Social Class and Education

Stuck in Class

By CARLA POWER Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008

From TIME.com

Autumn is not just the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, as Keats wrote, but also the widening of the class divide. For it brings the start of school, an institution that, particularly in crowded global cities like London, efficiently sorts kids by socioeconomic class. A 2004 study of British schoolchildren by University of Bristol researchers found that the wider the choice of schools parents have, the more segregated pupils are by background. I've seen this firsthand, having just dispatched my youngest child, Nicola, to school.

With her went the freedom to lie in and to wear what she likes. And though she's only four, a subtler, if more profound freedom has begun eroding, too: the freedom to mix with people from other backgrounds. She's headed off to school, in her red-checkered uniform, with the kids of middle-class Londoners, "people like us." We pay fees, but low ones, so the school tends to attract parents in the media, the public sector and small businesses. Our local state schools were too rough, too crowded or too religious, and the school where we'd sent our elder daughter, Julia, for a couple of years was too expensive and snooty. So Nicola's joining Julia at a school that will give her a good education, but, if we're not careful, a narrow view of the world. The students are whiter and more English than at the local state schools, which draw many migrant kids, and at Julia's first school — populated as it is by the children of the international élite. In choosing affordable academic excellence, we've had to sacrifice diversity.

The residents of London may come from all walks of life, but early childhood is one of the few times when the classes mix. The free neighborhood baby-massage courses I attended saw migrant mothers and American corporate types bonding over lavender oil and breast-feeding. At our local northwest London playground, my kids share the swing set with Kosovar refugees and the children of hedge-fund millionaires. Government vouchers for day care broke down class stratifications during Nicola's toddler years. Her classmates were the children of cash-strapped single mothers, middle-class professionals and the rich — a few arriving in chauffeured Bentleys.

But nursery is a false Eden, because class inequalities are already at work. According to a 2007 report by the nonprofit Sutton Trust, cognitive test scores of bright 3-year-olds from the poorest British households drop around 30% by the time the children reach age 5. As kids grow, so does the education gap. The chances for smart-but-poor Britons to reach top universities are slim. A 2006 study for the Bonn-based Institute for the Study of Labor found that Britain had the lowest social mobility of the 12 developed countries surveyed.

The British child who matriculates takes one step nearer to a class ghetto, whether the gated community, the neatly clipped suburb or the council tower block. Nicola's nursery mates are no exception: the Bentley babies have since decamped to schools that charge fees of about $22,000 a year. Those parents pious or savvy enough to attend church have a shot at getting their kids into a state-funded religious school, for decades a refuge of the aspirational classes. Rising private-school fees — up over 40% in the last five years — have triggered a groundswell of faithful behavior. "It's pray or pay," parents mutter to one another. I've attended baptisms of people who may be secularists, but are fervent believers in the right to decent schooling for their children.

Year by year, the embrace of one's class grows tighter. Now six, Julia plays less in the local park, busy as she is with homework, ballet and violin. When Nicola was at nursery, she went to birthday parties in tony private clubs. Uniformed staff served her in a stately ballroom at the Dorchester Hotel. By the time she was three, she had attended probably the most lavish parties she'll ever see, at least while living with us.

Maybe if the markets rebound and my husband and I scrimp, Nicola will head off to a secondary school with people from the Dorchester birthday-party set. We'd defy the odds if she did: a Halifax Financial Services study last year found that the average earner in only 13 professions can afford private school for their kids, down from 23 professions in 2002. Perhaps we'll move to an area where the schools are good, free and nondenominational. Even so, Nicola's schoolmates will probably be middle-class like her: the Bristol University study found that poor children are 30% more likely to attend low-scoring schools than equally bright but wealthier kids. As we middle-class parents scrabble to keep our children in the middle class, many of us have opted for academic standards over the chance to have our kids learn with others from a range of backgrounds. School has become as much a slow shuttering from the world as it is an exposure to it.

Reference: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1852609,00.html

Reflective essay:

In this article, the author, who is a mother of two who comes from the middle class, talks about how varying quality of schools reproduce the stratification system by sorting kids by socioeconomic background as what she has seen firsthand, having just dispatched her daughter to school. She mentions that the local state schools which draw many migrant kids were too rough, too crowded and too religious while schools which charges very expensive fees are snooty and populated by the children of international elite. She also mentions that class inequality even exists in nursery. According to a report, cognitive test scores of bright 3-year-olds from the poorest British household drop around 30% by the time the children reach age 5. As kids grow, so does the education gap.

From the functionalist perspective, the function of education is to convey basic knowledge and skills to the next generation. According to Durkheim, education has a role in socializing people into society's mainstream. Functionalist also sees that education is responsible for sorting students based on talent and effort (meritocracy). Society's needs demand that the most capable people get channeled into the most important occupations. Schools identify the most capable students early. Those who score highest on classroom and standardized tests enter accelerated programs and college-preparation courses.

On the other hand, conflict theory sees the purpose of education as maintaining social inequality and preserving the power of those who dominate society. While functional theory emphasized on the value of meritocracy, there is a conflict that influence of social stratification prevents the education system from grading people purely in terms of ability. Schools distribute the benefits of education unequally, allocating most of the benefits to children from upper class and eventually tend to reproduce the stratification system generation after generation.

In my point of view, class membership is not the only factor that determines the educational achievement of chidren. It is true that children whose parents have high income has greater chance of success in education but today there is free education for all regardless of their social class background. Education is now viewed as mechanism of opportunity, equal access to schools of equal quality so everyone could go to school. Social mobility increases due to the diminishing importance of economic and social background as a determinant of the type of education a child receives. For example, in Brunei, the government provides free education to all its citizens so that everyone gets equal opportunity of entering school and obtain basic education. Whether a student will later be successful at higher level of education or not, it depends on the individual's own efforts, intelligence and ability.

Rape Case

Austria's Sex-Slave Father Tells His Side of the Story

By Eben Harrell Thursday, Oct. 23, 2008

From TIME.com

Josef Fritzl

Ever since Josef Fritzl, the authoritarian patriarch of a sprawling family in the north Austrian town of Amstetten, was discovered to have imprisoned his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar for 24 years and fathered seven children with her, Austria has been locked in an emotional debate over what could cause such a crime. Some have claimed Fritzl's sadism to be a vestige of Nazism's moral corruption, others that the psychological strain of living for years under the threat of nuclear destruction was to blame.

But on Wednesday, six months after Fritzl was arrested on suspicion of incest and abduction, leaked portions of a long-awaited psychiatrist's report to prosecutors suggest that personal, rather than societal, causes were behind Fritzl's crimes. Fritzl's actions, the report said, can be partly attributed to the abuse he suffered as a child. "His story describes an unpredictable atmosphere with humiliating and unprovoked attacks from his mother," psychiatrist Adelheid Kastner wrote in her 130-page report. "His childhood made him susceptible to an emotional handicap; [he felt] the need to possess an entire human being."

Fritzl reportedly blamed his behavior not on his upbringing but on an innate "evil streak" that he battled against his whole life. "I was born to rape, and I held myself back for a relatively long time," Fritzl reportedly told Kastner. "I could have behaved a lot worse than locking up my daughter."

In six lengthy interviews, Fritzl described himself as an "alibi child" who was only conceived so that his mother could prove to her partner that she was not sterile. According to Fritzl's account, she neglected him and subjected him to traumatic experiences like abandonment. During World War II bombing raids, for example, Fritzl's mother would retreat to an air-raid shelter for safety, leaving Fritzl alone in the family home.

Kastner's report, a portion of which was leaked to Austria's Oesterreich newspaper on Wednesday, also contains more troubling details of Fritzl's crime. The 73-year-old deliberately never looked his daughter in the face while he was raping her, the report says, and purposefully shunned contraceptives "so that she would always stay with me, because as a mother of six, she would no longer hold any attraction for other men."

Fritzl also told Kastner that he would punish his imprisoned family by turning off the cellar lights (the shelter was windowless) or withholding food for several days. He taunted his children with photographs of other kids playing outside in the sun.

From these and other details, Kastner diagnosed Fritzl with severe combined personality disorder and a serious sexual disorder, although she also found him sane enough for a criminal trial due to start in the coming months. According to her report, Kastner recommends that Fritzl remain in psychiatric care for the rest of his life, regardless of the outcome of his prosecution. Kastner believes Fritzl, who carries a conviction from a rape of a nurse in 1967, will always be a danger to society.

Austrian authorities meanwhile are focusing on the rehabilitation of Fritzl's 42-year-old daughter Elisabeth and her six children. Psychiatrists say the children are more likely to suffer from a range of psychological problems in adulthood, including becoming abusive themselves. As a nation obsesses over one man's evil, the challenge now is to help his children escape their dark past.

Reference: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1853330,00.html

Reflective essay:

The issue of crime and aggression against women is touched in the article above which talks about how traumatic experience of a man and the abuse subjected by his mother during his childhood have contributed to his evil action of imprisoning his daughter as a sex slave in a cellar over a period of 24 years and fathered seven children with her. To the worst case, the article mentioned that while imprisoning his family, the man punished them by turning off the lights in the windowless cellar and withholding food for several days This case has shocked the entire nation and brought about to the arrest of the man on suspicion of incest and abduction. While the father is still going through the legal procedings for sexually abusing his daughter, the Austrian authorities are now focusing on the rehabilitation of his daughter and the children.

According to the functional approach of Durkheim, deviance and crime is inevitable and necessary as it gives people the opportunity to draw the line between right and wrong and this clarification of moral boundaries is useful in promoting the unity of society or its "social solidarity". On sociological perspective, all types of crimes against women, including rape, involves domination and humiliation as principal motives. It is not surprising that some rapist are men who were physically or sexually abused in their youth, who develop a need to feel powerful as psychological compensation for their early powerlessness. In this case, the man was powerless when he was abused by his mother during his childhood and being raised in such an atmosphere, he eventually learned to want to dominate women by turning his daughter into a sex slave. However, much rape cases are not reported to the police because many rape victims are reluctant to report the crime because they are afraid they will be humiliated and stigmatized by making it public. Some do not report because the assailant is a relative of the victim and this is what has been faced by the woman who became a rape victim of her own father.

In 1970's, many types of crimes against women, including rape, were largely ignored in the US and most other parts of the world. Government did not collect data on the topic and a few social scientists showed any interest in what has now become a large and important area of study. This is because of the perception that women are generally less powerful than men in all social institutions. However, today, the situation has improved. Rape presented more often now than it used to be and the same is the for violence against women and sexual harassment. This is due to the big improvement of women's position in the economy, the family and other social institutions over the past 30 years and women's movement that heightened concern about crimes disproportionately affecting them.

Mass Media and Socialization

Sex on TV Increases Teen Pregnancy, Says Report

By Alice Park Monday, Nov. 03, 2008

From TIME.com

Ellen Page and Olivia Thirlby in Juno.

Sex on TV has come a long way in the past few years. Anyone who saw the first episode of 90210— a pair of students engage in oral sex in the first episode of the new sequel to Beverly Hills 90210 — can attest to that.

The question that has been debated by parents, psychologists and media critics for years is whether such racy content has an adverse affect on young viewers. Now researchers at the Rand Corporation say they have documented for the first time how such exposure can influence teen pregnancy rates. They found that teens exposed to the most sexual content on TV were twice as likely as teens watching less of this material to become pregnant before they reach age 20.

"The relationship between exposure of this kind of content on TV and the risk of later pregnancy is fairly strong,' says Anita Chandra, a behavioral scientist and the study's author. "Even if it were diminished by other contributing factors, the association still holds.' Such consistent exposure may explain in part why the U.S. teen pregnancy rate is double that of other industrialized nations. Chandra and her team interviewed 1461 teens aged 12 to 17 by phone, speaking to them three times between 2001 and 2004. Where previous studies exploring the effect of TV content on teen pregnancy relied on one-time snapshots of the adolescents' behavior, Chandra believes the continuity of her study reinforces the strength of the relationship she found between exposure to sexual content on television and pregnancy.

Previous research has revealed two major ways that this glamorized perception of sex contributes to teen pregnancy — by encouraging teens to become sexually active early in their adolescence, and by promoting inconsistent use of contraceptives. And, notes Dr. Donald Shifrin, former chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' Committee on Communications, add to this the fact that children are accessing television not just via the big screen at home but on the computer and increasingly on cell phones, and the opportunities for exposure to the sex-based content just explode. "It's not just appointment television, now it's anytime television,' says Shifrin. "And this study was begun seven years ago, so if it were done today, [the authors] would probably find more evidence of sex on screens that affects youngsters' behaviors.'

Yet it's not likely, nor realistic, to expect the television and movie industries to curb the amount of sexual content in their products. That's why the American Academy of Pediatrics created the Media Matters campaign more than a decade ago, to not only promote awareness within the industry of how influential their TV shows and movies are to youngsters, but also to alert parents to the critical role they play in monitoring and mediating what their children watch. Having ammunition in the form of study-based association such as Chandra documented just gives the message more impact.

Reference: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1855842,00.html

Reflective essay:

The article above talks about how the rate of teenage pregnancy is linked to the amount of sex content viewed on TV which is related to the issue of the effects of mass media on socialization. Researchers have found out that pregnancies were twice as common among those who said they watched such shows regularly, compared with teens who said they hardly ever saw them and the rate in US is double that of the industrialized nations. This glamorized perception of sex contributes to teen pregnancy in two major ways – by encouraging teens to become sexually active early in their adolescence, and by promoting unprotected sex. Add to this fact that today, with the advance in technology, children are accessing the tv shows not just via the big screen at home but on computers and increasingly on cellphones.

From the functionalist perspective, the mass media is an influential and important agent of socialization and encourage social integration by exposing the entire society shared beliefs, values and norms. However, the role of mass media in sexual behaviour of teenagers through rapid growth of programming with excessive sexual content and how much influence they actually exert over their audience have become a very controversial issue.

Why teen pregnancy occur mostly in US compared to other developed countries is because in US, adults are increasingly absent from the lives of adolescents. According to Hersch, it is because “American society has left its children behind at the cost of progress in the workplace” (Hersch, 1998:19). More American adults are working longer hours than ever before and consequently, they have less time to spend with their children at home and the declining adult supervision and guidance leave youth more susceptible to the influence of the mass media and peer groups.

The most common outcome of teenage pregnancy is abortion - another main issue debated by the crowds. Some people view abortion as killing an innocent human being, therefore wrong and immoral, while some others do not agree that unborn must be classified as human. Those who do not carry out abortion and decide to bear the child are most likely to drop out from school and therefore reduces educational achievement.

In my point of view, sexual content on TV does not necessarily influence teenagers to engage in early sexual activity. It depends on the individual's self-control, judgement and their degree of religious faith. To deal with this problem, I think the government should step in and encourage more awareness campaigns and sex education in public schools and parents should be more alert and monitor what their young children are watching on TV and help to filter messages sex-filled shows are sending.

Ageing

Call for end to pension 'poverty'

Wednesday, 22 October 2008

More than 1,000 protesters will converge on Parliament later to call for the state pension to be increased above what they say is poverty level.

Pensioners and trade unions will join forces to demand a rise in the basic single pension from £91 to £151 a week.

They also want it to be paid universally to all pensioners regardless of their contributions.

Pensions minister Rosie Winterton said she wanted to "give" more - but the demands would cost some £30bn a year.

The protest has been organised by the National Pensioners Convention and 15 trade unions to mark 100 years since the state pension was introduced.

'National disgrace'

The protesters say the state pension has become even more important following the recent crisis in the stock markets.

That is because many people relying on private pensions for their retirement will have seen the value of their funds fall.

General secretary of the NPC Joe Harris said it was "a national disgrace" that at least 2.5 million older people were living below the poverty line and millions more were struggling with rising prices.

"The government should use the huge £46bn surplus in the National Insurance Fund and give everyone a pension that takes them out of poverty," he said.

The unions, in particular, want the government to increase pensions in line with earnings or prices, whichever is higher.

The existing Pensions Bill allows for the restoration of that link from 2012 or the end of the next Parliament.

But Unison general secretary Dave Prentis said he wanted to see "a living pension" for retired people now.

"Telling 70, 80 and 90-year-old pensioners to wait until 2012 is simply unreasonable - they need the money to put food on the table today," he said.

Pensions Minister Rosie Winterton said the government understood that people were "facing challenges with rising costs".

But she said: "We would like to give pensioners more but we must balance that with the ability of people to pay taxes.

"The NPC proposal would cost in the region of £30bn per year in the early years. That's equivalent to an increase of around 7p on the basic rate of income tax."

Reference: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7683358.stm

65 isn't a sell-by date

By Yvonne Roberts
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday September 24 2008

Ageism embodies poor management practice, narrowness of vision, stereotypical attitudes and bullying in the workplace

At 30, mystery probably surrounds the idea of anyone wanting to work over the age of 65. At 50, it's often a different story. All that freedom and stress-free hours of doing nothing can begin to appear as attractive as a three-month forced march barefoot through the Gobi desert.

Why? For a variety of reasons, not least because saying goodbye to paid work, for the unprepared in this occupation-obsessed society, may also mean farewell to an adequate income, friends, a daily routine, status, self-respect and a sense of usefulness. Also, for a fit, active, experienced person with a lot to offer, it makes no rational sense. And that in itself is depressing.

Chronological age isn't what it used to be. Once, marriage, parenthood, middle age and retirement followed in an orderly fashion. Now, parenthood can come at 40 or 50, marriage a decade later – but no matter how much spring in the step, at 65, any boss can show you the door and get away with it.

Yesterday, an advocate-general, a senior legal advisor to the European court of justice, a challenge to the right of employers to make people retire at 65. The charity Age Concern is challenging UK laws which, since 2006, have allowed employers to compel workers to retire at 65. Two hundred and sixty people in Britain have cases at employment tribunals which depend upon the European court's ultimate decision.

So, we have the ludicrous situation that a manager can't ask you whether you intend to start a family – but he can ask you how many candles you'll have on your next birthday cake. Around a third of employers have a mandatory retirement age, although not necessarily at 65.

This retirement deadline has a ripple effect: if you are past your sell-by date at 65, then 50 doesn't look so hot either. One in three people over the age of 50 who would like to work are unable to find a job. B&Q, the do-it-yourself chain with a pro-older employees policy, have tried hard to tackle this discrimination but it can't hire the entire workless vintage population of the UK.

Ageism is a plague. Yet, ironically in a period that so overvalues youth that it eulogises the sexagenarian who from a distance manages to pass as an ingénue – it works both ways. According to a survey by the Employers Forum on Age (EFA) published last year, firms continue to pay older people more, manage younger workers differently to older ones, and overlook younger staff for promotions irrespective of experience.

Despite nine out of 10 people knowing it is illegal to discriminate on the grounds of age at work, more than half of employees claimed to have witnessed ageist behaviour in the workplace in the past year. This level of discrimination says as much about poor management practice; narrowness of vision, stereotypical attitudes and bullying in the workplace as it does about the counterfeit battle of young versus old.

It's a paradox that a time when individualism is once again on the rise – the ability to judge a person on their talents, abilities and merits does not seem to figure hugely in the workplace. Age is often such an irrelevant gauge of ability. Eventually, however, demographics may force a different approach, at least when it comes to the older age group.

According to the EFA, by 2017 – just round the corner – there will be more people over 40 than under. From 2010, the number of young people reaching working age will begin to fall by 60,000 every year, fundamentally changing the shape of the workforce. The trouble is that the disparaging view of the older employer, apparently already embedded in the workplace, means that anyone working beyond 65 in a less than enlightened setting in decades to come, may face two choices.

One is delusion, denial, facelifts and achieving the miracle of turning back the clock by lying about age. The other choice is to work, exuding "gratitude" for this second chance. A better option would be to introduce flexible working hours; the opportunity to take on two or three day contracts and a more inspired range of work hours that allows employment to taper into retirement much more gradually.

Hopefully, in the retirement age struggle, this ruling is only a setback and Age Concern will win on appeal. But any change in the law also requires a cultural shift. In the US, for instance, Civic Ventures is a charity that offers newly-retired professionals over 55 (1,800 so far) opportunities to use their skills and experiences and give back to the community. The point is not what they do – but the belief that originally drove the late John Gardner, one of its founders, and his approach to an ageing population. "The nation today faces breathtaking opportunities," says his website, " … disguised as insoluble problems". It doesn't take an old head to see that makes sense.

Reference: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/24/equality.workandcareers

Reflective essay:

Ageing population has become a main concern of many people especially in most developed countries. The proportion of elderly people is rising is because of the medical advances, better welfare provisions as well as the declining fertility rates in virtually all industrial societies. Both articles above are related as they show the problems associated with ageing population.

The first article mentions about the pensioners and trade unions joining forces to call for the state pension to be increased above what they say is poverty level. Apparently the current pension they receive is not sufficient to support their daily needs and this problem has become even worse following the current global economic crisis.

This is situation is called Pensioner Poverty syndrome. The people who are 65 and above only depend on their pensions for the rest of their lives. With the increasing life expectancy, the pensions are surely not sufficient for them to survive. Pensioner Poverty syndrome often occurs in Brunei especially to people who used to work for low-position jobs. In Brunei, the system of TAP (Tabung Amanah Pekerja) is being used whereby a small percentage of the salary of the workers are being put aside for future savings. Once they reach their retirement age, the accumulated amount of money is given back to them. The amount may seems to be huge, but actually it can only be able to support them for a couple of years.

The second article talks about the age discrimination that often exists in the workplace. The discrimination says as much about poor management practice; narrowness of vision, stereotypical attitudes and bullying in the workplace as it does about the counterfeit battle of young versus old, whereby a person is being judged based on his age instead of his talents, abilities and merits. People are forced to retire once they reach the age of 65 eventhough they are still capable to work. Firms also tend to put an age limit for those who are getting hired and it was found out that people who are over 50 who would like to work have difficulties to find a job.

The elderly are often viewed less important than adults employed in the paid labor force. They are labelled as the economic burden because they are seen as a waste of a country's resources as they are no longer productive and do not contribute anything to the country. In my point of view, this is not how the elderly should be treated. Those people who still have the skills and ability who are still willing to work should be given a chance to continue their career. For example, in Japan, the government has already passed a law requiring companies to raise their mandatory retirement age or provide retraining and re-employment for older workers in order to tackle the problems associated with the ageing population.

Gender Discrimination

If Women Were More Like Men: Why Females Earn Less

By John Cloud

Friday, Oct. 03, 2008

From TIME.com

One of the oldest debates in contemporary social science is why women earn less than men. Conservatives tend to argue that because women anticipate taking time off to raise children, they have fewer incentives to work hard in school, and they choose careers where on-the-job training and long hours are less important. Liberals tend to focus on sex discrimination as the explanation. Obviously some mixture of those factors is at work, but academics have long been frustrated when they try to estimate which force is greater: women's choices or men's discrimination.

A new study looks at this problem in a wonderfully inventive way. In previous studies, academics have looked at variables like years of education and the effects of outside forces such as nondiscrimination policies. But gender was always the constant. What if it didn't have to be? What if you could construct an experiment in which a random sample of adults unexpectedly changes sexes before work one day? Kristen Schilt, a sociologist at the University of Chicago and Matthew Wiswall, an economist at New York University, couldn't quite pull off that study. But they have come up with the first systematic analysis of the experiences of transgender people in the labor force. And what they found suggests that raw discrimination remains potent in U.S. companies.

Schilt and Wiswall found that women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men who become women (MTFs). MTFs in the study earned, on average, 32% less after they transitioned from male to female, even after the authors controlled for factors like education levels. FTMs earned an average of 1.5% more. The study was just published in the Berkeley Electronic Press' peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy.

The men and women in the study had already gone to school and made their career choices. Some of them changed jobs after they transitioned, and some stayed in the same jobs. Some were out to their employers; others started completely new lives as members of the opposite sex. Regardless, the overall pattern was very clear: newly minted women were punished, and newly minted men got a little bump-up in pay.

Still, the paper is complex, so it's useful to step back first and look at where the larger debate over the gender wage gap stands. After all, isn't that gap narrowing to the point of obscurity? Actually, no. The Russell Sage Foundation published the most authoritative work on the gender wage gap in 2006, The Declining Significance of Gender?. In the book, Francine Blau and Lawrence Kahn, both Cornell economists, show that the average full-time female worker in the U.S. earns about 79% of what the average full-time male worker makes. Women employed full-time actually tend to have slightly more education than men, but women are still more likely to work in clerical and service jobs. Blau and Kahn say women do make different choices when they decide on college majors and jobs — even highly educated women more often choose "female" occupations that pay less — but the authors also note that discrimination persists. As one example, they cite a 2000 study which found that when symphony orchestras switched to blind auditions — those in which the musicians play behind a screen — women had a significantly better chance of being hired.

The good news is that the gender wage gap has narrowed. In 1978, full-time women workers earned just 61% of what full-time men did, compared to 79% now. But what to make of the big difference in the experiences of those transgenders who have become women versus those who have become men? Schilt, one of the authors of the new article, interviewed a female-to-male transgender attorney a few years ago. As a younger attorney, the lawyer had been Susan; now he was Thomas. He told Schilt that after he transitioned from female to male, another lawyer mistakenly believed that Susan had been fired and replaced by Thomas. The other lawyer commended the firm's boss for the replacement. He said Susan had been incompetent; "the new guy," he added, was "just delightful." (Later, Ben Barres, an FTM neurobiology professor at Stanford, told The Wall Street Journal of a similar experience. An attendee at one of his lectures leaned over to a colleague and said, "Ben Barres' work is much better than his sister's.")

Such stories help explain an interesting feature of transgender life: men who want to change outward gender wait an average of 10 years longer to transition than women, according to the new article by Schilt and Wiswall. "MTFs attempt to preserve their male advantage at work for as long as possible," they write, "whereas FTMs may seek to shed their female gender identity more quickly." It should be noted that many transgender men do experience discrimination, especially if they are short and if they don't look convincingly male. Also, it's harder for MTFs to pass than FTMs: men who become women still have large hands and bigger frames. The less-convincing appearance of MTFs probably explains part of the reason they earn so much less after they transition. Still, the new paper suggests an entirely new vein of research in the field. It also suggests that if you're thinking about changing sexes, you should carefully consider the economic consequences.

Reference: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1847194,00.html

Reflective essay:

The article above talks about the earning gap between men and women, one of the most important expressions of gender inequality today. It was questioned whether gender discrimination is the only explanation for why women earn less than men or is there another factor which contributes to this issue. Kristen Schilt, a sociologist and Matthew Wiswall, an economist came up with the first systematic analysis of the experiences of transgendered people in the labor force. It was found out that women who become men (known as FTMs) do significantly better than men become women (MTFs), where by MTFs earned less after they transitioned from male to female and FTMs earned more. Some of them changed jobs after they transitioned, and some stayed in the same jobs. Regardless, the overall pattern was clear; newly minted women were punished and newly minted men got an increase in pay.

This incident is a clear illustration of gender discrimination, rewarding women and men differently for the same work. However, socialogists suggests that there are other factors which contribute to the gender gap in earnings based on several social circumstances rather than any inherent difference between men and women. One of the factors is the impact of heavy domestic resposibilities whereby women anticipate taking time off to raise children. Another factor is concentration of women in low-wage occupations and industries such as clerical and service occupations. And the other factor is undervaluation of women's labor whereby work done by women is commonly considered less valuable than work done by men because it is viewed as involving fewer skills (Figarte and Lapidus, 1996; Sorenson, 1994)

However, despite gender discrimination, antidiscrimination laws have helped to increase the female-male earnings ratio, that is, women's earnings as a percentage of men's earnings, or in other words, the gender gap has narrowed. In the article, it says that in 1978, full-time women workers earned just 61% of what full-time men did, compared to 79% now.

In my view, earnings received by workers should not be set based on their gender but it should be based on the their level of education as well as their job performances. In conclusion, women should constantly fight for their right to tackle this stubborn inequality .

Food Security

How long till Brunei feels pinch from rice shortage?
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

ONE OF the most pressing issues surrounding food security in the region is the rising price of rice an issue that has reached the stage of a global crisis. However, judging from local media reports, local supermarkets are apparently unperturbed by the issue, saying that they do not foresee problems with domestic rice supplies and prices.

The general feeling amongst retailers in the sultanate is that the government is capable of meeting domestic demands.

But how long will it be until we feel the pinch that our neighbours are already feeling? Malaysia and Indonesia, for instance, are facing the adverse effects of the commodity's tightening global supplies.

A minister said on Monday in Kuala Lumpur that Malaysia is considering blocking the movement of rice across its borders to ensure supply of the subsidised commodity and to keep prices low.

The aim of the ban was to ensure there was sufficient rice supply in the country and to prevent prices from spiking, said Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Minister Shahrir Abdul Samad.

The announcement was made just days after Asean trade ministers reached an agreement to work together to cope with rising prices of rice and other food products. During a meeting between Asean countries and its trade partners in Indonesia late last week, Indonesian Trade Minister Marie Elka Pangestu said the ministers had agreed to continue exports provided domestic needs were being met.

As governments, notably in Asia, are trying out every technique possible to shield their populations from the risk of millions of hungry people on their doorstep, things are looking tougher ahead for consuming countries which have to pay higher and higher prices. Asian rice prices have almost trebled this year.

Countries including India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil have imposed curbs on food exports in a bid to secure domestic supplies and limit inflation. Last week Thailand said it had agreed in principle to form a rice price-fixing cartel similar to the oil industry's OPEC with neighbours Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar as well as Vietnam.

This development should be of great concern to the sultanate's decision and policy makers, as locally-produced rice accounted for only 3.15 per cent of the 31,242 metric tonnes consumed by the population last year. It was a godsend for Brunei and many other countries when Thailand, the sultanate's biggest supplier of rice, announced a surplus in rice production and that it will not stop exports.

According to data from the Agribusiness Development Division of the Agriculture Department, locally-produced rice is expected to corner 10 per cent of the local market by 2013. Citing better drainage and irrigation systems, an official from the department said it is expecting rice production to increase by 7.1 per cent by the harvest year of 2012/2013.

This statement may prove to offer relief, but even then, in this globalised world, sooner or later the sultanate will be affected by the crisis.

So what stance can the average Bruneian take on this issue? Should they be on their guard? Is there a need to change eating habits? If the country wants its people to be prepared for any eventualities, including the possibility of shortage, the first thing that must be ensured is awareness on the country's preparedness.

Should there be any possible shortage of rice in Brunei in the near future, this agency will be the one to help you prepare for it. (HHM1)

The Brunei Times

Reference:

http://www.bt.com.bn/en/home_news/2008/05/07/how_long_till_brunei_feels_pinch_from_rice_shortage

Reflective essay:

The article highlights the issue of food security which has become a great concern in the region with the sharply rising price of rice that has reached the stage of a global crisis mainly caused by the growing demand, poor weather and rising cost of petroleum. With the reducing global supplies of rice, governments, especially in Asia, are trying out every possible way to protect their people from the risk and danger of food shortage, secure domestic supplies and limit inflation. However, despite our neighbouring countries are facing the adverse effects of the drop in rice production, our local society are still not concerned about this issue. Bruneians still have not feel the impact of the crisis mainly because price of rice in the country has remained unchanged due to increasing subsidies by the government.

Rice is the staple food for our country of which more than 95 percent of it is imported from other countries, mainly from Thailand. Eventhough there has been no incidences of food shortage in this country, the society should be aware that the world is now facing global warming. Flood, drought and other natural disasters can occur anytime and will destroy the crop across a wide region, leading to a shortfall of supply. What would happen to us if suddenly natural disasters occur to the rice-exporting countries and they decided to stop their exports? Surely, Bruneians cannot imagine not having rice with their meals and should there occur the shortage of rice, it will surely create havoc in our country as well as in other countries consuming this grain. It is worrying that the agriculture output in our country can only fulfil 3.12 percent of our needs, and still we are not making any efforts to increase our rice production

This growing world problem has caught the attention of the monarch by which His Majesty highlighted the issue a couple of times in his titah, warned about the decline of agriculture output and emphasized that Brunei as a nation needs to increase food production and make food security a priority. In my opinion, it is no doubt that a meltdown of food security will threaten political, economical and social stability of a country. It is time for the government and the citizens to work together in an effort towards improving our agriculture industry, aim at food self-sufficiency and prepare ourselves for any eventualities including the possibility of shortage.

Online Dating

We Just Clicked

By Coco Masters
Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008

From TIME.com

Indian matchmaking site BharatMatrimony paired up the couple. Ten million people have
signed up for the site's service

At the global headquarters of eHarmony in Pasadena, Calif., one blue wall is papered with testimonies of love: snapshots of couples who met on the Internet matchmaking site and subsequently got hitched. There are older couples, military couples, kissing couples, couples with physical disabilities, couples dressed in wedding whites. Soon, if all goes as planned, there will be Chinese couples, Indian couples, European couples, many dressed in the brilliant matrimonial hues of their cultures. They're going to need a new wall.

Once a practice as provincial as it was personal, the art of pairing up people for marriage has become an increasingly international and technology-driven business. As young people all over the world move far from home for school and work, even those from traditionbound cultures can no longer rely solely on the resources of crafty aunties to find them suitable mates. Enter the Internet, where marriage and dating sites began to appear a decade ago and have multiplied rapidly over the past several years. In the U.S. alone, there are close to 1,000 such sites, led by Match.com eHarmony and Yahoo! Personals. The industry rang up $649 million in revenues in 2006, according to Jupiter Research, a market-research firm. With growth slowing in the U.S., Web matchmaking giants are eyeing fertile potential markets such as China and India. But an international match presents hurdles in business as in love: differing societal attitudes, wily competition and cultural quirks to bewilder the most sophisticated suitor. Love, it turns out, isn't the same in every language--not even close.

Love is, however, a lucrative and recession-proof business, and that makes translating it worth the effort. As far back as the Paleolithic era, arranged marriages served to forge networks between family groups, writes Stephanie Coontz in Marriage, a History. Families exchanged daughters and sons for labor, land, goods and status. These matches were so important that, in almost every society, a community member eventually set up shop in setting up unions; in northern India, it was the barber's wife, the nayan. "Be a matchmaker once," goes the Chinese saying, "and you can eat for three years."

In the U.S., matchmaking took off as an industry only in this decade, with the arrival of Internet dating sites. Suspicion and disdain eased into acceptance as more Americans found a partner--or at least a date and not a nut--on the sites. Of the 92 million unmarried Americans 18 and older counted by the Census last year, about 16 million have tried online dating, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. In 2003 online daters increased 77%. With sites charging $35 a month on average, revenues popped accordingly. Growth has ebbed of late to about 10% a year, say analysts, partly because of the competing popularity of social-networking sites. You can flirt on Facebook too--and for free.

If a country with little tradition of matchmaking can embrace a version of it online, then it follows that cultures long used to a third party's hand in love affairs would do the same. That's what many Western companies seem to believe anyway, judging by their expansion strategies. Match.com the leading online dating site in the U.S., began exploiting first-mover advantage through international acquisitions in 2002. Now in 35 countries, the Dallas-based company says 30% of its 1.3 million members live outside the U.S., accounting for 30% of its $350 million 2007 revenues (the bulk of its 15 million members just browse for free).

But it has learned along the way that its model does not always translate. On Match, users post personal profiles and photos, attracting and perusing potential mates in what resembles a colossal bar scene. While many Americans like the freedom and convenience, single women in Japan felt threatened by the lack of privacy. Plus, parts of the profiles weren't culturally appropriate, as Match CEO Thomas Enraght-Moony learned over lunch in a Tokyo restaurant with his country manager. "He pointed to the women there and said, 'We really don't need to ask for hair color. We all have the same,'" says Enraght-Moony. In Scandinavia, on the other hand, the 2.2 million Web-savvy singles were long used to dating online. To differentiate itself from local competitors when it launched there in 2003, Match toned down its window-shopping aspect and played up the promise of long-term love. "The dream here is not to marry a millionaire prince," says Johan Siwers, vice president of Northern Europe. "The dream is to live a good life in the countryside and be happy." Match now rules the Scandinavian market, with 1.5 million members.

One way U.S. online matchmakers seek to set themselves apart from local competitors is science. Match hired Rutgers University anthropologist Helen Fisher to devise a compatibility test for a spin-off called Chemistry.com As Chemistry prepares to launch abroad, Fisher is confident that the test--56 questions that place users in four temperament categories--is applicable to any culture (see box, left). The societal trends that drive online matchmaking in the U.S. apply in much of the world, after all: women going to work, young people migrating far from home and, perhaps most important, a newly pervasive insistence on love as an essential ingredient of marriage. Fisher cites a study that asked 10,000 people of 36 cultures about their No. 1 criterion for marriage. "Everywhere, the answer was love," she says.

That bodes well for the international hopes of eHarmony, the leader among compatibility-focused sites in the U.S. Started in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren, the folksy clinical psychologist who starred in the company's ads, eHarmony poses 436 questions to users in order to find them the best match. It has since accrued 17 million members, 230 employees, $200 million in annual revenues and 30% yearly growth. That's not to mention marriages at a rate of 90 a day, unions that so far have produced 100,000 children (a disproportionate number of them named Harmony).

But rather than dive quickly into promising markets, eHarmony has remained devoted--some would say slavishly--to its research-based model. In China, that means commissioning researchers at Beijing University to find out whether its model--in which 29 "dimensions" such as humor and spirituality are mined for compatibility--applies to the culture. Kaiping Peng, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, who is assisting eHarmony, is unsure. "What is the best match might not be about matching exactly," he says. "Maybe it's complementary--like the yin and the yang." Americans are drawn to eHarmony's deeply probing questionnaires because as a culture we seek to know ourselves. "That probably is not necessarily the teachings of Asian philosophies and religions. Buddha used to talk about diminishing self--don't look at yourself, look at others for information and for guidance."

Perhaps those cultural differences explain why no Western company has yet won the Chinese single's hand. And what a hand: 46% of those 35 and younger are unmarried, according to a university study, and that percentage is increasing. Sixty million Internet users are of marrying age, according to Shanghai-based market-research company iResearch, a population that will grow about 20% a year, to 128 million in 2010. In Beijing alone, there are more than 2 million marriage-age singles. Local competition is rife. Chinese matchmaking sites had 14 million registered users in 2006, a number iResearch says will triple by 2010.

China should be a natural haven for online matchmaking. Up until a century ago, marriage-registration forms required the seal of an "introducer." Young, educated professionals seem open-minded. Even today, the off-line matchmaking business remains robust; there are a reported 20,000 agencies, many run by local governments and bearing such dreamy names as the Beijing Military and Civilian Matchmaking Service and the Tianjin Municipal Trade Union Matchmakers' Association. The imbalance of genders brought on by the single-child rule (many parents opted to keep only a male baby) has also led to a desperate demand for matchmakers among rural men, opening the door to unscrupulous brokers who con women into unions.

Western online matchmakers, however, do face challenges in gaining a foothold in the Chinese matchmaking market. Of the 14 million Chinese Internet daters, only 500,000 pay subscription fees; thus industry revenues are estimated at just $24 million, according to iResearch. Paying users are expected to rocket to 3 million by 2010, generating sales of at least $160 million. But fees are minimal compared with the $59 per month charged by the likes of eHarmony. "In China, if you charge money, you'll die fast," says Gong Haiyan, CEO and founder of the leading Web dating site, Jiayuan (formerly Love21cn). Chinese sites rely instead on online advertising and ticket sales from events such as speed-dating mixers that charge about $13 for admission (parents who tag along have to pay too). Another popular dating site, 915915.com.cn-- in Chinese, the numbers sound like "only want me"--set up a "love cruise" in 2006 on the Huangpu River near Shanghai to introduce men worth at least 2 million yuan ($274,000) to attractive women. Edward Chiu, CEO of ChinaLoveLinks, says his free websites steer users to his 30 off-line matchmaking offices, where they can pay fees totaling up to $6,000. Both eHarmony and Match say they have yet to decide how to adjust their subscription-based models to the market.

Like China, India has a long history of and cultural comfort with matchmaking; as many as 90% of weddings are arranged, says Patricia Oberoi, a Delhi-based sociologist. There are 60 million singles ages 20 to 34, and 71% believe arranged marriages are more successful than "love" marriages. But with so many moving to cities or even abroad--up to a third of the population, according to the latest census--the Internet is proving preferable to the services of the village nayan. So-called matrimonial sites first appeared 10 years ago and today make up half the world's matchmaking sites. Like U.S. sites, they offer free viewing but charge about $40 to subscribe for three months. BharatMatrimony, a leading site, claims 10 million members and, in its 10 years, a million marriages. Another, named Shaadi, boasts 800,000 matches. Industry growth in India could be even more explosive than in China; users have doubled every year. Sales are growing 50% annually and reached $30 million in 2006. "Online matrimony has become a mainstream activity, like checking e-mail," says Uday Zokarkar, business head of BharatMatrimony.

Partly because India's matrimonial sites have already succeeded in wooing the nation, Western companies have hesitated at the door. "India is a very different business, and we just haven't got there yet," says Match's Enraght-Moony. For instance, sites there make matches on the basis of factors unfamiliar to outsiders, including caste, language and "character"--a euphemism for chastity. About 15% of profiles are filled in not by the prospective bride or groom but by their parents. And now Indian sites are challenging Western matchmaking companies on their own turf. Shaadi CEO Vibhas Mehta says 30% of its business comes from the U.S., Europe, Australia and the Middle East. Perhaps love needs no translation after all.

With reporting by Ling Woo Liu/ Hong Kong, Madhur Singh/ Delhi

Reference: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1704691-1,00.html

Armadale man loses $130,000 in computer dating scam

John Chan
November 8, 2008 - 9:49AM

An Armadale man has been defrauded of more than $130,000 by several women on an internet dating website who professed their undying love to him.

Police spokesman Sergeant Greg Lambert said that the man was approached by West African women on the dating site.

He said that over an 18-month period, the man had sent over $130,000 by money transfer to the women. He will attempt to get his money back.

"The victim became involved in the romance scams after being approached through the website by women who were professing their love," Sergeant Lambert said.

"He has parted with the money after being told a variety of hard luck stories."

Police have issued a warning for people to heed the warnings posted on these dating websites about such scams.

Anyone who believes themselves to be a victim of an internet scam, they can contact Scam Net on the WA Government website or the police computer crime squad.

Reference: http://www.watoday.com.au/wa-news/armadale-man-loses-130000-in-computer-dating-scam-20081107-5jli.html


Reflective essay:

In recent years, online dating has become very popular as a new trend of communicating, interacting and socializing with people through the use of the Internet. Internet users interact socially by exchanging text, images and sound via e-mail, messaging services, and online dating services and in the process, they form virtual communities. According to Brym and Lie, a virtual community is an association of people, scattered across the country, continent, or planet, who communicate via computer and modem about a subject of common interest.

The first article above says that the number of online dating and matchmaking sites is multiplying rapidly and has become a very successful and effective business, bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. So just how successful is the Internet as an agent of socializing with people? According to the article, it has been estimated that 16 million Americans have tried online dating. Hundreds of thousands of relationships have been formed and approximately a marriage rate 90 a day, unions that so far have produced 100,000 children.

However, online dating has its implications on the society and state as well. Such implications are such as failed marriages which causes the increase rate of divorce. Failure of marriages may be caused by dishonesty whereby some people may be lying and giving false information to their partners during the process of knowing each other. Another implication which has may raise the concern of the state is the increased number of cybercrimes. Online dating fraud or scam occurs when a con artist tend to take advantage over the people who use the Internet. In my view, it is still unclear just how successful online dating is for meeting people, or more importantly, in meeting the ‘right’ person, to form long term relationship and successful marriage. I think it is important to consider the aspect of ‘luck’ in internet dating just as we would in traditional way of dating.

Gender issue

A Transsexual Vs. the Government

By John Cloud

Friday, Sep. 12, 2008

From TIME.com

Diane Schroer, a former Army Special Forces commander, has brought a discrimination lawsuit against the Library of Congress

Charlotte Preece wanted a cigarette. She was freaking out, and she needed a moment outside her Capitol Hill building in Washington to think about the odd turn her life had taken that day, Dec. 20, 2004.

Preece, who was 51 at the time, worked then — as she does now — for the Library of Congress, where she helps make hiring decisions for the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the U.S. Congress's analysis agency. She had decided to recommend an ex–Special Forces colonel named David Schroer to be CRS's terrorism specialist. Schroer was a dream candidate, a guy out of a Tom Clancy novel: he had jumped from airplanes, undergone grueling combat training in extreme heat and cold, commanded hundreds of soldiers, helped run Haiti during the U.S. intervention in the '90s — and since 9/11, he had been intimately involved in secret counterterrorism planning at the highest levels of the Pentagon. He had been selected to organize and run a new, classified antiterrorism organization, and in that position he had routinely briefed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He had also briefed Vice President Dick Cheney more than once. Schroer had been an action hero, but he also had the contacts and intellectual dexterity to make him an ideal congressional analyst.

But now, about three weeks before Schroer was to begin work at CRS, he told Preece over a Chinese lunch that he had a personal matter to reveal: after years of cross-dressing in private, he was preparing to start living full time as a woman. He would also probably have sex-reassignment surgery. And so he planned to start at CRS as Diane Jacqueline Schroer, not David John Schroer.

The first thing Preece remembers blurting out at the time was something along the lines of "Why would you want to do that?" Later she stood outside her office, lit another cigarette and thought, I can't believe this is happening to me.

Schroer did not get the job. Working with some other Library of Congress officials the next morning, Preece drafted a brief script and then telephoned Schroer. She told him that the Library worried his transition could imperil his top-secret security clearance; that his appearance in women's clothing could make his contacts in the government less willing to cooperate with him; and that his impending surgeries (facial surgery to make him appear more feminine, possible genital surgeries in the future) could distract him from his job. She thanked Schroer for his honesty and said goodbye.

What Preece did that day became, not surprisingly, the subject of a lawsuit, one that was tried in August in federal court. Judge James Robertson, a Clinton appointee, is expected to rule any day. In deciding whether the Library unlawfully discriminated against Schroer, Robertson will have to rule on a much bigger and more elemental issue: How, if at all, is sex different from gender? And if you discriminate against a transsexual, is it "sex" discrimination under federal law?

Diane Schroer is a polite and engaging woman, and her outward appearance is convincingly feminine — a testament to the advances in plastic surgery and to Schroer's willingness to pay tens of thousands of dollars to have herself rebuilt to reflect her mental gender. On the hot summer day I met Schroer at her Alexandria, Va., home, she was wearing shorts, and her legs appeared so smooth that it seemed rough masculine hair had never grown on them.

In the years since losing the job offer at the Congressional Research Service to a man who was the Library's second choice, Schroer has started her own security consultancy. Schroer still has powerful allies in the government. One who testified for her at last month's trial is Kalev Sepp, a deputy assistant secretary of defense and a former member of the Iraq Study Group. Sepp told the court that Schroer is "a person of integrity and complete honesty." He said her transition from male to female should have been of little or no consequence in the CRS's hiring decision.

But Schroer's honesty was called into question in this case, for the simple reason that she presented herself as male during the interview and then — at the last minute — revealed that she was becoming a woman. Did she lie?

Yes and no. Transitioning from one gender to another is a long process, one governed by standards of care that nearly all American medical and psychological professionals follow. If you want to undergo sex-reassignment surgery in the U.S., you must first live for a year as a member of the other gender — dressing and acting as though you had been born with the other genitalia. This one-year "real-life experience," which is overseen by a psychotherapist, is designed to ensure that dilettantes give up before having their bodies permanently changed. In October 2004, when Schroer went for his Library interview, he had not yet begun his real-life experience — he and his therapist had planned for him to start Jan. 1, 2005 — which is why he wore a sport coat and tie.

But Schroer also said nothing in his hours of interviews about the plans to begin his real-life experience. In court, Diane Schroer explained that she thought such personal information was irrelevant to an interview exploring her professional credentials. But Schroer obviously knew that showing up to work in women's clothes would surprise fellow workers.

Preece felt as though she had been taken advantage of. She also wondered how a man in a dress would be perceived by members of Congress. Would Diane-née-David be taken seriously by people in the conservative antiterrorism community?

It's a good question. But Preece apparently failed to make any inquiries to learn the answer. She did not ask Schroer's references for their reaction to his impending gender transition; if she had, she might have discovered that colleagues like Sepp said they respected Schroer no matter her outward appearance. Nor did Preece consult a Pentagon contractor for whom Schroer had recently worked — a contractor who, as it happens, knew about Schroer's plans to transition to female and says he had no problem with it. Though Preece may well have found many people in the antiterrorism community who would have been unsettled by Schroer's decision to transition, the fact that she did not even try to investigate suggests that she had already made up her mind after her lunch with Schroer.

Indeed, the Library does not deny that it discriminated against Schroer because she was transgendered. The trouble for Schroer is that it's not explicitly illegal to discriminate against the transgendered, because no federal law prohibits discrimination on the basis of gender identity.

And yet Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act makes employment discrimination because of sex illegal. Could that statute help Schroer? Does one's "sex" include being transgendered? At the trial last month, Schroer's expert witness, a University of Minnesota psychologist named Walter Bockting — the incoming president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health — testified that sex is a multifaceted notion composed of several elements, one of which is one's mental gender identity. Part of his evidence was that thousands of babies are born each year with uncertain sex. They have XY chromosomes but no visible male sex organs. Or they have XX chromosomes but do not appear, outwardly, to be normal girls. Or they have even more complicated chromosomal constructions — XXY, for instance — which render their sex entirely indeterminate.

These individuals, who are called intersexed, are usually assigned a gender by the obstetricians who deliver them. As intersexed children grow up, they and their parents must decide whether they agree with the sex assigned to them at birth. That's an understandable, if fraught, policy, but if intersexed people can decide what their sex is, why can't the rest of us? What, precisely, is sex?

The commonly accepted definition is whether you have a penis or a vagina. But then there are those thousands of intersexed kids, as well as thousands of transgendered people who feel that their outward morphology doesn't accurately represent their mental conception of themselves. It seems likely that sex is some combination of chromosomes, psychology and environment. Even the Library of Congress's expert witness acknowledged this: during the trial, Johns Hopkins physician Chester Schmidt said that after all the research is completed, he believes "there will be some biologic, some psychologic, some combination of psychological etiologies" that lead to gender identity in the transgendered. Sex, in other words, is not just what you have between your legs; it is what you have between your ears.

David Schroer was not hired on the basis of sex — on the basis of his sex being strange and unusual to Charlotte Preece and her colleagues. In the past few years, gay activists have argued that we need a new statute to outlaw discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. But there is a compelling argument to be made in this case that at least with respect to transgenders, the current statute already applies. Schroer's attorneys at the American Civil Liberties Union argue that Title VII already prohibits discrimination against transgendered people. Although their sex may be more complicated than the composition of their chromosomes, that is no reason people like Diane Schroer cannot do their jobs.

Reference: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1840754,00.html