Question for Palin.

As Governor, what is she doing about the fact that Alaska ranks number one in the nation for the rate at which women are murdered by men, and number one for its rape rate? (Alaska only ranks 22nd for murders regardless of gender.) While she served as mayor, her town began charging rape victims hundreds of dollars each for the forensic exams used in prosecution of rape, and her police chief vehemently opposed a bill in the state legislature to prohibit charging victims for the exams.

Modernity increases gender differences.

Another in a series of paradoxes:
As gendered cultural influences lessen, innate differences between men and women influence personality to a greater extent, concludes a 2008 global study spanning fifty-five cultures. It confirms previous findings based on multiple studies that gender differences in personality are smallest in the most traditional cultures and greatest in those that are the most modern, affluent and progressive.

These conclusions are "counterintuitive" to the socialization (blank slate) theory of gender differences long favored by most feminists, which has presumed that boys and girls enter the world with similar cognitive and behavioral tendencies and that subsequent personality differences are attributable to the rigid gender roles found in most cultures. The concerns of those who predicted that equal rights for women would homogenize the genders now seem unfounded.

The 2008 study and its forebears are not arguing that personality differences between men and women are only caused by genes. The current scientific consensus is that nature and nurture have roughly equal influences on the behavioral tendencies that define personality. The 2008 study also does not contend that efforts to achieve equality alone create greater personality differences, but that prosperity also plays a huge role. Fortunately, we live in a world in which progressive societies prosper and prosperous societies – excepting a few oil rich nations – are progressive.

Another bombshell contained in the 2008 study: modern cultures are mostly changing and benefiting men’s personalities, not women’s. One theory offered to explain this finding is that industrialization has increased the relative power of men and acted to enhance male personality traits – in part because the benefits of industrialization do not flow as much to women, who are more restrained by the responsibilities of child rearing.

The authors’ alternative explanation is that the struggle just to survive in non-industrialized societies suppresses gender differences in personality. Where advances in civilization have made life easier, innately influenced male personality traits such as assertiveness, dominance, risk taking and affinity for innovation have flourished. It has been well documented that as progressive governments have broadened opportunities, environmental effects matter less in success and inherited traits matter more. An analogous physical phenomenon is the greater differences in height between men and women in more affluent cultures due to better nutrition and medical care. (But progress is not uniformly advantageous for men. Gender differences in blood pressure, non-existent is some agrarian economies, are highest where modernity has liberated men’s personalities to focus on career competition.)

The rise of more egalitarian societies and the decline of institutional and cultural barriers to opportunity are forces that should eventually equalize the relative opportunity each gender has for power and wealth. But the resulting changes in men’s personalities are creating new advantages for them that seem to be acting as a counterweight to the societal forces of equalization. To cite another of the authors’ analogies, in spite of laws equalizing opportunities in competitive track and field in the U.S., a far greater percentage of men cluster at the top – have times close to the best runners of their gender – than is the case for women. Men seem to respond to greater opportunity by becoming more competitive, and the result is greater clustering at the top. As Harvard Law Professor Lani Guinier said, "it is not enough to just add women and stir." We have to do more to help women be more effective in creating social change.

Palin may hinder electing other women.

Another in a series of paradoxes:
Like many people, I’ve trying to wrap my head around McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin, Governor of the forty-eighth state (in population) for twenty months. While many theories abound, my best guess is that trying to pick up Hillary supporters with a woman may have been only one of three of his motivations. Perhaps more important is that McCain is running against what he describes as a celebrity. Regardless of your political leanings, you have to admit that Obama blows away McCain in the charisma department. Palin has a magnetic charm, according to her opponents in the Alaska gubernatorial race, that makes voters love her regardless of her positions on the issues. Unlike Mitt Romney, people tend to believe her sincerity. Also significant is that Palin’s Pentecostal and right wing views amp up McCain’s previously tepid appeal to his party’s religious right base. As more details of her public and private life and of McCain's hasty vetting of her are revealed, however, it is clear that McCain was so desperate to shake up the race that he did not conduct the rigorous investigation to which Vice-Presidential candidates normally are subjected.

Even if McCain and Palin lose, and as long as Palin doesn’t make too many mistakes, there is a potential upside to her candidacy. It may encourage party bosses to put forward more women as candidates in the future under the assumption that they will charm voters. But there are a number of downsides, including that it may set back efforts toward getting more women into elective office.

The first is that her candidacy may reinforce the popular belief that there are no women with the intellect, experience and ideological beliefs that make them qualified to be President – with the exception of Hillary Clinton. After Clinton’s run fizzled in May of 2008, The New York Times could not find a political strategist able to name anyone else likely to be the first woman President. McCain touts Palin’s executive experience, which presumes he sought that in a running mate. If wanted a sitting woman governor, he had only one real choice: Palin. The other two Republicans are in Hawaii and Connecticut. Hawaii’s Linda Lingle is a childless, twice-divorced Jew. Connecticut’s Jodi Rell signed the bill making Connecticut the first state (not acting under court order) to allow gay couples to join in civil unions giving them all the rights of married couples. Rell does not have a college degree. That left him with Governor Palin, a former beauty queen with an undergraduate degree in journalism from a mediocre university (University of Idaho), whose prior political experience was as the mayor of a small town. Her first trip outside the U.S. was last year. If she has any foreign policy expertise, she’s keeping it a secret.

The second downside would continue the popular belief that it may still be impossible for a woman to be qualified to be President and at the same time not have high negatives with half of the voters. In other words, if you’re a woman with the intellect, drive and toughness needed to be President, many voters will find you to be unfeminine and scary. Thus, the parties may conclude that the only way a woman can become President is to follow the lead of George Bush and be perceived as being a congenial sort, a person the average voter could talk to casually and not find intellectually overwhelming.

For a candidate to not appear to be too intellectual usually means the candidate can't actually be extremely smart. But picking women without the best intelligence and perspective increases the chances that the female leaders of tomorrow will be what some feminists refer to as "social males" – women who simply adopt a patriarchal view of the world and perpetuate it in their words and actions. The problem is more acute in cases such as Palin's, where the good ole boys do the picking. In this sense, Palin’s bid is for women as Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court was for African-Americans.

The third downside comes if the Grand Old Party ultimately does not succeed in dumbing down the office in voters’ minds, and through McCain’s premature death in office at the young age of 73 puts a clearly unqualified woman in the White House. If she does not do exceptionally well, this may block the pipeline for women for that office for decades to come. (The 2005-2006 series Commander in Chief may have prophesied the future of McCain’s administration. In the series, a Republican President dies and his female Vice-President, regarded by some as not qualified to serve, takes over. Too bad ABC impeached it after one season. Otherwise, we could have seen more of how TV writers would imagine a Palin Presidency.)

(Update: Somewhat ominously, in her acceptance speech Palin compared herself to Harry Truman. Less than three months after becoming Vice-President, Truman became President when Roosevelt died. He had been a US Senator for ten years before that.)

At this point we should be so past the need to question whether a woman candidate for political office is qualified. In particular, we should not have to raise this question about a woman’s candidacy for Vice-President in the twenty-first century. If McCain had wanted a female running mate, he had several experienced Republican senators to chose from. There is no excuse for putting forward a woman whose lack of qualification causes people to say that she only got the job because she's a woman, as people are saying about Palin. NY Times op-ed columnist Gail Collins hopes that in the Vice-Presidential debate Biden will say to Palin (in a reprise of the 1988 debate), "I know Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a friend of mine, and governor, you’re no Hillary Clinton."

It is insulting to women to think that just putting a woman on the ticket, no matter her positions on the issues or her qualifications, will convince women to vote for a ticket that opposes equal pay legislation and other efforts towards women’s equality. It’s especially insulting when you realize how far behind the Republican party is in putting women in office, compared to the Democratic party. There are considerably fewer than half as many Republican women in Congress and in state legislatures as there are Democratic women.

Making marriage work in the twenty-first century.

Another in a series of paradox solutions:
There is lots of press now about gay and lesbian couples marrying, but not about some of those couples breaking up instead. The availability of marriage as an option in California and Massachusetts is forcing many couples to confront their individual expectations about commitment as never before. As I have heard from a number of my gay and lesbian friends, some are finding that those expectations do not match. Painful as this process may be for those couples, it may be for the best.

But there is a bigger lesson to be learned here. If we are to decode social gender roles and eliminate their unfair limitations on individual potential, we can’t just make changes in the workplace and schools. We have to change the rules in marriage and relationships.

Gay marriage is an unprecedented opportunity to help us do this. The religious right has this all wrong. Gay marriage does not threaten heterosexual marriage, it will strengthen it. Many gay and lesbian couples are creating committed, mutually satisfying relationships without all of the Mars/Venus gender stereotypes that have defined heterosexual marriage for hundreds of years.

Gay and lesbian couples will be taking on a lot of heartache in this process, but what they learn will help all of us transform marriage in a way that will make it work for more couples in the twenty-first century and beyond. This change will hasten the emergence of matrocracy and help more heterosexual couples bond and stay together as gender equality becomes reality.

How are we going to beat misogyny?

Another in a series of paradoxes:
One of the lessons learned in the Presidential campaign is there is still an enormous amount of misogyny in the United States that is tolerated by most people. Sexist remarks can go much further without prompting general outrage and condemnation than can racial slurs. Witness John McCain's laughing response to woman who called Hillary Clinton a bitch at a town hall meeting, and the fact that the day after his campaign had its biggest single day of online fundraising up that point. Imagine how his response would have by necessity been quite different if instead a person of color had asked him, "How are we going to beat the nigger?" Many other examples of woman bashing littered the public discourse about her.

Misogyny is also a theme of the top Emmy nominated television drama of the year, Mad Men, realistically portraying the 1960's workplace when women had almost entirely subservient roles and often endured sexist insults from their bosses. Yes, it's a historical drama and some women characters on the show will rise in the workplace over the long run. But, don't hold your breath waiting for an accurate historical drama in which a focal point is whites keeping down minorities on the job. Such realism would not likely be tolerated even on cable.

If the above observations fail to convince you that sexism fails to provoke outrage in the campaign, see the amazing video of McCain dodging the question of whether insurance companies that pay for Viagra should be forced pay for birth control. Imagine the uproar that would have resulted if he had avoided condemning a policy that failed to pay anything for drugs that would prevent a well-known condition that only affects a particular racial or ethnic group.

International Women’s Day.

The American women’s suffrage movement spurred the creation of International Women’s Day in 1911. However, this annual celebration on March 8 fell into disfavor after it was adopted by communist countries and for years passed with scant attention in the U.S.

One of the organizations seeking to amplify the voices of women worldwide is the International Museum of Women. Visit their site in honor of International Women’s Day.