Gender

Recently, I heard about a girl in New Jersey trying to petition toy maker Hasbro into making a gender-neutral version of the Easy-Bake Oven for her 4-year-old brother. You see, Hasbro has been marketing the kitchen set, which kids use to bake cookies and cakes using a light bulb as a heating element, primarily to girls for years. All the packaging and promotional materials featured girls, and the ovens were only made in pink and purple. McKenna Pope has collected more than 45,000 signatures on her petition on change.org since Dec. 3, and has the support of celebrity chefs Graham Elliot and Kevin Gillespie.

Woman who accused Clarence Thomas of harassment talks about politics of high court picks at UCI.Anita Hill, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, spoke at UC Irvine on Wednesday evening as part of the campus' 21st annual Rainbow Festival. In her speech, which lasted about an hour, Hill touched only momentarily on her experiences with Thomas and her time in the public eye 14 years ago. Most of her presentation, delivered to a packed room in the Humanities Instructional Building, focused on racial and gender politics on the Supreme Court and President Bush's current mission to replace retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Deirdre Newman A UC Irvine Graduate School of Management professor has been honored with an endowed fellowship in her name courtesy of two former students. Judy Rosener, an acclaimed expert on gender differences in the workplace, received the honor in late December. Richard and Darcy Kopcho, who graduated from the school in 1980, donated $200,000 to the business school for the endowment. In addition, another alumna, Martha Newkirk, started a small committee to raise another $200,000 for the fellowship.

The English language is flexible, forgiving and fun. But don't tell that to some people. There's a large contingent of sticklers who think that every language choice has just one right answer. Many are victims of superstitions that ran rampant in educational circles in the 1950s and '60s — mythical laws like "you can't end a sentence with a preposition" and "it's wrong to split an infinitive. " Most of the prohibitions popular in those days were pure superstition, including the aforementioned.

After an unprecedented victory in last year’s election and a historic presidential inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, Barack Obama’s first address to both houses of Congress can also be recorded as memorable. The president delivered another powerful speech conveying a patriotic and a unifying message to captivate Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. But that wasn’t it. The magical moment traveled around the world through the Internet and moved mountains without even showcasing a Martin Luther King-like speech.

Once there was a man who did not allow women on his team when they climbed Mt. Everest. He said they weren?t strong enough and lacked the leadership abilities to make it. In response, American mountaineer Arlene Blum organized a group of 10 women to reach an arguably more difficult summit, Annapurna. On Monday, Nov. 19, stories like Blum?s will be the focus of Vanguard University?s Center for Women?s Studies Day on campus. The day will kick off with a silent auction at 8 a.m. that lasts until 6 p.m. Participants can donate items to auction off or bid on the prizes any time throughout the day. The university?

My hunch is this column’s going to bring me some trouble. But the subject is just too fascinating to let pass. I witnessed a phenomenon last week on my way back to the home fort following another grinding day in the coal mine. Columns of women — a collective demographic of metropolitan hotties in their late 20s to refined and tailored business women just older than 40, it seemed — were surging in unison toward the cinema on Newport Center’s outer ring. Some strode confidently in strappy heels and in dresses with elevated hemlines and necklines finishing up somewhere near the equator.

As I perused my accumulated Daily Pilots after a weeklong vacation, I found several very interesting articles and columns -- some very fortuitously juxtaposed -- that require my response. I was delighted to see Byron de Arakal's May 29 column summarizing the probable candidates for City Council in November (Between the Lines, "Early handicapping in Costa Mesa council race"). I was especially encouraged by his inference that Councilman Gary Monahan may, in fact, reconsider his plan to not run again.

On a recent business trip to Philadelphia, I was standing at the reception desk of the downtown hotel I was staying at getting directions one evening to Citizens Bank Park to see the Phillies play. In the middle of my conversation with the hotel employee, she stopped, looked over my shoulder and said to someone, "Are you the cab?" Apparently, before we started our conversation, a guest had ordered a cab and was waiting nearby for it to arrive. After she asked the question, I turned around to see whom she was addressing.

Every summer, across the country, high school boys line up in the heat in cleats and clothes made for muddying. They run countless drills, endure merciless barking from coaches and find themselves nightly nursing sore muscles and bones. They eagerly subject themselves to abuses called two-a-days and hell week . It’s no different in Orange County. Before practicing in full pads, the boys run plays in shorts, T-shirts, and helmets, resembling sweaty, panting, life-size bobble-head dolls.

Over the last several years, the phrase "the sanctity of marriage" has been used as part of an artillery of weaponry to battle equality and keep gays and lesbians from getting married. Since June, with the exception of a couple of random shots fired, the battlefield in California has been essentially evacuated with the declaration of the U.S. Supreme Court that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is dead, and that here the lower court's ruling will stand and Proposition 8 is dead and gone as well.

The English language is flexible, forgiving and fun. But don't tell that to some people. There's a large contingent of sticklers who think that every language choice has just one right answer. Many are victims of superstitions that ran rampant in educational circles in the 1950s and '60s — mythical laws like "you can't end a sentence with a preposition" and "it's wrong to split an infinitive. " Most of the prohibitions popular in those days were pure superstition, including the aforementioned.

Recently, I heard about a girl in New Jersey trying to petition toy maker Hasbro into making a gender-neutral version of the Easy-Bake Oven for her 4-year-old brother. You see, Hasbro has been marketing the kitchen set, which kids use to bake cookies and cakes using a light bulb as a heating element, primarily to girls for years. All the packaging and promotional materials featured girls, and the ovens were only made in pink and purple. McKenna Pope has collected more than 45,000 signatures on her petition on change.org since Dec. 3, and has the support of celebrity chefs Graham Elliot and Kevin Gillespie.

In keeping with the season, I should acknowledge all that I have to be thankful for. I'm grateful for my family and friends, my dog, and UCLA's defeat of USC last weekend. What a wonderful world. On a broader scale, there's something else for which I give thanks, and that's the renewed attention paid in the last few months to the issue of women's equality. That gratitude is tempered by the knowledge that, despite the many strides women have made toward achieving equal status with men, we remain maddeningly far from where we need to be. Still, we're talking about it, and that's a good thing.

Leaders from the Girl Scouts of America shared advice on gender equality in leadership to more than 100 community and corporate leaders at a forum last week in Newport Beach. Voice for Girls 2012, hosted by the Girl Scouts of Orange County and presented by United Healthcare, at Pacific Club on Friday, included several speakers who addressed the importance of leadership for young girls. Keynote speaker Anna Maria Chavez, Girl Scouts of the USA chief executive, encouraged community leaders to advocate and mentor today's young girls so they can be inspired and prepared to be tomorrow's leaders.

NEWPORT BEACH — Bringing the city into modern times and to the forefront of environmentalism, the Newport Beach City Council on Tuesday night approved a list of proposed city charter reforms. Council members proposed prohibiting offshore oil drilling, restricting the city's ability to tax residents, among other changes. Residents will vote on the changes to the charter in the November election. It is the first overhaul of the charter since the city's framework was adopted in 1958; many of the proposals would bring it in compliance with current municipal law and today's social norms.

As part of a legal settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union, the Newport-Mesa Unified School District will provide a written apology to a former Corona del Mar High School student who claims school officials did little to stop four varsity athletes from harassing her with homophobic and sexist taunts, attorneys in the case announced Wednesday. The school district also has agreed to provide training on gender issues to students and staff at Corona del Mar High School and other school administrators as part of the settlement.

After an unprecedented victory in last year’s election and a historic presidential inauguration ceremony on Jan. 20, Barack Obama’s first address to both houses of Congress can also be recorded as memorable. The president delivered another powerful speech conveying a patriotic and a unifying message to captivate Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. But that wasn’t it. The magical moment traveled around the world through the Internet and moved mountains without even showcasing a Martin Luther King-like speech.

My hunch is this column’s going to bring me some trouble. But the subject is just too fascinating to let pass. I witnessed a phenomenon last week on my way back to the home fort following another grinding day in the coal mine. Columns of women — a collective demographic of metropolitan hotties in their late 20s to refined and tailored business women just older than 40, it seemed — were surging in unison toward the cinema on Newport Center’s outer ring. Some strode confidently in strappy heels and in dresses with elevated hemlines and necklines finishing up somewhere near the equator.

Once there was a man who did not allow women on his team when they climbed Mt. Everest. He said they weren?t strong enough and lacked the leadership abilities to make it. In response, American mountaineer Arlene Blum organized a group of 10 women to reach an arguably more difficult summit, Annapurna. On Monday, Nov. 19, stories like Blum?s will be the focus of Vanguard University?s Center for Women?s Studies Day on campus. The day will kick off with a silent auction at 8 a.m. that lasts until 6 p.m. Participants can donate items to auction off or bid on the prizes any time throughout the day. The university?