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Baby Spice to Burkas

September 24, 2009, by katefarrar

In the beginning of September I was lucky enough to take my first trip to the Middle East, seeing the remarkable countries of Egypt and Jordan. Before leaving on this adventure, I prepared in the usual way by getting shots, appropriate clothes, and handy travel books. But what I wasn’t prepared for was hearing from one of my AAUW colleagues that Egypt is one of the worst countries in the world for street harassment of women. In a recent survey, 83 percent of Egyptian women reported experiencing harassment, and two-thirds of Egyptian men said they engage in harassment; more than 70 percent of the women said they were wearing a veil when they were harassed. This video chronicling the popularity of karate for self-defense against harassment gives you a sense of how desperate women are for their safety.

I had read that the best tactic to respect the cultures of these countries and avoid harassment was to try to remain completely covered, so I packed my bag with long sleeves, pants, and long skirts for the 100 degree weather! What I experienced on the street was a little different than expected, though. In Egypt you cannot walk for one minute without being hassled to take a taxi or to buy something or to ride a camel (yes, most places have camels at your service). And this hassling is constant; you cannot get away from it, because no matter how covered your body may be you are clearly a tourist. Initially I felt that I was being hassled not so much because I was a woman but because I was a tourist. Often the men would hound my friends and me and even follow us down the street continuing to hassle us. This behavior definitely made me question whether they would have done that if we had had a male in our group of four women. There were also several instances in which we were called out with “gendered” language — such as “Let me see your beautiful eyes,” “Show off those legs,” or the best/worst one, “Talk to me Baby Spice.” My fellow female travelers unfortunately have faced much worse experiences of street harassment in other countries around the globe.

Facing this hassling did not ruin our days seeing this amazing country or make me worry for my safety, but it was extremely tiring and just plain annoying. It gave me a keen personal sense, though, of how easy and acceptable it is for men to harass women on these streets and of what the women of Egypt must face every day.

Posted in Sexual Harassment | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

Blogging, Facebooking, Texting, and Tweeting: A New Age of Literacy

September 22, 2009, by zkhorakiwala

Clive Thompson’s take on the “new literacy” inspired me to reflect on society’s need to always feel connected. Advanced technology allows this “need” to be easily satisfied through constant facebooking, tweeting, texting, blogging, etc. Online socializing allows us to efficiently communicate our thoughts and messages and, as a result, there is always a way to know what just about anyone is doing.

Critics argue that we are in for an age of illiteracy because they believe students are making a mockery of our language through shorthand and a focus on writing nonsense about their lives. But Thompson says, “Before the Internet came along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they got a job that required producing text, they’d leave school and virtually never construct a paragraph again.” The fact that people today are inspired to write and share their thoughts is remarkable. The fact that they are inspired to write something is key.

There is a stigma associated with online communicating; people are facebooking, tweeting, and blogging about trivial matters when they should be concerned about the world or reading a book. But if you take a take a close look at the variety of issues that people write about and share through online forums, you can see the interests students have in the economy, healthcare, and other important topics.

Facebook allows people to share articles and spread the news about causes. Tweeting helps others promote their professional careers by presenting opportunities to leverage their networks and seek insight from others. Blogs create open forums for people to write about what is on their minds and encourages comments and discussion on current issues.

Yes, you have your occasional “OMG, Kanye West totally dissed Taylor Swift on stage at the VMAs”  status updates, but you can’t disregard the fact that students do care about what is going on in the world and do have an opinion about it.

Andrea Lunsford, professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, conducted a study on college students’ prose. She collected 14,672 student writing samples from 2001 to 2006. Her samples included in-class assignments, formal essays, journal entries, e-mails, blog posts, and chat sessions. She found that students were quite proficient in “kairos,” which is an awareness of who one is writing to and adjusting tone and style to meet the needs of that audience. She did not find any sign of texting speak in the academic work of first-year students, which supports the following findings in David Crystal’s book, Txtng: the Gr8 Db8. According to Wikipedia, Crystal found that fewer than 10 percent of words are abbreviated in text messages and that abbreviation has been around for decades. He also found that texting improves literacy, because it provides the opportunity for people to read and write.

The fact that students are embracing social media as a way to stay connected and generate thoughtful discourse is interesting. This technology wave has initiated advances in traditional schooling: distance education is more prominent, and webinars, classroom chats, and podcasts make it possible for people to learn just about anywhere.

Even our parents are exposed to technological advances, and they are delighted as they see what this “Facebook thing” is all about. My father recently e-mailed to tell me that he had sent me a text message and that I should check it promptly! Slowly but surely others will come to appreciate this shift in our ways of communicating and the importance of staying connected any time of day.

Posted in Students and Educational Issues | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

House of Representatives Passes Key Student Loan Bill

September 18, 2009, by adamzimmerman

It’s often said that you can’t put a price tag on a good education. Millions of current and former students, however, know quite well that a good education can costs tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars — plus interest. For these students, fortunately, today was a good day in Washington, D.C.

Earlier today, the U.S. House of Representatives took a strong step toward curbing the astronomical price tag of higher education with the passage of the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (H.R.3221). Sponsored by Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, the bill passed the House by a bipartisan vote of 253-171. AAUW strongly supported passage, and we are pleased that the Senate is working on its own version of the bill.

The bill would take a number of steps to make achieving the dream of higher education a reality — and more affordable. AAUW strongly supports the bill’s provisions to move all federal loans to the Direct Lending program by 2010, a proposal advanced by President Obama in his 2010 budget request. The bill will establish a competitive bidding process that allows the Department of Education to select lenders based on how well they serve borrowers, educate them financially, and prevent increasingly common loan defaults. Moving all loans to the Direct Lending program will save the federal government and taxpayers almost $100 billion over the next 10 years, as it eliminates the taxpayer-funded subsidies private lenders have been receiving to make student loans. The savings would then be used to strengthen the Pell grant program, keep interest rates on student loans low, improve community colleges, and expand early childhood education — all without costing taxpayers a single extra dime.

AAUW enthusiastically supports the bill’s expansion of the Pell grant funding program. Of the almost $100 billion in savings created by moving to the Direct Lending program, approximately $40 billion of this will be used to increase Pell grant funding — resulting in a maximum Pell grant award of $5,550 for 2010. In future years, instead of remaining stagnant, the maximum award would automatically increase by an amount equivalent to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) plus 1 percent. At this rate, the maximum Pell award is estimated to increase to $6,900 by 2019. By taking this important step, the Pell award will reflect inflation and will not lose value over time — a problem that has plagued the program in the past.

While this bill will help all students, women in particular stand to gain. As we know all too well — and as the Census Bureau recently reminded us — women earn significantly less on average over the course of their lives than their male counterparts. AAUW’s Behind the Pay Gap report found that college-educated women earn 5 percent less than men one year out of college and 12 percent less than men 10 years out of college, even when they have the same major and occupation as their male counterparts and when controlling for factors known to affect earnings such as education and training, parenthood, and hours worked. These findings suggest that sex discrimination not only continues to be a problem in the workplace, but that it affects the incomes of even the most educated women starting immediately out of college. This immediate and pernicious wage disparity makes it that much harder for women to repay their student loans. Women also stand to gain from an amendment to the bill that focuses on the need to have more women and underrepresented minorities enter science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers.

Earlier in the week, the Obama administration came out in strong support of this legislation. The Senate now has to act for this bill to become law. AAUW will continue to work hard to ensure that this bill reaches the president’s desk. Millions of students are depending on it.

Posted in Students and Educational Issues | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Caster Semenya’s Fight for Human Decency

September 17, 2009, by zkhorakiwala

Imagine growing up in a poor South African village, being 18 years old, and winning the women’s 800 meter title at the World Championships in Berlin. In the midst of feeling pride for your country and for your achievement, imagine being scrutinized due to suspicions about your sex and having this very sensitive issue handled with little discretion by the media.

Imagine searching your name on the Internet and viewing  hundreds of articles in which people are questioning your sex, making a mockery of your looks, and accusing you of not being worthy of your medal. Now imagine being forced into hiding, driven into trauma counseling, and placed on suicide watch, all over rumors regarding your biological sex. This is the life of Caster Semenya, South African middle distance runner and world champion.

Semenya does not fit into the traditional mold of what a woman is expected to look like. As a result, she has suffered publicly as people have made assumptions about the sex she has identified with for the last 18 years. In the wake of these rumors, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) commissioned sex-determination tests, and there are now rumors claiming that the tests showed Semenya has no ovaries or uterus and that she has internal testes, which produce large amounts of testosterone.

Caster Semeria at

Caster Semenya at World Championships in Berlin

Semenya has become a spectacle as people hash out their views regarding traditional gender norms. In an attempt to quell these rumors, Semenya received a makeover and appeared on the cover of the South African magazine You. The picture is clearly an attempt to make Semenya “look like a girl,” to offer society proof that she is indeed a woman.

You, South African Magazine

The chair of South Africa’s sports committee reportedly said that Semenya is “like a raped person,” because of the brutal, public humiliation she has endured. What started out as a competition and a chance to represent her country has turned into a public struggle of trying to fit people into specific gender categories. We must go back to basic human decency and show our respect for Semenya—this situation should have been handled privately.

Posted in Sexism, Social Justice, Women's Health | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments »

Harassed on the Way to School

September 16, 2009, by hollykearl

AAUW’s research reports Drawing the Line and Hostile Hallways show that girls and boys are subject to sexual harassment at school. Research I’ve conducted on gender-based street harassment of girls and women outside of my work at AAUW shows that girls are vulnerable to harassment on their way to and from school as well.

As the news reminds us almost daily with abduction stories like Jaycee Dugard’s, most Americans realize that children are at some risk for abduction from strangers and, as a result, fewer parents  allow their young children to go to school alone (though the number of abductions is smaller than people may realize: 112 children are kidnapped by strangers per year). I don’t think people realize, however, how many girls and young women are followed, verbally harassed, and touched by boys and men as they wait for a school bus, walk, or ride the subway to and from school, particularly once they reach puberty.

Last fall I conducted an informal online survey about people’s experiences with street harassment, and more than 900 people responded. In an open-ended question where people could share a story, many women and girls mentioned the harassment they had or do receive en route to or from school.

“When I was a freshman in high school a girlfriend and I were followed home by a car of teenage boys who shouted remarks and the occasional lewd comment. We veered off our route and onto the campus of the elementary school where we went to a former teacher’s classroom and asked her if we could stay for a while, until we felt sure those guys were gone.”

—An Anglo American woman in her 20s in Murfreesboro, Tennessee

“One day in 8th grade (when I was 13), I was running late. The train was crowded, but I had to get on. As I shoved myself in, a fat man suddenly came out of nowhere and wedged himself in behind me. … He started rubbing his crotch against my leg and panting. I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do or say. When the train reached the next stop and a lot of people got off, I tried to get away from him. He followed me and continued rubbing his crotch against my leg. … He didn’t stop until more people got off, and I finally found a seat.”

–An Asian American teenager in New York City 

Of the 811 women and girls who took my survey, 22 percent said they were first harassed by men in public when they were younger than age 12, 40 percent were between ages 13 and 15, and 25 percent were between ages 16 and 19.

Unfortunately, harassment of girls on the way to and from school is a global problem, from England to Italy, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, Mauritius, India, Japan, and Canada.

For example, in large cities in Japan, men groping women on the subway is a huge problem. According to a recent article in The Japan Times, last year in Tokyo alone there were 2,000 reported groping cases (and it’s a vastly underreported crime). Most of the attacks occurred during morning rush hour, and almost half the women targeted were in their 20s and more than 30 percent were teenagers. To combat this problem, there are women-only subway cars and PSAs telling men to stop groping.

Another example is in rural areas throughout Africa. A recent news story detailed how only about 20 percent of children who enter primary school in rural Zambia complete grade 12, in large part because of the long distances that they must travel (up to 13 miles), which is tiresome and also places them, particularly girls, at risk of assault and rape. To enable more school attendance, Chicago-based World Bicycle Relief is donating bicycles to children in Africa to help them stay safe as they travel to school.

In the United States, to combat parents’ fear of child abductions, SafeRoutes works to enable children to travel to school more safely by foot or on bus and also to reduce traffic congestion.

I think, however, that people need to pay more attention to how boys and men are treating older girls going to and from school. My research has shown that street harassment affects females of all ages, but the harassment of teenage girls upsets me the most. They are the most vulnerable to believing that this is how women are supposed to be treated and the least likely to know how to respond or protect themselves. And it should not be girls’ responsibility to have to protect themselves; boys and men must stop preying on and harassing young women. I’m currently writing a book on this topic that will explore ways to accomplish this goal. In the meantime, here are suggested strategies to share with the young women in your life about dealing with harassers. If you are a parent or in a position to mentor youth, please especially note #7 for ways to help stop harassment overall.

Posted in Sexual Harassment, Students and Educational Issues | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments »

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