Daily Archives: January 5, 2009

The Double Standard for Gender

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Jim Manzi of The American Scene posted an article today concerning recent remarks from Barnard College President Debora Spar. In these remarks she relies upon some pretty significant gender-based assumptions to conclude that:

Whatever the reason, the experience of the past year suggests that we desperately need to bring more women into leadership positions on Wall Street, in politics, in regulatory bodies and in American life generally.

Manzi contrasts these remarks to those made by former Harvard President Lawrence Summers who in 2005 said of the difference between men and women in science and engineering jobs that:

One is what I would call the…high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search.

And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.

Manzi ends his article by writing:

So, presumably all of those who critcized the Summers talk will promulgate at least equally vehement reactions to Spar’s article – right?

I am quite tired of the double standard that applies for discussions of gender. Summers was ostracized for his comments and called a sexist (among other, surely worse terms). Spar here will probably get off with very little, if any, criticism and almost certainly won’t lose her job because of the remarks. If a woman is able to say what Spar said and have that be viewed as acceptable then the remarks of Summers ought to be acceptable as well. If women have the right to make generalizations and assumptions about men then men ought to have the right to make those generalizations and assumptions about women. All ought to be held accountable to the same standard of acceptability.

Link to the original Manzi article.

Israel’s Wars

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Juan Cole, President of the Global Americana Institute, has an interesting article/essay (warning, its very long so be committed to reading it) about the conflict raging in the Gaza strip. What his piece does is look at the types of wars that Israel has fought with its Arab neighbors over time. In the opening he writes that:

With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, we have entered the age of micro-wars.

This is an interesting characterization to me for many reasons. Cole’s article made me think (in a somewhat unrelated tangent to this article) about the current conflict.

I agree with the term “micro-war” because it does seem that these wars are significantly different from conventional warfare. While these wars are different in the sense that they don’t necessarily involve the “infantry, artillery, armor and air forces [that] played central roles” in earlier conflicts their seriousness is still conventional. What I’m worried about is that by characterizing these conflicts as “micro-wars” the press (assuming that this term gets spread in mainstream media) may be creating a situation in which the public begins to believe that these are simply small conflicts that aren’t lasting and that if we just give them time they will resolve themselves. I know this is a little different from what Cole means by micro-wars, but this is just how I see the majority of the public interpreting this term.

Furthermore, I have become concerned that in this age countries have begun to think that wars that they engage in will be resolved quickly (i.e. U.S. in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.). What worries me is what happens if a “micro-war” that doesn’t necessarily have the full commitment of a nation’s military force becomes a much larger conflict that cannot be resolved quickly? We saw in Iraq what can happen when a country undertakes military force without a contingency plan for after the fighting. So long as Israel, and other countries for that matter, enter into these conflicts with plans for getting out and for stabilization then the problems can be mitigated. If they begin to enter into conflicts over religion, territory, etc. without thinking past getting what they want then these “micro-wars” could become “macro-wars” pretty quickly.

Link to Juan Cole article.

The Times Starts Selling Display Ads on Page 1 – NYTimes.com

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The New York Times has taken a new step in its attempts to increase revenue: sell ads on the front page.

In its latest concession to the worst revenue slide since the Depression, The New York Times has begun selling display advertising on its front page, a step that has become increasingly common across the newspaper industry.

The first such ad, appearing Monday in color, was bought by CBS. The ad, two-and-a-half inches high, lies horizontally across the bottom of the front page, below the news articles and a brief summary of some articles in the paper. In a statement, the paper said such ads would be placed “below the fold” — that is, on the lower half of the page.

I’m glad to see that the NY Times is working toward staying profitable in creative ways. The fact that the ad will appear below the fold is important to me because it allows the paper to increase its ad revenue in such a way that (hopefully at least) is not distracting to the reader.

Of concern to me though is that if they are accepting ads like the CBS one that are two and a half inches high, what will happen to the front-page content? What I hope the Times will do is to simply shorten some columns but keep the same number of stories on the front page. If they begin to cut front page stories in order to fit the ad on the page then I’m worried.

Link via The Times Starts Selling Display Ads on Page 1 – NYTimes.com.