo, $)
The Kids Aren’t Alright
- Child marriage, defined as a union before the age of 18, is increasing at an alarming rate across the developing world. According to a report released Monday from the UN Children’s Fund, coronavirus is reversing years of hard-earned progress toward keeping young women in school.
- The pandemic has intensified factors that drive child marriage, such as lack of education, economic hardship, parental death, and teen pregnancy — the latter is amplified by disruptions in getting contraception. The report predicts that in this decade an additional 10 million girls will be at risk of child marriage.
- What especially worries children’s advocates is the clear link between marrying early and dying young. The World Health Organization lists pregnancy complications and childbirth as the leading cause of death in girls aged 15 to 19 in developing countries. Plus, the risk of infant mortality is much higher among the children of child brides. (NYT, $)
When Masks Are Allowed, But Face Coverings Aren’t
- Voters in Switzerland have approved a proposition banning facial coverings in public. Niqabs and burqas — worn by almost no one even among the country’s Muslim population — will be banned outside of religious institutions. The law exempts facial coverings for health reasons.
- Just 51.2% of Swiss voters supported the initiative. Some feminist groups and progressive Muslims were in favor of the proposal, arguing that full face coverings are oppressive to women. But opponents felt the new restriction was Islamophobic and that women should not be told what to wear.
- The Islamic Central Council of Switzerland also said the results were “Islamophobically motivated.” Several other European countries have banned facial coverings, including France, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria. (NPR)
Additional World News
- Female activists in Russia now have a place to rest far from the political fights (WaPo, $)
- ‘Pandemic of patriarchy’: Pakistani women defy threats to hold march (Guardian)
- Seoul Agrees To Pay More For U.S. Forces Stationed In South Korea (NPR)
- Trial implicating Honduran president in drug trafficking begins (Al Jazeera)
- Myanmar military occupies hospitals and universities ahead of mass strike (CNN)
- Ten grim lessons from a decade of war in Syria (Guardian)
- U.S. commits to Saudi defence after Houthi attacks on oil heartland (Reuters)
- Analysis | The symbolic power of the papal visit to Iraq (WaPo, $)
- What is behind the rise in Saudi-Houthi tit-for-tat attacks? (Al Jazeera)
- US says Russian-backed outlets are spreading Covid vaccine ‘disinformation’ (CNBC)
Shoring Up Support For Coastal Rebuild
(Drew Angerer via Getty Images)
- The Army Corps of Engineers released its long-awaited environmental impact statement last week, clearing the way for the next phase of Louisiana’s $50 billion plan to protect its coast from erosion and rising sea levels. In the last 100 years, some 2,000 square miles of the Pelican State’s land have been lost.
- Contributing to the loss are levees built to contain the Mississippi River, rising seas, and damage from activities like oil exploration that cut channels into the wetlands, letting in destructive saltwater that destroyed the delicate marshes. The state proposes to dig a $1.4 billion structure into the western bank of the river below New Orleans. The structure will include gates allowing operators to control the flow of water and sediment from the river into Barataria Bay.
- Letting freshwater flow from the river into the depleted wetlands of Barataria Basin will mimic the spring floods and sediment that created the Mississippi Delta — before people built all the levees to hold back the river. The Corps found the plan would create over 12,000 jobs during the five years it will take to complete the project, and should produce some 17,300 acres of new land after 30 years.
- The report said the move would benefit the state’s coastal areas, although it might affect some marine life, especially bottlenose dolphins, and could cause problems for people who make their living raising and catching seafood in the area. (NYT, $)
The Amazon Effect
- New research suggests that when big companies raise wages, they drive up pay in the places they operate without a notable loss of jobs — like “a rising tide lifts all boats” says. Three years ago, Amazon made a corporate decision to raise its starting pay to $15 an hour. This winter, the company began an advertising blitz to encourage Congress to follow its lead and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
- But the new study by economists at UC Berkeley and Brandeis University shows what Amazon did by itself lifted pay for low-wage workers in other local companies. The federal minimum wage has stalled at $7.25 an hour for over a decade. Democrats are trying to raise that number to an hourly rate of $15 by 2025.
- The study illustrates how difficult it can be for low-wage workers to command higher pay in the modern American economy without the intervention of a powerful outside actor, like a large employer, or the government. Researchers also determined that raising the minimum wage would not lead to significant job loss, a finding consistent with several recent studies. (NYT, $)
Additional USA News
- Manchin wants to make filibuster ‘painful’ to use (Politico)
- With virus aid in sight, Democrats debate filibuster changes (AP)
- Jury selection begins in Derek Chauvin’s trial in the death of George Floyd. Here’s what to expect (CNN)
- ‘We’re making our way’: how Virginia became the most progressive of the US’s southern states (Guardian)
- Why has there been a rise in anti-Asian hate crime in the US? (Guardian)
- How Trump administration left indelible mark on U.S. immigration courts (Reuters)
- Opinion | I Asked the Head of Space Force What the Agency Has Done for Me Lately (NYT, $)
- Racial inequality in US youth detention wider than ever, experts say (Guardian)
- Apple and Google face new antitrust battle over Arizona app store bill (Guardian)
- Republicans raise now-familiar alarms about ‘steal’ of California recall (Politico)
Don’t Be A Sheep, Control Your Destiny At Shepherd School
- Understanding that International Women’s Day means to celebrate women’s achievements makes it hard to know where to place the launch of Spain’s first female shepherding school on the timeline of accomplishments.
- The website for the School for Shepherdesses of the 21st Century is intriguing, if not quite relatable. It’s definitely aimed at rural women, or urban women who’d just as soon move to the country. It uses concepts like “empowering rural women is crucial,” and it’s “necessary to dignify the work of rural women.” But the part about women taking “a step forward to become rural entrepreneurs” might take a little more explaining.
- The website says that “in this training the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals converge, [and] the strategies of the European Union and the Bioeconomy are integrated as a way to achieve healthy ecosystems.” It talks about pastoralism needing “the opportunity to adapt to new technologies” in order to achieve a “dynamic and connected rural world….”
- There’s a simpler explanation. The population across more than half of Spain’s surface area has been steadily whittled away by urbanization. Many more women than men have abandoned rural areas, leaving behind an aging population and villages that were “being masculinized,” according to Linda Diaz of the Spanish Association Against Depopulation. “It’s a step backwards.”
- Susana Pacheco, the driving force behind the new school headquartered in the northern region of Cantabria, puts it this way: “There are other shepherd schools that women can attend. But the difference is that we’ve thought this through from the perspective of women. That’s why we’re talking about work-life balance, creating networks of mutual support and collaboration.”
- The nine-month shepherding course includes 500 hours of online training and one weekend a month of hands-on instruction. It’s a crash course in small-scale, sustainable farming, carefully mapped out in 17 modules. The course will blend traditions that stretch back millennia — like the use of indigenous species of livestock — with the latest advances in technology, such as the use of drones to track roaming livestock.
- Threading through the course is the idea of work/life balance: women can bring their children to hands-on training sessions in ventures such as beekeeping, cheesemaking, and sustainable tourism, allowing women to diversify their income, even escape an abusive relationship.
- “Women have always worked in rural environments but oftentimes they work intensely with little recognition,” Pacheco said. “We see this school as social transformation project – we want to empower women and dignify this work.” Once registration got started, 265 applications came pouring in, from which 30 students will be selected for the first session. “It’s clear that we’re meeting a need that exists in society.” Now we get it. (Guardian)
Additional Reads
- Perseverance site named Octavia E. Butler Landing (Boing Boing)
- SpaceX reveals the grand extent of its starport plans in South Texas (ArsTechnica)
- An Old Effort To Stop A Virus Has Lessons For Today (NPR)
- 5 Lesser-Known, Late-In-Life Works By Frida Kahlo Now On View In Dallas (NPR)
- OpenAI’s state-of-the-art machine vision AI is fooled by handwritten notes (Verge)
- The Power of Playing Dead (NYT, $)
- How early humans’ quest for food stoked the flames of evolution (Guardian)
- Pandemic Forces Mushers To Adapt To An Already Grueling Iditarod (NPR)
- Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service promises high speeds in rural areas like Big Sur. (Monterey County Weekly)