Monday August 24th, 2015: Sex Testing and Gender Policing in Sports

"There is no single thing in the body that can be objectively used to sort all males from all females." Rebecca Jordan-Young

Rebecca Jordan-Young, Tow Associate Professor of Women's Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College and author of Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences joins Kate Raphael to discuss gender policing and sex testing in sports.

A recent ruling by the International Court of Arbitration for Sport in the case of sprinter Dutee Chand suspended the practice of "hyperandrogenism regulation" by the International Association of Athletics Federations.  Where did this type of sex testing come from, and what does the ruling mean for the future of women's sports? Are we heading to gender neutral sports? What counts as unfair and disproportionate?

Listen now or Get MP3. 26:26 min.






Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:
Theo E.J. Wilson, In Defense of Black Women

Monday, March 16, 2015: Gender Bias Against Women of Color in Science

100% of Women of Color experience gender bias at work.

Kate Raphael talks with Joan C. Williams, founding director of the UC Hastings Center for Work Life Law about her new study, Double Jeopardy: Gender Bias Against Women of Color in Science. Williams, the coauthor of the book What Works For Women At Work, also talks about strategies for interrupting workplace bias.

Listen now or Get MP3. 26:26





A new study, Double Jeopardy released from the Center for WorkLife Law at UC Hastings combines in-depth interviews of 60 women of color in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) with a survey of 557 women in STEM (both women of color and white women), and finds pervasive gender bias.

The report introduces a new approach to organizational change to interrupt gender bias, called Metrics-Based Bias Interrupters, developed by Professor Williams last year.

Bias Interrupters uses a four-step iterative process: 1) survey women to find out whether they think gender bias is playing out in basic business systems (recruiting, assignments, evaluations, etc.); 2) develop objective metrics to test whether women’s perceptions are accurate; 3) implement “Bias Interrupters” to interrupt bias in real time; 4) see whether the relevant metric improves and, if it doesn’t, strengthen or modify the intervention.

Williams’s work on the advancement of women can be found online at www.newgirlsnet.com and www.toolsforchangeinSTEM.org. You can follow her on her Huffington Post blog or on Twitter @JoanCWilliams. The WorkLife Law website is www.worklifelaw.org.

Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's program:
5 Black Women Historical Figures