Younger than Jesus

Interesting topic and review here: Younger than Jesus: Made by Generation Why at the New Museum.

Questioning why we do what we do, how we got there, and the "so what" of it all. I've been feeling very "so what" myself these days - nice to see a community embracing that. Go to the show if you'll be in the NYC area between now and July 5. I predict we'll be seeing more of these kids.

Women In Science

In ‘Geek Chic’ and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science

Surveying outcomes for 160,000 Ph.D. recipients across the United States, the researchers determined that 70 percent of male tenured professors were married with children, compared with only 44 percent of their tenured female colleagues. Twelve years or more after receiving their doctorates, tenured women were more than twice as likely as tenured men to be single and significantly more likely to be divorced. And lest all of this look like “personal choice,” when the researchers asked 8,700 faculty members in the University of California system about family and work issues, nearly 40 percent of the women agreed with the statement, “I had fewer children than I wanted,” compared with less than 20 percent of the men. The take-home message, Dr. Mason said in a telephone interview, is, “Men can have it all, but women can’t.”

From a purely Darwinian point of view, expecting a young woman to sacrifice her reproductive fitness for the sake of career advancement is simply too much, and yet the structure of academic research, in which one must spend one’s 20s and early 30s as a poorly compensated and minimally empowered graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, and the remainder of one’s 30s and into the low 40s working madly to earn tenure, can demand exactly that.

Zines First Day of School

Zines!

Richmond Zine Fest 2008!
That's right - go see our zines. On the "free" table. 11a-5p October 11, 2008. Gay Community Center of Richmond. Go there. Thanks!

(P.S. Please ignore my dirty floor in the photo - I've been working a lot! :-) )

The other side of Pink

Featured in the Washington Post this week, here's a (totally unrelated to the last pink org) pink project I can get on board with: The Pink Line Project.
The project supports local artists in the Washington DC area making a significant contribution to arts in the area. It's fresh and not pretentious or stuffy. Check out the founder, Philippa P. B. Hughes' blog!

Code Pink

I'm going to preface this post with a disclaimer just stating that I'm writing as just one half of the Teesquare team. I'd rather not be responsible for putting words in the other half's mouth... and so, with that said:

Reading about Code Pink for Peace this morning in the news, creating havoc on the Democratic National Convention, I can't help but think this is possibly not the best use of these women's talents. Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Code Pink is an activist and writer, widely known for her explosive public displays and involvement in organizations that use scare tactics to bully people into taking their side. I've always wondered what Rachel Carson and Susan B. Anthony have that I look up to that so many activist women in the news today don't have. I think it's tact. Or class. I'm not sure, exactly, how to put it into words, but there's definitely something a little unrefined about the movement Benjamin and team are trying to create with their blood-on-our-hands aggressive campaign. I could be way off base, but I'm not sure it's working for them. How come all these talented, well educated women are sneaking into events to flash homemade signs in hopes of getting 2 seconds on the local news? If these people are so talented, why can't they think of a more effective way to spread the word of Peace? I'd love nothing more than our troops to come home, having friends and relatives involved in both foot and air combat from Desert Storm through today. And I'm thrilled that women are educating themselves on the war, political efforts (or non-efforts) to stop it and how they can get involved. Where does effective anti-war marketing begin and where does anti-war marketing begin to make a group of intelligent women look foolish?

Women Dominate A-School, but...

Where do they go when they graduate? Interesting article a few weeks ago in The National (an English newspaper produced in the UAE) about the odd fact that women dominate architecture schools, but the professional field remains a man's world. Read it here. My general understanding is that this is an epidemic across the globe.