Women Engineers Are Jerk-Averse

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 29, 2011 at 4:44 pm

(cc photo by meneldur)

Anna North notes new research on why women leave the science and engineering fields, which often comes down to women not enjoying being mistreated by jerks:

In Stemming The Tide: Why Women Leave Engineering, two University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professors report on their survey of over 3,700 women with engineering degrees. They found that just one in four women who had left the field reported doing so to spend more time with family. One third left “because they did not like the workplace climate, their boss or the culture,” while almost half departed due to “working conditions, too much travel, lack of advancement or low salary” (respondents were allowed to check more than one reason). The researchers also found that among women who got engineering degrees but never entered the field, a third made that decision “because of their perceptions of engineering as being inflexible or the engineering workplace culture as being non-supportive of women.” And, unsurprisingly, “Women engineers who were treated in a condescending, patronizing manner, and were belittled and undermined by their supervisors and co-workers were most likely to want to leave their organizations.” Writes study author Dr. Nadya Fouad, “Bottom line — it’s not all about family for most of the women who left engineering.

Not that shocking, but important nonetheless. Dysfunctional social norms that drive talent out of key fields are a real burden on the country, as well as on the individual women impacted.

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Climate Progress

Berkeley temperature team explains attack on its initial findings by WattsUpWithThat was pure fabrication

By Joe Romm on Mar 29, 2011 at 4:44 pm

UPDATE: Watts has posted two comments below that contain a disingenuous admission of error and several more outrageous falsehoods. While Watts asserts below, “I was not aware of the issue until Dr. Muller communicated with me,” the truth is that Watts has known for six days that his post was in grave error — but it is only my post here that forced him to concede the mistake.

It was fairly obvious the discredited denier Anthony Watts made a false statement and egregious blunder last week when he attacked the initial findings of Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project. Of course, that’s true of most posts on WattsUpWithThat, but this fabrication stands out because Watts usually attacks climate science, not the confusionists.

Here’s the hilarious story of Watts’ self-inflicted implosion, what Shakespeare called being hoist with his own petard.

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LGBT

Anti-Gay Group Called Out On Fearmongering About CT Transgender Equality Bill By Lawmaker

By Igor Volsky on Mar 29, 2011 at 4:30 pm

Last week, the Connecticut House Judiciary Committee considered HB 6599, a bill to add “gender identity or expression” to the state’s anti-discrimination statute. Testifying against the bill, Peter Wolfgang — President of the Family Institute of Connecticut Action — warned that the bill would “expose” children “to teachers in their schools who one day will be a man and the next day could decide to be a woman” and “alternative lifestyles.” Women and children “would be put at risk,” Wolfgang continued. “Nothing would prevent a male sexual predator from pretending that he is confused about his sex to gain access to a woman’s bathroom.”

During the hearing, Committee Chairman Rep. Holder-Winfield (D) challenged Wolfgang on his fearmongering, “pointing out that laws prohibiting that kind of assault already exist” and would remain in place if the nondiscrimination measure is adopted:

REP. HOLDER-WINFIELD: You said if this bill passes, nothing would prevent the sexual predators from taking the actions that you suggest might happen. What prevents them from doing that now?

WOLFGANG: Well they’d certainly have more of a reason to do it. And men in general should not be allowed into women’s bathrooms. At issue is the fact that you have an exception for sex but not for gender identity and expression if this bill passes and men can enter women’s bathrooms.

REP. HOLDER-WINFIELD: But my question to you is, what prevents them from doing it now? Your answer, while a response, doesn’t actually indicate what does that.

WOLFGANG: Well, I mean, you know, there are laws that prevent crimes, obviously, from taking place in bathrooms in general. But, I mean, why give sexual predators a pretext? Why give them an excuse to say, “Look, I’m transgendered and that’s why I went into the women’s bathroom.” Obviously it’s – you know, there are laws for registered sex offenders.

REP. HOLDER-WINFIELD: And so those laws would actually exist if the crime was committed after entering the bathroom, even if this law passed – if this bill passed, is that not correct?

Watch it:

As HRC’s Meghan Stabler writes, while momentum for the bill is building, “[s]imilar bills in the past had passed both the Judiciary Committee and the Senate yet died in the state House of Representatives.” A similar bill in Maryland “dropped its public accommodations language in an effort to boost support.”

In 2004, the Connecticut passed a transgender-inclusive hate crime law and in 2000, the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities (CHRO) issued a declaratory ruling “indicating that transgender people are protected under existing Connecticut sex discrimination laws.” Still, there currently exists no explicit law “protecting transgender people from discrimination in employment, education, housing, and public accommodations.” (H/T: Equality Matters)

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Politics

Graham: Those Engaged In Anti-Muslim Hate Speech Are ‘Putting Our Soldiers At Risk’

By Tanya Somanader on Mar 29, 2011 at 4:30 pm

Today, Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) convened a hearing on “Protecting the Civil Rights of American Muslims” — the “first of its kind for Congress.” A counterweight to House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Pete King’s (R-NY) anti-Muslim hearings earlier this month, Durbin’s hearing sought to counter increasing number of bigoted attacks like the Quran burnings, hate crimes, and restrictions on mosque construction by reinforcing “the Constitution’s ‘First Freedom’ — the freedom of religion.”

Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-SC) provided a counter-approach to many in his own party. Graham took the opportunity to declare “I will do my part as a Republican to let my party and anyone listening that I totally get it when it comes to religion.” After the Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez testified to the “steady stream of violence and discrimination” targeting Muslim, Sikh, and South Asians, Graham responded, “one case is too many.” He went further to admonish those who unleash hate speech against Muslims are “putting our soldiers at risk”:

GRAHAM: I guess my opinion about such matters is that one case is too many. You have an example in America where somebody is being abused because of their faith, I think all of us should join in and push back as the Bush administration did, as you’re doing. So that’s my baseline here — I don’t know what the numbers are but one for me is too many. And to those who have freedom of speech, it’s a gift given to you by a lot of people risking their own lives. So when you say things here at home or you do things here at home that create tension based on religious differences, particularly when its the Muslim community involved, your putting our soldiers at risk.

We have soldiers all over the world of a variety of religions fighting in the name of America trying to help moderate Muslims defeat radical Islam. And my view is that there are plenty of moderate Muslims out there who need our help and we should be helping because its better to fight the war over there than it is here. But at the end of the day, we’re all in this together….there are plenty of Muslims who wear our uniform and we need to understand that, again, we’re all in this together.

Watch it:

Graham’s enlightened stance stands in stark contrast to the entrenched anti-Muslim position adopted by the hard right. Indeed, directly following Graham’s opening statement, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) said that if this hearing “is part of a narrative that says its improper to point out the obvious” about radical Muslims and errs on the side of “political correctness,” then “count me out.” “All bigotry is to be condemned but we’re only credible if we’re principled in our condemnation. Selective indignation is not healthy,” he said — without a hint of irony or mention of King’s hearings.

It appears, however, that many high-profile Republicans relish in their “selective” condemnation of Muslims. GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain recently insisted all Muslims “have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.” Fellow candidate and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has used Muslims and Nazis interchangeably and advocated for “explicit profiling and explicit discrimination for behavior” of Muslims.

Taking the exact opposite view of Graham, King said Muslims aren’t “American” when it comes to war and “do not cooperate” to combat terrorism. Today, he condemned Durbin and Graham’s hearing as one that “perpetuates the myth that somehow Muslims are the victim of September 11” and that “create[s] the illusion that there’s a violation of civil rights of Muslims in this country. It’s absolutely untrue, and to me it makes no sense.”

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Yglesias

Record Profits—On Wall Street

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 29, 2011 at 3:59 pm

I’d sort of been letting my eyes glaze over at pieces about “record profits but workers still unemployed blah blah” on the theory that first you get the profits, then you get the expansion of business activity, and then you get the job growth. But now Annie Lowrey has me alarmed: “But in the last quarter of 2010, the story was all about Wall Street. Profits actually decreased a bit at nonfinancial firms. But companies like investment banks and insurers saw profits climb to an annualized $426.5 billion.”

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Security

Report Finds More People Displaced In Americas Than Middle East

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Mar 29, 2011 at 3:40 pm

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a young Mexican police sheriff — Marisol Valles — who had fled her post in one of the country’s most dangerous regions to seek asylum in the U.S. While it’s clear that Valles certainly is one of many people to be in that situation, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) recently released a report which sheds some light on the number of people who are coming to the U.S. from Latin America as a result of drug cartel violence in the region.

According to the report, “by the end of 2010, as many as 5.4 million people were internally displaced due to armed conflict, violence, and human rights violations in the Americas.” In comparison, 3.9 million were displaced in the Middle East at the end of the year largely due to armed conflicts. The IDMC claims that, in Mexico alone, about 230,000 people have been displaced because of drug violence. While approximately 115,000 of those Mexicans were internally displaced within the country, the IDMC notes that the other half of those displaced “crossed the border into the United States.” These figures don’t include the Central American nation of Guatemala, which is also experiencing high levels of violence.

Meanwhile, those who seek asylum face an uphill battle. In order to qualify, asylum applicants must prove “credible fear” based on their membership in a social, political, religious, or ethnic group that has been targeted for persecution. While asylum applicants who are fleeing Latin America’s drug violence can usually prove they have a good reason to fear for their lives, persecution is difficult to establish. Less than two percent of the 3,800 Mexican asylum petitions were approved last year.

While some legal experts are advocating for a broader set of asylum criteria, the courts have been slow to respond and it seems unlikely that all 115,000 displaced people would meet even the most expansive asylum standards that have been discussed. Others have suggested lobbying the federal government to grant drug war victims “Temporary Protected Status,” a temporary immigration status that is available to individuals from a small number of federally-designated countries suffering armed conflicts, natural disasters, or other extraordinary circumstances. However, that option is highly controversial.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) also released a report this week which warns, “the unchecked power and violence of these Mexican DTOs [drug trafficking organizations] present a substantial humanitarian concern and have contributed to forced migration and numerous U.S. asylum requests. If the situation were to worsen, a humanitarian emergency might lead to an unmanageable flow of people into the United States.” According to CFR, the U.S. bears part of the responsibility “given that U.S. drug consumption, firearms, and cash have fueled much of Mexico’s recent violence.” They recommend “bolster[ing] U.S. domestic law enforcement efforts to curb illicit drug distribution, firearms smuggling, and money laundering” and making “an overall commitment to preventing and treating drug abuse and other societal ills caused by drugs and reevaluate the effectiveness of current U.S. and international drug policies.”

Ultimately, it’s probably safe to say that many — if not most — of the immigrants coming to the U.S. are driven by economics more than the drug war. Yet, as the drug-related violence in Latin America escalates, dealing with migration to the North may start to require addressing U.S. drug and gun policies along with the nation’s broken immigration system itself.

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Alyssa

Whatever Happened To…

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Mar 29, 2011 at 3:32 pm

Pop-punk? I ask this in all sincerity, mostly because someone sent me Bowling For Soup’s “High School Never Ends” during an instant message conversation:

I wouldn’t say I felt the pale flame of nostalgia or anything, but it did make me go huh, and remember how much fun the video for “1985,” was, and how good the band was at contributing to at pop culture if not at actually contributing to it:

The same was much more aggressively true of blink-182, of course, about whom I feel much more strongly:

So what happened? Did pop culture just get so shamelessly ridiculous that there wasn’t room for this kind of internal critique? Did it seem unnecessary coming from dudes with unapologetically terrible and intense emotional awareness of how absurdly they were behaving? I don’t kid myself that the music was great, but I kind of miss this kind of thing:

It’s a lot more honest in its fear and foolishness than Judd Apatow movies, anyway.

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Politics

Former Romney Adviser Jonathan Gruber: Without RomneyCare, We Wouldn’t Have ObamaCare

By Travis Waldron on Mar 29, 2011 at 3:28 pm

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has attempted to distance his statewide health care plan from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as he positions himself for the 2012 presidential primaries.

But MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who advised both Romney and President Obama on their health care reform plans, told the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin today that without Romney’s plan (and more specifically, that plan’s individual mandate) President Obama never could have gotten his plan through Congress:

He says that as the federal health care plan emerged, the Massachusetts plan was “widely discussed.” [...]

In his opinion, without the Massachusetts plan the federal individual mandate plan wouldn’t have garnered acceptance and gotten through. “It was huge,” Gruber says, to have the Massachusetts plan to point to. And without it, he thinks “it’s likely” ObamaCare wouldn’t have become law.

While there was extensive debate about the individual mandate, Gruber said, its inclusion was ultimately Romney’s decision, and the former governor was the plan’s biggest “champion.” Gruber is also skeptical of the argument Romney now makes, that the Massachusetts reform is different because it is a state-controlled plan. Gruber said that it is incorrect to say, “Massachusetts did it on its own,” since it received federal funding to implement the proposal.

A Romney spokesperson declined to respond to Gruber’s claim, saying only that Romney is “proud of what he accomplished for Massachusetts in getting health insurance to everyone,” but that he still supports repeal of the ACA and a “state-by-state approach to health reform.”

Romney’s health care reform — particularly the individual mandate — has greatly expanded coverage in the state. Currently, 98 percent of Massachusetts residents, including 99.8 percent of children, are enrolled in a health care plan — the highest in the nation. As Gruber notes, it is both “sad” and “depressing” that Romney has to run away from that sort of an accomplishment in order to satisfy conservative primary voters.

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Yglesias

Mitt Romney’s Christian Problem

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 29, 2011 at 3:15 pm

I agree with Jamelle Bouie that while Mitt Romney’s RomneyCare problem may be surmountable, his additional Mormon problem may not be:

This is very different from conservative evangelical hostility toward Catholics, which dissipated in the 1970s and 1980s (for a taste of old-school fundamentalist anti-Catholic rhetoric, read a Chick tract). Catholics, at the very least, shared key doctrines with evangelicals. Mormons are in a different boat entirely, and Romney will have to overcome that prejudice to win the nomination, given the evangelical stranglehold on Republican grassroots operations.

To put a slightly more precise spin on this, I think Romney has less of a “Mormon problem” than he does a “Christian problem.” Specifically, it’s very important to a lot of American Christians that other people be Christian. The media is dominated by secular people who aren’t invested in this sort of thing, and tend to accept at face-value the idea that Mormonism is one of several Christian denominations, but a great many Christians disagree with this diagnosis. After all, it’s part of the essence of Bible-based Protestantism that the Bible doesn’t have a sequel. The Catholic church says that Mormon baptisms are invalid and United Methodist Church says “that the LDS Church is not a part of the historic, apostolic tradition of the Christian faith.”

At any rate, if you look at David Thomas Smith’s research (PDF) you can see that attitudes toward Mormonism were a huge driver during the 2008 campaign:

Using Pew data from 2007 which asked questions about attitudes toward Mormonism and toward Mitt Romney, I find that the belief Mormons are not Christians plays a very important role in the formation of general anti-Mormon attitudes, and that while this belief is most widespread among evangelical Christians, it has the same importance in attitude formation toward Mormons even for individuals who are not Christians. The effect of the “Christian question” remains significant but decreases in importance when applied to more politically concrete questions—whether the respondent would be more or less likely to support a Mormon presidential candidate, and how the respondent feels about Mitt Romney. However, more generalized feelings about Mormons are the single most important factor in evaluations of Romney, even more so than party identification or ideology.

All that said, I think it’s unwise to write anyone with some substantial base of support off. That’s because the Republicans generally do winner-take-all primaries, which makes for very unpredictable outcomes in a multi-candidate field.

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Climate Progress

Tim Pawlenty: “Every one of us” running for president has flip-flopped on climate change

By Climate Guest Blogger on Mar 29, 2011 at 3:01 pm

Tim Pawlenty argued Monday that his past support for cap-and-trade legislation shouldn’t hinder his presidential bid because nearly all the other Republican White House hopefuls also took the same position.

Yes, GOP contenders are now vying to see who can bend over backwards furthest to please the pro-pollution, anti-science Tea Party extremists (See “Gingrich’s 20 years of global warming flip-flops“). So Pawlenty shrewdly says he should get a pass for flip-flopping because everybody who wants to be President has abandoned science!

Think Progress has more (including audio of TPaw):

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