Friday Femme Fatale: Abusive Text Messages, Teen Pregnancy & Females in Finance

Debora Spar writes a controversial and compelling piece in The Washington Post this week titled, Ones Gender Crash, explaining how the woes of the financial world all have one thing in common this year: men behaving badly. While the piece is far from misandrous writing, Spar tries to explain how the financial world could benefit with a greater female touch saying:

The financial crisis has exposed a quieter but equally pressing concern: We need women in leadership positions not only because they can manage as well as men but because they manage differently than men; because they tend -- over time and in the aggregate -- to make different kinds of decisions and to accept and avoid different kinds of risk. We need women who will say no to bad decisions based on male-dominated rivalries and clubby golf course confidences. We need women to blow the whistle when risks explode and to challenge the presumptions that too many men, clustered too closely together and sharing a common worldview, can easily indulge.

Elizabeth Wurtzel describes the differences in the response to Gov. Sarah Palin compared with Senator-hopeful, Caroline Kennedy, in an opinion piece titled, When Is It Sexism? featured on The Daily Beast this week. Her article describes feminism as a "fine mess" these days (which I have to respectfully disagree with) and then works to draw a distinction between the sexist treatment of Palin versus Kennedy saying:

But perhaps the real problem is simply that the women who catch our attention in the policy arena tend to feel like novelty acts, pop idols who came from out of nowhere, who didn't work the workaday ranks of their male competitors. This is, of course, the precise criticism that's being leveled at Caroline Kennedy these days, and the dismissive greeting she's received from so many in the press is being likened to the Palin experience. Now, of course, about the only thing these two women have in common is that they are two women-not nothing in a man's world-but to say sexism is the issue is an insult to sexism. If Sarah Palin was the sole occupant of the Venn diagram of those smart enough to be governor of Alaska and dumb enough to be vice president, Caroline Kennedy is not even on the chart.

The New York Times reports on evidence showing that there may be more teen dating abuse and violence than ever before in the article, A Rise in Efforts to Spot Abuse in Youth Dating. The piece describes how the use of text messages are being used by young men to harass young women:

Dr. Miller cited a survey last year of children ages 11 to 14 by Liz Claiborne Inc., a clothing retailer that finances teenage dating research, in which a quarter of the 1,000 respondents said they had been called names, harassed or ridiculed by their romantic partner by phone call or text message, often between midnight and 5 a.m., when their parents are sleeping.

 Such behavior often falls under the radar of parents, teachers and counselors because adolescents are too embarrassed to admit they are being mistreated.

 They can seek help from the National Teen Dating Abuse Helpline, where calls and hits to its Web site, loveisrespect.org, doubled in November over the previous month. Awareness of the help line has grown since it was started in early 2007.

 Most of the calls come from girls, often in response to relentless texting or efforts by boys to dictate what they do or wear.

Additionally, The Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues put health at top of it's 2009 to-do list and is lining up a solid bipartisan roster for the next session: female heart disease, human trafficking, sexual and domestic violence, women in the military, a backlog of DNA evidence in rape cases. This comes at a time where USA Today reported that teen birth rates are up in 26 states. This news leaves many reproductive health advocates with good reason to protest abstinence only education and ask for more sophisticated sex education programs to be implemented by state and local governments.

Finally, Salon shares the excitement about Obama's appointment of Dawn Johnsen who will head the Office of Legal Counsel, inside the Justice Department, "which is probably the most consequential federal government office that remains relatively obscure" according to Glenn Greenwald.  Johnsen is a Professor of Law at Indiana University, a former OLC official in the Clinton administration (as well as a former ACLU counsel), and a graduate of Yale Law School.