Part time professionals = more full time lives.

Another in a series of paradox solutions:

If our economy is to obtain the maximum benefit from the millions of women trained and educated to create, produce, process, diagnose, teach, manage or advise, can’t we offer options that will allow them to continue to work if they choose to have families? Providing part time options in every career track will ensure that the greatest number of women are poised for leadership roles when they are done having children. If women are forced to leave their jobs in order to have children, most will never recover those lost years in their careers. At the age when many men are at the pinnacles of the their careers, many women are reentering the work force with unequal experience. But how to change the existing employer mindset that so opposes part time opportunities for professionals? Here’s one idea:

When layoffs began in earnest in 2008 in response to the recession, there was much public debate about the merits of simply reducing many workers’ pay and hours proportionately in order to reduce the need for layoffs. Proponents argued that shortening hours would greatly reduce the number of families in dire economic circumstances, spread the pain of the recession more equitably, and lessen the chances the recession would go into free fall. In Germany this approach is called Kurzarbeit, which translates as short work. When companies reduce workers’ hours, the government uses money from a special fund to pay workers two-thirds of their lost salaries. The U.S. should consider using this approach. If it could jumpstart a change in employers’ attitudes toward letting employees work less than full time schedules, we’d not only be better able to weather economic downturns, we’d also have a more flexible and family friendly economy.

Rape victims revictimized.

Another in a series of paradoxes:
As further evidence that the U.S. is not making a serious effort to reduce the incidence of rape, a report by Human Rights Watch revealed that scores of police departments in Los Angeles County have not tested thousands of rape kits. That means hundreds or perhaps thousands of rapists will not face justice for their crimes and may rape again. Just as many women will be revictimized by the message that the justice system is not intended to redress the wrongs inflicted on them. Rape will continue to be one of the many injustices women face that makes it harder for them to attain a standing in society equal to men.

U.S. rape and domestic violence rates up.

Another in a series of paradoxes:
U.S. Department of Justice surveys show an increase of 25 percent in rape and sexual assault and 42 percent in violence by intimate partners against women between 2005 and 2007, in part due to a change in research methodology. "Except for simple assault, which increased by 3 percent, the incidence of every other crime surveyed decreased." You would think this would be big news, but it did not get much coverage in the media.

A number of blogs fail to point out that these numbers are based on telephone surveys of crime victims, which is only the start of the confusion. The surveys found that the percentage of rapes and sexual assaults reported to the police increased from 38 percent in 2005 to 42 percent in 2007. Yet at the same time, the number of rapes actually reported to the police decreased more than 4 percent from 2005 to 2007. Based on these numbers, one can only assume that the 25 percent increase in rape and sexual assault is because a lot more women are telling the phone surveyors that they were sexually assaulted, but either they are not reporting these assaults to the police as rape, or the police are not categorizing the reports as rape. Is that what's really going on here?