Equality is an abstract concept. I don’t believe that it is something that can easily be defined. But apparently, every year, the World Economic Forum thinks it can easily define gender equality. This year, the evaluated 128 countries. The WEF just released the Global Gender Gap Report for 2007. According to their website, it measures gender equality across the following four areas:
1. Economic participation and opportunity – outcomes on salaries, participation levels and access to high-skilled employment
2. Educational attainment – outcomes on access to basic and higher level education
3. Political empowerment – outcomes on representation in decision-making structures
4. Health and survival – outcomes on life expectancy and sex ratio
I sat and stared at these categories for awhile and tried to figure out what about them it was that bothered me. It took me some time and a lot of thinking, but then I realized it. And it was so obvious. They didn’t even consider choice. And I’m not talking about pro-choice or anti-choice, I’m talking about the choice to excel economically or to be a stay at home father.
You can’t measure choice. And if you can’t measure choice, how can you measure equality?
The problem is complicated, the solution is simple (according to one judge): just say you’re sorry.
Eight boys in Australia filmed their sexual assault of a 17 year old girl and “distributed it as a DVD throughout the community”. You’d think that a filmed record of the event and their confessions along with guilty pleas would secure these boys some time in a juvenile detention facility… but it didn’t:
Facebook just unveiled their latest advertising program. This plan utilizes information from user’s profiles to display ads appropriate to their interests when they browse through their friend’s pages:
Additionally, Facebook has unveiled targeted advertisements that will allow marketers to target by any information inside Facebook profiles, from relationship status to favorite television shows.
This makes sense. Gmail utilizes a tool that skims through your inbox and displays appropriate in-line advertisements. Users are accustomed to this type of privacy invasion.
One thing about the new advertising program that irritates me is Facebook is essentially encouraging advertising companies to provide users with the tools to sell their product for them. Without paying any additional advertising fees:
By now, I’m sure you’ve all heard of the writer’s strike. Personally, I stand with the writers. The internet is not too new. The television and film industry has an opportunity to do something huge with these contracts, something that the major record labels never did. The major labels reacted to the internet with fear by utilizing DRM technology and basically saying they don’t trust their customers. The record industry committed suicide. The television and film industries, however, in their [hopefully] upcoming deals with writers will realize the internet’s potential and harness the power of unlimited opportunities.
Apparently, men don't think Sarah Jessica Parker is attractive. This
probably because she's over 25 and has wrinkles, but I digress. The
readers in an online poll at Maxim voted her as unsexy. The best part? She doesn't give a shit. One more reason to love SJP:
Sarah Jessica Parker is nonplussed at her most most recent accolade: being named the Unsexiest Woman Alive by an online magazine poll in America. "What they don't know is that one day I'll wake up fat," the Sex and the City star says. "But I'll still be happy, just like I am now. I believe in the old 'sticks and stones' philosophy, so frankly their words don't come close to hurting."
My question is why did Maxim feel the need to single out SJP and
call her unsexy? Why did they think it was ok for them to do that? Men's magazines never seen to get it right when it comes to women... not like that's a big shocker.
Apparently, we have returned to the classic stereotype that if a heterosexual man as an affair, it is his female partner’s fault. I am just as aghast at the comments to this article as I am with the actual text. Summary: Emily is a busy lawyer with a husband and two year old son. She hasn’t had sex with her husband for months. He had an affair. It’s her fault because she didn’t want to have sex. Feminism is to blame!
