In yesterday’s Washington Post, Ruth Marcus discusses gender politics in the U.S. and what she sees as females shying away from leadership positions, beginning at the college level. She cites a Princeton study that found a tendency among women to undersell themselves and make self-deprecating remarks. Women, the report said, are more reticent about speaking up, where men tend “to raise their hands and express their thoughts even before they are fully formulated.”

It’s well worth a read.

Male Mob at Macworld

Fortune magazine’s top corporations are mostly old-economy stalwarts: oil companies, banks, and retailers. But the products, corporations, and leaders that fire the imaginations of men these days are in technology—especially now that investment banking is in disgrace. Technology is the new frontier.

Silicon Valley is the cradle of dreams, and technology is the language that all self-respecting men must speak…Whether they have an eye for Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, or XXX-rated celebrities, virtually all men lust after the latest gadgets. They admire those who make them–and especially those who make money from them.

An added bonus is that technology is still a man’s world. Women have shown their mettle in most domains, but not as much in the technology business. It’s still an area in which men’s competitiveness, obsessiveness, and love of gadgets give them the edge. It’s the frontier where they can range freely and do heroic deeds. And there are plenty of high-profile wealthy technopreneur role models for men of all ages: genomics guru Craig Venter, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Linus Torvalds of Linux are just the tip of the iceberg.

And don’t forget Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Evan Williams of Twitter, and Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai of Foursquare. Social media is to today’s millennial generation what rock ’n’ roll was to baby boomers: a new and powerful mass cultural phenomenon that is defining and shaping attitudes, behaviors, and generational self-perception. It has eclipsed politics, corporations, and consumer power as the greatest agent of change, according to a summer 2010 survey by Euro RSCG Worldwide.

So IT and social media have generated the first and second waves of technology icons. Now venture capitalists are looking to fund new technologies to take over outdated energy and transportation systems. Chances are that, as with IT, the icons of these new technologies will be men. Despite the advances made by women, power generation, cars, boats, trains, and planes still tend to be guy things.

This post is an excerpt of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s “Male in the U.S.A.” study. To download the white paper, click here.

Image credit: Creative Commons/Ken-ichi@flickr.com

An absolutely fascinating piece from blog The Achilles Effect looks at how the vocabulary of toy advertising reinforces gender stereotypes. A sneak preview:

Most commonly used words in toy advertising for boys:

And for girls:

We’re guessing the gender labels were unnecessary.

Click here to read the full story.

Financial News’s fourth annual Women in Finance survey, published this week, showed that while momentum is building in the fight against gender imbalance in the workplace, familiar obstacles remain.

Is your company looking to redress inequality and encourage women in the workplace? If so, click here for your 10-point to-do list.

Image credit: Creative Commons/dmachiavello@flickr.com

Arab women, long stereotyped as submissive and uninvolved in politics, have been playing a vital role in uprisings around the Middle East, taking part in street protests and demanding reform. In Libya, Iman Bugaighis has even assumed the role of spokesperson for the Provisional Transitional National Council.

How will these uprisings affect the role of women going forward? And what has been the reality of women’s political and social activism until now?

Aljazeera’s Riz Khan discusses Arab women’s enduring fight for a more equitable society with Rabab al-Mahdi, professor of political science at the American University in Cairo; Frances Hasso, professor of Women’s Studies at Duke University; and Nadje al-Ali, a social anthropologist at the University of London:

The Critic Sees by Jasper Johns

One of my favorite minor masterpieces in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is Young Woman Drawing (1801) by French master Jacques-Louis David. Or at least it was long thought to be by David. In the 1950s, experts believed that Constance Marie Charpentier, one of David’s women students, painted the work. Today, Marie-Denise Villers gets credit for the work. When David took credit, critics saw the hand of the master at work. When women entered the picture, suddenly the same painting lacked the qualities experts found previously. Beginning in March’s Women’s History Month, The Delaware Art Museum conducts an experiment in seeing gender in art in the exhibition Battle of the Sexes, in which visitors will vote on whether works were created by a female or male artist. The results may finally answer whether gender stereotypes in art are just another form of identity theft, in this case robbing female artists of the full identity of creator.

Click here to read more about it.

Image credit: Creative Commons/jonseidman1988@flickr.com

Today’s the day!

Women for Women International and Google invite you to join them on the bridge in celebration of the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. From the Brooklyn Bridge in New York to the Grand Barriere Bridge joining Rwanda and Congo, people are coming together on bridges around the world to raise awareness and offer support on a number of vital issues. Can’t make it in person to one of the event bridges? Show your support virtually by attending via Street View on Google Maps.

Click here to participate.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) is asking for immediate help in providing emergency aid to tens of thousands of people fleeing into Tunisia and Egypt to escape the violence in Libya. More than 170,000 men, women, and children have already crossed the border.

The Egyptian government has repatriated tens of thousands of its own nationals. Egypt, Tunisia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom have offered air or sea transport, and other nations have offered funds for the UNHCR response to the Libya crisis. Private donations have also been coming in—but the need is outpacing available funds and supplies. Particularly acute is the shortage of medical professionals in the region, with the majority of foreign medical staff having been evacuated. There is concern that fuel will start to run out within the next two weeks, with food shortages also anticipated.

Please do whatever you can to help. Go to the UNHCR relief site to donate.

* US$40 will provide 10 blankets for those displaced by the violence.

* US$100 will provide a survival kit containing a blanket, a mattress, a kitchen set, a cooking stove, and soap.

* US$200 will provide an all-weather tent to shelter families displaced by the fighting.

Learn more about what’s happening:

Image credit: @UNHCR/A.Duclos

by Kate Fridkis on MyDaily

Women are better than men. At least that’s what media mogul and ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams argues in his new book, Man Down. According to plenty of research, Abrams reports, women are better at everything from managing hedge funds to avoiding getting struck by lightning. (Let’s face it–you definitely won’t be in any condition to manage billions of dollars if the lightning gets you first.)

Women are better cops, better doctors, better drivers and better at dealing with painful breakups. That guy who shrugs and says, “Whatever. I’ll just hook up with her friend”? He’s definitely bawling his eyes out every night. But women aren’t just emotionally savvy, they’re technologically tuned in. His ex could beat that guy at every video game he owned. Which is another reason why he’s crying.

As hilarious and lighthearted as many of the examples in Man Down are, there’s something serious about its premise. Yesterday the White House released a report called “Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being” that documents a continuation of the familiar pay gap, despite the increase of women in higher education and the workforce.
If women are not only great at a lot of things they were told they couldn’t succeed at, but even better than men at those things, then maybe the world needs a little reminding. Maybe the world needs to hear about it from someone unexpected.

How about … a man?

Abrams is a lawyer, and he knows how to make a convincing argument. Of course, many of us didn’t need any convincing in this case, but we still wanted to find out more about the man behind Man Down. So MyDaily got right on the job. After all, that’s what we women do.

Read the interview on MyDaily.

I’ve never been told I throw like a girl, but apparently I write like a man. At least according to the Gender Genie calculator on Bookblog. Inspired by an article and a test in The New York Times Magazine, the Gender Genie uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author.

Were you aware certain words are considered masculine (e.g., around, what, more, are) or feminine (e.g., with, if, where, be)? I didn’t, but apparently I gravitate toward the former. I submitted a sample of my writing to the Genie and received this result:

Well that can’t be right. So I submitted a second, longer sample. Surely my femininity would ooze through.

It didn’t.

Curious to know how others would fare, I submitted two pieces by my brother. The first came back male, but the second was decidedly female (he always did throw like a girl). David Brooks? Male all the way. But then so is Peggy Noonan. Christopher Hitchens only barely ekes by as male, while Maureen Dowd has a foot in both camps.

Perhaps gender is more complicated than an algorithm can support. Try it out for yourself: Click here to submit a writing sample to the Gender Genie.