Category: Greed

World Wide (Conversation) – Are you ever around women who seem frustrated, upset or irritated? Have you ever asked one of them if she was on her period or perhaps been tempted to inquire? Take it from me: Don’t. Presuming that female reproductive organs make women behave irrationally is rude and sexist. It also evokes the same unscientific beliefs that have always held women back. I’m a sociologist who researches the perils women experience on a daily basis simply for existing. In studying the systemic nature of sexism, I’ve learned…

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United States (Conversation) – Forty percent of all working-age Americans sometimes struggle to pay their monthly bills. There is no place in the country where a family supported by one minimum-wage worker with a full-time job can live and afford a 2-bedroom apartment at the average fair-market rent. Given the pressure to earn enough to make ends meet, you would think that low-paid workers would be clamoring for raises. But this is not always the case. Because so many American jobs don’t earn enough to pay for food, housing and…

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United Kingdom (Conversation) – People’s lives have been shattered by so-called “revenge porn”, upskirting, fake porn, sexual extortion and videos of sexual assaults and rape shared online. Victims and survivors can experience profound “social rupture” – a major devastation that drastically alters all aspects of their lives, as well as the lives of those who love and support them. And yet, despite greater public awareness and four new laws in the past five years, legislation is still failing to fully protect victims and provide access to justice. The law is…

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United States (CD) – The majority of American veterans and members of the general public agreed in two new surveys that the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the U.S. military campaign in Syria were all “not worth fighting.” The Pew Research Center, for the pair of polls published Wednesday, asked all respondents to consider the costs versus the benefits to the United States in their analysis of whether each conflict was worthwhile. Roughly two-thirds of both veterans and members of the public told Pew that the 2003 U.S. invasion…

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United States (Conversation) – Jeffrey Epstein, a powerfully connected American financier, is facing charges of sex trafficking, bringing underage girls as young as 14 years old into homes in various locations across the US. He reportedly had a network of more than 50 victims, and evidence against him included hundreds of lewd photographs of girls and young women. Accusations against high-profile people such as Epstein temporarily raise awareness of this significant human rights violation. But regardless of the outcome of this case, the ugly truth is this is just the…

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United States (Conversation) – Summers often bring a wave of childhood memories: lounging poolside, trips to the local amusement park, languid, steamy days at the beach. These nostalgic recollections, however, aren’t held by all Americans. Municipal swimming pools and urban amusement parks flourished in the 20th century. But too often, their success was based on the exclusion of African Americans. As a social historian who has written a book on segregated recreation, I have found that the history of recreational segregation is a largely forgotten one. But it has had…

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United States (Conversation) – On a typical day, men spend a third as much time cleaning as women. Does that make women beacons of cleanliness, while men are genetically unable to see the messiness in their midst? This myth is a common explanation for why men don’t do as much housework as women. Men walk into a room and apparently can’t see the dust bunnies gathering on the floor or the piles of laundry stacked up on the couch. It lets men off the hook for not doing their fair…

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Albania (GV) – Made in Prison is a website that sells handmade products by female inmates of the Ali Demi prison in Tirana, the only prison for women in the Balkan country whose population totals 2,8 million. The project is an initiative by Orkidea (meaning “the orchid” in Albanian language), a local women’s rights NGO, and has received funds from the US Embassy in Tirana. Since its launch on March 8, 2019, the project has been endorsed by Albania’s Ministry of Justice and the General Directorate of Prisons. As of June 12, the inmates have produced 235 handmade…

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World Wide (Conversation) – Shortlisted for the Oxford English Dictionary’s 2018 word of the year, “gaslighting” has well and truly found its way into contemporary thought and vernacular. The term has recently been employed to explain the behaviour of contestants on The Bachelor Australia, Monica Lewinksy’s experiences with the media post-Bill Clinton, and the words of US President Donald Trump. But what, exactly, does it mean? Where did it come from? And why is it experiencing a resurgence today? Gaslighting takes its name from the 1944 film Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman…

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United States (Conversation) – In last week’s New York magazine, journalist E. Jean Carroll recounts her rape in a New York department store dressing room, some 23 years ago. “[He] opens [my] overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway —or completely, I’m not certain —inside me.” The alleged rapist? United States President Donald J. Trump. Carroll joins more than a dozen other women who have publicly accused the sitting president of sexual assault or harassment, with no consequences yet for Trump….

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