Ingrid

Tomorrow is international women’s day, and in the past days the Iranian regime has, once again, shown its oppressive face towards grassroots women’s organisations who were peacefully demonstrating for their rights. On Sunday at least 31 women were “illegally”:http://www.meydaan.com/English/showarticle.aspx?arid=175&cid=52 arrested during a peaceful gathering in front of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran. They were demonstrating in solidarity with women’s rights activists who had organised a peaceful demonstration on June 12, 2006, which was “brutally ended by the police”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5073328.stm, and who had to appear before court last Sunday. They were also protesting the increasing oppression and criminalisation of the non-violent Iranian women’s movement, who has launched the “one million signatures campaign”:http://en.we4change.com/spip.php?article18 to educate citizens about gender-discriminatory laws, and who are collecting signatures to demand an end to such discriminatory legislation. “The correspondent for a Dutch newspaper”:http://onzemaninteheran.com/?p=60 was also arrested, but quickly released. Yesterday some women were “released”:http://www.meydaan.com/English/news.aspx?nid=211, but there are also “reports”:http://www.meydaan.com/English/news.aspx?nid=221 that others were beaten and are in a bad condition. The 24 remaining women have started “a hunger strike”:http://www.meydaan.com/English/showarticle.aspx?arid=181&cid=52 to protest their illegal confinement.
[click to continue…]

Ever heard of “AllAcademic Inc.”:http://www.allacademic.com/? This company describes itself as “an application service provider specializing in online solutions for abstract submissions, session submissions and conference management for annual meetings, conventions, and other types of events”. They are selling a range of papers that have been presented at previous APSA conferences (and annual meetings by many other academic associations). For example, there are papers for sale written by Jonathan Quong on “luck multiculturalism”:http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p63637_index.html?type=info, David Wasserman on “disabilities and the capability approach”:http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p59051_index.html?type=info, Simon Caney on “the global basic structure”:http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p58933_index.html?type=info, Richard Arneson on “sufficientarian conceptions of justice”:http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p59049_index.html?type=info, John Christman on “cultural recognition”:http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p63723_index.html?type=info, and two papers by Henry, “one”:http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p64378_index.html?type=info on E-commerce, and “one”:http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p64305_index.html?type=info on regulatory trajectories in the information age. There are also two by myself, “one”:http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p63603_index.html on the gendered division of labour, and “one”:http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p59129_index.html on Rawls and Sen. Most papers were presented a couple of years ago. They are for sale for USD 7 per piece. So, should we be happy with this commercial service?
[click to continue…]

UNICEF has released “a study”:http://www.unicef-icdc.org/presscentre/presskit/reportcard7/rc7_eng.pdf on the well-being of children in 21 OECD countries. The countries are ranked according to their average child well-being. The top four are the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, and the bottom two are the United States and the United Kingdom. Ranking countries always attracts the attention of the media, with the Dutch media proudly announcing that “children are nowhere as happy as in the Netherlands”:http://www.volkskrant.nl/buitenland/article397676.ece/Kinderen_nergens_zo_gelukkig_als_in_Nederland, and the “BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6359363.stm reporting on reactions in the UK.

Here are some thoughts about this report from a Dutch perspective — I’ll leave it to others to comment on the problems the UK, USA or other countries are facing. What follows are just some thoughts for discussion and not a full explanation of why the Dutch are so high in this ranking (for other discussions of the report, see “here”:http://www.peaktalk.com/archives/002597.php, “here”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2013309,00.html and “here”:http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Child-Welfare.html) [click to continue…]

The Dutch educational and academic system is in crisis. In the last couple of years, media coverage on schools and universities has been rather alarming, with reports on high drop out rates, 18 year olds who can’t decently write and who think opinions are factual knowledge, primary schools teachers who don’t sufficiently master mathematics, the brain drain of the best university students, overworked university staff, cutting of budgets and so on and so forth.

But now there is hope. Today, the media reported that the new minister for education, research and culture will be Ronald Plasterk, a highly succesful biologist who is a “Professor of developmental genetics”:http://www.niob.knaw.nl/researchpages/plasterk/groupleader.html at Utrecht University. He has also been a columnist for the daily newspaper “De Volkskrant“:http://www.volkskrant.nl/ and has criticised the previous educational policies in his column for that newspaper. He is also known to be an atheist, which, in my view, is a good thing given that the coalition contains, next to Plaskerk’s social-democratic labour party “PVDA”:http://www.pvda.nl, two Christian parties (the center-right Christian Democratic Party “CDA”:http://www.cda.nl/ and the left-bending “ChristianUnion”:http://www.christenunie.nl/en/).

I very much hope that Plasterk will be as strong in politics as he has been succesful in the sciences, so that he can fix our educational and academic system….

In the Netherlands, children between the ages of 2 and 4 (which is the age at which compulsory schooling starts) and who are not attending nurseries, can spend two mornings a week together in so-called ‘playgroups’. These playgroups are run by the municipalities. There is also a ‘pre-playgroup’ for kids between 18 months and two years, which only lasts one hour and where they are accompanied by one of the parents (or another adult). This morning a neighbour asked me whether I wouldn’t be interested in enrolling my son for such a pre-playgroup. But, she added, it’s only for mothers, fathers are not allowed. Apparently the justification is that otherwise mothers from certain ethnic minorities, where gender segregation is an important issue, would not attend with their children.

What should we think about such policies? In principle, I would strongly condemn such policies, since they are plainly discriminating fathers, grandfathers, and male babysitters. In practice, I can appreciate the underlying goal of offering mothers from social groups where opposite-sex parental activities are entirely out of the question more options to socialise, and also the social and developmental benefits for their children; but it does restrict the options of more progressive heterosexual couples to equally shared parenthood, let alone the options of gay fathers and single fathers. Since the kids of these ethnic minorities tend to be among the worst-off in society and we can safely assume that they are benefiting from joining a playgroup, I’m trying to look at this from its positive side – but I really have difficulties convincing myself that this is, all things considered, a wise policy.

Sunday morning, 7.05 AM. Most people are still asleep. I am playing with my son and listening to the radio, and it is the first time this week that I hear some substantial radio coverage of the “2007 World Social Forum”:http://wsf2007.org/. I had no time this week to watch the evening television news more than once or twice, and hence do not know whether the Dutch television paid more attention. But I did read the newspaper, and listened to the radio, and heard almost nothing about the WSF.

So no attention to the WSF on primetime. Perhaps it’s just my impression? Or perhaps it’s just the Netherlands? (Not that there is important local news here – the government formation is happening behind closed doors, with no gossip spreading to the People). I hope I am wrong, since the WSF offers a good opportunity for the mainstream press to report on structural issues of global injustice and poverty, instead of only reporting on natural disasters, flaming wars, and other cases of instant misery.

Happy 2007! I wonder whether some marketing company did a survey of the top-5 of new year’s resolutions. Doing more excerise, stop smoking, losing weight, working less, spending more time with friends, perhaps? Apart from my resolution to finally get my act together and start writing the book that I’ve been wanting to write for the last 4 years, all my resolutions belong to the category of the ordinary and boring (alright, perhaps the book-resolution belongs to that category too).

Did you make any less boring good resolutions for 2007 ?

Can you ask your siblings and friends how much they earn? Can you ask your co-workers? I guess in many or most places in the world, this is a taboo. This is regrettable, since there are many unjustified earnings inequalities, often related to factors such as gender, race and nepotism. Unjust earnings inequalities can only fade away if individuals demand equal wages for equal work, but therefore they first need to know how much those who are doing this ‘equal work’ are earning (and in many countries much more is needed, such as a shift in power between labour and capital, to put it in these grand terms).

In 17 countries, there exists an internet tool, called the “wage indicator”:http://www.wageindicator.org/main, that can tell us how much people in a certain profession (with the same age, seniority, etc. etc.) earn, which may be useful information if you need to negotiate your wage, or if you think you or your colleague should be earning more. For labour scholars, the information gathered by the tool can be used to investigate pay inequalities, and many other trends and facts related to earnings and the workforce. “The Dutch version”:http://www.loonwijzer.nl/main/ was launched in 2001, and at present the wage indicator is available in “many countries”:http://www.wageindicator.org/main/Partnersworldwide, such as “South Africa”:http://www.mywage.co.za/main/, “India”:http://www.paycheck.in/main/, “Finland”:http://www.palkkalaskuri.fi/, “the UK”:http://www.paywizard.co.uk/ and “the USA”:http://www.worklifewizard.org/main/.

Clearly the wage indicator has its limitations too. One limitation is inherent for almost all surveys: sometimes you feel that your experience does not fit the questions, and therefore that you can’t answer the question properly. For example, when I had to give the number of years I had been employed, I didn’t know whether I should count my years working on my PhD or not (in the Netherlands and Belgium doctoral students are – euh – not students but employees, whereas in England, where I got my PhD degree, they are students.) Another problem is that there needs to be a minimal number of respondents who have responded to the questionnaire before anything statistically representative can be said about the average earnings of people with your profile. Hence even if you have no personal interest in figuring out what the typical person with your profile earns, you can do labour scholars a favour by filling out this survey. And by reporting any oddities you come across, or your views about these tools, in the comments section. I don’t personally know the scholars who run them, but I’m sure they’ll find us.

When, some years ago, I read Adam Hochschild’s “King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terrorism and Heroism in Colonial Africa“:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold’s_Ghost, I was shocked not only by the historical analysis of Belgian Colonialism in the Congo, but even more about the fact that I had never learnt these things at school or university. While, partly thanks to the internet, nowadays many more Belgians know about the attrocities that King Leopold committed in the Congo, there is still a lot of denial about Belgium’s colonial role in Africa.

According to Adam Hochschild, there are “striking parallels between King Leopold in Congo and George W. Bush in Iraq”:http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-hochschild22dec22,0,2727390.story?coll=la-opinion-center. I expect that people will differ in their opinion whether this is an exaggeration or not, but at least I hope that the American kids (now and in the future) will get a more self-critical account of the US’s role in Iraq than what I learnt about Belgian’s role in the Congo.
(hat tip to “Political Theory Daily Review”:http://www.politicaltheory.info/)

On Wednesday evening, a Breaking News session on “RTBF”:http://www.rtbf.be, the French-speaking Belgian public television announced that the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) parliament of Belgium had unilaterally announced their independence. It wasn’t true, of course, otherwise I would have written about it Wednesday night (wondering whether my Belgian passport would still be worth anything, and whether the Flemish independence would lead to a solution for “my conflict with the Belgian State”:https://crookedtimber.org/2006/08/21/whats-in-a-name/ ). The newsbulletin, of which (very poor) versions can be seen on YouTube (“here”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4hIotCD9R0, “here”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvHhSdgZKOw, and “here”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=452Nmk5rUmY ), looked realistic enough to understand that many Belgians believed it. From what I gather from the Belgian media, it caused a wave of consternation, and even some panic, throughout Belgium.

[click to continue…]

One the day my child turned one, “TRex”:http://www.firedoglake.com/index.php?author=35 wrote about “Esten”:http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/12/06/late-nite-fdl-for-esten/, a three year old boy with leukemia, asking his readers to donate money for his treatment.

I am surprised about my increasing inability to read posts about children in pain, or children in miserable circumstances, without producing tears. Is it age? Or is it triggered by a growing awareness of how vulnerable children can be? Or a permanent change in my hormonal balanance due to childbearing or breastfeeding? Or is it the psychological effects of motherhood?

Whatever…. Hang in there, Esten!

Today is “World Aids Day”:http://www.worldaidsday.org/default.asp, and “UN AIDS”:http://www.unaids.org/en/ “reports”:http://www.unaids.org/en/GetStarted/UNFamily.asp that another 14.000 children, women and men will become infected with HIV today. This year is 25 years ago that the first case was reported. In those 25 years, there has been a gigantic difference in the impact of HIV/AIDS on the affluent societies versus the poor societies, especially in sub-Saharan African. The life expectancy in some African countries such as Botswana and Swaziland is now well below 35 years. And even these statistics do not reveal the grim reality of children who are growing up without adults, in what social scientists now call ‘childheaded households’. How can a 12 year old girl feed her younger siblings? If there are no neighbours or organisations supporting them, it is likely that her only short-term survival option is prostitution. Long-term survival is something these children simply cannot contemplate.

The theme of this World Aids Day is accountability – not only of individuals who are having unsafe sex (especially those who are infecting others through unwanted sex), but also of religious leaders “discouraging the use and promotion of condoms”:http://www.thebody.com/cdc/news_updates_archive/2003/may27_03/malawi_condoms.html, political leaders of rich societies “who don’t give enough money”:http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/19/health/main1913718.shtml to fight the epidemic, and political leaders in severely HIV/AIDS-affected countries, such as “Doctor Beetroot”:http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=49983, who are misinforming the population. But World Aids Day is also the day when we should thank the many men and women who are fighting this ugly disease, from grassroots awareness activities up to diplomatic action at the highest level, often in difficult circumstances.

The elections for parliament are held in the Netherlands today. The first exit polls are expected at just after 9 pm Dutch time. While in general elections in small countries are not particularly interesting for an international audience, one never knows what surprises (which may be relevant also beyond the national borders) are waiting for us. Apart from the question which party will become the biggest and hence (most probably) deliver the prime minister, here are two other prominent issues of the current Dutch elections. [click to continue…]

In many (most? all?) Universities, the research output of the staff is evaluated every couple of years (every 4 or 5 years, for example). This is also done at a more aggregate level, for example in country-wide Research Assessment Excercises. For such evaluations, an unavoidable question is: what determines quality, and how should we weigh publications of different quality levels? In order to simplify matters a little, let us just look at journal articles and not at books. One possibility is to make three categories of journals, A, B, and C, where A would give you double points compared with B, and B double of C. The difficult question then becomes: how should one decide which journals to classify in which group?
[click to continue…]