In STEM news, a recent study conducted by Yale researchers concludes that female students in research-intensive universities face tough biases from faculty members.
This is despite the fact that the study included equally qualified female applicants along with their male counterparts. Moreover, faculty members offered male STEM students more career advantages, mentoring, and financial compensation for doing the same job as female students. Professors found male students to be more hireable and competent even though an identical female applicant was present. Female professors were equally as biased as male professors, the report shows.
The researchers conclude that subtle and preexisting bias against women influenced the findings of the study and that intervention with faculty members might assist in decreasing gender bias.
An impostor Abercrombie & Fitch website fooled consumers by selling fake "Abercrombie & Fitch N***er Brown Pants." Links to the website quickly went viral thanks to the social media network Facebook, and A&F soon shut down the fake website.
But there is a reason so many people believed the website was real.
We can't forget your racist hiring policies and the offensive products you were selling just a few years back, Abercrombie.
Let's review Abercromie's history:
1. Hiring only white people. In 2009, A&F settled a $40 million class action lawsuit for forcing all minority employees to work in the stock room while allowing white employees to be on the sales floor. CBS News reports that a former A&F employee stated, "A corporate official had pointed to an Abercrombie poster and told our management at our store, 'You need to have more staff that looks like this.' And it was a white Caucasian male on that poster."
2. Selling Racist t-shirts using pseudo-Chinese character font. I can't imagine who approved the Two Wongs Can Make it White, Abercrombie & Fitch T-Shirt. In April 2002, A&F launched a line of racist shirts with offensive Asian stereotypes. The shirts featured Asian caricatures engaging in forced stereotypes of kung fu fighting and offensive religious references to Buddha. In response to these shirts, Los Angeles based cartoonist and "Angry Little Asian Girl" creator Lela Lee told the LA Times, "We're used to depictions of Asians as kung-fu fighting, fortune-cookie-speaking, slanty-eyed, bucktooth servants. We're really tired of it."
3. Selling Sexist t-shirts. Back in 2005, A&F produced sexist shirts and received some push-back from teen groups who staged "girlcotts." A&F shirts had slogans such as, "I had a nightmare I was a brunette" and "Who needs brains when you have these?" printed across the chest.
4. Sexualizing young girls. And let's not forget about the A&F "push up padding" bikinis for children that came out in 2011. Enough said.
Given Abercrombie's sordid history, it was not implausible to believe the N-word pants were real. Needless to say, SBW maintains its Two Person Boycott of that store. We encourage you to join us.
After being fired from her job with the Georgia General Assembly, Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgendered woman, fought back.
She started working as an editor for the state assembly in 2005, a dream job for Glenn. The next year, Glenn informed her boss of her decision to become a woman. Soon, Glenn began wearing women's clothes on a regular basis to the workplace.
However, two years into building a dream job, Glenn's supervisor terminated her, calling her lifestyle, "perhaps immoral, perhaps unnatural." Glenn's boss said that the way she was dressed would make other people uncomfortable and that her gender transition would be disruptive. Glenn recorded the conversation.
In 2008, Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of Glenn.
A U.S. district court judge found that Glenn was a victim of sex discrimination and ordered the Assembly to employ her again. The judge said, in a 19-page decision, that Glenn's firing met the criteria to fall under sex-based discrimination. The judge held that, "all persons whether transgender or not, are protected from discrimination on the basis of gender stereotypes." The 11th Circuit has held similarly that, "A person cannot be lawfully terminated because an employer objects to the way an employee expresses his or her gender."
After getting her job back, Glenn says about the bigots, "[T]hey don't have power over you."
Read more here.
