HERSTORY

Reaching the summit, breaking barriers all the time

AFP / Lionel BONAVENTUREWorld freeride snowboard champion Marion Haerty says she struggled to gain recognition from her male counterparts

When Marion Haerty was a child, she saw her brother snowboarding and dreamed of having a go herself. Today, she is the world freeride champion and a groundbreaking star in a breathtaking sport.

"I've always liked pushing the limits," Haerty said in Andorra, where she was training.

At times the 28-year-old French rider is helicoptered to craggy summits, before strapping on her board and descending at high speed -- freeride consists of a long descent on a snowboard during which competitors have to perform tricks.

"What I like is the creative aspect, combined with pitting myself against the elements. I think of myself as being like a crayon drawing a line on a blank page, except that in this case it's virgin snow on a slope."

The mountains have been part of Haerty's life almost since she was born. She grew up near Grenoble, the host city of the 1968 Winter Olympics.

At the age of 10 she snowboarded for the first time and her talent was soon spotted by a coach from a local club. Before long she was taking part in snowboard competitions.

- Lack of recognition from men -

Her introduction to freeride came later when, in 2015, she received an invitation from the Freeride World Tour, the organisers of the world championships.

AFP / Lionel BONAVENTUREMarion Haerty says she had to put up with mocking from male members of her training group when she was starting out in the sport of freeride
"It was the start of a new adventure," Haerty recalled, smiling at the memory.

She finished third that year but she was soon on top of the podium, becoming world champion in 2017 and 2019. This year she has crushed the opposition and leads the standings by 10,000 points.

If she wins for a third time, she will become the first woman to win three world titles, joining US rider Sammy Luebke who achieved the feat for the men -- a significant milestone in a sport that until now has been dominated by men.

The road to the summit hasn't been easy for Haerty. In the early days she was subjected to the mocking of male freeriders when she fell trying out a new manoeuvre and also felt their scorn when she refused to go down a slope that they were happy to try.

"It's hard to get recognition from my male counterparts," she said.

She said she found the only way to build her confidence was by taking part in high-level competition. "It helped me to develop as a woman. To commit to something, make choices and stay true to my values. And to develop my self-confidence, even if that is something I'm still working on."

- Long way to go -

But she says there is still a long way to go to change the macho culture in her sport.

AFP/File / Fabrice COFFRINIMarion Haerty and her female competitors on the Freeride World Tour will receive the same prize money as their male counterparts this year, for the first time

"We're still mired in this culture in which women shouldn't take risks, where danger isn't a thing for women. When we do extreme sport, they make us feel that somehow we don't conform to the standards for women imposed by society."

After 12 years of existence, this is the first year that prize money on the Freeride World Tour will be equal for men and women.

Despite that victory, there is a long way still to go, Haerty said.

On the freeride circuit there are 16 women compared to 32 male competitors. Despite that "we are going in the right direction -- before, women weren't as prominent and they weren't taken seriously."

Very few women freeriders can live from the sport. "That's not a concern for the men," Haerty says.

"But sponsors are starting to realise that the world is not populated just by men and that there's a wintersports market for women out there." Haerty herself is backed by sportswear company The North Face, which is using her in a campaign about female skiers.

There are even all-women wintersports clubs -- one is called Lead The Climb.

Haerty is taking a more hands-on approach, coaching young girls at the club where she began.

"I want to tell them that they must ignore the barriers, that if they aim for the moon, they'll reach the stars -- they just have to dare to try."

US Olympic swim champion, a rape survivor, fights abuse in sport

Hand-Out/AFP / HandoutFormer Olympic swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar has dedicated her life to gender equality while fighting sexual abuse in sport

Three years after the trauma of being raped by a stranger while jogging outside a university campus, American swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar lit up the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles by winning three gold medals and a silver.

Today, the 57-year-old lawyer, mother and activist devotes her life towards the fight for gender equality and the battle against sexual abuse in sport.

In an interview with AFP ahead of International Women's Day on March 8, Hogshead-Makar says she remains "unrealistically optimistic" about her work and life in general.

"I guess you have to be in order to try to win in the Olympics and try to address sexual abuse in sports," Hogshead-Makar said. "They're pretty audacious goals."

The day before the interview, Hogshead-Makar had been working until the early hours drafting a letter to the US Congress about bipartisan legislation that calls for tougher protections for amateur athletes against abuse by coaches and employees.

Hogshead-Makar's work ethic mirrors the dedication that formed the cornerstone of her swimming career -- from the age of 11, she would spend four hours a day churning the waters of her training pool.

"My winning formula was to compete," Hogshead-Makar said. "That's how I was successful in life."

After retiring from swimming, the Iowa native channelled her energy into helping others. After becoming a lawyer, she focused on campaigning for gender equality and combating sexual abuse in sport.

- 'Profoundly broken' -

For decades, Hogshead-Makar did not talk publicly about the traumatic events that occurred in the autumn of 1981 when she was 19.

While out jogging outside the campus of Duke University in North Carolina, she was raped by a stranger. With help and support from loved ones, friends and coaches, she rebuilt her life but kept the attack private.

"I didn't talk about it for 20 years because I would have started to cry, as I healed from it," Hogshead-Makar said.

Eventually, a friend and mentor, the human rights activist Richard Lapchick, suggested that talking about the attack could help.

"He said, 'You really need to start talking about your own experience'," Hogshead-Makar said. "And he was right."

She suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"I felt profoundly broken. I felt forsaken by God. I was scared all the time," she said. "I thought that I could overcome it by willing it away."

Hogshead-Makar said she benefited from two things that many sexual assault victims don't receive.

"Number one, everybody around me believed that it happened," she said. "Number two, people believed in the depth of my emotional harm. Nobody told me, 'Just get over it'."

- Gender equity -

In her efforts to foster change in Olympic sports in the United States, she's drawing from her experience as an elite swimmer.

Hogshead-Makar believes that the nature of competitive swimming fosters equality.

"It's no coincidence that some of the best gender equity advocates come from the sport of swimming because we see equality," she said.

"I trained almost exclusively with guys. I was accustomed to having things be fair. We swam lap-for-lap and we lifted weight-for-weight."

There have however been cases of questionable behavior.

One of Hogshead-Makar's former coaches, Mitch Ivey, was suspended from the sport for life in 2013 after evidence emerged of improper sexual relationships with multiple swimmers he had coached.

"The boundaries are just not well spelled out the way they are for counselors, religious leaders or lawyers or teachers," says Hogshead-Makar, who has founded the advocacy group Champion Women.

In 2012, the United States Olympic Committee ordered all its member federations to ban intimate relationships between coaches and athletes, regardless of age and consent.

Hogshead-Makar however says the message still needs to be reinforced. She estimates that only 0.5 percent of swimmers and 1.4 percent of their parents have received adequate training to safeguard against the problem.

To raise awareness on the issue, Hogshead-Makar is working on a social media campaign with Child USA, a non-profit which works to end child abuse and neglect in the United States.

She was also heavily involved in the effort to launch the US Center for SafeSport, the first independent organization to combat sexual and physical violence in Olympic sports, which launched in 2017.

 Indian women take reins in birthplace of

 modern polo

AFP / Xavier GALIANAWomen polo players are becoming more prevalent in Manipur, considered the birthplace of the modern incarnation of the sport

Laishram Thadoi's face is a picture of concentration as she adjusts her helmet and prepares to play in Manipur, the remote Indian state regarded as the birthplace of modern polo.

The 35-year-old, who is soon wielding her mallet and riding a pony at a full gallop, is among a group of women players challenging the rural region's all-male traditions in the sport.

"If men can play polo why can't we do it too?" Thadoi, a member of the Linthoingambi Kangjei Lup Polo Club, told AFP.

"We want female junior players to think like this... We tell them 'Don't be scared, you will also play like us'."

Manipur, in the foothills of the Himalayas, has produced some of India's top athletes including champion boxer Mary Kom.

Even so, polo -- which resembles horseback field hockey, and whose Manipuri version, "Sagol Kangjei", is played with riders on indigenous ponies -- is usually viewed as a male-only sport in the state.

"It was a men's game. It was a martial arts form, it was warrior-like," Manipur Horse Riding and Polo Association president Hawaibam Deleep Singh told AFP.

"It was very brutal and rough -- like practising for a real war."

AFP / Xavier GALIANAPolo dates back centuries in Manipur

The game dates back centuries in Manipur, where it first came to the attention of British colonialists who formalised it as polo and spread it around the world.

But by the late 1980s, few men were playing it in insurgency-wracked Manipur and the ponies -- sacred in the state, and central to its culture and identity -- were dwindling in numbers as their habitat shrank due to urban development.

Fearing their beloved sport and ponies would die out, Singh and others banded together to revive the game by attracting new players.

"The natural extension... was to start with women," Singh said.

"We are working to promote women's polo and the government of Manipur now sponsors a women's polo tournament every year."

- 'Deep connection' -

The involvement of female players was intertwined with the survival of the ponies, which experts feared were on the brink of extinction.

AFP / Xavier GALIANAManipur ponies are regarded as sacred in the state

The ponies were once worth next to nothing but as more women started playing, demand rose and their value increased.

Singh said some of the women have also become experts at caring for the animals, and rescue them from accidents like falling into construction pits and drains.

"Sometimes when we can't save them they die. It's very sad, we cry," said Khundongbam Habe, who with her sister cares for more than 40 ponies.

"You wouldn't believe how much we love the ponies. We live with them from morning till night every day and they are like a part of us.

"We have this deep connection with them."

Polo is a rich man's game in other parts of the world but in Manipur, it is integral to regional traditions and is embraced by all levels of society.

AFP / Xavier GALIANAThe female players also play a central role in caring for the ponies

The women's involvement flies in the face of the usual expectations in Manipur that they should primarily be caregivers.

Thadoi is a mother of two and works as a PE teacher in the state's sports department, as do the Khundongbam sisters.

Teammate Okram Ashalucky, 23, who is an accountant, said her father initially did not want her to pick up the sport, fearing she would get hurt.

"But still we are working hard and playing with courage and belief that we will play better than men," she said.

5MAR2020

   

Civil rights: The road to Bloody Sunday began 30 miles away

By GARY FIELDS

1 of 16
FILE - In this March 1, 1965, photo, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. leads a procession behind the casket of Jimmie Lee Jackson during funeral rites at Marion, Ala. From left, John Lewis, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, King and the Rev. Andrew Young. In 1965, Jackson was fatally shot at a protest in Marion. It was that killing that sent hundreds of people to Selma for a march at the Edmund Pettus Bridge two weeks later. (AP Photo/File)

MARION, Ala. (AP) — Della Simpson Maynor remembers the mounted police officer cracking her elbow with a baton. She recalls the panicked marchers unable to escape the onslaught, and the scuffle between officers and a young church deacon who was trying to  protect his mother and grandfather. Most of all, she remembers the gunshot.

Two weeks before Bloody Sunday — the clash in Selma on March 7, 1965, that helped propel passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — there was a march in this small town 30 miles away.

What happened in Marion is now a less-familiar episode in the civil rights movement, a footnote in the textbooks. But the blood spilled here would send hundreds of people from Marion and the surrounding county to Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where history was made.


“Starting the story in Selma is like reading a book by starting in the middle and not going back to the beginning so you can get the total picture of what actually happened in 1965,” said Perry County Commissioner Alfred Turner Jr. “Without the events occurring in Marion, there’s no way you would have gotten the same results or the optics of Bloody Sunday.”

The protest in Marion was sparked by the arrest of a minister who was leading efforts to register black people to vote. It ended with the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old black church deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by a state trooper.

As the 55th anniversary of Bloody Sunday approaches, people here say they want the full story remembered.

This undated photo provided by the family of Jimmie Lee Jackson shows him. (Courtesy of the Jimmie Lee Jackson Family via AP)

___

The road to Marion, and eventually to Selma, began at the White House months before.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, his lieutenant Andrew Young and other activists sat down with President Lyndon Johnson after passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Johnson “told Dr.  King, `I know you need voting rights. I wish I could do it, but I just don’t have the power,’” Young recalled, adding Johnson seemed depressed.

When they left, King said, “We’ve got to figure out how to get the president some power,” according to Young, who would go on to become a congressman, Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador. “I said, `That Nobel Prize you won didn’t come with an army.’”

King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference chose to throw its support behind the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and local groups that had been focusing on voter registration in Alabama, where they were holding protests, sit-ins and boycotts.

The Rev. James Orange of the SCLC organized protests in Marion and Perry County, and hundreds of people were regularly arrested and jailed. When students began skipping school to join the marches, authorities arrested Orange on Feb. 18, 1965, for contributing to the delinquency of minors.

The Rev. James Orange, right, and Obang Metho pray after helping to lay a wreath at the tombs of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and his wife Coretta Scott King at the King Center for non-violent Social Change in Atlanta on Jan. 12, 2007. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)


Former Perry County Circuit Clerk Mary Moore, a second-grader at the time, said the arrest was hypocritical on the part of the white authorities, noting that black students back then often missed school because farmers needed them to pick cotton.

Rumors circulated that Orange would be lynched behind bars. That was by no means a far-fetched fear.

“Black folks in jail ended up dead. That’s the way it was then,” said 83-year-old Elijah Rollins, then owner of one the town’s funeral homes. ”It was just tradition.”

Townspeople planned a night protest march from Zion Methodist Church to the jail on the next block. State and local police were waiting for them outside, where the streetlight was either shot out or turned off. With darkness came chaos.

Rollins had skipped the church meeting but heard the commotion, and when he went outside, “a lot of people were getting the hell beat out of them.”

Elijah Rollins, eye witness to the 1965 death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, recounts the events of that day Jackson was killed in Marion, Ala. (AP Photo/Julie Bennett)

Maynor, then 14, watched as a pastor started off the protest by kneeling to pray, as was customary. Police officers told him to get up and clubbed him when he didn’t, she said. “When I saw that, I was terrified,” she recalled. Seconds later she was hit as she raised her arm to protect her head. An officer on horseback “was whaling down on me.”

“They didn’t know what your age was. They didn’t care. They swung at everybody,” she said.

Somewhere in the melee, Cager Lee, 82, and his daughter Viola Jackson were attacked by police. Lee’s grandson, Jimmie Lee Jackson, came to help them and grappled with officers inside a local hangout, Macks Cafe.

“A few minutes later you heard the gunshot,” Maynor said.

Jackson had a stomach wound and was taken to the black hospital in Selma, where he died eight days later. Rollins, who heard him screaming in pain two days before, picked up the body.

SCLC and local leaders began talking almost immediately about taking his body from Marion to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery, but that idea was abandoned. They decided to lay Jackson to rest at a Marion-area cemetery at a funeral attended by King himself, and later march to the capital from Selma, a more logical staging point.

Demonstrators walk to the courthouse behind the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Montgomery, Ala. The march was to protest treatment of demonstrators by police during an attempted march. At front and center of march in white shirt is Andrew Young. (AP Photo/File)

“We will take this problem to Montgomery and leave it on Wallace’s doorstep,” King told Young, referring to Alabama’s arch-segregationist governor, George Wallace.

Plans were made for the 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, but on the day chosen, King was back home in Atlanta, and the federal observers who normally shadowed him and presumably would have served as a deterrent against violence weren’t there when hundreds of marchers with backpacks gathered at the bridge.

State troopers and local police were waiting for them and attacked with clubs and tear gas.

 A terrified Terrance Chestnut, 6 at the time, was there with his father, Selma civil rights attorney J.L. Chestnut Jr.

“I saw a cop hit a guy across the jaw with a billy club. I could hear the crack,” he said. “It was a really bad scene, something I don’t care to remember but something I can’t erase from my mind. “

The TV footage and other images from that day shocked the country and helped lead to the landmark federal law protecting the right of African Americans to vote.

The Marion marchers would not recognize the community leadership now.

Retired Alabama state trooper James Bonard Fowler, center, leaves the Perry County Sheriff's Office after turning himself in Marion, Ala., for the shooting death of Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965. (AP Photo/Rob Carr)

The state trooper who shot Jackson, James Bonard Fowler, was prosecuted decades later by Perry County’s first black district attorney. Fowler pleaded guilty in 2010 to manslaughter and served five months in jail. The mayor, police chief, sheriff and numerous other public officials in Marion and Perry County also are African American.

A marble monument to the civil rights movement has been erected in front of Zion Methodist with the names of the people who participated in those protests. The county jail where Orange was held is closed, but there are plans to turn it into a museum. On the courthouse square is another monument, telling Jackson’s story and adding Marion to the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail. It was put up in 2015.

In a letter to the Department of Interior supporting Marion’s inclusion, Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama cited the role Jackson’s death played in the Selma march, saying that nearly 300 of the more than 500 people who participated on Bloody Sunday were from Marion.

“They paved the way and gave the push to change the world,” said Marion Mayor Dexter Hinton.

Jamida Orange looks around the Perry County Jail cell in Marion, Ala., where her father, the Rev. James Orange, a project coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, was held in 1965 after his arrest while organizing a voter registration drive. (AP Photo/Julie Bennett)

In the years afterward, Jackson’s mother “was never right again after Jimmie was killed,” said his cousin Fairest Cureton, 63.

“Jimmie was one of the nicest, most mannerable persons that I knew. He always had a smile on his face,” said another cousin, 76-year-old Julia Cash, “and what was most impressive is he always took time for older people.”

In fact, according to his family, Jackson was too sick to come to the church meeting that night in Marion but drove his grandfather and mother there and was waiting to take them home.

As for Orange, he went on take part in the Bloody Sunday march and spent his life fighting for civil rights and others causes, believing in “this thing called equality,” said his daughter, Jamida Orange. He died in 2008.

“If anybody tells you it was anything but the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson that provoked that Selma-to-Montgomery march,” she said, “they are doing a revisionist history.”

The family of the Rev. James Orange, a project coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, pose for a photo outside the Perry County jail in Marion, Ala. (AP Photo/Julie Bennett)

___

Associated Press researchers Rhonda Shafner and Randy Herschaft in New York contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through the Religion News Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Whither Boeing? Tough times persist one year after crash

by Luc Olinga

Chicago-based Boeing is at a crossroads, caught between cutting costs or letting engineers take the lead

One year after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX that killed 157 people and triggered the worst crisis in Boeing's history, the aviation giant is at a crossroads.

The MAX remains grounded worldwide and, after a leadership shakeup, former employees and analysts say the Chicago-based company must reform to stop such disasters from happening again, but has yet to articulate how to do so.

"They have to decide what kind of company they want to be," Stan Sorscher, a retired engineer and union leader, told AFP.

The choice, Sorscher said, is between being a company where cutting costs is key, an approach favored by Wall Street but criticized after the MAX debacle, or one in which Seattle-engineers and their strict procedures take precedence over profits.

Fundamentals and values

In December, Boeing fired CEO Dennis Muilenburg and General Counsel Michael Luttig, whose responses to the MAX grounding beginning on March 13, 2019 were seen as inept.

The manufacturer has also separated the roles of CEO and chairman of the board of directors.

David Calhoun, the new boss, has set out to appease the demands of both the company's investors and its engineers.

He went to Seattle in January a week after taking office to see the engineering teams and other employees, telling the engineers to go back to the drawing board for Boeing's next aircraft the NMA, New Midsize Airplane.

To appease the markets, he compensated shareholders with a $1.2 billion fourth-quarter dividend despite the company's making a loss in 2019.

Calhoun has been on Boeing's board of directors since 2009, and those who know the company wonder whether he is the man to change it.

"Everyone at the board of directors comes from that financial tradition of cost cutting. I don't expect David Calhoun to change," Sorscher said.

Addressing the board's culture is key, Scott Hamilton of Leeham said, because "the culture of prioritizing shareholder value and cost-cutting starts at the board of directors."

And the body's members aren't necessarily there because of their technical expertise, said Richard Aboulafia, an expert at Teal Group.

"There are a lot of people who don't know the industry but who just are there because they have political power," such as former US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley.

Of the 13 current board members, only one is an engineer by training.

"It's not easy to change the fundamentals and values of an organization," said Michel Merluzeau of Air Insight Research.

Inquiries

Cost reduction became an important issue within Boeing after its 1996 takeover of rival McDonnell Douglas, experts told AFP.

"The 787 program was dreadful. It was our first model in the new culture," an engineer said on condition of anonymity. "Our supervisors kept asking, 'Why are we doing this? Is there something we can't do to save costs?'"

Jim McNerney, a former General Electric executive who was appointed CEO in 2005, fortified this culture during his 10-year reign.

Boeing saw its share price rise from $64.68 in 2005 to $138.72 in 2015. The firm paid out $78 billion to shareholders over the last 15 years, compared to the 11 billion euros ($12.3 billion) paid out by Airbus, Bank of America calculated last year.

After the crashes in Ethiopia and another in October 2018 in Indonesia that killed 189 people, Boeing said in a statement it carried out an "independent review" of its procedures and created a body to look into "cases of undue pressure and safety concerns raised by employees."

The company "initiated reorganization of the engineering function to sharpen its focus on customer and operational priorities, resulting in an even greater emphasis on safety," it said in a statement.

Boeing faces further scrutiny: the Department of Justice wants to know if it encouraged employees to hide problems encountered during the development of the MAX.

Internal communications released in January implied such conduct.

"I still haven't been forgiven by God for the covering up I did last year," an employee wrote.
New CEO tells staff Boeing must be 'transparent'

© 2020

WHY JOE BIDEN WILL PICK MAYOR PETE FOR VP

Biden acknowledged the "bittersweet" moment for supporters of Buttigieg, whom he described as "a man of enormous integrity."

Biden said Buttigieg "reminds me of my son Beau," who died of cancer in 2015.

"It's the highest compliment I can give any man or woman."

https://www.afp.com/en/news/3954/buttigieg-endorses-joe-biden-president-doc-1pj6i12

Lampton International wins $7.9M for transport of decommissioned reactor


This 2016 photo shows the B reactor at the Hanford site in Washington state. This week the Department of Defense awarded a $7.9 million contract to Lampson International for the transportation of decommissioned reactor packages to a burial trench at Hanford. Photo by vonguard via Flickr

March 4 (UPI) -- Lampton International was awarded a $7.9 million contract for land haul services work for the Navy, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.

The contract funds the off-load, transport and placement of defueled, decommissioned reactor compartment disposal packages from a barge at Port of Benton in Richland, Wash., to a burial trench at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford site.

Lampson International's website describes the company as "a worldwide leader in the Heavy Lift and Transport industry for over 70 years."

The Kennewick, Wash.-based company operates conventional cranes as well as proprietary heavy lifting and transportation equipment, created for use at nuclear construction sites, including nearby Hanford.

The Department of Energy used the Hanford site for the production of nuclear weapons for five decades.

The site was decommissioned in the late 1980s, but the DOE still stores and treats nuclear waste in tanks at Hanford, which is considered one of the most contaminated sites in the world.

In February the Department of Energy determined three contaminated structures at the site could collapse and release radioactive contamination.

Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funding in the amount of $987,730 will be obligated at the time of the award, according to the DoD.

The contract was awarded through a competitive bidding process, with three bids received.

Work on the contract is expected to be completed by March 2025.

In gender discrimination, social class matters a great deal

by Catherine Harnois, and Matthew Andersson, The Conversation

The Harvey Weinstein guilty verdict is a victory for the #MeToo movement. "Today is a powerful day & a huge step forward in our collective healing," wrote the actress Rose McGowan on Twitter.

Still, sexism is pervasive in American culture. About 40% of U.S. women say they've experienced gender discrimination at work. Women's work is often undervalued and underpaid. And female job candidates are frequently subjected to extra scrutiny during the hiring process, and have lower chances of landing the work they deserve.

We are scholars who study how conditions in the workplace can contribute to health inequities and gender discrimination.

Research shows that sexism takes a large toll on women's health, but women work at a variety of jobs where hours, expectations and cultures vary widely. While the Weinstein verdict may acknowledge the injustice of criminal sexual acts—and by extension, acknowledge the entire #MeToo movement—holding him to account took the efforts of more than 80 women, multiple investigative journalists and significant resources to pay attorney's fees. For women without such resources, successfully challenging sexism can be much more difficult.

Level of education makes a difference

Our recently published study used 12 years of data from the General Social Survey, or GSS, to look into workplace discrimination in the U.S. – and just as critically, how that discrimination affects women's health and well-being.

Specifically, we wanted to know if women's levels of education influence whether they experienced gender discrimination at work. In the 1980s, the number of women earning college degrees surpassed men. Since then, women have obtained advanced degrees at record rates. We wondered if women's educational achievements altered their chances of encountering sexism at work. And because higher education generally opens the door to more financial and social resources, we wanted to know whether increased education helps women deal with the negative consequences of discrimination.

The findings

In the GSS, about 10% of women reported gender discrimination in their current job. Consistent with other research, women with higher levels of education reported higher rates of discrimination. Among those with master's or doctoral degrees, it's nearly 13%; for women with less than a high school education it's 7%.

Why the difference? The most powerful explanation: highly educated women working in high-paying, professional jobs are more likely to work alongside more men. And women in those contexts are more likely to be targets of gender-based discrimination and harassment.

Another reason: Women with less education typically hold less prestigious jobs, which offer fewer opportunities for raises or promotions. Trapped on the "sticky floor" of low-wage service or retail work, these women may not even have opportunities to collide with the glass ceiling. And they might recognize sexism less often simply because traditionally feminine traits—caring or deferring to others, for instance—are sometimes required of the job, expected or even taken for granted.

Just as critical: The GSS data shows gender discrimination is a source of stress and illness. We found that women who perceive discrimination experience lower self-reported levels of happiness, job satisfaction, sleep, mental health and overall health.

Lower-educated women may report less discrimination, but that does not mean all is well with them. Quite the opposite—we found that women in less-valued jobs actually show some of the largest health harms from discrimination.

On some level, that makes sense. Those with more education typically have greater resources for coping with stress. Those resources include higher earnings, greater social support and better health insurance coverage. Also, the data does not distinguish between degrees of discrimination. Women with less education might experience more severe or hostile forms of sexism, while women in better-paying jobs may face more inequality due to missed promotions or raises, for example.

Gender discrimination is unfair, illegal, bad for the economy and a public health issue. It hurts everyone, but it is much more harmful for poor and working class women. These findings should concern anyone interested in advancing health, well-being and social justice. And really, shouldn't that be all of us?High levels of sexism fuel poor mental health among women

---

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Study find delta helps to decrease the impact of river flooding

by Dauphin Island Sea Lab

A ground-level view of the Tombigbee-Alabama Delta. 

Credit: Steve Dykstra, Dauphin Island Sea Lab

Most coastal cities and ports face a double threat from storm surge and river flooding. Infrastructure development along waterways and sea-level rise increase vulnerability for these communities. In a recent publication, The Propagation of Fluvial Flood Waves Through a Backwater-Estuarine Environment, historical data is examined to determine how to reduce the risk of coastal river flooding to communities.

Usually, in rivers, large flooding events move from upstream to downstream faster than small events. This study identified a different model by tracking flooding events as moved from the river to the coastal ocean. The river delta, which is common in many natural systems, turned out to be very important for understanding when and where flooding is likely to happen.

Using years of observations (in some cases 9 decades of data), this study found that the Tombigbee-Alabama Delta (also known as the Mobile-Tensaw Delta) delays and reduces flooding for cities along the delta and bay. Amazingly, this effect is largely caused by the vegetation that naturally occurs in the delta.

Most of the delta is a densely packed tupelo-bald cypress swamp, supporting the most biodiverse location in temperate North America. For large events, the delta swamp acts like a sponge quickly absorbing the initial floodwaters, and then slowly releases the water back to the main rivers. This gives communities more time to prepare and reduces the risk of river flooding overlapping with a storm surge during a hurricane. The slower release of water from the delta also slows the impact on the bay, delaying the initial flushing while also keeping the salinity low for a longer period of time. In contrast, smaller flooding events moved downstream faster. This occurs because smaller flooding events remain in the confines of the river channel, where they are not impacted by the swamps of the delta.

These findings indicate the intensity of coastal flooding can be decreased and provide more time to prepare by allowing inland regions of rivers to flood and/or by managing vegetation type, both of which reduce the downstream height of water.

NASA prepares for new science flights above coastal Louisiana

---

More information: S. L. Dykstra et al, The Propagation of Fluvial Flood Waves Through a Backwater‐Estuarine Environment, Water Resources Research (2019). DOI: 10.1029/2019WR025743

New model improves management of wetland, floodplain and river habitats

by Utah State University

USU researchers developed a model that can help improve wetland and river habitats.  

 Credit: USU

Wetlands, floodplains and aquatic habitats are some of Utah's most important ecosystems. They are home to many bird, plant and fish species, and they provide unique outdoor recreation opportunities.

But in recent years these habitats have faced mounting pressure from encroaching land use and increased demand for water. Now researchers at Utah State University are developing new tools that help preserve and increase the area and quality of wetland, floodplain and aquatic habitats.

USU Associate Professor David Rosenberg and Ayman Alafifi, a water resources engineer at Brown and Caldwell, have developed an innovative computer model that helps water and wetland managers make better, data-based decisions. Their work was recently published in the journal of Environmental Modelling and Software. The study is part of a multi-year research effort focused on creating more effective habitat management tools.

The Watershed Area of Suitable Habitat systems model, known as WASH, takes hydrologic, topography, ecological and management data and helps managers identify when, where and how to allocate water, financial resources and vegetation management to improve the area and quality of the three habitat types. Recommendations are subject to constraints, including water availability, vegetation growth, infrastructure and existing demands.

"It's important to manage water and vegetation together in these areas," said Rosenberg. "Managing water and vegetation together helps us identify synergies and trade-offs across the three habitat types."

Rosenberg and Alafifi recently tested the model along the lower Bear River in Northern Utah, the largest source of water to the Great Salt Lake. The results show potential to increase aquatic habitat area during all months of the year, an increase in floodplain habitat during spring and summer, and an increase in wetland habitat during critical summer months when water is most scarce.

"These habitats and their well-being affect many residents in Utah because Utahns like to fish, hunt, bird and recreate," said Rosenberg. "People value these outdoor areas and want to see them improved."

Rosenberg and Alafifi worked in collaboration with a group of stakeholders, including the Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited, PacifiCorp, Bear River Land Conservancy and Cache County. These stakeholders gave researchers information about the habitats, shared water and vegetation management on the river and provided feedback on model results.

Researchers develop model to improve arid-region wetlands

---

More information: Ayman H. Alafifi et al, Systems modeling to improve river, riparian, and wetland habitat quality and area, Environmental Modelling & Software (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.envsoft.2020.104643