Same as last week.... Please comment on the presentation topics - not on the style or "grading" of the presentations - but generate conversation about the topics covered in the presentations.
I think Becca had an interesting perspective in her presentation. Comparing female leaders of various countries and their "dovish" or "hawkish" approaches to policy is very interesting, especially to American politics because we have not yet had a female executive, as some other countries have. I also find it interesting, yet not surprising, that female leaders were seen as more unstable, and less aggressive. Those are typical stereotypes that go along with females.
Jenny's presentation was cool, and I liked the idea of comparing women's studies programs in the state. It is not too surprising that major universities like UK and U of L have almost all of the courses she listed as criteria. Smaller universities do not tend to offer specified courses. However, I did kind of find it surprising that Midway, an all-female college, did not have but about 5 of the 10 courses offered. Being an all-female school, I would expect that they would have more. Perhaps this is because being a school for women only, they tend to not recognize a need for such classes.
Cameron's discussion of sex-oriented business and legislature made me think of Hustler in Lexington, and so I was surprised that there wasn't more legislation introduced in Kentucky. I suppose maybe it was just in comparison with Tennessee since they had just passed a bill about SOB's, and Kentucky has yet to do so.
I think Carla's interviews with the custodian and professor were interesting. It did not seem that views on sexual harrassment differed just because of their job. Although I know the custodian admitted she enjoyed the whistling, etc. Sexual harrassment is a prevalent issue, and one that is very hard to define. I was also surprised that the professor admitted not only to being harrassed, but that she never reported it. I would assume there are numerous circumstances like this, as it can be hard for someone know what can be contrued as sexual harrassment.
I think Andrew also took on a very good topic. Occupational segregation is oh so obvious, although we are starting to see men and women crossing lines into different occupations. I liked how he pointed out the pay difference between jobs typically reserved for women compared to jobs typically held by men. I do think our biological differences can impact this. I SUCK at math, I really do. This is something men are generally better at. I know this does not mean women cannot be good at math and men cannot be good at communications. But women may be biologically better suited to communications and education. The pay difference would still be an issue, though, as was mentioned in class. I know he mentioned that women used to depend on spouses for income, and their jobs were then only supplemental income. But, in regards to education and teaching, which is what the discussion focused on, teachers are horribly underpaid.
I liked Becca's topic, she put a very interesting spin on it with the relation to feminist ethics; her results, however, we not surprising. I think we all assume that women will have to be more hawkish in instances where they are competing with men.
Jenny's presentation was good, I enjoyed her topic. I would like to propose the question, is it surprising that many of the smaller schools don't have women's studies programs? We must look at the fact that they are unable to offer the variety of classes that a larger institution would be able too. I agree with Ashley, I would think that Midway would have more women's studies classes, since they are an all female institution.
I found Cameron's topic the most interesting. I would be curious to see how some of the larger cities like New York or Chicago stack up in regards to amount of legislation introduced dealing with SOBs. I would think that in smaller cities that are close to interstate exchanges would have more regulation, because smaller towns tend to be more conservative that larger cities. The conservative-ness of those towns would lead me to believe that they would have more of a problem with the existence of SOBs and would petition for more regulation or a ban all together.
I particularly liked that Carla interviewed EKU staff for her presentation. I would be curious to see a male staffer’s opinion on the same questions. We know that lots of cases of sexual harassment go unreported, I wonder if cases of male sexual harassment are even more underreported? I would be curious to know the statistics on the number of cases reported here at EKU and the number of males who reported them.
I liked that Andrew brought up the point, through answering someone’s question, that the reason that many “women’s job” are not paid as much as “male jobs” is because of our history. Women were seen as not needing the money because they were expected to get marries and the men would be the official breadwinners.
Overall I have been very impressed by these presentations and the topics taken on by my classmates!
I enjoyed listening to the topic on women's studies and the differences of what Kentucky colleges offer. It isn't surprising to me to see that while EKU offers many women's program that WKU would as well, these schools compete against each other. Murray is focused more on the Nursing majors and Business Degrees. They lack not only in the women's studies, but they are just beginning a criminla studies program. Something most schools jumped on right after 9/11 or when CSI and Law and Order became popular shows. The Sexual Harrassment presentation makes me wonder why we don't have a mandatory class for all employers and employees to sit through, since we obviously still have people who can't keep their hands and thoughts to themselves or that go way over the line of flirting in the work place. Still on the otherside of that note, as my 12 year old son has some concept of sexual harrassment, why do people let sexual harrassment get so far as allowing "hands to go down ther pants" and not say anything before it gets to that point. There is a law about reporting someone for inapproprite behavior and retalation. Employers can not retaliate against someone for it in Kentucky. However, they can fire you for absolutely no reason (just not for reporting them, they can claim you didn't do your job to the standards of the job description or something). But the upside you don't have to be subjected to that type of abuse. It isn't any fun and the legal system only gets worse, delving in to your past and putting you on display. For the most part it is a "he said, she said" and it can take 1 to 3 years to resolve the case and that is usually out of court. I went to the EEOC website to see how many cases of harrasment charges were filed from 1997 to 2006 each year was over 10,000 filed across the U.S. The good news is that there is a decline. (or maybe just a decline in reports?) I wonder how the sexual harrassment policies differ across Kentucky Colleges?
I thought that Becca did a great job explaining her topic. I would have never thought to compare female leaders. She had a lot of great points in her disscussion and brought up alot things that I had never really thought about. I never really thought about women in politics being unstable or unable to do their job.
Jenny did a great job comparing the different statistics in the women's studies program. She pretty much covered every women's studies program in Kentucky. I thought it was interesting that over half of the schools in Kentucky had women's studies programs and caried 9 out of 10 of the programs she researched.
I am actually glad that Cameron chose to do Tennessee in his presentation. I live close to the border and I usually go into Tennessee for almost everything when I am at home. It was really interesting to see how the legislature was different between both states.
Ashley did a great job with letting us see the different effects people thought that Porn had on men and women. I wouldn't have thought there would have been such a difference but there was. Also I must say that the pictures were a great idea.
Now last but not least Andrew's presentation. Being an edcuation major just like Andrew I have never had class with over 4 guys in any major class. There is a demand for men teachers and I think that finally they are getting the message across that teaching is not just a woman's job. I do believe however that we are seeing more and more males starting in the female thought roles.
Overall I thought that everyone did an awesome job and had great presentations!
I have been very impressed with everybody’s presentations, but a couple of issues seemed to be distracting to me throughout the majority of the topics. I kind of feel like the presentations would have had more substance if there was a greater effort to define certain terms or subjects more clearly. One example of this comes to mind with Becca’s presentation. I thoroughly enjoyed her topic and agreed with her conclusions that many Americans value “hawkish” traits in political candidates, even if those traits do not seem to be the best traits to accomplish the job of ruling a country. However, I feel if hawkish and dovish could have been more clearly defined, then I would have had a better understanding of the material. Did those traits just pertain to voting records? Were they relevant to political stances or could they have included personality traits or even appearance? I think if that could have been more clearly defined then the presentation would have been much more focused. Similarly, Janice’s presentation on the pay gap discrimination seems that have had comparable problems. I think if it had been made clear what constituted a male or female dominated profession, then the study would have been more scientific or exact. I think we can all agree that professions that present an 80%+ male makeup could be defined as male-dominated, but that was a little ambiguous. Furthermore, it would have been interesting if she could have further divided the groups into male and female dominated professions and then heavily male and female dominated professions. It is just a hunch, but I believe that the results from the more specific classification could have produced some interesting results. All in all I felt that Janice’s presentation was right on the money and that, although difficult to prove, blatant discrimination could explain the pay gap.
Jenny’s comparison of women’s studies programs in higher education institutions in Kentucky was very fascinating. Few of her results surprised me, but one that really jumped out at me was how religious institutions gravitated away from women’s studies majors or even classes. To me, it seems that women’s studies is incredibly interdisciplinary and provides students with a well rounded account of women’s accomplishments to society, a subject we rarely hear about in high school. It seems like the possibilities are endless in regards to future studies, and I would be willing to bet that some elements of certain religious institutions reinforce patriarchy in our societies. All in all, the presentations have been wonderful and very interesting. Good luck on the final girls and guys!
All of the presentations were very interesting and I'm glad I got to witness all of them, not only for the sake of my grade but for the sake of education as well. I hope I don't make anyone mad, but this week has been one big blur and I'm not sure if I can remember anyone's presentation in particular. I remember Becca's presentation and I thought that it was very well put together, and while it seemed that there was almost too much information put into that little space of time, it all fit together at the very end and made complete sense. Andrew's presentation was very interesting as well. We had talked about his topic a couple of times, as we are in the same fraternity and share a likeness in the political ideology somewhat, and I was very interested to see where his presentation went. It was very interesting and I enjoyed it. Cameron's presentation was also interesting. I thought the bills concerning S.O.B's was very interesting and had kind of hoped we would have spent a little more time on those. I thought Ben's presentation today was also very interesting and informative. The outcome of the data really surprised me. All of the presentations were really great and I really enjoyed all of them. I wish Dr. Patton had another 18 weeks to dig deeper into this field, but such is life. I look forward to seeing all of you in my future classes.
I have really enjoyed listening to everyone’s presentations and viewpoints throughout the semester. It has helped me look at things in a more in depth manner. I really enjoyed Becca’s presentation. Although, the outcome of women being more hawkish in male dominated jobs didn’t surprise me. It seems as if women have to over compensate for discrimination and persisting stereotypes.
Another recurring theme I have seen in some of the presentations is the gender pay gap. If studies control for all the extraneous variables, and a pay gap still exists why isn’t anyone getting sued or fired? There are no other reasons except for out right discrimination. This is 2007, in a industrial, ‘progressive’ nation matters like this shouldn’t be an issue.
As for pornography, I’m still a bit hazy to where I stand. I can see both sides of the argument. I really enjoyed the presentation.
I really enjoyed the information on Utilitarianism. I have yet to take a philosophy course, and but have done some reading about it in the past. It was cool to see the relation with the Feminism movement.
Overall, I think everyone did a wonderful job and put a lot of thought into the presentations!
For those of you interested in media portrayal of presidential candidates (both male and female), take a look at Janice's comment in the "Discuss It" post.
The class presentations this past week were yet again interesting and I applaud everyone on their hard work putting together both a research paper and presentation.
I was very intrigued by Jenny’s topic—it was something that has rarely crossed my mind. Now yes, if I had to take a survey asking if EKU had a Women’s Studies program, I would know that we did, but other than that, I don’t know much about the program. More so, I had never considered that other schools across the state may or may not have the same. As Jenny’s study showed and several of you have pointed out, Midway College, Kentucky’s only all-female higher education institution, doesn’t have as many women’s studies classes—I agree that this may be so because the college feels that these women gain much knowledge and insight that those classes would provide by being in such a unique, single-gender environment. On a side-note about Midway that has nothing to do with women’s studies, I just visited Midway’s website and found that they have a male president of their college—I find this somewhat surprising, yet not.
Moving on to other presentations, Carla’s topic was very interesting as well. I feel that sexual harassment is something that we are often oblivious to and/or we are not as informed on protection policies as we should be. I recently went through a new employee orientation with a large employer and policies or procedures concerning such inappropriate conduct wasn’t brought up at all—yes, I’m sure it might be in the employee handbook but among the hundreds of things we went over during this 9-hour orientations, sexual harassment
Once again, all of the presentations have been enlightening and overall, so has this class. It has caused me to really open my eyes concerning certain issues, as well as sparked my interest to dig deeper into certain topics for my own education and knowledge!
I have to applaud Ben for tackling pornography and its detrimental effects on women. When he was discussing the results of the studies I couldn’t help but wonder if the answers to the survey weren’t a bit skewed because they were asked the questions directly over the telephone. There is a very good chance that those who answered lied, either being caught off guard by the telephone call and questions being asked, or because their wife or mother was sitting right next to them. Also, was it a male or female asking the questions? I think that could make a difference as well. All in all, I believe that pornography is harmful to women (yes, Ben, I have agreed with you…hell has frozen over), but I don’t believe there is any kind of ban that we could put on it. The mainstream media portrayal of women is much more harmful to women, in my eyes, than pornography is because of the restrictions placed on pornography. I think we need to work on changing the mainstream media first. It is affecting not only adults, but also our children. This is evident by the discussions that I have had with my 15-year old about women in the media.
I really liked Amber’s presentation. I am always looking for ways to improve this country that we live in. I really liked how she pointed out that things are much better in theory and not so great in practice. I find that to be true about so many things in this world.
I also liked Kara’s presentation about acceptance of governmental control of pornography. I have to wonder if answers were not skewed because individuals were asked directly instead of anonymously. However, I think that most people would agree to some regulation or control on pornography. This is especially true in regards to the times it is available on television. We would be mortified if our children turned on the television at any point in time during the day and pornography was on.
I would like to say that I thought everyone did a phenomenal job and I wish everyone luck with finals! I hope everyone has a wonderful summer, and for those who are graduating…good luck with whatever you endeavors you are embarking on!!!
Now I would like to address Robert. I am not sure how to explain this any more clearly, but a male dominated occupation is an occupation that is dominated by males. There is nothing else to it. I did not choose an occupation based on the occupation; I chose it based on the percentage of men versus women. This is the same for the female dominated occupation. It had nothing to do with the occupation and everything to do with the percentage of females versus males within that occupation. As far as further breaking it down, it was broken down as far as it could be. I chose the occupations with the largest percentage of males for the male dominated occupations and the largest percentage of females for the female dominated occupations. I was limited by the data because they did not include any data on occupations where either women or men were represented by less than 50,000 respondents. So, those that were extremely male or female dominated could not be compared because there is no data available for them. Again, male dominated and female dominated are strictly defined by the percentage of males and females in those occupations. I do not see this as ambiguous; I see this as exact. I did not base my choices on whether an occupation required stereotypically male or female traits to perform. That would have been biased. I chose strictly based on the data. I hope this makes sense to you, if it does not I would be more than happy to try and explain it further if I can.
I would have to agree with rob on a certain issue is that people just assumed that in their presentations that hey just assumed that the terms or phrases that were used in presentations that we all understood the meaning. I was kind of confused when it came to that. Because during the entire presentation I was wondering what that word meant and I couldn’t really listen to the rest of it. Not that they didn’t do a great job because they did. Everyone did! Yay! I enjoyed Cameron’s presentation because his topic was somewhat related to mine. But that’s not the only reason that I liked it, it was a different take on sexually oriented businesses. And if you haven’t noticed by our presentations it seems to me that our class throughout enjoys pornography. Or at least has strong opinions about it. I liked Andrew’s presentation. I would like to say something that completely boggles my mind is that I think teachers should be paid more, not that they don’t make anything its because it such an important job, I mean lawyers, doctors and any other profession that helps out our society and a job that our society values as important. Teachers should be paid just as much as any doctor, they are teaching the future leaders and etc the world. And as sad as it is, like Dr. Patton said our society values money. People will be more willing to work the jobs if they pay the right kind of money. That’s the way they will get more men in there, getting “the breadwinners” to be teachers.
Thanks Janice for trying to clear up my questions. I think you did a terrific job. However, defining a male dominated job as a job dominated by males is rather ambigious. What I meant was at what percentage were you classifying a job as being dominated by one sex or the other? Was it 80% 90% 51%? That was my main concern. By setting a standard before studying the occupations, it just seems more scientific. It was a very minor detail, but I was just curious what percentage marked an occupation as being dominated by one sex or another. All in all, it was a fantastic presentation and I agreed with the results.
Once again this weeks worth of presentations delivered good information. I particularly like the presentation on Utilitarianism. I thought it was a great idea to bring philosophy and theory into the discussion. It was the only presentation of the type and a lofty goal to tackle the liberal philosopher J.S. Mill. I had read some work by him in the past in another class and remembered him being a devote antifeminist early in his career. I remember something that he wrote in 1820 about his beliefs that women’s (and children) political interests could be linked with their fathers, or if they were married, their husbands. That early realm of thought obviously changed, as we learned in the presentation on Thursday. I also thought that the presentation given by Ben was an interesting presentation. Obviously it was a topic that he had a stake in proving his hypothesis correct. Even though his research could not prove that pornography had the type of effect that he envisioned in his hypothesis, he did an excellent job delivering his findings in the presentation. The pay gap presentation was one topic that I am very well aware of, but to see the numbers highlighted was all together disturbing. It is just sad that in 2007 there is still such an issue with pay. That really should not be a hard one for employers to get right. Do the same amount of work; receive the same amount of pay. That’s hard! (By the way, I do believe I just used a semicolon correctly for you Dr. Patton) Anyways, that really was off on a tangent. The blogging was great and so was the class. I’m out!
This week's presentations just like those of weeks past were all very well done. This week I really enjoyed the presentation on women's studies programs. Just from listening to the names of universities mentioned in the study it seemed like most, if not all of the universities discussed were liberal arts colleges. However, I know that some of those discussed could also be considered technical colleges, meaning they specialize in preparing students for a particular occupation through two or four year degrees. I think that it would be interesting to research whether or not schools that were classifies as both a liberal arts college and a technical college would be more likely to have a women's study program. Just by looking up some of the schools that I remembered from the presentation it appears that schools like EKU and UK that are classified as both tend to have women's studies programs where as Midway, which was only classified as a liberal arts college does not have a women's studies program. However, Western was also classified as a technical school and liberal arts college but still did not have a women's studies program. The classification as a liberal arts college and a technical school may have absolutely nothing to do with the existence of a women's studies program at a particular university or there may be a correlation. I just thought this might be something worth looking in to.
I also liked Becca's presentation. I actually filled out one of the surveys she used. I think that some of the answers I gave on the survey would have been different had I taken it before I took this class. Because of this I think it might be interesting to have some sort of survey for this class at the beginning of the semester and then have students take the same survey at the end to see if student's opinions change about women in politics after taking the class. I realize we kind of did this with the short survey that asked whether or not we thought we are feminists but I think that a bigger survey with questions about what students believe about the leadership styles of female politicians and whether or not they think there is a necessity for an equal rights amendment would be pretty interesting. We did something sort of like this in my evolution class and the results were vastly different for some of the questions on the survey.
Andrew's presentation about occupational segregation was also very interesting. I know I made the point in class that the male teachers I had in high school and middle school taught social studies and female teachers usually taught my math classes. Dr. Patton made the point that most of the time schools make their athletic coaches teach social studies. I know I said that the two male teachers I had weren't coaches but after I went home and thought about it I think they both had at one time been at least assistant coaches for the baseball team or something. Why is it that schools make their athletic coaches teach social studies? I thought about this but I couldn't really figure out why schools would do this. I don't think they would have any less work to grade that would allow them more time to concentrate on coaching or anything.
Jenny's presentation on Tuesday was very interesting. I thought it was very interesting that she found that universities with a religious affiliation were much less likely to have a women's studies program or women's studies classes. The only thing I wish she had of done different would have been to include every single university in Kentucky. I think she got most of them and I don't believe the ones she missed would have changed her results that much but it would have been nice to have them all included for consistency's sake.
I also enjoyed Andrew's presentation. It made me think back to the discussion we had about whether or not police forces should actively recruit women. No one can deny that women are underrepresented in certain occupations but I still struggle with the issue of giving special treatment to anyone simply because of their sex. He mentioned a program in Florida I believe that was designed to give men who wanted to go into elementary education pretty much a free education. I just don't think that's fair to all the women in the state that wanted to be elementary teachers. Wouldn't a program that gave everyone going into elementary ed a break be more beneficial? We have programs in Kentucky that gives teachers going into math and science opportunities for loan forgiveness, but it certainly doesn't matter whether you are male or female. On the other hand I recognize the good that affirmative action programs can do so I'm a little torn on the issue.
FYI- My son was born at 11:12 on Thursday morning. His name is Jackson Phoenix Griffith and he weighed 8 lbs. 9 oz. and was 21 inches long. I am probably the happiest man on earth.
I have really enjoyed the presentations these past two weeks. Everyone has been well organized and prepared and had very good presentations. Of course, we're a pretty awesome class! :D
The three presentations that I enjoyed the most were Becca's, Amber's, and Janice's.
Becca did some really good research I thought and I really enjoyed her discussion of perceptions of women in politics. I thought she did a really good job with her powerpoint and information. It is not really suprising that she found that many people see female politicians as "unstable" and "weak." It reinforces the stereotypes we've learned about in class that face women in politics.
I enjoyed Amber's because I had to read John Stuart Mills my freshman year of college and so her discussion of utilitarianism caught my attention. I thought the connection to women's issues was very interesting and added more variety to all our presentations.
Janice's presentation on the pay gap provided a lot of really great information. I was reiterating it to my boyfriend later that night and he was getting as outraged over the pay gap as me. :D I've turned my boyfriend into a feminist! YAY!
I just wanted to add something about my presentation because a few people have wondered if school size may be a factor in the offering of women's studies programs and courses. It is in a sense since big schools like WKU, UK, UofL and EKU can offer a large number of the courses. But even small schools like Pikeville College offered a degree program in women's studies. Size seems to have a role in whether a school HAS a women's studies program, but it seems to not be too determinent in if it DOES NOT. I don't know if that made sense. Some of the literature I looked at also showed how small community colleges can offer women's studies courses even if they don't have a degree program.
I suppose that's all for my last blog comment. This class has been awesome. Everyone have a good summer!
The other is his roomate, who is the complete opposite and has very little respect for women altogether. He goes to the length of calling this class my 'feminist BS' class.
I couldn't help but think of these two when Ben gave his presentation because of how different the two of them are, and they both have very different ways of handling women in general. I felt like porn wasn't the main influence in their attitudes because of the fact that they both watch porn.
That was my thought, because of all of the studies done on Pornography and the affects it has on men and their perception of women. I was always more under the impression that it was several factors, and that pornography could be a catalyst more than a primary cause.
POL 446 Politics of Sex Students: Welcome to your class blog! You are the only ones who can post comments on this blog, but be aware that it is available for anyone to read. You are responsible for posting to the blog on a regular basis as part of the graded assignments (see the syllabus), but you may also "discuss it" if there is something you want to discuss via the blog.
18 comments:
Well I guess I'll start!
I think Becca had an interesting perspective in her presentation. Comparing female leaders of various countries and their "dovish" or "hawkish" approaches to policy is very interesting, especially to American politics because we have not yet had a female executive, as some other countries have. I also find it interesting, yet not surprising, that female leaders were seen as more unstable, and less aggressive. Those are typical stereotypes that go along with females.
Jenny's presentation was cool, and I liked the idea of comparing women's studies programs in the state. It is not too surprising that major universities like UK and U of L have almost all of the courses she listed as criteria. Smaller universities do not tend to offer specified courses. However, I did kind of find it surprising that Midway, an all-female college, did not have but about 5 of the 10 courses offered. Being an all-female school, I would expect that they would have more. Perhaps this is because being a school for women only, they tend to not recognize a need for such classes.
Cameron's discussion of sex-oriented business and legislature made me think of Hustler in Lexington, and so I was surprised that there wasn't more legislation introduced in Kentucky. I suppose maybe it was just in comparison with Tennessee since they had just passed a bill about SOB's, and Kentucky has yet to do so.
I think Carla's interviews with the custodian and professor were interesting. It did not seem that views on sexual harrassment differed just because of their job. Although I know the custodian admitted she enjoyed the whistling, etc. Sexual harrassment is a prevalent issue, and one that is very hard to define. I was also surprised that the professor admitted not only to being harrassed, but that she never reported it. I would assume there are numerous circumstances like this, as it can be hard for someone know what can be contrued as sexual harrassment.
I think Andrew also took on a very good topic. Occupational segregation is oh so obvious, although we are starting to see men and women crossing lines into different occupations. I liked how he pointed out the pay difference between jobs typically reserved for women compared to jobs typically held by men. I do think our biological differences can impact this. I SUCK at math, I really do. This is something men are generally better at. I know this does not mean women cannot be good at math and men cannot be good at communications. But women may be biologically better suited to communications and education. The pay difference would still be an issue, though, as was mentioned in class. I know he mentioned that women used to depend on spouses for income, and their jobs were then only supplemental income. But, in regards to education and teaching, which is what the discussion focused on, teachers are horribly underpaid.
I liked Becca's topic, she put a very interesting spin on it with the relation to feminist ethics; her results, however, we not surprising. I think we all assume that women will have to be more hawkish in instances where they are competing with men.
Jenny's presentation was good, I enjoyed her topic. I would like to propose the question, is it surprising that many of the smaller schools don't have women's studies programs? We must look at the fact that they are unable to offer the variety of classes that a larger institution would be able too. I agree with Ashley, I would think that Midway would have more women's studies classes, since they are an all female institution.
I found Cameron's topic the most interesting. I would be curious to see how some of the larger cities like New York or Chicago stack up in regards to amount of legislation introduced dealing with SOBs. I would think that in smaller cities that are close to interstate exchanges would have more regulation, because smaller towns tend to be more conservative that larger cities. The conservative-ness of those towns would lead me to believe that they would have more of a problem with the existence of SOBs and would petition for more regulation or a ban all together.
I particularly liked that Carla interviewed EKU staff for her presentation. I would be curious to see a male staffer’s opinion on the same questions. We know that lots of cases of sexual harassment go unreported, I wonder if cases of male sexual harassment are even more underreported? I would be curious to know the statistics on the number of cases reported here at EKU and the number of males who reported them.
I liked that Andrew brought up the point, through answering someone’s question, that the reason that many “women’s job” are not paid as much as “male jobs” is because of our history. Women were seen as not needing the money because they were expected to get marries and the men would be the official breadwinners.
Overall I have been very impressed by these presentations and the topics taken on by my classmates!
I enjoyed listening to the topic on women's studies and the differences of what Kentucky colleges offer. It isn't surprising to me to see that while EKU offers many women's program that WKU would as well, these schools compete against each other. Murray is focused more on the Nursing majors and Business Degrees. They lack not only in the women's studies, but they are just beginning a criminla studies program. Something most schools jumped on right after 9/11 or when CSI and Law and Order became popular shows.
The Sexual Harrassment presentation makes me wonder why we don't have a mandatory class for all employers and employees to sit through, since we obviously still have people who can't keep their hands and thoughts to themselves or that go way over the line of flirting in the work place. Still on the otherside of that note, as my 12 year old son has some concept of sexual harrassment, why do people let sexual harrassment get so far as allowing "hands to go down ther pants" and not say anything before it gets to that point. There is a law about reporting someone for inapproprite behavior and retalation. Employers can not retaliate against someone for it in Kentucky. However, they can fire you for absolutely no reason (just not for reporting them, they can claim you didn't do your job to the standards of the job description or something). But the upside you don't have to be subjected to that type of abuse. It isn't any fun and the legal system only gets worse, delving in to your past and putting you on display. For the most part it is a "he said, she said" and it can take 1 to 3 years to resolve the case and that is usually out of court. I went to the EEOC website to see how many cases of harrasment charges were filed from 1997 to 2006 each year was over 10,000 filed across the U.S. The good news is that there is a decline. (or maybe just a decline in reports?)
I wonder how the sexual harrassment policies differ across Kentucky Colleges?
I thought that Becca did a great job explaining her topic. I would have never thought to compare female leaders. She had a lot of great points in her disscussion and brought up alot things that I had never really thought about. I never really thought about women in politics being unstable or unable to do their job.
Jenny did a great job comparing the different statistics in the women's studies program. She pretty much covered every women's studies program in Kentucky. I thought it was interesting that over half of the schools in Kentucky had women's studies programs and caried 9 out of 10 of the programs she researched.
I am actually glad that Cameron chose to do Tennessee in his presentation. I live close to the border and I usually go into Tennessee for almost everything when I am at home. It was really interesting to see how the legislature was different between both states.
Ashley did a great job with letting us see the different effects people thought that Porn had on men and women. I wouldn't have thought there would have been such a difference but there was. Also I must say that the pictures were a great idea.
Now last but not least Andrew's presentation. Being an edcuation major just like Andrew I have never had class with over 4 guys in any major class. There is a demand for men teachers and I think that finally they are getting the message across that teaching is not just a woman's job. I do believe however that we are seeing more and more males starting in the female thought roles.
Overall I thought that everyone did an awesome job and had great presentations!
I have been very impressed with everybody’s presentations, but a couple of issues seemed to be distracting to me throughout the majority of the topics. I kind of feel like the presentations would have had more substance if there was a greater effort to define certain terms or subjects more clearly. One example of this comes to mind with Becca’s presentation. I thoroughly enjoyed her topic and agreed with her conclusions that many Americans value “hawkish” traits in political candidates, even if those traits do not seem to be the best traits to accomplish the job of ruling a country. However, I feel if hawkish and dovish could have been more clearly defined, then I would have had a better understanding of the material. Did those traits just pertain to voting records? Were they relevant to political stances or could they have included personality traits or even appearance? I think if that could have been more clearly defined then the presentation would have been much more focused. Similarly, Janice’s presentation on the pay gap discrimination seems that have had comparable problems. I think if it had been made clear what constituted a male or female dominated profession, then the study would have been more scientific or exact. I think we can all agree that professions that present an 80%+ male makeup could be defined as male-dominated, but that was a little ambiguous. Furthermore, it would have been interesting if she could have further divided the groups into male and female dominated professions and then heavily male and female dominated professions. It is just a hunch, but I believe that the results from the more specific classification could have produced some interesting results. All in all I felt that Janice’s presentation was right on the money and that, although difficult to prove, blatant discrimination could explain the pay gap.
Jenny’s comparison of women’s studies programs in higher education institutions in Kentucky was very fascinating. Few of her results surprised me, but one that really jumped out at me was how religious institutions gravitated away from women’s studies majors or even classes. To me, it seems that women’s studies is incredibly interdisciplinary and provides students with a well rounded account of women’s accomplishments to society, a subject we rarely hear about in high school. It seems like the possibilities are endless in regards to future studies, and I would be willing to bet that some elements of certain religious institutions reinforce patriarchy in our societies. All in all, the presentations have been wonderful and very interesting. Good luck on the final girls and guys!
All of the presentations were very interesting and I'm glad I got to witness all of them, not only for the sake of my grade but for the sake of education as well. I hope I don't make anyone mad, but this week has been one big blur and I'm not sure if I can remember anyone's presentation in particular. I remember Becca's presentation and I thought that it was very well put together, and while it seemed that there was almost too much information put into that little space of time, it all fit together at the very end and made complete sense. Andrew's presentation was very interesting as well. We had talked about his topic a couple of times, as we are in the same fraternity and share a likeness in the political ideology somewhat, and I was very interested to see where his presentation went. It was very interesting and I enjoyed it. Cameron's presentation was also interesting. I thought the bills concerning S.O.B's was very interesting and had kind of hoped we would have spent a little more time on those. I thought Ben's presentation today was also very interesting and informative. The outcome of the data really surprised me. All of the presentations were really great and I really enjoyed all of them. I wish Dr. Patton had another 18 weeks to dig deeper into this field, but such is life. I look forward to seeing all of you in my future classes.
I have really enjoyed listening to everyone’s presentations and viewpoints throughout the semester. It has helped me look at things in a more in depth manner. I really enjoyed Becca’s presentation. Although, the outcome of women being more hawkish in male dominated jobs didn’t surprise me. It seems as if women have to over compensate for discrimination and persisting stereotypes.
Another recurring theme I have seen in some of the presentations is the gender pay gap. If studies control for all the extraneous variables, and a pay gap still exists why isn’t anyone getting sued or fired? There are no other reasons except for out right discrimination. This is 2007, in a industrial, ‘progressive’ nation matters like this shouldn’t be an issue.
As for pornography, I’m still a bit hazy to where I stand. I can see both sides of the argument. I really enjoyed the presentation.
I really enjoyed the information on Utilitarianism. I have yet to take a philosophy course, and but have done some reading about it in the past. It was cool to see the relation with the Feminism movement.
Overall, I think everyone did a wonderful job and put a lot of thought into the presentations!
For those of you interested in media portrayal of presidential candidates (both male and female), take a look at Janice's comment in the "Discuss It" post.
The class presentations this past week were yet again interesting and I applaud everyone on their hard work putting together both a research paper and presentation.
I was very intrigued by Jenny’s topic—it was something that has rarely crossed my mind. Now yes, if I had to take a survey asking if EKU had a Women’s Studies program, I would know that we did, but other than that, I don’t know much about the program. More so, I had never considered that other schools across the state may or may not have the same. As Jenny’s study showed and several of you have pointed out, Midway College, Kentucky’s only all-female higher education institution, doesn’t have as many women’s studies classes—I agree that this may be so because the college feels that these women gain much knowledge and insight that those classes would provide by being in such a unique, single-gender environment. On a side-note about Midway that has nothing to do with women’s studies, I just visited Midway’s website and found that they have a male president of their college—I find this somewhat surprising, yet not.
Moving on to other presentations, Carla’s topic was very interesting as well. I feel that sexual harassment is something that we are often oblivious to and/or we are not as informed on protection policies as we should be. I recently went through a new employee orientation with a large employer and policies or procedures concerning such inappropriate conduct wasn’t brought up at all—yes, I’m sure it might be in the employee handbook but among the hundreds of things we went over during this 9-hour orientations, sexual harassment
Once again, all of the presentations have been enlightening and overall, so has this class. It has caused me to really open my eyes concerning certain issues, as well as sparked my interest to dig deeper into certain topics for my own education and knowledge!
I have to applaud Ben for tackling pornography and its detrimental effects on women. When he was discussing the results of the studies I couldn’t help but wonder if the answers to the survey weren’t a bit skewed because they were asked the questions directly over the telephone. There is a very good chance that those who answered lied, either being caught off guard by the telephone call and questions being asked, or because their wife or mother was sitting right next to them. Also, was it a male or female asking the questions? I think that could make a difference as well. All in all, I believe that pornography is harmful to women (yes, Ben, I have agreed with you…hell has frozen over), but I don’t believe there is any kind of ban that we could put on it. The mainstream media portrayal of women is much more harmful to women, in my eyes, than pornography is because of the restrictions placed on pornography. I think we need to work on changing the mainstream media first. It is affecting not only adults, but also our children. This is evident by the discussions that I have had with my 15-year old about women in the media.
I really liked Amber’s presentation. I am always looking for ways to improve this country that we live in. I really liked how she pointed out that things are much better in theory and not so great in practice. I find that to be true about so many things in this world.
I also liked Kara’s presentation about acceptance of governmental control of pornography. I have to wonder if answers were not skewed because individuals were asked directly instead of anonymously. However, I think that most people would agree to some regulation or control on pornography. This is especially true in regards to the times it is available on television. We would be mortified if our children turned on the television at any point in time during the day and pornography was on.
I would like to say that I thought everyone did a phenomenal job and I wish everyone luck with finals! I hope everyone has a wonderful summer, and for those who are graduating…good luck with whatever you endeavors you are embarking on!!!
Now I would like to address Robert. I am not sure how to explain this any more clearly, but a male dominated occupation is an occupation that is dominated by males. There is nothing else to it. I did not choose an occupation based on the occupation; I chose it based on the percentage of men versus women. This is the same for the female dominated occupation. It had nothing to do with the occupation and everything to do with the percentage of females versus males within that occupation. As far as further breaking it down, it was broken down as far as it could be. I chose the occupations with the largest percentage of males for the male dominated occupations and the largest percentage of females for the female dominated occupations. I was limited by the data because they did not include any data on occupations where either women or men were represented by less than 50,000 respondents. So, those that were extremely male or female dominated could not be compared because there is no data available for them. Again, male dominated and female dominated are strictly defined by the percentage of males and females in those occupations. I do not see this as ambiguous; I see this as exact. I did not base my choices on whether an occupation required stereotypically male or female traits to perform. That would have been biased. I chose strictly based on the data. I hope this makes sense to you, if it does not I would be more than happy to try and explain it further if I can.
Janice Clayton
I would have to agree with rob on a certain issue is that people just assumed that in their presentations that hey just assumed that the terms or phrases that were used in presentations that we all understood the meaning. I was kind of confused when it came to that. Because during the entire presentation I was wondering what that word meant and I couldn’t really listen to the rest of it. Not that they didn’t do a great job because they did. Everyone did! Yay!
I enjoyed Cameron’s presentation because his topic was somewhat related to mine. But that’s not the only reason that I liked it, it was a different take on sexually oriented businesses. And if you haven’t noticed by our presentations it seems to me that our class throughout enjoys pornography. Or at least has strong opinions about it.
I liked Andrew’s presentation. I would like to say something that completely boggles my mind is that I think teachers should be paid more, not that they don’t make anything its because it such an important job, I mean lawyers, doctors and any other profession that helps out our society and a job that our society values as important. Teachers should be paid just as much as any doctor, they are teaching the future leaders and etc the world. And as sad as it is, like Dr. Patton said our society values money. People will be more willing to work the jobs if they pay the right kind of money. That’s the way they will get more men in there, getting “the breadwinners” to be teachers.
Thanks Janice for trying to clear up my questions. I think you did a terrific job. However, defining a male dominated job as a job dominated by males is rather ambigious. What I meant was at what percentage were you classifying a job as being dominated by one sex or the other? Was it 80% 90% 51%? That was my main concern. By setting a standard before studying the occupations, it just seems more scientific. It was a very minor detail, but I was just curious what percentage marked an occupation as being dominated by one sex or another. All in all, it was a fantastic presentation and I agreed with the results.
Good luck on finals everyone.
Once again this weeks worth of presentations delivered good information. I particularly like the presentation on Utilitarianism. I thought it was a great idea to bring philosophy and theory into the discussion. It was the only presentation of the type and a lofty goal to tackle the liberal philosopher J.S. Mill. I had read some work by him in the past in another class and remembered him being a devote antifeminist early in his career. I remember something that he wrote in 1820 about his beliefs that women’s (and children) political interests could be linked with their fathers, or if they were married, their husbands. That early realm of thought obviously changed, as we learned in the presentation on Thursday. I also thought that the presentation given by Ben was an interesting presentation. Obviously it was a topic that he had a stake in proving his hypothesis correct. Even though his research could not prove that pornography had the type of effect that he envisioned in his hypothesis, he did an excellent job delivering his findings in the presentation. The pay gap presentation was one topic that I am very well aware of, but to see the numbers highlighted was all together disturbing. It is just sad that in 2007 there is still such an issue with pay. That really should not be a hard one for employers to get right. Do the same amount of work; receive the same amount of pay. That’s hard! (By the way, I do believe I just used a semicolon correctly for you Dr. Patton) Anyways, that really was off on a tangent. The blogging was great and so was the class. I’m out!
This week's presentations just like those of weeks past were all very well done. This week I really enjoyed the presentation on women's studies programs. Just from listening to the names of universities mentioned in the study it seemed like most, if not all of the universities discussed were liberal arts colleges. However, I know that some of those discussed could also be considered technical colleges, meaning they specialize in preparing students for a particular occupation through two or four year degrees. I think that it would be interesting to research whether or not schools that were classifies as both a liberal arts college and a technical college would be more likely to have a women's study program. Just by looking up some of the schools that I remembered from the presentation it appears that schools like EKU and UK that are classified as both tend to have women's studies programs where as Midway, which was only classified as a liberal arts college does not have a women's studies program. However, Western was also classified as a technical school and liberal arts college but still did not have a women's studies program. The classification as a liberal arts college and a technical school may have absolutely nothing to do with the existence of a women's studies program at a particular university or there may be a correlation. I just thought this might be something worth looking in to.
I also liked Becca's presentation. I actually filled out one of the surveys she used. I think that some of the answers I gave on the survey would have been different had I taken it before I took this class. Because of this I think it might be interesting to have some sort of survey for this class at the beginning of the semester and then have students take the same survey at the end to see if student's opinions change about women in politics after taking the class. I realize we kind of did this with the short survey that asked whether or not we thought we are feminists but I think that a bigger survey with questions about what students believe about the leadership styles of female politicians and whether or not they think there is a necessity for an equal rights amendment would be pretty interesting. We did something sort of like this in my evolution class and the results were vastly different for some of the questions on the survey.
Andrew's presentation about occupational segregation was also very interesting. I know I made the point in class that the male teachers I had in high school and middle school taught social studies and female teachers usually taught my math classes. Dr. Patton made the point that most of the time schools make their athletic coaches teach social studies. I know I said that the two male teachers I had weren't coaches but after I went home and thought about it I think they both had at one time been at least assistant coaches for the baseball team or something. Why is it that schools make their athletic coaches teach social studies? I thought about this but I couldn't really figure out why schools would do this. I don't think they would have any less work to grade that would allow them more time to concentrate on coaching or anything.
Kristeena Winkler
Jenny's presentation on Tuesday was very interesting. I thought it was very interesting that she found that universities with a religious affiliation were much less likely to have a women's studies program or women's studies classes. The only thing I wish she had of done different would have been to include every single university in Kentucky. I think she got most of them and I don't believe the ones she missed would have changed her results that much but it would have been nice to have them all included for consistency's sake.
I also enjoyed Andrew's presentation. It made me think back to the discussion we had about whether or not police forces should actively recruit women. No one can deny that women are underrepresented in certain occupations but I still struggle with the issue of giving special treatment to anyone simply because of their sex. He mentioned a program in Florida I believe that was designed to give men who wanted to go into elementary education pretty much a free education. I just don't think that's fair to all the women in the state that wanted to be elementary teachers. Wouldn't a program that gave everyone going into elementary ed a break be more beneficial? We have programs in Kentucky that gives teachers going into math and science opportunities for loan forgiveness, but it certainly doesn't matter whether you are male or female. On the other hand I recognize the good that affirmative action programs can do so I'm a little torn on the issue.
FYI- My son was born at 11:12 on Thursday morning. His name is Jackson Phoenix Griffith and he weighed 8 lbs. 9 oz. and was 21 inches long. I am probably the happiest man on earth.
Cameron Griffith
I have really enjoyed the presentations these past two weeks. Everyone has been well organized and prepared and had very good presentations. Of course, we're a pretty awesome class! :D
The three presentations that I enjoyed the most were Becca's, Amber's, and Janice's.
Becca did some really good research I thought and I really enjoyed her discussion of perceptions of women in politics. I thought she did a really good job with her powerpoint and information. It is not really suprising that she found that many people see female politicians as "unstable" and "weak." It reinforces the stereotypes we've learned about in class that face women in politics.
I enjoyed Amber's because I had to read John Stuart Mills my freshman year of college and so her discussion of utilitarianism caught my attention. I thought the connection to women's issues was very interesting and added more variety to all our presentations.
Janice's presentation on the pay gap provided a lot of really great information. I was reiterating it to my boyfriend later that night and he was getting as outraged over the pay gap as me. :D I've turned my boyfriend into a feminist! YAY!
I just wanted to add something about my presentation because a few people have wondered if school size may be a factor in the offering of women's studies programs and courses. It is in a sense since big schools like WKU, UK, UofL and EKU can offer a large number of the courses. But even small schools like Pikeville College offered a degree program in women's studies. Size seems to have a role in whether a school HAS a women's studies program, but it seems to not be too determinent in if it DOES NOT. I don't know if that made sense. Some of the literature I looked at also showed how small community colleges can offer women's studies courses even if they don't have a degree program.
I suppose that's all for my last blog comment. This class has been awesome. Everyone have a good summer!
Jenny Holly
(i finally remembered my name)
Argh! i feel terrible for posting this so late!!! It completely slipped my mind! Better late than never, right?
Anyways, I found all the presentations to be top-notch, and really enjoyed all of them, but the one that struck me personally was Ben's! Mostly because I know two people very closely who have had two different reactions to watching pornography. One of them is my fiancée, whom it hasn't affected him negatively at all. He respects women to the utmost degree; and often sounds more like a feminist than I do!
The other is his roomate, who is the complete opposite and has very little respect for women altogether. He goes to the length of calling this class my 'feminist BS' class.
I couldn't help but think of these two when Ben gave his presentation because of how different the two of them are, and they both have very different ways of handling women in general. I felt like porn wasn't the main influence in their attitudes because of the fact that they both watch porn.
That was my thought, because of all of the studies done on Pornography and the affects it has on men and their perception of women. I was always more under the impression that it was several factors, and that pornography could be a catalyst more than a primary cause.
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