Article here. Excerpt:

'Economists are calling on the government to produce a "Plan F" to tackle the disproportionate burden being placed on women by spending cuts. Female-friendly tax and welfare policies are desperately needed to redress the balance, say experts from the independent Women's Budget Group (WBG), who have produced a report looking at the impact of austerity policies on different types of family groups in England.

It finds that women, particularly single parents and single pensioners, have lost much more than men from cuts to benefits and public services imposed by the government since it came to power in May 2010.'

Video here. Good on them! I think they followed the poster-snatchers for just long enough to see that they would not engage in conversation, then broke off following them. Much longer would have been fruitless and make them look bad.

Video here. Excerpt:

'You notice that the host starts off with a kind of snide condescension as well as a parroting of Feminist ideology. They point of course to the wage gap, that men make up most of the CEOs, and so forth. That is code for the true believers among them for “let’s join in and laugh.” Now of course, men are the majority sex at the top of society – i.e., they have the best jobs, they are most of those in congress, the judiciary, and so forth – but that is not the whole picture.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'If you're a convicted criminal, the best thing you can have going for you might be your gender.

A new study by Sonja Starr, an assistant law professor at the University of Michigan, found that men are given much higher sentences than women convicted of the same crimes in federal court.

The study found that men receive sentences that are 63 percent higher, on average, than their female counterparts.

Starr also found that females arrested for a crime are also significantly more likely to avoid charges and convictions entirely, and twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'Aftab Khan was giving evidence at the trial of Amanda Hutton, who denies manslaughter over the death of her son Hamzah Khan in December 2009.

The youngster's body was found by police nearly two years later.

During a day of harrowing testimony at Bradford Crown Court, jurors heard how police visited Hutton's house nine times before Hamzah's death.

They were also read a transcript of an interview Mr Khan gave to police after he was arrested for hitting Hutton in 2008.

He told officers his son was undernourished and neglected and threatened to contact social services, warning: "Believe me, I'm going to get in touch ... because it's gone so far now."

He also described how Hutton refused to let him take Hamzah to see a doctor, despite telling her "time and time again" he was not well.'

Link here. Excerpt:

'Women differ from men in anatomy, physiology, risk factors and disease symptoms. They are also likely to use more medical devices over the course of their lives than men do.

That is why FDA is actively trying to learn more about how medical devices uniquely affect women, and how women can be better served by them.
...
One specific activity highlighted in the report was a workshop sponsored earlier this summer by the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) to formally launch a new program designed to more closely look at medical device use and the health of women (HoW).
...
Nearly 200 representatives from industry, academia, health care, federal agencies, patient and advocacy groups, gathered to discuss the issues related to medical devices and health in women and to brainstorm about effective strategies to address clinical research needs in this population.

This work builds on a December 2011 draft guidance, also highlighted in this month’s 907 report.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Women in full-time, year-round jobs still make 77 cents for every dollar men make, said the U.S. Census Bureau this week — a zero percent change since 2002.

Full-time male workers brought in median annual earnings of $49,398 in 2012, compared with $37,791 for females. That's almost an $11,500 difference in yearly median wages.

So why has the gap remained unchanged (with the exception of one cent fluctuations in 2003 and 2007) for 11 years?

Discrimination plays a role, yes, but "analysts caution that the annual earnings comparison is a crude measure of a complex reality," says Brenda Cronin in The Wall Street Journal.'

Article here. Excerpt:

These days dropping the word "circumcision" on the Internet is like yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. People. Go. NUTS.

The thing I don't understand? Why? Why are people so concerned about what other people have done with their son's foreskin?

I'll admit I do not have a son. I did not circumcise. Although I can't say whether I would have. The ironic thing is, although we did not know the gender of our baby-to-be, I never really thought about whether or not we'd snip his little manhood.'

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'At a symposium here House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., influential Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., top Obama White House advisor Valerie Jarrett, speakers from the Service Employees and other allies declared the start of a grass-roots national campaign to enact the "Fair Shot: A Plan For Women And Families To Get Ahead."

That campaign, said Center for American Progress executive director Neera Tamden, recognizes the only way to move issues through a gridlocked Congress is to shove lawmakers with mobilized popular support. The Center was the sponsor of the Sept. 18 rollout of Fair Shot.

Came across this essay on conscription. Read the comments, good exchanges. (There are other essays on the site dealing with other topics that aren't MR-related; some may find them of interest, others not.) Excerpt:

'The one form of indentured servitude still legal for non-convicts in the United States is military service. When you join the military, you have fewer rights and freedoms left than did “indentured servants” in the Americas three centuries ago:

• You have masters whose orders you must follow without question.
• You are not allowed to “quit” until your contracted term ends (if then), unless your appeal to your masters and they agree, which is unlikely.
• They command labor from you, while you’re paid a token sum and given a minimal standard of food and shelter.
• You may well be doing it on the promise of training that can become a career once you are freed of the obligation.

So far, this describes an indentured servant in the Colonies in 1700, or a US soldier.

Article here. Excerpt:

'You may seek a modification in your existing Massachusetts child support order if it is inconsistent with the new 2013 Guidelines. Presumably, this will apply to all or almost all existing child support orders given the overall reductions that have been made.

Consider seeking a modification if any of the following factors may impact your child support.

1. Support guidelines were reduced, resulting in an average 11% decrease for one-child families and a 6% decrease for two child families.

2. A new formula was established for calculating support where parenting time is higher than the norm.

3. The court must now consider “availability of employment at the attributed income level.”

4. Orders for education costs for adult dependent children are not presumptive.'

An original essay submitted by a reader:

The Fair Child Support Act

Due to the ongoing discrepancies in county/state child support laws taking place across the United States, and the inability to bring fairness to the parents (which, are often primarily fathers) ordered to pay support thru the system, there is a great need for several changes to be implemented. Agree or not, the often biased decisions taking place throughout this system continue to be a major factor in the breakdown of the father-mother-child(ren) relationship. Being someone who was a former teen mother myself at one point, I offer a view many females and the child support system fails to consider. Too often, courts almost always side with a mother when the issue of support arises regardless of mitigating factors due to the fact no one speaks up for fathers' rights.

One major area for addressing unfair practices in child support cases is the immediate need to impose changes to laws that make the death of a child whom support is being paid a reason to eliminate the ongoing order. Nothing in life is as final as death and no parent should be expected to continue to pay past or ongoing support to a mother (or custodial parent) for a child who is not even alive anymore to benefit from it. This practice accounts to nothing more than being one of the most cruel and unjust forms of punishment designed by county/state/federal governments throughout America today. It is tragic enough that the parent of a deceased child will have to endure a lifetime of grief over the loss of their child, but to be forced by law to continue to pay a support order for that child is immoral and beyond reproach.

Article here. Excerpt:

'In 2000, Christina Hoff Sommers published The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming Our Young Men. Hoff Sommers was already known as a critic of late-20th-century feminism; her much-lauded and much-disparaged 1994 book Who Stole Feminism? had provoked charges that she was anti-women. In August, Hoff Sommers, now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, updated and reissued her bestseller on boys with a new subtitle: How Misguided Policies Are Harming Our Young Men. Hoff Sommers makes the case that boys and girls are fundamentally different—and that ignoring the difference, in an effort to protect girls, amounts to a “war against boys.”
...
Q: The obvious counterpoint is that so many more men are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and top politicians. How can we explain that top-tier divide?

Story here.

'An Ohio woman convicted of killing her baby daughter in a microwave oven wants a fourth trial because of errors made in her last trial, her lawyer said.

China Arnold, 33, was convicted three times of killing her 28-day-old daughter, Paris Talley -- in February 2008, September 2008 and May 2011.

She was sentenced to the death penalty on her first conviction and to life in prison on the subsequent two convictions.

Tuesday attorney Christopher Thompson requested a fourth trial in Ohio's Second District Court of Appeals because he said five errors were made in her case, the Dayton Daily News reported. He requested a trial without the chance of the death penalty.'