A new agenda for the world’s women

Carolyn Moynihan

What’s behind the discovery that women are the world’s greatest unexploited resource for fighting poverty and terrorism?

If you think the world is going to hell in a handcart, stop worrying; there are plenty of would-be saviours around. Philosopher Peter Singer, as we noted on this site last week, says a voluntary transfer of cash from the rich to the poor would save the world from poverty. New Scientist is working on a “Blueprint for a better world” starting with such bright ideas as scepticism about common sense, legalising drugs, and entrusting everyone’s DNA to the police. And The New York Times believes that “Saving the World’s Women” is the way to go. It probably is, so let’s see what’s new on the women’s agenda.

Admittedly, we hear a lot about saving the women of the developing world. Usually, it is from the “sexual and reproductive health” crowd, whose answer to dangerous childbirth, infant mortality, hunger, disease the abuse of women -- and practically everything else -- is contraception, sterilisation and abortion. Just this month they gathered in Berlin to complain about lack of progress on that front in many countries and to call for “universal access to sexual and reproductive health information and services by 2015”.

http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/a_new_agenda_for_the_worlds_women/

Myths or Facts in Feminist Scholarship?

An exchange between Nancy K.D. Lemon and Christina Hoff Sommers

Christina Hoff Sommers, in her essay "Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship" (The Chronicle Review, online edition, June 29), criticized Nancy K.D. Lemon, a lecturer in domestic-violence law at the University of California at Berkeley's School of Law, for publishing errors in the popular textbook she edits, Domestic Violence Law, and for not taking seriously her continuing criticisms of the book. "One reason that feminist scholarship contains hard-to-kill falsehoods is that reasonable, evidence-backed criticism is regarded as a personal attack," Sommers charged. Following is Lemon's response to those criticisms and Sommers's rebuttal. Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Nancy K.D. Lemon: Christina Hoff Sommers accused me of being a "scholarly merchant of hype" for material in my popular textbook, Domestic Violence Law. In fact, she is the one whose assertions are untrue and who is impervious to correction.

http://chronicle.com/article/Domestic-Violence-a/47940/

Persistent Myths in Feminist Scholarship

By CHRISTINA HOFF SOMMERS
"Harder to kill than a vampire." That is what the sociologist Joel Best calls a bad statistic. But, as I have discovered over the years, among false statistics the hardest of all to slay are those promoted by feminist professors. Consider what happened recently when I sent an e-mail message to the Berkeley law professor Nancy K.D. Lemon pointing out that the highly praised textbook that she edited, Domestic Violence Law (second edition, Thomson/West, 2005), contained errors.

http://chronicle.com/free/v55/i40/40sommers.htm

Liberated and Unhappy

By ROSS DOUTHAT

American women are wealthier, healthier and better educated than they were 30 years ago. They’re more likely to work outside the home, and more likely to earn salaries comparable to men’s when they do. They can leave abusive marriages and sue sexist employers. They enjoy unprecedented control over their own fertility. On some fronts — graduation rates, life expectancy and even job security — men look increasingly like the second sex.

But all the achievements of the feminist era may have delivered women to greater unhappiness. In the 1960s, when Betty Friedan diagnosed her fellow wives and daughters as the victims of “the problem with no name,” American women reported themselves happier, on average, than did men. Today, that gender gap has reversed. Male happiness has inched up, and female happiness has dropped. In postfeminist America, men are happier than women.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/opinion/26douthat.html?_r=2&em