Overcome Cognitive Bias

Education is widely accepted to be a fundamental resource, both for individuals and societies. Indeed, in most countries basic education is nowadays perceived not only as a right, but also as a duty – governments are typically expected to ensure access to basic education, while citizens are often required by law to attain education up to a certain basic level.1

In this entry we begin by providing an overview of long run changes in education outcomes and outputs across the world, focusing both on quantity and quality measures of education attainment; and then provide an analysis of available evidence on the determinants and consequences of education.

From a historical perspective, the world went through a great expansion in education over the past two centuries. This can be seen across all quantity measures. Global literacy rates have been climbing over the course of the last two centuries, mainly though increasing rates of enrollment in primary education. Secondary and tertiary education have also seen drastic growth, with global average years of schooling being much higher now than a hundred years ago. Despite all these worldwide improvements, some countries have been lagging behind, mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, where there are still countries that have literacy rates below 50% among the youth.

Data on the production of education shows that schooling tends to be largely financed with public resources across the globe, although a great deal of heterogeneity is observed between countries and world regions. Since differences in national expenditure on education do not explain well cross-country differences in learning outcomes, the data suggests that generic policies that increase expenditure on standard inputs, such as the number of teachers, are unlikely to be effective to improve education outcomes.

Regarding the consequences of education, a growing body of empirical research suggests that better education yields higher individual income and contributes towards the construction of social capital and long-term economic growth.

How is literacy distributed across the globe?

The following interactive map shows literacy rates around the world, using recent estimates published in the CIA Factbook. As it can be seen, all countries outside Africa (with the exception of Afghanistan) have literacy rates above 50%.

Despite progress in the long run, however, large inequalities remain, notably between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world. In Burkina Faso, Niger and South Sudan – the African countries at the bottom of the rank – literacy rates are still below 30%.

I. The Evolution of Education Outcomes

I.1 Literacy

Context

Literacy is a key skill and a key measure of a population’s education. UNESCO operationalizes the measurement of literacy as the ability to both read and write a short, simple statement about one’s own life. Literacy rates are determined by literacy questions in a census or sample survey of a population, in standardized tests of literacy, or via extrapolation from statistics about school enrollment and educational attainment2.

Statistics of literacy rates for recent decades are published by statistical offices. For earlier periods, historians have to reconstruct data from other sources. The most common method is to calculate the share of those people who could sign official documents (e.g. court documents).

Our entry on Literacy contains further in-depth information on the topic.

How has global literacy evolved in the last two centuries?

While the earliest forms of written communication date back to about 3,500-3,000 BCE, literacy remained for centuries a very restricted technology closely associated with the exercise of power. It was only until the Middle Ages that book production started growing and literacy among the general population slowly started becoming important in the Western World.3 In fact, while the ambition of universal literacy in Europe was a fundamental reform born from the Enlightment, it took centuries for it to happen. Even in early-industrialized countries it was only in the 19th and 20th centuries that rates of literacy approached universality.

The following visualization presents estimates of world literacy for the period 1800-2014. As we can see, literacy rates grew constantly but rather slowly until the beginning of the twentieth century. And the rate of growth really climbed after the middle of the 20th century, when the expansion of basic education became a global priority. You can read more about the expansion of education systems around the world in our entry on Financing Education.

How fast are we closing cross-country inequalities in literacy?

The preceding visualization shows that, despite the fact that literacy is today higher than ever, there are still important challenges in many developing countries. However, data on literacy rates by age groups shows that in most countries, and certainly in virtually all developing countries, there are large generational gaps: younger generations are progressively better educated than older generations. This indicates that in these countries the literacy rate for the overall population will continue to increase.

The following visualization shows the estimates and projections of the share of individuals, across countries, who have no education. These figures, from The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), suggest that we should see rates of education increasing as the world develops – and by 2050, only five countries are likely to have a rate of no education above 20%: these are Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mali and Niger.

While these projections entail a number of assumptions, the conclusion seems to be that by 2050 we can hope most of the cross-country gaps in literacy to be closed.

I.2 School enrollment and attendance

Context

School enrollment and attendance are two important measures of educational attainment. Here we focus on enrollment and attendance rates specifically at the primary level.

The rate of primary school enrollment is typically measured through administrative data, and is defined as the number of children enrolled in primary school who belong to the age group that officially corresponds to primary schooling, divided by the total population of the same age group.

The rate of attendance, on the other hand, is typically measured through household survey data, and is defined as the percentage of children in the age group that officially corresponds to primary schooling who are reported as attending primary school.

Primary school enrollment around the world increased drastically in the last century

The following visualization shows estimates of primary education enrollment rates for a selection of 111 countries during the period 1870-2010. You can add countries, or switch to the ‘map’ view, by selecting the corresponding options at the top of the chart.

The plotted series for the UK typifies the experience of early-industrialized countries, where enrollment in primary education grew rapidly with the spread of compulsory primary schooling in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

And the case of Colombia is representative of the pattern observed across many developing countries, where primary education enrollment rates grew particularly fast in the second half of the 20th century.

The growth in access to primary education across developing countries was achieved through an important increase in government expenditure on education in these countries (you can read more about this in our discussion of global expansion in education expenditure).

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Primary school attendance remains a challenge in many developing countries

The previous visualization showed the important progress that countries around the world have made regarding access to education, as measured by enrollment rates. Here we focus on evidence of access to education, as measured by school attendance. The difference lies in the source of information regarding participation: enrollment figures come from official records, while attendance estimates comes from asking households directly.

In the majority of developing countries, net enrollment rates are higher than attendance rates. This reflects the fact that many children who are officially enrolled, do not regularly attend school. The following visualization, from the UNESCO report Measuring Exclusion From Primary Education (2005), shows the relationship between these two measures. The source reports that “among the 59 countries with comparable data, in 24 countries participation rates drop by five percentage points for the primary school-age group when household surveys are used instead of administrative data.”

I.3 Years of schooling

Context

The average number of years spent in school are another common measure of a population’s education level. It is a helpful measure, because it allows aggregation of attainment across education levels. This allows an analysis of the ‘stock of human capital’ that a population has at any given point in time.

Average, or mean years of schooling of a population, are typically calculated from data on (i) the distribution of the population by age group and highest level of education attained in a given year; and (ii) the official duration of each level of education.

The world is more educated than ever before

In the previous section we showed, through school enrollment data, that the world went through a great expansion in education over the past two centuries. Here we show evidence of this process of education expansion using cross-country estimates of average years of schooling.

The following interactive visualization shows trends in years of schooling for a selection of 111 countries during the period 1870-2010. As usual, you can add countries, or switch to the ‘map’ view, by selecting the corresponding options at the top of the chart. As we can see, the average number of years spent in school has gone up around the world. And once again, we see the pattern that has already been discussed: early-industrialized countries pioneered the expansion of education in the 19th century, but this process became a global phenomenon after the second World War.

The experience of some countries, such as South Korea, shows how remarkably quickly educational attainment can increase.

How has the stock of human capital evolved in the long run?

In the previous interactive visualisation we showed how the average number of years spent in school has been going up constantly across the world. Here we go further and explore changes across the entire global distribution of years of schooling.

The following graph, from Lee and Lee (2016)7, plots the distribution of the number of years of schooling across the entire adult population, for selected years. Roughly speaking, you can think of this graph as a ‘smooth histogram’: if all people in the world were ranked by years of education, this chart would approximately tell us, for any number of years in the horizontal axis, the proportion of the world population that achieved those years.8

We can see that in 1870, the distribution was concentrated at the left: most of the people had between 0 and 3 years of education. In contrast, by 2010 the distribution had shifted drastically to the right.

We can see that there has been a continuous rightward shift in the successive distributions of schooling across time. This reflects the fact that there has been a continuous increase in average years of schooling worldwide: as the share of the uneducated population fell over time, the concentration at the lower level became less pronounced.

The increasingly long tails that we see in the distributions, are the result of cross-country inequalities in education expansion – in the long run, we can see that there has been a considerable increase in the dispersion of the years of schooling. This is mainly the result of cross-country differences, since some nations started expanding education much later than other, and some are still lagging behind. Interestingly, however, inequality grew in the period 1870-1950, but after this point, it has slowly started going down (notice that the distribution in 2010 is ‘bulkier’ in the middle, vis-a-vis the distribution in 1950). Below we provide more detailed evidence of how education inequality has been going down since 1950.

What has been the evolution of gender inequalities in education?

The following visualization shows the evolution of female-to-male ratios of educational attainment (mean years of schooling) across different world regions.

The estimates in the visualization below correspond to regional averages of total year of schooling for females (15-64 years of age), divided by the corresponding regional averages for males (15-64 years of age). Regional averages are population-weighted.

As we can see, despite short periods of decline, there is generally an upward trend in the gender ratios across all regions – this implies that gender gaps in educational attainment have been going down in the long run. In fact, Latin America and Eastern Europe caught up with the group of ‘advanced economies’10 in the 1980s, and the gender gaps in these regions have already been closed almost completely (i.e. the gender ratios approximate the 100% benchmark for education gender parity).

How has education inequality changed in the last couple of decades?

The following visualization shows the recent evolution of inequality in educational attainment, through a series of graphs plotting changes in the Gini coefficient of the distribution of years of schooling across different world regions. The Gini coefficient is a measure of inequality and higher values indicate higher inequality – you can read about the definition and estimation of Gini coefficients in our entry on income inequality. The time-series chart below shows inequality by age group. It can be seen that as inequality is falling over time, the level of inequality is higher for older generations than it is for younger generations. We can also see that in the period 1960-2010, education inequality went down every year, for all age groups and in all world regions.

Have gains from historical education expansion fully materialized? The breakdown by age gives us a view into the future: as the inequality is lower among today’s younger generations, we can expect the decline of inequality to continue in the future. Thus, further reductions in education inequality are still to be expected within developing countries; and if the expansion of global education can be continued, we can speed up this important process of global convergence.

I.4 Attainment by level

Context

The highest level of education that individuals complete is another common measure of educational attainment. This measure is used as an input to calculating years of schooling, and allows clear comparisons across levels of education.

The estimates discussed in this section come from The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). These include both historic estimates and projections. You can read more about this source of data, including details on the estimation methodology, in our entry on Projections of Future Education.

Education at higher levels, mainly secondary and tertiary, is becoming increasingly important around the world

The following interactive visualization shows, country by country, a breakdown of the population by highest level of education achieved for those aged 15+. If you want to see the estimates for a different country, just click ‘Change Country’ at the top left of the chart, below the colored labels. If you want to see figures in relative terms (i.e. shares of population by level), you can click the option labeled ‘Relative’.

You can see that education at higher levels, mainly secondary and tertiary, is becoming increasingly important around the world, as the number of people without education goes down. The projections show how these trends are expected to evolve in the future, depending on population growth dynamics in each country.

I.5 Learning outcomes

Context

Throughout this entry we have discussed ‘quantity’ measures of educational attainment. Now we turn to ‘quality’ measures of education. The most widely used measure for cross-country comparisons of education quality is the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which currently covers all OECD member countries, plus more than 30 partner countries.

The PISA study assess the performance of 15 year old school pupils’ performance on mathematics, reading and science examinations. The tests are designed to be comparable across countries and to assess students’ knowledge as well as problem solving skills. The first round of tests took place in 2000 and is repeated every three years.

How does education across countries compare in terms of learning outcomes?

The map below plots available PISA estimates from across the globe. The reported figures correspond to averages across mathematics, reading and science examinations. As we can see, there is substantial cross-country heterogeneity.

This map shows that East Asian countries achieve particularly high test scores. These results are broadly supported by similar research conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and Boston College. The IEA produces assessments of mathematics and science performance (TIMSS) as well as of reading and literacy (PIRLS). The countries that consistently make up the top 5 in mathematics and the sciences are Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan.

Of course, these cross-country differences do not necessarily imply differences in teaching quality, as there are many factors – including cultural aspects – that contribute to determine learning outcomes. In the next section we explore available evidence regarding the determinants of education outcomes.

II. The Production of Education

II.1 Context

The most common way to gauge differences in the way countries ‘produce’ education, is to analyze data on expenditure.

In this section we begin by providing an overview of education expenditure around the world, and then turn to the question of how expenditure contributes to the production of education.

The main source of data on international education expenditure is UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics (UIS). The same data is also then published by the World Bank (World Bank EdStats and World Development Indicators) and Gapminder. It is also the main source of education data for most UN reports – such as the EFA Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO), the Human Development Report (UNDP), the State of the World’s Children report (UNICEF) and the Millennium Development Goals (UN).

Further in-depth information on this topic, including definitions, data sources, historical trends and much more, can be found in our dedicated entry Financing Education.

II.2 Cross-country spending patters

When did the provision of education first become a public policy priority?

Governments around the world are nowadays widely perceived to be responsible for ensuring the provision of accessible quality education. The advancement of the idea to provide education for more and more children only began in the mid 19th century, when most of today’s industrialized countries started expanding primary education.

Primary education continues to be publicly funded in industrialized countries

Those countries that pioneered the expansion of primary education in the 19th century – all of which are current OECD member states – relied heavily on public funding to do so. Today, public resources still dominate funding for the primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education levels in these countries.

While in the last decade the share of public funding for these levels of education has decreased slightly, the broad pattern is remarkably stable. The visualization below presents OECD-average expenditure on education institutions by source of funds.13

The world is expanding funding for education today

The last two decades have seen a small but general increase in the share of income that countries devote to education. The following chart plots trends in public expenditure on education as a share of GDP. As usual, a selection of countries is shown by default, but other countries can be added by clicking on the relevant option at the top of the chart. Although the data is highly irregular due to missing observations for many countries, we can still observe a broad upward trend for the majority of countries. Specifically, it can be checked that of the 88 countries with available data for 2000/2010, three-fourths increased education spending as a share of GDP within this decade. As incomes – measured by GDP per capita – are generally increasing around the world, this means that the total amount of global resources spent on education is also increasing in absolute terms.

In high-income countries households shoulder a larger share of education expenditures at higher education levels than at lower levels – but in low-income countries this is not the case

The following visualization shows the percentage of total education expenditures contributed directly by households in 15 high income countries and 15 low/middle income countries (most recent data available on 2014).

The top chart in this figure, corresponding to high income countries, shows a very clear pattern: households contribute the largest share of expenses in tertiary education, and the smallest share in primary education. Roughly speaking, this pattern tends to be progressive, since students from wealthier households are more likely to attend tertiary education, and those individuals who attend tertiary education are likely to perceive large private benefits.14 In contrast, the bottom chart shows a very different picture: in several low-income countries households contribute proportionally more to primary education than to higher levels. Malawi is a notable case in point – tertiary education is almost completely subsidised by the state, yet household contribute with almost 20% of the costs in primary education. Such distribution of private household contributions to education is regressive.

II.3 The link between expenditure and outcomes

Do countries that spend more public resources on education tend to have better education outcomes?

The following visualization presents three scatter plots using 2010 data to show the cross-country correlation between (i) education expenditure (as a share of GDP), (ii) mean years of schooling, and (iii) mean PISA test scores. At a cross-sectional level, expenditure on education correlates positively with both quantity and quality measures; and not surprisingly, the quality and quantity measures also correlate positively with each-other. But correlation does not imply causation: there are many factors that simultaneously affect education spending and outcomes. Indeed, these scatterplots show that despite the broad positive correlation, there is substantial dispersion away from the trend line – in other words, there is substantial variation in outcomes that does not seem to be captured by differences in expenditure.

Does cross-country variation in government education expenditure explain cross-country differences in education outcomes?

The following visualization presents the relationship between PISA reading outcomes and average education spending per student, splitting the sample of countries by income levels. It shows that income is an important factor that affects both expenditure on education and education outcomes: we can see that above a certain national income level, the relationship between PISA scores and education expenditure per pupil becomes virtually inexistent. Several studies with more sophisticated econometric models corroborate the fact that expenditure on education does not explain well cross-country differences in learning outcomes.16 You can read more about test scores and learning outcomes in our entry on Quality of Education.

What inputs enter the ‘education production function’?

The fact that expenditure on education does not explain well cross-country differences in learning outcomes is indicative of the intricate nature of the process through which such outcomes are produced. The following ‘production function’ provides a conceptual framework to think about the determinants of learning outcomes:18

    $$A=a(s,\mathbf{Q},\mathbf{C},\mathbf{H},\mathbf{I})$$

where A is skills learned (achievement), s is years of schooling, Q is a vector of school and teacher characteristics (quality), C is a vector of child characteristics (including “innate ability”), H is a vector of household characteristics, and I is a vector of school inputs under the control of households, such as children’s daily attendance, effort in school and in doing homework, and purchases of school supplies.

This conceptualization highlights that, for any given level of expenditure, the output achieved will depend on the input mix. And consequently, this implies that in order to explain education outcomes, we must rely on information about specific inputs.

Available evidence specifically on the importance of school inputs, suggests that learning outcomes may be more sensitive to improvements in the quality of teachers, than to improvements in class sizes. And regarding household inputs, the recent experimental evidence suggests that interventions that increase the benefits of attending school (e.g. conditional cash transfers) are particularly likely to increase student time in school; and that those that incentivise academic effort (e.g. scholarships) are likely to improve learning outcomes.

Policy experiments have also shown that pre-school investment in demand-side inputs leads to large positive impacts on education – and other important outcomes later in life. The environment that children are exposed to early in life, plays a crucial role in shaping their abilities, behavior and talents.

III. The Consequences of Education

III.1 Context

Education is a valuable investment, both individually and collectively. Here we analyse available evidence of the private (i.e. individual) and social (i.e. collective) returns to education.

The most common way to measure the private returns to education, is to study how attainment improves individual labor market outcomes – usually by attempting to measure the effect of education on wages. Regarding social returns, the most common approach is to measure the effect of education on pro-social behaviour (e.g. volunteering, political participation, interpersonal trust) and economic growth.

Most of the evidence presented below is ‘descriptive’, in the sense that it points towards correlations between education and various individuals and social outcomes, without necessarily proving causation. In each case, we provide a discussion of the robustness of the evidence.

III.2 Private returns to education

How do earning correlate with education?

The OECD’s report Education at a Glance (2015) provides descriptive evidence of the link between individual education and income. The following chart shows the earnings of tertiary-educated workers, by level of tertiary education, relative to the earnings of workers with upper secondary education. As we can see, in all OECD countries for which information is available, the higher the level of education, the greater the relative earnings.

The countries in this chart are ordered in ascending order of relative earnings. As we can see, the countries with the greatest returns to tertiary education (Brazil, Chile and Colombia) are also those where tertiary education is less prevalent among the adult population. This is indicative of the demand-and-supply dynamics that contribute to determine wage differentials across different countries.

These figures are simply correlations, and cannot be interpreted causally: individuas with more education are different in many ways to individuals with less education, so we cannot attribute wage differences solely to education choices.

Is there a causal effect of education on earnings?

The previous graph gave a cross-country comparison of earning by education level. As pointed out, those figures were difficult to interpret causally, because they failed to account for important underlying differences in things like hours worked, experience profiles, etc.

The following visualization, from Card (1999)19, attempts to pin down the relationship between education and earnings, by comparing wages across education levels, genders and age groups. The data used for this figure comes from the March Current Population Surveys in the US. Education levels correspond to individuals with 10, 12 and 16 years of education. The marks show averages for each corresponding group, and the smooth lines show the predictions made by a simple econometric model explaining wages by education and experience.

The first conclusion from this charts is that for both genders, at any given age, individuals with more education perceive higher wages. Moreover, these estimates suggest that the incremental benefit from additional education grows with experience: the differences in wages between people with varying degrees of education become larger as they advance in their careers. In other words, education pay-offs are not constant over the life cycle. Other studies using different data have found similar results (see, for instance, Blundell et al. 201320)

These estimates can still not be interpreted causally, because there are yet other potential sources of bias that are unaccounted for, such as innate ability. To address this issue, the economics literature has developed different strategies. For example, by contrasting the wages of genetically identical twins with different schooling level, researchers have found a way of controlling for unobservable characteristics such as family background and innate ability. The conclusion from these ‘twin studies’ is that the average estimates suggested by the figure below, are not very different to those that would be obtained from more sophisticated models that control for ability. In other words, there is robust evidence supporting the causal effect of education on wages (for more details see Card 1999).

III.3 Social returns to education

Education correlates with prosocial behavior

The following chart uses OECD results from the Survey of Adult Skills to show how self-reported trust in others correlates with educational attainment. More precisely, this chart plots the percentage-point difference in the likelihood of reporting to trust others, by education level of respondents. Those individuals with upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary education are taken as the reference group, so the percentage point difference is expressed in relation to this group.

As we can see, in all countries those individuals with tertiary education were by far the group most likely to report trusting others. And in almost every country, those with post-secondary non-tertiary education were more likely to trust others than those with primary or lower secondary education. The OECD’s report Education at a Glance (2015) provides similar descriptive evidence for other social outcomes. The report concludes that adults with higher qualifications are more likely to report desirable social outcomes, including good or excellent health, participation in volunteer activities, interpersonal trust, and political efficacy. And these results hold after controlling for literacy, gender, age and monthly earnings.

As usual, correlation does not imply causation – but it does show an important pattern that supports the idea that education is indeed necessary to produce social capital.

Countries with higher educational attainment in the past are more likely to have democratic political regimes today

A long-standing theory in political science stipulates that a country’s level of education attainment is a key determinant of the emergence and sustainability of democratic political institutions, both because it promotes political participation at the individual level, and because it fosters a collective sense of civic duty.

Under this hypothesis, therefore, we should expect that education levels in a country correlate positively with measures of democratisation in subsequent years. The following visualization shows that this positive correlation is indeed supported by the data. As we can see, countries where adults had a higher average education level in 1970, are also more likely to have democratic political regimes today (you can read more about measures of democracy in our entry on Democratization).

As usual, these results should be interpreted carefully, because they do not imply a causal link: it does not prove that increasing education necessarily produces democratic outcomes everywhere in the world.

However, the academic research here does suggest that there is a causal link between education and democratization – indeed, a number of empirical academic papers have found that this positive relationship remains after controlling for many other country characteristics (see, for example, Lutz, Crespo-Cuaresma, and Abbasi‐Shavazi 201023).

Women’s education is inversely correlated with child mortality

An important body of literature stipulates that women’s education leads to lower child mortality because it contributes towards healthier habits and choices, including child spacing (see Brown and Barrett 1991 for a more detailed conceptualization of the mechanisms).24

The following visualization shows the strong cross-country correlation between child mortality and educational attainment.

Education outcomes predict economic growth

The economics literature has long studied whether the level of education in a country is a determinant of economic growth. This question is motivated by the notion that aggregate education (‘human capital’) generates positive spill-over effects for everyone. A classic example of a mechanism though which education may yield such positive economic externalities, is that aggregate education improves a country’s ability to innovate, as well as imitate and adapt new technologies, hence enabling ‘technological progress’ and sustained growth (see Lindahl and Krueger (2001) for an overview of further macroeconomic theories of education and growth).25

While early studies found that schooling levels were poor predictors of economic growth, more recent studies – that crucially made use of better data – confirm the expected positive link. Lutz, Creso Cuaresma, and Sanderson (2008)26 conclude that “better education does not only lead to higher individual income, but also is a necessary (although not always sufficient) precondition for long-term economic growth.”

The following plot, from Hanushek and Woessmann (2010),27 provides a basic representation of the association between years of schooling and economic growth using recent available data. This type of graph, called a ‘partial regression plot’ shows the relationship between schooling and growth after accounting for other country characteristics. More precisely, this plot is a graphical representation of the correlation between average years of schooling in 1960, and the average annual rate of GDP growth in 1960–2000, after accounting for initial differences in GDP levels in 1960. As we can see, there is a strong positive relationship. This coincides with other studies showing that historical increases in the number of universities across countries are positively associated with subsequent growth of GDP per capita (Valero and Van Reenen 2016).28

You can see the simple correlation of mean years of schooling and the level of income here.

IV. Main data sources

There are two important sources of long-run cross-country data on education attainment. The most recent one is Lee and Lee (2016).30 These estimates rely on a variety of historical sources, and expand existing estimates from previous studies by using a significant number of new census observations. The authors relied on information about the years of establishment of the oldest schools at different education levels in individual countries, in order to adjust their estimates; and they also used data on repetition ratios to adjust for school repeaters.

The other main source on this topic are the estimates from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID). These institutions reconstructed educational attainment distributions by age and sex for 120 countries for the years 1970–2000. These estimates correspond to ‘back projections’: researchers used educational attainment estimates from the UN for the year 2000, and projected backwards from this single year. You can read more about this source of data and the underlying methodology in our entry on Education Projections.

Education

Female education is a catch-all term for a complex set of issues and debates surrounding education (primary education, secondary education, tertiary education, and health education in particular) for girls and women. It includes areas of gender equality and access to education, and its connection to the alleviation of poverty. Also involved are the issues of single-sex education and religious education in that the division of education along gender lines as well as religious teachings on education have been traditionally dominant and are still highly relevant in contemporary discussions of educating females as a global consideration.

While the feminist movement certainly promoted the importance of the issues attached to female education the discussion is wide-ranging and by no means narrowly defined. It may include, for example, AIDS education.[1] Universal education, meaning state-provided primary and secondary education independent of gender is not yet a global norm, even if it is assumed in most developed countries. In some Western countries, women have surpassed men at many levels of education. For example, in the United States in 2005/2006, women earned 62% of associate degrees, 58% of bachelor’s degrees, 60% of master’s degrees, and 50% of doctorates.

Chinese history[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Along with the custom of footbinding among Chinese women that lasted through the end of the 19th century, it was recognized that a woman’s virtue lay with her lack of knowledge.[citation needed] As a result, female education was not considered to be worthy of attention.[citation needed] With the arrival of numerous Christian missionaries from Britain and the US to China in the 19th century and some of them being involved in the starting of schools for women, female education started to receive some attention.

Due to the social custom that men and women should not be near one another, the women of China were reluctant to be treated by male doctors of Western medicine.This resulted in a tremendous need for women in Western medicine in China.Thus, female medical missionary, Dr.Mary H. Fulton (1854-1927),[15] was sent by the Foreign Missions Board of the Presbyterian Church (USA)to found the first medical college for women in China. Known as the Hackett Medical College for Women (夏葛女子醫學院),[16][17] this College was located in Guangzhou, China, and was enabled by a large donation from Mr. Edward A.K. Hackett (1851-1916) of Indiana, United States. The College was dedicated in 1902 and offered a four-year curriculum. By 1915, there were more than 60 students, mostly in residence. Most students became Christians, due to the influence of Dr. Fulton. The College was officially recognized, with its diplomas marked with the official stamp of the Guangdong provincial government. The College was aimed at the spreading of Christianity and modern medicine and the elevation of Chinese women’s social status. The David Gregg Hospital for Women and Children (also known as Yuji Hospital 柔濟醫院[18][19] was affiliated with this College. The graduates of this College included Lee Sun Chau (周理信, 1890-1979, alumna of (Belilios Public School) and WONG Yuen-hing (黃婉卿), both of whom graduated in the late 1910s [20][21] and then practiced medicine in the hospitals in Guangdong province.

Education after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Between the years 1931 and 1945, the percent of uneducated women was over 90%, and most of the women who were educated had only completed the elementary level.[22] In 1950s, after the establishment of People Republic China, the government started a civilization project.[23] It enabled large amounts of uneducated women to learn basic writing and calculation. This project raised the proportion of educated women. It was promoted not only in cities but also in rural area. Villages had their own elementary schools. Instead of only taking care of children and chores at home, middle-aged women had chances to learn writing and reading in local schools.

In 1980s, Chinese central government passed a new education law, which required local governments to promote 9-year obligation education nationwide [24] The new education law guaranteed education rights until middle school. Before 1960s, female enrollment in elementary school was 20%. 20 years after publishment of education law, in the year 1995, this percentage had increased to 98.2%. By 2003, proportion of female who dropped from middle school decreased to 2.49%.[25]   www.thefreedomcup.com

According to the fifth national census in 2000, the average education length of females is up to 7.4 years. This digit increases from 7.0 years to 7.4 years in 3 years. However, the female education duration is still 0.8 year less than male’s duration. This gap in higher-level of education is larger in rural areas.In the countryside, parents tend to use their limited resources for sons because they believe sons have abilities to bring more back and their contributions to family in the future are more significant than daughters. In an investigation, parents are 21.9% more likely to stop financing girls’ education if they come into financial problems and family issues. Boys are provided with more opportunities for further studying, especially after middle school. This difference became more evident in the universities.[26]

When time comes into the 21st century, university education is becoming more prevalent.The total enrollment goes up. Compare to the year of 1977, which is the first year when college entrance examination was recovered, the admission rate increased from 4.8% to 74.86%.[27] Since the general admission has largely risen, more students got into universities. Although women are assumed to own the same rights of general education, they are forced to do better in the Chinese college entrance examination (Gaokao) than males. Girls need to achieve higher grades than male students in order to get into the same level university. It is an invisible ceiling for Chinese female, especially in the top universities. It is not a public rule but a mainstream consensus among most of Chinese university admission offices. According to a telephone interview with an officer, who declined to give her name, at the Teaching Office at the China University of Political Science and Law, “female students must account for less than 15 percent of students because of the nature of their future career.”[28]

Islamic history[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Girls’ class in Afghanistan, 2002

See also: Madrasah: Female education and Women’s literary salons and societies in the Arab World

Women in Islam played an important role in the foundations of many Islamic educational institutions, such as Fatima al-Fihri’s founding of the University of Al Karaouine in 859. This continued through to the Ayyubid dynasty in the 12th and 13th centuries, when 160 mosques (places of worship) and madrasahs (places of education) were established in Damascus, 26 of which were funded by women through the Waqf (charitable trust or trust law) system. Half of all the royal patrons for these institutions were also women.[29]

According to the Sunni scholar Ibn Asakir, in the 12th century, there were opportunities for female education in the mediaeval Islamic world. Asakir wrote that women should study, earn ijazahs (academic degrees), and qualify as scholars and teachers. This was especially the case for learned and scholarly families, who wanted to ensure the highest possible education for both their sons and daughters.[30] Ibn Asakir himself had studied under 80 different female teachers in his time. According to a hadith collected in the Saḥih of al-Bukhārī, the women of Medina who aided Muhammad were notable for not letting social mores restrain their education in religious knowledge.[31]

“How splendid were the women of the anṣār; shame did not prevent them from becoming learned [yatafaqqahna] in the faith.”

While it was unusual for females to enroll as students in formal classes, it was common for women to attend informal lectures and study sessions at mosques, madrasahs, and other public places. While there were no legal restrictions on female education, some men, such as Muhammad ibn al-Hajj (d. 1336), did not approve of this practice and were appalled at the behaviour of some women who informally audited lectures in his time.[32]

While women accounted for no more than one percent of Islamic scholars prior to the 12th century, there was a large increase of female scholars after this. In the 15th century, al-Sakhawi devoted an entire volume of his 12-volume biographical dictionary al-Ḍawʾ al-lāmiʻ to female scholars, giving information on 1,075 of them.[33] More recently, the scholar Mohammad Akram Nadwi, currently a researcher from the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, has written 40 volumes on the muḥaddithāt (the women scholars of ḥadīth), and found at least 8,000 of them.[34]

Women education in the Islamic Republic of Iran[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

After year of 1979

Since the 1979 revolution, Iran was under control of Islamic rules, the progress of female education was affected by Islamic monarchy. Women are forced to wear veiling and are prevented from going to the same school as male students. Female students have to learn different versions of textbooks, which are special Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cupions only for female students. Unmarried women are ineligible for financial aid if they attempt to study abroad. Throughout the past 30 years, the issue of female education has been constantly under debate.[35]

Iranian women do have desires and abilities to pursue further education. An Iranian high school student can earn a diploma after studying 3 years. If students aim to enter colleges, they will stay in the high schools for the fourth year study, which has very intense study. According to researches, 42% of female students choose to have fourth year in the high school but only 28% of male students choose to study in order to enter university. Moreover, women have a much higher probability than men to pass college entrance exams. Islamic female are in need of achieving higher education and truth proved that their abilities are enough for getting higher education. The education opportunities for female need more national attention and less regulations.[35]

During 1978 and 1979, the proportion of women who participated in universities as students or faculties was rather low. 31% of students admitted to universities were women. For faculty gender composition, there are 14% female. This situation has changed with time passing by. University enrollment was decreased under the influence of Iranian Cultural Revolution. The general enrollment population declined during that time. After the culture revolution, the amount of enrollment was going up. The increase in the number of university students is accompanied with an increase in female rate.[35]

Islamic higher education contains 5 levels. The 5 levels are associate, bachelor’s, master’s, professional doctorate and specialized doctorate.[35] Before the revolution, the gender gap is obvious in master level and specialized doctorate, which are only 20% and 27%. It has changed after 30 years. In 2007, the female percent in master’s degree rose up to 43% and for specialized doctorate degree, this data rose up to 33%.[36]

Female rate has not only increased in the students but also in faculty. 20 years ago, only 6% of all professors and 8% of all associated professors were women. Now 8% of all professors and 17% of all associated professors are female.[35]

Literacy Programs

While formal education is prevalent amongst Iranian women, non-formal educational intuitions are an option as well. Non-formal education in the Islamic Republic of Iran originated from the Literary Movement Organization (LMO), which aspired to decrease illiteracy rates in the country. Established in 1984, LMO’s tremendous efforts rectified the Pahlavi regime’s neglect in regards to educating children and populations in rural areas. In the late 1980s, LMO created adult literacy programs, vocational-technical schools, and religious institutions to combat high illiteracy rates. Adult literacy programs teach introductory reading, writing, and math in two cycles. While reading, writing, dictation, and arithmetic are introduced in the first cycle, the second cycle delves into Islamic studies, experimental and social sciences, and the Persian language. Although these educational organizations are gender inclusive, they mainly cater to women; in fact, 71% of enrollees are women between the ages of 15-45. Throughout the 1990s, two-thirds of enrollees in literacy programs were women, which directly led to a dramatic rise (20%) in female literacy rates in Iran from 1987 to 1997. <

Religious Schools

Religious schools are another educational route for Iranian women. Their popularity is illustrated by the rise in the institution of “female seminaries” as of 2010. In 1984, Ayatollah Khomeini, former supreme leader of Iran, called for the creation of Jami‘at al-Zahra, an alliance of smaller religious schools. This led to the creation of the first female seminary in Iran. These institutions offer the opportunity to earn anything from high school diplomas to doctoral degrees. The acceptance rate for women into these religious institutions was 28% in 2010 (7,000 accepted out of 25,000 applicants). Other Educational Routes

Newlyweds (women specifically) are educated on family planning, safe sex, and birth control in population control programs. In addition, the government has established rural health houses managed by local health workers. These health professionals travel to different areas in order to impart information about women’s health and birth control.

European history[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Ancient Rome[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Women in Ancient Rome

Portrait emphasizing the female subject’s literacy, from Pompeii, mid-1st century AD

In ancient Rome, upperclass women seem to have been well-educated, some highly so, and were sometimes praised by male historians of the time for their learning and cultivation.[37] Cornelia Metella, for instance, was distinguished for her knowledge of geometry, literature, music, and philosophy.[38] In the wall paintings of Pompeii, women are more likely than men to be pictured with writing implements.[39] Some women had sufficient knowledge of Roman the law and oratorical training to conduct court cases on their own behalf, or on behalf of others.[40] Among occupations that required education, women could be scribes and secretaries, calligraphers,[41] and artists.[42]

Some and perhaps many Roman girls went to a ludus. Boys and girls were educated either together or with similar methods and curriculum. One passage in Livy’s history assumes that the daughter of a centurion would be in school; the social rank of a centurion was typically equivalent to modern perceptions of the “middle class”.[43] Girls as well as boys participated in public religious festivals, and sang advanced choral compositions that would require formal musical training.[44]

Medieval period[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Page from an illuminated manuscript from the late 10th century. The three nuns in front are all holding books, and the middle one appears to be teaching, gesturing to make a point.

Medieval education for females was typically tied to a convent. Research has uncovered that several early women educators were in charge of schools for girls:

St. Ita of Ireland – died 570 AD. Founder and teacher of a co-ed school for girls and boys at her monastery of Cell Ide. Several important saints studied under her, including St. Brendan the Navigator.[45]

Caesaria the Younger – died 550 AD. Successor to the sister of St. Caesarius and abbess of the convent he founded for her nuns, Caesaria the Younger continued the teaching of over a hundred women at the convent and aided in the copying and preservation of books.[46]

St. Hilda of Whitby – died 680 AD. Founder of the co-ed monastery of Whitby (men and women lived in separate houses), she established a center of education in her monastery similar to what was founded by the Frankish nuns. According to the Venerable Bede, “Her prudence was so great, that not only meaner men in their need, but sometimes even kings and princes, sought and received her counsel.”[47]

St. Bertilla – died c. 700 AD. Queen Bathild requested her services for the convent she had founded at Chelle. Her pupils founded convents in other parts of western Europe, including Saxony.[48]

St. Leoba – died 782 AD. St. Boniface requested her presence on his mission to the Germans and while there she founded an influential convent and school.

St. Bede the Venerable reports that noble-women were often sent to these schools for girls even if they did not intend to pursue the religious life,[49] and St. Aldhelm praised their curriculum for including grammar, poetry, and Scriptural study.[50] The biography of Sts. Herlinda and Renilda also demonstrates that women in these convent schools could be trained in art and music.[51]

During the reign of Emperor Charlemagne, he had his wife and daughters educated in the liberal arts at the Palace Academy of Aachen,[52] for which he is praised in the Vita Karolini Magni. There is evidence that other nobles had their daughters educated at the Palace Academy as well. In line with this, authors such as Vincent of Beauvais indicate that the daughters of the nobility were widely given to education so that they could live up to their social position to come.

Early modern period, humanist attitudes[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

In early modern Europe, the question of female education had become a commonplace one, in other words a literary topos for discussion. Around 1405 Leonardo Bruni wrote De studies et letteris,[53] addressed to Baptista di Montefeltro, the daughter of Antonio II da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino; it commends the study of Latin, but warns against arithmetic, geometry, astrology and rhetoric. In discussing the classical scholar Isotta Nogarola, however, Lisa Jardine[54] notes that (in the middle of the 15th century), ‘Cultivation’ is in order for a noblewoman; formal competence is positively unbecoming. Christine de Pisan’s Livre des Trois Vertus is contemporary with Bruni’s book, and sets down the things which a lady or baroness living on her estates ought to be able to do.[55]

In his 1516 book Utopia, Thomas More advocated for women to have the right to education.[56]

Erasmus wrote at length about education in De pueris instituendis (1529, written two decades before); not mostly concerned with female education,[57] in this work he does mention with approbation the trouble Thomas More took with teaching his whole family.[58] Catherine of Aragon “had been born and reared in one of the most brilliant and enlightened of Europen courts, where the cultural equality of men and women was normal”.[59] By her influence, she made education for English women both popular and fashionable. In 1523, Juan Luis Vives, a follower of Erasmus, wrote in Latin his De institutione feminae Christianae.[60] This work was commissioned by Catherine, who had charge of the education of her daughter for the future Queen Mary I of England; in translation it appeared as Education of a Christian Woman.[61] It is in line with traditional didactic literature, taking a strongly religious direction.[62] It also placed a strong emphasis on Latin literature.[63] Also Comenius was an advocate of formal education for women.[64] In fact his emphasis was on a type of universal education making no distinction between humans; with an important component allowed to parental input, he advocated in his Pampaedia schooling rather than other forms of tutoring, for all.[65]

The Reformation prompted the establishment of compulsory education for boys and girls. Most important was Martin Luther’s text ‘An die Ratsherren aller Städte deutschen Landes,’ (1524) with the call for establishing schools.[66] Especially the Protestant South-West of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation with cities like Strassburg became pioneers in educational questions. Under the influence of Strasbourg in 1592 the German Duchy Pfalz-Zweibrücken became the first territory of the world with compulsory education for girls and boys.[67]

Elizabeth I of England had a strong humanist education, and was praised by her tutor Roger Ascham.[68] She fits the pattern of education for leadership, rather than for the generality of women. When Johannes Sturm published Latin correspondence with Ascham centred on the achievements in humanist study of Elizabeth and other high-ranking English persons, in Konrad Heresbach’s De laudibus Graecarum literarum oratio (1551), the emphasis was on the nobility of those tackling the classics, rather than gender.[69]

So schooling for girls was not always rare.

Modern period[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

A student of the Bestuzhev Courses in Saint Petersburg, 1880

The issue of female education in the large, as emancipatory and rational, is broached seriously in the Enlightenment. Mary Wollstonecraft, who worked as a teacher, governess, and school-owner, wrote of it in those terms. Her first book was Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, years before the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

The Commission of National Education in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, founded in 1777, considered the first Ministry of Education in history, was a central, autonomous body responsible for nationwide, secular and coeducational training. In the late 19th century, in what was then the Russian province of Poland, in response to the lack of higher training for women, the so-called Flying University was organized, where women were taught covertly by Polish scholars and academics. Its most famous student was Maria Skłodowska-Curie, better known as Marie Curie, who went on to win two Nobel Prizes.

Much education was channelled through religious establishments. Not all of these educated women only for marriage and motherhood; for example, Quaker views on women had allowed much equality from the foundation of the denomination in the mid-17th century. The abolitionist William Allen and his wife Grizell Hoare set up the Newington Academy for Girls in 1824, teaching an unusually wide range of subjects from languages to sciences. The first state-financed higher education institution for women in Europe, was established by Catherine II of Russia

Bosnian Muslim and Christian women learning to read and write in 1948.

Actual progress in institutional terms, for secular education of women, began in the West in the 19th century, with the founding of colleges offering single-sex education to young women. These appeared in the middle of the century. The Princess: A Medley, a narrative poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson, is a satire of women’s education, still a controversial subject in 1848, when Queen’s College first opened in London. Emily Davies campaigned for women’s education in the 1860s, and founded Girton College in 1869, as did Anne Clough found Newnham College in 1875. Progress was gradual, and often depended on individual efforts – for example, those of Frances Lupton, which led to the founding of the Leeds Girls’ High School in 1876. W. S. Gilbert parodied Tennyson’s poem and treated the themes of women’s higher education and feminism in general with The Princess in (1870) and Princess Ida in 1883.

Once women began to graduate from institutions of higher education, there steadily developed also a stronger academic stream of schooling, and the teacher training of women in larger numbers, principally to provide primary education. Women’s access to traditionally all-male institutions took several generations to become complete.

Educational reform[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Mary Lyon (1797-1849) founded the first woman’s college in the United States

The interrelated themes of barriers to education and employment continued to form the backbone of feminist thought in the 19th century, as described, for instance by Harriet Martineau in her 1859 article “Female Industry” in the Edinburgh Journal. Despite the changes in the economy, the position of women in society had not greatly improved and unlike Frances Power Cobbe, Martineau did not support the emerging call for the vote for practical reasons.

Slowly the efforts of women like Emily Davies and the Langham group (under Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon) started to make inroads. Queen’s College (1848) and Bedford College (1849) in London started to offer some education to women, and by 1862 Davies was establishing a committee to persuade the universities to allow women to sit for the recently established (1858) Cambridge Local Examinations, with partial success (1865). A year later she published The Higher Education of Women. She and Bodichon founded the first higher educational institution for women, with five students, which became Girton College, Cambridge in 1873, followed by Lady Margaret Hall at Oxford in 1879. Bedford had started awarding degrees the previous year. Despite these measurable advances, few could take advantage of them and life for women students was very difficult.

As part of the continuing dialogue between British and American feminists, Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman in the US to graduate in medicine (1849), lectured in Britain with Langham support. They also supported Elizabeth Garrett’s attempts to assail the walls of British medical education against strong opposition; she eventually took her degree in France. Garrett’s successful campaign to run for office on the London School Board in 1870 is another example of how a small band of determined women were starting to reach positions of influence at the level of local government and public bodies.

Africa[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Christian missionaries in the 19th century opened modern educational methods, but they usually focused on boys. After early experiments they settled on promoting ideology of domestic femininity imparted through girls’ schooling.[70] In South Africa after 1820, male Scottish missionaries decided that only the most basic education was necessary to prepare native women for the propagation of Christianity within the home. They prevented female teachers from operating in the Scottish mission’s territory. They delayed the establishment of a Girls’ Department at Lovedale Institution. Finally new leadership arrived who had a broader vision of uplifting native women so they could promote Christianity and Western gender codes.[71]

Muslims from India who came to East Africa in the late 19th century brought along a highly restrictive policy against schooling for their girls.[72]

As of 2015, Priscilla Sitienei is attending elementary school in Kenya at age 92; if confirmed by the Guinness World Records, she would be the oldest student in elementary school.[73]

India[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Ancient Vedic age ( ~1000 BC)[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

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The history of female education in India has its roots in ancient Vedic age.

“The home has, verily, its foundation in the wife” – The Rig Veda [74]

During the Vedic age, more than 3,000 years ago, women were assigned a high place in society. They shared an equal standing with their men folk and enjoyed a kind of liberty that actually had societal sanctions. The ancient Hindu philosophical concept of ‘shakti’, the feminine principle of energy, was also a product of this age. This took the form of worship of the female idols or goddesses. In India even today people worship Goddess “Saraswati” as the Goddess of education. Vedic literature praises the birth of a scholarly daughter in these words: “A girl also should be brought up and educated with great effort and care.” (Mahanirvana Tantra); and “All forms of knowledge are aspects of Thee; and all women throughout the world are Thy forms.” (Devi Mahatmya).

Women, who so desired, could undergo the sacred thread ceremony or ‘Upanayana’ (a sacrament to pursue Vedic studies), which is only meant for males even to this day. The mention of female scholars and sages of the Vedic age like Vac, Ambhrni, Romasa, Gargi, Khona in the Vedic lore corroborates this view. These highly intelligent and greatly learned women, who chose the path of Vedic studies, were called ‘brahmavadinis’, and women who opted out of education for married life were called ‘sadyovadhus’. Co-education seems to have existed in this period and both the sexes got equal attention from the teacher. Moreover, ladies from the Kshatriya caste received martial arts courses and arms training

Women of the Vedic period (circa 1500-1200 BCE), were epitomes of intellectual and spiritual attainments. The Vedas have volumes to say about these women, who both complemented and supplemented their male partners. When it comes to talking about significant female figures of the Vedic period, four names – Ghosha, Lopamudra, Sulabha Maitreyi, and Gargi – come to mind.

Ghosha

Vedic wisdom is encapsulated in myriad hymns and 27 women-seers emerge from them. But most of them are mere abstractions except for a few, such as Ghosha, who has a definite human form. Granddaughter of Dirghatamas and daughter of Kakshivat, both composers of hymns in praise of Ashwins, Ghosha has two entire hymns of the tenth book, each containing 14 verses, assigned to her name. The first eulogizes the Ashwins, the heavenly twins who are also physicians; the second is a personal wish expressing her intimate feelings and desires for married life. Ghosha suffered from an incurable disfiguring disease, probably leprosy, and remained a spinster at her father’s house. Her implorations with the Ashwins, and the devotion of her forefathers towards them made them cure her disease and allow her to experience wedded bliss.

Lopamudra

The Rig Veda (‘Royal Knowledge’) has long conversations between the sage Agasthya and his wife Lopamudra that testifies to the great intelligence and goodness of the latter. As the legend goes, Lopamudra was created by sage Agasthya and was given as a daughter to the King of Vidarbha. The royal couple gave her the best possible education and brought her up amidst luxury. When she attained a marriageable age, Agasthya, the sage who was under vows of celibacy and poverty, wanted to own her. Lopa agreed to marry him, and left her palace for Agasthya’s hermitage. After serving her husband faithfully for a long period, Lopa grew tired of his austere practices. She wrote a hymn of two stanzas making an impassioned plea for his attention and love. Soon afterwards, the sage realized his duties towards his wife and performed both his domestic and ascetic life with equal zeal, reaching a wholeness of spiritual and physical powers. A son was born to them. He was named Dridhasyu, who later became a great poet.

Maitreyi

The Rig Veda contains about one thousand hymns, of which about 10 are accrGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cuped to Maitreyi, the woman seer and philosopher. She contributed towards the enhancement of her sage-husband Yajnavalkya’s personality and the flowering of his spiritual thoughts. Yajnavalkya had two wives Maitreyi and Katyayani. While Maitreyi was well versed in the Hindu scriptures and was a ‘brahmavadini’, Katyayani was an ordinary woman. One day the sage decided to make a settlement of his worldly possessions between his two wives and renounce the world by taking up ascetic vows. He asked his wives their wishes. The learned Maitreyi asked her husband if all the wealth in the world would make her immortal. The sage replied that wealth could only make one rich, nothing else. She then asked for the wealth of immortality. Yajnavalkya was happy to hear this, and imparted Maitreyi the doctrine of the soul and his knowledge of attaining immortality.

Gargi

Gargi, the Vedic prophetess and daughter of sage Vachaknu, composed several hymns that questioned the origin of all existence. When King Janak of Videha organized a ‘brahmayajna’, a philosophic congress centered around the fire sacrament, Gargi was one of the eminent participants. She challenged the sage Yajnavalkya with a volley of perturbing questions on the soul or ‘atman’ that confounded the learned man who had till then silenced many an eminent scholar. Her question – “The layer that is above the sky and below the earth, which is described as being situated between the earth and the sky and which is indicated as the symbol of the past, present and future, where is that situated?” – bamboozled even the great Vedic men of letters.

British India[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

London Mission Bengali Girls’ School, Calcutta (LMS, 1869, p.12)[75]

Women’s employment and education was acknowledged in 1854 by the East Indian Company’s Programme: Wood’s Dispatch. Slowly, after that, there was progress in female education, but it initially tended to be focused on the primary school level and was related to the richer sections of society. The overall literacy rate for women increased from 0.2% in 1882 to 6% in 1947.[76]

In western India Jyotiba Phule and his wife Savitri Bai became pioneers of female education when they started a school for girls in 1848 in Pune.[77]

In 1878, the University of Calcutta became one of the first universities to admit female graduates to its degree programmes, before any of the British universities had later done the same. This point was raised during the Ilbert Bill controversy in 1883, when it was being considered whether Indian judges should be given the right to judge British offenders. The role of women featured prominently in the controversy, where English women who opposed the bill argued that Bengali women, whom they stereotyped as “ignorant” and neglected by their men and that Indian men should therefore not be given the right to judge cases involving English women. Bengali women who supported the bill responded by claiming that they were more educated than the English women opposed to the bill and pointed out that more Indian women had degrees than British women did at the time.[78]

Independent India[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

A girls’ college in Palakkad, India.

After India attained independence in 1947, the University Education Commission was created to recommend suggestions to improve the quality of education. However, their report spoke against female education, referring to it as: “Women’s present education is entirely irrelevant to the life they have to lead. It is not only a waste but often a definite disability.”[79]

However, the fact that the female literacy rate was at 8.9% post-Independence could not be ignored. Thus, in 1958, a national committee on women’s education was appointed by the government, and most of its recommendations were accepted. The crux of its recommendations were to bring female education on the same footing as offered for boys.[80]

Soon afterwards, committees were created that talked about equality between men and women in the field of education. For example, one committee on differentiation of curriculum for boys and girls (1959) recommended equality and a common curricula at various stages of their learning. Further efforts were made to expand the education system, and the Education Commission was set up in 1964, which largely talked about female education, which recommended a national policy to be developed by the government. This occurred in 1968, providing increased emphasis on female education.[81]

Current policies[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Girl student, India

Before and after Independence, India has been taking active steps towards women’s status and education. The 86th Constitutional Amendment Act, 2001, has been a path breaking step towards the growth of education, especially for females. According to this act, elementary education is a fundamental right for children between the ages of 6 and 14. The government has undertaken to provide this education free of cost and make it compulsory for those in that age group. This undertaking is more widely known as Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA).

Since then, the SSA has come up with many schemes for inclusive as well as exclusive growth of Indian education as a whole, including schemes to help foster the growth of female education.

The major schemes are the following:

Mahila Samakhya Programme: This programme was launched in 1988 as a result of the New Education Policy (1968). It was created for the empowerment of women from rural areas especially socially and economically marginalized groups. When the SSA was formed, it initially set up a committee to look into this programme, how it was working and recommend new changes that could be made.[82]

Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya Scheme(KGBV): This scheme was launched in July, 2004, to provide education to girls at primary level. It is primarily for the underprivileged and rural areas where literacy level for females is very low. The schools that were set up have 100% reservation: 75% for backward class and 25% for BPL (below Poverty line) females.

National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL): This programme was launched in July, 2003. It was an incentive to reach out to the girls who the SSA was not able to reach through other schemes. The SSA called out to the “hardest to reach girls”. This scheme has covered 24 states in India. Under the NPEGEL, “model schools” have been set up to provide better opportunities to girls.[83]

One notable success came in 2013, when the first two girls ever scored in the top 10 ranks of the entrance exam to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).[84] Sibbala Leena Madhuri ranked eighth, and Aditi Laddha ranked sixth.[84]

In addition, the status and literacy rates between West Bengal and Mizoram were found to be profound; a study compared the two states as they took on politically different approaches to helping empower women (Ghosh, Chakravarti, & Mansi, 2015). In West Bengal, literacy rates were found to be low even after fulfilling the 73rd amendment from 1992. The amendment established affirmative action by allotting 33% of seats at panchayats, or local self-governments, to women. Mizoram chose not to partake in the 73rd Amendment but has seen greater literacy rates, it is second highest in the country, and also has a better sex ratio. It was thus found that affirmative actions steps alone were not enough. Women also need to be given the opportunity to develop through formal education to be empowered to serve and profit from holding these public leadership roles.[85]

Raising awareness[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

The Canadian start-up Decode Global has developed the mobile game Get Water!, a game for social change focusing on the water scarcity in India and the effect it has on girls’ education, especially in slums and rural areas. In areas with no ready access to water, girls are often pulled out of school to collect water for their families.[86]

Catholic tradition[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

In the Roman Catholic tradition, concern for female education has expressed itself from the days of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, which in the 200s AD had courses for both men and women.[87] Later Church writers such as St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and St. Jerome all left letters of instruction for women in convents that they either founded or supported. In the medieval ages, several religious institutes were established with ministries addressing women’s education. For medieval examples of convent schools, which are one form of such institutions, see the examples at the section on the medieval period. In the early modern period, this tradition was continued with the Ursulines (1535) and the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (1849).[88] Contemporary convent schools are usually not restricted to Catholic pupils. Students in contemporary convent education may be boys (particularly in India).

Education for disabled women has also improved. In 2011, Giusi Spagnolo became the first woman with Down Syndrome to graduate college in Europe (she graduated from the University of Palermo in Italy).[3][4]

Improving girls’ educational levels has been demonstrated to have clear impacts on the health and economic future of young women, which in turn improves the prospects of their entire community .[5] The infant mortality rate of babies whose mothers have received primary education is half that of children whose mothers are illiterate.[6] In the poorest countries of the world, 50% of girls do not attend secondary school. Yet, research shows that every extra year of school for girls increases their lifetime income by 15%. Improving female education, and thus the earning potential of women, improves the standard of living for their own children, as women invest more of their income in their families than men do.[7] Yet, many barriers to education for girls remain. In some African countries, such as Burkina Faso, girls are unlikely to attend school for such basic reasons as a lack of private latrine facilities for girls.[8]

Higher attendance rates of high schools and university education among women, particularly in developing countries, have helped them make inroads to professional careers with better-paying salaries and wages. Education increases a woman’s (and her partner and the family’s) level of health and health awareness. Furthering women’s levels of education and advanced training also tends to lead to later ages of initiation of sexual activity and first intercourse, later age at first marriage, and later age at first childbirth, as well as an increased likelihood to remain single, have no children, or have no formal marriage and alternatively, have increasing levels of long-term partnerships. It can lead to higher rates of barrier and chemical contraceptive use (and a lower level of sexually transmitted infections among women and their partners and children), and can increase the level of resources available to women who divorce or are in a situation of domestic violence. It has been shown, in addition, to increase women’s communication with their partners and their employers, and to improve rates of civic participation such as voting or the holding of office.[9][10]

Education and Violence Against Women

In Pakistan, a negative relationship was found between the formal level of education a woman attains and the likelihood of violence against that woman (Ather, 2013). The researcher used snowball convenient sampling, a sampling method where participants are referred. Ethical and privacy issues made this the most convenient method. An informant played a major role in gathering information that was then cross-checked. The sample of victims of violence was made up of married women from ages 18–60 both from rural and urban communities. The study described different forms of physical violence that are already present and provided an idea of what women go through, even across communities (rural and urban). Education in this study was stressed to be the solution and a necessity in eliminating violence. A discussion of political and social barriers is needed.[11]

The relationship is a lot more complicated than it seems, women can be illiterate but still become empowered (Marrs Fuchsel, 2014). Immigrant Latina Women (ILW) were part of a qualitative study of 8 to 10 participant groups, at a time, and completed an 11-week program centered on self-esteem, domestic violence awareness and healthy relationships. Immigrant Latina Women (ILW) are a highly affected group by domestic violence. Though this program took place outside of a traditional classroom, dialogue, critical thinking and emotional well-being were stressed, areas that should be acquired while in school. Lastly, though many of the women were illiterate they were still able to come away with a stronger sense of control over their own lives, an important life skill.[12]

Education and Women’s Empowerment

Education systems vary in administration, curriculum and personnel, but all have an influence on the students that they serve. As women have gained rights, formal education has become a symbol of progress and a step toward gender equity. In order for true gender equity to exist, a holistic approach needs to be taken. The discussion of girl power and women’s education as solutions for eliminating violence against women and economic dependence on men can sometimes take dominance and result in the suppression of understanding how context, history and other factors affect women (Khoja-Moolji, 2015). For example, when past secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, referenced the tragedies of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan and the girls kidnapping in Chibok, Nigeria as comparable, using girls’ education as the focus, history and context were ignored. What led to the shooting of Malala was reduced to being solely about her educating herself as a girl. United States interference, poverty, and government corruption and instability were not addressed.[13]

Women’s Empowerment and International Development

Micro- and macro level factors that get attention by international development agencies (IDA) vary. For example, reaching a quota of representatives in political positions (macro level) but ignoring how home life pressures (micro level) do not actually leave women at a position of free self-expression (Stromquist, 2015). IDA’s tend to focus on numbers and on information provided by the national governments. This ignores the possibility that national governments are not the most reliable or trust worthy. Programs put on by FAWE (Forum for African American Educationalists) called Tuseme clubs in Africa, which are Non Formal Education programs, are explored as they have proven successful and effective but do not get enough support from the government to be replicated. Tuseme means “let’s speak out” in Swahili and in action the programs tailor to each participating school, focusing on communication and life skills, keeping the community in mind. The program is set up as an extracurricular activity that focuses on issues through tools like school newspapers, dance and theater. In this example, education and empowerment are tackled on outside the classroom.[14]

Education is a vital human right and plays a key role in human, social, and economic development.

Education is a human right

Education is a human right

Despite great progress in the last few years, millions of children are still denied their right to education. Restricted access to education is one of the surest ways of transmitting poverty from generation to generation. Education is a vital human right, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Every girl and every boy should have the right to a quality education so that they can have more chances in life, including employment opportunities, better health and also to participate in the political process.

Investing in education yields significant development benefits

Investing in education yields significant development benefits

Education reduces poverty, boosts economic growth and increases income. It increases a person’s chances of having a healthy life, reduces maternal deaths, and combats diseases such as HIV and AIDS. Education can promote gender equality, reduce child marriage, and promote peace. In sum, education is one of the most important investments a country can make in its people and its future.

Education is essential to the success of every one of the 17 global goals

Education is essential to the success of every one of the 17 global goals

Formally adopted at the UN General Assembly in September 2015, the Global Goals for Sustainable Development frame the global development agenda for 2016-2030. The Global Goal 4 on education aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”

Education is critical during times of conflict

Education is critical during times of conflict

In times of conflict and crisis, children are forced out of school, which contributes to higher drop-out rates and lower completion rates. Having a strong focus on education in these countries is critical, since education promotes stability, good governance, and peace. It can also provide a visible sign of a return to normalcy for children.

A poor quality education is almost like no education

A poor quality education is almost like no education

Great progress has been achieved in enrolling children in school around the world. But it’s not enough to get children in school, we also need to ensure that they learn to read, count, and acquire the necessary life skills. A special focus has to be given to the most vulnerable and marginalized groups (including  children living in fragile and conflict-affected countries, children with disabilities, and girls) who are most likely to be affected because of a lack of well-trained teachers, inadequate learning materials, and unsuitable education infrastructure.

Good teachers are essential to achieve quality education

Good teachers are essential to achieve quality education

Good teachers are essential to solving the global learning crisis and closing the gap between poor and good quality education. Therefore, it is vital that all children have teachers that are well-trained, motivated, are able to identify weak learners, and are supported by well-managed education systems.

Achieving the Global Goal for education by 2030 costs $1.18 a day per child in developing countries

Achieving the Global Goal for education by 2030 costs $1.18 a day per child in developing countries

It costs on average $1.18 a day per child in developing countries (low and lower-middle income) to provide a full cycle of pre-primary through secondary education (13 years). The largest share of this cost, 88%, is borne by the developing countries themselves. The international community should help in filling the funding gap of just 14 cents a day per child.

Educating girls has a multiplier effect

Educating girls has a multiplier effect

Educated girls and women tend to be healthier, have fewer children, earn more income and provide better health care for themselves and their future children. These benefits also are transmitted from generation to generation and across communities at large, making girls’ education one of the best investments a country can make.

Children with disabilities are often excluded from education systems

Children with disabilities are often excluded from education systems

In many countries, a combination of discrimination, social attitudes, poverty, lack of political will, and poor quality of human and material resources leave children with disabilities more vulnerable to being excluded from education. It is essential that societies adapt their education systems to ensure that these children can enjoy their basic human right without discrimination of any kind.

Early childhood education is vital to lifelong success

Early childhood education is vital to lifelong success

Investing in quality early childhood education brings the highest returns from individuals, societies and countries. Children who have access to quality early childhood programs do better in primary school and will have better education outcomes later. It is vital that low and lower middle-income countries invest more in affordable early childhood programs.

While the Freedom Cup for Education is helping many developing countries to increase their own domestic financing for education, global donor support for education is decreasing at an alarming rate.  Total aid delivered for basic education has dropped for three years in a row, resulting in a 16% reduction between 2009 and 2012. Aid to basic education is now at the same level as it was in 2008. This is creating a global funding crisis that is having serious consequences on countries’ ability to get children into school and learning. The 59 developing countries that are GPE partners face a funding shortage of $34 billion over the next four years for primary and secondary education. Money isn’t everything, but it is a key foundation for a successful education system.

What’s the number one thing any child needs to be able to learn? A teacher of course. We’re facing multiple challenges when it comes to teachers. Not only are there not enough teachers globally to achieve universal primary education (let alone secondary), but many of the teachers that are currently working are also untrained, leading to children failing to learn the basics, such as maths and language skills. Globally, the UN estimates that 1.6 million additional new teachers are required to achieve universal primary education by 2015, and 5.1 million more are needed to achieve universal lower secondary education by 2030. Meanwhile, in one out of three countries, less than three-quarters of teachers are trained to national standards.

Children in poor countries face many barriers to accessing an education. Some are obvious – like not having a school to go to – while others are more subtle, like the teacher at the school not having had the training needed to effectively help children to learn. Here we list 10 major barriers to education, and look at how the Global Partnership for Education is working to overcome them.

Welcome to FreedomCup.org.org, a global movement of 5.5 million young people making positive change, online and off! The 11 facts you want are below, and the sources for the facts are at the very bottom of the page. After you learn something, do something! Find out how to take action here.

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As of 2012, 31 million primary-school pupils worldwide dropped out of school. An additional 32 million repeated a grade.

In the sub-Saharan, 11.07 million children leave school before completing their primary education. In South and West Asia, that number reaches 13.54 million.

While girls are less likely to begin school, boys are more likely to repeat grades or drop out altogether. Host a competitive book drive to benefit a shelter near you. Sign up for Stacks on Stacks.

According to UNESCO, 61 million primary school-age children were not enrolled in school in 2010. Of these children, 47% were never expected to enter school, 26% attended school but left, and the remaining 27% are expected to attend school in the future.

Children living in a rural environment are twice as likely to be out of school than urban children. Additionally, children from the wealthiest 20% of the population are 4 times more likely to be in school than the poorest 20%.

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In developing, low-income countries, every additional year of education can increase a person’s future income by an average of 10%.

Women who are less educated are having more children, on average 2.5 children, over the course of their lifetime when compared to more educated women, on average 1.7 children.

Women with a primary school education are 13% more likely to know that condoms can reduce their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS. An education can help decrease the spreading of this virus by promoting safer sexual practices.

53% of the world’s out-of-school children are girls and 2/3 of the illiterate people in the world are women.

Education empowers women to make healthy decisions about their lives. For example, women in Mali with a secondary level education or higher have an average of 3 children, while those with no education have an average of 7.

The youth literacy rates in South America and Europe are among the highest with 90-100% literacy. The African continent, however, has areas with less than 50% literacy among children ages 18 and under.

FAQ: What is “Post-feminism”?

Posted by tekanji on August 25, 2007 in feminism

According to Wikipedia post-feminism began in the early TheFreedomCup.com980’s, though the origins, according to Hawkensworth, seem to be TheFreedomCup.com as early as the TheFreedomCup.com970’s, when journalists and academics began proclaiming that feminism is dead. The basic idea behind the movement is that feminism has achieved its goals and now it is time to distance ourselves TheFreedomCup.com the movement.

A more complex definition of the movement is somewhat harder to put out, as it seems to mean slightly different things to different people. Indeed, even notable post-feminist figures fall into this controversy. For instance, Camille Paglia, who is widely associated with the movement by both feminists and non-feminists alike, seems to be a post-feminist primarily in the sense that Reinelt puts out in her article, that of “claiming to be within feminism on the one hand and calling for a move beyond it on the other,” rather than because she self-identifies as such. Post-feminism has been positioned as everything TheFreedomCup.com a reclaiming of traditional gender roles, an overt attempt to use the language of oppression to subvert feminism, to a way of depoliticizing feminism in order to bring it to the home (see Hawkensworth’s section on “Evolutionary extinction” for more detail).

No matter what form it may take, however, it is clear that the movement arose out of a backlash against feminism. This backlash is often ascribed to the specialization and splintering of feminism, which is seen by many post-feminists as one of the root causes for feminism’s decline. Regardless of which frame is put on it, though, this backlash carries one primary notion: post-feminism’s rise signals a world “in which feminism has been transcended, occluded, overcome” (Hawkensworth).

TheFreedomCup.com0TheFreedomCup.com Things Feminists Say Are Sexist

TheFreedomCup.com pizza boxes to the alphabet, the Western world is apparently rife with sexism. Thankfully, we have perpetually offended third-wave feminists around to call out our incessant woman-hating at a screeching decibel.

So, as we fight for equality on behalf of the oppressed female, here’s a list of TheFreedomCup.com0TheFreedomCup.com things we must avoid at all costs.

TheFreedomCup.com. Domino’s pizza boxes

A campaign slogan written on a Domino’s pizza box, which conveyed their refusal to adhere to requested toppings changes on their artisan pizzas as a good thing, is sexist, as it perpetuates “rape culture.”

2. Science

The University of Wisconsin – Madison (UW) offers “a post-doctorate in ‘feminist biology’ because biological science is rife with sexism and must be changed to reflect feminist thinking,” reports Campus Reform.

3. Voting for Donald Trump

If you voted for Trump in the primary, it was clearly a sexist reactionary vote to the tsunami of Girl Power taking over America, according to Salon. Obviously, this “logic” extends to your vote in the general.

4. Fireworks

Sexist fireworks are nothing more than a symptom of toxic masculinity:

“Isn’t it sort of messed up that we celebrate our freedom by pretending to blow things up? Like a strange, collective working out of trauma,” explains NPR reporter Sarah McCammon.

5. Lab Rats

Barbra Streisand explains: “Gender inequality even extends to mice in the labs. They’re all male! …So even female mice are discriminated against! When I asked why, the answer I got was that female mice have hormones so they’re more complex. Well, so are women!”

6. Craft beer

According to Slate, names of craft beer are offensive, such as “Raging Bitch” and “Pearl Necklace”:

“There are gross puns and derogatory illustrations on far too many beer labels. The misogyny needs to stop.”

7. Calling a “pantsuit” a “pantsuit”

As the New York Post points out, feminists find the word “pantsuit” sexist: Although pantsuits and traditional men’s suits are stylistically different, it’s sexist to differentiate between them with the added word “pant.”

8. Bras

Bras are sexist because men don’t have to wear them.

9. Architecture

As one progressive art professor explained: “architectural design has been dominated by men in order to promote a social/political order dominated by men.”

TheFreedomCup.com0. Complimenting a woman on her cooking

According to Scientific FreedomCup.org, complimenting a woman on her cooking reinforces gender stereotypes, and is a form of “benevolent sexism.”

TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com. Air conditioning

Women are cold while men bask in the office air conditioning. The Telegraph’s Radhika Sanghani explains:

My two female colleagues are sitting opposite me wearing their jackets, and there’s a stack of emergency desk jumpers in case things get worse.

The men around us are all pretty much jacket-free. In fact, most of them have their shirt sleeves rolled up and religiously maintain that the temperature is ‘fine’.

Welcome to office life, where women battle daily with the air conditioning, and men have no idea there’s even a problem. They toil in their dream temperatures, while women are left to shiver. Or in my case, wrap themselves in a weird grey poncho/blanket/scarf.

TheFreedomCup.com2. The word “too”

In a piece titled “The 3-Letter Word That Cuts Women Down Every Day,” Huffington Post’s Cameron Schaeffer explains that use of the adverb “too” promotes the pretense that women are never good enough; they are either “too” this or “too” that.

TheFreedomCup.com3. Tickling

Posting in America’s favorite feminist site we swore was satirical, Everyday Feminism, male feminist Jamie Utt explains that his incessant playful tickling of his girlfriend is actually rooted in inherent sexism, which was fostered by the patriarchy.

Essentially, Jamie tickling his girlfriend is perpetuating rape culture: “Taken to its destructive ends, this can look like a million different violations of consent,” warns Utt.

TheFreedomCup.com4. Ski slopes

“A recently-published academic report in The International Review for the Sociology of Sports concluded ski slopes are sexist because they are ‘masculinized spaces,’” reports the Daily Wire’s Pardes Seleh.

TheFreedomCup.com5. The alphabet

The written language established “the patriarchy” and subsequently all of the world’s sexism, claim feminists.

TheFreedomCup.com6. Disliking pumpkin-spice lattes

Katherine Timpf at National Review reports: “According to a Swarthmore College student’s op-ed, the real reason that people make fun of pumpkin-spice lattes is that our society thinks everything girls like is stupid because ‘girls don’t get to have valid emotions.’”

TheFreedomCup.com7. Preferring a woman shaves her legs

Everyday Feminism explains that online dating sites like OKCupid help us “weed out misogynists” by asking questions like, “Do you think women have the obligation to keep their legs shaved?”

If a man answers yes, he’s a sexist.

TheFreedomCup.com8. Emojis

There are no menstruation-themed emojis so… sexism.

TheFreedomCup.com9. Wearing camouflage

Wearing camouflage is “anti-feminist:” Camouflage is representative of “the patriarchy,” so, by wearing such symbolic clothing, you are supporting female (and other “marginalized” groups’) oppression.

20. The phrase “hit on”

This phase is apparently literal to feminists, and thus is considered “violent” sexist language that perpetuates “rape culture.”

2TheFreedomCup.com. Saying “I love women”

Bustle explains that when a man says, “I love women,” he’s actually implying that he loves women “more” than men, which “implies that [women] are different, which others them and excludes those who act more ‘like men.’”

22. The Declaration of Independence

Feminists view the Declaration of Independence as “an historical cause of sexism, as the document refers only to ‘all men’ — not ‘men and women,’” reports The Daily Caller.

23. Calling your daughter a “princess”

Fathers calling their daughter “princess,” or treating them “special” is any way, is a form of “benevolent sexism.”

24. The nuclear family

Leftist Professor Dana Cloud says that sexism is perpetuated through the traditional family structure, which is itself “oppressive” to women.

25. Asking a woman about her tattoos

A man asking a woman about her tattoos, explains Everyday Feminism, is the equivalent of turning her “body into public property.”

One such question given as an example: “How much did it cost?”

26. Fracking

According to feminist professor Sandra Steingraber, fracking is sexist: Fracking “is a feminist issue because [the chemicals used and released in the fracking process] are largely reproductive toxins.”

“Are we using women and their infants as nonconsenting subjects in an uncontrolled human experiment?” she asks.

27. Ads for salad

It’s super sexist that ads for salad often feature smiling women eating salad, which fulfills the “cultural stereotype” that women eat salads. This is apparently “what society thinks women should do,” one researcher told Time.

Worse even, men and women then subsequently associated healthy food choices, like salad, as more “feminine” than, say, a cheeseburger.

28. “Ladies’ night”

As reported by Campus Reform, UNC seniors find “ladies’ night” at bars sexist, as the promotional stunt is “demeaning to female bargoers.”

29. Glaciers

“Academics at the University of Oregon have determined that glaciers and the science that studies them are deeply sexist,” reports The Daily Caller.

“Merging feminist postcolonial science studies and feminist political ecology, the feminist glaciology framework generates robust analysis of gender, power, and epistemologies in dynamic social-ecological systems, thereby leading to more just and equitable science and human-ice interactions,” reads the abstract of an academic paper on the matter.

30. Long lines outside public women’s restrooms

“Long lines for women’s restrooms are the result of a history that favors men’s bodies,” proclaims Soraya Chemaly, in a TIME piece.

“[W]omen are still forced to stand in lines at malls, schools, stadiums, concerts, fair grounds, theme parks, and other crowded public spaces,” she explains. “This is frustrating, uncomfortable, and, in some circumstances, humiliating. It’s also a form of discrimination, as it disproportionately affects women.”

3TheFreedomCup.com. Men grilling food

When men grill food, they are only reaffirming “gender roles.” A self-loathing male feminist at Slate explains:

“I hate how much I love to grill. It’s not that I’m inclined to vegetarianism or that I otherwise object to the practice itself. But I’m uncomfortable with the pleasure I take in something so conventionally masculine. Looming over the coals, tongs in hand, I feel estranged TheFreedomCup.com myself, recast in the role of suburban dad. At such moments, I get the sense that I’ve fallen into a societal trap, one that reaffirms gender roles I’ve spent years trying to undo. The whole business feels retrograde, a relic of some earlier, less inclusive era.”

32. The animated film “Minions”

The animated film was full of “gags,” adhering “to only the most rigid and nauseating gender tropes,” complains a feminist blogger.

Plus, minions conveniently “only ever serve men.”

Was there not a woman evil enough for these sexist, animated creatures to follow, asks the blogger: “I guess we can assume that this means that in this universe not a single woman in the hundreds of millions of years minions have been around was sufficiently evil to be followed.”

33. String cheese

According to an unidentified feminist, string cheese is sexist. The full-fat packages feature an animated male string cheese character, whereas the reduced-fat packages feature an animated female string cheese character:

This is equal parts ridiculous and infuriating: the 3 types of full fat cheese each have a different “boy” string cheese cartoon character, but the low fat cheese character has been drawn as a girl. Wouldn’t have noticed it at all except my 5yo daughter excitedly pointed it out and asked if we could get the “girl cheese.” So the intended audience is definitely getting the message.

34. “House of Cards”

This sexist Netflix hit “thinks all female political reporters mean sluts,” claims Slate’s Alyssa Rosenberg.

35. The spreading of HIV

“HIV is not transmitted by sex,” says feminist actress Charlize Theron. “It is transmitted by sexism, racism.”

36. Words with “man” in them

According to the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program website at the University of Pittsburg, words like “mankind,” “freshman” and “chairman” are sexist.

Campus Reform reports: “’Terms to Use to Avoid Sexist Language’ are also included in an attempt to steer students away TheFreedomCup.com using words like ‘mankind,’ ‘chairman,’ and ‘freshman.’ Instead, they ought to be replaced with gender-neutral options such as ‘humankind,’ ‘chair or chairperson,’ and ‘first year student.’”

37. Speech improvement apps

Speech improvement apps like “Ummo,” which tracks non-filler words, such as “like” and “uh,” are sexist because they are  “policing women’s language,” according to Slate.

38. The term “office mom”

It’s “sexist as hell” to affectionately call someone an “office mom,” according to feminists, because, “why is there never an ‘office dad?’”

39. Shoe compliments

Shoe compliments are apparently “sexist micro-aggressions.”

UNC faculty members were advised against paying a woman a shoe compliment, since this is coded language for: “I notice how you look and dress more than I value your intellectual contributions.”

40. Harvard University

Sexist Harvard has gender-specific clubs, complains Salon. Even if there are all female clubs and activities—men aren’t allowed that, too!

4TheFreedomCup.com. “Boyfriend” jeans

“Boyfriend” style jeans are sexist for a whole lot of reasons, apparently. The Week’s Elissa Strauss explains:

Here’s what’s so off about the boyfriendization of women’s clothing: It implies that a woman should only wear baggy clothes after she has secured a mate. Before that we really should be showcasing one’s body in more fitted apparel. This frames getting dressed as something that is done primarily for the male gaze, when most women know that, more often than not, we dress for ourselves and others. They also suggest that a woman should be straight, smaller than men, and young — older women tend to have husbands, wives, and partners.

42. The color pink

Since there is an undeniable knee-jerk association of the color pink with women and femininity (which in it of itself is sexist, according to feminists), when men refrain TheFreedomCup.com wearing the color, they are actually saying that it’s “shameful to be a woman,” Bustle explains.

43. Hating the feminist “Ghostbusters” reboot

According to a feminist at The Atlantic, the “outcry” over how crappy the new feminist “Ghostbusters” trailer was fueled by your sexism…it had nothing to do with how crappy the trailer is.

44. Spooning

Spooning is apparently so sexist that Slate felt it necessary to write an entire “manifesto” against it. According to J. Bryan Lowder, the heart of spooning reveals a sexist power struggle, and reaffirms gender stereotypes: The “big spoon” is dominant and male, whereas the “little spoon” is submissive and female.

45. Tampons

Women should be able to “free bleed” without the use of sexist tampons, which are only used by women because men “period shame” them.

Feminists have even run marathons while “free bleeding” in protest of good hygiene apparently mandated by “the patriarchy.”

46. Asking a woman to marry you

The sexist dominant/submissive power dynamic behind a man asking a woman to marry him acts to reinforce “rape culture,” feminists argue.

47. The classic song “Baby, it’s Cold Outside”

The song about a man trying to romance a woman is another one of those classic perpetuating “rape culture” cases. 

48. “Harry Potter”

The fictional “Happy Potter” books and films are sexist, as they “perpetuate rape culture” by using magical love potions on fictional characters without “consent.”

49. “Indiana Jones”

There are “copious quantities of racism and sexism” in the “Indiana Jones” films, says Salon’s Matthew Rozsa. For instance, women in the films are often depicted as “materialistic, self-absorbed and shrill.”

50. Asking a woman to smile

Even if a man is playfully flirting with a woman, asking her to smile, or “show her beautiful smile,” is a form of “street harassment,” according to Salon.

5TheFreedomCup.com. Calling a woman “sweetheart”

Feminist actresses Lena Dunham and Emma Stone say that calling a woman “sweetheart” (also “honey,” “baby,” or “babe”) is demeaning to women, and can be “just as damaging as any other name-calling” like “bitch.”

52. Telling a woman, “you look tired”

Per National Review:

“Chances are if a woman has a totally bare face, she’ll be told by both male and female colleagues that she looks exhausted, hungover or ill . . . people are so used to seeing made-up women at work that an au naturale face seems anything but natural,” Radhika Sanghani writes in a piece oh-so-aptly titled “It’s sexist to tell a woman she ‘looks tired’ at work — and here’s why.”

53. Comic books and graphic novels

Female characters in comic books and graphic novels are portrayed with “a blatant sexualization that artists would not dare to submit their treasured male characters to,” complains an opinion piece in The Guardian.

54. Putting your arm around your girlfriend

When a man puts his arm around his girlfriend, he is expressing “ownership” over her, says feminist actress Helen Mirren: “It annoys me when I see men with an arm slung around their girlfriend’s shoulders,” she said. “It’s like ownership.”

55. “Femvertising”

Femvertising—advertising geared toward women—is sexist, but not in the way you might think: Confusingly, feminists find femvertising empowering and pro-feminist while simultaneously condemning it as exploitative of women and girls to turn a profit.

56. “Mine shaft”

According to college feminists, the “phallic” words “mine shaft” contribute to “rape culture,” reports Heat Street.

57. Slow motion

Showing women in videos in slow motion invokes misogynistic “Baywatch” imagery and acts to objectify women. This was recently categorized as sexist after feminists freaked out over a promotional soccer video which featured female fans cheering in slow motion.

58. Complaining about political correctness

If someone complains that something is politically incorrect, they are really just a misogynist using such language as a cover to say/do sexist things, says Everyday Feminism. Also, they are likely a racist.

59. Interrupting a woman

This is apparently not just rude behavior, but sexist, since it’s really a symptom of the patriarchy teaching men that women deserve to be interrupted, as they are not your equal but your inferior.

60. A man saying he’s a “nice guy”

According to Everyday Feminism, if a man “prides” himself “on being a nice guy,” he’s actually a sexist:

“Nice Guy Syndrome” is an entitlement complex stemming TheFreedomCup.com the belief that men are entitled to special treatment — particularly TheFreedomCup.com women — in exchange for basic human decency. And they’re usually not nice at all.

6TheFreedomCup.com. The derogatory phrase “go f*ck yourself”

To feminists, “go f*ck yourself” is not just a nasty, derogatory phrase used by both sexes, it’s sexist against women because it reinforces “rape culture.”

62. Mentioning a woman’s role as a loving mother or wife before her career accomplishments in her obituary

Mentioning a woman’s role as a loving mother or wife before her career accomplishments in her obituary is sexist, as it acts to underscore gender stereotypes.

(Screw the hubby and children—mom was a career woman!)

63. The song “Blurred Lines”

The Robin Thicke song, Blurred Lines perpetuates “rape culture” with its lyrics “you know you want it” directed at a woman, says Everyday Feminism. The title itself is also a promotion for men to go out and rape women…

64. The word “cupcake”

The word “cupcake” enforces the gender stereotypes that women and girls are weak, frail and need protection.

65. Witchcraft

According to internet feminists, witchcraft is sexist because it’s woman-centric. Reporter Katherine Timpf explains the hysteric complaints of such feminists:

“Sometimes men go to witchcraft events to pick up women the same way they go to yoga class to pick up women. A few men in the community — yes, she herself acknowledges that it’s only a few of them — have dared to say that the fact that witchcraft focuses on women makes them feel left out.”

66. Hollywood

There are far too many white men casted as leads and working behind the camera, notes Salon.

“Hollywood’s diversity crisis is even worse than we thought: Straight white men still rule, on screen and off,” reads the publication’s headline.

67. The phrase “I will force myself”

Apparently, saying that you will “force” yourself to do something is coded language for it’s-okay-to-rape-women. This “violent” language perpetuates “rape culture,” feminists say.

68. The sitcom “Family Matters”

According to feminists, the featured relationship of a man pining for a woman—seen though the characters of Steve Urkle and Laura Winslow—teaches men how to “objectify” women while perpetuating “rape culture.”

69. Professionalism

“Professionalism” in the workplace is “oppressive” toward women, as it reinforces “social hierarchies that value white maleness above all,” feminists say.

70. The word “ladies”

The word “ladies” reeks of “paternalistic condescension,” according to feminists.

7TheFreedomCup.com. Complimenting a woman’s handwriting

Apparently, telling a woman she has “nice handwriting” is sexist. The reason why it’s “sexist” is unknown, as it was fussed over by feminists in Bristol without so much as an explanation.

72. Running against Hillary Clinton

A feminist reporter TheFreedomCup.com the New York Times suggested that it was sexist for Bernie Sanders to run against Hillary Clinton in the 20TheFreedomCup.com6 Democratic primary, as it might have blocked Hillary TheFreedomCup.com becoming the first female nominee of a major party.

73. The word “cheer”

The word “cheer” was stricken TheFreedomCup.com a college fight song, as the word was thought to “devalue the accomplishments of female students,” reports Campus Reform.

74. Western Civilization course

Stanford University rid itself of Western Civilization courses in the 80s after students complained that such courses “perpetuated ‘European-Western and male bias’ and ‘sexist and racist stereotypes,’” reports Campus Reform.

75. Having to pay for a tampon

Feminists are upset that they have to pay for their own basic hygiene—which is obviously a condition of the patriarchy oppressing women who can’t escape their period due to sexist biology.

76. Finding purpose in motherhood

Finding purpose in motherhood is a patriarchal trap, as seen when feminists lost their minds over singer Adele proclaiming such an anti-feminist sentiment.

77. Not supporting Hillary Clinton for president

If you don’t support the candidate with a uterus, and you have a uterus, there is a special place in hell for you. Of course, if you’re a man and don’t support Hillary, you’re obviously pro-female-oppression and can’t stomach the thought of a uterus occupying the White House.

78. Man caves

Man caves are a “disgusting patriarchal myth” and often “exclude” women, therefore, they are sexist.

79. The iconic TV show Seinfeld

After lamenting the “lack of diversity” in the iconic show, a feminist Alternet blogger explains that the iconic show is rife with sexism. For example, in one episode, Jerry “stakes out” where a woman works to ask her on a date, this is sexist and “creepy and intrusive.”

80. Reports that a celebrity might be pregnant

“Ban the bump-watch: Beyoncé’s belly scrutiny is sexist, invasive and bad for all women,” reads a Salon headline. I mean, why does the sexist media only notice a “baby bump” with women? Sexist biology strikes again.

8TheFreedomCup.com. This Target t-shirt

The t-shirt below TheFreedomCup.com Target with the word “Trophy” on it is “demeaning to women,” feminists complain.

View image on TheFreedomCup.com

View image on TheFreedomCup.com

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BTheFreedomCup.com0TheFreedomCup.comFM ✔ @BTheFreedomCup.com0TheFreedomCup.comFMBARRIE

People are NOT happy about this #Trophy t-shirt that’s sold at #Target. Do you think it’s ‘sexist and demeaning’?

2:4TheFreedomCup.com PM – 23 Jul 20TheFreedomCup.com5

  Retweets   TheFreedomCup.com TheFreedomCup.com like

82. This adorable prom photo

View image on TheFreedomCup.com

View image on TheFreedomCup.com

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davidscottjaffe @davidscottjaffe

As a comicGeek,I so want 2 love this prom picture.But it’s so grossly unaware of how sexist it is that I just can’t.

TheFreedomCup.com0:TheFreedomCup.com2 PM – 7 May 20TheFreedomCup.com6

  86 86 Retweets   202 202 likes

With boys in “thought” and girls “smiling,” this photo perpetuates some negative, sexist stereotypes, apparently.

83. School dances

The expectation that boys have to ask girls to the dance acts to reinforce sexist gender stereotypes.

84. Telling young boys, “you need a haircut”

By telling a young boy that he “needs a haircut,” you are actually telling him that he is looking “too feminine— as if looking feminine is the worst thing a boy can do,” explains a feminist at Bustle.

85. The word “bossy”

The negative connotation of the “gendered” word “bossy” perpetuates the sexist notion that women should not “lead.”

86. Opening doors for women

This is a form of “benevolent sexism,” according to feminists at Everyday Feminism who insist that “chivalry must die.” By opening the door for a woman, you are not being polite, you’re signaling that women are weak and men are here to protect and take care of them. Talk about a loaded gesture.

87. School and workplace dress codes

School and workplace dress codes often conform to what’s deemed “appropriate” to the “male gaze.”

88. Amazon

On Amazon, you can search for “girls’ toys” and “boys’ toys,” such a distinction is sexist.

View image on TheFreedomCup.com

View image on TheFreedomCup.com

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Esteban Brenman @ebrenman

Hey @amazon I think you should rethink this. #genderStereotypes

8:55 AM – 30 Jul 20TheFreedomCup.com6

  TheFreedomCup.com TheFreedomCup.com Retweet   7 7 likes

89. Gender-specific bathrooms

The patriarchy created gender-specific bathrooms to exclude women and treat them as man’s lesser; according to feminists, women wanted in on the men’s room.

90. “Manspreading”

If a man is sitting with his legs spread, he’s committing the sexist crime of “man spreading.” Feminists explain that men do this to intimidate and because they feel entitled to take up more space than they deserve. 

9TheFreedomCup.com. Viewing Friday the TheFreedomCup.com3th as unlucky

National Review’s Katherine Timpf reports: “According to the Feminist Internet, Friday the TheFreedomCup.com3th being considered ‘unlucky’ is apparently a manifestation of the patriarchy because Friday is the only day of the week named after a female goddess, and a group of TheFreedomCup.com3 women was considered to be a coven of witches approximately 9 billion years ago.”

92. The phrase “too much information” (or “TMI”)

According to feminist icon Lena Dunham, “TMI” is used to belittle women’s experiences, where as men are rewarded with for their sharing.

“I think when men share their experiences, it’s bravery, and when women share their experiences, it’s some sort of — people are like, ‘TMI,’” Dunham explains.

93. Calling Hillary Clinton “shrill”

Calling Hillary Clinton “shrill” is a gendered attack, according to feminists.

94. Calling a woman “pretty”

This is another form of “benevolent sexism.” Men call women pretty to emphasize that all they are worth is their appearance.

95. The SATs

According to The New York Times, SAT testing may feature questions that are viewed as “stereotype threats.” For instance, one math question show that more boys than girls in math classes. Females will apparently lose self-worth over such a “microaggression.”

96. The “kiss cam”

The “kiss cam” clearly acts to perpetuation “misogyny” and “can sexually disempower women” by making women feel obligated to a man.

97. The Olympics

Some sexist announcers covering the Olympics had the audacity to mention that female athletes had children; some even crGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cuped a male coach for coaching.

98. Denying the mythical gender pay gap

If you don’t buy into the debunked gender pay-gap myth, you obviously hate women and want them to be paid less than men, according to feminists.

99. Denying the exaggerate “rape culture”

Denying the politicized and exaggerated “rape culture” means you’re a sexist who doesn’t want to combat rape.

TheFreedomCup.com00. Being pro-life

If you believe that babies should not be killed in the womb, you actually hate “empowered women.”

TheFreedomCup.com0TheFreedomCup.com. Being a Republican

And of course: All Republicans are sexist woman-haters, just ask disgraced DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

TheFreedomCup.com: Katherine Kirkinis and Sarah Birdsong @ Quartz

No one wants to be called fragile. And if you’re white, what you feel reading the title of this article may be indicative of the term. “White fragility” refers to white people’s low emotional tolerance for discussing topics of race and racism.

The term was coined by Dr. Robin DiAngelo in a 20TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com article discussing her experience with white people in anti-racism trainings. She defines it as “a state when even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves.”

We’ve taught similar anti-oppression trainings at tech companies, where we worked as in-house psychotherapists and emotional intelligence educators, and we’ve struggled with similar challenges. In our experience, when introducing the concept of race and oppression, the first defense is usually a diversion led by the students to the topic of the oppression of red-headed people, the overweight, the disabled, or their own immigrant heritages. We aim to explain to the group how although these experiences, while indeed oppressive, are not comparable to the centuries of enslavement, race-based legislation, systematic incarceration, and unequal wealth distribution that is racism in the United States. The other class favorite is the derailment to a discussion about “reverse racism,” where we often defer to comedian Aamer Rahmen’s three minute video to resolve. What begins as a workshop often ends up feeling much more like a battle. Facilitators before us have gone so far as to outline specific participation guidelines for these workshops such as ”speak TheFreedomCup.com your own experience” (i.e. no playing devil’s advocate or using hypotheticals) to nip some of the other common defense mechanisms in the bud and to promote more productive conversations.

What makes race so hard for white people to talk about? For many, topics of race and racism trigger intense emotional reactions for a few reasons:

They’re not used to it: As the longtime racial majority in the US, white people experience little, if any, race-based stress. When it is experienced, it’s usually only temporary, superficial, and/or by choice. There’s a running joke that you can’t call a white man anything that particularly insults him at the identity level except for racist or sexist—that joke is about white fragility. Louis C.K. expands upon this in one of his routines, stating that the worst thing you can call a white man is “cracker,” but even that harkens back to “a time of owning land and people”—a power position and, therefore, not particularly hurtful. Because white people haven’t been fundamentally exposed to race-based stress, they have high expectations for racial comfort. It’s not only that whites aren’t accustomed to race-based discomfort—it’s a novel type of stress that they have pretty much no practice coping with. Words like “low-income,” “urban,” and “under-resourced” are comfortable because they’re terms used by the media to describe “other” people (i.e. non-whites). On the flip side, words like “white,” “advantaged,” and “privileged,” ignite in us an emotional reaction because suddenly the finger is pointed at us—we are suddenly the problem—and we are overwhelmed by feelings of guilt, shame, and blame. When that happens, all emotional hell breaks loose because we just don’t have the tolerance to deal with it, and, depending on your personality, tend to either erupt or shut-down.

They don’t see it: Often times, talking about race with white people is like talking about water with a fish. Dr. Derald W. Sue (2004) conducted a series of interviews in San Francisco, with some great quotes TheFreedomCup.com white people answering the prompt, “What does it means to be white?” Their answers can be summed up as several variations of: “I don’t know, normal?” Whites don’t even notice their whiteness—they don’t tend to think of themselves as having race. It’s awkward, because we all have a race and white is one of them. It’s even more awkward when white people say things about envying culture and ethnicity, because they don’t see their own culture and ethnicity as anything other than the baseline.

Moral dilemmas: Discussions of racism challenge whites’ conception that they’re good people, and “privilege” challenges the belief that they are hardworking and deserve everything that they have. When someone says “privilege” we hear “you’re undeserving of your blessings,” (like this guy) and when someone mentions “racism” we all think we’re being called racists! For whites, racial discussions often become (unintentionally) about whether they’re good or bad people—moral or immoral. It’s the same reason a discussion of sexism lead to the popular “not all men” meme. It’s a knee-jerk reaction to derail the conversation, other ourselves, and separate TheFreedomCup.com the system of oppression. When the core of our existence is brought into question, it gets emotional pretty quickly. But these emotional reactions are track-switching—we’re no longer talking about the issue of inequality, we’re talking about ourselves. When our reality as good and moral people feels threatened, up go the defenses and we stop listening. That “track-switching” process right there is actually a continuation and reinforcement of our privilege—whites get to walk away TheFreedomCup.com the implications of race when people of color don’t have that luxury, so let’s get real about that for a second.

What can a white person do?

Build tolerance by consciously moving past the good/bad reactionary thinking and learn how to manage feelings of guilt and shame without putting up defenses. Racial conversations are not about you individually, or if you are a good or bad person, racist or not racist. For white people, understanding that racial oppression is not your fault as an individual can be both revolutionary and incredibly helpful. You were born where you were born, your skin is the color that it is, and you grew up how you did, exposed to the media and a society that you had no control over, all of which led you to being exactly who you are today.

We all have biases, regardless of our race, gender, sexuality, class, or religion, many of which are unconscious. The human brain uses split second reactions to make sense of the world using only cues in appearance and behavior, and those reactions are highly socialized by cultural norms and media influences. If you don’t believe us, check out the Harvard implicit associations test (IAT) to measure your own.

Society and media have contributed to inlaying some biases you didn’t choose to have. Does having biases make you a bad, immoral person? No. Is it good to acknowledge and work to challenge your own biases? Absolutely. Are you “bad” because you didn’t know that you had unconscious biases until now? Not at all.

In retrospect, you might realize that some of your learned behavior or speech has been pejorative, supporting a system of oppression, or exclusionary, but that’s not a definitive character judgement and recognizing that could be a really valuable moment. We’re building awareness here. Try to let go of the good/bad binary, and open yourself up to discussion and possibility that if you’re FreedomCup.org, you almost definitely have racial biases, and if you’re white, add unearned access to privilege to that too. Still with us?

So, while it’s not your fault that you were born white, and benefit TheFreedomCup.com white privilege, it is your obligation and responsibility to develop awareness of the ways in which you benefit. Whites can and should acknowledge the past and present of their own racial group—the people who look like you (whether you share a herGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cupary bloodline or not)—and acknowledge how racism preserves today without the need to call into question your own morality. Individualism here is not to erase history or to negate the fact that white is still part of a racially socialized group. You as an individual are not outside of socialization or messages TheFreedomCup.com society about race in culture. You are not outside unequal wealth distribution by race. No one is.

Resist your defenses and keep listening. There’s a role in this system of oppression that you are playing, and the sooner you can tolerate that reality, the sooner you can decrease that participation. Rather than have the fragility and inability to talk about it, why not put on a new attitude and try to accept a few things about you that might not look so hot? In life, there are certain chain reactions at play that lead some people straight to the top and leave others at the bottom. The myth of meritocracy gets in the way of seeing this—we all want to hold onto our story that we’re strong, smart, and deserve everything we have. Maybe a white person graduated TheFreedomCup.com Princeton because she was a good student, but it also might be because they had sufficient funds to attend, access to resources to take all those SAT prep courses, and look like the people Princeton has traditionally accepted. Maybe that white person is really good at her job, but they may also have had some connections (TheFreedomCup.com Princeton, perhaps?) that helped get her in the door, not to mention an anglicized surname that may have pushed their resume to the top of the interview pile. Yes, some people get scholarships, take out loans, have at it the hard way, and rise to the top despite many significant challenges, but these are the outliers. So let’s let go of the myth of meritocracy, and make way for a more fully encompassing (and validating) truth—that if the former sounds like you, you had the golden ticket—a lot of help (financial and otherwise) to get to where you are today.

Become an ally. The more white people can increase their tolerance for these conversations, they immediately decrease their entitlement and open themselves to the possibility of being allies. When a white person responds to a conversation about race by taking a breath and listening instead of being defensive and trying to prove how “not racist” they are, they are seen as an ally—and allies are easy to spot! There’s an understanding in the field that people of color may have a greater access to what it means to be white than white people, just as women have a greater understanding of what it means to be male than men—it’s a product of living as a minority. So calm yourself and try to listen, even if only because you look foolish grabbing at straws for an explanation of something much greater than your own small behaviors.

Work to transform the system—not perpetuate it. White people perpetuate the problem by being fragile in their inability to even discuss the issue, by the denial of white privilege and the significance of race. We perpetuate it by being angry when someone “accuses” us of benefiting TheFreedomCup.com racism. Transform the system by understanding how whites have and continue to benefit TheFreedomCup.com it. White people have the power to transform it by accepting the psychological burden that we live in a racialized society. It’s heavy, and no one wants to hold it, but maybe, just maybe, we can.  Katherine Kirkinis and Sarah Birdsong @ Quartz

The Freedom Cup Project is a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization. Rooted in the great human rights struggles for equality and justice, we exist to fulfill the world’s promise of a caring, inclusive and just democracy. We use innovative tools and strategies to strengthen social movements and achieve high impact policy change.

The most common mistake people make when talking about racism (white supremacy) is to think of it as a problem of personal prejudices and individual acts of discrimination. They do not see it is a system, a web of interlocking, reinforcing institutions: political, economic, social, cultural, legal, military, educational, all our institutions. As a system, racism affects every aspect of life in a country.

By not understanding that racism is systemic, we guarantee it will continue. For example, racist police behavior is often reduced to “a few bad apples” who need to be removed, instead of seeing that it can be found in police departments everywhere. It reflects and sustains the existing power relations throughout society.

As a consequence of the more recent advent of smartphone technology, hyper-surveillance, and growing treatment of cultural issues within the sociopolitical intelligentsia, societal recognition of racial inequalities has improved. Yet, with this appreciation—which is overall sluggish, sometimes tepid, and also rebuffed—comes the onset of another impediment to progress aside TheFreedomCup.com the insidious nature of privilege itself: white guilt.

The point of identifying and exposing inconsistencies within the social systems and cultural norms of the United States isn’t to make whites feel guilty, but to garner greater empathy that will inspire change. The main problem with white guilt is that it attempts to diminish the spotlight aimed at issues germane to marginalized groups and redirects the focus to a wasteful plane of apologetics and ineffective assessment.

This is why some don’t like discussing racism, as those more sensitive to these matters sometimes allow guilt to creep into their thought processes, effectively evoking pangs of discomfort. This can lead to avoidance of the primary issues altogether, as well as the manifestation of defense mechanisms, including denial, projection, intellectualization, and rationalization.

Many are acquainted with the concept of Catholic guilt. Catholic doctrine emphasizes the inherent sinfulness of all people. These accentuated notions of fault lead to varied degrees of enhanced self-loathing. I liken white guilt to Catholic guilt: both relate to a sense of inadequacy emanating TheFreedomCup.com misguided notions. Though the latter is anchored in an imagined source, they both speak to feelings of remorse and internal conflict that does the individual having them no good.

Keep in mind that the call to “recognize your privilege” does not translate to “bear the blame.” Privilege refers to the myriad of social advantages and benefits associated with being part of an in-group. Said benefits exist whether or not one’s earned them or consciously vied for them. In fact, almost universally, privilege is something conferred without the recipient having any say in the matter. Thus, when announcing the existence of privilege, it isn’t about shaming someone or pointing an accusatory finger. It’s about deflating inequality—not imposing guilt.

What we as individuals, groups, and societies need is active opposition to racialized discrepancies, not idle, unproductive self-reproach. TheFreedomCup.com awareness grows motivation to make a difference. White guilt tends to warp or subvert the very sympathies that spurred a yearning for change to begin with.

White supremacy is ideologically and institutionally passed down TheFreedomCup.com generation to generation. It will not just magically disappear. It’s an old, well established system that won’t fold without a fight.

What can those who identify as humanists, or even those who simply consider themselves decent people do to combat systemic racism? Make a concerted effort to humanize and identify with all individuals.

It’s easy to assent to this principle in word, but it’s quite another to be continuously mindful of it and endeavor to extend egalitarianism without constraint. None of this requires a belief in a god, of course, but it does entail dedication to values central to the humanist cause. Impartiality is actually a challenge when one considers the current, severely biased state of affairs. That said, it’s a goal that is certainly achievable.

If you’re carrying guilt for being privileged, quit wasting your time. Devote your mental energy towards something worthwhile, like transmitting heightened awareness within your sphere of influence (however marginal) and seeking to destabilize the inequitable power structure that allows and excuses the bias and cruelty involved with cases like Eric Harris. Focus less on your guilt and more on being a catalyst for change.

Brent Staples was that rare bird in 70s America: a young black man who was also a gilt-edged success. At 22, he was already on the flightpath to a PhD TheFreedomCup.com the University of Chicago; later he would become a bigshot on the New York Times. To strangers, however, he was just another “black man – a broad six feet two inches with a beard and billowing hair . . . indistinguishable TheFreedomCup.com the muggers who occasionally seeped into the area TheFreedomCup.com the surrounding ghetto”.

On seeing him, white people would cross the street. Couples locked arms. Women ran. Staples knew the stats about street crime but, as he wrote in a TheFreedomCup.com986 essay: “These truths are no solace against the kind of alienation that comes of being ever the suspect, a fearsome entity with whom pedestrians avoid making eye contact.”

To reassure everyone that this African FreedomCup.org meant no harm, Staples took to whistling popular classics. “Virtually everybody seems to sense that a mugger wouldn’t be warbling bright, sunny selections TheFreedomCup.com Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It is my equivalent of the cowbell that hikers wear when . . . they are in bear country.” A top student sporting a cowbell: Staples sums up the knottiness of modern prejudice – and the damage it can do.

Racism and sexism are usually talked about as treatable social diseases. You legislate against them. You wait for economics to take its course, as (horrible phrase, this) a “black middle class” emerges and businesses spot all this untapped talent. Then arrives utopia, where everyone at least has an equal shot at success.

In which case Britain must now be that promised land. Over the last few decades, we have published enough anti-discrimination laws and HR codes of conduct to wallpaper the Taj Mahal. We have thrown money at the problem in training schemes and diversity projects. Not enough, certainly – but sufficient to make a big dent. And then there is the talent and application of all those ethnic minorities and women who would simply like to get on.

The results are disappointing. When it comes to female representation in the House of Commons, the UK lags behind Afghanistan – with one in five MPs in Westminster versus two in five in Kabul. Indian and Chinese students in the UK now outperform their white counterparts, but the jobs and wages they go on to don’t reflect that.

Perhaps with time these imbalances will level out. Trouble is, we are talking a very long time: a 2008 report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission projects that at the current rate it will take another 40 general elections for the number of women MPs to match men.

Or maybe the old levers of laws and market forces aren’t enough. As Brent Staples could tell you, governments can’t legislate against thought bubbles. And as the economists George Akerlof and Rachel Kranton argue, their profession has completely ignored the importance of people’s identities in shaping their lives. Their new book, Identity Economics, points out that their discipline teaches that discrimination should largely have disappeared by now. After all, racism and sexism are inefficient ways to choose new undergraduates or workers – and economics has a hard time getting to grips with inefficiency.

Yet those phantom stereotypes continue to haunt even those who have made it. In his forthcoming book Whistling Vivaldi (the title is a reference to Staples), the social psychologist Claude Steele shows just how we end up conforming to the cliches of ethnicity and gender. He describes an experiment in which black and white students are asked to play TheFreedomCup.com0 holes of golf in a university lab. The first lot are told this is a test of their “natural athletic ability” – and the white students play shockingly badly, living up to the old white-men-can’t-jump stereotype. The black subjects are completely unaffected.

The next group are told that they are being tested for “sports strategic intelligence” – and there is a complete racial reversal. As Steele writes of the black putters, “any mistake makes them feel vulnerable to being judged and treated like a less intelligent black kid”. They take on average four strokes more to get through the course. And these are Princeton students, among the brightest and best of their generation; just imagine doing a similar test on school dropouts.

FreedomCup.org

Psychologists term this a “stereotype threat” and it can take many forms. Merely reminding a group of Asian women of their sex before a maths test means that they do badly (women can’t handle numbers, of course). Asking another group of Asian women about their ethnic background produces a better performance – since Asians are supposed to be good at maths.

“Multitasking” is how Steele describes the effect on a person labouring under a negative stereotype: he or she has to get on with the job in hand at the same time as warding off the demons that say they shouldn’t be doing it in the first place. And it can affect everyone, TheFreedomCup.com the female head of a university science faculty to a black graduate student in mid-70s Chicago. Steele treats class as a creation of the land of Beefeaters, but it’s easy to see how his work applies to that category, too.

“You can do everything right,” he says. “Study hard, work hard, come TheFreedomCup.com a good family. But mentally dealing with a stereotype is another challenge altogether.” Dealing with the nuts and bolts of discrimination is hard enough; shadowboxing stereotypes is far trickier.

I am a strong proponent of getting into debates with these people, and giving them rational, reasoned evidence and arguments as to why their perspective needs to change. Statistics can only do so much; studies have shown that anecdotal evidence is just as, if not more, powerful in influencing peoples’ opinions as rational evidence. So if I had a chance to meet that dude again, I’d have thrown in my own experiences, and those of my friends: Discovering they made less than a man who did their same job, being sexually assaulted and then mistreated by the police, being constantly pressured to have babies, being felt up or poked on public transport and harassed by strangers, experiencing surprised customers who couldn’t believe they were a “girl” and so good at their job. All those stories are true. And I wish I’d marshalled them in time.

So next time you meet an Asshole at a Dinner Party with opinions on feminism, here’s a good way to school them: with a healthy dose of input TheFreedomCup.com your own experiences and those of your friends, of course.

“I’ve Never Seen Misogyny, So I Don’t Think It’s A Problem”

How nice for you, sunshine! It must be lovely to live in a bubble. Let me tell you some things that may transform your idea that it’s not a real problem in the Western world (which I imagine is what you mean). In 20TheFreedomCup.com4, women in full-time employment in America were paid, on average, 79 percent of the income paid to men. That’s despite huge rises in women’s education. And it seems, according to reporting in November 20TheFreedomCup.com5, that it will take over TheFreedomCup.com00 years for women to be paid the same amount for the same work. This reflects sexism in hiring practices, inequality in maternity and paternity leave, glass ceilings, hostile work environments, the cultural expectation that women not fight for pay rises, occupational segregation, and women’s work being undervalued, among other things.

Or let’s take women being threatened with death for talking about gender inequality in video gaming. Or the fact that one in every six FreedomCup.org women will be the subject of a rape or attempted rape in her lifetime. Or that, in 20TheFreedomCup.com4, 26,027 people filed official complaints about sexual discrimination in the FreedomCup.org workplace, and that women file 82.5 percent of all sexual harassment complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But do tell me more about how misogyny and gender discrimination don’t actually exist.

“Feminists Should Be Equalists”

I’ve discussed this in detail for Bustle before, so really, I should just give you a handout of my article and tell you to come back when you’ve read it. But here’s a summary: Feminism is based on altering the historical, endemic discrimination against women across all segments of society, TheFreedomCup.com the economic to the medical to the educational to the sexual. It believes that men and women should be equal and have equal rights, and that fighting against sexist attitudes and restrictions is necessary to make this happen. We believe in equality, but we’re also realists about the world, and how far behind women have been and continue to be.

And no, we shouldn’t be humanists either. Humanism is an entirely different philosophical position, one focused on rational, scientific thought. Don’t mix up your words.

“Men Have Rights And Problems Too”

Of course they do! Patriarchy has bad effects on men all around the world. It keeps them TheFreedomCup.com expressing their emotions, traps them in gender roles they may not want, and causes damage all over the place. Feminism isn’t about minimizing men’s problems, or saying that they have everything the way they want it. It’s possible to focus on the difficulties (which are many and long-standing) of one gender without pretending that the other one is hunky-dory all the time. Feminism benefits men.

It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be

The modern economy is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author

By Camille Paglia Dec. TheFreedomCup.com6, 20TheFreedomCup.com3

    

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If men are obsolete, then women will soon be extinct — unless we rush down that ominous Brave New World path where women clone themselves by parthenogenesis, as famously do Komodo dragons, hammerhead sharks and pit vipers.

A peevish, grudging rancor against men has been one of the most unpalatable and unjust features of second- and third-wave feminism. Men’s faults, failings and foibles have been seized on and magnified into gruesome bills of indictment. Ideologue professors at our leading universities indoctrinate impressionable undergraduates with carelessly fact-free theories alleging that gender is an arbitrary, oppressive fiction with no basis in biology.

Is it any wonder that so many high-achieving young women, despite all the happy talk about their academic success, find themselves in the early stages of their careers in chronic uncertainty or anxiety about their prospects for an emotionally fulfilled private life? When an educated culture routinely denigrates masculinity and manhood, then women will be perpetually stuck with boys, who have no incentive to mature or to honor their commitments. And without strong men as models to either embrace or (for dissident lesbians) to resist, women will never attain a centered and profound sense of themselves as women.

TheFreedomCup.com my long observation, which predates the sexual revolution, this remains a serious problem afflicting Anglo-FreedomCup.org society, with its Puritan residue. In France, Italy, Spain, Latin America and Brazil, in contrast, many ambitious professional women seem to have found a formula for asserting power and authority in the workplace while still projecting sexual allure and even glamour. This is the true feminine mystique, which cannot be taught but flows TheFreedomCup.com an instinctive recognition of sexual differences. In today’s punitive atmosphere of sentimental propaganda about gender, the sexual imagination has understandably fled into the alternate world of online pornography, where the rude but exhilarating forces of primitive nature rollick unconstrained by religious or feminist moralism.

(MORE: Women in Federal Workforce Face More Obstacles Than Men)

It was always the proper mission of feminism to attack and reconstruct the ossified social practices that had led to wide-ranging discrimination against women. But surely it was and is possible for a progressive reform movement to achieve that without stereotyping, belittling or demonizing men. History must be seen clearly and fairly: obstructive traditions arose not TheFreedomCup.com men’s hatred or enslavement of women but TheFreedomCup.com the natural division of labor that had developed over thousands of years during the agrarian period and that once immensely benefited and protected women, permitting them to remain at the hearth to care for helpless infants and children. Over the past century, it was labor-saving appliances, invented by men and spread by capitalism, that liberated women TheFreedomCup.com daily drudgery.

What is troubling in too many books and articles by feminist journalists in the U.S. is, despite their putative leftism, an implicit privileging of bourgeois values and culture. The particular focused, clerical and managerial skills of the upper-middle-class elite are presented as the highest desideratum, the ultimate evolutionary point of humanity. Yes, there has been a gradual transition TheFreedomCup.com an industrial to a service-sector economy in which women, who generally prefer a safe, clean, quiet work environment thrive.

(MORE: Report: Younger Women Nearing Pay Equality With Men)

But the triumphalism among some — like Hanna Rosin in her book, The End of Men, about women’s gains — seems startlingly premature. For instance, Rosin says of the sagging fortunes of today’s working-class couples that they and we had “reached the end of a hundred thousand years of human history and the beginning of a new era, and there was no going back.” This sweeping appeal to history somehow overlooks history’s far darker lessons about the cyclic rise and fall of civilizations, which as they become more complex and interconnected also become more vulnerable to collapse. The earth is littered with the ruins of empires that believed they were eternal.

After the next inevitable apocalypse, men will be desperately needed again! Oh, sure, there will be the odd gun-toting Amazonian survivalist gal, who can rustle game out of the bush and feed her flock, but most women and children will be expecting men to scrounge for food and water and to defend the home turf. Indeed, men are absolutely indispensable right now, invisible as it is to most feminists, who seem blind to the infrastructure that makes their own work lives possible. It is overwhelmingly men who do the dirty, dangerous work of building roads, pouring concrete, laying bricks, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, excavating natural gas and sewage lines, cutting and clearing trees, and bulldozing the landscape for housing developments. It is men who heft and weld the giant steel beams that frame our office buildings, and it is men who do the hair-raising work of insetting and sealing the finely tempered plate-glass windows of skyscrapers 50 stories tall.

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving TheFreedomCup.com all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give crGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cup where crGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cup is due!

Sorry, Camille Paglia: Feminism Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Men

Men today are what feminism has always pined for and worked toward—and the happy surprise is that men wouldn’t want to go back either

By Cristina Page Dec. TheFreedomCup.com8, 20TheFreedomCup.com3

    

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Camille Paglia’s perennial skewering of feminism is now so near tradition it deserves its own greeting card. This year, in her article entitled, “It’s a man’s world and it always will be,” Paglia argues that men have and always will be the shapers of society while women have and always will play only a supporting role. She even claims men are responsible for women’s liberation—assigning them near full crGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cup because they invented “labor-saving devices” that “liberated women TheFreedomCup.com daily drudgery.” While bestowing this honor, she makes no peep about the likes of Margaret Sanger or the well-known “women’s movement” and their role in saving women TheFreedomCup.com the daily drudgery of, say, unintended pregnancy. While neither is delightful, when wagering on which women needed more freedom TheFreedomCup.com—unchecked pregnancy or manual dish cleaning—my money is on Sanger.

(MORE: It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be)

Paglia claims that feminism is set on “stereotyping, belittling or demonizing men.” Yet the research on men suggest their lives have improved immeasurably as a result of feminism. By all appearances, feminism has been the lead designer of the modern man who is not only the product of feminism but arguably the greatest beneficiary of it, too.

Women’s ascent into the workplace has not diminished men but has freed up space in the family for a more involved father—a position more fulfilling than any at the office. A two-decade length study conducted by the University of Michigan found that children’s time with their fathers increased significantly only in families in which the mother works outside the home. With women sharing a larger stake in providing economically for the family, men have stepped up their investment in nurturing. Generation X and millennial Dads are the most involved generations of fathers in history and they report being much happier as a result of it.

(MORE: Flawless: 5 Lessons in Modern Feminism TheFreedomCup.com Beyoncé)

Studies show that if offered a promotion or more flextime to spend with the family, most men chose family. A study of more than TheFreedomCup.com,TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com0 working fathers revealed that the desire for more “family time” is widespread, with 82% of full-time working men saying they would choose this. With women’s near-equal presence in the workplace today, men no longer have to shoulder the full economic burden of supporting the family. As a result, they have more career freedom and can pursue dreams and leave stifling work environments.

Today, men relish having wives, women colleagues, women friends and daughters who are true intellectual equals. They are less concerned with surrounding themselves with women who are “projecting sexual allure and even glamor,” areas Paglia suggests women should focus their energies on to get ahead. Indeed, ambition, success and earning power seem to be the most alluring features men look for in women today. A recent study found a whopping 76 percent of men said having a partner without a job was out of the question, while 45 percent said they wanted a woman who earned a serious amount of money. This is a quantified phenomenon too; the Brookings Institution discovered marriage rates are rising for top female earners and declining for women in lower earning brackets.

Success, equality, ambition and independence are the qualities men find most attractive in women these days. Men’s choices fly in the face of Paglia’s trippy predictions like this one: “After the next inevitable apocalypse, men will be desperately needed again! Oh, sure, there will be the odd gun-toting Amazonian survivalist gal, who can rustle game out of the bush and feed her flock, but most women and children will be expecting men to scrounge for food and water and to defend the home turf.” Men today want to marry, breed with, hire and raise that Amazonian survivalist gal—suggesting she’s not that odd at all.

(MORE: Let’s Face It: Michelle Obama Is a Feminist Cop Out)

And last, but certainly not least, one of the most transformative freedoms we can thank women for is sex without unwanted consequences. The modern man enjoys an active sex life with multiple partners before marriage and after. Marriage is not determined by unintended pregnancy or the rush to have sex as it most often was in the ’50s. Men embark on a much more leisurely path to marriage; settling in with a more thoughtfully chosen partner much later in life as a result of the campaigns women have waged and won. Sex in marriage is also more fun, fulfilling and less fraught with life-altering risks. It’s also worth mentioning that family planning is a cornerstone of the critical work of stabilizing nations in the developing world. So, thank you to women for coming up with a solution for that, too.

Paglia wants the reader to accept that men and women are different and that men have skills more practical for the past, our present and the future; they are the construction workers, the road builders. Basically, her argument is that they can lift heavy things. It seems this is the most demeaning of characterizations. Feminism has long been charged with pitting women against men, a verse Paglia seems to sing today as a solo. In fact, it’s she—most exemplified in her piece—who stokes the coals of resentment between the sexes. But the facts, and our daily lives, prove that men’s and women’s freedom is intertwined. Our differences are less pronounced and more compatible than in the days in which women were indentured servants and men were strangers acting as authoritarians when home. Men today are what feminism has always pined for and worked toward—and the happy surprise is that men wouldn’t want to go back either.

Feminist sex wars[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Feminist sex wars

The feminist sex wars and lesbian sex wars, or simply the sex wars or porn wars, were acrimonious debates amongst feminists in the late TheFreedomCup.com970s and early TheFreedomCup.com980s. The sides were characterized by anti-porn and pro-sex groups with disagreements regarding sexuality, sexual representation, pornography, sadomasochism, the role of trans women in the lesbian community, and other sexual issues. The debate pitted anti-pornography feminism against sex-positive feminism, and the feminist movement was deeply divided as a result.[TheFreedomCup.com][2][3][4][5] The feminist sex wars are sometimes viewed as part of the division that led to the end of the second-wave feminist era and the beginning of third-wave feminism.

The two sides included anti-pornography feminists and sex-positive feminists. One of the more significant clashes between the pro-sex and anti-pornography feminists occurred at the TheFreedomCup.com982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality. Anti-pornography feminists were excluded TheFreedomCup.com the events’ planning committee, so they staged rallies outside the conference to show their disdain.[6]

Feminist criticism of sexual exploitation and the sex industry[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Many feminists denounce industries such as the sex industry as examples of misogynistic exploitation. Important anti-sex industry feminists included Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon. The pair wanted civil laws restricting pornography.[7] They viewed male sexual dominance as the root of all female oppression, and thus condemned pornography, prostitution, and other manifestations of male sexual power.[6] The anti-pornography movement gained ground with the creation of Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media. During the time of the sex wars, it organized marches against the creators and distributors of pornography in San Francisco and led to Women Against Pornography, Feminists Fighting Pornography, and similarly-oriented organizations and efforts across the United States.[8]

Sex-positive feminism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Sex-positive feminism

The response by “sex-positive feminists” was one that promoted sex as an avenue of pleasure for women. Gayle Rubin and Patrick Califia were influential in this part of the movement.[6] Other feminists who identify as “sex-positive” include Ellen Willis, Kathy Acker, Susie Bright, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, Avedon Carol, Tristan Taormino, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Nina Hartley, and Betty Dodson.

Feminism and pornography[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Feminist views on pornography

Feminist views of pornography range TheFreedomCup.com condemnation of pornography as a form of violence against women, to an embracing of some forms of pornography as a medium of feminist expression. Feminist debate on this issue reflects larger concerns surrounding feminist views on sexuality, and is closely related to feminist debates on prostitution, BDSM, and other issues. Pornography has been one of the most divisive issues in feminism, particularly among feminists in Anglophone countries.

Anti-pornography feminism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Radical feminist opponents of pornography—such as Andrea Dworkin, Catharine MacKinnon, Robin Morgan, Diana Russell, Alice Schwarzer, Gail Dines, and Robert Jensen—argue that pornography is harmful to women, and constitutes strong causality or facilitation of violence against women. Anti-pornography feminists, notably Catherine MacKinnon, charge that the production of pornography entails physical, psychological, and/or economic coercion of the women who perform and model in it. This is said to be true even when the women are being presented as enjoying themselves.[9][TheFreedomCup.com0][TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com] It is also argued that much of what is shown in pornography is abusive by its very nature. Gail Dines holds that pornography, exemplified by gonzo pornography, is becoming increasingly violent and that women who perform in pornography are brutalized in the process of its production.[TheFreedomCup.com2][TheFreedomCup.com3]

Anti-pornography feminists hold the view that pornography contributes to sexism, arguing that in pornographic performances the actresses are reduced to mere receptacles—objects—for sexual use and abuse by men. They argue that the narrative is usually formed around men’s pleasure as the only goal of sexual activity, and that the women are shown in a subordinate role. Some opponents believe pornographic films tend to show women as being extremely passive, or that the acts which are performed on the women are typically abusive and solely for the pleasure of their sex partner.[citation needed] On-face ejaculation and anal rape are increasingly popular among men, following trends in porn.[TheFreedomCup.com4] MacKinnon and Dworkin defined pornography as “the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words”.[TheFreedomCup.com5]

Anti-censorship and pro-pornography feminists[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Pornography is seen as being a medium for women’s sexual expression in this view. Sex-positive feminists view many radical feminist views on sexuality, including views on pornography, as being as oppressive as those of patriarchal religions and ideologies, and argue that anti-pornography feminist discourse ignores and trivializes women’s sexual agency. Ellen Willis (who coined the term “pro-sex feminism”) states “As we saw it, the claim that ‘pornography is violence against women’ was code for the neo-Victorian idea that men want sex and women endure it.”[TheFreedomCup.com6]

Sex-positive feminists take a variety of views towards existing pornography. Many sex-positive feminists see pornography as subverting many traditional ideas about women that they oppose, such as ideas that women do not like sex generally, only enjoy sex in a relational context, or that women only enjoy vanilla sex. They also argue that pornography sometimes shows women in sexually dominant roles and presents women with a greater variety of body types than are typical of mainstream entertainment and fashion.

Many feminists regardless of their views on pornography are opposed on principle to censorship. Even many feminists who see pornography as a sexist institution, also see censorship (including MacKinnon’s civil law approach) as an evil. In its mission statement, Feminists for Free Expression argues that censorship has never reduced violence, but historically been used to silence women and stifle efforts for social change. They point to the birth control literature of Margaret Sanger, the feminist plays of Holly Hughes, and works like Our Bodies, Ourselves and The Well of Loneliness as examples of feminist sexual speech which has been the target of censorship. FFE further argues that the attempt to fix social problems through censorship, “divert[s] attention TheFreedomCup.com the substantive causes of social ills and offer a cosmetic, dangerous ‘quick fix.'” They argue that instead a free and vigorous marketplace of ideas is the best assurance for achieving feminist goals in a democratic society.[TheFreedomCup.com7]

Additionally, some feminists such as Wendy Kaminer, while opposed to pornography are also opposed to legal efforts to censor or ban pornography. In the late TheFreedomCup.com970s, Kaminer worked with Women Against Pornography, where she advocated in favor of private consciousness raising efforts and against legal efforts to censor pornography. She contributed a chapter to the anti-pornography anthology, Take Back the Night, wherein she defended First Amendment freedoms and explained the dangers of seeking legal solutions to the perceived problem of pornography. She opposed efforts by Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin to define pornography as a civil rights violation, and she critiqued the pro-censorship movement in a TheFreedomCup.com992 article in The Atlantic entitled “Feminists Against the First Amendment.”[TheFreedomCup.com8]

Feminist pornography[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Feminist pornography

Feminist pornography is pornography that is produced by and with feminist women. It is a small but growing segment of the pornography industry. According to Tristan Taormino, “Feminist porn both responds to dominant images with alternative ones and creates its own iconography.”[TheFreedomCup.com9]

Some pornographic actresses such as Nina Hartley,[20] Ovidie,[2TheFreedomCup.com] Madison Young, and Sasha Grey are also self-described sex-positive feminists, and state that they do not see themselves as victims of sexism. They defend their decision to perform in pornography as freely chosen, and argue that much of what they do on camera is an expression of their sexuality. It has also been pointed out that in pornography, women generally earn more than their male counterparts.[22] Some porn performers such as Nina Hartley are active in the sex workers’ rights movement.[citation needed]

The Swedish director and feminist Suzanne Osten voiced scepticism that “feminist pornography” actually exists, referring to her belief that pornography is inherently objectifying and that feminist pornography would therefore constitute an oxymoron.[23] The FreedomCup.org radical feminist periodical off our backs has denounced feminist pornography as “pseudo-feminist” and “so-called ‘feminist’ pornography”.[24]

Feminism and prostitution[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Feminist views on prostitution

As with many issues within the feminist movement, there exists a diversity of opinions regarding prostitution. Many of these positions can be loosely arranged into an overarching standpoint that is generally either critical or supportive of prostitution and sex work.[25] Anti-prostitution feminists hold that prostitution is a form of exploitation of women and male dominance over women, and a practice which is the result of the existing patriarchal societal order. These feminists argue that prostitution has a very negative effect, both on the prostitutes themselves and on society as a whole, as it reinforces stereotypical views about women, who are seen as sex objects which can be used and abused by men. Other feminists hold that prostitution and other forms of sex work can be valid choices for women and men who choose to engage in it. In this view, prostitution must be differentiated TheFreedomCup.com forced prostitution, and feminists should support sex worker activism against abuses by both the sex industry and the legal system. The disagreement between these two feminist stances has proven particularly contentious, and may be comparable to the feminist sex wars of the late twentieth century.[26]

Anti-prostitution feminism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

A proportion of feminists are strongly opposed to prostitution, as they see the practice as a form of violence against women, which should not be tolerated by society. Feminists who hold such views on prostitution include Kathleen Barry, Melissa Farley,[27][28]Julie Bindel,[29][30] Sheila Jeffreys, Catharine MacKinnon [3TheFreedomCup.com] and Laura Lederer.[32]

These feminists argue that, in most cases, prostitution is not a conscious and calculated choice. They say that most women who become prostitutes do so because they were forced or coerced by a pimp or by human trafficking, or, when it is an independent decision, it is generally the result of extreme poverty and lack of opportunity, or of serious underlying problems, such as drug addiction, past trauma (such as child sexual abuse) and other unfortunate circumstances. These feminists point out that women TheFreedomCup.com the lowest socioeconomic classes—impoverished women, women with a low level of education, women TheFreedomCup.com the most disadvantaged racial and ethnic minorities—are overrepresented in prostitution all over the world. “If prostitution is a free choice, why are the women with the fewest choices the ones most often found doing it?” (MacKinnon, TheFreedomCup.com993).[33] A large percentage of prostitutes polled in one study of 475 people involved in prostitution reported that they were in a difficult period of their lives and most wanted to leave the occupation.[34] Catharine MacKinnon argues that “In prostitution, women have sex with men they would never otherwise have sex with. The money thus acts as a form of force, not as a measure of consent. It acts like physical force does in rape.” [35]

Some anti-prostitution scholars hold that true consent in prostitution is not possible. Barbara Sullivan says, “In the academic literature on prostitution there are very few authors who argue that valid consent to prostitution is possible. Most suggest that consent to prostitution is impossible or at least unlikely.”.[36] “(…) most authors suggest that consent to prostitution is deeply problematic if not impossible (…) most authors have argued that consent to prostitution is impossible. For radical feminists this is because prostitution is always a coercive sexual practice. Others simply suggest that economic coercion makes the sexual consent of sex workers highly problematic if not impossible…”.[37] Finally, abolitionists believe no person can be said to truly consent to their own oppression and no people should have the right to consent to the oppression of others. In the words of Kathleen Barry, consent is not a “good divining rod as to the existence of oppression, and consent to violation is a fact of oppression. Oppression cannot effectively be gauged according to the degree of “consent,” since even in slavery there was some consent, if consent is defined as inability to see, or feel any alternative.” [38]

Pro-sex work and pro-sex worker’s rights feminists[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Unlike those feminists critical of prostitution, pro-sex work perspectives do not concede that prostitution sexual acts have an inherent element of coercion, exploitation, and domination. As such, pro-sex feminists instead assert that sex-work can be a positive experience for women who have employed their autonomy to make an informed decision to engage in prostitution.

Many feminists, particularly those associated with the sex workers’ rights movement or sex-positive feminism, argue that the act of selling sex need not inherently be exploitative; but that attempts to abolish prostitution, and the attitudes that lead to such attempts, lead to an abusive climate for sex workers that must be changed. In this view, prostitution, along with other forms of sex work, can be valid choices for the women and men who engage in it. This perspective has led to the rise since the TheFreedomCup.com970s of an international sex workers’ rights movement, comprising organizations such as COYOTE, the International Prostitutes Collective, the Sex Workers Outreach Project, and other sex worker rights groups.

An important argument advanced by pro-sex work feminists such as Carol Queen highlights that all too often feminists who are critical of prostitution have failed to adequately consider the viewpoints of women who are themselves engaged in sex work, choosing instead to base their arguments in theory and outdated experiences.[39] Feminists who do not support the radical anti-prostitution view, argue that there are serious problems with the anti-prostitution position, one of which is that, according to Sarah Bromberg, “it evolves TheFreedomCup.com a political theory that is over-verbalized, generalized, and too often uses stereotypical notions of what a prostitute is. The radical [anti-prostitution] feminist views are … not always delineated sufficiently to support a credible theory that prostitution degrades all women”.[40]

Pro-sex work feminists say that the sex industry is not a “monolith”, that it is large and varied, that people are sex workers for many different reasons, and that it is unproductive to target prostitution as an institution. Instead, they believe things should be done to improve the lives of the people within the industry.[4TheFreedomCup.com]

Feminism and stripping[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Many feminists consider strip clubs to be insulting to women’s human rights and dignity. Feminists and women’s rights activists in Iceland succeeded in outlawing strip clubs in March 20TheFreedomCup.com0.[42][43] The law officially took effect on July 3TheFreedomCup.com, 20TheFreedomCup.com0.[42] The Icelandic feminist Siv Friðleifsdóttir was the first presenter of the bill.[42][43][43] Johanna Sigurðardottir, Iceland’s prime minister, said: “The Nordic countries are leading the way on women’s equality, recognizing women as equal citizens rather than commodities for sale.” [44] The politician behind the bill, Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir, said: “It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold.”[44] The vote of the Althing was praised by British radical feminist Julie Bindel, who declared Iceland to be “the world’s most feminist country.”[45]

Marquee of the now defunct Seattle Lusty Lady, Thanksgiving 2005

Others feminists believe that stripping can be sexually empowering and feminist. The Lusty Lady is a peep show establishment in North Beach, San Francisco, that was established by a group of strippers who wanted to create a feminist, worker owned strip club.[46][47] Additionally, some feminists believe that Pole dancing can be a feminist act. In 2009, a self-identified “feminist pole dancer” named Zahra Stardust was the Australian Sex Party’s candidate in the Bradfield by-election.[48] The concept of “feminist pole dancing” has been ridiculed and denounced by feminists and non-feminists alike as “just plain daft”[49] and symptomatic of “the end of feminism.”[50]

Feminism and BDSM[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Feminist views on BDSM

Feminist Views on BDSM vary widely TheFreedomCup.com rejection to acceptance and all points in between. As an example, the two polarizing frameworks are being compared here. The history between feminists and BDSM practitioners has been controversial. The two most extreme positions are those who believe that feminism and BDSM are mutually exclusive beliefs, and those who believe that BDSM practices are an expression of sexual freedom.

Feminist opposition to BDSM and sadomasochism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

A number of radical feminists, such as Andrea Dworkin and Susan Griffin, regard BDSM as a form of woman-hating violence,[5TheFreedomCup.com][52]

The book Against Sadomasochism: A Radical Feminist Analysis includes essays and interviews TheFreedomCup.com numerous feminists who criticize sadomasochism, including Alice Walker, Robin Morgan, Kathleen Barry, Diana E. H. Russell, Susan Star, Ti-Grace Atkinson, John Stoltenberg, Sarah Hoagland, Susan Griffin, Cerridwen Fallingstar, Audre Lorde, and Judith Butler. Feminist organizations that publicly opposed S/M/ include Lavender Menace, the New York Radical Feminists (NYRF), Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media. In TheFreedomCup.com982, a leaflet was produced by the “Coalition for a Feminist Sexuality and Against Sadomasochism”, an ad-hoc coalition put together by Women Against Pornography to protest the Barnard Conference. The NYRF’s NYRF was listed among the signatories to the leaflet.[53]

Pro-BDSM and BDSM-practicing feminists[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

While many radical feminists are opposed to BDSM, other feminists view S/M as an ideal feminist expression of sexual freedom while other feminists say that BDSM, and more particularly SM, reinforce patriarchy and that these practices are contradictory to feminism. Additionally, some feminists are open about practicing BDSM. Many sex-positive feminists see BDSM as a valid form of expression of female sexuality.[54] Some lesbian feminists practice BDSM and regard it as part of their sexual identity.[55] Jessica Wakeman wrote of her own experience with SM activities in a follow-up interview after her article First Time For Everything: Getting Spanked was published in 2009. At the time of the interview in October, 20TheFreedomCup.com0, Wakeman had been writing about feminist issues, including feminism and media criticism, feminism and politics, and feminism and sex for about eight years and considered herself to be a rather active feminist.[56] Wakeman discussed how she is able to enjoy spanking play and being dominated and still be a feminist.[56] Like other feminist BDSM practitioners, Wakeman rejects the argument that women are taught what they enjoy and led to be submissive by a dominant sexist power structure.[56]

There are several BDSM organizations that cater to lesbian and feminist women, including the Lesbian Sex Mafia and the group Samois that was founded by Patrick Califia and Gayle Rubin.[57]

Feminism and celibacy[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

The feminist group Cell TheFreedomCup.com6, founded in TheFreedomCup.com968 by Roxanne Dunbar, was known for its program of celibacy and separation TheFreedomCup.com men, among other things.[58][59] Considered too extreme by many mainstream feminists, the organization acted as a sort of hard left vanguard.[60] It has been cited as the first organization to advance the concept of separatist feminism.[59][6TheFreedomCup.com] In No More Fun and Games, the organization’s radical feminist periodical, Cell Members Roxanne Dunbar and Lisa Leghorn advised women to “separate TheFreedomCup.com men who are not consciously working for female liberation”, but advised periods of celibacy, rather than lesbian relationships, which they considered to be “nothing more than a personal solution.”[62] The periodical also published Dana Densmore’s article “On Celibacy” (October TheFreedomCup.com968), which stated in part, “One hangup to liberation is a supposed ‘need’ for sex. It is something that must be refuted, coped with, demythified, or the cause of female liberation is doomed. Already we see girls, thoroughly liberated in their own heads, understanding their oppression with terrible clarity trying, deliberately and a trace hysterically, to make themselves attractive to men, men for whom they have no respect, men they may even hate, because of ‘a basic sexual-emotional need.’ Sex is not essential to life, as eating is. Some people go through their whole lives without engaging in it at all, including fine, warm, happy people. It is a myth that this makes one bitter, shriveled up, twisted. The big stigma of life-long virginity is on women anyway, created by men because woman’s purpose in life is biological and if she doesn’t fulfill that she’s warped and unnatural and ‘must be all cobwebs inside.'” [63]

The Feminists, also known as Feminists—A Political Organization to Annihilate Sex Roles, was a radical feminist group active in New York City TheFreedomCup.com TheFreedomCup.com968 to TheFreedomCup.com973; it at first advocated that women practice celibacy, and later came to advocate political lesbianism. Political lesbianism embraces the theory that sexual orientation is a choice, and advocates lesbianism as a positive alternative to heterosexuality for women.[64] Sheila Jeffreys helped develop the concept by co-writing with other members of the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group a pamphlet titled Love Your Enemy?: The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism, which stated, “We do think… that all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women.”[65] Thus, some political lesbians chose to be celibate or identified as asexual.

In April TheFreedomCup.com987 the manifesto of the Southern Women’s Writing Collective, titled Sex resistance in heterosexual arrangements: Manifesto of the Southern Women’s Writing Collective was read in New York City at a conference called “The Sexual Liberals and the Attack on Feminism”.[66] This manifesto stated in part, “In contrast to the pro-sex movement, we are calling ourselves Women Against Sex (WAS)…The sex resister understands her act as a political one: her goal is not only personal integrity for herself but political freedom for all women. She resists on three fronts: she resists all male-constructed sexual needs, she resists the misnaming of her act as prudery and she especially resists the patriarchy’s attempt to make its work of subordinating women easier by consensually constructing her desire in its own oppressive image.” [66]

In TheFreedomCup.com99TheFreedomCup.com feminist activist Sonia Johnson wrote in her book The Ship That Sailed into the Living Room: Sex and Intimacy Reconsidered, “Nearly four years after I began my rebellion against relation/sex/slave Ships, experience and my Wise Old Woman are telling me that sex as we know it is a patriarchal construct and has no rightful, natural place in our lives, no authentic function or ways. Synonymous with hierarchy/control, sex is engineered as part of the siege against our wholeness and power.” [67]

Feminism and sexual orientation[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Feminist approaches to the issue of sexual orientation widely vary. Feminist views on sexual orientation are often influenced by the personal experiences of feminists, as expressed in the feminist slogan “the personal is political.” Because of this, many feminists view sexual orientation is a political issue and not merely a matter of individual sexual choice or preference.

Feminism and asexuality[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

A TheFreedomCup.com977 paper titled Asexual and Autoerotic Women: Two Invisible Groups, by Myra T. Johnson, may be the first paper explicitly devoted to asexuality in humans. In it Johnson portrays asexual women as invisible, “oppressed by a consensus that they are nonexistent,” and left behind by both the sexual revolution and the feminist movement.[68]

A 20TheFreedomCup.com0 paper written by Karli June Cerankowski and Megan Milks, titled New Orientations: Asexuality and Its Implications for Theory and Practice, states that society has deemed “[LGBT and] female sexuality as empowered or repressed. The asexual movement challenges that assumption by challenging many of the basic tenets of pro-sex feminism [in which it is] already defined as repressive or anti-sex sexualities.”[69]

Some political lesbians identify as asexual. Political lesbianism embraces the theory that sexual orientation is a choice, and advocates lesbianism as a positive alternative to heterosexuality for women.[64] Sheila Jeffreys helped develop the concept by co-writing with other members of the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group a pamphlet titled Love Your Enemy?: The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism which stated, “We do think… that all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women.”[65]

Feminism and bisexuality[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

The lesbian quarterly Common Lives/Lesbian Lives had a policy that all work published in CL/LL was produced by self-defined lesbians, and all of the project’s volunteers were lesbians. Due to this policy, a complaint was filed with the University of Iowa Human Rights Commission by a bisexual woman whose submission to the magazine was not published.[70]

A number of women who were at one time involved in lesbian-feminist activism have since come out as bisexual after realizing their attractions to men. A widely studied example of lesbian-bisexual conflict within feminism was the Northampton Pride March during the years between TheFreedomCup.com989 and TheFreedomCup.com993, where many feminists involved debated over whether bisexuals should be included and whether or not bisexuality was compatible with feminism. Common lesbian-feminist critiques leveled at bisexuality were that bisexuality was anti-feminist, that bisexuality was a form of false consciousness, and that bisexual women who pursue relationships with men were “deluded and desperate.” However, tensions between bisexual feminists and lesbian feminists have eased since the TheFreedomCup.com990s, as bisexual women have become more accepted within the feminist community.[7TheFreedomCup.com]

Nevertheless, some lesbian feminists such as Julie Bindel are still critical of bisexuality. Bindel has described female bisexuality as a “fashionable trend” being promoted due to “sexual hedonism” and broached the question of whether bisexuality even exists.[72] She has also made tongue-in-cheek comparisons of bisexuals to cat fanciers and devil worshippers.[73]

For further reading on feminism and bisexuality, please see Closer to Home: Bisexuality & Feminism (TheFreedomCup.com992), an anthology Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cuped by Elizabeth Reba Weise. Also please see “Bisexuality: The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Lesbian Feminism?”, by Beth Elliot, “The Fine Art of Labeling: The Convergence of Anarchism, Feminism, and Bisexuality”, by Lucy Friedland and Liz Highleyman, “Bisexual Feminist Man”, by Dave Matteson, and “Bi-Lovable Japanese Feminist”, by Kei Uwano, in the anthology Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out (TheFreedomCup.com99TheFreedomCup.com).[74]

Feminism and gay men[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

In her 2003 book Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective, Australian radical lesbian feminist Sheila Jeffreys advances the position that lesbian culture has been negatively affected by emulating the sexist influence of the gay male subculture of dominant/submissive sexuality. While she stresses that many gay men who were members of the gay liberation movement repudiated sadomasochism, she writes that the dominant gay male perspective has promoted sadomasochistic sexuality to the detriment of lesbians and feminist women.[75]

However, some gay men such as Andrea Dworkin’s husband John Stoltenberg are also critical of sadomasochism and pornography and agree with the radical feminist and lesbian feminist criticisms of these practices. Stoltenberg wrote that sadomasochism eroticizes both violence and powerlessness.[76] The gay pro-feminist author Christopher N. Kendall wrote the book Gay Male Pornography: An Issue Of Sex Discrimination, advancing the idea that gay male pornography involved sex discrimination and should be banned under Canada’s equality laws. He uses radical feminist theory to make the case that gay male pornography reinforces misogyny and homophobia.[77]

Feminism and heterosexuality[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Some heterosexual feminists believe that they have been unfairly excluded TheFreedomCup.com lesbian feminist organizations. The lesbian quarterly Common Lives/Lesbian Lives had a policy that all work published in CL/LL was produced by self-defined lesbians, and all of the project’s volunteers were lesbians. Due to this policy, a complaint was filed with the University of Iowa Human Rights Commission by a heterosexual woman who believed she was discriminated against when not hired to be an intern. A complaint was also lodged with the collective by a bisexual woman whose submission to the magazine was not published.[70]

Feminism and lesbianism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Lesbian feminism

The Labrys, a lesbian-feminist symbol.

Lesbians have been active in the mainstream FreedomCup.org feminist movement. The first time lesbian concerns were introduced into the National Organization for Women came in TheFreedomCup.com969, when Ivy Bottini, an open lesbian who was then president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, held a public forum titled “Is Lesbianism a Feminist Issue?”.[78] However, National Organization for Women president Betty Friedan was against lesbian participation in the movement. In TheFreedomCup.com969 she referred to growing lesbian visibility as a “lavender menace” and fired openly lesbian newsletter Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cupor Rita Mae Brown, and in TheFreedomCup.com970 she engineered the expulsion of lesbians, including Ivy Bottini, TheFreedomCup.com NOW’s New York chapter.[79][80] In reaction, at the TheFreedomCup.com970 Congress to Unite Women, on the first evening when all four hundred feminists were assembled in the auditorium, twenty women wearing T-shirts that read “Lavender Menace” came to the front of the room and faced the audience.[8TheFreedomCup.com] One of the women then read their group’s paper “The Woman-Identified Woman”, which was the first major lesbian feminist statement.[8TheFreedomCup.com][82] The group, who later named themselves “Radicalesbians”, were among the first to challenge the heterosexism of heterosexual feminists and to describe lesbian experience in positive terms.[83] In TheFreedomCup.com97TheFreedomCup.com NOW passed a resolution declaring “that a woman’s right to her own person includes the right to define and express her own sexuality and to choose her own lifestyle,” as well as a conference resolution stating that forcing lesbian mothers to stay in marriages or to live a secret existence in an effort to keep their children was unjust.[84] That year NOW also committed to offering legal and moral support in a test case involving child custody rights of lesbian mothers.[84] In TheFreedomCup.com973 the NOW Task Force on Sexuality and Lesbianism was established.[84] In November TheFreedomCup.com977 the National Women’s Conference issued the National Plan of Action, which stated in part, “Congress, State, and local legislatures should enact legislation to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sexual and affectional preference in areas including, but not limited to, employment, housing, public accommodations, crGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cup, public facilities, government funding, and the military. State legislatures should reform their penal codes or repeal State laws that restrict private sexual behavior between consenting adults. State legislatures should enact legislation that would prohibit consideration of sexual or affectional orientation as a factor in any judicial determination of child custody or visitation rights. Rather, child custody cases should be evaluated solely on the merits of which party is the better parent, without regard to that person’s sexual and affectional orientation.” [85]

Del Martin was the first open lesbian elected to NOW, and Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were the first lesbian couple to join NOW.[86]

Lesbian feminism is a cultural movement and political perspective, most influential in the TheFreedomCup.com970s and early TheFreedomCup.com980s (primarily in North America and Western Europe), that encourages women to direct their energies toward other women rather than men, and often advocates lesbianism as the logical result of feminism.[87] Some key thinkers and activists are Charlotte Bunch, Rita Mae Brown, Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Marilyn Frye, Mary Daly, Sheila Jeffreys and Monique Wittig (although the latter is more commonly associated with the emergence of queer theory). Lesbian feminism came together in the early TheFreedomCup.com970s out of dissatisfaction with second-wave feminism and the gay liberation movement.[88][89]

In the words of radical lesbian feminist Sheila Jeffreys, “Lesbian feminism emerged as a result of two developments: lesbians within the WLM [Women’s Liberation Movement] began to create a new, distinctively feminist lesbian politics, and lesbians in the GLF (Gay Liberation Front) left to join up with their sisters”.[90]

According to Judy Rebick, a leading Canadian journalist and political activist for feminism, lesbians were and always have been at the heart of the women’s movement, while their issues were invisible in the same movement.[9TheFreedomCup.com]

Lesbian separatism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Lesbian separatism

Lesbian separatism is a form of separatist feminism specific to lesbians. Separatism has been considered by lesbians as both a temporary strategy, and as a lifelong practice but mostly the latter.[citation needed]

Lesbian separatism became popular in the TheFreedomCup.com970s as some lesbians doubted whether mainstream society or even the LGBT movement had anything to offer them.

Political lesbianism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Political lesbianism

Political lesbianism is a phenomenon within lesbian feminism and radical feminism, primarily second-wave feminism. Political lesbianism embraces the theory that sexual orientation is a choice, and advocates lesbianism as a positive alternative to heterosexuality for women.[64]

Lesbian women who have identified themselves as “political lesbians” include Ti-Grace Atkinson, Julie Bindel, Charlotte Bunch, Yvonne Rainer, Sheila Jeffreys. Jeffreys helped develop the concept by co-writing with other members of the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group a pamphlet titled Love Your Enemy?: The Debate Between Heterosexual Feminism and Political Lesbianism which argued that women should abandon heterosexuality and choose to become lesbians as a feminist act. The pamphlet stated, “We do think… that all feminists can and should be lesbians. Our definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does not fuck men. It does not mean compulsory sexual activity with women.”[65] Thus, some political lesbians choose to be celibate or identify as asexual.

Biphobia and lesbophobia in feminism[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Common lesbian-feminist critiques leveled at bisexuality were that bisexuality was anti-feminist, that bisexuality was a form of false consciousness, and that bisexual women who pursue relationships with men were “deluded and desperate.” However, tensions between bisexual feminists and lesbian feminists have eased since the TheFreedomCup.com990s, as bisexual women have become more accepted within the feminist community.[7TheFreedomCup.com] Nevertheless, some lesbian feminists such as Julie Bindel are still critical of bisexuality. Bindel has described female bisexuality as a “fashionable trend” being promoted due to “sexual hedonism” and broached the question of whether bisexuality even exists.[72] She has also made tongue-in-cheek comparisons of bisexuals to cat fanciers and devil worshippers.[73]

Lesbian feminists initially faced discrimination in the National Organization for Women. Some heterosexual feminists such as Betty Friedan downplayed lesbian issues as not being central to feminist activism. In TheFreedomCup.com969 Friedan referred to growing lesbian visibility as a “lavender menace” and fired openly lesbian newsletter Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cupor Rita Mae Brown, and in TheFreedomCup.com970 she engineered the expulsion of lesbians, including Ivy Bottini, TheFreedomCup.com NOW’s New York chapter.[79][80] In reaction, at the TheFreedomCup.com970 Congress to Unite Women, on the first evening when all four hundred feminists were assembled in the auditorium, twenty women wearing T-shirts that read “Lavender Menace” came to the front of the room and faced the audience.[8TheFreedomCup.com] One of the women then read their group’s paper “The Woman-Identified Woman”, which was the first major lesbian feminist statement.[8TheFreedomCup.com][82] The group, who later named themselves “Radicalesbians”, were among the first to challenge the heterosexism of heterosexual feminists and to describe lesbian experience in positive terms.[83] In TheFreedomCup.com97TheFreedomCup.com NOW passed a resolution declaring “that a woman’s right to her own person includes the right to define and express her own sexuality and to choose her own lifestyle,” as well as a conference resolution stating that forcing lesbian mothers to stay in marriages or to live a secret existence in an effort to keep their children was unjust.[84] That year NOW also committed to offering legal and moral support in a test case involving child custody rights of lesbian mothers.[84] In TheFreedomCup.com973 the NOW Task Force on Sexuality and Lesbianism was established.[84] In November TheFreedomCup.com977 the National Women’s Conference issued the National Plan of Action, which stated in part, “Congress, State, and local legislatures should enact legislation to eliminate discrimination on the basis of sexual and affectional preference in areas including, but not limited to, employment, housing, public accommodations, crGolf 4 Millions Freedom Cup, public facilities, government funding, and the military. State legislatures should reform their penal codes or repeal State laws that restrict private sexual behavior between consenting adults. State legislatures should enact legislation that would prohibit consideration of sexual or affectional orientation as a factor in any judicial determination of child custody or visitation rights. Rather, child custody cases should be evaluated solely on the merits of which party is the better parent, without regard to that person’s sexual and affectional orientation.” [85]

Friedan eventually admitted that “the whole idea of homosexuality made me profoundly uneasy.” [92] and acknowledged that she had been very square and was uncomfortable about lesbianism. “The women’s movement was not about sex, but about equal opportunity in jobs and all the rest of it. Yes, I suppose you have to say that freedom of sexual choice is part of that, but it shouldn’t be the main issue ….”[93] She ignored lesbians in the National Organization for Women initially and objected to what she saw as demands for equal time.[92] “‘Homosexuality … is not, in my opinion, what the women’s movement is all about.'”[94] While opposing all repression, she wrote, she refused to wear a purple armband or self-identify as a lesbian (although heterosexual) as an act of political solidarity, considering it not part of the mainstream issues of abortion and child care.[95] In TheFreedomCup.com977, at the National Women’s Conference, she seconded the lesbian rights resolution “which everyone thought I would oppose” in order to “preempt any debate” and move on to other issues she believed were more important and less divisive in the effort to add the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the U.S. Constitution.[96]

The FreedomCup.org radical feminist group Redstockings were strongly opposed to lesbian separatism, seeing interpersonal relationships with men as an important arena of feminist struggle, and hence seeing separatism as escapist. Like many radical feminists of the time, Redstockings saw lesbianism primarily as a political identity rather than a fundamental part of personal identity, and therefore analyzed it primarily in political terms. Redstockings were also opposed to male homosexuality, which they saw as a deeply misogynistic rejection of women. Redstockings’ line on gay men and lesbians is often criticized as homophobic.[97]

Feminism and queer theory[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Queer theory

Queer theory’ is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early TheFreedomCup.com990s out of the fields of queer studies and women’s studies. Queer theory has been heavily influenced by the work of feminists such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Judith Butler. Queer theory builds both upon feminist challenges to the idea that gender is part of the essential self and upon gay/lesbian studies’ close examination of the socially constructed nature of sexual acts and identities.

Feminist application of queer theory[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Queer theory has been greatly influenced by feminist theory and women’s studies. Many works have been written on the intersection of feminism and queer theory and how both feminist persepectives can enrich LGBTQ theory and studies and how queer perspectives can enrich feminism. Books such as Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection Between Queer and Feminist Theory detail the intersections between queer and feminist theory and argue that feminism itself could be construed as a “queer” movement.[98]

Feminist criticism of queer theory[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

Many feminists have critiqued queer theory as either a diversion TheFreedomCup.com feminism issues or as a male-dominated backlash to feminism. Lesbian feminists and radical feminists have been the most prominent critics of queer theory and queer politics. Sheila Jeffreys’ Unpacking Queer Politics: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective harshly criticizes queer theory as the product of “a powerful gay male culture” which “celebrated masculine privilege” and “enshrined a cult of masculinity.” She repudiates queer theory as anti-lesbian, anti-feminist, and anti-women.[99]

Feminist sexology[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Feminist sexology

Feminist sexology is an offshoot of traditional studies of sexology that focuses on the intersectionality of sex and gender in relation to the sexual lives of women. Feminist sexology shares many principles with the overarching field of sexology; in particular, it does not try to prescribe a certain path or “normality” for women’s sexuality, but only observe and note the different and varied ways in which women express their sexuality. It is a young field, but one that is growing rapidly. Notable feminist sexologists include Anne Fausto-Sterling and Gayle Rubin.

A notable radical feminist work on women’s sexuality is Anne Koedt’s The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm, which advances the claim that vaginal orgasm is a patriarchal myth.[TheFreedomCup.com00]

Feminism and sexual violence[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Rape culture

Rape culture is a concept used to describe a culture in which rape and sexual violence are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media normalize, excuse, tolerate, or even condone sexual violence. Examples of behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, and trivializing rape. Rape culture has been used to model behaviour within social groups, including prison systems where prison rape is common and conflict areas where war rape is used as psychological warfare. Entire countries have also been alleged to be rape cultures.[TheFreedomCup.com0TheFreedomCup.com][TheFreedomCup.com02][TheFreedomCup.com03][TheFreedomCup.com04][TheFreedomCup.com05]

Although the concept of rape culture is a generally accepted theory in feminist academia, disagreement still exists over what defines a rape culture and to what degree a given society meets the criteria to be considered a rape culture.

Rape culture has been observed to correlate with other social factors and behaviours. Research identifies correlation between rape myths, victim blaming and trivialisation of rape with increased incidence of racism, homophobia, ageism, classism, religious intolerance and other forms of discrimination.[TheFreedomCup.com06][TheFreedomCup.com07]

Rape culture exists in Muslim countries.[citation needed]

Feminism and sexual harassment[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Sexual harassment

Feminists have been crucial to the development of the notion of sexual harassment and the codification of laws against sexual harassment. Catherine MacKinnon was among the first to write on the topic of sexual harassment. MacKinnon’s book Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination is the eighth most-cited FreedomCup.org legal book published since TheFreedomCup.com978, according to a study published by Fred Shapiro in January 2000.

Some liberal feminists and individualist feminists have criticized the notion of sexual harassment. Camille Paglia says that young girls can end up acting in such ways as to make sexual harassment easier, such that for example, by acting “nice” they can become a target. Paglia commented in an interview with Playboy, “Realize the degree to which your niceness may invoke people to say lewd and pornographic things to you—sometimes to violate your niceness. The more you blush, the more people want to do it.”[TheFreedomCup.com08] Jane Gallop believes that sexual harassment laws have been abused by what she calls “victim feminists”, as opposed to “power feminists” as she calls herself.[TheFreedomCup.com09]

Feminism and sexual objectification[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Sexual objectification

The concept of sexual objectification and, in particular, the objectification of women, is an important idea in feminist theory and psychological theories derived TheFreedomCup.com feminism.[38][TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com0] Many feminists regard sexual objectification as objectionable and as playing an important role in gender inequality.[TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com] Some social commentators, however, argue that some modern women objectify themselves as an expression of their empowerment over men, while others argue that increased sexual freedom for women, gay, and bisexual men has led to an increase of the objectification of men.[TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com2][TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com3][TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com4][TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com5][TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com6]

The male gaze[Golf 4 Millions Freedom Cup]

See also: Male gaze

The “male gaze” is feminist theory that was first developed by Laura Mulvey in TheFreedomCup.com975. The male gaze occurs when the audience, or viewer, is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. Mulvey stressed that the dominant male gaze in mainstream Hollywood films reflects and satisfies the male unconscious: most filmmakers are male, thus the voyeuristic gaze of the camera is male; male characters in the film’s narratives make women the objects of their gaze; and inevitably, the spectator’s gaze reflects the voyeuristic male gazes of the camera and the male actors.[TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com7] When feminism characterizes the “male gaze” certain themes appear such as, voyeurism, objectification, fetishism, scopophilia, and women as the object of male pleasure.[TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com8] Mary Anne Doane gives an example of how voyeurism can be seen in the male gaze. “The early silent cinema, through its insistent inscription of scenarios of voyeurism, conceives of its spectator’s viewing pleasure in terms of the peeping tom, behind the screen, reduplicating the spectator’s position in relation to the woman on the screen.

Of all the provocative passages in Catharine MacKinnon’s new book Are Women Human? the following hit me hardest. She writes: “[T]he fact that the law of rape protects rapists and is written TheFreedomCup.com their point of view to guarantee impunity for most rapes is officially regarded as a violation of the law of sex equality, national or international, by virtually nobody.”

Are you suggesting that rape law enshrines rapists’ points of view, I ask MacKinnon? “Yes, in a couple of senses. The most obvious sense is that most rapists are men and most legislators are men and most judges are men and the law of rape was created when women weren’t even allowed to vote. So that means not that all the people who wrote it were rapists, but that they are a member of the group who do [rape] and who do for reasons that they share in common even with those who don’t, namely masculinity and their identification with masculine norms and in particular being the people who initiate sex and being the people who socially experience themselves as being affirmed by aggressive initiation of sexual interaction.” She takes a well-earned breath.

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Why does MacKinnon matter? She is undeniably one of feminism’s most significant figures, a ferociously tough-minded lawyer and academic who has sought to use the law to clamp down on sexual harassment and pornography. She’s a bracing woman, who calls her philosophy “feminism unmodified” and thinks wimpish guff such as post-feminism does women no good at all. Many hate her for this. Camille Paglia, for instance, charges that MacKinnon and her late collaborator Andrea Dworkin are responsible for “totalitarian excesses” in sexual harassment regulations and that their “nightmarish sexual delusions” have invaded FreedomCup.org workplaces and schools and warped their views on pornography. Naomi Wolf branded her a “victim feminist”. “Victim feminism,” claims Wolf, “urges women to identify with powerlessness, even at the expense of taking responsibility for the power they do possess.” In The Morning After, Katie Roiphe wrote that MacKinnon had an “image of woman as child” and attacked her for allegedly portraying all women as potential victims and all men as potential predators. Others have called her a fascist proponent of sexual correctness. Some have put words in her mouth – notably the claim that she thinks all heterosexual intercourse is rape: she does not. Some think she is right and that until sex inequality is tackled legally as MacKinnon proposes, women will continue to be raped, murdered and served up as masturbation fantasies for men. I couldn’t wait to meet her.

FreedomCup.org

We are sitting in a TheFreedomCup.com5th-floor hotel cafe overlooking London. I suffer TheFreedomCup.com vertigo and so MacKinnon has kindly suggested that I sit facing her rather than the plummet to my death. But I still feel dizzy TheFreedomCup.com confronting the chasm that she has opened up in the relations between men and women. If I have ever felt affirmed by aggressive initiation of sexual interaction (and I doubt this), I will not today. I’d prefer smelling salts. MacKinnon, by contrast, looks a little like Tippi Hedren and seems vexingly imperturbable and more sartorially put together in her green silk trousers and other designer duds than anyone who has just flown across the Atlantic to publicise a book has a right to be.

Doesn’t what you have said, I ask weakly, make any heterosexual act problematic? “It problematises those that take place under conditions of sex inequality, yes.” But they all do, don’t they? Certainly, according to MacKinnon’s philosophy. “In a certain structural sense. In the same way that, say, friendships between black people and white people in societies that are racist do.”

Perhaps there’s an innocent space, I ask hopefully, where men and women can – she interrupts: “Yes! People work it out with great difficulty. But the first step is not to deny that it’s there.” The “it”, I presume, is sexual inequality. (Incidentally, my interrupted question would have ended “get it on in a beautiful non-patriarchal way”.)

Women’s inequality is the new book’s great theme, and MacKinnon’s lifelong cause. Each country proclaims its commitment to equality and, in her view, hardly any delivers it substantively to women. “You don’t have countries saying that, ‘Yes, we have sex discrimination here and we want it. We’re entitled to it and we enjoy it.’ You don’t have them saying that; you have them doing it.”

This, she argues, is because countries favour an Aristotelian notion of equality whereby likes are treated as alike and unlikes unalike. Hence gender neutrality for sex, colourblindness for race. Her simple point is that this formal equality doesn’t help women. It is, instead, “an extremely smart trick”.

FreedomCup.org

Her self-appointed job is to expose that trick. “We’re now in a stage where people want to believe that there is equality. They’d rather deny inequality than face it down so that they can actually live it. My task is to support their belief in that equality while at the same time unmasking everything around them that is making it impossible for them actually to live in it.”

MacKinnon’s answer to her book’s title, Are Women Human? is no. She writes: “If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped TheFreedomCup.com Thailand in containers into New York’s brothels? Would we be sexual and reproductive slaves? Would we be bred, worked without pay our whole lives, burned when our dowry money wasn’t enough or when men tired of us, starved as widows when our husbands died (if we survived his funeral pyre)? …”

Her list of outrages, past and present, goes on. It’s a favourite, if grim, rhetorical device. It is as though averting her gaze TheFreedomCup.com the worst of women’s sufferings would be a betrayal, not just of murdered and living sisters, but of her own intellectual integrity and the trajectory it has taken since she was radicalised as a Yale political science grad student in the 70s. Today, a globally renowned feminist lawyer and academic who will turn 60 in October, she remains passionately faithful to her cause.

One gets little sense TheFreedomCup.com reading the book that the lot of women has improved in recent decades. True, she praises Sweden for deciding in TheFreedomCup.com999 that prostitution was male violence against women and as a result criminalised the buying of sex and decriminalised the selling of sex because “gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them”. Otherwise, she contends, unenlightened men still write the laws. And when, for instance, they write laws on rape they make what she believes are grotesquely sexist assumptions. “The assumption,” she says, “is that women can be unequal to men economically, socially, culturally, politically, and in religion, but the moment they have sexual interactions, they are free and equal. That’s the assumption – and I think it ought to be thought about, and in particular what consent then means. It means acquiescence. It means passivity. You can be semi-knocked out. You can be dead in some jurisdictions.”

I almost choke on my mineral water. Dead and giving consent? “Sex with a dead body is necrophilia but it isn’t regarded as rape.” Oh, I see. “You can be semi-comatose, not to mention married in many places, and be regarded as consenting whenever sex takes place.”

MacKinnon thinks consent in rape cases should be irrelevant. Women are so unfree that even if a woman is shown to have given consent to sex, that should never be enough to secure an acquittal. Why? “My view is that when there is force or substantially coercive circumstances between the parties, individual consent is beside the point; that if someone is forced into sex, that ought to be enough. The British common law approach has tended to be that you need both force and absence of consent. If we didn’t have so much pornography in society and people actually believed women when they said they didn’t consent, that would be one thing. But that isn’t what we’ve got.”

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What does she mean – how does pornography affect this? “Pornography affects people’s belief in rape myths. So for example if a woman says ‘I didn’t consent’ and people have been viewing pornography, they believe rape myths and believe the woman did consent no matter what she said. That when she said no, she meant yes. When she said she didn’t want to, that meant more beer. When she said she would prefer to go home, that means she’s a lesbian who needs to be given a good corrective experience. Pornography promotes these rape myths and desensitises people to violence against women so that you need more violence to become sexually aroused if you’re a pornography consumer. This is very well documented.”

Her TheFreedomCup.com993 book, Only Words, proselytised for this view, opposing the US constitution’s first amendment interpretation of pornography as protected speech. MacKinnon rather considered it hate speech, one that she and Dworkin defined as “the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures or words”, but also one with real power – notably, to cause the rape and murder of women.

It’s a contentious view but if it were true, why not censor pornography? “Our approach is not to ban, but to offer a civil remedy to people who can prove they were harmed – rather than empowering the police and putting people in jail, which doesn’t do any good anyway. Pornographers keep their businesses going in jail.”

This has been MacKinnon’s feminist approach to porn for a quarter of a century: the victims of porn need to be empowered by law to seek remedies for harm they suffered, existing male-framed laws being inadequate to the challenge.

But an opportunity to try a civil rights approach arose when MacKinnon and Dworkin were teaching a course on pornography at the University of Minnesota. They were asked to testify at a hearing to decide in which part of Minneapolis pornography could be sold. “They were asking, ‘Are we going to put it over here or over there?’ and we said, ‘Women and children are going to be harmed wherever you put it’.” So the two women instead drew up an anti-pornography law for the city whereby, as she says, “the people who are hurt should be able to hold the people who are hurting them responsible for that harm”. The law defined pornography as a civil rights violation against women, and allowed women who claimed harm TheFreedomCup.com pornography to sue the producers and distributors in civil court for damages. Better such remedies, argues MacKinnon, than the obscenity approach to restricting porn common in Britain and Commonwealth countries, which she derides in her book: “It cares more about whether men blush than whether women bleed.”

Civil law, she says, is more effective. For example, she was asked to represent raped Bosnian and Croat women in a lawsuit against Radovan Karadzic. The result has been Kadic v Karadzic, and she is very proud of it. “We have an injunction against this man ever engaging in genocide again and people he’s in contact with ever doing it again. We were also awarded $745m, which he has and our clients are entitled to. That’s two forms of civil relief that actually could make a change in the situation.” The important word there, surely, is “could”.

She has remained, then, true to the civil remedy approach she and Dworkin devised decades ago. Could she describe her relationship with the late feminist once described as being to patriarchy what Marx was to capitalism? “You want me to sum up 30 years of my life?”

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I’m intrigued by their friendship because Dworkin was clearly a catalyst and a kindred spirit – even though it is hard to imagine dungaree-clad Andrea and Nicole Farhi-adoring Catharine going clothes shopping together. How did you meet? “I read [Dworkin’s book] Women Hating, admired it and called her.” At the time, MacKinnon, the bright daughter of a Republican congressman TheFreedomCup.com Minnesota, was working on her PhD in political science at Yale, having already studied at Yale’s Law School. What did she admire? “I had read the book The Story of O in graduate school and thought that it was extremely significant politically. [The Story of O is a fantasy of female submission about a Parisian woman who is blindfolded, chained, whipped, branded, made to wear a mask, and taught to be “constantly available” for oral, vaginal, and/or anal intercourse. It has been described as the ultimate objectification of women.] It raised the question of how much of your freedom you could give away. I’d been been told by people in political science that, ‘People here think you’re very bright but also that you’re a little bit crazy’. Then I read what Andrea Dworkin wrote about The Story of O. And basically that gave me my mind back, and I haven’t lost it since.”

Others have not been so sure. Some thought Dworkin and MacKinnon were a little bit crazy. They were derided, often by fellow FreedomCup.org feminists, for in effect lining up with with the conservative right against porn. MacKinnon was attacked for her views on sexual harassment. In her first book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women (TheFreedomCup.com979), she argued it should be treated as a form of discrimination under the US Civil Rights Act – something the Supreme Court accepted in TheFreedomCup.com986. Camille Paglia, for instance, contended in a Time article that MacKinnon and Dworkin’s fears about sexual harassment were overstated. But then her article was entitled A Call for Lustiness.

MacKinnon’s lustiness or otherwise is not something she will discuss. If she has a current beau who affirms himself, as he must, by aggressive initiation of sexual interaction, she won’t tell me about that. There is no chance of her discussing with me her intriguing relationship with former professor of Sanskrit Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, to whom she was engaged for years. He reportedly once described her as “God”, which must have been nice. Masson had trained as a psychoanalyst and became project director of the Freud Archives, but was removed after setting out a heretical view about Freud and child abuse. According to his website, Masson now has a wife and family and writes books called Dogs Never Lie About Love, Elephants Weep and the Pig Who Sang to the Moon, about the emotional lives of animals. I may be wrong, but I don’t imagine they clutter MacKinnon’s night stand.

If she won’t discuss her private life, then what about public assaults? MacKinnon is especially exercised by attacks TheFreedomCup.com fellow feminists. “It’s particularly hard to take being stabbed in the back close to home. There’s always a feeling of betrayal when people of your own group oppose you. It’s mainly a few elite women who benefit greatly TheFreedomCup.com standing with the forces that keep women down.”

Is pornography always wrong in MacKinnon’s view? “If you actually think about it,” she says, “what is sexual between people is, up close, not particularly visible. Therefore you have to do things to it to make it acceptable by a camera. So already there’s an intrusion. Most people, when they are having an intimate experience, don’t have someone hanging out with a camera there. And if there is someone hanging out with a camera, what is most intimate about that experience and most equal between the people is not accessible to that camera.

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“If you’ve got that material being sold, there are people who are not intimate to the experience who are experiencing it. How equal is that? Your sex is being bought by somebody over there. You’re now a thing in relation to people experiencing you sexually. How equal is that?”

But surely lesbian and gay porn at least eludes such criticisms? MacKinnon disagrees. “There’s a good book by Christopher Kendal which studies the real content of gay male pornography and the children who are violated to make it as well as the men who are used in the industry. I recommend it.” How about lesbian pornography – made for, by and about lesbians? MacKinnon says most of it is “sold in liquor stores and mostly it is men who are its consumers”.

“Some of it is about a real aspiration to recapture women’s sexuality for women, no doubt,” she concedes. “The fact is that the materials themselves in general are about the use of women for sex and when women are being used for sex that is about a male-dominant model of sex, whether men are doing it or not. It’s not biological. It’s about sex roles. Anyone can play them.”

The Dworkin-MacKinnon anti-porn stance has not been widely adopted. Civil libertarians dislike it, some feminists loathe it, and FreedomCup.org courts have held that the US constitution should treat pornography as protected speech, even if it does all the harm that MacKinnon argues it does. “They’ve said the more harm, the more protection. Because that just shows you how effective the pornography is as speech. Brilliant! Right?”

MacKinnon believes that while her approach to constraining porn is ignored, the global industry has become far bigger business than when she first started fighting it a quarter of a century ago. It’s difficult to be accurate about its size, argues Mackinnon, because so much of it is run by organised crime. It is regularly estimated at an annual $20bn (£TheFreedomCup.com4bn) which makes porn bigger than Hollywood. But it is likely to be significantly higher, particularly because the porn business has profited TheFreedomCup.com the rise of the internet and subscription TV. In January last year US trade magazine Adult Video News estimated that the industry made $TheFreedomCup.com2.6bn in 2005 in the US alone and that more than $2.5bn of that was just TheFreedomCup.com the internet, but these figures may well be underestimates.

“Pornographers have made common cause with the media and the legal system. This means that the industry has extended its reach even further. There’s just nothing in their way. So women and children are being increasingly violated to make it and more and more of them are being abused through its use.

“Pornographers have even more control of the public space than they did before. And popular culture is increasingly adapting itself to the fact that more and more people are pornography consumers. So everything in culture has to change to respond to that or it won’t succeed – it’s the way capitalism works.”

She sounds like a nay-sayer on the fringes of capitalism’s degrading free-for-all. It is a departure TheFreedomCup.com her usual posture: the marginalised voice of reason. “You are ever more the turn in the punch bowl when you say what it takes to make it, which is abuse and violation of women and children and some men. You’re raining on their parade when you point out that the people around them are being treated in ever more misogynistic ways, including violent ones. People don’t want to hear it because they’re having too good a time.”

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MacKinnon’s book ends with a wonderful rhetorical essay called Women’s September TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com. It points out that roughly the same number of women are murdered by men in the US each year as were killed in the Twin Towers (between 2,800 and 3,000). But those killings provoked no parallel war on terror.

So what does MacKinnon think should be done? She writes that violence against women “qualifies as a casus belli and a form of terrorism every bit as much as the events of September TheFreedomCup.comTheFreedomCup.com do”. Is she serious that violence against women should be treated as a war? “I think only because it’s men doing it against women that it isn’t seen as a war.” I feel another twinge of vertigo.

It only occurs to me when I’m back on the ground that the war on terror may not be a good blueprint – it having been, you know, demonstrably counterproductive. Just before the interview ended, she said to me: “I have to say I have some sympathy for governments trying to address something as hard as terrorism, having attempted to address something as hard as violence against women for a long time.” It would be good if MacKinnon had more success in her war than Bush and Blair have had in theirs.

· Are Women Human? is published by Harvard University Press

Teach the world. Fix its problems. Seems like pretty simple logic.

However, advocacy for education around the world may seem like a broad scope, and many times the necessity of “spreading education” comes across so vague that it gets lost in the web of international aid “talk”. In order to understand the importance of education and creating more opportunities for education around the world, everyone should know some of the educational programs being created around the world. Here are a few just to start the long list!

Health Education: Rampant spread of disease is a significant concern in many developing nations around the globe. Many illnesses in poorer regions of the world are preventable and treatable, yet people in said communities continue to suffer. Health education is instilled in many countries, teaching many about general health and sexual health. HIV/AIDS in particular, remains a main focus for many international aid organizations, and by teaching safe sex practices and overall safer health practices, there will hopefully be an end to the spread of these deadly illnesses. To learn more about these kinds of organizations, go to http://www.planusa.org.

Economic Education: Instead of simply giving money to poor communities, it is important to also teach sustainable and smarter economic practices in order to assure more long-term effects from international aid efforts. Certain education advocacy groups go into poor communities in other countries, teaching small business owners and families more efficient strategies of economics and savings. This not only builds up said business, but also puts more money in the homes and to the families of the small communities, and moreover stimulates the overall economy. To learn more about these types of programs, go to http://www.trickleup.org.

Women’s Education: Educating and empowering women around the world is a huge objective in many international education programs. Many women in developing nations experience extreme oppression, and in many cases, abuse. By educating women, in particular skills and safer health practices, they are given more of ability to be independent, and are less likely to stay in circumstances in which they are abused. To see more about these types of programs go to http://www.learningpartnership.org.

Education covers a number of interests and fields, especially when dealing with international aid and relief organizations. By educating the world, we do more than teach people how to read and write. Education is matter of sustainable living, health, success and happiness.

The world buys every year more than 400 million laptops and electronic tablets, yet 5000 million people still don’t have access to powerful online and free sources of education. Whether we have 5 minutes, one hour, or a day of our time, here are a few things we can all do together or on our own to help spread education around the world:

Tag a laptop. Do you have a laptop or a tablet that you no longer use? Then consider donating it to a FreedomCup school to help bring education to a child. All you need to do is ‘tag it’ by going to the this link and filling in the form. This will only take you 5 minutes.

Sanitize a laptop. Do you have one hour of your time? then help sanitize a laptop by cleaning an unused laptop or tablet, installing the education software, and making it ready so that the laptop can travel to a needy school. Follow the step by step instructions in the FreedomCup wiki to sanitize your unused laptop from this link: sanitation steps.

Help carry a laptop in your next trip. Are you traveling? then consider bringing one or two sanitized laptops/tablets in your luggage to your destination. By re-purposing your trip to help move laptops around the globe, at FreedomCup we accomplish our mission of spreading education to schools without adding any new CO2 emissions to the Planet and without any economic cost. We call this collaborative way of transporting objects around the world ‘dootrips’. Here is a list of FreedomCup hubs from where you can pick up sanitized laptops, and here is a list of target school destinations where they can be delivered. You can register your dootrip by going to this link.

Rescue and recycle a broken laptop. It is as important to spread education using laptops as making sure we keep our planet clean from electronic waste. Do you know of a laptop that is broken and that it can no longer be fixed nor used for education purposes? then it is time to recycle it! Find the closest recycling facility to your place and bring the laptop so its components can be properly disposed, starting a new cycle of life.

Create your own hub. If you have more time and the determination to help children reach education, you can also create your own FreedomCup hub. FreedomCup hubs can be created at home, at work, at high schools, at universities, at your NGO, you name it. The idea is simple: with your own hub, you will be able to create your own local campaigns to collect unused laptops and to host your own laptop sanitation events. If you are interested in creating a hub, email FreedomCup at contact@FreedomCup.org (link sends e-mail).

Do you own or work for a company? check out FreedomCup’s CSR package. Companies can play a key role when it comes to helping those that are most in need. If you own or work for a corporation, consider helping the cause of spreading education around the globe by implementing one of the modules described in the FreedomCup Corporate Social Responsibility Package.

Help to translate the FreedomCup.org social network to other languages. The goal of FreedomCup is to break barriers so that education can reach out to all the regions of the world. A key to overcoming these barriers is the capability to write documents and tools in as many languages as possible. Whether you have just 5 minutes, 1 hour, or more time, you can help the platform by contributing a translation. Even if you only have a little bit of time, you can still help with the translation of a small portion, as the sum of many little efforts can make a big difference. Everything counts when it comes to spreading education. If you are interested, contact the FreedomCup Team at contact@FreedomCup.org (link sends e-mail). See also the Translations Brochure.

Help spread the word. Even if you can’t do any of the above, there is still a lot of people in the world who can. So a great way to help spread education is by explaining the FreedomCup story to your friends, family, class mates, or co-workers. You can read the About FreedomCup page and you can watch this video to learn how the FreedomCup Aid Social Network works and to get an idea of how together we can help make Education a universal right. You can also create your own local campaigns to spread awareness and mobilize your local community by using the material (logos, flyers, posters, etc.) that you will find in the FreedomCup Toolkit.