The Sponsor Effect: Breaking through the Last Glass Ceiling (pdf)
Women aren't making it to the top. Despite gains in middle and senior management, they hold just 3 percent of Fortune 500 CEO positions. In the C-suite, they're outnumbered four to one. What's keeping women under the glass ceiling? High-performing women simply don't have the sponsorship they need to reach the top.
The study found that women underestimate the role sponsorship plays in their advancement. And those who do grasp its importance fail to cultivate it. It's also a classic catch-22: a woman's personal choices, whatever they may be, brand her as not quite leadership material. What will it take to promote sponsorship?
posted by infini
on Sep 20, 2012 -
33 comments
"Over the past few decades, 160 million women have vanished from East and South Asia — or, to be more accurate, they were never born at all. Throughout the region, the practice of sex selection — prenatal sex screening followed by selective termination of pregnancies — has yielded a generation packed with boys. From a normal level of 105 boys to 100 girls, the ratio has shifted to 120, 150, and, in some cases, nearly 200 boys born for every 100 girls. In some countries, like South Korea, ratios spiked and are now returning to normal. But sex selection is on the rise in Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East." American journalist Mara Hvistendahl's new book: "
Unnatural Selection: Choosing Boys Over Girls, and the Consequences of a World Full of Men," examines and tries to predict the actual and potential effects of unequal sex ratios on men, women and the social economies of the affected regions, including the recent spike in sex trafficking and bride-buying across Asia.
More.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jun 10, 2011 -
65 comments
Neuroscientist Lise Eliot finds that claims of sex differences fall apart. In one study, scientists dressed newborns in gender-neutral clothes and misled adults about their sex. The adults described the "boys" (actually girls) as angry or distressed more often than did adults who thought they were observing girls, and described the "girls" (actually boys) as happy and socially engaged more than adults who knew the babies were boys. Dozens of such disguised-gender experiments have shown that adults perceive baby boys and girls differently, seeing identical behavior through a gender-tinted lens.
[more inside]
posted by cashman
on Sep 3, 2009 -
106 comments
Mapping couplings at a high school Sociologists graphed the romantic and sexual relationships of 80% of an entire high school (832 out of ~1000 students). The research indicates that high schoolers lack sexual alpha-persons resulting in partner maps that are mostly long lines rather than the more hub and spoke like maps common in adult maps.
posted by Mitheral
on Jan 31, 2005 -
47 comments
Alfred Kinsey: Liberator or Pervert? (New York Times link, I hope you know the drill by now.)
A newish movie explores the life of
Alfred Kinsey, sex researcher and founder of the
Kinsey Institute.
Kinsey was author of the controversial book
Sexual Behavior In The Human Male. The controversy has blossomed oh these many years later with accusations that Kinsey's work is
fraudulent, and conducive to
child based porn and fantasy. The ultra-right seems obsessed with
sexualizing his research in terms of "protecting the children". His observations have been linked to the
addictive, destructive nature of pornography, that twists our notions of sex and love, and even enables the sexual abuse of college students in class. (Yeah, I know, that last sounds kinky, doesn't it?)
posted by Wulfgar!
on Oct 5, 2004 -
11 comments
According to
scientists who study sex we can toss some common misconceptions: there is no battle of the sexes; the Mars and Venus book is misleading; extreme body builders are not sexy; breast size isnt always sexy; men and women cheat equally; the notion of man "spreading his seed" is a cultural invention; thin is not sexy. All thanks to our caveman brain.
posted by stbalbach
on Aug 28, 2002 -
61 comments
MIT's Erotic Computation Group. "By developing advanced sexual appliances and techniques, we seek to broaden the range of human amative expression and heighten our potential for sexual gratification." Good to see that at least some people are doing research that will benefit all mankind.
posted by Eloquence
on Nov 25, 2001 -
22 comments
Jane Want Relationship, Tarzan Want Sex. A study seems to confirm what women have long suspected -- women seek security in relationships, while men stick around for the sex.
The study says that in most species, monogomy is the top choice when fertility is hidden. Wonder if they took into account the Pill? ;)
posted by jennak
on Apr 26, 2001 -
14 comments
