Ah, wage gap, sweet wage gap. It’s been awhile since we’ve seen you! It’s good to know that we haven’t forgotten about you.

The most recent development in the drama of attempting to determine whether or not men and women are paid different wages is the census’s recent finding that, among younger men and young, single, childless women, women are typically earning more than men. Fantastic news, right?! Well, don’t pull out your party pants yet. Tracy Clark-Flory on Salon.com explains why we should save the champagne for actual equality:

It does not mean that young women face no pay discrimination… We know that women make 80 cents on every dollar men make, and that the average woman in her 20s makes 90 cents on the dollar… What Chung [the president of the firm that conducted the analysis] and his colleagues have done is “isolate the segment where women have caught up with and exceeded men,” and that is young, single, childless women.
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One of Britain’s leading abortion providers has come under fire this week for offering free terminations to its staff. Marie Stopes International offers employees, their partners and children free access to terminations as part of its employee benefits package, which also includes discounted gym membership, free annual health checks and a range of leisure deals and offers.

The company’s policy on staff access to terminations has this week caused outrage among anti-abortion groups in the UK, which have branded the benefit as ‘macabre.’ According to the Marie Stopes’ website:

‘Team members, their partners and dependents will be able to access Marie Stopes International’s core services… without charge.’

Under ‘core services,’ the company lists services such as sterilisation, testing for HIV and other sexual transmitted infections, ultrasounds, family planning and abortion.

Marie Stopes International operates on a not-for-profit basis, but is given an estimated £30 million a year from the NHS to carry out abortions – though the NHS offers free abortions (subject to strict law which states that women must obtain the consent of two doctors before being allowed the procedure), Marie Stopes carries these out on behalf of the NHS in some cases. The organisation also offers private abortions for women who prefer to pay privately to terminate as quickly as possible.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the UK’s Pro-Life Alliance, has said that:

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Despite the global recession, an increasing number of parents are setting up new businesses involving a child-focused product or service which they felt was missing for them in their role as parent. A new survey of 1800 mothers, by workingmums.co.uk, found that 63% of respondents had considered setting up their own business or franchise. Though this statistic is high, it is unsurprising considering the huge success of some of these parent-driven businesses.

Alison Pinto, founder of Menus4Mums, an online service that helps busy parents to be organised when cooking, was interviewed by the UK’s Independent in a piece on the topic this week. Of her business, which was launched on the back of the economic crisis, she says:

‘I decided to make a virtue out of the recession by stressing the savings to be made by using menu plans instead of going out on a supermarket dash, especially as I base my meals around quality bargains at the supermarket. It was something I used, and thought others might find useful too.’

Online communities have also begun to emerge to support …

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A regular reader sent in this pic of a license plate frame reading “I Love My Life/As Mommy & Wife.”  She felt it was worthy of discussion, and I definitely agree. On the surface, it seems like there are two potential schools of thought in terms of this statement.

1. It is wonderful that a woman is so passionate about her family.
Speaking from experience, there is nothing more rewarding than motherhood. Nothing. I enjoy every second I spend with my children and truly think that they are the coolest human beings I know. They are funny and witty and kind and just so much fun.

Family is the most important thing, and I am so proud of it that I want to sing it from the mountaintops (or from the license plate holder of my car).

2. It’s pathetic that any woman would identify herself solely as a mother and wife.
Although I love my family and they come first and foremost, I am also proud to identify myself by my profession. I have worked very hard to establish myself in my chosen career, and I am proud …

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For, well, pretty much since its inception, online dating has endured a stigma that suggests it is reserved only for the unattractive, unlucky in love, old or perverted. However today, with nearly nine million adults subscribed to online dating sites in the UK alone, and thousands of registered online dating websites to choose from throughout the world, it has this week been suggested that this stigma has long passed its sell-by date.

It is certainly a common misconception that people who date online are ‘on there for a reason’ and are unable to hold down a relationship in ‘the real world.’ I think it’s fair to say that this definitely isn’t true in the majority of cases – almost every adult knows someone who has dated online, if not having dated online themselves. I know plenty of people, myself included, who have dabbled with online dating – and this includes some who have met their partners online, and some who have been on dates with people who have ended up as their close friends.

With both men and women working longer hours than ever before, and then having to find the time to ram in everything else that needs doing in their lives, I think it’s also fair to say that lots of perfectly eligible people simply don’t have the time to go out to find dates. Online dating solves this problem by matching these ….

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Kate Winslet announced that she would be separating from her second husband, director Sam Mendes, in March. Since then, we haven’t really heard much. I suppose it seems natural to suspect that getting divorced from the man who directed both American Beauty and Revolutionary Road, movies dedicated to the drudgery of Suburban married life, would be a messier affair. In fact, it seems like every divorce in Hollywood winds up being a PR nightmare for one or both parties.

But things have been so civil for Winslet that a lot of media outlets are speculating that it means she and her estranged husband are getting back together, though “sources close to the actress” and #10 on the list of 15 Signs of Divorce suggest otherwise. However, one article tries to argue that Winslet has just mastered the ability to “stage manage” the perfect divorce — utilizing the techniques that she picked up from her first go around with Jim Threapleton. Mendes and Winslet appear to be able to …

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In late May, the Czech Republic held its national elections. Women won more seats in parliament than ever before. But last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Public Affairs party, one of the parties represented in May’s new parliament, is selling a 2011 calendar featuring photos of some of its newly sworn-in lawmakers posing provocatively in rather revealing outfits.

The party’s somewhat racy calendar, which was first released during the election campaign, is described by the WSJ as ‘A sign of the times here [in the Czech Republic]. A new generation of Czech women is coming of age that is embracing femininity and sex appeal while at the same time fighting for, and winning, more equal treatment in the realms of business and government.’

May’s elections saw a huge percentage of women elected to parliament – the 200-person lower house now has 44 female members. However last month, as the new members were being sworn in, a member of the Civil Democrat party noticed the number of new flaxen-haired females in the house and dubbed them the ‘Blond Coalition’ – a nickname that has, rather unfortunately I think, stuck in the Czech national media.

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The US Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released a report that found a myriad of interesting nuggets of information concerning women and the wage gap. One part of the report claims that the wage disparity between men and women is shrinking with younger women. Hooray! Let unchecked equality run rampant. The New York Times reports:

The data are for all full-time wage and salary workers, and do not attempt to control for the different types of jobs that men and women enter. …women under 35 who work full-time earn around 90 percent of what their male counterparts earn. But women over age 35 earn only about 75 percent as much as their respective male counterparts.

The New York Times cites a few different reasons why this disparity might exist. Summarizing, they reason that women of an older generation might have entered the workforce at a lower wage and despite raises have never caught up, and/or women of an older generation typically were attracted into careers that were lower paying in general. I think this last point is particularly encouraging.  Whether or not the more “traditional” occupations for women (nursing, teaching, etc.) are lower paying because they are primarily comprised of women or whatever the reason, I find it encouraging that women are choosing to enter different types of occupations, as simplistic an idea as this might sound. Nothing is personally more frustrating to me than seeing women choose a career path that is “good for a woman” and not because it’s what they want.

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Forbes magazine this week published its annual ‘Celebrity 100’ list, ranking celebrities by their ability to successfully make money, generate headlines and beef up internet traffic on search engines and social networking sites.

This year, for the first time, women dominate the top ten of the list, holding six of the top ten slots. Oprah Winfrey, who earned an estimated £209m [$315m] in the last twelve months alone, was named as the world’s most influential personality. Beyonce Knowles, Lady Gaga, Sandra Bullock, Madonna and Miley Cyrus also all feature in the top twenty of this year’s list.

Taking a cursory glance at this year’s list, it would perhaps appear that women hold more sway than their male counterparts in the entertainment business. It could also be said that the list suggests that women may at last be starting to gain the levels of influence (and indeed wealth) that they deserve in this industry.

Many opinion pieces have of course emerged following the publication of this year’s Celebrity 100 and many, such as Guy Adams’ piece in today’s Independent, focus (not unreasonably) on whether the Forbes Celebrity 100 list really signals success for women.

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One of the biggest talking points in the British media over the past few years has been how well young female artists are doing in music charts and sales. Women like Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse are most certainly on top when it comes to making clever and popular music, and Fiona Sturges writes about this in today’s Independent.

Sturges questions whether these incredibly successful women artists, who are topping the charts and enjoying a new level of success on their own terms, point to a new equality in the music business. She doesn’t think so, and argues that if we look behind the success of these women, we find a different story. Beyond writing and performing music, there are myriad employees that reply on the music industry to keep them afloat – agents, managers, record label employees, PRs, radio station employees, music magazine writers … and most of them are men.

Sturges, an established music journalist, says that:

‘In my 13 years writing about music I have found myself overwhelmingly outnumbered by men in both print and at music events, from gigs and showcases to music conferences. Although the male-female ratio has improved among music writers in recent years, the most cursory glance at almost any music publication… reveals that male writers still significantly outnumber female ones. The implication seems to be that the serious business of rock and pop appreciation is still a male obsession even though the female audience [for music] very clearly illustrates otherwise.’

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The New York Times last week reported on the Pentagon policy bill containing the proposal to repeal the controversial ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in the US military. However, instead of focusing on this part of the bill, the piece focused on a lesser-known amendment that takes on another emotive issue – making abortion easier for military women in war zones.

Current US law bans abortions, in most cases, at military facilities – even if women pay for the procedure themselves. This means that serving women seeking an abortion are forced to go outside, to private hospitals or clinics, and this is pretty much impossible for most of the 100,000 American women serving overseas, especially those in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Advocates of the amendment say that the result of the current law is that military women serving overseas do not have the same access to basic health care as non-serving American women. On the other hand, opponents of the amendment believe that, because abortions would be performed in government facilities, taxpayer’s money would be helping to subsidise the underlying costs of the procedure.

According to the New York Times, supporters are ‘cautiously optimistic about [the amendment’s] chances in the full Senate this summer.’ Similar amendments have failed numerous times since the current ban was put in place in the 1990s, but obviously women have been out in Afghanistan for nine years now (seven in Iraq), and this is the first vote of its type since President Obama was elected to power.
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Today’s Daily Telegraph reports that a new study has found that two thirds of British women are ‘completely bored’ with their lives.

3000 women were surveyed – the top reason given for dissatisfaction (almost 50%) was being stuck in a routine, closely followed by a lack of a social life.

Reading the ‘top ten bores’ list, it’s clear that the majority of the reasons women gave for their dissatisfaction were linked to work, including hating their jobs, a lack of time off, keeping a home on top of paid work and the very vague category of ‘responsibilities’. A quarter of the women surveyed said they would like to walk into work and hand in their notice, and almost seven out of ten said they were sick of being short of money.

Elaine Smith, marketing manager for Florette Fruit, the company behind the study, said:

‘Women today are so busy trying to have it all – the job, the family, the social life – that somehow we’ve ended up with nothing. It is no surprise that two thirds of British women are bored with their lives and half are sick of doing the same thing day in and day out. Women have lost the get-up-and-go to shake up their lives and try something different.’

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