Year: 2011

Saudi women given right to vote, run in future elections

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

News organizations and social networks were buzzing Sunday morning after Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud announced that women would be given the right to vote and to run in future local elections as well as join the advisory Shura council as full members.

This marks a significant shift for the conservative Muslim country where activists have been calling for further rights for women.

“Because we refuse to marginalize women in society in all roles that comply with sharia, we have decided, after deliberation with our senior ulama [clerics] and others … to involve women in the Shura council as members, starting from the next term” (King Abdullah said in his speech, according to The Guardian)

Saudi writer Nimah Ismail Nawwab, in talking to the BBC, said activists have been campaigning on this issue and others related to women’s rights in the country for 20 years. In this report by Al Jazeera, Hatoon Al Fassi, a professor of women’s history at Saud University, comments on the decision and the long-term efforts for further women’s rights in the country:

Women in Saudi Arabia currently must have written approval from a male to work, leave the country or for certain medial procedures, and public segregation of the sexes is the norm. Women are also still not allowed to drive, though there is no specific law against it. This became the most recent hot-button issue as over the summer women protested by defying the ban and driving. Some women were arrested as a result. This issue was not addressed in the announcement.

The White House offered praise of the decision Sunday morning, with National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor saying the move recognizes the “significant contributions” that women make in Saudi Arabia, according to the AP.

Some commentators have suggested that the elections are meaningless and these elected positions don’t hold real power, as noted in this Christian Science Monitor story. But many are still acknowledging the symbolic importance of involving women.

This changes will go into effect after Thursday’s election. The next municipal elections will be in 2015.

Here’s a roundup of some of the initial coverage:

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.

Gender check: 9/22/11 – Midwest

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click here to read more.

Website: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (stltoday.com)

"Metro East prosecutor announces crackdown on bad cops" - Stltoday.com, 9/22/2011

On Stltoday.com, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9:20 a.m. (PDT) Thursday, Sept. 22, was titled “Metro East prosecutor announces crackdown on bad cops.” Its subject was seven police officers arrested on a variety of charges as part of a crackdown.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male (3)

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male, county state’s attorney
  2. Male, victim in one of the cases

Notes/analysis: Three of the seven arrested are female.


Website: St. Louis Beacon

On the St. Louis Beacon, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9:20 a.m. (PDT) Thursday, Sept. 22, was titled “Consumers, pharmacists, lawmakers weigh in on Express Scripts merger plan.” Its subject was opinions on a mega-merger of two pharmacy benefit managers.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male, chief executive at one company
  2. Male, counterpart at other company
  3. Male, pharmacy executive on behalf of a national association
  4. Male, pharmacist and member of association of independent, local pharmacies
  5. Male, U.S. senator

Women see increase in bylines in eighth month of Gender Checks

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

Women made up 24.3 percent of sources and 44.8 percent of authors in the eighth month of our Gender Check monitoring project. That reflected a rise in women authors over last month, when women had 35 percent of bylines.

Here’s the breakdown of our findings for the eighth month:

Eighth Month: Aug. 22 – Sept. 15, 2011

We reviewed 32 articles, two in each Gender Check, during our eighth month. That included four Gender Checks from each geographic region.

In each Gender Check, we look at two websites from that region — one associated with a newspaper and one that is online-only. During our monitoring, we pull the top or lead articles on their websites at the time of the check and gather details on the gender of the author, the breakdown of the genders of the human sources referenced in the articles and other details. (For more on what Gender Checks are, read our introductory post here.)

Sourcing

This month the articles contained 81 male sources and 26 female sources. This meant women made up 24.3 percent of the human sources referenced. Five articles this month contained no named sources.

Here’s how that broke out by geographic region:

  • West: 19 males, 8 female (Women at 29.6 percent)
  • Northeast: 18 males, 5 females (Women at 21.7 percent)
  • Midwest: 34 males, 6 females (Women at 15 percent)
  • South: 10 male, 7 female (Women at 41.2 percent)

Here’s the breakdown by news sites associated with a traditional newspaper and those that are not.

  • Newspaper website: 50 males, 14 females (Women at 21.9 percent)
  • Online-only:  31 males, 12 females (Women at 27.9 percent)

Authorship

This month 13 articles were written by an individual woman and 16 by one or more man. That put women at 44.8 percent of bylines of one gender or another for the month. Additionally, there were three shared bylines between a man and a woman (or two). This was one of the higher byline percentages for women in the study and an increase over the 35 percent women reached last month.

Here’s how bylines broke down by geographic region:

  • West: 3 stories by an individual woman, 5 by an individual man
  • Northeast: 2 by a woman, 5 by men and 1 with a shared byline between a man and a woman
  • Midwest: 4 by a woman, 3 by a man, 1 with a shared byline between a man and a woman
  • South: 4 by a woman, 3 by a man, 1 with a shared byline between a man and two women

Here’s how women did in bylines between newspaper sites and online-only sites this month:

  • Newspaper website: 7 by a woman, 7 by men and 2 with a shared byline between a man and woman (or two)
  • Online-only: 6 by a woman, 9 by a man, 1 with a shared byline

As a note to our readers, these findings reflect a limited amount of data from our simple Gender Checks. We hope you recognize the limitations of this data, since we’ve only sampled a few articles from eight news sites. Further research and time is needed to verify any validity across the board.

In July, we released our findings from our first six months of monitoring. During that time, women were 25.3 percent of human sources referenced and 37.7 percent of authors of one gender or the author.

To look at past month breakdowns and other data on gender representations in online news, check out our “Findings and Statistics” category. 

Gender check: 9/20/11 – West

Jasmine R. LinabaryLeave a comment

*Gender Checks are quick examinations of gender representation in individual news articles for the purpose of discovering trends over time. Click hereto read more.

Website: Seattle Times

On the Seattle Times, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9:15 a.m. (PDT) Tuesday, Sept. 20, was titled “Scammers ‘skimming’ millions from area’s ATMs.” Its subject was the rise of bank card “skimming.”

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Female, U.S. attorney

Notes/analysis: A male assistant special agent is mentioned in the story but not quoted. He is also featured in the image with the story.


Website: Seattle P-I

Seattle P-!, 9/20/2011

On the Seattle P-I, one of the lead articles featured on the home page as of 9:15 a.m. (PDT) Tuesday, Sept. 20, was titled “Prosecutors: Sex offender molested children at Renton church.” Its subject was a male charged with molesting at least a girl at a church and abusing another elsewhere.

Here is its gender breakdown:

–Author: Male

–Human sources  (listed in order mentioned):

  1. Male, senior deputy prosecutor

HPV vaccine returns to spot of controversy in GOP primaries

Joy BaconLeave a comment
Image from http://www.politico.com.

When the HPV vaccine became available in 2006, it was met with both enthusiasm and concerns. (In fact, I reported its arrival, and opposition, on our religiously affiliated college campus). Those concerns were brought back to the front page news cycle this week as the Republican candidates for president have questioned the vaccine’s safety and Gov. Rick Perry’s policies in Texas schools.

Approximately 20 million people are currently infected with HPV in the United States. As many as half of these infections are among adolescents and young adults, ages 15 through 24 years of age, according to the CDC. Most HPV infections are asymptomatic, but four of the 40 types of the STD cause cervical cancer, which kills 4,000 women in the U.S. each year. Other types can cause genital warts in both males and females. More than 35 million doses of HPV vaccine have been distributed in the United States as of June 2011.

The topic was first brought up in the September 7 debate, the first in which Perry participated since announcing his candidacy. At that time, he defended his 2007 mandate of the vaccine for 11 and 12 year old girls in Texas schools, saying he would “always err on the side of saving lives.” Other candidates said he should have let parents opt in to the vaccine, rather than opt out of the mandate. Other candidates, and conservatives, have said the vaccine encourages promiscuity. In May 2007, the Texas legislature overwhelmingly passed a bill vacating the governor’s executive order by a veto-proof margin. Perry, however, still supported the executive order in his 2010 re-election bid for the governor’s office. Currently, Virginia and the District of Columbia require the vaccine for girls entering the sixth grade. Both jurisdictions offer liberal opt-out policies that allow parents to decline to have their daughters vaccinated. (As of April 2011, only 22 percent of sixth-grade girls in D.C. public schools were in the midst of or had completed the vaccinations; Virginia has also tried to repeal the mandate.)

In Monday’s debate, Perry was again criticized for his support of the mandate, and by the end of the week he had reversed his position, telling a GOP event in Virginia that “We should have had an opt-in instead of an opt-out.”

But the bigger story became one of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s attacks on Perry, telling him she had met a mother whose daughter became mentally retarded after receiving the vaccination. She also accused the governor of “crony capitalism” and receiving financial incentives from Merck, the drug company that produces the Guardasil vaccine. (GlaxoSmithKline also produced an HPV vaccine, Cervarix, but this variety only protects against two types of HPV; Guardasil protects against four and is usually the variety in question during debates over the vaccine). Sarah Palin, in what was seen by some as her first attack on Perry, supported Bachmann’s statements in a Fox appearance the next day. Many, including Perry, questioned the factual basis of Bachmann’s statement. Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson: “It is possible that Rick Perry encouraged HPV vaccinations in the wrong way or for the wrong reasons. But it is Bachmann, not Perry, who would put girls and women at greater health risk based on moral confusion and public health illiteracy.” Bachmann’s former campaign manager said she’d “goofed,” as described by the Christian Science Monitor.

No research at this time shows a connection between the HPV vaccination and mental retardation. One bioethicist went as far as to challenge Bachmann’s statement by offering to donate $10,000 to charity if she can prove and verify a single case. Published side effects of Guardasil are similar to other vaccinations, including pain, swelling, itching, bruising, and redness at the injection site, headache, fever, nausea, dizziness, vomiting, and fainting. Gardasil works against HPV types 6, 11, 16 and 18. These four types cause 90 percent of genital warts and types 16 and 18 cause 70 percent of cervical cancer, according to the CDC.

The vaccine is administered in three doses and is recommended by the CDC to start in girls around 11 or 12 because it is most effective when administered before a girl becomes sexually active; the vaccine is approved for women up to 26 years old.

Here are some resources to learn more about HPV and the vaccine:

  • Centers for Disease Control: fact sheets, FAQs, research studies, statistics, and more.
  • Guardasil: site for the vaccination includes parent information, side effect information, and funding assistance programs.

This is the Gender Report’s Week in Review, a weekly post that highlights some of the major stories related to gender issues this week. Some of these stories may have already appeared in our News Feed or in the week’s Gender Checks. We’ll at times include a longer analysis of stories as well as bring attention to stories that may have slipped through the cracks of the week’s news cycle.