“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and diligence.”

– Abigail Adams

In today’s world of information overload, we might miss something worthwhile. Every week, I’ll be flagging some of the articles I have read, which I found interesting, for you. Here’s the roundup for the week:

1. In an opinion piece, Tricia Lowther for The Guardian highlights why labelling books by gender for children only enforces stereotypes, even when it seeks to reduce them. She takes the cases of Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, and its more recent male equivalent Stories for Boys Who Dare to Be Different, which are among a clutch of bestselling children’s books that supposedly break down gender stereotypes. She says that books like them, even while they showcase the inspirational stories of men and women, only emphasises the difference between boys and girls through their titles, and thus impedes equality.
2. Bustle focuses on a new font, created by Leslie Sims, Chief Creative Officer of global advertising agency Young & Rubicam (Y&R), who realised that we lack a physical language that encompasses all the issues that women face, every day. Hence, she created The Feminist Letters. Sims says that ‘Each letter represents a specific issue, through both the design and what the letter stands for, in order to further call attention to the reality of the large span that the women’s rights movement covers (for example, E is for elections, and V is for voting). By selecting a letter, you are actively learning background information and factual evidence about the relevant legislation of that issue.’
3. Timothy Williams for the New York Times examines the differences between the trials faced by Bill Cosby, where he was accused of having drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand. Between the first trial, where the jury could not agree on whether Cosby was guilty or not, and the second trial, where he was sentenced to jail, a series of revelations over Harvey Weinstein and a cascade of other powerful men invigorated the #MeToo movement. Williams examines the differences in the two trials and whether Cosby’s case was also part of a shift in the ‘norms of accountability’.
4. BBC reports on the rules introduced by the IAAF in a bid to stop women with higher testosterone gaining a competitive advantage, and the impact it’ll have on elite female athletes, including Caster Semenya, Olympic 800m champion. These rules have been seen as divisive, and politically motivated. Further, as stated by Katrina Karkazis, a bioethicist and visiting senior fellow at the Global Health Justice Partnership at Yale, the hammer throw and the pole vault categories, which showed the highest performance advantage for women with elevated testosterone in the 2017 I.A.A.F. study, are not included in the new rules, the regulations appear to be arbitrary and not based on solid science.