Slate has a fascinating article up about women in politics. It looks at a study on the impact of female leadership on village councils in India. Guess what? Villages with more women in power have more and higher quality public services. There’s more:

They were also less corrupt — villagers with female-headed councils were 25 percent less likely to report having to pay bribes to access basic services like getting ration cards or receiving medical attention.

But female leaders didn’t get much recognition:

India’s female pradhans were remarkably unappreciated for their efforts. Despite the objective upgrades in village amenities, both men and women living in villages headed by women expressed lower satisfaction with public services.

I like this piece because it explains not just the results of the study, but its design, and the reasoning behind that design. There are even a couple intelligent criticisms in the comment section. For example, were these women resented because they were put in power partly by an affirmative action program?

Damn scientists and their blasted research!

It seems men are more stupid than once believed. Well, maybe not stupid so much as insecure. Yes, that’s the sweeping generalization I think can be made after reading this New York Times report.

A two-year Columbia University study of speed daters found that “men avoided women whom they perceived to be smarter than themselves. The same held true for measures of career ambition — a woman could be ambitious, just not more ambitious than the man considering her for a date.”

Researcher Ray Fisman (an economist) didn’t hide his disappointment in the results. “I guess I had hoped that they had evolved beyond this…So, yes, the stereotypes appear to be true: We males are a gender of fragile egos in search of a pretty face and are threatened by brains or success that exceeds our own.”(more inside…)

Slate reports on research by American economist Caitlin Kowles showing that women wait abot 20 seconds longer than men to be served at coffee shops. Check out the original paper here. Knowles has eliminated a few possible causes other than sexism - no surprise, it’s not because women order fancy drinks or flirt with the barristas.

Tyler Cowen, over on economics blog The Marginal Revolution suggests that women are more indecisive, but doesn’t really dispute Knowles’ main conclusion: “The simplest explanation, however, is that the staff feel more implicit psychological pressure to meet the needs of the male customers.”

Not a life-altering injustice, surely, but just another reminder that sexism lives in all of us, and intrudes on our lives almost constantly.

On the upside, it’s nice to see some feminist economics getting press coverage. I love feminist economics.

Check out this piece from The Guardian about a new trend in finance: “female-oriented” banking, which “is not about frivolity and bows but profit and the bottom line.”

Emotion Banking’s chief executive, Christian Rauscher, says that until now banks have failed to tap into the lucrative female market. “Fifty-one per cent of [banking] clients worldwide are female … more women are standing on their own feet and deciding their own finances … [banks] tend to address men in their communication, which is not necessarily the best way to be successful.”

The article is pretty vague about exactly what female-oriented banking actually looks like, or how it differs from “conventional” banking.

Catherine Tillotson, a partner at the wealth management consultancy Scorpio Partnership, says private banks are often guilty of “wrap[ping] up their services in pink … now it’s becoming [clearer] the issue is not about whether women should be treated differently. [Banks need] a different marketing approach, rather than different service.”

I don’t think I like the idea that women require different banking services or different marketing strategies compared to men. And I kind of find it a bit, um, weird that the consultancy firm first mentioned is called Emotion Banking - is my savings account supposed to ask me about my feelings when I make a withdrawal because I have ovaries?

But the article does mention some heartening stats:

A 2006 Centre for Economic Business Research study estimated 53% of millionaires are likely to be female in 2020 … [Morevoer], the wealth gap between males and females is narrowing. In 2006, the average female millionaire was worth £1.97m, while the figure for men was £2.96m. This compares with £1.28m for women in 1998 and £2.71m for males … No longer reliant on divorce settlements or inheritances, women are now making their own money. Some 38% of Coutts’ clients gained wealth through salary, 19% did so from their spouse, 7% inherited it and the remainder acquired it through unknown means.

The article also mentions some Canadian figures:

As in Britain, Canadian women’s financial power is growing: between 1991 and 2001, women’s self-employment grew 43%, and there are some 821,000 female entrepreneurs in Canada, contributing in excess of C$18bn (£8.58bn) to the economy.

We’re not quite there yet - but nice to know we’re on our way.

Here is something awesome: sex workers in Vancouver are planning to open a cooperatively-owned brothel. Being planned by British Columbia Coalition of Experiential Women, the idea is to create a safe place to work and enable sex workers to have control over their work.

Thousands of women have been killed in Vancouver, many of them sex workers, and a worker-owned co-op, where women could work inside, is a step toward preventing this kind of violence.

According to Women’s E-News, any sex worker can join the co-op and rent rooms. Workers set their own rates and keep all of their profits, and the co-op will adhere to labour standards. Plans include an art gallery, a museum on the history of sex work and a dinner club featuring burlesque shows.

Even the police and politicians are backing the idea, as the city tries to “clean up” its image (read: hide from view its many and persistent economic and social problems) for the 2010 Olympics. In fact, the only people opposed are escort agencies that are afraid of a little competition.

The fine folks at Explore Design 2007 — North America’s first design education fair for youth — have donated a few tickets for our readers.

In addition to info from design programs across the country, there are seminars and workshops on all aspects of design, from urban skate parks and video games to social housing, sustainable design and international development.

The fair runs tomorrow (October 10) and Thursday (October 11) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

So, how can you get in? The first two people to e-mail me (at megan at shamelessmag.com) both get a free pass.

We’ve talked about porn before (here and here), what do we think of this?:

From the Feminist Daily News:
Sexually Explicit Magazines Return to Army Exchanges After 10 Year Ban

“Penthouse, along with Playgirl and Ultra for Men, returned to Army and Air Force military exchanges this summer after being banned 10 years ago by a Pentagon review board for being sexually explicit. By July, Penthouse was available in more than 500 exchange outlets worldwide, including in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than 40 anti-pornography groups plan to appeal to the Pentagon Inspector General.
…
‘I know from my 20 years as a prosecutor and as an activist that men involved in porn look at women in a different way. At the military academies, they’re selling the same magazines. Don’t women deserve to be safe in that environment?’ Patrick Trueman, special counsel to one of the groups involved, told the Air Force Times. He cited incidents of sexual harassment in the military and other problems that he contends are exacerbated by pornography.”

The Feminist Daily News is strongly opposed to this development, but I’m unsure what I think.

On the one hand, I don’t really like the kind of porn that Penthouse and Playboy produce, more often than not it makes me feel uncomfortable and distressed. On the other hand, (I’m pretty sure that) the women in Penthouse and Playboy are consenting, and if the magazines brighten up the lives of soldiers fighting in this horrible war - because it is horrible, and I wouldn’t want to be them, no matter what I think of the war itself - isn’t that a good thing?

Because I am hopeless at keeping up with music (this is why I am very grateful to Anna and Picks From Planet Venus) several months after everyone else, I’ve just started listening to Leslie Feist’s new album, The Reminder.

I’m particularly taken with the single “I Feel it All”, and since I like multi medias, I decided to see if I could watch the video on youtube. I found a clip of her playing the song on a bus:

This clip is cute and I love the song, but I couldn’t help but notice that all of Feist’s back-up musicians are men. There’s something kinda endearing about adult men whispering “Oooo, I feel it allll” into a mike - but I was still sad to see that there weren’t other ladies present.

Just like Alanis Morissette, Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde, Tori Amos, Gwen Stefani and other lady music heroes before her (ok, Stefani stopped being a hero once she started using East Asians to accessorise, but we’ve talked about that enough - and I’m not positive that Amos’ crew is all men), Feist appears to be the only woman in her crew.

On one extreme end, this could be a case of a member of a “marginalised” group trying to distance herself from the rest of the group so they don’t taint her rise - and maybe it’s just not right that Feist isn’t bringing other ladies up to the stage with her. But on the other end, isn’t feminism about choice, and shouldn’t female musicians be allowed to choose whoever the heck they want to play with them, without having to worry about accusations of gender treachery?

What do you think? Let me leave you with another multimedia experience: Beyonce singing Irreplaceable with her all-girl band (which, by the by, is a conscious move on her part - and yes, I know that I’ve posted this video before and I recognise that I have a problem…)

Although I’ve had my share of retail jobs over the years, I’ve never thought very much about secret shoppers — people who are hired to pretend to be shoppers in order to evaluate employees at hotels, restaurants and stores, then report to back to management — other than to hope, as a worker, I wasn’t secret shopped. Luckily, Michelle Langlois has given the practice a thorough assessment over at Rabble.ca, revealing why secret shopping is a serious labour issue for service workers, most of whom are women and young workers. Secret shopping, Langlois notes, is “a billion-dollar retail practice [that] entices low-wage workers to spy on other workers.” Read on for her other insights.