arkanzas

Республиканцы предложили наказывать тех, кто способствует гендерному «переходу» несовершеннолетних

Республиканцы штата Арканзас предложили закон о защите уязвимой молодёжи (Vulnerable Youth Protection Act). Если закон будет принят, то любой, «кто вызывает социальный „переход“ несовершеннолетнего или способствует ему», может быть привлёчен к ответственности. Под «переходом» понимается любое действие, «посредством которого несовершеннолетний принимает или одобряет гендерную идентичность, отличающуюся от его биологического пола». В том числе это касается одежды, местоимений, причёски или имени.

К примеру, закон позволит гражданам подавать иски против парикмахеров, если те постригли ребёнка в «неконформном» в половом отношении стиле. Говоря проще, если девочка пришла домой со стрижкой «под мальчика», родители смогут подать в суд. С юридической точки зрения, считает редактор BILD Юдит Гёрс, закон ставит в уязвимое положение не только парикмахеров, но всякого владельца магазина, который продаст 16-летнему подростку бюстгальтер. Или учителя, который обращается к своему ученику-транссексуалу по выбранному им самим мужскому или женскому имени.

Законопроект внесён от имени Мэри Бентли — христианки, активистки движения против абортов и владелицы производства пластиковой посуды. Бентли считает: никому не должно быть позволено убеждать детей в том, что они «родились не в том теле», а молодым людям с «гендерной путаницей» может помочь только психотерапевт.

Эвелин Риос Стаффорд, первый и единственный транссексуал в Арканзасе, разорвала законопроект на части, потому что из-за него судам грозит «волна необоснованных исков по самым абсурдным ситуациям». По мнению Стаффорд, даже комплимент причёске транс-подростка может стать уголовным преступлением.

«Это говорит о том, что у трансгендерных детей нет гарантированных Конституцией прав на контроль над собственным телом», — говорит Стаффорд.

Генеральный прокурор-республиканец Арканзаса Тим Гриффин также раскритиковал закон за нарушение свободы слова. В результате Мэри Бентли отозвала законопроект, чтобы внести в него поправки. Что из этого получится, пока неясно, однако республиканка известна своим упорством. В 2023 году она вопреки многочисленным возражениям провела закон, разрешающий подавать иски о халатности против врачей, предлагающих процедуры по смене пола.

transgender

Минюст России потребовал ликвидировать фонд «Трансгендер»

Как сообщает «Медиазона» (в реестре «иноагентов»), соответствующий иск управления министерства по Москве зарегистрировал Кунцевский районный суд.

Фонд «Трансгендер», оказывавший помощь транслюдям, привлек внимание чиновников в феврале 2024 года.

В прошлом году после плановой проверки руководство фонда получило письмо от ведомства, в котором организацию обвинили в «активной пропаганде вседозволенности, безнравственности и эгоизма».

Как рассказала ОВД-Инфо (в реестре «иноагентов») директор фонда Яэль Демедецкая, чиновники в своем письме ссылались на запись семинара фонда 2017 года. В акте проверки были приведены цитаты его участников семинара и сделан вывод, что эти обсуждения не соответствуют стратегии национальной безопасности России.

🔗 Читать нас без VPN можно здесь: bit.ly/bbcrussian

census reliability

Британская перепись 2021 года могла переоценить количество трансперсон в стране

Британское Бюро национальной статистики (ONS) признало, что перепись населения, проведенная в 2021 году, могла переоценить количество трансгендерных персон в стране, поскольку многие респонденты могли неправильно понять соответствующий вопрос.

По итогам переписи сообщалось, что примерно 0,5% населения Англии и Уэльса старше 16 лет относили себя к иному гендеру, чем тот, который был им приписан при рождении.

Однако последующий анализ показал, что среди этой категории респондентов аномально высока доля тех, для кого английский язык не родной.

Отсюда следовал вывод, что кто-то из респондентов мог неправильно понять вопрос. Заместительница директора ONS Мэри Грегори в пятницу признала, что это могло произойти.

Вопрос формулировался так: «Совпадает ли гендер, с которым вы себя отождествляете, с полом, который был зарегистрирован при рождении?» 262 тысячи человек к Англии и Уэльсе ответили «нет».

Вопросы к достоверности этой цифры впервые были подняты публично в апреле в статье профессора социологии Оксфордского университета Майкла Биггса, опубликованной в журнале Британского социологического общества. Он обратил внимание, что если в целом по выборке 10% населения указали, что для них английский или валлийский языки не являются родными, то среди тех, у кого гендер, по их словам, не совпадает с приписанным при рождении полом, таких было целых 29%.

Также аномально высокой оказалась доля трансперсон среди населения лондонского района Ньюхэм: 1,51%. В этом районе для 35% жителей английский язык не родной, это один из самых высоких показателей в стране, тогда как в среднем по Англии – 9%.

Бюро национальной статистики заявило, что остальные данные переписи 2021 года оно по-прежнему считает в полной мере достоверными.

Governing Transgender Identity

Foreword to the 2024 Edition

 

Sex Is as Sex Does draws attention to what few journalists, elected officials, or scholars outside of transgender studies have understood: one’s legal sex is never decided once and for all. Whether a transgender person can change it to F, M, or the non-binary designation of X has varied considerably not only from state to state but also from agency to agency, even within the same jurisdiction. This book shows how government agencies have been far less interested in adhering to any universal idea about what sex is—assignment at birth, self-understood gender identity, and so on—than in what sex does for that agency’s work. For example, officials in prisons have often defined sex differently than do officials in departments of motor vehicles, even when those officials work in the same state. 

Now that policing the gender binary has been transformed from an unremarkable aspect of bureaucratic policymaking to a weapon in the culture wars, everyone is paying attention. As Donald Trump noted in 2023, “I talk about cutting taxes, people go like that [mimicking polite applause]; I talk about transgender, everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.” Trump echoes the findings of public opinion research: in this third decade of the twenty-first century, transgender issues have become one of the most politically polarizing topics in the United States. In the last few years, Republican-controlled state legislatures have introduced hundreds of bills limiting medical care for trans people and barring transgender students from school sports and restrooms, among other anti-trans measures. In addition, “Women’s Bills of Rights” have been introduced in over a dozen state legislatures and, as of this writing, have passed in a handful. At the time of writing these bills usually define sex according to one’s reproductive capacity, which is determined at birth. Some officials have interpreted these laws, which install the definition of sex across the state’s legal code, to mean that every identity document issued by the state must reflect only an individual’s birth sex.

What had been a confusing but little noticed bureaucratic patchwork of contradictory policies within states has now been transformed into a stark partisan map of “red” and “blue” states. Even as Republicans enacted laws targeting multiple aspects of trans life, twenty-one states under Democratic control changed policy to allow people to choose an X for the gender marker on their driver’s license. In those jurisdictions, state IDs can usually be changed to X, F, or M just by filling out a form. In the wake of the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision and trans medical care bans, around a dozen blue states have passed refuge or shield laws for transgender people, their families, and medical professionals, oſten combining protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care. (The Texas Attorney General attempted to breach this jurisdictional divide in November 2023 when he demanded that a hospital in Seattle, Washington, provide his office with the names of any trans youth who had leſt Texas to receive gender-affirming care in the previous two years. Anticipating this flex from red states, the Washington legislature had already passed a shield law.) 

At the time of writing, a meme in circulation riffs off Dr. Seuss’s classic book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! Under the title, “Oh, the Places I’m Allowed to Go!,” a map of the US highlights about twenty states that are “relatively safe” for trans people. While no doubt well-intentioned, the Manichean political vision it reflects (blue states are good places, red states are bad places) suggests that transgender people have everything they need in blue states. It also erases the trans and gender non-conforming people who are making their lives in red states, forging communities, and nurturing new forms of support, mutual aid, and resistance. Certainly, the absence of policies intended to harm trans people and the presence of those intended to help are good. But to assume that the solution to right-wing anti-trans policies lies only in reparative policies that let people change their sex classification and provide gender-affirming care is to become a victim of the false choices of liberalism. Recognition is necessary but not sufficient. Like everyone else in the US, trans people are subjected to the quotidian cruddiness of normal life under the conditions of representative neoliberalism—vast income inequality, the climate crisis, declining life expectancy, patchy or nonexistent health care in general, mass incarceration, and the ongoing defunding of public education. 

One of the book’s central arguments is that the misclassification of trans people was at first an unanticipated byproduct of patriarchy. Over the course of the twentieth century, as the government got out of the business of upholding male domination through the law, the rationale for consistently denying requests for sex reclassification faded from view. Because the law no longer explicitly subordinated women, maintaining an impenetrable border between men and women would no longer be necessary. Government agencies and courts started managing sex classification more minutely, with policies depending on how sex was put to use in a particular governmental context. (I take no position on the various debates about what sex “really is.” In my work, I define it as a decision about M, F, or X backed by the force of law.) Transgender people were oſten accidental beneficiaries of liberal feminism. 

In our current moment, the tail is wagging the dog—a targeted attack on trans people, whose numbers are growing but remain a small part of the population, will undermine and possibly even reverse feminist achievements in the legal arena. The legislative assaults on transgender people absolutely reflect anti-trans animus. But they also index a larger anxiety about the changes wrought by feminism. Debates about which bathrooms trans girls and women use and which teams they play on give conservatives the opportunity not only to excise trans people from public life but also to re-subordinate women. Very oſten, the stated rationale of anti-trans bills, made clear in the rhetoric and oſten the titles, is to “protect women’s rights.” But a different picture emerges if we look at what the legislation actually does. For example, in some jurisdictions with sports bans, cisgender girls who have won events have been subject to investigation when the concerned parents of losing competitors “accuse” them of being assigned male at birth. Another example: In 2023, the Commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture announced to employees that they must dress in clothes consistent with their “biological gender.” While this policy was intended to resonate with other state initiatives specifically targeting transgender people, it accomplishes more than that: it brings gender norms back in. Not only will trans men be forced to wear clothes traditionally coded as feminine, but so too will cisgender women. Moves to reverse the trajectory of women’s equality through anti-trans legislation are also surfacing in the reasoning about sex discrimination claims in some of the decisions upholding these laws.

The raucous debates over the definitions of sex taking place in legislatures might lead some to conclude that the battle now truly centers “what sex is.” In the rhetoric around the “Women’s Bills of Rights” and other anti-trans legislation, the right wing vehemently declares that sex falls within the purview of God and/or nature. (This insistence has had the paradoxical effect of making disagreements about the meaning of sex part of our democratic life.) But the certitudes of these pronouncements are easily dismissed when convenient. Over and over throughout history—through the machinery of enslavement, welfare, social security, labor, and tax policy—capital’s need for labor has prevailed over abstract commitments to an immutable sex binary and the complementary gender roles it sustains. In the colonies and the new American Republic, for instance, despite the prevalence of the language of marriage, family, and the benefits of domesticity for women, theories of gender difference were not applied to enslaved people. There were no protections for their marriages, which could be sundered at will through the sale of one spouse. In the words of historian Tera W. Hunter, “The ideology of race trumped the ideology of domesticity.”

Or consider a more recent example, one that disproportionately affects women although it is gender-neutral on its face. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government expanded the child tax credit, raising the amount of tax credits and making them refundable. No single policy has done so much to alleviate child poverty: between three and four million children were liſted out of it. It made it possible for more families to follow the patriarchal model of a male wage earner and a woman caring for children at home, which would seem to be a win for the right wing. But in 2022, Republicans in Congress let it lapse. Why? the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute (as in Gary Becker and Milton Friedman, prophets of neoliberal economic theory) had warned ominously that the expanded credit would incentivize parents to stay home, shrink the labor force, and force wages up. Gender roles can be redefined if the economy demands it. It is likely that most of these policy- makers would also cosponsor legislation mandating that everyone carry a driver’s license listing their birth sex. That’s not a contradiction, because sex remains a pliable contrivance of politics and governing.

gender

В России стали в два раза чаще приглашать на работу женщин, чем три года назад, пишут Известия.

Причём соискательниц всё активнее зовут на традиционно мужские вакансии — водителей, охранников, слесарей. Таким образом компании стремятся справиться с дефицитом кадров. Тем не менее гендерный разрыв в зарплатах пока не сокращается — в среднем доходы у женщин на треть ниже, чем у мужчин, отмечают аналитики.

На рынке труда в России вырос спрос на сотрудников женского пола: в первой половине 2024 года их стали приглашать на работу в два раза чаще (54 млн приглашений по вакансиям), чем три года назад (26 млн), пишут «Известия» со ссылкой на исследование hh.ru.

По версии аналитиков, работодатели таким способом стремятся справиться с дефицитом кадров, хотя при этом гендерный разрыв в окладах не сокращается — женщины продолжают зарабатывать на треть меньше, чем мужчины.

В сфере транспорта, перевозок, логистики доля приглашений для женщин выросла на 8% (29% всего), в отрасли домашнего и обслуживающего персонала (вакансии дворников, водителей, курьеров, официантов, охранников, уборщиков, воспитателей и администраторов) прибавилось 6% (47% всего), в сфере рабочего персонала — 5% (19% всего).

В первой половине 2024 года из общего числа приглашений на должности в отрасли информационных технологий 38% поступило соискателям женского пола. Также стало гораздо больше женщин, занимающих руководящие должности.

«Женщины в руководстве компаний, в том числе на позициях CEO, перестали быть исключением из правил. Если в первой половине 2021 года они получили 62,5 тыс. приглашений на вакансии высшего и среднего менеджмента, то в начале 2024-го — уже 291,4 тыс., то есть в 4,5 раза больше», — уточнила руководитель направления маркетинговых исследований hh.ru. Мария Игнатова.

Также в последние годы из-за пандемии и прочих внешних событий россияне чаще стали искать удаленную работу, что не всегда совпадает с требованиями компаний. В этом плане женщины охотнее соглашаются на работу из офиса, чем мужчины, а также на пятидневную рабочую неделю.

educational gradient of period fertility

A new method for measuring the educational gradient of period fertility in Europe

July 22, 2024 Angela Greulich and Laurent Toulemon

Angela Greulich and Laurent Toulemon present a new method for measuring the educational gradient of fertility for women who are at childbearing age rather than for women who have already completed their reproductive years, enabling a timely analysis of within-country differentials of period fertility behavior.

Introduction

After a period of increase during the decades 1990-2010, fertility is currently stagnating or decreasing in many European countries. As its levels and trends have multiple social and economic impacts, understanding their drivers at the micro level is of paramount importance. However, while European cross-country differences in total fertility rates (TFR) are well-documented, a comprehensive overview of within-country differentials is currently lacking. Measures of fertility differentiated by education have so far been mostly based on a completed cohort approach, and they show a negative educational gradient in most European countries (Sobotka 2020, Nisén et al. 2021). This implies that it was mainly higher educated women who were deciding to limit their fertility 10 to 20 years ago in Europe, mostly due to incompatibilities between work and family. The focus, in other words, is on cohorts whose fertility decisions were affected by past, not current, circumstances and policies.

Furthermore, as studies on socioeconomic differentials of period fertility behavior are often parity-specific (see for example Klesment et al. 2014, d’Albis et al. 2017, Trimarchi and van Bavel 2019), we do not know exactly which subgroups currently have the lowest fertility levels within European countries, and to what extent these subgroups contribute to the dampening of totalfertility rates in each country.

 

Fertility by age, parity and education using UE-SILC Data

In a recent publication (Greulich and Toulemon 2023), we proposed a new method of exploiting annual European survey data to accurately measure period fertility levels by education for 24 EU and four non-EU countries in Europe. Our data are those of the European Union Survey of Income and Living Conditions, EU-SILC (available on the Eurostat website; Eurostat 2020), based on large national individual samples, collected on a yearly basis, with a four-year follow-up. Respondents are not asked directly about their fertility in the questionnaire, but it can be estimated by combining the own-children method (children ever born at age 25) with a semi-retrospective approach to derive the parity-specific fertility behavior of women of higher childbearing ages (De Santis et al. 2014), while at the same time recording their educational level. Bayesian statistics allow us to obtain credible intervals for the age-, education- and parity-specific birth probabilities for each country. These birth probabilities are then combined into a multi-state life table to obtain parity-specific and total birth intensities by education. We use post-stratification of birth probabilities to calibrate our estimates with national total fertility rates, enabling international comparisons for specific groups (e.g. highly educated women) or for particular dimensions of fertility behavior (e.g. childlessness).

 
Our estimates refer to the year 2010, which makes our educational gradients of period fertility levels comparable with those based on census data, allowing for additional data quality checks.

 

Main results for 2010

Even though low educated women have the highest period fertility levels in almost all European countries, the educational gradient is not universally negative. In 2010, period fertility levels exhibited a U-shaped pattern in a third of European countries, with medium-educated women having the lowest fertility.
Highly educated women have considerably higher fertility levels than medium-educated women in the Nordic countries (Iceland and Denmark, followed by Sweden and Finland) but also in Belgium, the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Conversely, the educational gradient is strongly negative in Portugal, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Poland and Romania.
The remarkable diversity in period fertility levels among highly educated women in Europe is due to higher transitions to first and second childbirth among this group in some countries than in others; higher order births, on the other hand, exhibit a universally negative educational gradient (Fig. 1).

Focusing on six countries

Figure 2 illustrates the diversity of European period fertility levels for six selected countries that can be considered representative of a specific European region:

• France, for the Continental countries including Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg,

• Germany, for the German-speaking countries including Austria and Switzerland,

• Italy, for the Mediterranean countries,

• Poland, for the Central and Eastern European countries,

• Sweden, for the Nordic countries and

• the UK, for the English-speaking countries including Ireland.

In all six countries, birth intensities are highest for the low educated. Germany, Italy and Poland, all with TFR <1.5, show a strong negative educational gradient: medium and highly educated women have a much lower fertility level than low educated women. Conversely, France, the UK and Sweden have comparatively high fertility levels for medium and highly educated women, although France and the UK still show a negative educational gradient. In Sweden, there is no clear educational gradient, and the fertility differences between educational groups are not significant.

Relatively high period fertility levels for medium and highly educated women combine with a higher proportion of highly educated women in Sweden, France and the UK (about 50% in our sample) than in Germany, Poland and Italy (less than 40%), which results in comparatively higher fertility (above 1.5 children per woman) in the former group of countries.
Checking, documenting and disseminating data and results

The cross-sectional database of the EU-SILC, on which our measures are built, includes datasets since 2004 for most countries.

 
We are currently producing the full set of data by year (2004-22), age, parity, education and country, using R software, and checking our data with external data sources, such as population censuses and civil registers (more information is available in the appendix of our 2023 paper, e.g. fertility by age, parity, level of education, summary data for 2005 and 2015, as well as STATA and Excel documents presenting our method). In addition to research papers, we will document our data and methods on a website, and disseminate them on other web platforms, including theHuman Fertility Database and the Human Fertility Collection. A growing number of datasets are becoming available, but their accuracy and relevance needs to be assessed. It is important to share methods and documentation to take advantage of these new possibilities.

References

• d’Albis H., Gobbi P., Greulich A. (2017). Having a Second Child and Access to Childcare: Evidence from European Countries. Journal of Demographic Economics 83(02): 177–210.
• De Santis G., Drefahl S., Vignoli D. (2014). A Period Total Fertility Rate with Covariates for Short-Panel Data. Population 69 (3): 419–432.
• Eurostat (2020). EU statistics on income and living conditions microdata.
• Greulich A., Toulemon L. (2023). Measuring the educational gradient of period fertility in 28 European countries: A new approach based on parity-specific fertility estimates. Demographic Research 49(34): 905–968.
• Klesment M., Puur A., Rahnu L., Sakkeus L. (2014). Varying association between education and second births in Europe: Comparative analysis based on the EU-SILC data. Demographic Research31(1): 813–860.
• Nisén J., Klüsener S., Dahlberg J, Dommermuth L, Jasilioniene A., Kreyenfeld M., Lappegård T., Li P., Martikainen P., Neels K., Riederer B., Riele S., Szabó L., Trimarchi A., Viciana F., Wilson B., Myrskylä M. (2021). Educational Differences in Cohort Fertility Across Sub-national Regions in Europe. European Journal of Population 37: 263–295.
• Sobotka, T. (2020). Fertility Across Time and Space. Data and Research Advances. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 18: 1–24.
• Trimarchi A., Van Bavel J. (2019). Partners’ Educational Characteristics and Fertility: Disentangling the Effects of Earning Potential and Unemployment Risk on Second Births. European Journal of Population 36(3): 439–464.

Stagnant motherhood work time penalty in Great Britain over 30 years

June 10, 2024 Muzhi Zhou and Man-Yee Kan

More and more mothers with young children stay in the labor market today. In the United Kingdom, the share has risen from 62% in 1989 to 72% in 2023. However, when women become mothers, their hours of paid work decrease substantially, in contrast to new fathers, whose change in paid work time is modest. Muzhi Zhou and Man-Yee Kan discuss whether the gendered impact of parenthood on time use will weaken as family policies pay more attention to gender equality.

Almost everywhere around the world, women spend two to three times more time on housework than men. This disproportionate division of domestic responsibilities between genders has been identified as a key reason for the gender pay gap and the reduction in women’s paid work time when they become parents. The expectation that women will take on the majority of household chores and caregiving responsibilities has created a barrier to their participation in the labor market and their ability to advance in their careers. This reinforces traditional gender roles and perpetuates gender inequality in both the workplace and the home. An increasing number of countries are adopting social policies to promote gender equality, designed to address the specific needs and challenges faced by women and men in different areas of life, such as education, employment, and family life.

Reasons for a change

Family policies in Great Britian used to reinforce a gendered division of labor, with expensive and inadequate childcare being the prevalent reason, but things are gradually changing. Currently, a maximum of 52 weeks of maternity leave is available, of which a maximum of 39 weeks is paid. New fathers have only up to two weeks of paid paternity leave, available since 2003. Since 2010, some measures have been introduced to promote gender equality in the domestic division of labor, such as increased free childcare provision and, since 2015, shared parental leave (SPL), which allows parents to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between them after the birth or adoption of a child. SPL is designed to give parents more flexibility in how they take time off work to care for their child, and to encourage more fathers to take an active role in parenting.

The annual free childcare provision was increased from 412 hours in 1998 to 570 hours in 2010. It has now been extended to all parents of three- and four-year-olds in England and those of two-year-olds from disadvantaged backgrounds. Meanwhile, gender equality in the UK’s labor market has made progress since the early 1990s, with a rise in women’s employment rates and a decrease in the gender pay gap: women’s employment rates rose from 62% in 1989 to 72% in 2023, with the largest increase for women with dependent children. The corresponding rate was 78% for men in 2023. The gender pay gap decreased from 27.5% in 1997 to 14.3% in 2023. Additionally, the proportion of women in senior management positions increased from 19% in 2012 to 34% in 2020.

Reasons for stagnation

The cost of childcare services remains a significant barrier to women’s participation in the labor market; the average cost of 25 hours of childcare per week for a child under two was £127 in 2021. In addition, men’s contribution to housework and childcare is barely increasing. From 2000 to 2014, the childcare time reported by fathers remained stable at one hour during weekdays and one and a half hours during weekends (Henz 2019). While some measures have been introduced to promote gender equality in the domestic division of labor, such as increased free childcare provision and shared parental leave, the uptake of shared parental leave has been low, with only 2% of eligible parents taking advantage of the policy. As societies strive to create more family-friendly policies, the impact of family formation on people’s lives has become a topic of interest. Are women and men experiencing more similar shifts in time allocation when they get married and have children? Are these policies creating a more equitable distribution of work and family responsibilities?

The changed and unchanged impact of family formation on time use

In a recent study (Zhou and Kan 2023) we shed light on these questions, exploring the impact of partnership and parenthood on the gender division of labor in Great Britain over the past 30 years. We found that prior to the 2010s, women’s housework time increased by approximately 2.5 hours, while that of men increased by about 0.8 hours when they were in partnerships. However, after the 2010s, both women and men increased their housework time by the same amount of approximately 1 hour when in a partnership (Figure 1).
Regarding parenthood, we found that women reduced their paid work time by between 12.3 and 13.8 hours, approximately, when they had their first child, while men’s paid work time decreased by between 0.63 and 2.16 hours when they became fathers (Figure 2 and Figure 3). In other words, the substantial gendered impact of parenthood on paid work has remained relatively unchanged over the past 30 years.
It is noteworthy that the increase in women’s housework time after having a child has decreased over the last 30 years: in the 1990s, it increased by 5.2 hours, in the 2000s by 4.8 hours, and in the 2010s by 4.3 hours. However, the increase in men’s housework when they  become fathers has remained stable at approximately 0.75 hours (Figure 2 and Figure 4).

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that while the traditional gender roles associated with partnership formation have weakened over time, motherhood still reduces women’s paid work time in Great Britain to a similar extent as it did 30 years ago.

These findings highlight the persistence of traditional gender roles and the need for policies that promote a more equitable distribution of work and family responsibilities. In other words, the gender revolution in the division of labor among parents has stalled in Great Britain, and family policies have not been successful in increasing mothers’ paid work time and fathers’ unpaid work time.

References

• Henz, Ursula. 2019. “Fathers’ involvement with their children in the United Kingdom: Recent trends and class differences.” Demographic Research 40 (30):865-896.
• Zhou, Muzhi, and Man-Yee Kan. 2023. “The Gendered Impacts of Partnership and Parenthood on Paid Work and Unpaid Work Time in Great Britain, 1992–2019.” Population and Development Review 49 (4):829-857. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12593

love

Auf Sylt singen junge, wohlhabende Menschen rassistische Hassparolen. Im Land wird ernsthaft über „Remigration“ diskutiert. Gleichzeitig reicht es aber sogar nun den zentralen Parteien der extremen Rechten in Europa mit der AfD. Und die deutsche Top-Etage der Wirtschaft erhebt deutlich ihre Stimme gegen den völkischen Irrsinn.

Auf den Song "l'amour toujours" von Gigi D'Agostino werden seit einiger Zeit in Diskotheken oder bei Volksfesten rassistische Parolen gegrölt – wie zuletzt auf der Insel Sylt.

Source

Progress in gender equality in Egypt

Progress in gender equality in Egypt

Abu Amara N., Ambrosetti E., Condon S. 

Egypt, like many countries in the world, has been witnessing over recent decades slow improvements in gender equality, in line with the evolving international political debate. In this study we are going to analyse changes in gender relations in Egypt using socio economic and demographic indicators. We will thus highlight the ways in which Egyptian society is evolving slowly towards more egalitarian behaviour and attitudes. We are going to focus on the issue of “wife abuse”, using the few quantitative studies existing on that topic for Egypt. At the same time we will analyse the role played by women associations in promoting gender equality and thereby reducing gender based violence. This socio-political process is reflected by the media (particularly independent media organs) in Egypt, as in other countries of the Middle East (Palestine, Jordan). Therefore we will analyse the social and media discourse regarding these issues.

Decriminalization of homosexuality

since the 18th century

April 29, 2024 Jean-François Mignot

More and more people live in countries that have decriminalized homosexual relations, from 11% of the global population in the late 18th century to 79% in the early 21st century. However, as Jean-François Mignot observes, due to faster population growth in criminalizing countries, this trend may soon reverse.

Today, around 21% of the world’s population live in countries where homosexual acts (between consenting adults in private) are a criminal offence punished with fines, corporal punishment, imprisonment or even the death penalty. This implies that around 79% of humans reside in nations where homosexual acts have been decriminalized.

How did we get there? Where, when and how have homosexual relations been decriminalized in the world since the Age of Enlightenment? And is the proportion of humans living in a country which has decriminalized homosexuality more likely to increase, or decrease, in the foreseeable future?

Historical data on the legality of homosexual acts – and historical population numbers as well as UN population projections until 2100 – were gathered on 203 present-day countries, allowing us to answer these questions.

The first wave of decriminalization, from the French Revolution

In the late 18th century, when just 11% of the world’s population lived in countries where homosexual acts were not a criminal offense, France became the first country to decriminalize these practices. The French Penal Code of 1791, drafted in the liberal spirit of the Enlightenment, abolished a “crowd of imaginary crimes”, including sodomy, and the French Penal Code of 1810, which was applied in Napoleonic Europe, inspired the first wave of decriminalization in Western Europe (and, indirectly, in the French, Spanish, Dutch and Belgian colonies), Latin America and the Ottoman Empire. However, in the 19th century fewer than 25% of humans lived in a country where homosexual relations were not illegal. Most notably, Great Britain criminalized “buggery” at home and disseminated this criminalization across its immense empire in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania.

 

The second wave of decriminalization, since the 1960s

From 1950 to 2020, the proportion of countries where homosexual acts were not a criminal offense almost doubled, from 35 % to 66 %. This second wave, beginning in the 1960s in Western and Northern Europe and Canada, then spread to Oceania, Eastern Europe and finally Asia. It was driven by liberalization of public opinion and social movements. In India, homosexual acts were decriminalized by the Supreme Court decision Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India (2018). Africa is the only continent where, since 1950, the decriminalization movement has had relatively little success.

Recriminalization in the Muslim world?

In contrast to these trends, in countries with a Muslim majority, fewer people now live in a country where homosexual acts are not illegal; the proportion fell from 47% in 1950 to 41% in 2020. In addition, since the 1990s, several sub-state entities not included in the animated map have begun to criminalize homosexual acts or impose stricter penalties in the name of Islamic law (sharia). This is the case in provinces of southern Somalia; in the Chechen Republic of the Russian Federation (1996); in Indonesia in the province of Aceh (2002) and in the capital of South Sumatra (2006); and in the northern states of Nigeria (1999). Punishments for homosexual acts are also especially harsh in a few Islamic-law states and sub-state entitiesю

The future of decriminalization

Relatively more humans are now legally free to engage in homosexual acts, but will this long-term trend continue? There are reasons to doubt it. First, the diffusion of religious fundamentalism, especially but not only in the Muslim world, may lead some countries to recriminalize homosexual acts. Second, countries where homosexual acts are currently illegal have higher fertility and will have faster population growth in the future than those where they are not criminalized today. This is why the share of humans who are legally free to engage in homosexual acts will likely decrease, unless, of course, attitudes and laws change in a large enough number of sufficiently populated countries where homosexuality is currently outlawed.

References

• Mignot, J. F. (2022). Decriminalizing homosexuality. In Annales de démographie historique (Vol. 143, No. 1, pp. 115-133). Belin. https://hal.science/hal-03778162v1/document

danger

Новый закон о смене пола в Германии ущемляет права женщин

 — журналистка BILD

В пятницу Бундестаг принял Закон о самоопределении. Теперь менять пол в ФРГ можно раз в год с помощью простого устного заявления. Глава новостной службы BILD Майке Клебль назвала это «чёрным днём» для прав женщин и напомнила, что в Бундестаге уже заседают два депутата-трансгендера. Это Тесса Гансерер и Нике Славик (на фото), прошедшие в парламент по женскому списку «Зелёных». Публикуем полный текст Клебль:

«Десятилетия борьбы за права женщин, безопасные зоны и равные права сметены одним взмахом. Это окончательная победа мужчин над женщинами. Это может показаться радикальным. Но именно это и происходит, когда мужчины решают, что означает быть женщиной, и могут заявлять о себе как о женщинах посредством устного заявления, присваивая себе их права и безопасные зоны. Квоты для женщин сейчас де-факто отменены. Даже если они и противоречивы, сама демократическая дискуссия о привилегиях [женщин] теперь невозможна по закону. Хуже того: женщин принуждают делиться своими безопасными зонами, такими как раздевалки, с теми, кто объявил себя женщиной, не отказавшись от бороды и пениса. Женщин заставляют воспринимать мужчин в их раздевалке, как женщин. Это не что иное, как принуждение.

Сторонники [закона] поспешили назвать это «единичным случаем». Но уже есть множество сообщений из нашей страны и из-за границы о мужчинах в женской одежде, которые нападали на женщин в женских раздевалках. Мне неизвестно, чтобы женщина в мужской одежде напала на мужчин ради секса в мужской раздевалке. Никто не против улучшения условий жизни настоящих трансгендеров, которых на самом деле очень мало. Но не за счёт всех женщин и девочек. Этот закон не делает мир лучше. Просто женщинам стало ещё опаснее, чем было раньше»

• определение женщины

Let them arrest me

«Пусть меня арестуют». 

Дж. К. Роулинг ответила на шотландский закон о запрете разжигания ненависти постами о трансгендерах

В день вступления нового закона в силу Дж. К. Роулинг описала несколько трансгендерных женщин как мужчин
2 апреля 2024, 00:08 GMT

Британская писательница Дж. К. Роулинг резко раскритиковала новый шотландский закон о запрете разжигания ненависти и опубликовала в своих социальных сетях несколько постов о трансгендерных людях. Она заявила, что если эти высказывания будут расценены как нарушение закона, она будет готова отправиться под арест.

Новый закон вступил в силу 1 апреля этого года, хотя шотландский парламент одобрил его еще в 2021-м. Он вводит уголовную ответственность за разжигание ненависти по признаку возраста, ограниченных возможностей, религии, сексуальной ориентации, трансгендерной идентичности или интерсексуальности (то есть смешанного проявления мужских и женских половых признаков).

Глава правительства Шотландии Хамза Юсаф заявил, что новый закон необходим, чтобы справиться с «растущей волной ненависти».

При этом закон не защищает женщин как отдельную социальную группу. Ожидается, что шотландское правительство позже предложит принять особый закон, направленный против женоненавистничества.

Роулинг неоднократно заявляла, что женщинами могут считаться только те, у кого бывает менструация.

Против писательницы звучали обвинения в трансфобии, в том числе — после выхода ее книги, в которой главный персонаж совершает злодейства, переодеваясь в женскую одежду. Десятки тысяч комментаторов посчитали, что Роулинг пренебрежительно отзывается о трансгендерных людях и не признает за ними право решать, к какому гендеру они себя относят.

Что написала Роулинг

Автор эпопеи о Гарри Поттере, которая живет в столице Шотландии Эдинбурге, отреагировала на вступление нового закона в силу постами в социальной сети Х (бывший твиттер).

В них она упомянула уголовные дела в отношении трансгендерных людей, в том числе — случай британки Ислы Брайсон, признанной виновной в изнасилованиях. Она описала этих людей как мужчин, хотя они сменили половую принадлежность. Мужчинами она также назвала нескольких активистов, которые борются за права трансгендеров.

Около парламента Шотландии состоялась акция протеста против вступления нового закона в силу

«Шотландские законодатели, по всей вероятности, отдают предпочтение чувствам мужчин, которые реализуют свои представления о женственности — хотя бы даже оппортунистически или женоненавистнически, а не правам и свободам настоящих женщин и девочек», — заявила при этом Роулинг.

«До тех пор, пока нам не позволят называть мужчину мужчиной, невозможно будет даже корректно описать или справиться с той реальностью насилия, в том числе сексуального, с которой сталкиваются женщины и девочки», — продолжила писательница.

«Свобода слова и вероисповедания в Шотландии могут закончиться, если корректное описание биологического пола провозглашается уголовным преступлением, — считает Дж. К. Роулинг. — Сейчас я нахожусь за границей, но если то, что я написала, будет квалифицировано как преступление с точки зрения нового закона, то жду не дождусь, когда меня арестуют после возвращения на родину Шотландского возрождения [период в истории Шотландии в XVIII — начале XIX века, когда страна активно развивалась в культурном, научном и социальном отношении — Ред.]»

Шотландская полиция сообщила, что пока не получала каких-либо жалоб в связи с постами Роулинг.

Что сказано в новом законе

Нарушение нового закона о запрете разжигания ненависти может караться штрафом или тюремным заключением на срок до семи лет.

В законе сказано, что преступлением является распространение материалов или поведение, которое «здравомыслящий человек сочтет угрожающим или оскорбительным», и его цель — разжигание ненависти при принципу принадлежности к определенным категориям.

На всей территории Великобритании уже действует закон, запрещающий разжигать ненависть к людям на основе их расовой принадлежности, сексуальной ориентации и религии (он был принят еще в 1986 году).

Однако новый акт, одобренный в Шотландии, устанавливает более низкую планку подобных правонарушений, поскольку также включает «оскорбительное поведение».

В ответ на критику, связанную с принятием закона, Юсаф заявил: «Если ваше поведение не является угрожающим или оскорбительным и он не направлено на разжигание ненависти, вам не о чем беспокоиться с точки зрения появившегося в законе нового правонарушения»

gendering

В Баварии государственным органам запретили использовать в официальных текстах так называемый «гендеринг»

Использование гендерно-чувствительного языка будет категорически запрещено в школах, университетах и органах власти немецкой земли Бавария. На заседании в Мюнхене кабинет министров принял решение о необходимости таких изменений.

Местный закон уже обязывает государственные органы, включая школы, использовать официальные правила немецкой орфографии в деловой переписке. Однако теперь это положение «уточнено и дополнено»: гендерные «звёздочки», двоеточия и подчёркивания недопустимы.

В немецком языке женский род части существительных образуется с помощью суффикса «in», и для того, чтобы подчеркнуть равность полов на письме зачастую используются «звёздочки», двоеточия и другие знаки, позволяющие вписать «женский» суффикс в слово множественного числа или в случае, когда пол упоминаемой личности неизвестен. Например, «коллега» в мужском роде это «Kollege», в женском «Kollegin». «Гендерный» язык подразумевает во множественном числе написание, не исключающее женский род: «Kolleg:innen», «Kolleg/innen» или «Kolleg*innen».

📍Совет по немецкой орфографии в решении от 15 декабря 2023 года не рекомендовал использовать специальные символы внутри слов и указал, что это вмешательства в словообразование, грамматику и орфографию, которые могут ухудшить разборчивость текстов.

women in politics

Отношение россиян к женщинам в политике

Очень интересные цифры из свежего опроса к 8 марта: отношение россиян к женщинам в политике за последние два года значительно (очень значительно) ухудшилось!

В 2022 году только 22% россиян не одобряли участие женщин в политике - сейчас их стало 30%. Не хотели, чтобы женщины занимали высшие государственные посты, в 2022 году 29% опрошенных, сейчас - 40%! Против того, чтобы президентом России стала женщина, выступали 54%, сейчас уже 67%. По всем этим трём показателям негатив находится на рекордно высоких уровнях.

Эффект интересный и, если честно, несколько пугающий, но ещё интереснее - что же его вызвало? СВО, беспрестанные разговоры про "традиционные ценности" и "рожайте в 16", ещё что-то?

Sexual minority women and parenthood

Sexual minority women and parenthood: Perceptions of friendship among childfree and new parents

Kay A. Simon, Samantha L. Tornello & Henny M. W. Bos

Many individuals experience shifts in their friendship networks after becoming parents. The current study investigated the narratives of how a sample of sixty-six sexual minority women, most of whom do not yet have children but who expect to be parents in the future, perceive the changes in friendship networks following becoming parents. A thematic analysis uncovered three themes: (1) general expectations surrounding future parenthood and friendships; (2) changes in lifestyle and priorities; and (3) LGBTQ + community attachment. Further, the theme of general expectations surrounding future parenthood and friendships was largely represented among lesbian and queer women, while the theme of changes in lifestyle and priorities was predominately represented among lesbian women, and finally, the theme of LGBTQ + community attachment was shared among all sexual minority women in our sample across different sexual identities. We discuss the diversity of shared and non-shared narratives among sexual minority women, the intentionality in how friendship during parenthood is perceived, as well as why some themes were particularly prevalent among women with specific sexual identities.

Kay A. Simon , M.S., is a doctoral candidate at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Psychology. Their work focuses on LGBTQ + families, intended parenthood, identity development, and ambiguous loss.

Samantha L. Tornello , Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at Pennsylvania State University in the Human Development and Family Studies Department. The majority of her work has focused on the role of family composition, sexual orientation, and parental gender in the family system.

Henny M. W. Bos , Ph.D., is full professor at the Research Institute of Child Development and Education, Faculty of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on: (1) lesbian and gay parent families; (2) lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities; and (3) gender nonconforming individuals in relation to mental health.

source

the gender wage gap

Occupational characteristics and the gender wage gap among parents in Europe

February 19, 2024 Alícia Adserà and Federica Querin

The gender wage gap persists, especially among mothers. Alícia Adserà and Federica Querin show that despite low wages in predominantly male occupations that depend on heavy machinery, women (and chiefly mothers) are penalized by holding fewer jobs with leadership roles and more jobs that require frequent contact with others.

Despite important advances in closing the gender wage gap in most advanced countries over the last decades, progress has slowed or stalled during recent years. As women’s educational attainment now often surpasses that of men, explanations for the persistence of this gap point to gender-based differential sorting into sectors, and sorting on occupational characteristics within each sector (Goldin 2014; Blau and Khan 2017). Gendered occupational sorting increases in saliency for parents, who must juggle work and family demands.

In a recently published paper, we used data across 14 countries from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), collected by the OECD in 2012, to examine the degree of sorting on occupational characteristics and its implications for the gender wage gap, with a focus on parents (Adserà and Querin 2023). For each individual, we matched occupational characteristics at 4-digit ISCO-08 codes with information from the O*NET databaseon the requirements and work content of occupations. We examined five occupational characteristics relating to the importance of interpersonal relationships in the job, the worker’s autonomy, and a time component. Each index is normalized to have mean of zero and a standard deviation of one.

Prevalence of occupational characteristics is gendered

• The first occupational characteristic is contact with others, which is defined by frequent interactions with peers such as colleagues, clients, and the public. It is closely linked with flexibility and ability to work from home, occupational characteristics that increased in relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• The second, leadership, captures vertical hierarchical work relationships and involves guiding, directing, and coordinating other workers. Unlike contact with peers, leadership is associated with higher wages and, in general, tends to be male-dominated.

• Third, autonomy is defined as having a job characterized by control on the decision-making process. It is juxtaposed with machine-dependency, which involves the direct operation of machinery and vehicles that require the worker’s physical presence at the workplace. These latter occupations are frequently performed by men but, unlike most predominantly male occupations, often do not reap high wage returns.

• Lastly, time pressure and high frequency of deadlines captures the time squeeze that may be especially binding for parents.

Figure 1 shows that the gender differences (in standard deviations) in prevalence for the five occupational characteristics align with expectations. Only contact with others is, on average, more prevalent in jobs held by women, while machine use and leadership are much more prevalent in men’s jobs. In general, when we restrict the sample to parents, gender differences amplify. This is particularly evident in the increased gap between mothers and fathers in occupations with more autonomy and leadership. For example, mothers’ occupations are associated with 0.30 standard deviations fewer leadership requirements than fathers, while this difference increases to 0.36 standard deviations fewer among childless individuals.
While there is no difference in machine use between fathers and childless men, it is fathers who most frequently hold leadership roles, in line with previous research on the existence of both a glass ceiling for women and a fatherhood premium. The sizable autonomy of fathers might be consistent with their jobs being more associated with managerial positions than those of younger (childless) workers. Interestingly, mothers less frequently work in high contact occupations than childless women (even though they do so more than fathers), indicating a shift towards occupations that allow for greater flexibility.

Geographical differences

To account for substantial labor markets differences within Europe, we group countries in our sample according to the Eurofound classification that captures industrial relations in the EU and that nicely aligns with differences in welfare systems and gender norms across Europe. These groups are Continental Europe (Belgium, Germany, France, The Netherlands), Southern Europe (Spain, Greece, Italy), Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia), with the UK representing Anglo-Saxon countries, and Denmark Nordic countries.

While prevalence results hold in all countries, the gender gap in leadership is particularly large in Southern Europe and between mothers and fathers in Eastern and Continental Europe. Southern and Eastern Europe also display gender gaps in autonomy. Taken together, the prevalence findings are indicative of more gender-based occupational sorting in Eastern and Southern Europe.

High wages for leadership and autonomy contribute to the gender wage gap

Two main factors pulling in opposite directions emerge when estimating the contributions of occupational characteristics to the gender wage gap. On the one hand, occupations involving more contact with others are generally less well paid. This increases the gender wage gap as we show that contact is more prevalent in women’s occupations (Figure 1). On the other hand, the fact that male-dominated machine-dependent occupations are poorly paid partially closes the gender wage gap. However, women who work in machine-dependent occupations are paid even less than their male counterparts, while men who work in contact with others are not penalized. This, in combination with a wage premium for (male) leadership and autonomy, tips the balance for a persisting gender wage gap.

Gender wage gaps persist after adjusting for occupational characteristics

Figure 2 shows that in all countries, except those in Continental Europe, adjusted gender wage differences (measured in log gross hourly earnings) are still significant even after controlling for demographic and employment characteristics such as education and whether respondents work in the public sector or on temporary contracts, as well as for the five above-mentioned occupational characteristics and their interactions with gender.

Eastern Europe shows the largest gender wage gap (and Denmark the lowest) both for all workers and for parents. Restricting the sample to parents leads to a widening of the adjusted gap, especially in Southern Europe, where reconciling work and family is especially complicated for women.

Thus, even accounting for a sizable occupational sorting and for differential wage returns to occupational characteristics, Figure 2 clearly shows a persistent gender wage gap that calls for further research.

References

• Adserà, A., & Querin, F. (2023). The Gender Wage Gap and Parenthood: Occupational Characteristics Across European Countries. European Journal of Population, 39(1), 34.
• Blau, F.D., and Kahn, L.M. (2017). The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations. Journal of Economic Literature 55(3):789–865.
• Goldin, C. (2014). A Grand Gender Convergence: Its Last Chapter. American Economic Review104(4):1091–1119

Demographic and occupational change in Europe:

gender, education, and age disparities

February 5, 2024 Álvaro Mariscal‐de‐Gante, Amaia Palencia‐Esteban, Sara Grubanov‐Boskovic and Enrique Fernández‐Macías

Over the last decades, the working population in Europe has become older, more feminized, and more educated. However, Álvaro Mariscal‐de‐Gante, Amaia Palencia‐Esteban, Sara Grubanov‐Boskovic and Enrique Fernández‐Macías argue that female occupational improvements have been insufficient to close the gender gap, and find declining occupational returns to education for highly educated women in two countries. Conversely, European labour markets have been able to accommodate the growing number of older workers, despite some occupational downgrading.

European societies are undergoing significant demographic changes, most notably the trend towards feminization and ageing of their workforce. Intertwined with a process of educational upgrading, these shifts are reshaping the landscape of the continent’s labour market (Lutz and Skirbekk 2014).

To respond to these challenges, the European Union (EU) and its member states have implemented a series of policy initiatives aiming to promote longer working lives and reform social protection and pension systems. In 2020, the EU’s Green Paper on ageing outlined strategies for addressing these challenges, propelling the twin transitions towards a greener and more digital Europe while nurturing the ageing population’s potential (European Commission 2022).

In a recent paper on this topic (Mariscal‐de‐Gante et al 2023), we used recent occupational and demographic data for six European countries to briefly illustrate and discuss three of these major demographic challenges, namely gender disparities in the labour market, the effects of educational improvements on employment, and the ageing of the working population.

Has increased female participation widened the gender occupational gap?

Population pyramids intuitively show the major demographic changes faced by European countries over the last 25 years. In 1995, countries like Spain, Italy, or the Czech Republic still exhibited the classical pyramidal shape, reflecting a great number of young workers and smaller cohorts of old individuals. In contrast, Germany, Sweden, and France already showed a narrowing base, indicating earlier declines in fertility rates and incipient population ageing (Spain and Sweden are shown in Figure 1). Despite these differences in structural demographic shifts, a common thread ran through all these countries: inactivity, unemployment, and low-paid jobs were relatively more prevalent among women.
Between 1995 and 2019, while inactivity and unemployment tended to decline significantly, there was a widespread process of occupational upgrading, with growing employment shares in relatively high-paid jobs. Although this upgrading process was particularly important for women (Spain is noteworthy example), such improvement was certainly not enough to achieve gender parity. In fact, the female-to-male ratio in low-paid jobs increased from 1995 to 2019, and the female occupational structure is still clearly more polarized than that of men, reflecting the difficulties that women face during their professional career (Card et al. 2016). Thus, we can answer our first question by saying that, despite significant progress, occupational gender gaps remain large in European labour markets.

Has educational upgrading benefitted the labour market position of women?

Over the last quarter of century, Europe has experienced a significant expansion of tertiary education coupled with a decline in primary education. This expansion has been stronger among women: for instance, in Spain the proportion of prime-aged female workers has increased by 31 percentage points as opposed to only 20 percentage points for men. But has their occupational position improved likewise?

First, it must be noted that this educational upgrading has not been equally absorbed by all European labour markets, as illustrated in Figure 2. In the case of highly educated workers, their occupational profile has clearly improved in Germany, Sweden and, to a lesser extent, in Spain and France, while deteriorating in Italy and the Czech Republic. These patterns seem to run more or less in parallel with gender occupational dynamics. While women’s profile improved more than men’s in Sweden, Germany, Spain and, to a lesser degree, in France, the occupational position of highly educated female workers worsened in Italy and the Czech Republic. In fact, in the latter two countries, the occupational outcomes of highly qualified female workers declined in relative terms, despite an educational profile that increased over the period more than that of men.

How has the occupational profile of old and young workers changed?

In the last 25 years, the European population has been ageing, with a growing share of older workers and a declining share of younger ones. Faced with this reality, some scholars have hypothesized that given the disparities in numbers of competitors, different generations will experience different labour market outcomes,. Accordingly, these so-called cohort-crowding effects might harm the occupational prospects of (abundant) older workers and enhance those of (scarce) young workers.
In terms of overall employment, European labour markets have been able to accommodate large expansions in the cohorts of old workers: inactivity rates have fallen quite drastically without an equivalent growth in unemployment. If we look at the occupational profiles, however, our analysis also reveals some deterioration, which again appears to be gender-biased as it affects older women more acutely. The shrinking of the younger cohorts, on the other hand, does not seem to be associated with any significant change in their occupational outcomes.

In conclusion…

Understanding the interplay of demographic shifts and occupational changes is vital for policymakers and researchers interested in addressing persistent disparities in the labour market. As the labour market continues to evolve, in many cases towards an ageing and feminized workforce, European experiences provide valuable insights into this multifaceted interaction. Impressive strides in women’s labour participation and education have (so far) failed to bridge occupational disparities, often leading to lower-paid positions. Together with cross-country differences, the old continent’s evolution over the last 25 years may underscore the importance of public institutions. The path towards true gender equality in the labour market calls for reinforced policies addressing the diverse factors that explain the persistence of gender occupational gaps, from early education choices and uneven household workload to outright discrimination.

References

• Card D., Cardoso A., Kline P. 2016. Bargaining, Sorting, and the Gender Wage Gap. Quantifying the Impact of Firms on the Relative Pay of Women. The Quarterly Journal of Economics 131(2): 633–686. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv038
• EJM. 1995. European Jobs Monitor.
• EU-LFS. 1995. European Union Labor Force Survey.
• European Commission, Directorate-General for Communication, Green paper on ageing, Publications Office of the European Union. 2022. https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2775/785789
• Lutz W., Skirbekk V. 2014. “How Education Drives Demography and Knowledge Informs Projections.” In W. Lutz, W.P. Butz, S. KC (Eds.) World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 14–38.
• Mariscal‐de‐Gante Á., Palencia‐Esteban A., Grubanov‐Boskovic S., Fernández‐Macías E. 2023. Feminization, Ageing, and Occupational Change in Europe in the Last 25 Years. Population and Development Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/padr.12586
• SES. 2018. Structure of Earnings Survey.

seems like fake

В 2018 году трое учёных опубликовали 7 лженаучных статей под видом «гендерных исследований», собрав восторженные рецензии. Одна из статей состояла из переписанных фрагментов Mein Kampf

Трое учёных из США и Великобритании провели социальный эксперимент, на протяжении года публикуя в уважаемых социологических журналах статьи, состоящие из случайного набора выдуманных фактов.

В ходе проекта авторы написали 20 статей. За год топовые научные журналы, специализирующиеся на гендерных исследованиях, без вопросов опубликовали 7 из них.

Одна из статей содержала фрагменты из автобиографии Адольфа Гитлера, которая была замаскирована под исследование интерсекционального феминизма. Учёные заменили арийцев на женщин, а евреев на мужчин.

В других исследованиях учёные предлагали дрессировать мужчин как собак, чтобы предотвратить изнасилования. Также исследователи обвинили искусственный интеллект в «мужском империализме» и провели «дилдо-анализ», в ходе которого открыли диагноз «трансистерия»,

На каждую из статей рецензенты журналов писали хвалебные отзывы.

seems like fake

Extreme morning sickness?

Scientists finally pinpoint a possible cause

A protein released by fetal cells in the placenta influences the risk of experiencing severe nausea and vomiting during pregnancy.

Sickness during pregnancy can be so severe that it disrupts eating, drinking and everyday activities.

Researchers have pinpointed a hormone released by growing fetuses that might cause a debilitating form of morning sickness. Women who are more sensitive to the hormone, which increases during early pregnancy, might be at greater risk of experiencing a severe form of nausea and vomiting, called hyperemesis gravidarum, according to their study.

“For the first time, hyperemesis gravidarum could be addressed at the root cause, rather than merely alleviating its symptoms,” says Tito Borner, a physiologist at the University of Pennsylvania. The work was published on 13 December in Nature1.

The finding could also open avenues for treatment. “We now have a clear view of what may cause this problem and a route for both treatment and prevention,” says study co-author Stephen O’Rahilly, a metabolism researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK.

The researchers found that women who had high levels of the hormone GDF15 before they got pregnant had minimal reactions to it while carrying their baby. The findings suggest that giving GDF15 to those at high risk of hyperemesis gravidarum before pregnancy could protect them from the condition. O’Rahilly says that although their study suggests that GDF15 influences the risk of severe sickness, other factors might have a role.

Roughly 70% of women experience nausea and vomiting during pregnancy — colloquially termed morning sickness, even though it can occur at any time. Around 0.3–2% experience hyperemesis gravidarum: symptoms so severe that they have difficulty eating, drinking and doing everyday activities. In the worst cases, this can lead to death from dehydration. “It is extremely disabling,” says O’Rahilly.

Protective mechanism

Research has shown2 that GDF15, which is produced at low levels by organs including the prostate, bladder and kidneys, can trigger nausea by binding to specialized receptors in the brainstem. After ingesting toxic substances and during early pregnancy, levels of this hormone increase, causing sickness. “It’s usually worst in the first trimester and then it gradually fades,” says O’Rahilly.

On the basis of such studies, O’Rahilly proposed3 that GDF15 might have evolved to protect people from poisoning themselves and to shield a developing fetus from toxic substances. It’s not necessary to eat a lot and gain much mass in early pregnancy, says O’Rahilly. “It’s far better off being cautious about what you eat, to protect your offspring from toxins.”

In 2018, researchers linked some variants of the GDF15 gene, which encodes GDF15, to an increased risk of developing hyperemesis gravidarum4.

In the latest study, O’Rahilly and his colleagues found that GDF15 levels in the blood were substantially higher in nearly 60 pregnant women who experienced nausea and vomiting than in around 60 who had little or no sickness.

The researchers compared the levels of different variants of GDF15 produced by placental cells derived from the mothers and fetuses, and found that fetal cells produced most of the hormone.

Genetic risk

The team found that people with certain genetic variants of GDF15, which have previously been linked to a higher risk of developing hyperemesis gravidarum, had lower GDF15 levels in the body. By analysing genetic data from more than 18,000 people, the researchers found that higher levels of GDF15 in non-pregnant people reduced the risk that they would develop hyperemesis gravidarum if they did become pregnant. This suggests that people react less to the hormone during pregnancy if they have higher GDF15 levels beforehand, says O’Rahilly.

To test this idea, researchers injected mice that weren’t pregnant with either a long-lasting form of GDF15 or a placebo. Three days later, the team gave all the mice a dose of GDF15, and found that animals that had received the placebo ate less and lost weight, but those exposed to GDF15 ate normally and lost less weight.

The team also asked mothers with the chronic blood condition β-thalassaemia — who have lifelong elevated levels of GDF15 — whether they experienced sickness during pregnancy. Only 5% had, whereas more than 60% of those in a sample of the general population, matched for ethnicity and age, experienced these symptoms.

Stopping the sickness

The results suggest that people who have generally low levels of GDF15 could be given increasingly high doses of the hormone while trying to conceive, to desensitize them to it and reduce their chances of experiencing hyperemesis gravidarum during pregnancy, says O’Rahilly.

Alternatively, they could be given antibodies that block GDF15 or GDF15 receptors, to reduce nausea and vomiting. At least two antibodies against GDF15 are being tested in clinical trials to treat the wasting syndrome cachexia.

Further research is needed to explore these possibilities. “We don’t know anything about the role of GDF15 in normal pregnancy,” says obstetric clinician and researcher Catherine Williamson at Imperial College London. Studies should establish whether changing the hormone’s activity might have harmful side effects, she says.

Borner agrees. Attempts to tackle pregnancy sickness have a troubled past: in the 1950s and 1960s, the drug thalidomide was used to treat the condition, but turned out to affect the development of babies’ limbs.

“If fetally derived GDF15 is a primary driver of nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, then that’s a big deal,” says nutritional researcher Bart De Jonghe at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “It shows us a powerful way the fetal environment can use a single chemical signal to dramatically impact maternal health and behaviour.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03982-8

там всё: ссылки и проч.

The Nobel Prize Gender Gap

2023 has been a banner year for women at the Nobel Prize, as four female laureates stand opposite seven male honorees. Perhaps more importantly though, three women, Claudia Goldin in Economic Sciences, Katalin Karikó in Medicine and Anne L'Huillier in Physics, were honored in fields that have been heavily male-dominated since the Nobel Prize's inception in 1901. Goldin, who was awarded the prize for “for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes”, was only the third woman to win the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, as it's officially called, and the first to be the sole winner in any year.

Marie Curie was the first female scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in 1903 and to this day, she's the only woman to be honored twice. There have been a total of 65 female Nobel laureates in the prize's long history, most of them in the peace and literature categories. The chart below shows a gender breakdown of all (non-institutional) Nobel Prize winners, illustrating the vast gender gap in laureates, especially in chemistry, physics and economics, where less than five percent of all winners have been female. The Nobel Peace Prize has most frequently been awarded to women, with Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi becoming the 19th female laureate in the category this year. Mohammadi was honored for “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all”. She is currently imprisoned in Tehran's infamous Evin Prison for her political activity.