The Duck of Minerva

Monday Linkage: targeting mothers, uteruses, and the key to ending congressional deadlock

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by Megan MacKenzie

21 October 2013, 0110 EDT

  • According to economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett, “gender smarts” were key to ending the recent congressional deadlock. She argues: “Unlocking gridlock in government, it turns out, depends on precisely the mechanism that unlocks competitive strength in the private sector: a diverse team (laden with gender smarts and cultural fluency) managed by leaders whose aggregate of experience motivates them to manage inclusively.”
  • A new “ism”: motherism, or prejudice against stay-at-home-moms.The Guardian reports that- according to Dr Aric Sigman, a biologist and psychologist- “stay-at-home mothers are increasingly facing a damaging but unspoken prejudice that assumes they are stupid, lazy and unattractive.”
  • Medical staff working in Syria are reporting that snipers appear to be targeting pregnant women– with several cases of heavily pregnant women being shot in the uterus.
  • In a great post entitled “Why so few women in Nobel science?” Debasish Mitra laments the lack of gender equality amongst the past winners and lists six women who deserved to win the Nobel prize for science.

Megan MacKenzie is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney in Australia. Her main research interests include feminist international relations, gender and the military, the combat exclusion for women, the aftermaths of war and post-conflict resolution, and transitional justice. Her book Beyond the Band of Brothers: the US Military and the Myth that Women Can't Fight comes out with Cambridge University Press in July 2015.

https://www.cambridge.org/ee/academic/subjects/politics-international-relations/international-relations-and-international-organisations/beyond-band-brothers-us-military-and-myth-women-cant-fight?format=PB

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