Anthonine Pierre and Marly Pierre-Louis hope to change their community where men can be aggressive to women out walking.
Credit: Aaron Adler

The Brooklyn Movement Center is taking on the streets of Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights to change the way women move through the neighborhoods — or more specifically, to change the way the neighborhoods interact with the women within them.

“There’s a basic modicum of respect that women aren’t afforded while trying to navigate these streets,” BMC lead organizer Anthonine Pierre told Metro. “It seems very complicated sometimes for men, but it’s pretty simple: use words that are respectful, and if a woman doesn’t want to speak to you, stop talking to her.”

At a chalk party last month in a park in Bed-Stuy, she and BMC communications organizer Marly Pierre-Louis were able to speak with some men in the neighborhood, but Pierre-Louis said that the conversation “definitely made it clear that we had a lot of work cut out for us.”

“It’s going to take more than a conversation in the park to get a man to understand what women experience,” Pierre-Louis said. “They just don’t see it as harassment, they can’t understand it.”

Pierre said some men complained of the way women respond to them, saying, “All I want to do is say good morning to you and I get my head chewed off.”

She pointed out that while one man may simply be saying good morning, the woman may have had to walk through several other men who used less kind language.

Pierre-Louis said it’s hard to even cite specific incidents because “it happens so frequently and so casually.”

The women described stories they’d heard from other women, some of whom have even had to deal with threats of rape. One women reported a man saying “next time I see you, I’ll rape you,” and another said that after she ignored a man’s advances, he told her, “you’re lucky I don’t rape you.”

Other women reported having glass bottles thrown at them and being spat at from cars that drive slowly by. Many women say they’ve been followed, either on foot or by men in vehicles.

Even things as seemingly innocuous as cat-calling or blowing kisses are harmful, Pierre said, and “still contribute to the way a woman moves psychologically through her neighborhood.”

She and Pierre-Louis are hoping to do action projects throughout the summer, as the warm weather increases women’s risk for harassment.

“We’re going to be identifying high-risk harassment areas in the neighborhood,” Pierre-Louis said, “and be very visible in those areas and make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention to the issue.”

In the fall, they hope to start some allied work with men who could undergo community organizing training to do outreach with other men and help facilitate conversations around the fundamental question: how do we transform our neighborhood?

“We can think about how to keep ourselves as women safer, we can tell our stories,” she added. “But solutions are going to have to come from community dialogue.”

She noted that men “have been taught by society how to talk to women in the street.”

“We’d like for everyone to sort of have a new way of dealing with each other,” she said. “The question is: how do we have the dialogue so that can happen, so we can be a community?”

Follow Danielle Tcholakian on Twitter @danielleiat

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Ashley Milne-Tyte says women need to stick to their guns while being polite when negotiating a raise.

How often do you negotiate a raise? If you’re female, the answer is quite likely to be not often, or even never. My first time came about 12 years ago. I was in my 20s and about to switch roles within a company. My co-worker told me I should shoot for a number that constituted a 25 percent raise. It seemed like a huge amount and I found it horribly awkward to discuss money — let alone think I was actually worth something. I squirmed at the thought. But during the interview, I summoned up the courage to make the ask. My supervisor acted surprised, which made me uncomfortable, but I managed to resist backing down.

He muttered that it was a very large raise and I was unlikely to receive that much. Still, he said he’d see what he could do.

I got it.

That was my first lesson in negotiating. Just ask — they can always say no. In almost every study done on negotiating, women simply don’t ask for raises as frequently as men do. It’s one of the many reasons for the gender pay gap. Of course, I know men who hate negotiating as much as I do (I never said it was fun) and women who consider it a point of pride to fight fiercely for what they’re worth. But in general, women face particular challenges when it comes to asking for what we want.

Society still views women as nice and accommodating. Asking for more money doesn’t fit that picture. So we have to be careful how we do it to avoid turning people off. But if you don’t ask, you have no idea what you could get. You could be turned down, but isn’t it better to find out by asking in the first place?

Do’s and Don’ts:

DO your research first. There’s a ton of it out there. I recommend Shenegotiates.com and the book “Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Want” by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever.

DON’T immediately back down if your boss balks at your request. This is all part of the game.

DO remain pleasant and polite throughout. Research shows women can get more from negotiating if they keep playing nice while sticking firmly to their guns.

DON’T say things like “because I deserve it.” It gets interviewers and managers all hot under the collar because it goes against gender norms for women.

Ashley Milne-Tyte is a radio producer and reporter based in New York City. She hosts a bi-monthly podcast called “The Broad Experience” about women in the workplace.

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On one January day in Guatemala six women and two girls were murdered.

“I haven’t been able to find a reason for the murder,” says mother Rosa Franco, whose 15-year-old daughter Maria Isabel was killed. “But such is life as a woman in this country full of corrupt authorities. I suspect several people, including a 45-year-old drug dealer who’d been harassing my daughter since he asked to go out with her but she refused.”

Welcome to our 21st century world, where one third of women will become victims of violence at least once in their lifetime. In Peru, their fate is even worse: “We have 10 femicides a month,” says María Ysabel Cedano García of the local women’s rights group Demus.

Perhaps even more perplexing is that violence against women remains common in developed countries. In Sweden, 46 percent of women report having been victims of violence. Women and girls make up 80% of people trafficked globally each year.

“Violence against women is a hidden epidemic, and hidden is a very important word,” notes Ann Veneman, the former Executive Director of UNICEF. “We all know that women are getting raped as a weapon of war in places like the DRC, but in the developed world the problem is hidden.”

Most violence against women occurs in their homes, committed by their boyfriends or husbands. “Partner violence often has a psychological component, which makes it harder to measure,” notes Markku Heiskanen, an expert in domestic violence at the European Institute for Crime Prevention and Control. “And women want to protect their partners. When they talk about previous partners, they mention violence much more.”

Young women, especially, bear the brunt of men’s aggression. Nearly half of all sexual assaults worldwide are committed against girls under 16.

“In many cases it’s girls from difficult homes who are trapped by men who say they love them but are really johns [pimps],” says Veneman. “What goes on in these cases is quite extraordinary, and it’s happening in North America and Europe.”

But there’s good news. Safe houses for women are being built, even in countries where violence against women has long been tolerated. Victims are being trained in occupations so they can earn their own money. In India, the Delhi gang rape of a young woman led to unprecedented protests. And in China, the death sentence of Li Yan, a woman convicted of killing her husband after being abused by him for years, caused a rare public outcry.

On Valentine’s Day this year, the global organization V-Day arranged One Billion Rising, a record-breaking event for protesting violence against women. And this month global leaders convene at the UN headquarters in New York to address it.

A generation ago, violence against children was considered acceptable; today it’s frowned upon, and in many countries it’s banned.

“That shows that society can change the situation if it acts,” explains Heiskanen. “Every man carries violence inside him. Every human feels aggression, but perhaps women have been educated to use it less. We can educate men, too. They are rational beings. If they’re told what’s allowed and not, they’ll behave accordingly. We need courses in how to be a man.”

Victims of rape, FARC find hope in girls’ home

When Monica was five years old, her stepfather raped her. But when she told her mother, her mother informed her stepfather.

“Then he threatened to kill me and do the same to my sisters,” recalls Monica, now 16 years old.

After six more years of abuse, Monica ran away and joined FARC, Colombia’s rebel group.

“I wanted to belong to a group because at home I had nobody,” she explains. But after hearing that several boys had been killed, she escaped.

Monica is now being cared for by Taller de Vida, an organization in Bogota that supports former child soldiers. “

The most common reason the girls join this group is that they’ve been sexually abused by their relatives,” says Stella Duque, Taller de Vida’s director. “But having belonged to a revolutionary armed group creates big problems and emptiness in them.”

At Taller de Vida, Monica and the other girls get psychological counseling, attend school and perform theater and music. “I used to want to find my mother and kill her,” she says. “But now I want to find her and tell her that after all she did to me I’m happy.”

Q&A: “Vagina warriors celebrate success” — Susan Swan, Executive Director, V-Day

Metro: V-Day was founded after the Vagina Monologues became a global phenomenon. How can it be that, despite years of campaigning and events like the Monologues, violence against women remains so common?

Swan: V-Day just turned 15 years, and we asked ourselves, ‘How can we celebrate when one third of women are still victims of violence?’. But we’ve seen incredible progress. New laws have been passed. Women are doing amazing things, like running shelters for abuse victims. Tens of thousands of activists in 142 countries, including Libya, Iran and Somalia, have joined our campaign. People are realizing that if you help women you help your community.

Where have you seen progress?

Women are organizing. We’re getting emails from women all over the world telling us they’ll take action. In India, men and families are coming together in support of their wives and daughters. And in Mogadishu women recently organized a flash mob! Women are looking at the patriarchy in a different way. And men have been draw into this movement too, including Robert Redford and the Dalai Lama. We need more such men, and we need to invite men into the conversation. All of this creates a ripple effect. You need this movement in combination with legislation. Male and female members of the European Parliament have even created a ‘Vagina Lobby’. And remember that politics responds to people. It’s a stigma to our modern society that violence against women still exists.

Can you give me a success story?

We’ve helped with a healing program in the DRC called City of Joy. The women who attend are asked to bring what they’ve learned back to their communities, and boy, have they done it! We’ve seen a massive shift in attitudes. We call these women ‘the vagina warriors’. It’s truly inspiring.

Women in Iraq reduced to ‘breeders’ after war

Twenty years ago, Iraqi women usually dressed according to their choice, drove their cars freely, and had independent incomes. Indeed, when it came to women’s rights, Iraq was considered the most progressive country in the Middle East. Not anymore.

“Since the war started 10 years ago, Iraq has moved towards Islamist fundamentalism, and women are paying the price for it,” says Yanar Mohammed, President of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI).

“Even in families that were liberal before the war, women are now simply seen as breeders who have no opinion.” The situation has deteriorated even though the Americans immediately after the war introduced a 25% women quota for the new parliament.

OWFI, based in Baghdad, provides shelter for battered women, even though the government has banned it from doing so. “Even if a woman’s life is in danger, we’re not allowed to shelter her,” says Mohammed. “The general attitude is that if a woman goes against the wishes of her community, she deserves to be killed.”

So Mohammad goes on sheltering women, even though it means she could be sent to jail. “The so-called war of liberation has turned the worst machos into leaders,” she says. “We have to fight back. They don’t have the right to turn millions of women into victims.”

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The decades-long fight for women’s equal pay in New York is finally gaining traction, spearheaded by Governor Andrew Cuomo and encouraged by his supporters.

Cuomo made women’s pay equity one of the 10 goals in the Woman’s Equality Act he announced over the weekend — and a recent Quinnipiac survey showed many New Yorkers stand with him. Fifty-three percent of those polled said that equal pay for women should be the highest priority for the state legislature, with another 36 percent saying it should be a high priority. Only 10 percent considered it lower priority.

A report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in December indicates that in 2011, New York State female full-time wage and salary workers made median weekly earnings of $760 — or 85 percent — of the $894 median weekly earnings for their male counterparts.

Beverly Neufeld, the director of the Equal Pay Coalition NYC, believes now is the time for pay equity reform.

“There is talk on all state levels about economic security, understanding that women are a driving force in the economy and businesses do better when they have routine loyal and committed workers,” Neufeld said.

Elizabeth Mason, an employment lawyer in Manhattan currently represents a client who was overlooked for a promotion. Although she had as many work responsibilities and was more educated than her male co-worker, she made significantly less money.

“It was very clear from the supervisor’s comments, and even the male individual, that she was not being treated equally and fairly because of her gender,” Mason said.

This case and others got Mason thinking about the reasons pay equity hasn’t already been enacted.

“From a pragmatic standpoint, the reason why there is this feeling of unequal pay is because employers have been allowed to get away with it due to an employee’s inability to know what her co-workers are making. Until the playing field is leveled, women employees are a distinct disadvantage,” Mason said.

Women’s rights experts give a range of reasons for why women aren’t paid the same as men, including the fact that historically men have always made more, the different career paths a woman might chose to go into, whether they took time off to raise a family or not, and whether women may be less likely to ask for a raise.

Linda Hartley, 58, the vice president of New York Women’s Agenda who works full-time as the president of Hartley Consulting, said she faced pay discrimination in the 1980s when she worked at a fundraising development office. Although her boss told her she was much more effective than the man who previously held the position, a colleague told her that she was making to 20 percent less than the man when he worked there. Hartley said that after bringing the matter up with her bosses, she finally earned a significant raise, although still less than her predecessor.

Her experiences with pay inequity informed her women’s rights work today. “This isn’t something we should be talking about anymore,” she said. “We should be done. Move on. There are other things that deserve our attention.”
It hasn’t been easy to move on, but Sonia Ossorio, president of the National Organization for Women New York City, said she thinks Gov. Cuomo can make it possible.

“There are certainly very strong players in the business community that can lobby against these basic inequity reforms and there has been a lack of political wealth to fix this problem,” Ossorio said. “Our current governor appears to be making up a lot of that. If we want to see our daughters earn their fair share, we need to act now. We need to do it or we’re going to see another generation being underpaid.”

NUMBER

$74,215 Average salary for a man in New York City, according to PayScale.com, which collects salary info

$58,360 Average salary for a female in New York City

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Now Egyptian women are fighting back, through civil society groups determined to provide the protection that police have failed to deliver.

“We want to create safe space for women to protest,” Salma, a founding member the group ‘Tahrir Bodyguard,’ told Metro. “We have volunteers to patrol the square at the Friday demonstrations and if they see an attack they intervene and take the girl to safety.”

The uniformed volunteers try to avoid confrontation, says Salma, but wear protective clothing and “accept that they will face violence.” Volunteers have been beaten and stabbed in their efforts to disrupt attacks.

‘Tahrir Bodyguard’ was established spontaneously in December by a small group of female friends, in response to the growing number of women refusing to attend protests for fear of sexual assault. They established a Twitter account for people to report assaults, and were flooded with messages of support.

The group quickly expanded to 300 active volunteers, in alliance with similar groups such as Basma and Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment (OpAntiSH), and there are signs that such actions are having an impact, despite around 80 percent of Egyptians believing that assaults are the victim’s fault according to a recent survey. The group is planning to launch courses in self-defense.

“It is making a difference because they refer cases to us for psychological and medical help,” Dr Farah Shash, lead researcher into violence against women at Cairo’s El-Nadeem Center, told Metro. “Public and media attitudes are beginning to change as people realize how traumatic these incidents are.”

But Shash believes the government is resisting any progress.

“We see a pattern to assaults and we know that it is organized. The assaults are systematic, on the same streets, with the same people. We can’t say who exactly is behind them, but by refusing to take action, the Ministry of Interior is implicitly supporting them.”   

The Ministry could not be reached for comment, but in December pledged to launch extra patrols and airborne unit.

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“Rape is typical in the mentality of men from northern India,” Namratha, a 26-year-old journalist from Goa, told Metro. “Historically, they [men] were always fighting with enemies and think they can get a woman when they want, that she is just an item.”

“I think that women in Kerala are much safer than in the north. We don’t have illiteracy problems, people are better educated,” says Sambasivarao, a 57-year-old businessman. We chat outside the Mother and Child Hospital in Kerala’s major port city of Kochi, where anxious mothers are vaccinating their children against polio.

Yet Sambasivarao is optimistic some change will come out of the rape case. “After the protests and media hype that raised the rape issue, the situation will improve. Until now, rapists were treated unpunished; they bribed police and walked free. But after the trial they ought to get the death penalty.”

But not everyone shares this businessman’s confidence. “After the media hysteria, everything will return back to the way things were,” says Nitha Ak. The 28-year-old nurse goes on to explain that “alcoholism is a major engine for rape”, adding that widescale impunity does not make life easy for women.

Others suggest a lifestyle alien to traditional Indian culture as the spark to rape. “What causes it is a taboo associated with sex and new technologies,” Police Sergeant K. P. Babu tells Metro, who recently arrested a man accused of rape. “Today, students in schools are watching porn on mobile phones. It’s crazy!”

But these reported cases are probably just the tip of the iceberg. “Women are afraid to report rapes, they don’t want their husband and family to know it,” Babu says.

Gang rape trial

• Fast-track trial of five men accused of a fatal gang rape began in a New Delhi court on Monday (January 21).
• If convicted, the men could face the death penalty. A sixth suspect, thought to be 17, is expected to be tried in a juvenile court.
• The victim – a 23-year-old paramedical student – was brutally assaulted and gangraped in a moving bus in December. The victim later died at a Singapore hospital.
• Trial proceedings are held “in camera” (privately) following a media gagging order.
•  
  Defenselawyers say the accused will enter not-guilty pleas and accuse police of torturing the adult defendants, aged between 19 and 35, to confess.
• Prosecutors say they have DNA evidence linking the defendants to the attack.

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The December 16 attack on the 23-year-old student and a male companion provoked furious protests close to the seat of government in New Delhi and has fuelled a nationwide debate about the prevalence of sexual crime in India, where a rape is reported on average every 20 minutes.

The woman died of her injuries in hospital in Singapore, where she had been taken for treatment, on Saturday.

The five are accused of assaulting the woman on a bus in New Delhi, leaving her with such severe injuries that she died two weeks later. They were not present in court.

A sixth accused is under 18 and is due to be tried separately in a juvenile court.

A public prosecutor read out charges including murder, gang rape and criminal conspiracy. The court will examine the charges on Saturday, duty magistrate Surya Malik Grover said.

Murder carries the death penalty in India.

The father of the woman said earlier he backed the chorus of calls for those responsible to be executed.

“The whole country is demanding that these monsters be hanged. I am with them,” the father told reporters in his home village of Mandwara Kalan in Uttar Pradesh state. The woman was born in the village but the family later moved to New Delhi.

She has not been identified and nor have members of her family, in accordance with Indian law.

In a sign of the depth of feeling surrounding the case, the bar association at the court said none of its members was willing to represent the accused. The court is expected to assign a defense lawyer for the men.

Advocates dressed in black robes protesting outside the court called for fast justice. In the northern state of Kashmir, school girls marched with black ribbons over their mouths and demanded harsh punishment for the accused.

The case is due to be processed by a new, fast-track chamber set up in response to the crime.

While the fast-track procedure has broad support, many lawyers worry new that legislation written in haste could be unconstitutional and oppose introducing the death penalty for rape.

“A swift trial should not be at the cost of a fair trial,” Chief Justice Altamas Kabir said on Wednesday.

ANGER

Police have said the accused have admitted to torturing and raping the student “to teach her a lesson”. She fought back and bit three of them, a police source told Reuters, and the bite marks are part of the evidence against them.

After throwing her from the private bus, the driver tried to run the victim over but she was pulled away by her companion, a senior police official told Reuters.

Police have prepared a dossier of evidence and charges against the accused, which is believed to run to 1,000 pages, including testimony from the woman’s friend who survived the hour-long attack and a man who said he was robbed by the same gang prior to the rape.

Days of protests in New Delhi and other cities followed the attack. Many of the protesters have been students, infuriated by what they see as the failure of the government to protect women.

In the northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday, village women beat a politician and handed him to police for what they said was the attempted rape of a woman, police said. Anti-rape protests have also broken out in neighboring Nepal.

The government has set up two panels headed by retired judges to recommend measures to ensure women’s safety. One of the panels, due to make recommendations this month, has received some 17,000 suggestions from the public, media reported.

India’s chief justice inaugurated the first fast-track court for sexual offences on Wednesday – a long standing demand of activists to clear a court backlog.

A review of India’s penal code, which dates back to 1860, was presented to parliament last month, before the attack, and widens the definition of rape, another demand of activists.

That bill is now likely to be revised further, with chemical castration and the death penalty in rape cases among proposals under consideration.

“We want the laws to be amended in such a stringent way that before a person even thinks of touching a girl, he should feel chills down his spine,” said lawyer Suman Lata Katiyal, protesting at the south Delhi courthouse.

Hanging is only allowed in the “rarest of rare” cases according to a 1983 Supreme Court ruling. It was used for the first time in eight years in November when the lone surviving gunman from a 2008 militant attack on Mumbai, Mohammad Ajmal Kasab from Pakistan, was executed.

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Gilberto Valle, 28, of Forest Hills, Queens, was charged and arrested in October with conspiring to cross state lines to kidnap the women and with illegally accessing a federal database.

Prosecutors said some of the women were acquaintances of Valle but it was not clear if he knew or had met all of them. Valle, who an official said had no prior criminal record, was not charged with carrying out any of his suspected plans.

At a brief hearing Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Valle’s attorney, Julia Gatto, told the judge she would again seek to have her client freed on bail after two other judges previously denied her request.

Investigators uncovered a file on Valle’s computer containing the names and pictures of at least 100 women, and the addresses and physical descriptions of some of them, according to the criminal complaint. It said he had undertaken surveillance of some of the women at their places of employment and their homes.

Gatto argues that Valle, a 6-1/2 year NYPD veteran, was all talk and should be released on bail.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

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The band’s supporters burst into chants of “Shame” outside the Moscow courthouse and said the case showed Putin’s refusal to tolerate dissent. The U.S. embassy in Moscow said the sentence appeared disproportionate to what the defendants did.

The women have support abroad, where their case has been taken up by a long list of celebrities including Madonna, Paul McCartney and Sting, but opinion polls show few Russians sympathize with them.

“The girls’ actions were sacrilegious, blasphemous and broke the church’s rules,” Judge Marina Syrova told the court as she spent three hours reading the verdict while the women stood watching in handcuffs inside a glass courtroom cage.

She declared all three guilty of hooliganism motivated by religious hatred, saying they had deliberately offended Russian Orthodox believers by storming the altar of Moscow’s main cathedral in February to belt out a song deriding Putin.

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Marina Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, giggled as the judge read out the sentences one by one. They have already been in jail for about five months, meaning they will serve another 19.

They say they were protesting against Putin’s close ties with the church when they burst into Moscow’s golden-domed Christ the Saviour Cathedral wearing bright ski masks, tights and short skirts.

State prosecutors had requested a three-year jail term.

Putin’s opponents portray the trial as part of a wider crackdown by the former KGB spy to crush their protest movement.

“They are in jail because it is Putin’s personal revenge,” Alexei Navalny, one of the organizers of big protests against Putin during the winter, told reporters outside the court. “This verdict was written by Vladimir Putin.”

Putin’s spokesman did not immediately answer calls following the verdict, but the president’s allies said before the trial that the Kremlin would not have any influence on the outcome. The Russian Orthodox Church also did not comment.

FOREIGN SUPPORT

Foreign singers have campaigned for the trio’s release, and Washington says the case is politically motivated. Madonna performed in Moscow with “PUSSY RIOT” painted on her back.

“As in most politically motivated cases, this court is not in line with the law, common sense or mercy,” veteran human rights campaigner Lyudmila Alexeyeva said.

But Valentina Ivanova, 60, a retired doctor, said outside the courtroom: “What they did showed disrespect towards everything, and towards believers first of all.”

The judge said they had “committed an act of hooliganism, a gross violation of public order showing obvious disrespect for society.” She rejected their argument that they had no intention of offending Russian Orthodox believers.

The trio’s defense lawyers said they would appeal.

Many in Russia’s mainly Orthodox Christian society backed the authorities’ demands for severe punishment, though some have said the women deserved clemency.

Putin, who returned to the presidency for a third term in May after a four-year spell as prime minister, has said the women did “nothing good” but should not be judged too harshly.

Witnesses say at least 24 people were detained by police in scuffles or for unfurling banners or donning ski masks in support of Pussy Riot outside the courtroom. Among those detained were Sergei Udaltsov, a leftist opposition leader, and Garry Kasparov, the chess great and vehement Putin critic.

“Shame on (Russian Orthodox Patriarch) Kirill, shame on Putin,” Udaltsov said before he was detained.

“A disgraceful political reprisal is under way on the part of the authorities … If we swallow this injustice, they can come for any one of us tomorrow.”

The crowd of about 2,000 people outside the court was dominated by Pussy Riot supporters but also included some nationalists and religious believers demanding a tough sentence.

“Evil must be punished,” said Maria Butilno, 60, who held an icon and said Pussy Riot had insulted the faithful.

An opinion poll of Russians released by the independent Levada research group on Friday showed only 6 percent had sympathy with the women, 51 percent said they found nothing good about them or felt irritation or hostility, and the rest were unable to say or were indifferent.

RADICAL PROTESTERS

Tolokonnikova, Alyokhina and Samutsevich are educated, middle-class Russians who say their protest was not intended to offend believers.

The charges against Pussy Riot raised concern abroad about freedom of speech in Russia two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Today’s sentence in the Pussy Riot case looks disproportionate to the actions,” the U.S. Embassy in Moscow wrote on its Twitter microblog in Russian.

Protests in support of the group were planned in cities from Sydney to Paris, and New York to London. A crowd of several hundred gathered in a New York hotel late on Thursday to hear actress Chloe Sevigny and others read from letters, lyrics and court statements by the detained women.

In the centre of Kiev, a bare-chested feminist activist took a chainsaw to a wooden cross bearing a figure of Christ, while in Bulgaria, sympathizers put Pussy Riot-style masks on statues at a Soviet Army monument.

“Huge damage has been done to the country’s image and attractiveness for investors,” former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin wrote in a message posted on his website.

Protest leaders say Putin will not relax pressure on opponents in his new six-year term. Parliament has already rushed through laws increasing fines for protesters, tightening controls on the Internet, and imposing stricter rules on defamation.

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The decision comes after animal rights group PETA issued a statement condemning the tests, which involved using a syringe to inject human urine into a frog. Proteus Gowanus gallery officials initially vowed to feature the exhibition as planned, but Kirksey informed Metro Wednesday evening that board members decided not to include the tests.

“I will still be talking about the history of the test, describing the techniques for performing it, and telling people about how they can help with frog conservation,” Kirksey, who would have been performing the tests, told Metro. “We still hope that a representative of PETA will attend.”

Metro’s original story is below.

A Brooklyn gallery that has invited women to inject frogs with their urine to replicate an antiquated pregnancy test has not been deterred by the outcries of the animal right group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

The exhibition, by anthropologist Eben Kirksey, will take place at Proteus Gowanus gallery on July 6, and will include an outdated method of pregnancy testing developed in the 1930s. Doctors used to inject the African clawed frog with the urine of a woman to determine if she were pregnant, based on whether the frog laid hundreds of eggs within about 10 hours. The injection does not cause permanent harm, and frogs can be re-used for the tests up to 60 times according to Kirksey.

However, scientists attribute the African clawed frog with the demise of some frog populations. The species is a carrier of a deadly fungus known as Chytrid. When the African clawed frog was widely exported from South Africa to be used in testing, it spread the fungus to other frogs.

When informed that the opening would feature tests on animals that included injecting them with a syringe, PETA called on the gallery to cancel the event.

“Replicating a cruel, antiquated pregnancy test on frogs to show how the very test’s being replicated may have led to the demise of frog populations is laughable at best,” PETA fumed in a statement released to Metro.

The organization added, “It’s bad enough that frogs who are being injected with urine and infected with a deadly fungus for the sake of so-called ‘art’ will suffer significant pain, but for Eben Kirksey to do so knowing that animal pregnancy tests were long ago replaced with better non-animal methods and that he is potentially risking the lives of every frog in the area shows that he lacks as much compassion as he does common sense.”

Kirksey fired back, explaining that the frogs he will be using for the exhibition have tested negative for the fungus. He also added that the tests do not actually spread or cause the fungus. (It only affects other frogs if infected animals are released into the wild.) Kirksey plans to give away his frogs as pets after the tests are completed. He also told Metro he will try to make the tests as painless as possible for the frogs. 

“The frog pregnancy test is just like getting a TB test, a little bit of liquid will be injected into them,” Kirksey said. “I will do my utmost to ensure that the frogs just feel a tiny pinprick.”

Gallery owner Tammy Pittman not only confirmed that the exhibition will go on as scheduled, but also extended the offer to PETA to see the tests first-hand and attend another upcoming event that invites frog owners to test their pets for the fungus.

“PETA is a venerable institution and we hope that one of their representatives will join us at the Proteus Gowanus gallery,” Pittman said.

While PETA insisted the exhibition may even go so far as to violate New York’s cruelty-to-animals laws, Kirksey said his work is largely about ethics and encouraging people to think about their impact on other species.   

“In the Anthropocene, an era when humans have altered planetary ecologies, we need to rethink our ethics,” Kirksey said. “Is peeing on a stick, and routinely sending plastic trash to a landfill, more ethical than caring for a frog at home and using it as a pregnancy test?”

The post UPDATE: Brooklyn gallery cancels frog pregnancy tests after PETA outrage appeared first on Metro.us.

It turns out, the pregnancy test as we know it today has come quite a ways from its early versions. Long before the days of over-the-counter digital readouts, women relied on the wisdom (and physiological reaction) of frogs, thanks to a discovery in the 1930s.

Biologists determined that the Xenopus laevis — or African clawed frog — would lay between 100 to 200 eggs if its dorsal lymph sac was injected with the urine of a pregnant woman. The process could give a positive result in as little six hours. The test was quite popular through the ’70s, until the more reliable methods we know today were developed.

The Brooklyn gallery Proteus Gowanus is offering a throwback to the ’40s in an upcoming exhibition about “looking at culture in context of all species we share planet with” by anthropologist and CUNY professor Eben Kirksey. Women (especially those who suspect they are pregnant) are invited to attend the opening on July 6 and watch as Kirksey injects frogs with their urine, offering them a free, first-hand experience with the retro custom.

The frog pregnancy tests are part of a larger exhibit that aims to shed light on how the tradition may have contributed to the demise of frog populations as a result of a fungus spread by the tests. The African clawed frog is not affected by the Chytrid fungus, but is a carrier of it and often spreads it to other frog species, leading to “amphibian mass extinction,” according to Kirksey.

“It’s about the implications of new biotech. No one knew in the 1930s that they’d be spreading this fungus,” Kirksey, who describes the frog pregnancy test as “100 percent accurate” told Metro. “So, if this has resulted in mass extinction, what are the new biotech schemes doing?”

The frogs can be reused for testing up to 60 times. Kirksey compared the injection of urine into the frog to a TB shot — just a small amount of liquid under the skin. He has two frogs that will be used for testing at the opening and five that will be given away to women, with syringes, so they can do the test themselves at home, where Kirksey encourages them to be kept as pets and not released into the wild, potentially spreading the fungus to other frogs. A first of its kind for Proteus, Pittman said she is hoping the exhibit exposes people to this “antiquated form of science.”

“I think [Kirksey's] work combined with the others is indicative of a way of approaching a subject that gives a new way of thinking,” Proteus’ executive director Tammy Pittman said. “I think it exemplifies the kind of work we do at Proteus.” 
 
The “DIY Frog Pregnancy Test” exhibition will be held at Proteus Gowanus (543 Union Street, Brooklyn) on Friday, July 6 at 7 pm. 

The post Brooklyn gallery wants women to inject frogs with urine to see if they’re pregnant appeared first on Metro.us.

Whether you agree or disagree with the idea of objectifying and ranking women based on their physical appearance (and encouraging readers to do it, too, by voting for their picks), you can’t argue that Maxim has made the annual tradition into a wildly popular and successful media blitz. Maybe you love to look at it or maybe you hate to look at it — but you’re still looking at it.

So, of course, we here at Metro have studied the list closely, for, uh, reference purposes, and we contend that the Hot 100 are, in fact, hot. But, there are a few selections on Maxim’s 2012 Hot 100 that make us rather uncomfortable.

Allow us to explain:  

Amanda Knox

Everyone is talking about “Foxy Knoxy’s” appearance on the list. She was acquitted this year of her roommate’s murder and returned from Italian prison to her home in the United States. Besides a few professional athletes, Knox is the only woman on the list who isn’t a model, actor or singer. The question is: Is it okay to judge a convicted murderer on her sexiness, as long as she was acquitted later?

Amanda Bynes

Even though Bynes seems to be clumsily following in the footsteps of trainwreck Lindsay Lohan, we can’t help but still picture the former Nickelodeon star as just that — a Nickelodeon star. Her consistent roles as innocent, goofy girl have sucked any and all sexy thoughts about Bynes straight out of our heads.      

Lois Griffin

Interesting choice, Maxim, interesting choice. Perhaps the writers chose the “Family Guy” mom to try and interject a little humor onto the list and send a message that says, “Sure, we judge women primarily on their worth as sexual objects, but look — we included a cartoon, so we can’t be that bad, right? Ha. Ha.”

Sarah Hyland

The very young-looking actress plays a teen on the show “Modern Family” and, yes, she is of legal age. But even Maxim admits that talking about her hotness is a bit borderline creepy: “It turns out the hot daughter from Modern Family is 21, so you don’t have to feel weird about having a crush on her.” Well, we still feel weird about it.

Vanessa Hudgens

She’s already got a naked photo scandal under her belt, but Hudgens is another one of those former Disney stars who won’t grow up in our minds. She probably still lives at home with her parents, right?

Emma Roberts

Another young one, Roberts was dubbed by one Metro staffer as “the human glass of milk.” ‘Nuff said.

Selena Gomez

Again, we know she’s “legal” at age 19, but we still can’t get past her Disney image. Plus, she’s the the girlfriend of Justin Bieber (cutest kid couple ever!) and the whole thing makes us feel icky inside. Wait, Bieber turned 18, too?

Emma Watson

We’re well aware that the Brown-educated Brit has come into her own, cut her hair, and re-branded herself as a mature actress, but we will always see her as frizzy-haired little Hermione, who helped Harry Potter save the world as a young student at Hogwarts. We don’t want to sexualize anyone who’s still 11 in our minds.

Miley Cyrus

She certainly wants everyone to think she’s hot, with her recent sideboob unveiling and all, but she is still tween rocker Hannah Montana in our eyes. There’s no doubt that Cyrus is growing up, but come one: How mad would her dad be with us for looking at his Miley in “that way.”

Stephen Colbert

Apparently, he made the list after an aggressive write-in campaign by his fans, but it’s puzzling, given that Maxim labels the Hot 100 as “The Definitive List of the World’s Most Beautiful Women.” But, uh, sure, Maxim. 

The post The 10 selections on Maxim’s 2012 ‘Hot 100′ list that make us uncomfortable appeared first on Metro.us.

At least, that’s how One Million Moms, a coalition of mothers against negative influences from the media, views the photo. The image shows two young woman embracing each other in a full-on hand-on-face lip lock. And One Million Moms wants you to throw out that filthy, filthy catalog, per a strongly worded statement on the group’s website:

WARNING! The April 2012 catalog from Urban Outfitters has begun arriving in home mailboxes the last couple of days. On page two of this catalog is a picture of two women kissing in a face holding embrace! The ad and catalog are clearly geared toward teenagers.

Additionally, the Moms want you to write a letter to Urban Outfitters asking that they refrain from sending this type of offensive advertising into peoples homes or else.

When you call be sure to let them know why you are unsubscribing. Tell them you will also no longer shop at their stores if you hear this type of advertising continues.

And, quite frankly, they’d like an apology. Oh, and one last thing — If you see any other vile propaganda floating around, be sure to let The Moms know. And then they’ll post something about that, too:

If you see a commercial or program which is offensive, email us the information. Many of you have done this, and it is very helpful.

The post Moms outraged over Urban Outfitters girl-on-girl kiss appeared first on Metro.us.

Jezebel posted the man’s spreadsheet, complete with details about each woman’s appearance, personality, and messaging interactions. The site got hold of it after he (stupidly) told a woman he was dating about it and then emailed it to her so she could see it. Apparently, it was just too good to keep to herself and so she started sending it around, which we thank her for.

We can’t imagine that it’s easy to keep track of eight women, so we can at least understand the concept behind creating a spreadsheet — but it still seems pretty ridiculous. He organizes them by name, age, and online appearance in the form of a convenient scale from 1 to 10.

The initial comments/notes section includes his first impressions about the women. They range from “mixed bag of pictures but great bod,” to “Chanel makeup artist.”

He keeps impeccable track of his dates and messages with the women, noting their first meeting locations. Gramercy Park Hotel’s Rose Bar seems to be a favorite of his. His notes reveal that he was stood up by one of the women and another one canceled on him for “work-related” reasons.  

One woman who he found to be an “Ok girl, but very jappy” (by which we assume he means Jewish American Princess), he put in the “Monitor casually” column. Another match “from Hawaii and San Francisco,” he notes to himself to “Monitor closely.”

The meticulously systematized dater admitted to Jezebel, “I work with spreadsheets a lot. It’s a great additional tool. I work long days, go to the gym, go out on a couple of midweek dates or what not, get home late…how am I going to remember them? I’m not. So I made the spreadsheets. My comments aren’t malicious or mean. This was an honest attempt to stay organized.”

He also said he emailed the spreadsheet to his date because she was into spreadsheets, too. Sounds like a real love connection, if you ask us, but alas, this scorned date-sorter said he will never be using Match.com again… he didn’t say anything about not using spreadsheets again, though.

The post Unusually organized online dater makes spreadsheet to keep matches straight appeared first on Metro.us.

Previous studies have shown that prolonged bike seat sitting can lead to erectile dysfunction in men. Now, researchers have found that women who spend a lot of time in the saddle could lose sensation in their genitals.

The study, as reported by The  New York Times, was conducted on women who rode their bicycles at least 10 miles per week, and four weeks per month. During the study, the women alerted the researchers when they felt numbness or soreness. They also used a device that measured sensation in the pelvic floor as the women pedaled.

Researchers found that women who positioned their handlebars lower than their seats often had more pressure against the soft tissue area known as the perineum. This resulted in a decreased vaginal sensation. Ouch.

However, women cyclists can take steps to salvage their sexual health! As a result of the study, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends a “no-nose” bike seat for female riders. It helps women shift pressure to their sit bones, rather than the perineum. So ladies, sit back and enjoy the ride.

More adventures in psuedoscience:

• Forget happy meals — a study says fast food is actually linked to depression.
• Now for some above-the-belt news for women. Is early breast cancer over-diagnosed?
• And if you’re still worried about cycling, here are the top 25 cities for walking.

The post A Study Has Found: Can bicycle seats lower a woman’s libido? appeared first on Metro.us.

In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Lee Aronsohn said, “Enough ladies. I get it. You have periods.”

“We’re approaching peak vagina on television, the point of labia saturation,” he added.

Aronsohn was also a speaker at the Toronto Screenwriting Conference over the weekend, where he said the characters on “Two and a Half Men” are plagued by troubles caused by women.

“We’re centering the show on two very damaged men,” he said. “What makes men damaged? Sorry, it’s women. I never got my heart broken by a man.”

Internet backlash quickly followed the remarks as several notable female comedians launched a campaign of girl power against Aronsohn.

Co-creator of “The Daily Show” Lizz Winstead tweeted a link to the Hollywood Reporter interview along with the comment, “At the risk of never getting a part on “2 1/2 Men” What a gaping [expletive]…”

Aronsohn didn’t back down from his comments initially, instead defending them as harmless jokes, as reported by The New York Times.

“Women, please look up ‘irony,’” he tweeted, and later said, “See what I did there?”

However, he removed that last comment and later replaced it with, “Yes, yes – it was a stupid joke. I’m sorry.”

Considering Aronsohn’s resume includes work on shows with female leads like “Grace Under Fire” and “Murphy Brown,” we’re left wondering whether this was all a big publicity stunt to fill the “crazy comments” gap that Charlie Sheen left behind when he was booted from “Two and a Half Men.” If that’s the case, #notwinning.

The post Lee Aronsohn: ‘Two and a Half Men’ creator blasted for criticizing female comedies as ‘labia saturation’ appeared first on Metro.us.

Netbase, a company that monitors social networking, has designed an info graphic compiled from information that men and women share on sites like Facebook and Twitter. Now we know exactly what’s on the minds of both sexes and, believe it or not — it’s not sex.

After analyzing about 27 billion internet conversations, Netbase found that women crave ice cream, while men want cars.

It gets more specific than that, though. Women prefer Dairy Queen over other types of their favorite frozen treat. Men mostly fantasize about Fords, much more than they do about Mercedes’ or Ferraris.

Men and women both want pizza. In fact, pizza, ice creams and cars are the top three things wanted by both sexes — just in different orders.

Other things women want: chocolate, cake, cookies, coffee, a phone, sushi and pancakes.

Men prefer: beer, cookies, cake, phones, pancakes, chicken and bacon (shocker).

About 80 percent of the things both men and women want are food-related. Sex didn’t even make the top 10!

(via Mashable)

More adventures in psuedoscience:

• 
  A walk a day can keep obesity away.

• Scientists find human-like fossils in Chinese caves.

• Food-borne diseases on the rise from important fish, spices.

The post A Study Has Found: What men and women really crave appeared first on Metro.us.

Metro’s board of directors has a chairwoman, not a chairman; two out of the five executive management team are women — and I’m one of them. I’m the proud employer of women — 50 per cent of my team are women. I’m proud to count ambitious, brilliant women as colleagues and friends.

That said, before my first board meeting presentation, I couldn’t sleep, worried about … the other women.

The presentation was solid, I knew I’d impress the “suits.” But having never met anyone, I wasn’t sure the “skirts” in the room would let me get away with it: they’d find a way to make me look stupid, to trip me up.

I was concerned that those who should be my best allies could be my worst enemy.

Why do we spend so much energy cutting ourselves down? Sniping, whispering, threatening? We need to take control of the message women send to each other, and about each other: you’re not bossy, you’re assertive; you’re not emotional, you’re intuitive. You. Are. Not. A. Bitch. And neither is she.

GOOD magazine recently ran a campaign called Promote Women: Use your Network to Solve the Gender Gap.

They challenged us to 1) Think of three women in our industry who are under-noticed. 2) Think of three powerful people in our industry that we know personally. 3) Connect them!

Recommend your under-noticed, under-paid and otherwise under-exposed women colleagues — and tell them you did.

I would like to extend this challenge to Metro’s readers. Tell us about it on #promotewomen.

Ladies, women, girls; present and future CEOs, presidents and professionals: Be the mentor you needed. Cut the crap. Stop the gossip. And extend your hand. Just before my board room presentation, both women walked to the front of the room, shook mine, and told me I’d do just fine.

And I flew. Mean girls — what mean girls? THIS was the way it should be. 

#promotewomen.

Maggie Samways is  Executive Vice President and Global Editor in Chief of Metro World News. Follow her on Twitter at @TheEditrix.

The post International Women’s Day: You are not a bitch, and neither is she appeared first on Metro.us.

Researchers at the University of Rochester conducted five psychological experiments and learned that red actually makes men feel more amorous towards women, but they don’t realize it’s because of the color.

Men who participated in the study looked at photographs of women framed by borders of different colors, including red. They were asked to judge how pretty they perceived the women to be. Later, they viewed images of women wearing red shirts and were asked how much money they’d be willing to spend on each woman if they were on a date with her.

Turns out, the women wearing red or framed in red came out on top. These women were:

– rated significantly more attractive

– rated more sexually desirable

– more likely to be asked to the prom

– more likely to be treated to an expensive date

However, the color red did not affect other factors the men were asked to comment on about the women, like likability, intelligence or kindness.

This study could very well be the only scientific document on the effects of color on behavior in relationships.

“Much is known about color physics and color physiology, but very little about color psychology,” said psychology professor Andrew Elliot, a researcher on the study. “It’s fascinating to find that something as ubiquitous as color can be having an effect on our behavior without our awareness.”

Though society has deemed red the color of passion, the attraction to it might be more scientific. Primates offer a clear example — the females of some species will redden when nearing ovulation — sending the message that it’s mating time.

“Our research demonstrates a parallel in the way that human and nonhuman male primates respond to red,” said the study’s authors. “As much as men might like to think that they respond to women in a thoughtful, sophisticated manner, it appears that at least to some degree, their preferences and predilections are, in a word, primitive.”

Yep, just confirming what we already knew.

The post STUDY: Women in red prove more attractive to men appeared first on Metro.us.

“We tend to look at sex as this male thing,” she says. “It’s like, ‘If I’m pissed at him, I’m not having sex with him.’ It’s looked at as this reward for a man rather than a relationship thing.”
 
Madison recently published her book “Are All Guys A—holes?,” in which she did field research — interviewing 1,000 guys in 10 cities. What she found was surprising. She asked men if they liked hearing feedback from women in the bedroom and found that 58 percent of them love it.

“Women should take more responsibility for their sexual pleasure and figure out what feels good for them and make sure in the bedroom that they communicate that,” she says.

The sex and dating expert has recently endorsed the new “We-Vibe 3” — a couples’ vibrator that lacks the intimidation factor that can steer the squeamish away.

“One of the things with the We-Vibe brand is to be a discreet product,” says Sarah Bobas, the marketing and communications manager at We-Vibe. “You don’t want to walk in with something that off the bat makes your partner feel threatened. [The We-Vibe] enables us to get into the conversation without people getting shy or intimidated about what we’re talking about, which is just sexual intimacy, being closer to your partner.” 

The post Welcome to the pleasure dome appeared first on Metro.us.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa’s first freely elected female head of state, shared the $1.5 million with compatriot Leymah Gbowee, who led a “sex strike” among her efforts against Liberia’s civil war, and Arab activist Tawakul Karman, who hailed the award as a victory for democracy in Yemen.

“We cannot achieve democracy and lasting peace in the world unless women obtain the same opportunities as men to influence developments at all levels of society,” Norwegian Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland told reporters.

Johnson-Sirleaf, 72 and once dubbed the “Iron Lady” by opponents, is running for a second term in an election on Tuesday where she faces criticism for not having done enough to heal the divisions of years of civil war. Jagland dismissed suggestions the award might seem to be meddling in the vote.

But the former Norwegian prime minister said that honoring Yemen’s protesters, who unlike those in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya are still battling to get rid of their ruler, sent a signal from Oslo that President Ali Abdullah Saleh, long a U.S. ally, and other Arab autocrats should now step down.

It is a message that the era of Arab dictators was over, Karman told Reuters in Sanaa, declaring her prize a victory for Yemen and for all of the uprisings of the Arab Spring.

The trio of laureates follow only a dozen other women among 85 men, as well as a number of organizations, to have won the prize over its 110-year history.

The Committee said it hoped the three-way award “will help to bring an end to the suppression of women that still occurs in many countries, and to realize the great potential for democracy and peace that women can represent.”

ARAB SPRING HONORED

Recognizing Karman, a 32-year-old journalist and mother who was detained for a time during the unrest, was seen as a gesture of the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s wider approval for the Arab Spring protest movements, which had been heavily tipped to win the prize for their young street campaigners.

“In the most trying circumstances, both before and during the Arab Spring, Tawakul Karman has played a leading part in the struggle for women’s rights and for democracy and peace in Yemen,” the Nobel citation read.

Egyptian activist Asmaa Mahfouz, who had been nominated, said: “Giving it to Yemen means giving it to the Arab Spring, and this is an honor to all of us and to all Arab states.”

The committee said all three women were rewarded from the bequest left by Swedish dynamite inventor Alfred Nobel for “their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

LIBERIAN CAMPAIGNS

It noted that Johnson-Sirleaf had led the way for women to lead African states and that Gbowee, 39, had mobilized women across ethnic and religious lines to bring an end to the war in Liberia and ensure their participation in elections.

Her brother, Alphonso Diamond Gbowee, told Reuters: “I am so excited that her relentlessness to ensure the development of women and children in our region has been recognized.

“She’s very hard-working, helping with women and children all over the place, especially in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone … This will be a challenge for her to do more. I have no doubt she’ll continue to impact those vulnerable lives.”

Speaking by telephone from Monrovia, Johnson-Sirleaf’s son James told Reuters: “I am over-excited. This is very big news and we have to celebrate.”

Johnson-Sirleaf was Liberia’s finance minister, then suffered jail and fled the country as it descended into one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars, serving as a World Bank economist before going home and winning the presidency in 2005.

Gbowee’s Women For Peace movement is credited by some for bringing an end to the civil war in 2003. The movement started humbly in 2002 when Gbowee organized a group of women to sing and pray for an end to fighting in a fish market.

She is the subject of an award-winning documentary film “Pray the Devil Back to Hell.”

“Whatever they achieved today has been done along with all Liberian women,” Liberia’s minister for gender and development Vabah Gayflor told Reuters.

“It is something that all Liberian women will be proud of … Women all over Africa and the world will be proud.”

The prize will be presented in Oslo on December 10.

The post Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman: Nobel Peace Prize honors African, Arab women appeared first on Metro.us.

In an Intelligence Squared debate, people in the audience ended up siding with a team making the argument that “men are finished.”

ABC News Legal Analyst Dan Abrams and journalist Hanna Rosin convinced the audience that women are now the dominant sex due to shifting cultural values and a changing economy.

Christina Hoff Sommers, feminist scholar and author and David Zinczenko, EVP/Editor-in-Chief of Men’s Health Magazine debated the point, saying that men are still stronger politically and economically and are not yet, in fact, finished.

However, the audience sided with Rosin and Abrams who pointed out that for every two men who get a college degree, three women will do the same.

“So why are women getting more college degrees?” asked Rosin. “It’s not that women are smarter because they’re not smarter.  Men and women test about the same on standardized tests for both math and English.  But women have something.  Some sociologists call it grit, some call it engagement, some call it focus, some call it social intelligence.  It’s some special formula that’s required for success these days, which women just seem to have in greater abundance than men.  And this is a very new thing.”

About 46 percent of audience members ended up changing their minds during the debate to side with Abrams and Rosin, so perhaps that grit she mentions is really just the power of persuasion.

Do you think men are finished?

The post Debate: Are men finished? appeared first on Metro.us.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center says about 50 percent of women who graduated from a four-year college gave the higher education system excellent or good marks for the value given the cost.

Only 37 percent of men surveyed gave it the same high marks.

More women than men also said they felt their college education helped them grow professionally and intellectually. Could this have anything to do with the fact that society tends to think women need their education more than men do?

“While a majority of Americans believe that a college education is necessary in order to get ahead in life these days, the public is somewhat more inclined to see this credential as a necessity for a woman than for a man. Some 77 percent of respondents say this about women, while just 68 percent say it about men,” researchers reported.

What do you think? Is a college education more beneficial for a woman?

Find out more about college on EducationOption.

The post Do women value higher education more than men do? appeared first on Metro.us.

After reviewing data on 2.4 million people and 44,000 cardiac events, the article’s authors found female smokers have a 25 percent greater risk for coronary heart disease than males who smoke cigarettes.

The researchers also found the difference in risk for male and female smokers increased by two percent for every year they smoke.

The post Women smokers bear risk appeared first on Metro.us.

According to the National Science Foundation, the amount of women engaging in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, has grown significantly since the 1970s.  Fewer than 78,000 women were enrolled as graduate students in science and engineering in 1977 — compared with nearly 232,000 in 2008.

Still, men overwhelmingly dominate STEM fields. So what is preventing women from fully taking the field by storm?

One theory is that young girls have traditionally been taught that math and science are for boys, while they should focus more on literature and writing.

Many women in STEM professions say more women need to pursue careers in these fields. History is probably a good indicator that it’s just a matter of time. After all, it wasn’t long ago that you wouldn’t see a woman’s name on a ballot for a major election or listed as CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

It might not be long before they become front and center in the world of math and science, too.  

The post Women in science: STEM taking root appeared first on Metro.us.

According to the National Science Foundation, the amount of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, has grown significantly since the 1970’s.  Just under 78,000 women were enrolled as graduate students in science and engineering in 1977. Compared with nearly 232,000 in 2008, it’s obvious that women are finding a place for themselves on those career paths.

Still, men overwhelmingly dominate the fields. In a press release from the Association for Women in Science, Executive Director Janet Bandows Koster says, “Our nation must acknowledge that while women make up almost half of the U.S. workforce, they continue to be underrepresented in STEM professions, particularly in the higher academic faculty ranks and leadership positions.”

So what is preventing women from fully taking the field by storm? It could be a lack of equality in the workplace.

“In order to alleviate this problem, action must be taken at the federal and institutional level to alleviate the challenges impeding women’s access to these positions, including gender biases in the workplace and outmoded institutional practices,” says Koster.

It could also be the fact that young girls have traditionally been taught that math and science are for boys, while they should focus more on literature and writing.

Organizations like AWIS and the Society of Women Engineers work to promote the educational advancement of girls and women in those fields, and they’re making their mark. Carol Greider, an AWIS member, won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. In other words, she’s one smart lady who is shining star in the world of science, but she is also a rarity. That’s why organizations like AWIS regularly appeal the Congress in an effort to breakdown barriers that women in STEM professions face in the workplace.

Many women in STEM professions say more women need to pursue careers in the fields. History is probably a good indicator that it’s just a matter of time.  After all, it wasn’t long ago that you wouldn’t see a woman’s name on a ballot for a major election, or as a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. It might not be long before they become front and center in the world of math and science, too.

The post Why aren’t there more women in science and engineering? appeared first on Metro.us.

Metro accompanied two Navy servicewomen and one Marine on their tour about town to take a peek at the female side of Fleet Week, which wraps up Wednesday.

“Pulling in on the ship, seeing Ground Zero, the Empire State Building, the whole skyline, it was beautiful,” Navy servicewoman Gabrielle Milly, 26, said of seeing New York for the first time.

A leave on dry land was welcome. Milly, like other sailors on the USS Iwo Jima currently docked at Pier 88, spends most of her time several levels below the surface of the ship.

“There are days when I don’t see the light of day,” said Petty Officer Third Class Natasha Chalk, 27.
As soon as she was off the ship, Chalk beelined it to Times Square for a slice of pepperoni pizza. Up next was the trio’s first-ever trip on the subway to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After that, it was a stop for cupcakes.

And the servicewomen, in their crisp khaki uniforms, were exposed to another signature aspect of New York City in the summer: catcalls from men on the street. “Looking good, ladies!” shouted a man on 49th Street.

“It happens so much I ignore it,” said Chalk.

What’s it like to be a female soldier?

There are 2,320 sailors and Marines onboard the USS Iwo Jima. About 25 percent, or 573, of those are women. The servicewomen said differences in physical strength are the most apparent.

“A lot of women fought for these rights, but if I can’t physically pick something up, someone should help,” said Natasha Chalk of on-board equality. “Sometimes, people watch you struggle.”

One of the best compliments a female service member could hope for is to be seen as a man, said Milly.

“They say, ‘You’re the man.’ I’m not a man, but it makes me feel good anyway,” said Milly.

Follow Emily Anne Epstein on Twitter @EmilyatMetro.

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It’s no secret that men tend to dominate the comedy world, despite the presence of multitalented juggernauts like Tina Fey on the rise. One TV producer theorizes that mass audiences don’t like seeing women do risque humor.

“Men and women aren’t as comfortable watching women joke about bodily functions, masturbating, sex,” says comedian and television producer Marianne Schaberg. “It ‘creeps’ them out.”

While that may be true, many funny ladies don’t feel as if they’re judged to be less hilarious than their male counterparts within the comedy community.

“[The problem] is something that women face in a lot of occupations, which is that people don’t assume a woman to be the natural leader of a group,” says Caitlin Tegart, comedy writer and sketch teacher at New York’s Upright Citizen’s Brigade. “Maybe they’re not chosen as head writer or director as quickly.”

Boston-based improv comedian Marty Johnson adds that female comedy writers are the key to seeing more female-driven comedies.

“Eventually it won’t be weird to see a film like ‘Bridesmaids’ in theaters; they will just be comedies with people in them, whether or not they have boobs,” she says. “It comes down to the number of scripts that are being written by female comedy writers who have access to industry players. Women are going to write hilarious parts for other women, because that’s just the reality of their worlds.”

But there are rays of hope in television, says New York-based comedian Shannon O’Neill.

“On Thursday nights you have two female-led sitcoms — “30 Rock” and “Parks and Recreation” — so already there, we’re at the 50/50 point,” she says. “It might seem unusual to people now, but ‘Bridesmaids’ is just the starting point of absolutely more to come.”

Box office dollars

Some professional funny ladies feel that the lack of a female presence in big-budget comedies comes down to money, plain and simple. Glennis McMurray is the founder of theGLOC.net — that’s Gorgeous Ladies of Comedy — which serves as a forum for female comedians. She’s gathering as many women as she can to go see “Bridesmaids” this weekend, in the hopes of boosting the film’s box office numbers.

“It’s likely that movies are a risky business and [producers] need a surefire formula or franchise before they hit the green-light button,” she says.

“That’s why a huge opening weekend for ‘Bridesmaids’ is so important!”

For more movie news, follow Heidi Patalano on Twitter @HeidiatMetro.

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