The London Olympics concluded today.  For the first time, women were represented on every competing nation’s team, and the U.S. team had more women than men. Judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison talked openly about being a survivor of sexual abuse, and American soccer player Megan Rappinoe publicly announced she is gay. But these Olympics also demonstrated that we are still struggling with how to react when the people achieving these feats are women:

·         Officials considered requiring female boxers to wear skirts.  Are you kidding me? I am sure these ladies could kick ass wearing skirts, high heels, or the queen’s hat if they had to, but just because (some) women wear skirts doesn’t mean women need to wear them boxing.  You don’t see anyone making male boxers wear cummerbunds.

·         US weightlifter Sarah Robles struggles to get a sponsor.  The US top-ranked Sarah Robles had no sponsors and was living on $400 a month before the games, despite her athletic success and inspiring back story: she has Madelung’s deformity which means her ulna is shorter than normal and crooked, resulting in pain during every lift.  She is now sponsored by Solve Media. Her lack of funding highlights the difficulties that athletes in more obscure sports face in finding sponsors, especially if the athlete doesn’t look like our typical ideal of beauty.

·         Hurdler Lolo Jones gets ripped in NYTimes for having too easy a time getting a sponsor.  God forbid a female athlete should actually be good looking, controversial, and use those traits to drum up publicity necessary to get sponsorships and avoid living on $400 a day, though.  Lolo Jones was the subject of a highly critical NY Times article alleging that her fame was due to looks and public discussion of her choice to remain a virgin, rather than her athletic abilities. While it would be great to see more coverage of her teammates who medaled in the event, she placed fourth—it looks like she was pretty qualified to be at the Olympics.  It’s obvious that getting sponsorships relies not only on athletic performance but also on charisma, but it seems that female athletes get disproportionate criticism when they play the game. Lolo’s idiosyncrasies give her an unfair advantage in the media circus—but Ryan Lochte’s grill gets a pass.

·         Gymnast Gabby Douglas’s ponytail isn’t good enough.  I sometimes don’t comb my hair in the morning. Gymnast Gabby Douglas, gold medalist in the women’s all-around, hits the floor to complete some of the most difficult physical maneuvers on the planet, and it’s a travesty that more thought, time and effort didn’t go into her hair.  What, the U.S. gymnastics team didn’t want to hire Ronaldo to consult?

·         Will beach volleyball keep the bikinis?  In a number of sports, athletes compete in minimal attire for the sake of comfort and ease of movement.  When beach volleyball, whose traditional attire is obviously beach wear, allowed women to compete in more covering uniforms, an inordinate amount of attention was paid to which women would keep their bikinis. What should have been a simple choice reflecting weather and personal preferences would inevitably be viewed as a statement on gender, voyeurism, and the image of the sport.

·         IOC institutes policy of gender testing based on testosterone.  The test would only be carried out if requested by the chief medical officer of a national Olympic committee or a member of the IOC’s medical commission. They have not published an acceptable level of testosterone, and the methodology has been criticized by some doctors, as some women simply produce high levels of testosterone. Some fear that gender testing will unfairly single out athletes who don't conform to tr  Castor Semenya, a South Africa female runner whose gender was questioned three years ago and was subsequently cleared, competed and won the silver medal in the women’s 800 meter run.

This is possibly the most awesome economics paper I have read in a while, containing the most awesome graph I have seen in a long time: 

I’m a bit late responding to the whole DNC something Hilary Rosen’s statement that stay-at-home-mom Ann Romney “never worked a day in her life.”  While I understand that Rosen intended the statement to be a reference to Ann Romney’s socio-economic status, the statement was insulting to moms who work hard raising their children and managing their household.

Let’s be clear: denigrating the works it takes to raise a family and manage a household is not feminist—nor does it do anything to help mothers who work outside of the home.  Feminism is about making sure that men and women have the same opportunities.  Those opportunities should include taking care of a family. Discounting the value—and difficulty—of work in the home doesn’t do anything to encourage policies that let working parents balance their work and home responsibilities. Discounting the value of work in the home doesn’t do anything to encourage men to take on more of the work raising families.

The debate about stay-at-home-moms versus working moms is meaningless.  Raising a family is difficult, whether you are working for a paycheck to support the family, working in the home, or both, and the main factor that determines how difficult it is is economic opportunity. What matters, assuming we think the family is an important aspect of our society, is getting people to place greater value on the work it takes to manage a family, and pursue policies that lessen that burden.  

I think Michelle Obama said it best with this tweet: “Every mother works hard, and every woman deserves to be respected.”  

My last night in Ouagadougou, I enjoyed a lovely Vietnamese dinner, then went to the street to find a taxi to my hotel. It wasn’t late, but it was just starting to rain, and taxis were scarce, so I started walking in the direction of the hotel, knowing I would be more likely to find a taxi that way. 

I was crossing an intersection when a man started yelling “La blanche! La blanche” (White! White!) I decided to ignore him, as this rude by any measure.  The man then ran up behind me, and grabbed me around the neck with both arms.

I had no idea what he was doing, so to be on the safe side, I screamed.  I was able to duck out of his arms and push him away.  He didn’t put up much resistance, so I decided this was just his idea of sport. I hit him across the face, then walked away, and he let me go.

Hitting an assailant wasn’t the smartest thing—I probably should have taken off running—but I’m glad I did.  What was he thinking? He didn’t strike me as being mentally ill in any way.  The only conclusion that I can come to is that since I was clearly a foreigner, and because he thought I was physically weak, he felt like he could get away behavior that would be unacceptable in his own community.

The more disturbing thing is that, even though there were half a dozen people in the immediate vicinity, no one did anything.  No one tried to help, or even asked if I was okay.  This was shocking to me, especially because in Ghana, people would have come running from all around.  I’m not sure why no one helped—if it was because it was beginning to rain and they wanted to go home, or if it was because I was a foreigner, or if that’s just the culture in Ouagadougou.

If you are reading this and thinking, “Poor Liz—what a god-awful country!”, then I have news for you: men do stuff like this to women all the time in the United States, and they get away with it. Ask any young woman living in a city like New York or DC when the last time was that she was catcalled on the street, or grabbed in a bar or club.  Ask her if anyone said anything to the person who did it.  

The fact is, wherever conditions exist that allow people to harass others without consequence, there will be people who take advantage of that.  I think there are two cultural tendencies that contribute to those conditions:

1.       A general tendency not to get involved. This is something that you see a lot more in the west than in places like Ghana, where society values individualism less and communities are tightly-knit, creating more incentive to enforce good behavior.  But everywhere, to some extent, people are often hesitant to get involved, either because of fear, or because of inconvenience. The result is that bad behavior goes unpunished.  This is especially consequential in places where formal law and order is lacking.

2.       In-group bias.  I think that everywhere, people who are “different” are more likely to be targeted and less likely to be helped.  (They are probably more likely to be targeted BECAUSE they are less likely to be helped.)  These people might be vulnerable because they don’t speak the local language, and don’t have local social connections or social standing, but I think there is also a tendency for people who are different to be more objectified—they are seen first as “a white” or “a black”, rather than as another person.  People have less problem with them being objects for others’ amusement, and they are less concerned with their welfare than they would be someone who appears to be from their same community. There are people who would argue that in-group bias is okay or even good, and that it encourages social cohesion.  I argue that the cost of in-group bias is that the most vulnerable people are ignored when they need help. 

So if you don’t like what happened to me, I urge you to do two things. First, make yourself more of a “social enforcer.”  Being a social enforcer can be intimidating.  Natural social enforcers often have a high tolerance for stress.  But generally, a person who enforces good social behavior, for example by chiding someone who cuts in line, are viewed favorably by everyone who observes the interaction.

Second, try to fight your own in-group bias, and make an effort to reach out to those people who seem especially out of place.  If they look out of place, they probably feel that way even more so.  Treat them the way you would want your mother, or your sister, or your daughter treated if she were alone someplace strange.

Interestingly, the two things I am encouraging—social enforcement and reducing in-group bias—are typically associated with opposite sides of the political and social spectrum.  Social enforcement tends to be associated with conventional, authoritarian, and duty-oriented attitudes.  Reduced in-group bias tends to be associated with liberal, individualistic, and intellectually-oriented attitudes.  I don’t think this is an accident: all of these values are good; that’s why there are people that value them.  If we all ascribe to each other’s values a little more—if social enforcers can apply their protections to a wider group of people, and if those who care about people who are different can make themselves into social enforcers—I think we would do better at protecting the most vulnerable from those people who have no values at all.