WomanStats Blog

Welcome to the WomanStats Blog!

The WomanStats Blog is an offshoot of the WomanStats Project. This project, begun in 2001, has both a research and a database component. Our research explores the linkage between the security of women and the security of states and the international system. To that end, we have constructed the largest compilation of information on women in the world: over 315 variables for 175 countries. The WomanStats Database is freely accessible online; click on our homepage link above. The purpose of creating a WomanStats blog was to allow project personnel to bring to the attention of readers interesting (and sometimes appalling) facts concerning women, and also to allow them to reflect upon their experiences extracting data for the project. Use the links to the right to access our RSS feed, sign up for email updates, and add our feed to your site. Other functions on site include search, comments, and ShareThis. The posts below are for 2012 and are listed newest to oldest, and we have archives and categories links to the right to assist you in finding particular posts. Enjoy!

Baby Steps Away From Barbie

In July 2011 the United Kingdom’s Advertising Standards Authority banned cosmetics ads from L'Oreal/Lancome featuring Julia Roberts and Maybelline featuring Christy Turlington because the use of Photoshop caused the images to be misleading about the advertised product. In December 2011 America’s National Advertising Division banned Proctor & Gamble’s CoverGirl mascara ad because of its misleading photo created by Photoshop. It was a great baby step forward, but there is a lot of work to do in regards to Photoshopping ads.

Although there have been several examples of obvious Photoshopping like the Ralph Lauren ad in October 2009 in which the model’s head was bigger than her hips, Photoshopping goes on all the time in less glaringly obvious ways. In August 2010 the website for Ann Taylor accidentally posted the photo on the left until the photoshopped image on the right replaced it.

Photo from BeautyRedefined.net

Another less glaringly obvious photoshopped image is of Faith Hill on the July 2007 cover of the magazine Redbook. Her arm, back, and waist have been slimmed down, and wrinkles have been erased.

Photo from BeautyRedefined.net

The following link is to a short video about photoshopping that makes me laugh and shudder at the same time. The video comically spoofs photoshopping while making the point that most of the images we see are not real. http://vimeo.com/34813864

Although the photoshopped images are not real, they present images of women who have “obtained” the perfect body, best typified by the Barbie doll. If Barbie was a human she would be 5’9”, weigh 110 pounds, and have an 18 inch waist, 36 inch breasts, and 33 inch hips (Durham, 2008, 95-96).

Cosmetic surgery is on the rise throughout the world and most people seeking cosmetic surgery are women attempting to attain the Barbie body. (There are, of course, several factors in the decision to undergo cosmetic surgery; however, the constant bombardment of society with Barbie-like images as the ideal beauty plays a large role.) According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, in 2010 the total number of cosmetic procedures conducted in America was 13,117,063 for a total cost of approximately $10.1 billion.

According to the Webster’s dictionary, mutilation is defined as “the act of maiming, crippling, cutting up, or altering radically so as to damage seriously essential parts of the body”. The act of cosmetic surgery itself can be seen as mutilation of the body. Proponents of cosmetic surgery shudder at the idea of cosmetic surgery as mutilation and instead often describe it as empowering. However,

[a]s more and more cosmetic procedures are presented as ‘empowering choices’ that we'd be silly not to at least consider--breast implants which can cause chronic pain and disease, injections to deaden the nerves in our feet so we can keep wearing those high heeled shoes, surgery to make our vulvas resemble that of a famous porn star, permanent makeup tattooed onto our faces, liposuction or stripping of varicose veins which can lead to chronic nerve pain - the greater is the pressure on us to conform, and the smaller the space in which we get to be content with ourselves the way we are” (Winter, 2004, 14).

I have heard and read arguments against banning photoshopped images. Several of these arguments claim that consumers of the images realize they are not completely realistic and that there is nothing wrong with companies marketing their products in the most alluring manner as possible. I disagree with those arguments. Photoshopping is essentially cutting out unwanted parts and is, in a sense, mutilating the body of the photographed person. As can been seen in the above photographs the women are beautiful even without the nonrealistic alterations conducted by photoshopping. The constant bombardment of photoshopped images causes both men and women to idealize a body type that is physically impossible to attain in the real world.

Even though I know that the images are extensively photoshopped, I still criticize my own body in light of the ideals that are aggressively displayed in the media. I understand the importance of exercising and eating right in order to take care of my body. I know that the ideal portrayed in the media is physically impossible. But what keeps me from stopping on the treadmill when my lungs are bursting, my face is bright red, and I’m drenched with sweat is the hope that I will fit into those jeans again. I don’t think I’m the only one who has this dichotomous way of thinking. So while I am thrilled that the advertising watchdogs are taking the baby step of banning misleading photoshopped images in cosmetic ads, I hope that advertisements begin to show real women instead of photoshopped shadows of women. I realize that will take a very long time. Meanwhile, I will continue to take my own baby steps towards better internalization of my knowledge about the impossibility of the Barbie body and acceptance of my own body.

Works Cited

Durham, M. Gigi. 2008. The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. New York: Overlook Publishing.

Kite, Lindsay and Lexie Kite. 2011. Photoshopping: Altering Images and Our Minds!. BeautyRedefined.net. 30 November.

Winter, Amy. 2004. Feminism and the Politics of Appearance. Off Our Backs. Vol. 34 No. 11-12: 14

Posted by DG on 2 February 2012; Even in America

A Few Thoughts on Guns, Autos, Leisure, and Power

If you ask my friend Mitch what he’s been up to after a holiday, you don’t have to guess: he’s been hunting. Born and raised in rural southern Utah: what else could be expected? Just the way he describes how it feels to chase a mountain lion up a rocky hillside makes you wonder if you’re missing something unattainable in life (or that’s how I feel anyway). Mitch doesn’t know any women who love to hunt, and he doesn’t bring any women with him when he goes. He told me that women get tired, and then they want lunch and get bored following a 15-mile trail. He just doesn’t know any women who would have fun doing that.

I remember when he told me this I racked my brain trying to come up with a reason why more women didn’t hunt; all I could come up with was that on average women have less free-time then men, and hunting is very time intensive. So, I asked him if he’d be willing to stay home and take care of his children while his wife took a week long hunting trip, he answered “No, I would not watch the children while she went hunting because my wife wouldn’t go hunting…but I would be willing to let my wife take a week long trip to New York with her friends to go shoe shopping,” and then he repeated to me how he didn’t know any women who enjoyed hunting as much as he does. But why don’t women hunt?

Entertainment is a people thing. People like to do entertaining activities: that is a fact. But what women and men find entertaining can vary greatly. Looking at a few case studies of my own encounters, it can have interesting connections to power and authority. The purpose of this blog post isn’t to analyze or present facts about the condition of men and women and their leisurely activities, but rather to expound a few of my own experiences in the United States and take away what can be learned from them. So kickback, relax, don’t worry about the heady stuff and think about your place in relation to what activities you devote yourself to when you’re not looking up variables on WomanStats for your research.

In Wyoming (nicknamed both “The Equality State”) I have met one young woman, Cara, who loved to hunt. She lived with her aunt, uncle and her cousins and on the weekends they’d all go hunting together as a family. One of her best experiences she told me was when she shot her first buck. She explained nonchalantly how when she shot it, it didn’t die at first, so she had to get close and shoot it a few more times. She regretted it wasn’t cleaner. I’ve had a few men tell me the story of shooting their first buck, almost as if it were a passage of sorts into manhood. Cara is the only woman who has told me about her first experience with killing a buck; and of course she didn’t tell it as a passage into manhood, but rather as one into adulthood.

Cara grew up hunting and shooting a gun, but as explained by Mitch, not many women hunt. The hobby of owning and using a gun is really knowledge of how to use a tool of authority in our society. It has been shown that domestic abusers who also own guns are more likely to threaten their victim by cleaning, holding, or loading guns during arguments. Women who are the victims in domestic violence, usually do not own a gun. A gun can symbolize power. As such, guns are connected to pastimes considered masculine.

My sister Megan is part of the United States Air Force Reserves Officer Training Program (commonly referred to as the ROTC) at a university in Utah. For fun on the weekends her division informally goes shooting in the mountains, but somehow word never gets around to her and the other women. Megan has asked repeatedly to be invited, because she has little experience with handling a gun, and would find it useful to practice before basic training this summer. Shooting clay pigeons is how the men in her ROTC group bond and network with each other, but because she’s not “one of the guys” she’s not invited. The lack of social networking in this way may have repercussions in future promotions. Are women economically disadvantaged in other ways because they do not participate (or allowed) in culturally masculine hobbies?

In the rocky-mountain states men drive Toyota trucks, but about 30 hours to the east in Motor Town USA, (Detroit, Michigan) Toyota is taboo and Ford is the natural law. Where there are no mountain lions to conquer or elk to hunt, men dirty their hands in the engine of a car. My dad’s family is from a down-river suburb of Detroit: blue collar, where everyone works for (or got laid off from) some American auto plant. People know cars. My Aunt Darla once dropped off her car to a mechanic. He called a few hours later to give the appraisal for fixing it. After chatting with the mechanic for a few minutes, she handed the phone over to her husband. The price was brought down immediately by about $100. It’s assumed that every man practices amateur mechanics in their off time. The professional mechanics in Detroit are wise enough to not overprice men; apparently this one was not honest enough to not overprice a woman.

Does the tradition of American women not knowing how to tinker with their automobiles stem from the same ideology that kept them from gaining an education? Is it one factor keeping them economically disadvantaged? There are obvious connections between who has a certain skill or knowledge and who holds the physical and economic power. Luckily you have the skill of reading, and hopefully you read this for fun, and maybe learned a few things. These are just a few short examples I have noticed in my own life, focused specifically on guns and cars: two masculine defined past-times. So the question comes: When the hobbies and past times of people are gendered is there a correlation with who has the advantage in that society?

Posted by CHB on 29 January 2012; Thinking About Men

WomanStats Abroad Part Three: Stories from Senegal

I never imagined I’d end up living in Senegal for six weeks, it just sort of happened. I applied for a French Study Abroad program on a whim, always hoping but never really expecting for it to become a reality. But somehow or other I ended up on a plane to that little pac-man shaped country I knew so little about.

            My very first Senegalese interaction was with Aminata Sow Fall, arguably the most renowned francophone African female author. Our program director was good friends with Aminata and together made the itinerary for our trip. Our first evening in Dakar was spent having dinner at her home. Her home was decorated with elaborately carved furniture and vibrant traditional fabrics. It was lovely, yet much more humble than I would have expected for an author of her status. Her voice was soft and low, but she commanded the room without effort, seated like a Queen in her striking boubou of bright yellow.
            As we sat there drinking homemade bissap juice and eating the famous (and rightfully so) Senegalese mangoes, we were all completely enthralled by this grand intellectual in our midst. She was powerful and bold, and as we later found out by reading two of her novels, she wrote about women who were powerful and bold – despite their oftentimes-distressing circumstances. And even from the window of our rented Blue Bird Bus, it became immediately clear just how distressing those circumstances were.
            I wasn’t so shocked by how many people that asked me for money, but by who asked me for money. It wasn’t just the crippled or the homeless who were begging, it was every person you came into contact with. If a vendor couldn’t sell you on a hand-carved statue of ebony, or as they would say repeatedly, “the gold of woods”, they would simply ask for a handout – arguing that America is rich, so I must be too.

            One woman was dressed in an elaborate boubou with expensive-looking jewelry. She was positioned near our hotel so everyday we would walk past her and hear her loud and sometimes angry demands. She would send her two young children running after us, shoving their plastic containers in our faces. They were not at all like the other children, usually the talibé- boys in oversized and filthy clothes, usually barefoot, who were sent to beg for their Islamic schoolmasters. These two children were well dressed and clean, both wearing a sturdy pair of shoes.
            I didn’t really understand these differences until in St. Louis, while reading and discussing Aminata Sow Fall’s second novel and winner of the winner of the Grand Prix Littéraire d'Afrique Noire- La Grève des bàttu (The Beggar’s Strike). Here in an effort to improve tourism and advance his own career, a politician vows to “clean up” the city by getting all the beggars off the streets. The leader of these mistreated beggars is a fearless woman named Salla Niang. She, unlike many of her peers, is dignified and confident for she was not born a beggar. Salla had given birth to twins, which in Senegalese culture, means that she has been cursed. This curse can only be removed after living a certain period of time, usually several years, as a mendiant (beggar).
            The face of the woman I saw in Dakar came immediately to mind as well as those of her two little sons. They weren’t begging out of need for food or shelter or clothes. The mother was begging to regain her status in society, to win back the respect she lost by giving birth to two strong, healthy boys. And her boys were missing school to chase strangers down the street, a punishment for circumstances completely beyond their control.   What amazed me was that even though I could see these issues first-hand, it was the words of Aminata that brought me a greater understanding of the Senegalese sufferings and sorrows.
            A second strong female character from La Grève des bàttu, Lolli Badiane,embodies the deep wounds that are commonly felt by women living in a polygynous society. Lolli is the wife of the previously mentioned ambitious politician, named Mour. Lolli is the mother of their eight children and a wonderful support to her husband. During a time where Mour was unemployed, Lolli sold all of her clothes and jewelry to support the family. She is educated and beautiful and well respected. As Mour’s prominence rises, he becomes persuaded that another wife will add to his high status. As he shares his decision with his dear wife, Lolli expresses at first disbelief and then “all the rage of a wounded lioness. Her feline stare shot blazing rays on Mour’s face.” (p.43) After listening with shock to her uncommonly open resentment, Mour rebukes his wife for not accepting her “destiny” that God has dictated. After his sharp words, Lolli accepts his decision, but is described as reserved and lifeless throughout the rest of the novel. “People were no longer saying, ‘that’s Lolli Badiane’, but, that dress is Lolli Badiane.” (p.44)
            This particular exchange illustrates the differences in male and female perspective on the practice of polygyny. The conflict represented here is in no way rare. As a nation, Senegal currently maintains the highest rate of polygyny in all of West Africa, as 32% of all married men and 40% of all married women practice polygyny. Although the number of polygynous marriages increased due to the rise of Islam, the practice itself has existed there for much longer, originally influenced by the traditions of West African animists. Yet with a population that is 94% Muslim, polygyny is often attributed to religious beliefs rather than cultural ones.
           For many Senegalese men and women alike, polygyny is seen as part of the will of Allah. One woman named Saminista said “It is necessary for women to accept this practice if they are believing Muslims. We practice it because we are Muslim, and it’s necessary to accept that which the good God has written. Each must follow their destiny… It’s God who decides if a man will have several wives. A good Muslim woman must always submit to her husband and accept what he says.”
           Yet not everyone sees polygyny as a religious duty, as seen through the words of imam, Ousmane Sow, who said “It is a recommendation of God and not necessarily an obligation. It is something one can do if one feels pushed to do it and has the means for it.” In the Quran it reads “And if you fear that you cannot act equitably towards orphans, marry such women as seem good to you, two and three and four; but if you fear that you will not do justice between them, then marry only one or what your right hands possess: this is more proper that you may not deviate from the right course" (4:3).
           While their religion does permit this practice, many of the Senegalese are motivated by economic or social reasons. For a man, additional wives mean more children. In Senegalese society, having a lot of children merits a lot of prestige for the man because his name will continue and he will be well known. Posterity is also considered a sort of social security system, for it is the children’s duty to take care of their parents when they are old. Additional wives are often as additional helping hands – as one man put it “The more wives we have, the more we are assisted.”
            From the perspective of a woman, co-spouses can also mean “more arms”. This additional help around the house allows the wife more free time to spend with her children or her elderly parents, or enjoy other activities like work outside the home or participation in political life. But in the eyes of a second or third wife, social pressures for polygyny are often not viewed as kindly. In Senegalese society, a woman who is of age and single or childless, is regarded without respect and is usually treated very poorly. Fear of becoming an “old maid” is deeply ingrained in Senegalese girls, so they will choose to become a second, third, or fourth wife so as not to end up alone. Pressure from parents is strong as well, for a man is considered wealthy if he has many wives, and a daughter becoming a third or even fourth wife would bring honor and an added social status to her family. This measure of wealth is not always a safe bet however, because a man who does not have the means to provide for several wives will often do so regardless in order to merely have the appearance of wealth and high status.
            Other reasons for the practice included that there are “way more women than there are men in Senegal” (Population: 52% female and 48% male). Others praised the custom of “l’evirat” – where when a woman’s husband dies she becomes the wife of her husband’s brother, even if that brother is already married. A justification that I had not been expecting was that polygyny is a way of avoiding adultery. The man’s argument was that almost no man can be faithful to his spouse anymore so “it is better to have 4 wives than 10 concubines.” Whatever the reasoning for the practice, the decision has to be made before a man’s first marriage- for it must be registered as either monogamous or polygynous under the Family Code. As seen through the variety of responses the practice is extremely complex and therefore the reactions are as well. In the final statement of a University of Gaston Berger student who claimed to be completely against polygyny, “But one never knows…”
            When I think back on the women of Senegal, it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by the number of troubles they face in the quest for equality. Polygyny, poverty, lack of education for girls, circumcision, to just name a few. But then I think back on my cherished interactions with Aminata Sow Fall. In my opinion, she embodies the hopeful future of Senegalese women, as well as the intent of every WomanStats member. That is, to use our education, compassion, and creativity in order to help improve the lives of our fellow women.