More men seek success in ‘women jobs’

HOUSTON — Wearing brick-red scrubs and chatting in Spanish, Miguel Alquicira settled a tiny girl into an adult-size dental chair and soothed her through a set of X-rays. Then he ushered the dentist, a woman, into the room and stayed on to serve as interpreter.

A male dental assistant, Mr. Alquicira is in the minority. But he is also part of a distinctive, if little noticed, shift in workplace gender patterns. Over the last decade, men have begun flocking to fields long the province of women.

Political mommy wars

“Are you a mommy, or do you work?”

The question, years ago, from my nursery-school-aged daughter to one of my friends, sent darts of hot regret through my working-mom gut. But it got at a truth belying the phony outrage on all sides about Hilary Rosen’s put-down of Ann Romney as a woman who had “never worked a day in her life.” Even a three-year-old distinguishes between the work world and the home front.

Why it’s a bad time to be a British woman

Turn back the clocks and rewind history for International Women’s Daytoday. This marks the first era in living memory that British women’s freedoms have gone into reverse, as women pay the heaviest price for government policies.

Intentionally or not, a male breadwinner with a dependent woman carer at home is the model on which the cuts are crafted, removing the supports to independence and sending women home. “The most family-friendly government ever” – promised at election time – is in retreat.

Malaysia bans annual gay rights festival

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysian police yesterday abruptly banned a gay rights festival that had been running peacefully since 2008.

Deputy police chief Khalid Abu Bakar said the ban under the Police Act was to prevent ‘deviationist activity that could destroy religious freedom’.

Display of ‘erotic capital’ hurts women

CLEAVAGE or cover-up? Sexy clothes may look attractive but can hurt the wearer’s image and promotion chances.

Is it the end for chick lit?

The Bookseller has reported a 10% fall in sales of chick-lit titles. So is this the end for a much-derided genre? Elizabeth Day and Tasmina Perry debate the state of women’s fiction.

Singaporeans spend to decide gender of their baby

When it comes to fulfilling their long-cherished dream of bearing a son and heir, there is no limit to how far Singaporeans will go. Like Thailand, for example, or even the United States. The attraction of these places has to do with not just their skills in in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment. After all, that is on offer here.

China’s Boom Gives Rise to Mistresses as Status Symbol

By Dan Levin
New York Times

BEIJING — Jian, a 42-year-old property developer in the booming southern metropolis of Shenzhen, had acquired just about everything men of his socioeconomic ilk covet: a Mercedes-Benz, a sprawling antique jade collection and a lavishly appointed duplex for his wife and daughter.

It was only natural then, he said, that two years ago he took up another costly pastime: a beguiling 20-year-old art major whose affections run him about $6,100 a month.

Why the Gender Gap Won’t Go Away. Ever.

By Kay S. Hymowitz
City Journal

Early this past spring, the White House Council on Women and Girls released a much-anticipated report called Women in America. One of its conclusions struck a familiar note: today, as President Obama said in describing the document, “women still earn on average only about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns. That’s a huge discrepancy.”

It is a huge discrepancy. It’s also an exquisite example of what journalist Charles Seife has dubbed “proofiness.” Proofiness is the use of misleading statistics to confirm what you already believe. Indeed, the 75-cent meme depends on a panoply of apple-to-orange comparisons that support a variety of feminist policy initiatives, from the Paycheck Fairness Act to universal child care, while telling us next to nothing about the well-being of women.

The L’Oreal ideal of female beauty is an abomination

By Tanya Gold
The Guardian

The lengths the beauty industry and its ugly sister, the fashion industry, go to sell their products are repellent

The advertising slogan of L’Oréal is “Because we’re worth it”. But it doesn’t really mean it. If it did, it might include people who look like people in its marketing campaigns. And so the Advertising Standards Authority’s decision this week to ban two L’Oréal adverts for deviousness could be the start of something wondrous.

The adverts featured the actress Julia Roberts and the model Christy Turlington promoting Lancôme’s Teint Miracle foundation and Maybelline’s the Eraser foundation. (Note the use of the word “erase”. It means “annihilate”.) Roberts is 43; Turlington 42. In the fashion andbeauty world, they are as old as Yoda. So beauty did what beauty does; it examined the photographs, observed the flaws and eliminated them. The women emerged improbably radiant and extremely beige. They looked weird and alien and faintly radioactive, like the Ready Brek kids, but with smaller stomachs and longer necks. L’Oréal, the largest and most profitable beauty company in the world, was pleased.