Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Has danger risk changed the way we see?

Posted: 18 Dec 2012 07:30 AM PST

In the United Kingdom, direct eye contact can be a potentially threatening cue.

Women have adjusted the way they view the world, researchers suggest, because they are sensitive to the potential dangers of making direct eye contact.

In an investigation carried out at Bristol University, participants' eye movements were monitored as they viewed film stills and works of art.

While the male participants made direct eye contact with the faces in the images, especially when primed to perceive a threat, their female counterparts diverted their eyes slightly lower, towards the nose and mouth.

All people's eyes are normally drawn to those portions of an image that carry the most meaning and information, where there is a danger the reverse is true.

Faces, therefore, are a site of immense information whilst also posing a potential threat – especially when direct eye contact is made.

Whilst acknowledging the rewards associated with direct eye contact, the researchers highlight that “in the United Kingdom, direct eye contact can be a potentially threatening cue.

“Asking someone if they are ‘looking at me’ is less a request for information, and more a challenge to combat.”

Researchers suggest, therefore, that the slightly downward gaze of the female participants was the product of the 'trade-off decision' they were making between the potential rewards versus the potential risks of making eye contact.

The investigators also uncovered that viewing patterns between male and female participants differed when they were shown images of heterosexual couples.

While men spent virtually equal amounts of time looking at the man and the woman in the image, women spent nearly two-thirds of the time looking at the female in the image.

Further evidence of women's learned sensitivity to threat and increased anticipation of danger?

The UK government reports that over 300,000 women have been sexually assaulted and 60,000 women have been raped in the UK over the last year.

By taking account of these acute environmental factors affecting women, rather than relying on harmful gender stereotypes or biologically deterministic arguments, this study makes a cogent argument for visual perception as learned behaviour.

Science has often been used to provide evidence for gender essentialism; are we all feeling nurturing because of our maternal instinct today?

What makes this research refreshing is that a reason for the difference in the results between the sexes has been explored in the society that treats the sexes differently.

As Diane Halpern, past president of the American Psychological Association, points out, "even when differences [between men and women] are found, we cannot conclude that they are immutable because the continuous interplay of biological and environmental influences can change the size and direction of the effects some time in the future."

In this instance, perhaps that "time in the future" will come when those government statistics on violence against women have seen a significant reduction?

A ‘yes’ for United Synagogue women

Posted: 18 Dec 2012 04:14 AM PST

Women in the United Synagogue to be able to chair its congregations.

The Council of the United Synagogue (US) has voted in favour of changing the Synagogue's byelaws and so to allow women to become chairpersons of their synagogues.

The US consists of 62 Orthodox Jewish communities in Britain and is by far the largest synagogual organisation in Europe.

Dalia Cramer, the chair of US Women, said that the group was "thrilled" when the change was proposed as it gave female members of the US the opportunity to be recognised as leaders of their communities.

"This is a truly historic development for US Women which comes following a huge amount of hard work and in consultation with our Halachic authorities," she said.

The change was proposed by the lay leadership of the US, which is headed by its president Stephen Pack. Cramer said US Women was proud that the leadership and Pack "fully" supported women as lay leaders in the community.

Discontent from many United Synagogue rabbis was reported before the decision was made. However, sources speaking to the Times of Israel emphasised that this change was seen as inevitable and the rabbis were affronted at being left out of the decision-making process.

Women were only permitted to become local synagogue officers in 2001 and, while they could serve as vice chairs, the role of chair remained barred to them.

However several synagogues did deliberately chose not to appoint a chairman to allow their female vice chairs to lead the synagogue unofficially.

According to one United Synagogue rabbi, Dov Kaplan, of Hampstead Garden Suburb, this meant that the change to the byelaws was "largely symbolic."

The highest lay leadership positions in the United Synagogue still remain closed to women and they cannot hold any religious leadership positions.

Simon Hochauser, Stephen Pack's predecessor as president, said that allowing women to become synagogual chairs was "only a step."

"We are after full equality for men and women in lay leadership which includes becoming trustees and president of the United Synagogue," he said.

There are women representatives on the US trustee board where, according to one senior United Synagogue woman, they "do the same work" as trustees.

Dalia Cramer has praised Pack and the US trustees for proposing this latest change.

She believes the new byelaws "reflect [their] commitment…to openly discussing this issue and making it a real priority."

According to Pack, "inclusivity is at the heart of the mission of the US."

Women on boards: UAE says yes to quotas

Posted: 18 Dec 2012 02:42 AM PST

An acheivement in the history of women.

Last week the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ruled in favour of the compulsory inclusion of women on the boards of directors for corporations and government agencies operating in the Emirates.

The historic decision was announced on Twitter by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai: “Women proved themselves in many workplaces and today we want them to have a strong presence in decision-making positions in our institutions.”

At last month's 3rd annual Arab Women’s Leadership Forum, it was revealed that women hold a meagre 1.5 per cent of board positions in the private sector board in the UEA.

This figure increases to a 22 per cent presence on public sector boards, but 50 per cent of the public sector workforce are women, so that is still less than half.

The Dubai Women's Establishment, the Forum's organisers and champions of the quota for women policy, have called the Cabinet's decision, "an achievement for women in the UAE [as well as] an achievement in the history of women."

The legislation is expected to demand that board appointments meet a ratio of male to female executives similar to the quota system operating in Norway, which requires a 40 per cent female board membership.

Similar measures have been adopted by a number of European countries to address the dearth of women in the boardroom.

However, a proposal by the European Commission to introduce mandatory quotas across the EU was recently blocked by six nations.

And the UK was one of the six that vetoed the proposal, claiming that it was unwarranted intervention from Brussels.

Instead, the UK government continues to claim that the current plans laid out in Lord Davies’ report, which aims for a mere 25 per cent of boardroom seats to be held by women by 2015, offers adequate provisions for making UK boardrooms more diverse.

That the UAE were not satisfied with women making up only 22 per cent on public sector boards should, certainly, be food for thought for the UK government.

Conservative MPs have bouyed their argument against quotas with figures like those recently released by the Association of British Insurers (ABI), which show that over the past year, 26.1 per cent of FTSE 100 and 30.6 per cent of FTSE 250 non-executive appointments were women, compared to 18.5 per cent and 11.9 per cent one year earlier.

However, Fiona Hotson Moore, a partner at Reeves, a London-based accountancy firm, urges caution and careful scrutiny of such statistics.

“If those women are sitting there as non-executive directors, with as much actual decision-making responsibility as a vase of flowers, [then] that is hardly progress,” she said.

And certainly, with only 6.6 per cent of FTSE 100 executives and 4.9 per cent of FTSE 250 executives being women, it would seem that the "actual decision-making responsibility" remains firmly in the hands of men.

Until parliament takes a leaf out of the UAE's book, anyway.

Meantime, there is a petition to sign, to encourage the European Union to push for 40 per cent.