NY Times: “In Reversal, Student Is Given Extra Exam Time to Pump Breast Milk”: Sophie Currier, who was refused appropriate accommodations to pump breastmilk for her young daughter while sitting her medical Board exams, has had the ruling overturned on appeal. The exam typically has only 45 minutes of breaks in a nine-hour period; she has request an extra 60 minutes expression time, to feed her daughter and to avoid engorgement, which is painful, distracting, and potentially medically dangerous. It’s shameful that the medical profession is refusing to look after its own, and needs the legal profession to force it to make accommodations for maternal and infant health and for women’s equality.
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Lfskant’s Weblog: “Er”¦but that’s a bit radical isn’t it?”
A terrific post on the much-misunderstood meaning of the word “radical”, and the ways in which it is commonly falsely set up as a derogatory term, the opposite of “reasonable”.
Radicalism means thinking right back to the root of a concept, being open-minded enough to change even deeply held or comforting beliefs if they are contradictory or unsupported.
I like the way Lfskant takes sharp jabs at notions of “common sense”:
The motivations of a radical person are usually deemed to be temperamental instead of rational, they are dismissed as over-enthusiastic, too focussed on one issue, paranoid or just unrealistic. In fact these dismissals, being entirely ad feminam, are themselves irrational, although unswervingly in line with common sense. […] So when, for example, one argues with a “post-feminist,’ the argument that they are trying to make you understand is that your conclusion does not follow from their premises (“reality,’ “common sense,’ whatever they call it, for them it lies beyond the range of the discussion).
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Washington Post: “Salary, Gender and the Social Cost of Haggling”. This is from a while back, but I’ve only just read it. Women are often accused of not standing up for themselves, not requesting promotions, not asking for pay rises – and women are attributed blame for the pay gap and glass ceiling. “Women are their own worst enemies”, we hear. Women are the ones who are defective, who need to change their behaviour to “fit in” with the default-male workplace.
This article shreds that set of ideas by showing that women who do attempt to stand up for themselves in the workplace and negotiate for pay are penalised for it. They’re not fulfilling their womanly duties of “being nice”. Another case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
“This isn’t about fixing the women,” Bowles said. “It isn’t about telling women, ‘You need self-confidence or training.’ They are responding to incentives within the social environment.”
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ACLU: “Arizona Supreme Court Refuses to Review Prison’s Abortion Policy”. The decision made by an Arizona court to allow prison inmates physical access to medical care including abortion care has been let stand by the Arizona Supreme Court. Prisons still won’t pay for abortion of of tax dollars, but they’ll spring for a ride.
At issue was an unwritten Maricopa County Jail policy denying women in prison access to abortion care. The policy prohibited jail officials from transporting a prisoner for an abortion unless she first obtained a court order. The jail transports prisoners without a court order for all other necessary medical care, including prenatal care and childbirth. The jail also regularly transports prisoners for various non-medical reasons, including visits with terminally ill family members or attendance at relatives’ funerals.
Forced-birther sites are incensed.
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“You’ve noo been expoosed furr yurr loife of croime”: the Aberdeen shoplifting seagull (with a Hat tip to the oddprofessor]
Categories: economics, fun & hobbies, gender & feminism, health, religion
Hoyden About Town 