"Pentagon promotes 'Lean In' groups to boost women in leadership"

"U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter, keen to expand the number of women and minorities in military leadership, on Monday will endorse "Lean In" discussion groups sparked by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg's bestselling book, a senior defense official said."

"If you look at the numbers, it's clear that we are not where we should be in terms of the leadership reflecting the overall force," said the official. "It's important that our force reflect the nation that it protects."

Women make up about 15 percent of the U.S. military, and thousands of women have served alongside men in Iraq and Afghanistan. But women also leave military service during the mid-career phase at twice the rate of men, and top military officials are seeking ways to retain them.

The caption to the picture below reads... "I'm a single woman in the early thirties, who doesn't want children. Yesterday, I accepted my future."  Could she have made a fantastic general?

"Target Removes Gender Labels From Kids Sections After Complaints"

“As guests have pointed out, in some departments like toys, home or entertainment, suggesting products by gender is unnecessary,” Target said. “We heard you, and we agree. Right now, our teams are working across the store to identify areas where we can phase out gender-based signage to help strike a better balance.”

In June, Ohio mom Abi Bechtel called out Target’s gender designations in its toy aisle. She posted a photo to Twitter that showed store signs for “Girls’ Building Sets” next to regular “Building Sets.” The outcry was swift, with angry shoppers calling for change.

“It stood out to me as a good example of the way our culture tends to view boys and men as the default, normal option and girls and women as the specialized option,” Bechtel told CNN at the time.

Without signs I'm completely lost. It's a good thing I don't have kids of my own.

Chilly at work?... blame men

"Ms. Mahannah, 24, who wrote on Twitter that at work she felt like an icy White Walker from “Game of Thrones,” said a female co-worker at her digital marketing agency cloaked herself in sweaters, too. But the men? “They’re in, like, shorts.”"

Right. It happens every summer: Offices turn on the air-conditioning, and women freeze into Popsicles.

Finally, scientists (two men, for the record) are urging an end to the Great Arctic Office Conspiracy. Their study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, says that most office buildings set temperatures based on a decades-old formula that uses the metabolic rates of men. The study concludes that buildings should “reduce gender-discriminating bias in thermal comfort” because setting temperatures at slightly warmer levels can help combat global warming.

KLEM FM

Lyrics and comments after the break

NPR: "Why Women Don't Ask For More Money"

"When the women negotiated for themselves, they asked for an average of $7,000 less than the men. But when they negotiated on behalf of a friend, they asked for just as much money as the men."

Amanatullah (an assistant professor of management at the University of Texas) says when women advocate for themselves, they have to navigate more than a higher salary: They're managing their reputation, too. Women worry that pushing for more money will damage their image. Research shows they're right to be concerned: Both male and female managers are less likely to want to work with women who negotiate during a job interview.

One person I spoke with for this story lowballed herself so much in a negotiation that the recruiter came back and asked if she was sure she wanted to request so little. She hates negotiating to this day. (read the whole thing)

NPR via Hotair

“This is ‘Lord of the Flies’ with a female protagonist and better weapons”

"The Rebelle line, introduced last year, comes in a swirl of pink, purple, white and gold plastic, and the weapons have names — like the Heartbreaker and the Pink Crush — that are enough to make an enlightened 21st-century mother groan. But around a dozen new toys in the line are coming out this year."

 

 

“It’s the coming of age of the Title IX mom, who grew up as an athlete in her own right,” he said, referring to the gender equity law. “And men, who have grown up in that environment, who have daughters, want their children, both boys and girls, to have equal opportunity to play.”

Previous efforts by toy makers to market traditional boys’ toys as new lines for girls proved successful in just a few categories, like construction and ride-on cars, said Jim Silver, the editor in chief of TimetoPlayMag.com, a website about toy trends.

Selling action figures to girls has been less successful, he said, pointing to Princess Tenko and the Guardians of Magic from Mattel and Kenner’s Princess Gwenevere and the Jewel Riders, both of which bombed.

For many girls, things changed with the arrival of Katniss. Zing, whose sales doubled during the two weeks that it advertised on 3,600 movie screens playing “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” last fall, plans to advertise on twice as many screens for the first installment of the series’s two-part finale, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay,” which is due in November.

Jill Calderon, an 11-year-old sixth grader in Atlanta, is so enamored of Katniss that she and her friends play “Hunger Games” at recess, authentically reconstructed with a make-believe cornucopia and a presiding “game maker.” Her grandparents were horrified by her interest in a story that revolves around children battling one another to death in a dystopian world, but her mother is fine with it. (video at the link)

NYT

Who Writes What in Newspapers and Magazines

Economics is a terrible outlier. pic.twitter.com/HYWeEqtMnc
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) March 18, 2014

The awful gender optics at FiveThirtyEight.

Out on a Limb: Could Richard Sherman be interpreted as a 'gender role shift'?

"[T]his was Hampton’s most surprising finding: Today there are just a lot more women in public, proportional to men. It’s not just on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. On the steps of the Met, the proportion of women increased by 33 percent, and in Bryant Park by 18 percent. The only place women decreased proportionally was in Boston’s Downtown Crossing — a major shopping area. “The decline of women within this setting could be interpreted as a shift in gender roles,” Hampton writes. Men seem to be “taking on an activity that was traditionally regarded as feminine.”

"Across the board, Hampton found that the story of public spaces in the last 30 years has not been aloneness, or digital distraction, but gender equity. “I mean, who would’ve thought that, in America, 30 years ago, women were not in public the same way they are now?” Hampton said. “We don’t think about that.”

Last two paragraphs of a NY Times Magazine article titled "Technology Is Not Driving Us Apart After All"

Watch the video (again please) with a perspective of 'gender roles' in mind.