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2014’s Best and Worst States for Women’s Equality

Julie Kmec
Julie Kmec

Women’s rights in the United States have made leaps and bounds since the passage of the 19th Amendment. Yet many women today still struggle to crack the proverbial glass ceiling. And it doesn’t take a feminist to convince anyone that the gender gap in 21st-century America remains disgracefully wide. In 2013, the U.S. failed to make the top 10 — or even the top 20 — of the World Economic Forum’s list of the most gender-equal countries.

Participating in a Q&A about workplace inequality, Julie Kmec, professor of sociology and Edward R. Meyer Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts, said women can be proactive by promoting their attributes and successes. When a woman encounters a situation she deems unfair or unequal, she should not hesitate to (professionally and armed with details and facts) inquire why she was overlooked, Kmec said.

Learn more about the gender gap problem and solutions

Mormons discuss Book of Abraham translation

Armand Mauss
Armand Mauss

A nearly 3,000-word article posted recently on the website of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) says the Book of Abraham is inspired scripture and probably not a literal translation from ancient Egyptian scrolls by Mormon founder Joseph Smith.

The essay marks a departure from past explanations by LDS officials and embraces the widely-held view from religious scholars and historians that Smith’s work isn’t a direct translation, said Armand Mauss, a retired professor of sociology and religious studies at WSU.

“It is an official recognition — even a concession — that Joseph Smith could not, and did not, ‘translate’ any scriptures in the literal, scholarly sense that is usually implied by the term ‘translate,'” Mauss said.

The article recognizes that it’s impossible to know how exactly Smith used the papyri to write the Book of Abraham. There were no eyewitnesses to the translation process, and only fragments of the scrolls exist today, the article says. It notes that Smith never claimed to know the language it was in.

Read more about the church’s essay

A Booming Business: Using Jailed Migrants as a Pool of Cheap Labor

Clay Mosher
Clay Mosher

As the federal government cracks down on immigrants in the country illegally and forbids businesses to hire them, it is relying on tens of thousands of those immigrants each year to provide essential labor — usually for $1 a day or less — at the detention centers where they are held when caught by the authorities.

This work program is facing increasing resistance from detainees and criticism from immigrant advocates. In April, a lawsuit accused immigration authorities in Tacoma, Wash., of putting detainees in solitary confinement after they staged a work stoppage and hunger strike.

Detention centers are low-margin businesses, where every cent counts, said Clayton J. Mosher, professor of sociology at WSU Vancouver, who specializes in the economics of prisons. Two private prison companies, the Corrections Corporation of America and the GEO Group, control most of the immigrant detention market. Many such companies struggled in the late 1990s amid a glut of private prison construction, with more facilities built than could be filled, but a spike in immigrant detention after Sept. 11 helped revitalize the industry.

Read more about detained immigrants, working for the United States in The New York Times (subscription required)

Senior wins Boren Award to study Mandarin in Taiwan

Thomas G. Taylor, a senior studying social sciences through the WSU Global Campus, has received a Boren Scholarship from the National Security Education Program (NSEP) to study the Mandarin language in Taiwan during the 2014-15 academic year.

He is one of 165 Boren recipients out of 868 applications from students in 38 disciplines nationwide. The new Boren Scholars represent 25 disciplines at 90 institutions in 36 states.

Taylor’s degree program includes concentrations in political science, sociology, and history.

He is WSU’s 13th Boren Scholar since 2001; the designation is for awardees who are undergraduates. WSU has also had two graduate student Boren Fellows since 2000.

NSEP reports that among this year’s winners, China is the most requested destination and Mandarin the second most popular language.

Learn more about this distinguished scholarship and others

Women Are Not Men: A New Freakonomics Radio Podcast

Jennifer Schwartz
Jennifer Schwartz

In honor of National Women’s History Month, Freakonomics rebroadcast an exploration of several ways that “Women Are Not Men.” It looks at how the gender gap is closing, and how it’s not. Examples include the gender gap among editors of the world’s biggest encyclopedia, and the “female happiness paradox.” WSU associate professor of sociology Jennifer Schwartz talks about one of the biggest gender gaps out there: crime. Which begs the question: if you’re rooting for women and men to become completely equal, should you root for women to commit more crimes?

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Read the transcript