Today is International Women's Day, and in honor of that, bloggers are banding together for Blog Against Sexism Day. So what do environmental concerns and women's issues have in common (and how much do I hate the phrase "women's issues" anyway? I can't think of one of 'em that's not everyone's issue)?
Well, where to begin?
Sexual health, contraception, and population
Access to contraception and the level of empowerment to use that contraception has a direct effect on the number of children a woman will have -- a clear environmental issue, since more babies means more consumption of resources. Increasing education and access to contraception at home and abroad can improve women's lives, raise the standard of living, and lessen the environmental impacts of humanity -- all of which will be key if we want to make this whole "living" thing work.
And even having access to contraception may be damaging to the environment, so increasing the level of awareness, educational resources, and options is a must. Even our toys have environmental implications!
Poverty
The union of environmental concerns and women's rights is especially apparent in developing countries, where population is increasing the fastest, and where having more children most significantly impacts the quality of life. Women account for 70 percent of the world's absolute poor -- those living on less than a dollar a day. And the poor, both in the U.S. and abroad, already face some of the most harmful effects of environmental malfeasance, will face the most severe effects of global warming. So empowering women is a huge environmental concern.
Consumption
So everyone knows that sex sells, and for environmentalists and women, using women's bodies to sell more ... stuff ... just isn't OK. According to one advertising study, 62 percent of white women and 53 percent of black women used in advertising were "scantily clad" -- in bikinis, underwear, etc. For men, the figure was only 25 percent. So whether the stuff is vodka or pantyhose, women's bodies are being used to up consumption -- dangerous for us and the environment.
And while we're on the subject of consumption, let's take a moment to think about all the junk pushed on women to make us taller, darker, lighter, prettier, skinnier, curvier, curlier, straighter, and womanly-er. Of course there's the waste issue, as well as all the nasty chemicals in cosmetics, the abundance of petroleum in many beauty products, and the environmental impacts of our wardrobe. All this pressure to look hot is bad for our psyches, our physical health, and the environment.
And to get a plug in here for an outstanding online effort, our favorite eco-friendly sanitary product company, Seventh Generation, has an outstanding campaign going on right now. Visit their site, select your location, and they'll donate a box of chlorine-free sanitary products to a women's shelter in your state.
Women remain underrepresented in the sciences
Women account for only 20 percent of all Ph.Ds in computer science, less than 27 percent in physics, and only 17 percent in engineering. Girls are simply not encouraged to go into the sciences in the same way men are, and many a woman who may have been the next great biologist or engineer to address global warming issues has been discouraged from a career in sciences. Inspiring more girls to work in the sciences may be what saves us all.
Women have been representin' for a long time in the environmental movement
Rachel Carson. Majora Carter. Sylvia Earle. Elizabeth Kolbert. Jane Goodall. Wangari Maathai. Dian Fossey. Julia "Butterfly" Hill. Rosalie Edge. Marina da Silva. The list goes on and on.
Bloggers of all stripes grab a piece of the climate pie for Blog Action Day 2009
Comments
View as Flat
sunflower Posted 7:38 am
08 Mar 2007
Reject rich men with fast cars and big houses. Those men can not protect a family in a world severely compromised by global warming.
Seek self-reliant men that can build, farm, and think above the belt.
Men will quickly adapt to whatever women want.
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kmp Posted 7:58 am
08 Mar 2007
Clearly there are societies in which women are much worse off than here in American(Afghanistan and Africa spring to mind) but that doesn't mean today's woman in the good ole USofA doesn't have her share of issues. So, I wish for us:
-Equal pay for equal labor
-Equal opportunity for jobs in all sectors (how many female cab drivers do you see? auto mechanics? train conductors? Presidents?)
-Access to all forms of birth control, including abortion (even in South Dakota!)
-Freedom from the pressure to conform to someone else's idea of "womanhood"
-The courage to defend our knowledge passionately
-The grace to argue our positions deftly
-The peace of knowing that we are fabulous - not more fabulous than men, not less, just fabulous
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Biodiversivist Posted 8:22 am
08 Mar 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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drosera Posted 10:58 am
08 Mar 2007
Where nature and culture cross-pollinate
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Nucbuddy Posted 9:36 pm
08 Mar 2007
Women account for only 20 percent of all Ph.Ds in computer science, less than 27 percent in physics, and only 17 percent in engineering.
How did you come to the conclusion that females are underrepresented in the sciences? Did you attempt to account for the lower female mean-IQ?
Jackson, D. N., & Rushton, J. P. (2006). Males have greater g: Sex differences in general mental ability from 100,000 17- to 18-year-olds on the Scholastic Assessment Test.
psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushton_pubs.htm
psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/2006%20Intell%20Jackson%20&%20Rushton.pdf
In this study we found that 17- to 18 year old males averaged 3.63 IQ points higher than did their female counterparts on the 1991 Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT).
[...]
We examined the male-female differences in g across a representation of the entire distribution (Fig. 2). Males are over-represented in each and every category above the middle category, and females are over-represented in each and every category below the middle category. This indicates that male-female differences in g occur across the entire distribution of g scores.
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amazingdrx Posted 9:49 pm
08 Mar 2007
The most important environmental move for our planet!
Women in charge of population growth, one mother at a time. Trust them to make the right choice for themselves and mother earth.
The fact is that no amount of energy policy or any other reform can stave off eventual disaster with most women slaves to religious/commericial/warrior cultures that use them as baby making machines. To provide cannon fodder, cheap labor, and consumers to keep the corporate bottomline growing forever.
Until the earth rejects the human plague of vast overpopulation upon it.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 10:03 pm
08 Mar 2007
I hope all who read this will note the quality of this fellers character when considering his advocacy for nuclear power.
These kind of spokes persons for nuclear power are no coincidence. It is not guilt by asociation, it is corruption built into this industry that attracts these good folk. They are the best illustrations of why nuclear power is a disaster.
Really, really a new low buddy. Nice work.
Keep him talking.
You have no shame at all, do you?
Which race and sex has the highest IQ buddy? I bet it's your race and sex right? The rightfull leaders of human kind, by divine right? Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 11:05 pm
08 Mar 2007
According to Richard Lynn's 2006 book Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis, the East Asian race has the highest mean IQ, followed by the European race, which is followed by in turn by six other races in front of, finally, the sub-Saharan African race.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence#Test_data
Across and within all major races, the male sex has a higher mean IQ than does the female sex.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence
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caniscandida Posted 12:38 am
09 Mar 2007
On "women's issues": No doubt what Kate means is, there are indeed issues that directly affect women and not men; but in fact ultimately they affect everybody, men and women alike, adults and children too.
Kaela's list is necessary to put out there. The problems regarding unequal pay and unequal opportunities for advancement (cf. the "glass ceiling" phenomenon, and the class action suit against Wal-Mart), for starters, are real issues in US society.
I am appalled to read of Drosera's experience. As a New Yorker, too, I share her surprise; it would perhaps have been less surprising if that sort of harrassment had happened in a private business, rather than in a government office.
On Kaela's "Freedom from the pressure to conform to someone else's idea of 'womanhood'": we should recognize that it is all too often women who apply that pressure on other women. There are many subtle examples, such as the recent scandal involving the Delta Zeta sorority at DePauw University. But surely the worst by far, which is not subtle in the least, and which involves child abuse, is female genital mutilation in large parts of Africa.
In US politics, women in high places have always been held to unfairly high standards (save possibly for the two female Supreme Court justices). Hillary Clinton had to deal with that during her husband's campaign in 1992, then during her ill-fated attempt at health care reform, then through the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Perhaps the pressure on her has been less strong, while she represents this enlightened state of ours in the Senate. But now in her own presidential campaign it is back in a big way, most especially perhaps in connexion with the way she must handle talking about that fateful vote in 2002 authorizing W. to invade Iraq.
On the other hand, she seems to have begun appealing to women voters. Geraldine Ferraro and Madeleine Albright have already been produced as apparently ready to support her.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:52 am
09 Mar 2007
IQ is a measure of the ability to take an IQ test. Exactly what IQ tests measure is unknown. A difference of a few points on average for IQ tests between sexes measures the fact that men and women not only look different, but think differently as well, nothing more. When you look at how different men and women are on the outside, I find it amazing that there is only a 3-point difference in a test like this.
An IQ test is a very narrow measurement of overall cognitive capacity. I use the facets on the face of a diamond as an analogy for cognitive capacity. Think of each facet as a measure of something the brain controls. We all have our cognitive strengths and weaknesses. The weird, socially awkward, but really smart egghead is a well-known stereotype. We've all heard stories of autistic people with amazing mathematical or musical abilities. These unfortunate people demonstrate examples of hyper-developed facets of intellect.
Your local egghead has the same problem, but not as exaggerated: a hyper-development of some aspect or aspects of intellect at the expense of others. Is genius a result of brain damage? Mozart interpreted notes as colors. I suspect that Einstein was probably not so bright in many respects: his musical ability, his ability to empathize, to communicate non-mathematical ideas, to navigate through social nuance and subtlety, to make art, to remember names and faces. If he followed the general pattern for genius, he was probably just as dumb in many respects as he was brilliant in others. Einstein can be viewed as a diamond with only a handful of large facets. Traits like empathy, generosity, enthusiasm, and creativity are not measured by IQ tests. Women would dominate tests that measured all known cognitive abilities.
I know of no standard test that measures the ability to see oneself through other people's eyes. The ability is centered in that part of the brain containing the recently discovered mirror neurons. How polished would you guess your intellectual facets are in this area? Take some advice and stop posting the IQ stats. Doing so exposes one of your (I suspect many) cognitive weaknesses. The mistaken emphasis you place on their importance makes you, by definition, sexist and racist, a double whammy. And seriously, just how smart is that?
Men are analogous in many ways to roosters. We like the sound of our voices, walk on two legs, and fight with each other at the drop of a hat.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Baby Boomer Posted 3:54 am
09 Mar 2007
I turned 60 yesterday so I can tell you that things have changed since I was a little girl growing up in Georgia. I wasn't suppose to go to college because I was a girl, but I did. When I married, I had the birth control pill which was developed when I was a teenager. I couldn't have a credit as a female until my 20's. Heck, my mom was born in 1920, the year women got the vote.
So we've come a long way, but it's still a constant fight. Attention must be paid! But remember with rights come responsibility and there are women who came before that fought for these rights. Treasure the rights and respect the responsibilities.
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Nucbuddy Posted 4:24 am
09 Mar 2007
Perhaps. Thankfully, GNXP has done it for me.
gnxp.com/blog/2007/01/sex-difference-in-g.php
Even small differences in mean and variance can have large effects at the tails.
Scientists and engineers are not evenly-selected from throughout the combined IQ distribution. Even if we selected a lower IQ-cutoff at the combined IQ mean, males would outnumber females. If a more-realistic lower-cutoff of +1 Standard Deviations (SD) were selected, we could use the table at the above GNXP page to see the resulting disparities between males and females who make the IQ-grade. From that table we can see that at a mean female IQ-deficit of 0.3 SD (4.5 Wechsler IQ points -- the finding for 20- to 29-year-olds in Lynn and Irwing's 2004 review), females would make up only 38% of potential candidates.
However, the picture would only be that rosy for females if we assumed that the female IQ distribution had the same breadth. It is widely agreed -- even among researchers who claim to have found that the means are the same -- that the male and female IQ distributions do not have the same breadths. The male IQ distribution is in fact almost-universally found to be broader. The results of this extra distribution-breadth can be seen on the same GNXP table. Assuming a female distribution-breadth of only 0.85 that of the male distribution-breadth, drops the female candidate pool from 38% down to 28%.
There are other important mental-characteristics for scientists and engineers to possess that are known to differ greatly between males and females. IQ is merely the most-important one.
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Biodiversivist Posted 5:22 am
09 Mar 2007
IQ and Human Intelligence should be directly compared with Jensen's The g Factor. Given the authors' divergent backgrounds, the degree of their agreement on the interpretation of a number of empirical findings is striking. Both agree, for example, that there are no real differences in intelligence between the sexes and that this lack of differences is not an artifact of test construction procedures.
And from the Science Blog Gene Expression:
Overall, more boys and girls are in college than a generation ago. But when adjusted for population growth, the percentage of boys entering college, master's programs, and most doctoral programs -- except for PhDs in fields like engineering and computer science -- has mostly stalled out, whereas for women it has continued to rise across the board. The trend is most pronounced among Hispanics, African Americans, and those from low-income families.
You also missed my point. Let me be more blunt. Posting IQ stats to denigrate females is just not very bright, and by definition sexist. While you chew on that one, explain why women, with their defective little minds, may soon account for 80% of all physicians.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:36 am
09 Mar 2007
Mackintosh's IQ and Human Intelligence was published in 1999. Jensen's The g Factor was published in 1998. The new sex-differences-in-g results are partly based upon more-recent methods of examining old studies.
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Biodiversivist Posted 5:49 am
09 Mar 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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sunflower Posted 6:11 am
09 Mar 2007
She does health and I do engineering. The differences? Cassandra (Sandee) can remember organic chemistry names, drug names, and can read faces. I can do spatial reasoning and use a shovel. If my life depended on it, I would only see a female physician.
As demonstrated here, women can communicate better and men can dig holes deeper.
BioD is correct. Sexism is regressive and repugnant. I love women. I do not like this disgusting bathroom wall rhetoric from our misogynist troll buddy.
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caniscandida Posted 6:49 am
09 Mar 2007
<<
Take some advice and stop posting the IQ stats. Doing so exposes one of your (I suspect many) cognitive weaknesses. The mistaken emphasis you place on their importance makes you, by definition, sexist and racist, a double whammy. And seriously, just how smart is that?
>>
A+!
And then, Sunflower gratifyingly followed up with some volunteered data of a personal sort.
To be sure, there was this questionable bit: "As demonstrated here, women can communicate better and men can dig holes deeper." Well, OK, maybe, much of the time. But it ain't necessarily so. E.g., when my husband and his lesbian cousin go to the Wal-Mart together near where my mother-in-law lives, she goes off to check out the power tools, while he goes to see if there are any good buys in table linens.
Really, though: Is there a crisis in masculinity? If women can practically do anything as well as any man can do, is there anything that men can do really better, aside from growing beards and going bald?
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Biodiversivist Posted 7:28 am
09 Mar 2007
He's breathing.
What is the insensitive area at the base of the penis called?
A man.
What do men and women have in common?
They both distrust men.
A woman knows all about her children. She knows about dentist appointments, soccer games, romances, best friends, favorite foods, secret fears, hopes, and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.
Women dream of world peace, a safe environment, and eliminating hunger.
Men dream of being stuck in an elevator with the Doublemint twins (substitute Richard Gere and George Clooney as needed).
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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birdboy Posted 7:51 am
09 Mar 2007
Many scholars of ancient history agree that before the forceful conversion of most of the world to Christianity, people worshiped at least one form of a Goddess. This was natural, since only women could birth a child; they must be closer to the Divine Ones. This went quite nicely with the ancient view of Nature; often, the Goddess expressed Her will in the workings of Nature. In worshiping the Goddess, they were worshiping the Earth, life in all it's manifestations. Man lived with love and respect for the Earth's creatures, since they were the embodiment of the Goddess, and humans valued the feminine qualities of love, nurturing, personal sacrifice, and peaceful harmony.
But Christian political and church leaders went to great lengths, often by violent means, to overcome the people's reverence for the Divine Female. The societal position of women was downgraded- they were accused of aligning with the 'Devil', and were blamed for tempting Man with the 'forbidden'. Their angry, violent God would punish any who worshiped another way with eternal suffering. The masculine God was harsh, demanding, and dominating. The Church preached that to worship His creation was sinful; worship should be only to Him. Creation was to be used or abused as needed by Humanity, dominated and subdued to Man's purpose- no respect should be paid to the material things placed here by God- respect only He who Created them.
When the expulsion of all things feminine from the world didn't take hold, they began accusing women of witchcraft, of having secret, and therefore evil, knowledge (like herbal healing), and millions of women were burned at the stake. This kind of suppression and domination of the feminine aspect of life is at the heart of today's cavalier attitude toward Nature- Christians are taught to respect the Creator, to dominate creation. This is why people scoff at the notion that animals have rights, that a healthy forest might be more important than human jobs and new homes, and that we puny humans might be able to ruin God's creation with our emissions.
We desperately need to take a more feminine view of Nature; let Her be sacred, let Her thrive, and balance what we take with what we give- that is, nurture nature, don't dominate.
a liberal in redsville
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:18 am
09 Mar 2007
Let's begin with the women reforming themselves.
I suggest that women stop:
Selling themselves for pleasure.
Charging men for pleasure.
Raping men's finances with divorce and child support (they're independent, hear them roar, right? Or only if they can pick a man's pocket).
Exploiting men's nature by posing in pornagraphic scenes.
Using children to extract income from men and from the State.
Posing in advertising and receiving money for using their bodies to promote and sell products.
Yes, Women, Let's Stop the Exploitation NOW!
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
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sunflower Posted 9:04 am
09 Mar 2007
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0309-31.htm
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GreenEngineer Posted 10:23 am
09 Mar 2007
Troll: Commenter who makes outrageous or provocative statements purely in order to derail discussion.
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David Roberts Posted 12:43 pm
09 Mar 2007
www.grist.org
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caniscandida Posted 11:10 pm
11 Mar 2007
Your basic observation, that in the course of its development, biblical religion has been applied both in the suppression of women and the distinctive cultures of women's societies, and in the assertion of the authority of human beings over the non-human members of the natural community, is undeniably true. Not only that, it is extremely important, and needs to be repeated constantly, until people begin to understand.
But, I do not think there is a necessary connexion between those two phenomena. Both women and the environment got clobbered by a culture of men in control, who were not surprisingly able to find biblical authority to support them.
It is important to make distinctions. The first is, between the history of biblical religions, and the Bible itself. There is plenty in the Bible to suggest that women ought not to be allowed the same degree of freedom and authority that men are meant to enjoy. That is hardly the same as saying that women ought to be mistrusted and suppressed always and everywhere. Fortunately, the more progressive biblical traditions are getting over that.
The business about humankind's "dominion" over non-human nature, part of the Creation story at the beginning of Genesis, has never been an important theme of biblical religion. In this case, the biblical traditions are more guilty of a "sin of omission," according to the term in Catholic ethics: farmers, fishers, miners, hunters, etc., have been allowed pretty much to do what they want, without any relevant comment from others in their religious communities. That is a very sorry and unfortunate precedent indeed.
What we need to remember is that there is nothing essentially anti-woman or anti-environment about the Bible, in spite of what certain texts may seem to be saying, and in spite of the execrably bad habits of the Bible-based religious traditions.
A final note, on the gender of "God": The Israelites believed that they were saved from slavery in Egypt by a mountain-god. When they got to Canaan/Palestine, the mountain-god was assimilated with a local sky-god with whom the Israelites seemed to get along pretty well. The mountain-god's name was Yahweh, the sky-god's name was El. They were just two of countless members in the polytheistic club of the ancient Middle East. They happened to be male. But of course: mountain-gods and sky-gods were always male. That was the tradition.
But it was not for nothing that they were male. As is true of all ancient Mediterranean polytheism, the gender of the various gods reflects deep traditional concepts that were already rooted in society. So, that mountain-gods and sky-gods are male reflects ancient Middle Eastern ideas about how power and gender are related.
And, that the God of the Bible happens to be male, does not mean that the Israelite religious authorities were intentionally imposing a patriarchy. Rather the reverse: it means that a sexist pattern of social relationships was already in place, favoring male dominance, and that got secondarily reflected in the Israelite authors' concept of God. The on-the-ground in-the-flesh patriarchy already existed, before a patriarchal theology was written up to support it.
As I said before, God is not the character in the Bible with that name.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Nucbuddy Posted 5:58 pm
17 Jun 2008
Biodiversivist wrote: Irrelevant
If you believe that Mackintosh 1999 and Jensen 1998 are irrelevant, why did you cite them?
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