On the (Lack of ) Value of Husbands

From an Atlantic article on a study of longevity, hat tip Marginal Revolution:

For example, women who got divorced often thrived. Even women who were widowed often did exceptionally well. It often seemed as if women who got rid of their troublesome husbands stayed healthy—most women, it seemed, can rely on their friends and other social ties. Men who got and stayed divorced, on the other hand, were at really high risk for premature mortality. It would have been better had they not married at all.

Women in Special Ops

Special Ops is the glamour branch of the services.  Think of the Delta force operatives in Black Hawk Down.  So it's with some surprise I got towards the middle of this post on Tom Ricks blog and found that women are successfully infiltrating even Special Ops. You can't keep a good woman down, I guess.

Republican Change I Can Support

From Politico, Boehner is changing the House Parliamentarian's office with a women's restroom.

Change in the Armed Forces

Women/mothers make Sailor of the Year.  Turns out we have 4 sailors of the year and women won all 4 spots.  Article says they're about 16 percent of the Navy.

Best News Today

Is contained in  this NYTimes article. which describes how Greg Mortenson and the US military are getting together.  (Actually, the print version of the headline specifically mentions Mortenson and "Three Cups of Tea", which makes Gene Weingarten's column in the Post more timely.  Gene mourns the decline of headline writers, because headlines on the Web are intended to play into search engines, not for information or humor. Be sure to see his mention of Lady Gaga.)

I read Mortenson's book back when it was just getting a little word of mouth. Briefly, chance leads him into the mountains of Pakistan/Afghanistan and into building schools for girls, schools which are supported by the village elders and therefore protected against outside terrorists The book was well-written and moving. It gradually found an audience, getting onto the Times best seller list, finally selling 4 million copies, including to the wives of Gen. Petraeus and Adm. Mullen, which has led to some rapprochement between Mortenson and the military, a rapprochement described in the article.

So far his site says 70+ schools, the Times article 130+ schools have been built. Mortenson thinks educating females is the ultimate solution to the problem of terrorism in that part of the world.  Makes sense to me.

McArdle and Normalizing Children

Megan McArdle is back from her honeymoon and worrying about normalizing children: human interventions to adjust the height, and other characteristics, of our children.  As a very tall woman, she tentatively plumps for normalizing:

"If I were presented with a virtually riskless way to let my daughters buy clothing off the rack, and blend into the classroom a little better?  Frankly, no child of mine is ever going to have a brilliant athletic future in front of her.  So why not?  I'm pretty sure she could fight the patriarchy just as easily without a 35 inch inseam."

I'm bugged by the middle sentence and would have commented but I come late to the party so I'll post here instead:

• she does not allow for the genetics her daughter will receive from her husband.  He may be a total klutz, but maybe not.
• even if neither parent contributes much in the way of coordination, I'm reading the sentence, perhaps wrongly, as saying Ms McArdle looks down on athletics, at least as it pertains to her and hers. I'm hearing in it an echo of the attitude I get from some older relatives of mine: I'm no good on computers and technical type stuff.  That drives me up the wall. Now if they'd say: the world is full of wondrous things and my time on the planet is limited, so I choose not to invest the time needed to learn the ins and outs of Windows and the Internet--that I could understand.  
• so I guess I'd wish McArdle to say: while I'm not good at athletics, I'll try to keep my daughter's eyes open to athletics, just as I keep them open to a possible career in nuclear physics.

Klobuchar for SCOTUS? or President?

Via Volokh, a long post by Tom Goldstein predicting what happens in Supreme Court positions.  (Short answer: Stevens retires, Ginsburg doesn't.)  He runs through the possible candidates, ending with Sen. Klobuchar. From what little I've seen of her, I was mentally tipping her for POTUS.  When you ask, who will run for the Dems after Obama, and who might be the next female candidate, she seems to me to stand out.  Remains to be seen whether she would want either job.

[Updated: I Googled "Klobuchar for President" and found I'm out-of-date.  Here's a discussion--apparently she has too much of a sense of humor to be President.  Not a disqualification in my eyes--our most humorous President was also our greatest.]

The Past Persists

A couple factoids--the Presbyterians around 1900 were still dealing with "Freedmen", some 30 odd years after the 13th Amendment was ratified.

And it seems the U.S. didn't require passports for women until well into the 20th century.

Pigford and the Women

From a Government Executive post:

two key House members introduced legislation Thursday to establish a $4.6 billion compensation fund for female farmers who have been denied loans since 1981.

The article discusses Pigford and the other discrimination cases filed against FSA and USDA.  But there's no substantive discussion of the basis for the amount or any indication of what lawyers are involved.  (In the Pigford case there were allegations of misconduct by some of the lawyers.)

Updated:  See the press release on De Lauro's site for more details.  I refuse to use my dwindling brain cells to analyze the differences between De Lauro's process and Pigford but it looks as if it's the two track process again: one track for people who credibly claim to have applied for a loan, another track for people who can prove discrimination.  The first track gets $5,000 instead of the $50,000 for Pigford; the second gets an adjustable $109,000. 

One white male chauvinist legalistic remark:  there's no provision to prevent double-dipping by a black female  farmer (or, in the event, a Hispanic female or a Native American female farmer).

Feminism in 1930

From the 1930 blog:

A survey of the 500 female students at Stanford got 225 responses. Summary: About 90% expect to marry, with 40% currently in love. College men and fraternity members preferred. 70% “do not enjoy kissing for its own sake”; 20% believe in “companionate marriage”; 80% believe in divorce; 30% “consider themselves experienced in love”; 20% “approve of the double standard of morals”; most important qualities in husband: personality, appearance, and wealth. Favorite cities: San Francisco, New York, Washington, Los Angeles; most admired women: Mrs. Hoover, Helen Wills, mother, Amelia Earhart; most admired men: Lindbergh, Hoover, Edison, David Starr Jordan, Admiral Byrd. Religion: almost half Christian, 15% no religious faith, 7% “exotic Oriental creeds”, 1% spiritualism.

Feminism--1930 and Now

From 1930 Blog:

Higher education suspected of discouraging marriage in women students. Of living graduates of Wellesley College, less than 1/3 are married at the present time; of 400 women just graduated from Northwestern, only 23 stated in a final poll that “matrimony was their preferred career.”

From today, over 50 percent of college chemistry graduates are female.

Affirmative Action Works?

It does, at least for women judges, and under one theory. See this Slate article reporting on academic paper.

While women selected to be federal judges generally had lesser qualifications (based on some metrics), once selected they performed as well or better than male judges (based on some metrics).

Great News for Chinese Feminists

BBC reports China is instituting a pension system for farmers over age 60. Why is this good for feminists--because the preference for sons is, in part, a reflection of the need for someone to continue farming. Give farmers pensions and they'll accept daughters.

Unsung Hero of Copyright

Barbara A. Ringer died at 83. Why should you care? Well- she was a great bureaucrat who pushed through our modern copyright law, as well as being a pathbreaking feminist in the Federal service.

No, I hadn't heard of her before I read her obit in today's Post. A sentence from it:

Foreseeing the rise of the Internet, she inserted provisions into the law to protect authors from the unauthorized reproduction of their work, even by means not yet devised.

What's This About?

Got an appeal from the kennedy-center for a woman-oriented event (I didn't read it closely). I did note what I thought was an interesting discrepancy. The women sponsoring the appeal were listed as:

Mrs. Michelle Obama
Mrs. Laura Bush
Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton
Mrs. George Bush
Mrs. Ronald Reagan
Mrs. Jimmy Carter

Now what is this? Why do our most recent first ladies use their first name, while the older ones use their husband's? Have we dissolved all rules of manners pertaining to women's names? And why didn't Laura and Michelle keep their maiden names? And what is a "maiden" anyway? Old geezers want to know.

Women in Agriculture

"Lady Landowners" group? Encouraging such groups is a good idea for FSA.

The Feminization of American AGriculuture

Via Ethicurean, the Christian Science Monitor reports women own almost 50 percent of the farmland in Iowa. And they, some of them, have definite expectations for how the land should be farmed, namely with a concern for conservation and the environment. It's a long story. (I wonder if owners these days feel rich enough to be concerned for these issues, as opposed to maximizing return. Or, is it just a feminine thing?)

The Explanation for This Post Is...

Sex. According to columnist Kathleen Parker (don't know her) in the Post, men like McCain (and I?) don't have good judgment when faced with an attractive woman like Sarah Palin.

So, when I claim that I always felt Palin was important, my claim should be dismissed. :-(

However, Lois Romano's article on Palin as a new kind of feminist, also in the Post, deserves reading. I'd summarize it as saying Palin stretches the envelope for female politicians, showing one can attract support by combining feminism without pro-choice positions. I think she'll turn out to be a more important candidate than Ferraro was in '84, and hopefully have more effect on her party than Ferraro did on the Dems.

(I hasten to add, as a confirmed Dem, I'm glad she's making political history, but apparently without helping the Reps to win the White House.)

Feminism Score--Four Stars

The Post and Times have pieces on Lt. Gen. Ann Dunwoody, now nominated to be a four-star general, probably the first one to have graduated from Cortland State (i.e., upstate NY). And apparently a Scotch-Irish background.

What We May Assume--Women's Lib

Here's an interesting story, via someone I should recognize but missed, on women's lib, arguing that the advent of bicycles changed things and liberated women. It mentions riding sidesaddle. Now one could assume that the Victorian Age constraints on women were focused on the Anglo-saxon world, given Queen Victoria reigned over the British Empire and we concede that much of American popular culture followed the Brits. (Anyhow, that's the way my mind would work.)

But, separately there's an article in the NYTimes on Mexican rodeos ("a charreada") in the U.S. as Mexicans incorporate some of their traditions in their U.S. life. One of the features is a parade of women in petticoats riding sidesaddle. Whether Hispanic culture was as Victorian as U.S. was I don't know.