Gender News

Celebrating 2011 with the winter series: Moving Beyond the Stalled Revolution

by admin on 12/01/10 at 12:36 pm

Join us in celebrating the new year with the Winter 2011 Series: Moving Beyond the Stalled Revolution. This series will provide new insights into the barriers to women’s advancement and propose novel and workable solutions to advancing gender equality.

Professor Paula England

The Winter 2011 Series kicks off with a talk by Paula England, Stanford Professor of Sociology. England’s award-winning talk, The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled, addresses why changes to the gender system have been uneven. She looks at the continued devaluation of “women’s work” that incents women to enter male jobs, but offers little incentive for the reverse. England also looks at the difference in movement between classes. This sweeping work can be read online in Gender &  Society. The talk will take place at 4:15 pm  on Thursday, January 6, 2011 in Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center.

Next in the series, continuing to look at work-life issues and  engaging men in gender revolution, is a talk titled, “Switch Hitting: How Women’s Soaring Economic Power is Changing Men and Fatherhood.” The talk looks at issues of work-life balance and economic impact by two award-winning authors.

Women now represent half the U.S. workforce: While many struggles remain, it’s clear that most women have learned to switch hit—to play equally well in the workforce as in the family. Men, however, are only just starting to swing for the home team, taking on greater family responsibilities. Jeremy Adam Smith, author “The Daddy Shift“, and Christine Larson, co-author of “Influence“, explore why the next step in the gender revolution is up to men and how they can be mobilized for work-family balance. The talk will take place at 4:15 pm on  Thursday, January 13, 2011.

Mariko Chang

Our final talk in the Winter Series features Mariko Chang, author of “Shortchanged: Why Women Have Less Wealth and What Can Be Done About It,” looks beyond the gender wage gap between men and women, which has, in fact, never been smaller. Chang addresses important questions underlying the wealth gap: Why does the typical woman have only 36 cents for every dollar of wealth owned by the typical man? How is it that never-married women working full-time have only 16% as much wealth as similarly situated men? And why do single mothers have only 8% of the wealth of single fathers?Chang has a PhD from Stanford in Sociology and was an Associate Professor at Harvard University. The talk will take place at noon on Friday, February 4, 2011 in Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center.

Katha Pollitt

The final talk of the Winter 2011 Series features The Nation columnist, Katha Pollitt. Her “Subject to Debate” column appears every other week in ”The Nation”; it is frequently reprinted in newspapers across the country. Pollitt was just awarded the American book Award’s “Lifetime Achievement” prize, celebrating her contributions both as an essayist and a poet.

Pollitt is the inaugural speaker in the new Jing Lyman Lecture Series. The series recognizes women and men trailblazers who contribute significantly to gender equality over their lifetime. The talk will take place at 7 pm at Annenberg Auditorium.