Speaking of Sex examines patterns of gender inequality across a wide array of social, legal, and public policy settings. Challenging conventional biological explanations for gender differences, Rhode explores the media images and childrearing practices that reinforce traditional gender stereotypes. On policies involving employment, divorce, custody, rape, pornography, domestic violence, sexual harassment, and reproductive choice, Speaking of Sex reveals how we continually overlook the gap between legal rights and daily experience. All too often, even Americans who condemn gender inequality in principle cannot see it in practice - in their own lives, homes, and work environments. In tracing these patterns, Rhode uncovers the deeply ingrained assumptions that obscure and perpetuate women's disadvantages
Women and Leadership brings together in one comprehensive volume preeminent scholars from a range of disciplines to address the challenges involving women and leadership. These experts explore when and how women exercise power and what stands in their way. This groundbreaking volume offers readers an informed analysis of the state of women and leadership and offers the most informed and current thinking on · The perils of stereotypes · The importance of leadership style · Gender differences in the decision to seek leadership roles · Lessons from women leaders · “Opt out” patterns and the need for flexible career paths · Global inequalities and initiatives · Strategies that get women to the top Women and Leadership is indispensable for understanding recent progress toward equal opportunity and the challenges that remain.
"It hurts to be beautiful" has been a cliché for centuries. What has been far less appreciated is how much it hurts not to be beautiful. This book explores our cultural preoccupation with attractiveness, the costs it imposes, and the responses it demands. Beauty may be only skin deep, but the damages associated with its absence go much deeper. Unattractive individuals are less likely to be hired and promoted, and are assumed less likely to have desirable traits, such as goodness, kindness, and honesty. Three quarters of women consider appearance important to their self image and over a third rank it as the most important factor. Although appearance can be a significant source of pleasure, its price can also be excessive, not only in time and money, but also in physical and psychological health. Our annual global investment in appearance totals close to $200 billion. Many individuals experience stigma, discrimination, and related difficulties, such as eating disorders, depression, and risky dieting and cosmetic procedures. Women bear a vastly disproportionate share of these costs, in part because they face standards more exacting than those for men, and pay greater penalties for falling short. This book also explores the social, biological, market, and media forces that have contributed to appearance related problems, as well as feminism's difficulties in confronting them. It reviews why it matters. Appearance related bias infringes fundamental rights, compromises merit principles, reinforces debilitating stereotypes, and compounds the disadvantages of race, class, and gender. Yet only one state and a half dozen localities explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The book provides the first systematic survey of how appearance laws work in practice, and a compelling argument for extending their reach. It offers case histories of invidious discrimination and a plausible legal and political strategy for addressing them. Our prejudices run deep, but we can do far more to promote realistic and healthy images of attractiveness, and to reduce the price of their pursuit
As Deborah L. Rhode explains in this wide-ranging work, the American public
has long insisted on the central importance of character, but has failed to
adequately nurture and sustain it in families, schools, law, and politics. All
too often, our understandings of character are out of step with psychological
research and fundamental values.
"Cheating is deeply embedded in everyday life. Costs attributable to its most common forms total close to a trillion dollars annually. This book offers the only recent comprehensive account of cheating in everyday life and the strategies necessary to address it across a wide range of contexts: sports, organizations, taxes, academia, copyright infringement, marriage, and insurance and mortgages"--
