Life is full of contradictory messages to women. Speak up, be silent. Look “nice” but don’t draw attention to yourself. Promote/police other women. We are expected to solve our own problems plus social problems (patriarchy), and problems from individual men (sexist abuse and harassment). But we’re also told to take care of men, not demean them, to appease men by caveating our statements. We are not talking about you, Man Who Takes Offense at Our Legitimate Complaint, you’re fine (maybe). We are expected to do the work of freeing women from low wages, street harassment, fashion faux pas, employment inequality, civil rights, legal injustice, resting bitch face, domestic violence, and other transgressions and limitations.
Men have always written histories that excluded women. Now we are told that tech guys are designing a new patriarchy to dominate us through artificial intelligence (AI). Not intentionally, but because algorithms establish AI in the image of its male creators. Women say Silicon Valley is a “Brotopia” designed to exclude us, however, whiny white tech guys believe they suffer from diversity policies. Where’s the damn ERA when we need it? Okay, no ERA, how about the End Violence Against Women Act? What if we could be public about abuse without being blamed, doubted, or held to secrecy?
Women are working on all this as fast as we can but society and government aren’t keeping up. This week’s news includes the usual issues plus newly identified problems like AI. Fortunately, women keep devising innovative and determined efforts to deal with these problems and men show up to help.
male-designed robots will take over our lives
The overarching problem of men dictating the rules has found new expression in something that is currently changing the way we live and breathe: artificial intelligence (AI). [...]
I think the next fight for us women is to ensure artificial intelligence does not become the ultimate expression of masculinity.
There are many reasons to fear this could happen. First, the algorithms that codify human choices about how decisions should be made. It is not possible for algorithms to remain immune from the human values of their creators. If a non-diverse workforce is creating them, they are more prone to be implanted with unexamined, undiscussed, often unconscious assumptions and biases about things such as race, gender and class. What if the workforce designing those algorithms is male-dominated? This is the first major problem: the lack of female scientists and, even worse, the lack of true intersectional thinking behind the creation of algorithms.
Speak up!
be the role model you never had
Black Girl Nerds website was created in 2012 when Jamie Broadnax typed “black girl nerds” into Google search and had zero results.
You can find nearly everything under the sun, but during that year, if you typed “Black Girl Nerds” in Google images — white women wearing glasses with black frames would appear. This subcultural community of women was essentially a myth, a story of folklore only heard in old wives tales. We’re unicorns! [...]
As BGN started to grow and people like Shonda Rhimes was recognizing my Twitter presence on social media, I realized that this website and online community is resonating with a lot of people. [...]
It is a supportive community of fans and fellow Black girl nerds that are proud and happy to see a platform where their stories and images are reflected.
Black women in STEM now have role models on film and IRL, including Twitter.
change lives
But not like that!
even women police our lives and tell us “This is not how you should do scicomm”
Twitter fought back when one woman scientist criticized another who posts lab selfies on Instagram. Critical woman’s message is Do Not — be too feminine, express interest in makeup and clothing, or use emojis. “Publicly documenting the cute outfit I wear and the sweet smile I brandish in the lab isn’t going to help me build a fulfilling career in a field where women hold less senior positions, are paid less, and are continuously underrated,” griped the author of an finger-wagging reprimand published in Science.
The problem is a culture that says women need to be penisless men in order to be professional or scientific.
Go check out the great photos at #ScientistsWhoSelfie (and it isn’t only women)!
Now be silent
Uber accused of silencing women who claim sexual assault by drivers
Uber is trying to force women who say they were sexually assaulted by drivers to resolve their claims behind closed doors rather than in the courts, a move that critics say silences victims and shields the company from public scrutiny.
Court records in a California class-action lawsuit revealed that the ride-sharing firm has argued that female passengers who speak up about being raped in an Uber must individually settle their cases through arbitration, a private process that often results in confidentiality agreements.
Nine women from across the US have joined the case, seeking to represent all women who have been assaulted or experienced violence in Uber cars in hopes of pushing the corporation to reform and better protect passengers. Uber, however, has filed a motion arguing that the riders agreed to privately arbitrate all disputes when they signed up for the ride-share service and thus have no right to file a lawsuit.
Fortunately, we have ways of dealing with these problems
Those looking to improve the public record can volunteer a few hours at the fifth annual Wikipedia edit-a-thon at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC, where one can create, edit and add to Wikipedia pages on women in the arts on 17 March. [...]
It’s all part of an initiative to improve the gender imbalance on Wikipedia, where reports have suggested less than 20% of contributors are women. [...]
“We don’t just think about the impact of building awareness about the gender gap on Wikipedia in terms of what’s countable like article edits, but our greatest impact is modeling a form of defiance that kicks back at systems of misogyny and demands that they be dismantled,” [...]
The Wikimedia Foundation has also taken steps to reduce harassment by creating an anti-harassment team to mediate disagreements and protect people who are being attacked, especially new contributors to the site.
The year of 'Femtech' and destigmatizing our vaginas
"Being a woman is never dull," said Elvie co-founder and CEO Tania Boler as she took the main stage.
She noted that, when it comes to women's health, technology has fallen behind. And she should know. After completing her Ph.D. in women's health, she held several leadership positions — some in research and innovation — and she has published books, advised on women's health issues, and published research studies on the topic.
Interestingly, it wasn't until she got pregnant that she realized that there were so many things about women's health that even she didn't know. While 30 years ago breast cancer was stigmatized and women didn't feel comfortable talking about their breasts in the open, Boler explains that this is what's currently happening with the vagina. [...]
The rise of so-called Femtech is part of three larger movements currently going on, according to Boler: the feminist surge (as well as the #metoo movement); the huge technological revolution that's yielding instant personal data; and the paradigm shift in health, in which the patient/doctor paradigm is giving way to individual control of our own health.
Maya Dusenberry’s book Doing Harm relates how sexism in medicine is harming women. She had asked women to submit their personal stories of gender bias in medicine. She was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and in the process began hearing stories from women about how their symptoms and health concerns were dismissed by doctors.
I hope that the book will help women realize that their experiences feeling dismissed, unheard, and disrespected in the medical system are not the result of their own individual failings or simple bad luck. Instead, they reflect deep, systemic problems within medicine—problems that urgently need to be exposed and fixed.
Male feminists inside uganda’s police strike out at killing of women
Since last May at least 20 young women have been murdered, their bodies left along roadsides south of Uganda’s capital city. Police have arrested over a dozen suspects with possible motives like domestic arguments, sexual abuse, and ritual murder linked to human sacrifice. Although Uganda’s police have a reputation as the nation’s most corrupt institution, some police are now trying to understand how to fight against the belief that domestic violence is sometimes justified.
Balancing a heavy clay pot on his head with a baby tied to his back, policeman Francis Ogweng caused a scene as he marched down the busy highway towards Uganda's capital, Kampala...flanked by three policemen carrying bundles of firewood, a 50-strong police brass brand and other officers carrying placards that read: "Peace in the home. Peace in the nation. Prevent Gender Based Violence".[...]
With traffic backed up to the horizon...onlookers were surprised to see a senior officer marching to stop violence against women, in a force that opponents of Uganda's long-serving President Yoweri Museveni accuse of spending more time suppressing dissent than tackling crime…
"We want to put ourselves in the shoes of women," Ogweng, an assistant superintendent in the Uganda Police Force (UPF), told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "Is it difficult to carry water? Is it difficult to carry a baby?"
"We must invest our resources, our training, our recruitment ... into fighting against gender based violence," [Asan Kasingye, assistant inspector general, another unlikely ally in Uganda's fight for gender equality] said, seated in his top floor office at the police headquarters.
"It must percolate, it must be known by everybody. So it preoccupies us."
Still, some problems require constant attention
The legal situation in Germany regarding abortion is truly weird.
If the conviction of Kristina Hänel under §219a (mentioned in the Guardian article) stands up, it means that a doctor can be convicted of illegal advertising of abortion simply for offering factual information about abortion that a news outlet, for instance, can freely publish. Indeed, SPIEGEL ONLINE did publish exactly that in late January. The presiding judge’s justification for her decision against Hänel was that ‘The lawmaker did not want termination of pregnancy to be discussed in public as if it were a normal matter’.
A debate over proposals to scrap a Nazi-era law that forbids German doctors from providing information on abortion is expected to set the tone of the new coalition government when it is voted on this week.
Under paragraph 219a of the German penal code, it is a crime to advertise, offer or give information on abortion services, and those found guilty of doing so can face a two-year jail sentence or a hefty fine.
The liberal parties in the Bundestag, once showing a united front, are now split on whether to amend the law or scrap it, while the conservative parties – Angela Merkel’s CDU, the CSU and the far-right AfD – are in favour of keeping it intact.
Activist’s Detainment Reminds Us Immigration Is a Reproductive Justice Issue
[Alejandra Pablos], who had been placed in deportation proceedings following several years-old charges (including Driving Under the Influence and possession of drug paraphernalia), is currently being punished with mandatory detention after showing up to a scheduled appointment with ICE and, as other activists have pointed out, after having the audacity to advocate for herself and her community. It’s unjust—and it’s not just Ale. Her detainment is a message this administration is sending to those who fight for their communities to have basic human rights. It’s also a stark reminder for so many of us who work at the intersection of immigrant and reproductive justice that the two issues are inextricably linked. Our abortion stories—which we’ve shared as part of We Testify, an abortion storyteller program of the National Network of Abortion Funds—bear that out.
What good are diversity efforts if industry is hardwired to exclude women?
Whiny White Men Challenge Google and Youtube Diversity Efforts
Perhaps the white dude and the woman/POC have equal qualifications, but the woman/POC overcome obstacles, instead of coasting through life with unearned white birthright advantages?
Two high-profile legal cases in which white men have accused employers of discrimination or retaliation have put a spotlight on U.S. companies’ efforts to make career advancement more accessible to women and people of color.
A recruiter is accusing YouTube of retaliating against him after he complained that the video site discriminated against white and Asian male applicants in favor of hiring other people of color and women. The case comes on the heels of a lawsuit against Google, in which James Damore has accused the company of firing him for espousing conservative political views that oppose the company’s diversity-related hiring practices.
Why sexism is rife in Silicon Valley’s Brotopia
The tech industry is hardwired to marginalize women, claims Emily Chang, author of Brotopia. It wasn’t always this way but personality tests designed to identify people good at tech jobs was skewed by the paradigm that programmers don’t like people. “These tests perpetuated the stereotype of the antisocial, mostly white, male nerds who many of us think of when we think of computer programmers.” (Thus the whiny white tech guys came into power.)
[Brotopia is] this idea that Silicon Valley is a modern utopia where anyone can change the world or make their own rules, if they are a man. But if you are a woman it is incomparably harder. And that shows in the numbers. Women-led companies get just 2% of venture capital funding. That is egregious, especially in an industry that prides itself on being a meritocracy where anyone can succeed. We need people of all backgrounds to be making these products, because people everywhere are using them. [...]
Silicon Valley created the pipeline problem by creating this very narrow idea of who can be good at the job. The industry [also] has a big retention problem – women are twice as likely to quit tech than men – and that is because it is so male-dominated and the culture is not inclusive. Unconscious bias is a huge problem.
Here are opportunities to take action together
send an email to indian health service asking them to ENSURE NATIVE WOMEN’S EQUAL ACCESS TO CARE AFTER SEXUAL ASSAULT
All women have the right to be safe and free from violence, the right to adequate and equal health care, and the right to justice. That’s why we are pressuring Indian Health Service to implement its sexual assault protocols across IHS centers and protect Native women’s health care to ensure that the rights of women are protected.
Native American and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely to be raped than non-Native women in the United States: 1 in 3 Native women will be raped during her lifetime. In 2011, Indian Health Service (IHS), the federal agency responsible for providing Native health care, implemented sexual assault protocols that included guidelines for post-rape care. Native health activists report, however, that these protocols are unevenly, if ever, fully implemented. Sexual violence against women is not only a criminal or social issue, it is a human rights abuse.
Various support actions at the link.
This week, farmworkers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) are fasting for five days outside the Manhattan office of Wendy’s Board Chairman Nelson Peltz. They’re demanding that the fast-food giant join the Fair Food Program, a worker-driven monitoring program that has a proven track record of stopping sexual harassment and violence in the fields. Despite the program’s success and the participation of some of the world’s largest retail food companies (including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Subway), Wendy’s refuses to join.
Please sign this petition and make some phone calls to pass the National End Violence Against Women Act.
Violence against women is a human rights violation and public health issue, and ending violence against women should be a top U.S. priority. The International Violence Against Women Act (IVAWA) would do just that: this bipartisan bill would make ending violence against women and girls a U.S. priority, streamlining U.S. work, and building on previous successes and lessons.
THIS WEEK IN THE WAR ON WOMEN PROVIDES A WEEKLY SUMMARY OF NEWS ON WOMEN'S ISSUES AND INFORMATION ON CURRENT POLITICAL ACTIONS.
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THANKS TO ELENACARLENA, sandrallap, bmscott, mettle fatigue, AND NOWEASELS FOR THEIR HELP GATHERING THIS WEEK’S NEWS AND TO ALL THE WOW SISTER GODDESSES FOR THEIR SUPPORT.
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