The women’s rights movement has been great, right?

In many ways, yes. In many ways women are much closer to equal income and in some college programs there are more women that men. All in all, women have been making strides over the years. But this isn’t the case for all women. While rich and middle-class women have been climbing all sorts of ladders, less fortunate women have the same amount of equality as back in the 1970s.

Economic Professor Nancy Folbre wrote for the New York Times’ blog, Economix, that 18 percent of women with only a high school diploma are granted paid maternity leave. This is in contrast to the 66 percent of women with a college degree, and just up from the 1970s when 16 per cent of high school grads received paid mat leave. Read More »

I think we can all agree that college sports are a big deal. Whether it be March Madness or school rivalries or outstanding athletes, college sports are definitely worth commending. (And that includes women’s sports!) But even the best institutions have their issues and like many institutions before them some of the largest issues surrounding college sports right now are surrounding gender equality and Title IX.

Title IX is a federal gender equality law which seeks to ensure that equal opportunities exist for both men and women in college athletics. It requires that the number of sports available for men and women on a team are in proportion with the number of men and women on campus.

But in recent years, as the number of women attending college has begun to overtake the number of men  (women are now 56% of enrollment), the issues have begun to get more complicated. Unwilling to lose male athletes because of an increase in women attending college, athletic departments have begun searching for loopholes which would allow it to appear as though women and men are equally represented without actually increasing the number of female players. Whether that meant counting men who practiced with women as women, or putting women on the team, but never allowing them to play, schools like Duke, Marshall University, and Texas A & M have begun to get creative when creating the roster for their teams. Read More »

I wear push-up bras and high heels. I go gaga for lip gloss and lipstick, nail polish, and heavy eye-make up . And I’m not even going to lie, I’m a sucker for pouty boys that call me ma’am. But besides my affinity for sundresses, pearls, and men in ties, I’m a feminist. In fact, I’ve always considered myself to be one. But despite my own declaration in the fight for gender equality, this doesn’t seem possible to people.

“How can you be a feminist?” I’m asked all the time. “Do you even know what that means?”

While feminism can mean different things to different people, I’ve often felt like I didn’t fit the mold — like I wasn’t the ideal. Like I couldn’t claim it. And then it hit me: Feminism can be whatever you need it to be. And sometimes, what you need it to be will change from time to time.

This powerful realization hit me as an 18-year-old young woman sitting in on my first Women’s Studies class at a small, private, all-women university. This moment of feminist clarity has always stuck with me, and now as a 23-year-old post-grad, I am constantly revisiting feminism and its applicability in my ever changing life. Although feminism, even in 2011, often still sounds like a dirty word with a negative connotation, I’m constantly surprised at the way feminism finds itself in my day to day life — it really does come in all shapes, sizes, issues, prospects, and in all kinds of different people. And despite being so diverse and so varying from time to time, I’m still relieved that I can make feminism something all my own.

Read More »

I’ve never been overly patriotic. There are no American flags hanging in my room and even if I had snagged the athletic gene in my family, I still wouldn’t wake up at 5 am twice a week for ROTC. I don’t believe like some that the U.S. is “the best country in the world,” yet I’ve always felt that as an American, I am offered more freedoms and opportunities than almost any other country’s citizens.

So, I was surprised by the news this week that America ranks nineteenth in gender equality. In other words, based on factors including salary equality, education, political representation and life expectancy, the Global Gender Gap Report determined that women in eighteen countries come out ahead of us American females.

I was disappointed, but maybe I should have been happy- nineteen is a big improvement from 31^st last year, and 27^th the year before.

Nineteenth out of 134 countries really isn’t terrible…but it isn’t exactly wonderful either. In a high school graduating class, the land of the free and the home of the brave wouldn’t have even received Honors. Iceland would be the valedictorian of woman’s equality, but I don’t suggest a mass exodus of down-stuffed-parka-wearing women to the Nordic country. (I spent one shivering winter in Chicago and that was enough for me.) Even there, women don’t have it as great as men. Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like the sheer fashion trend!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Earlier this month, we were asking where chivalry had gone – and I’m down with that, I’d like to know where the little sucker slipped of to, too. But what I want to talk about now is, if chivalry is gone, do we really want it back? And should we expect it?

No matter how you slice it, chivalry always smacks of gender inequality. And yeah, it’s a lot harder to complain about inequality when you’re the one benefiting from it, but shouldn’t we still stand up against it? Are we hypocrites if we don’t? Add to that the fact that most of the little things we ascribe to the idea of chivalry (flowers, love tokens, professions of undying love) are all essentially just methods of winning over or even buying our affections. Isn’t that something that we in the post-feminist era should rebel against on principal?

We’ve fought for years to say that we’re just as good as men, that we shouldn’t be treated differently – and now, like it or not, this lack of chivalry is basically just guys treating us exactly like they treat each other. Hello, feminist victory here! Read More »

Last weekend I spent a full day catching up on the happenings of The Millionaire Matchmaker. (Don’t judge…) In one episode, ball-buster Patti Stanger duked it out with Rabbi Something-or-Other-Stein on the topic of morality in regards to her infamous club.

The Rabbi’s argument was that Patti’s club is superficial and that if it is exclusive to millionaires, then those who join the club are essentially marrying for money, and not for any of the “right” reasons.  Patti defended herself insisting that her services provide men with the tools they need to have a successful relationship, and provide women with the comfort of knowing that their potential mate will be able to give them a safe and secure life if a match is made.

My first thought: If only this were the topic of discussion on the Bimah at my own Bat Mitzvah, I may have been able to stay awake.
My second thought: Wait a second, Rabbi may have a point.
My third thought: Uh oh, does this make me a crazy feminist?

Well I’m not ready to stop shaving my armpits quite yet, but I do think The Bearded One has a point. Read More »

While us girls may not have the upper hand in dating right now, once college ends and the real world begins, guys are the real victims of the hookup culture.

And according to Charlotte Allen, it’s because all women are sluts.

In her recent essay The New Dating Game, Allen tries to communicate the message that because women now have the power to choose who they date (and sleep with), males, particularly beta-males, are being pushed to the back burner.  In the “New Paleolithic Age,” alpha males are “dragging women by the hair into their caves– and the women love every minute of it.” According to Allen, all women spend the better part of their 20′s dressing like hookers and going out to clubs to try and take home the most desirable dudes. That is until they get dried-up (at the ripe old age of 28) and are forced to settle for a less-than-stellar guy so they can get married and pop out a few babies.

Yeah, a woman actually wrote all that.
And now let me react. Read More »

Tomorrow is Equal Pay Day, a public awareness event to draw attention to the gender pay gap. Today, women make about 80 cents per every dollar a man makes.

It’s ridiculous – if we do the same work, we should get paid the same. Am I right!? [Crowd cheers.]

But I’m here to say that we not only deserve equal pay, but should actually be making more money than men. Here are 5 very real reasons why:

1. Women are biologically superior to men. We have a longer life expectancy, more grey matter in our brains (it’s useful stuff, trust me) and can have multiple orgasms. We aren’t as susceptible to many inherited diseases (like hemophilia and colorblindness) because we have two X chromosomes rather than just one.

2. We work twice as much. Most women and men work eight-hour days. But when women get home, they have to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. This extra work is known by feminists as the “second shift” and we deserve to be compensated for it.

3. Women are more qualified than man. Women get better grades and take more advanced placement classes in high school. Nearly sixty-percent of undergraduate college students are women, and women earn more bachelor and graduate degrees then men. Read More »

Ben and Jen: Super Fertile.

Too cloudy to go to the beach? Add these 80′s classics to your Netflix queue.

Exclusive look at the crazy new script from Tarantino. Awww yeah!

Nothing ruins a day at the beach quite like a shark. And I really needed a tan!

The new iPhone is out. We are not too happy about it, but what do the critics say?

Teen pregnancy on the up and up for the first time in over a decade. Could this be Juno’s doing?

Also on the rise, Wal-Mart stores. They. Are. Everywhere.

As if TV couldn’t get any worse – Nicole Richie gets another show.

2 words that should never go together: orgasmic and childbirth. Yes, there is a video.

Maybe this will inspire you to recycle. Think of the dolphins, people!

Gender equality on the road at last! Well, at least on the signs. Baby steps, ladies; baby steps.

Happiness is on the rise! At least, those are the findings of a super-scientific research study released this week. The World Values Survey has been tracking happiness for 17 years in 52 countries and involving 350,000 people. The positive results are attributed to “societal shifts in recent decades: Low-income countries such as India and China have experienced unprecedented rates of economic growth; dozens of medium-income countries have democratized; and there has been a sharp rise of gender equality and tolerance of ethnic minorities and gays and lesbians in developed societies.”

The results surprised scientists, who had previously believed that happiness was stable when looking at societies over time. Bucking the conventional knowledge, happiness levels in forty countries “rose substantially.”

Denmark is the happiest nation, Zimbabwe the least, and the US was rated as the 16th happiest country. A similar survey released last week determined one reason America isn’t ranking higher on the list: Baby Boomers are generally miserable compared to other generations. Read More »