Pie Fight

But, but...

If a straw man argument is when someone invents an easily tackled enemy that isn't actually there, what do you call it when someone completely ignores highly visible evidence that refutes their thesis? An 'ostrich man' argument?

Here's some dimwit in the Guardian writing a moany piece about how the Bourne Ultimatum has no strong characters, while almost completing ignoring Pamela Landy.

I mean, she actually asks the question 'why can't women in action movies ever do anything useful?' I won't spoil the film, but let it hereby be noted that 'doing something useful' pretty much sums up the Pam Landy character.

Practice exam question: Inside the black box of the family

Practice exam question: Explain why policy makers should invest more time in understanding processes internal to the family.

Hmm, can start here with Okin's notion of justice, and her contention that underlying all the inequalites specifically affecting women is the unequal distribution of unpaid labour in teh household. And Hobson's contention that the family is a site of great inequality, of a sort which doesn't mirror societal inequality. They should invest more time in understanding it because we have limited understanding of it - i'll discuss the theories of household bargaining that we have. But mainly they should invest more time in understanding it because, as feminist theorists observe, social policy is both shaped by and shaping of what goes on within the so-called black box of the family. And social policy understanding has always been skewed towards the public sphere, but as Hobson argues, the policy divide between public and private is arbitrary, ideological, and not gender neutral. Because women take on more of the caring duties within the family and tend to have weaker bargaining positions economically, policy which does not seek to peer into the black box is policy that tacitly supports, approves of and furthers the current gender gap.

Practice exam question: "Malestream" theories

Practice question: "In the field of social policy, mainstream theories would be more appropriately referred to as malestream theories." Discuss.

Ok, how to address this one? First of all, I don't know a lot about mainstream theories. I know a fair amount about EA, and I know that Willensky's was based on social expenditure. And I know that Marshall was the mac daddy of social citizenship, and that in general social citizenship is defined as one's ability to participate fully in the activities of society. What I could say is that I'll argue that mainstream theories have been said to be malestream because they were far more concerned with the welfare of men than with women. This concern expressed itself  through a concentration on class and an ignorance of the role of gender in personal welfare, as well as an implicit assumption that women's primary role was as carer rather than provider.

Practice exam question: citizenship, gender, and Wollstonecraft's dilemma

In what ways can policies that seek to address the distribution of unpaid and caring work be seen as an attempt to solve Wollstonecraft's dilemma by requiring both women and men to be "citizen workers"?

Ok, I'm a bit shaky on this material right now, but the purpose of this practice question is to get me up to speed with the key concepts and contributors. So here goes a kitchen skink approach, which I'l clean up later.

Ladies and gentlemen

Harry Brighouse links to a series of fab-sounding papers on gender egalitarianism. Authors include Gornick and Meyers, Crompton, and plenty of others. The papers can be found here. Just so you I can see what I'd be missing by not clicking through, I've pasted a list of them below, though the links don't seem to work down there. Damn t'internets! Bring back the slateboard!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Background           Paper:
Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers	"Institutions                   that Support Gender Egalitarianism in Parenthood and Employment"
Responses                 and Papers:
Rosemary               Crompton	"National                   Particularities, Caring, and the Domestic Division of Labour:           Their Impact on Gender Egalitarianism in Parenthood and Employment"
Ruth           Milkman	"Class                   Disparities, Market Fundamentalism and Work-Family Policy:           Lessons from California"
Lane               Kenworthy	"Who                   Should Care for One- to Three-           Year-Olds?"
Harry               Brighouse and Erik Olin Wright	"In                   Defense of Strong Gender Egalitarianism           (even if this requires Illiberal Policies for its Achievement)"
Shireen Hassim	"Whose                   Utopia? A Response to Gornick and Meyers 'Institutions           that Support Egalitarianism in Parenthood and Employment'"
Peter               McDonald	"Comments                   upon: Institutions that Support Gender Egalitarianism in Parenthood           and Employment by Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers"
Rosalyn               Baxandall	"Winning                   Day Care through Grass Roots Struggle           In New York City"
Scott               Coltrane	"Fatherhood,           Gender and Work-Family Policies"
Kymberly               Morgan	"The                   Political Path to a Dual-Earner/Dual-Carer Society: Pitfalls           and Possibilities"
Myra               Marx Ferree	"An                   American Utopia? A roadmap to reconciliation politics in the                     US"
Nancy           Folbre	"The           Qualities and Inequalities of Care"
Kathrin           Zippel	"The                   Missing Link for Promoting Gender Equality:           Family-Work & Anti-Discrimination Policies"
Johanna           Brenner	"Beyond                     the Family/Household and the Bureaucratic Welfare State"
Heidi           Hartmann and Vicky Lovell	"Paid           Sick Days: The Missing Component"
Michael               Shalev	"Trouble                     in Utopia: Class Divisions in Preferences, Interests and                     Politics"
Collette               Fagan	"Some                   brief Comments for the Conference on           Institutions for Gender Egalitarianism"
Barbara               R. Bergmann	"Taking                     Gender Equality into Account in Work-Family Policies" (revised)
Cameron           Macdonald	"What’s                   Culture Got to Do with It? Mothering Ideologies as Barriers                   to Gender Equity"

Assessed essay - SA4A7

Download sa4a7_assessed_essay_draft_3.doc

Middle class teen mums

You know what would make a good research project? Looking at what types of parents middle class teen mums turn out to be. I suspect they'd be much more similar to middle class older mums (eg in terms of smoking, verbal interaction with the children, etc) than they'd be to low-income teen mums.

On that note, an interesting discussion of the issue at unfogged.

Group glee

Via LanguageLog:

[A]s we poked around on Google Scholar, we stumbled over Lawrence W. Sherman, "An Ecological Study of Glee in Small Groups of Preschool Children", Child Development, 46(1) 53-61 1975.

Fighting a puma with a rubber band

More interesting results in teh annals of addressing the symptoms of poverty rather than poverty itself: a new sex ed programme has failed to reduce teen pregnancy rates. The kids preferred the programme to the old way of teaching sex ed, and that's good, but the conception rate did not drop. The administrators blame this on the fact that teen pregnancy is the product of a complex set of poverty-driven factors. Kids may learn more about sex and how to prevent pregnancies, but if getting pregnant is still seen as at least as good an option as not, then nothing's going to change.

The effect of fatherhood on men's patterns of employment

My thoughts and reflections after reading the end of award report for this study, which compared and contrasted fathers' patterns of paid employment with those of non-fathers.