according to according to a 2008 report in Vegetarian Times. Three percent of American adults, 7.3 million people, follow a vegetarian diet, and one million of them are vegans, who eat no animal products at all — no meat, fish, eggs, milk, cheese, even honey. (And 23 million say they rarely eat meat.)

No one knows how many people have tried and failed to switch to vegan or vegetarian diets, but the popularity of books like “The China Study” and the “Skinny Bitch” series suggests that interest is growing. New vegans often cite Robert Kenner’s 2008 documentary “Food, Inc.,” which offers an unsettling view of corporate farming and the toll it takes on animals, the environment and human health.

In 1912, Richard Schirrmann, a teacher, created the hostel industry at the medieval Altena Castle in western Germany; the hostel is still operating today. The first hostel in the United States opened in 1934, and now more than 4,000 are operated by Hostel International. The one at Fort Mason, with 170 beds, opened in 1980.

WHO, WHERE, WHEN

Fort Mason, which was built in the 1800s to defend the coast, was named for Richard Barnes Mason, the first and only military governor. The Golden Gate was given its name for its similarity to the Golden Horn in Istanbul; it was named before gold was discovered in California. During World War II, the fort was responsible for shipping 1.5 million soldiers to the South Pacific .

The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.

For our cash-strapped state, yesterday brought big money news: Tobacco maker Phillip Morris will pay the state $56 million as part of a settlement in a lawsuit filed 14 years ago over the lung cancer death of an Oregonian.
Under Oregon law, that cash is supposed to go into the state's crime victim's fund. That pot of money helps fund crucial services in the state like sexual assault hotlines, domestic violence shelters, and victim counseling.

But domestic violence victims advocates are worried that the squeezed state government will take much of that $56 million and divide it up between other funds, leaving sexual assault resources in the cold. The millions pouring into the fund comes just when other state services—like schools and healthcare—are worried about drastic budget cuts. It's no surprise legislators would start eyeing the cash for other important uses.

This is a windfall for the fund, but it has to be viewed in the context that domestic violence services have been severely underfunded in the state for years.

Nearly 23,000 requests for emergency shelter from violence could not be met in Oregon in 2010 says local domestic violence shelter Raphael House, and domestic violence wound up killing 49 people. Back in 2009, the Portland Women's Crisis Line had to tell 65 percent of callers that there was no shelter space for them, suggesting people fleeing violence instead hunker down in 24-hour-coffee-shops, the airport lobby, or hospital waiting rooms.

Even desperately needed new projects, like the city and county's much-vaunted one stop shop shelter that opened in 2010, have to cobble together funds from sources and wait years to see the resources get off the ground.

Raphael House, the 40-bed Portland shelter that is "always full" according to its director, is asking the state to keep the entire $56 million in the crime victims fund. Just to put the finances in perspective, Raphael House works with 10,000 clients a year on a budget of only $1.8 million, eight percent of which ($143,000) currently comes from the state.

Angry Brides, a Facebook game in which you play an angry Indian wife who bludgeons her husband with frying pans and shoes.

Totally sexist, right? But the company that made it, Indian dating site Shaadi, has discovered a loop hole for offensiveness: "creating awareness."

Full size
Shaadi says Angry Brides "creates awareness" about dowry-related abuse, which is when a groom's family abuses a bride to blackmail her family into paying additional dowry money post-nuptials. India recorded 8400 dowry-related deaths in 2010, plus "90,000 cases of torture and cruelty toward women by their husbands or family."

To express contempt for dowries, Shaadi encourages Facebook users to bludgeon their virtual husbands with virtual household objects. Here I am selecting a shoe to throw at my doctor husband. Every time I hit him, I earned money for my "anti-dowry fund," which is basically just a scoreboard, because it's not like Shaadi is giving money to charity or anything.

And so we return to the central conundrum: Does Shaadi's purported positive intent justify the ludicrously mixed message of combating domestic violence with more domestic violence? Or is everyone just a capitalist pig, and Angry Birds knock-offs are dumb, the end.

Prostitution becomes a trafficking crime when the victim is a minor, or at any age if controlled by force, fraud or coercion. Sundvall-Williams says she had to walk up and down Portland’s 82nd Avenue, a thoroughfare running through several residential neighborhoods, each night to bring home $300 or face a beating by her pimp.

The life of a trafficking victim typically involves starvation, confinement, beatings, gang rape and forced drug use. They must also contend with addiction, broken bones, concussions, burns, vaginal and anal tears, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), sterility, miscarriages, forced abortions and even contagious diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis, malaria and pneumonia. Psychological damage includes mind-body separation, disassociated ego states, shame, grief, fear, distrust, hatred of men, self-hatred, suicide and suicidal thoughts, post-traumatic stress disorder, acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, physical hyperalertness and self-loathing. Some victims suffer from traumatic bonding, a form of coercive control in which the perpetrator instills fear as well as gratitude for being allowed to live.

Intertwined with sexual trafficking are sexual abuse, drug and alcohol abuse and poverty. In a law review, Sarah Deer, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen and professor at the William Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota wrote that many women and girls are coerced into sex work—on and off reservations—by drug dealers to pay for their drugs.

This type of sexual violence targets Native women and girls due to the culture of silence in every community, the widespread poverty, and the legacy of appalling sexual violence committed by white men against Native women, says Deer. The U.S. government acknowledges that the rates of sexual abuse and rape committed against Native women and girls are higher than those for the general population.

One of the few opportunities a trafficked woman has for escape is when her pimp allows her to enter a medical facility for treatment of injuries, pregnancy or STDs. Hospitals and clinics can intervene—as they do for victims of domestic violence—though many lack the proper training to do so.

University researchers asked groups of men to read news articles suggesting that their local population had either more men or women. They were then asked to indicate how much money they would save each month from a paycheck, as well as how much they would borrow on credit cards for purchases.
When the articles suggested there was a surplus of men, the savings rate fell 42%, and the men were willing to borrow 84% more each month.
The study also found real-life evidence of this behavior. In Columbus, Ga., where there are 1.18 single men for every single woman, the average consumer debt was $3,479 higher than it was 100 miles away in Macon, Ga., where there were 0.78 single men for every woman.

Sex ratios don't affect women's financial decisions, but they do affect their expectations of how much men should spend on them, the study found. After reading an article stating that men outnumbered them, women expected men to spend more on dinners, Valentine's Day gifts and engagement rings.
In 2010, there were eight unmarried men for every nine unmarried women in the USA, the Census Bureau says. For unmarried Americans age 15 to 49, though, there were 11 unmarried men for every 10 unmarried women.
In some parts of the country, the ratio is more pronounced. Cities such as Birmingham, Ala. and Peoria, Ill. have a higher ratio of women, while Denver and Las Vegas have decidedly more men. The lopsided ratio for Sin City might disappoint male tourists, but it's a positive for the casinos, Griskevicius says. "Having more men than women might fuel gambling behavior," he says.

Rep. Ron Paul can count on support from some members of the world's oldest profession as he campaigns for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

Prostitutes at the Moonlite Bunny Ranch, a legal brothel outside Carson City, Nevada, have launched a "Pimping for Paul" campaign for the Texas libertarian, who backs their right to earn a living as working girls.

"If a client comes into the Bunny Ranch and says 'I'm pimpin' for Paul,' they're gonna have a real good time," Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch, told CNN.

The Bunny Ranch ladies are asking johns to donate money to Paul's campaign as they leave the brothel, which also backed Paul's presidential bid four years ago.

Though Paul hasn't commented on the brothel's latest drive, his spokesman told the Associated Press in 2007 that "while Paul does not personally condone prostitution, the candidate does not think it's the role of the federal government to regulate such activity."

During a 2012 GOP candidates debate in May, Paul said that states should be free to legalize prostitution, gay marriage and marijuana if they choose to do so.

Prostitution is legal in 16 counties in Nevada, which is slated to hold its 2012 presidential caucus on February 4.

Laura M. Edwards, who was executive director of the facility between June 2007 and June 2010, admitted to using corporate debit cards to embezzle what prosectors say was more than $213,000 the halfway house received under a contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
Edwards is disputing the amount of money involved, an issue that will be resolved at her sentencing on April 16.
The facility is now known as the Northwest Regional Re-Entry Center and provides residential services to federal offenders.
According to the District of Oregon U.S. Attorney's office, Edwards used the debit cards to establish an online retail business called The Adoption Shoppe, which purported to sell clothing and gift items to adoptive families. Instead, prosecutors say Edwards used the company to embezzle the halfway house funds.

LETTERS FROM MEN WHO GO TO STRIP CLUBS

is an online project that launched on October 26, 2011. It was created by journalist and blogger Susannah Breslin. Why do you go to strip clubs? EMAIL your stories. All letters and their authors will remain anonymous.

The only problem is when I witness real vulnerability.

One of my friends declined a lapdance offer because he didn't have a girlfriend at the time and didn't want to go home with blue balls. One of the businessmen was obviously lonely more than he was admiring, as naked as the woman talking with him. One groomsman was obviously far too admiring, and his apathy toward his current relationship was suddenly and vividly apparent. One stripper was obviously very keen for private performances, clearly needing the higher payout with some sense of urgency.

All of that is uncomfortable to witness, because none of it can be commented on nor helped without becoming far too intimate far too fast. The club creates the illusion of heterosexual intimacy, a coy game of it, but it refuses to actually allow or engage the real thing. So long as everyone involved simply enjoys the game, all is well; but the moment someone needs more than the game, they absolutely cannot have it, and so they stand there, open and raw and unable to share. Most of the other dudes are too engaged to notice, but the detached strippers and the detached gay man notice.

It is profoundly uncomfortable. It is the price of a fun outing, the price of not being entranced by the ladies. I see cute straight men letting their guard down and baring themselves, and there's rarely a thing I can do about it beyond sending a stripper their way. I get to feel generous and thoughtful, but I do so fundamentally at their expense.

Ultimately we're trying to build the next Visa, not the next PayPal.  We're building a human network based on how we think the future of payments will work. The current model needs to be blown up. 

Dwolla started out of my old company.  I owned a speaker manufacturing company and we sold everything directly through a website.  I got really obsessed with interchange fees and how not to pay them.  Every time a merchant gets paid with a credit card they have to give up a percentage.  In my case, I was losing $55,000 a year to credit card companies.  I felt like they were stealing from me -- I was getting paid and somebody was taking money out of my pocket. 

So I thought, how do I get paid through a website without paying credit card fees?  We pitched a bank, and amazingly enough they said, "We'll give it a shot."

This is not to say that I think people should not be allowed to express views that differ from my own, simply to point out that the big three advertising companies have no problem with other controversial campaigns.  They are clearly making decisions with who they're willing to do business - which is their right - but they've decided that the ad dollars of religious nutjobs, the police, racists, bigots, and even those who are (potentially) breaking laws are more acceptable than the ad dollars of sex workers.  (I'm pretty flattered that sex work is even more controversial to ad companies than WikiLeaks, honestly.)
In the end, the guys at Epic Step found RoadSign Adverts for us, which is a mobile billboard company.  Mobile billboards seem to be a bit of a "last resort" option for those rejected from the mainstream, and have been favored by folk like strip clubs and anti-abortion activists.  SWAAY's billboard will (assuming nothing else goes wrong) be starting later this month, and will be driving around in LA for 7 days.  I'm hoping that maybe this will be a blessing in disguise, and that the mobile billboard, because of their rarity, will garner even more attention than a standard stationary billboard.  The mobile billboards are more expensive, so what we fundraised to pay for 4 weeks of a standard billboard only buys us 7 days of a mobile one.

At 25, Deen is rounding eight years and a couple thousand titles, but he remains one of the youngest guys in the business. In a few years, his female peers will graduate to MILF roles, but Deen could spend the rest of his career performing alongside freshly minted
18-year-olds.

Several hundred men who would kill to be James Deen have gathered at the Los Angeles Convention Center for the annual Exxxotica Expo, one of the largest porn conventions in the United States. In a makeshift lecture hall, Joshua Lehman, a bald, tattooed producer from sex toy and film distributor Adam & Eve, has com- mandeered the mic at a seminar called “So You Wanna Be a Porn Star?”

A dozen men raise their hands. Yes, they want to be in porn. One woman with long brown hair, sitting quietly under a man’s extended arm, reluctantly lifts her hand. “For you, it would be easy,” Lehman announces in her general direction. “Not because you’re a hot chick, but because you’re a chick.”

“Everybody with a vagina,” Lehman continues, “you don’t even need boobs or a butt. You can be a porn star.” Actually, “you don’t even need a vagina. You could have boobs and a penis and still be a star,” he says. Most men are out of luck. “I get 300 dick pictures sent to my phone every day. I don’t want to see your penis. That’s not how you get into porn.” He advises straight men to “get the hottest bitch you can and make her your girlfriend,” then “go into a producer’s office and have her tell him that you’re the only guy she’ll fuck.”

If a woman enters the industry at 18, she can ride it for ten years, starting with solo scenes ($250) before advancing to “girl-girl” scenes ($600), then “boy-girl” arrangements ($800-$1,000). Along the way, she can secure pay bumps by exposing herself in new ways: blowjobs, anal, double penetration, gang bang. If she gains a following by her late 20s, she can keep working well into her MILF days. A man won’t make as much as a woman, but he can work every day without risk of overexposure. As far as the porn industry is concerned, no one is really paying attention to him anyway. “A male talent is a prop,” Lehman says.


All of this changes, of course, when there are no girls involved at all. Gay porn stars make “a ridiculous amount more,” Lehman says. “The best male performers make $1,000 a scene on average. Some of the male performers in gay porn make up to $10,000 a scene. That’s why guys do it.” According to Lehman, “some of the guys who do gay for pay would rather be in straight porn,” but if you turn up in gay porn, “we don’t really want you on the straight side,” Lehman says.

Lehman tells me he was recently approached by “two well-known male performers” floating a DVD of their sexual exploits with women. “The box is basically them. Huge pictures of them. In the background, there’s a couple of hot chicks, but it’s real small,” he says. “I looked at it and said, ‘Is it gay porn? Because that’s what it looks like.’” Lehman cannot imagine a future in which this rule does not hold. “Even James Deen. You may see him in every movie, but do you see him at the center of a box? I don’t think so,” Lehman says. “If you put a man in the foreground on a box cover, male and female customers are going to assume it’s gay porn.”

So what’s the affect of today’s youth culture? Not just the hipsters, but the Millennial Generation as a whole, people born between the late ’70s and the mid-’90s, more or less — of whom the hipsters are a lot more representative than most of them care to admit. The thing that strikes me most about them is how nice they are: polite, pleasant, moderate, earnest, friendly. Rock ’n’ rollers once were snarling rebels or chest-beating egomaniacs. Now the presentation is low-key, self-deprecating, post-ironic, eco-friendly. When Vampire Weekend appeared on “The Colbert Report” last year to plug their album “Contra,” the host asked them, in view of the title, what they were against. “Closed-mindedness,” they said.

According to one of my students at Yale, where I taught English in the last decade, a colleague of mine would tell his students that they belonged to a “post-emotional” generation. No anger, no edge, no ego.

What is this about? A rejection of culture-war strife? A principled desire to live more lightly on the planet? A matter of how they were raised — everybody’s special and everybody’s point of view is valid and everybody’s feelings should be taken care of?

Perhaps a bit of each, but mainly, I think, something else. The millennial affect is the affect of the salesman. Consider the other side of the equation, the Millennials’ characteristic social form. Here’s what I see around me, in the city and the culture: food carts, 20-somethings selling wallets made from recycled plastic bags, boutique pickle companies, techie start-ups, Kickstarter, urban-farming supply stores and bottled water that wants to save the planet.

Today’s ideal social form is not the commune or the movement or even the individual creator as such; it’s the small business. Every artistic or moral aspiration — music, food, good works, what have you — is expressed in those terms.

Call it Generation Sell.

U.S. births hit an all-time high in 2007, at more than 4.3 million. Over the next two years, the number dropped to about 4.2 million and then about 4.1 million.

Last year, it was down to just over 4 million, according to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

For teens, birth rates dropped 9 percent from 2009. For women in their early 20s, they fell 6 percent. For unmarried mothers, the drop was 4 percent.

Experts believe the downward trend is tied to the economy, which officially was in a recession from December 2007 until June 2009 and remains weak. The theory is that women with money worries — especially younger women — feel they can’t afford to start a family or add to it.

Former MySpace CEO Mike Jones is heading back to the startup world with the launch of a new startup incubator, accelerator and studio.

Science, based out of Santa Monica, Calif., is more like Betaworks and Bill Gross’s Idealab than it is Y Combinator or Techstars. Science focuses on three key areas: developing and incubating new business ideas, advising early stage startups and helping “Web 1.0″ companies reinvent themselves for the present.

The cost of accessing an Oregon DMV record could soon quintuple. As I outlined in a report earlier this year, the state is moving to a new model for online commerce--one that will shift the cost of conducting businesses with the state online over to consumers, and away from the state's general fund. The move could save millions of tax dollars a year. State officials have said all along that most transactions will not be assessed an additional fee--that is, if a certain license or permit costs $50, that's the price you'll pay whether you buy it through the mail, online, or in-person. But some types of transactions will incur an additional "convenience fee" for the privilege of conducting business online. The idea is that consumers--mainly businesses--will happily pay a little extra if it the process is faster and easier than, say, writing a check and putting it in the mail.

An initiative to allow grocery stores to sell liquor easily passed Tuesday night in the first round of results.

The Costco-backed I-1183 passed by more than 60 percent statewide with King, Pierce, Snohomish and Spokane counties reporting results.

I-1183 kicks the state out of the liquor business, allowed grocery stores to sell liquor and deregulated wine distribution.

Costco spent more than $22 million on the campaign, making it the largest single donor to a voter initiative in state history.

The opposition was financed by wine and liquor distributors, who fear deregulation in Washington would spread to other states.

According to new analysis of Census numbers released today, the proportion of young adults living with their parents has increased from 2005 to 2011. "The percentage of men age 25 to 34 living in the home of their parents rose from 14 percent in 2005 to 19 percent in 2011 and from 8 percent to 10 percent over the period for women," the Census reports.

And on that male prominence: Over the past year, the percentage of men ages 25 to 34 who live with their parents jumped 2.2 percent in the past year, while it actually dropped 0.8 percent for women.

We represent the 645 police officers who work hard every day to protect the citizens of Oakland. We, too, are the 99% fighting for better working conditions, fair treatment and the ability to provide a living for our children and families. We are severely understaffed with many City beats remaining unprotected by police during the day and evening hours.

As your police officers, we are confused.

On Tuesday, October 25th, we were ordered by Mayor Quan to clear out the encampments at Frank Ogawa Plaza and to keep protesters out of the Plaza. We performed the job that the Mayor’s Administration asked us to do, being fully aware that past protests in Oakland have resulted in rioting, violence and destruction of property.

Then, on Wednesday, October 26th, the Mayor allowed protesters back in – to camp out at the very place they were evacuated from the day before.

To add to the confusion, the Administration issued a memo on Friday, October 28th to all City workers in support of the “Stop Work” strike scheduled for Wednesday, giving all employees, except for police officers, permission to take the day off.

That’s hundreds of City workers encouraged to take off work to participate in the protest against “the establishment.” But aren’t the Mayor and her Administration part of the establishment they are paying City employees to protest? Is it the City’s intention to have City employees on both sides of a skirmish line?

It is all very confusing to us.

Meanwhile, a message has been sent to all police officers: Everyone, including those who have the day off, must show up for work on Wednesday. This is also being paid for by Oakland taxpayers. Last week’s events alone cost Oakland taxpayers over $1 million.

The Mayor and her Administration are beefing up police presence for Wednesday’s work strike they are encouraging and even “staffing,” spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars for additional police presence – at a time when the Mayor is also asking Oakland residents to vote on an $80 parcel tax to bail out the City’s failing finances.

So where is Wade getting all these dollar values for warm bodies anyway? Ah, that's the WhatsYourPrice.com difference: The site's raison d'etre is to get folks to set their bidding price for a hot date—to establish, through open trading, a stable market value for everyone who's seeking companionship. "Most of us are already pretty familiar with the idea of buying a first date," Wade's site states, but "an economic model of pricing and paying for a first date did not exist in the real world...until now." Basically, if you're "young and attractive" by WhatsYourPrice.com standards, you can put yourself up for a first-date auction and make some dough. And if you're a lonely guy with money to spend, you can buy yourself a first date with an insanely attractive woman. All the while, you're providing Wade with macro data on his macabre sexual-slave market. It's like some grand Nate Silver experiment, only, you know, completely douchey.

To be fair, Wade understands the sensitivity of his work. The Ash-Demi post includes this disclaimer:

While some of you may find this study to be offensive, please understand that it is not our intention to offend. The price value of an attractive male or female in this study is calculated from over 180,000 first date offers traded between members of our website. Our study is meant only to let us understand how humans, from a sociological and quantifiable point of view, evaluate each other.

The very next line of the "study" begins: "The following is the Cougar value graph and the Cub value graph." Don't try to fight it, folks: It's only science!

Sources: Robert B. Reich, University of California, Berkeley; "The State of Working America" by the Economic Policy Institute; Thomas Piketty, Paris School of Economics, and Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley; Census Bureau; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Federal Reserve

An Iowa girl who was born two years after her father died is not eligible to receive his Social Security Benefits, a federal appeals court has ruled.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision this week reversed a district court ruling that granted benefits to the girl, who is now 8 years old.

Her mother, Patti Beeler of West Branch, had filed for the benefits on behalf of her daughter in 2003 but was denied by the Social Security Administration because of a state law's definition of "natural child" and the inheritance rights of a child. Bruce Beeler died of leukemia in 2001, and Patti Beeler was later artificially inseminated with sperm the couple had decided to preserve.

Patti Beeler sued to challenge the agency's decision and won, but that was overturned by the St. Louis-based court, which ruled Monday that the girl did not satisfy requirements under Iowa's inheritance laws to be eligible for her father's benefits.

Telephone messages left Wednesday for Beeler and her attorney were not immediately returned. The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

At dispute in the case is an outdated Iowa law, which limited inheritance rights to a child who had a relationship with a person at the time of that person's death. Earlier this year, the Iowa Legislature passed a bill granting inheritance rights to children conceived posthumously, but did not make those rights retroactive. The measure was signed into law in May.

Last year the action blockbuster “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” was filmed at City Methodist, which is falling apart from the inside out. The year before, scenes of “A Nightmare on Elm Street” were shot there.

In 2010 Gary was the location for 24 movies, most of them attracted by the city’s visually arresting decay. With 26 productions already shot in 2011, this year is a record one for Gary’s nascent film industry.

“It is a significant economic development driver already, and we are still fledgling,” Mr. Clement said of the hundreds of thousands of dollars that flow into Gary from movie productions.

Mr. Clement was unable to supply specific numbers, but said the financial benefits came from film fees paid to the city, wages for locally hired security, grips, gaffers, caterers and carpenters, and money spent on accommodations for cast and crew members.

A booming industrial city through the 1950s, Gary suffered a rapid decline as steel production shifted overseas. The city’s population has declined 22 percent since 2000, to 80,294 residents from 102,746, according to 2010 census data. The median income for residents, according to the 2009 American Community Survey, is $24,821, and 30 percent of families are below the poverty line.

According to “The State of America’s Children 2011,” a report issued last month by the Children’s Defense Fund, the impact of the recession on children’s well-being has been catastrophic.

Here is just a handful of the findings:

• The number of children living in poverty has increased by four million since 2000, and the number of children who fell into poverty between 2008 and 2009 was the largest single-year increase ever recorded.

• The number of homeless children in public schools increased 41 percent between the 2006-7 and 2008-9 school years.

• In 2009, an average of 15.6 million children received food stamps monthly, a 65 percent increase over 10 years.

• A majority of children in all racial groups and 79 percent or more of black and Hispanic children in public schools cannot read or do math at grade level in the fourth, eighth or 12th grades.

• The annual cost of center-based child care for a 4-year-old is more than the annual in-state tuition at a public four-year college in 33 states and the District of Columbia.

Grim data, indeed. And there is no sign that things will get better anytime soon.

As a report issued last week by the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out: “Of the 47 states with newly enacted budgets, 38 or more states are making deep, identifiable cuts in K-12 education, higher education, health care, or other key areas in their budgets for fiscal year 2012.

Basically, symmetrical people don't have to be nice, because they can accomplish things on their own through genetic superiority — or just get people to do stuff for them because they're so hot. Of course, not all studies have found a link between symmetry and attractiveness, and attractiveness in general is a slippery and difficult thing to study. But if being hot does make you meaner, it could also make you richer — according to a study released earlier this month, men who scored low in measures of "agreeableness" — a tendency toward helping and cooperating with others — made 18% more money per year than those who scored high. For women, the difference was a more modest 5%. So being mean pays, but less if you're a lady.

Some studies show attractive people make more money than their less-attractive counterparts — could some of this be the result of their meanness? Unclear, but it's worth noting that asshole behavior is actually bad for companies — research has found that "incivility" increases employee turnover, which isn't surprising at all.

[Originally published in Game Developer magazine's free Game Career Guide issue, this annual salary survey provides a comprehensive breakdown of salaries for entry-level developers and beyond.]
Game Developer's salary survey is an objective look at who's earning what in the game industry. Developers of all experience levels and job descriptions give us information about their base salaries, benefits, and so forth. From there we can get the big picture of game developers' salaries. In this special Career Guide edition, we present to you our entry level-focused 10th anniversary salary survey.

Innovative Change$ is an emerging CDFI, founded by Innovative Housing to help struggling individuals and families manage short-term financial needs in order to achieve and maintain household stability. We do this by offering:

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Unexpected expenses or a sudden loss of income can result in crisis and overwhelming stress, often exacerbated by the use of high-cost payday loans to smooth basic consumption needs. For example, a $300 car repair may mean that a single mom with a stable job cannot get her children to daycare or herself to work on-time. This quickly results in lost wages – eventually even a lost job – and an increase in family stress. If she cannot afford to fix the car or pay her monthly bills on time, she may take out a payday loan, which pushes her into an unsustainable cycle of repetitive borrowing. Her credit and rental history are damaged, dramatically decreasing future opportunities, and she still struggles to meet her family’s basic needs.

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Credit scores dictate the cost and accessibility of services, influence assumptions about an individual’s character, and determine many asset-building opportunities. While there is no quick fix for increasing credit scores, we offer a range of tools to help people begin to repair, build and protect their credit.

Fancy Hands is a team of personal assistants ready to work for you right now. You should focus on what's important, let us focus on the rest.

In May, Kickstarter funded ten books and five additional projects in single-issue format. Vertigo solicited 7 books and 10 single issues for May. Kickstarter has the edge in books (10-7), Vertigo has the edge in overall items (17-15). There’s not a lot difference in output volume.
 
The comparison highlights the way that Kickstarter has become a much larger source of funding for comic book projects—larger than some established indie publishers. Even with a slow January, Kickstarter averaged just over $81,000 per month in funding for various comics-related projects. In May, the funding broke six figures with $102,110 split over 15 projects.

Edwards was indicted by a federal grand jury on Friday on charges that he violated campaign finance laws in an effort to conceal an extramarital affair while running for president in 2008, mainly by using $725,000 given to him secretly by Mrs. Mellon. Mr. Edwards pleaded not guilty, and the case is headed for trial. Mrs. Mellon was not named in the indictment — she was referred to as Person C — but is essentially an unindicted co-conspirator.

“It was so sad,” said Mario Buatta, a New York decorator dubbed the Prince of Chintz who knew Mrs. Mellon in earlier days. “She’s had such a clean life.”

Prosecution and defense officials said Friday that they could not discuss the legal implications for Mrs. Mellon, who is known as Bunny. Her lawyer declined to comment, but her team has said that the money was a personal gift and that she had no idea how Mr. Edwards used it.

Lawyers not involved in the case said it seemed unlikely that either side would try to compel Mrs. Mellon to appear in court, but she could be asked to provide written or video testimony.

Older people are often not perceived as reliable witnesses because their memories can be shaky or they may be easily confused on the stand. But James Reginato, a writer who visited Mrs. Mellon last year at her home in Virginia for a Vanity Fair article and spoke to her later by phone, said, “She seemed in very good spirits, and her mind definitely seemed very sharp.” He added, “She still has her sense of humor.”

After nine years in the role, actor Paul Marcarelli is breaking his silence. He said he was informed last September, via e-mail, that Verizon was taking its ads in a different direction

Marcarelli’s commitment entailed a strange combination of ubiquity and anonymity, he told the Atlantic magazine.

Among other things, his contract stipulated that he not discuss any aspect of the Test Man campaign, including the particulars of his contract.

Marcarelli said he endured years homophobic abuse from youths who drove by his Connecticut home, screaming “faggot,” but was too afraid to contact police for fear of being exposed as the “test man.”

Earlier this month, I wrote about my definition of "sex work" and why the term does not apply to everyone in the sex industry at large, or everyone who enjoys sex as a hobby.  To repeat myself, "sex work is exchanging one's own sexual labor or performance for compensation."  This means it doesn't include people like sex advice columnists, strip club owners, or dildo store clerks.  Those people are missing the whole "their own sexual labor" thing.  But, let's not forget the wannabes who are missing the whole work half of sex work.
I've apparently pissed off a sex blogger by not allowing contributions from non- sex workers for SWAAY's section of short personal stories from sex workers.  She sent in a submission about why she enjoys sex blogging, and I politely declined and told her the call-out for submissions is for sex workers only.

The videos of the Digital Journalism talks were posted! Thanks @drnormal! #pdxdjc

Officials said the event — touted in a press statement as a "circumcision party" — aims to promote safe circumcision and to offer to poor residents free surgery that would otherwise cost at least $40 in private hospitals.
As of mid-afternoon, nearly 1,500 boys aged 9 years and up had been circumcised while many were still waiting in line, city health officer Dr. Alberto Herrera said.
In the Philippines, preadolescent and adolescent boys traditionally are circumcised during summer school break from March to May. In rural areas, the surgery is sometimes performed by non-doctors using crude methods.
The city also hopes to establish a world record for the number of people attending a mass circumcision.
"We applied for the Guinness Book of World Records and we are recording everything so we can send all the data to them and hopefully it will be recognized," Vice Mayor Jose Fabian Cadiz said.

At Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, professor Marina Adshade teaches a popular undergraduate course called "Economics of Sex and Love," in which students apply the analytical and statistical tools available to economists to examine human sexuality. Topics in the course—which Marina will explore in this blog, too—include dating and marriage, promiscuity, infidelity, risky sexual behavior, the relation between sex and happiness, and markets for sex such as prostitution, pornography, and lap dancing.Economic theory suggests that sex makes people happy. Marina finds that economics plus sex is also very satisfying.  May this blog be as good for you as it is for her.

District service providers for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault will face a $3 million budget shortfall next year. According to Melissa Hook, director of D.C.'s Office of Victim's Services, the "substantial decrease in budget" is the result of several factors, including rising costs, the expiration of key federal funding, and the slow drain of the D.C. Crime Victims Compensation fund.

Hook says that her office has seen a "substantial increase in annual fixed costs to support the operations and debt service" of key victims services in the city, including "three new domestic violence shelters," the D.C. Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner program, and "24/7 crisis response to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and survivors of victims of homicide."

Meanwhile, funding from the D.C. Superior Court's Crime Victim Compensation Program has declined in recent years. In the past decade, the program has funneled $38 million in court fines and fees to help victims service providers support between 15,000 and 30,000 victims of violent crime each year. In a testimony in front of the D.C. council last week, Hook said that the "substantial revenue from the courts" helped "build capacity, introduce best practices, and establish an excellent coordinated community response to victims of violent crime in our communities."

* = not a sex worker
A Prostitute
An Escort
A Whore
A Hooker
A Streetworker
*A Madam
A Courtesan
A Dominatrix
A Master
An Erotic Masseuse
A Full Body Sensual Masseuse
A Stripper
An Exotic Dancer
An Adult Film/Porn Performer
*Someone Who Shoots, Directs, or Produces Porn
A Fluffer
*An Erotic Writer
A Phone Sex Operator
A Tantra Provider
*An Agency owner
*A Pimp
*Someone supported by A Sugar Daddy/Mama
Someone who has had sex for food, drugs, or to get the money you needed to survive
*A Clerk at a Sex shop
*An Owner of a Sexually Oriented Business
A Peep Show Dancer
A Webcam Performer
A Fetish or Nude Model
*A Fetish/Erotic Photographer
An Online Domme
*An Adult Webmaster/mistress
A Burlesque Dancer
*A Sex Advice Columnist
*A Sex Toy Reviewer
*A Sex Worker Advocate/Activist
*A Publisher/Editor of A Sexually Oriented Publication
A Hustler/Ho
*A Waitress at A Strip Club
*A Phone Operator at an Escort Service
A Fantasy Sex Provider
*A Curator at A Sex Museum
*A Sex Educator
A Sex Surrogate
*A Sex Therapist
Rent Boy/Girl

All of these dynamics are not about sex work, they're about having a job or hobby that relates to sexuality. There's a large overall sex industry - in which sex advice columnists, retail clerks, and reviewers could be included - but sex workers are a distinct subset of the sex industry.

Asked to evaluate the reasons they got married, married respondents place the greatest value on love (93% say this is a very important reason), followed by making a lifelong commitment (87%), companionship (81%), having children (59%), and, at the bottom of the list, financial stability (31%). Unmarried adults order the reasons the same way when asked to evaluate why they would consider getting married. But if economic security is no longer a key reason people marry, the lack of economic security nonetheless appears to be a key reason people don't get married. In 1960, there was virtually no difference by socio-economic status in the proclivity to marry: 76% of college graduates and 72% of adults who did not attend college were married. By 2008, that small gap had widened to a chasm: 64% of college graduates were married, compared with just 48% of those with a high school diploma or less. During this same period, the income gap between the well-educated and the less-educated -- and between the rich and poor -- also widened substantially. A 2010 Pew Research survey finds that among the unmarried, there are no significant differences by education or income in the desire to get married; just under half of the college educated (46%) and those who have a high school diploma or less (44%) would like to get married. Likewise, roughly similar shares of the unmarried who earn above and below $100,000 a year would like to marry. But the survey also finds that the less education and income people have, the more likely they are to say that in order to be a good marriage prospect, a person must be able to support a family financially.

Since 1978, the price of tuition at US colleges has increased over 900 percent, 650 points above inflation. To put that in number in perspective, housing prices, the bubble that nearly burst the US economy, then the global one, increased only fifty points above the Consumer Price Index during those years. But while college applicants’ faith in the value of higher education has only increased, employers’ has declined. According to Richard Rothstein at The Economic Policy Institute, wages for college-educated workers outside of the inflated finance industry have stagnated or diminished. Unemployment has hit recent graduates especially hard, nearly doubling in the post-2007 recession. The result is that the most indebted generation in history is without the dependable jobs it needs to escape debt.

In addition to the billions colleges have spent on advertising, sports programs, campus aesthetics, and marketable luxuries, they’ve benefited from a public discourse that depicts higher education as an unmitigated social good. Since the Baby Boomers gave birth, the college degree has seemed a panacea for social ills, a metaphor for a special kind of deserved success. We still tell fairy tales about escapes from the ghetto to the classroom or the short path from graduation to lifelong satisfaction, not to mention America’s collective college success story: The G.I. Bill. But these narratives are not inspiring true-life models, they’re advertising copy, and they come complete with loan forms.

According to research done by Babson College, “if women entrepreneurs in the U.S. started with the same capital as male entrepreneurs, they would add a whopping 6 million jobs to the economy within 5 years – 2 million of those in the first year alone.” We know that small business is the engine of job growth in the United States. Kauffman Foundation research shows that all net new jobs in the U.S. are created by firms less than 5 years old. Today female led high-tech startups have lower failure rates and greater capital efficiency than those led by men. The average venture-backed tech company run by a woman is started with one-third less capital and had annual revenues that were 12% higher than those run by male counterparts.

Yet, while women launch nearly half of all new businesses in the United States, access to capital remains largely out of reach. Of the $17.6 billion in angel investment in 2009, only 9.4% went to women entrepreneurs. This is problematic as early stage capital is often critical to keep young companies alive. Further, according to data from Dow Jones Venture Source, only 11% of U.S. firms with venture-capital backing in 2009 had current or former female CEOs or women founders. Why is this? One reason is that women don’t ask. Research shows that women are twice as likely to use debt rather than equity or self finance to get businesses going.

Another reason is that the “old boy’s network” still exists. Nearly 80% of venture capitalists are men. Women lack direct relationships with early stage funders and the ability to gain high-quality referrals. Access to early stage equity financing plays a critical role in the successful development of startups. Venture capitalists act as gatekeepers not only to funding but to introductions, partnerships, and future business opportunities. Today just 3 to 5% of female-owned companies receive venture funding, according to the Center for Women’s Business Research. Most female-run startups support the entrepreneur and their family but fail to attract capital sufficient to scale.

Every media company should be afraid of Flipboard. The Palo Alto startup epitomizes the best and the worst of the internet. The best is for the user. The worst is for the content providers that feed its stunning expansion without getting a dime in return. According to Kara Swisher ‘s AllThingsD, nine months after launching its first version, Flipboard’s new $50m financing round gives the company a €200m valuation.
Many newspapers or magazines carrying hundreds of journalists can’t get a €200m valuation today. Last year, for the Groupe Le Monde, an investment bank memo set a valuation of approximately $100m (net of its $86m debt at the time, to be precise). That was for a 644 journalists multimedia company – OK, one that had been badly managed for years. Still, Flipboard is a 32-people startup with a single product and no revenue yet.

Flipboard is THE product any big media company or, better, any group of media companies should have invented. It’s an iPad application (soon to be supplemented by an iPhone version), it allows readers to aggregate any sources they want: social medias such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or any combination of RSS feeds. No need to remember the feed’s often-complicated URL, Flipboard searches it for you and puts the result in a neat eBook-like layout. A striking example: the Google Reader it connects you to suddenly morphs from its Icelandic look into a cozy and elegant set of pages that you actually flip.

the Alberta Main Street organization is launching a street-wide campaign to tackle the problem. Graffiti has been such a long-standing issue along the popular commercial strip that few think Booker's vandalism is racially motivated.

Across Alberta Street from his business, the Community Cycling Center's mural has not been tagged but its trucks have been.

Online news consumers are heading primarily to traditional sources. The 25 most popular news Web sites in the United States, for instance, all but two are “legacy” media sources, such as the New York Times or CNN, or aggregators of traditional media, such as Yahoo or Google News. Of the roughly 200 news sites with the highest traffic, 81 percent are traditional media or aggregators of it. And some old media are seeing their overall audience — in print and on the Web — grow.

The crisis facing traditional media is about revenue, not audience. And in that crisis, newspapers have been hardest hit: Ad revenue for U.S. newspapers fell 48 percent from 2006 to 2010.

In 2010, Web advertising in the United States surpassed print advertising for the first time, reaching $26 billion. But only a small fraction of that, perhaps less than a fifth, went to news organizations. The largest share, roughly half, went to search engines, primarily Google. The newspaper industry illustrates the problem. Even though about half the audience may now be accessing papers online, the newspaper industry took in $22.8 billion last year in print ad revenue but only $3 billion in Web-based revenue.

On Friday, February 18, the US House of Representatives passed a GOP-backed spending plan that cuts all of the $317 million the feds usually give to family-planning programs. On Monday night, February 21, more than 400 Portlanders took to the streets in front of Planned Parenthood's NE Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue clinic, waving signs at rush-hour traffic and chanting, "Women's health care is under attack! What do we do? Stand up, fight back!"

Oregon has the highest per capita rate of Planned Parenthood use of any state—in 2009, the local Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette distributed 333,000 units of birth control and did 23,000 STD tests. A whopping 92 percent of their clients qualified for free or subsidized birth control under the threatened federal program.

None of Oregon's representatives voted for the spending bill, and President Obama has said he will veto the plan if it passes the Senate.

Upper-class people have more educational opportunities, greater financial security, and better job prospects than people from lower social classes, but that doesn’t mean they’re more skilled at everything. A new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds surprisingly, that lower-class people are better at reading the emotions of others.

A partial list of national foundations that fund journalism:

Rich girls will break your heart. Poor girls will take your money.

An award-winning sportswriter has pleaded guilty to running a prostitution operation, saying he needed the extra money to make up for a pay cut because of the downturn in the newspaper business.

Kevin Provencher, 52, Manchester, N. H., admitted in Salem, Mass., Superior Court Friday he recruited and received financial support from prostitutes working out of hotel rooms in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

He was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison and fined $5,000 on the prostitution charges and also for intimidating one of his hookers from testifying against him.

Provencher worked 23 years for the Manchester, N. H., Union Leader prior to his arrest in July of 2009. He is a four-time winner of the New Hampshire Sportswriter of the Year award from the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association.

Prosecutor Melissa Woodward described Provencher as a "pimp" who recruited women into prostitution, arranged for them to meet men in hotel rooms, then demanded half of their earnings plus the cost of the hotel room.

She said the women earned $240 per hour or $150 per half-hour and would pay Provencher in cash or by depositing the money in his bank account in 2008 and 2009.

Woodward said Provencher advertised his prostitution business on craigslist and other websites that feature adult sexual encounters.

Interested parties should send a 3 paragraph summary to us, and we’ll pass it on.  Paragraph one: concept and market plans; paragraph two:  team bios; paragraph three:  imagined scenarios for exit event.

Wednesday, September 26, 2007 - 2:41 PM PDT
In addition to the drug-free zone ordinance, the prostitution-free zone law also will sunset. Potter and Leonard will investigate how to increase community-based treatment services for those arrested for prostitution.
Designated prostitution-free zones include the downtown transit mall and portions of Burnside Street, the MLK/Killingsworth corridor and Sandy Boulevard/82nd Avenue.

Today, open source solutions are not only being considered, they are being implemented by large and small enterprises at increasing rates.

A bill in the state Legislature would make it legal in Washington state to pay someone to bear your child:
Jeri Chambers, a former surrogate who now operates a Portland agency called The Greatest Gift Surrogacy Center, said 80 percent of her clients are from Washington state.
And John Chally and Sandra Hodgson, attorneys who run the Northwest Surrogacy Center, also in Portland, say they plan to immediately open an office in Seattle if the bill passes.

For more than a dozen years, the team at GalTime has been writing and producing dynamic text and video content for television and the Internet. We know what Gals want to see and read when it comes to health, beauty, fashion, family, career, money and a whole lot more.

Sexual Strategies Theory, an evolutionary approach that focuses on the desire, conscious or unconscious, to pass one’s genes to the next generation. If that’s our driving impulse, women need to be choosy about their sexual partners; they’re looking for men who are likely to stick around and provide support during their child-rearing years. Men, on the other hand, have an evolutionary incentive to spread their seed as widely as possible.

For anyone that has ever dealt with taxes and tax returns, they instantly recognize that any payments toward the DJ, bouncers, and house fees/ stage fees are not part of total income. These items are tax deductible as a legitimate business expense. Some clubs will give you receipts for these items others won’t. It doesn’t really matter one way or the other as long as you keep good records. So what else is tax deductible as a stripper? A lot!
House fees Staff tips Hair extensions Makeup Hair Styling products Costumes/ dance outfits
Shoes Cab fare Tanning Personal Trainer Jewelry Vehicle mileage
Hotel/lodging Music purchases Bookkeeping services Chiropractor Stripper Pole/ lessons Cell phone
Internet service Gym membership Tax accountant Massage Therapy Meals while working Health insurance
Computer Air fare Nails Suitcases/ dance bag Dancer licenses Business cards
Printer/ fax etc Business license Digital Camera/ camcorder Office furniture Office supplies Auto expenses

And the list can go on and on, depending on where you live and what the local tax laws are in your region. One major note is that you CANNOT deduct plastic surgery as a business expense. This has been tried in court and failed to meet the tax deductable guidelines.

For your personal records you can break these items down into a few categories:

* Auto Expenses
* Equipment and Supplies
* Personal Care Expenses
* Professional Services
* Travel Expenses
* Legal and Professional fees
* Education Expenses

All of the sudden your gross take home pay has just dwindled considerably due to all the business expenses you have to pay to continue work as a professional stripper!

Unionized women earn 30 percent more than non-unionized women and have access to more benefits, such as paid leave and health insurance. An IWPR report on job retention and low-income mothers found that union membership contributed to keeping moms on the job. In 2010, across race and ethnic groups, male union membership is lowest for Asian men, but Asian women have the highest membership rate of all groups of unionized women.  Black men have the highest union membership, but black women are also more likely than white women to be unionized.  Hispanic women have the lowest rate of union membership compared to other groups of women.
Although male workers are still the majority of union membership, the gap between unionized men and women over the last 25 years has narrowed considerably, with women representing the majority of new workers organized during that time. (For more on women and unions, visit IWPR’s Women in Unions initiative page.)

(Click to enlarge)
Public sector unions like the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Teachers, however, have a majority female membership (52 percent and 60 percent, respectively), which makes the legislative outcome of public sector union bargaining power of particular interest to women workers. Furthermore, as you can see in the figure at left, women are 52 percent of the state public sector workforce and a whopping 61 percent of public workers at the local level (Figure 1).
If we focus on public sector employees at the local level, it becomes clear that women and their families will receive the brunt of the effects of these anti-union bills floating around state capitols in the Midwest. The most common occupation for local public sector women workers is elementary and middle school teachers (22 percent).  The most common occupation for local public sector male workers? Police and sheriff’s patrol officers, a group whose union representatives would be excluded from proposed legislation.

16 females head S&P's top 500 companies. women make 20 percent less than men. female CEOs making on par w/ male CEOs tho.