(INDEPENDENT) 19 June 2008:

…well, not quite. In Ireland these days there’s still a gender imbalance in how much of it is done by women and how much is done by men. Women are working on average nearly forty minutes more each day than men (this is including both paid work and work in the home).

Compare that to the cousins over the Irish Sea, the British, where total work is the same for each sex.

In both countries women do more of the houosehold work, men more of the paid outside the home. But in the total amount done the Irish are currently about where the Brits were thirty years ago, which sounds about right. While Ireland has advanced greatly economically in recent years, socially it’s still a conservative place. Divorce was only legalized a few years ago and abortion is still illegal. That there’s still no gender parity in working hours shouldn’t be all that much of a surprise.

(THE TIMES) 2 June 2008:

The Australian equivalent of the iconic cowboy is the jackaroo, rough and tumble men who work on ranches the size of a small country in the Australian Outback. For decades, women have been able to join in but until very recently it was still a 90 percent male trade. That’s now changing as nearly 60 percent of the new entrants are now women, or jillaroos.

(MSNBC.COM) 14 May 2008:

High fashion teen model Alexandra Michaels was too fat at 109 pounds and 5′ 9″. She started her career at 130 pounds and was told to lose weight. She did, managing to diet down to 102 pounds. She got lots of work on the runways. Unfortunately, she started experiencing signs of malnutrition, including her hair falling out in clumps and loss of menstruation.  She decided to put on 7 pounds, making her 109 pounds, which is still well below the average for her height. She was told she was fat and given work by one designer.

(THE HERALD SUN) 9 May 2008:

There are a number of different ways of measuring the gender pay gap: are people getting equal pay for the same jobs, for example. Is there a difference between the average hourly wage for men and women? Is there a difference between the average weekly or monthly wage? Each different measure of calculation will give you a different answer.

The standard Australian method is to look at weekly wages and the female average is $690 a week, the male $1060. Clearly there is a pay gap, but why?

Well, could it be that the average male work week is 38.5 hours and the average female 29?

(SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE) 9 May 2008:

In the general population, men commit suicide about four times as often as women do.

However, among doctors the rates are about equal between men and women and much higher than they are for the general population. There has been some puzzlement about this: doctors are highly paid and well respected, not the sort of things that tend to drive people to taking their own lives.

The explanation now offered is that doctors actually know how to do it swiftly, cleanly, and painlessly. It’s thus not so much that more doctors attempt suicide, but that more succeed. In this scenario, the difference between male and female is thought to be a combination of women being less successful when they try and their not using the more effective but messier and violent methods that men do.

(CNN.COM) 1 May 2008:

Barbara Walters confessed to Oprah Winfrey that she had an affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke. She made the startling confession during the taping of “The Oprah Winfrey Show,: which will air on May 6. Their affair lasted several years in the 1970s. Brooke was the first black to be popularly elected to the Senate.

The distinguished newswoman said she was “infatuated” and that Brooke was “exciting and brilliant.” Brooke later divorced and is remarried.

(Detroit Free Republic) 27 April 2008:

Recent research shows that there have only ever been three Fortune 1,000 companies that were founded by women: after takeovers, only one of them is currently in that top section.

This is something of a puzzle, for we know that twice the number of women start businesses as men. The combination of the freedom and time scheduling that your own business gives you, plus the (still!) existence of the glass ceiling leading to the ambitious starting their own companies, means we would expect there to be more of these large businesses that had been started by women.

Unless, of course, there is a difference in motivation: men might start a business with the aim (however unlikely it is) of creating a large company whereas perhaps women do it for the freedom and time scheduling it allows?

(STAR TRIBUNE) 26 April 2008:

The Marine Corps is traditionally seen as the most macho and male orientated institution in the country. It might surprise some to know that they are actively recruiting women.

The USMC has employed women in support roles since 1918. While it’s true that combat roles are still out of bounds for women in the USMC as they are in the other services, women recruits go through the same basic training as male recruits.

Its also true that the Marines advertised for female recruits back in the 70s, after the end of the draft. What really seems to have changed now is not the role of women, rather, the eagerness with which the Corps is persuing them and perhaps the skill with which they are doing so.

(International Communication Association) 22nd April 2008:

Research shows that men favor negative items of news. They are more interested in reading them in the newspapers; they remember more negative items and more details about them if they hear them on radio or see them on TV.

On the other hand, women are attracted to positive news. They do not remember so much about any items that are negative.

OK, no great surprises, but in these days of career equality, there are many more female reporters than there were thirty years ago. Do female journalists buck the trend, or is life more negative than it used to be?

(NEW YORK TIMES) 21 April 2008:

A problem not faced by previous generations is now rearing its head. In a double career family, what’s the right time to retire? When the man is ready? The woman? does it even have to be the same time for both?

Given that in the generation now beginning to retire many women didn’t really start careers until the children were older, even until they had left home, it can turn out that 20 years into their career they’re not ready to stop: while the man might have been working 40 years and would love to fold his hand.

It’s going to be interesting to see how it all works out.