A fascinating example:

Women make up only 1 per cent of chess Grandmasters. Yet according to a new study their under-performance is not down to lack of ability, but an awareness that they are expected to do badly. Researchers have shown that when women are under the illusion their opponent is female, they performed as well as the men. However their performance dropped by 50 per cent when they were aware they were playing a man. The researchers said women face accusations of “inferior (‘girl’s’) play, but when they perform exceptionally well, their femininity is also often doubted”.
They say the findings also suggest that women tend to approach chess games more cautiously and with less self-confidence, which may explain their worldwide under-representation and under-performance. “Women seem disadvantaged not because they are lacking cognitive or spatial abilities” but because of their mental approach to tournaments

And also very good, sensible news: Brazil is going to subsidise birth control pills for the poor.

Dulce Xavier, a Catholic who runs a group advocating for women’s reproductive rights, says Brazilians simply aren’t listening to the Vatican.
“There is total disobedience to church doctrine on sexual reproduction,” she says. “The majority of Catholics here use condoms, take the pill and support limited access to abortion.”
According to the government’s own estimates as many as one million women a year are having abortions in Brazil, even though they’re illegal, except for cases of rape or where a mother’s life is in danger.
About 4,000 women die from the procedures annually, making it the fourth-leading cause of maternal death in Brazil after hypertension, hemorrhages and infection.

Why particularly the Pope? Well he was there two weeks ago running all the usual “I want to control women’s bodies” stuff.

Australian government aid organisations have, for a decade, been unable to fund groups that give abortion advice – it was a trade-off for the conservative government to win the vote of a rightwing religious nutter in the Senate. (And yes, there was more than a little American influence there.)

Finally, however, a cross-party group of MPs has recommended the policy be dropped.

“It’s repugnant, it’s an insult to women. I think that is just absolutely an insult,” a Liberal [conservative in Australia’s odd political vocab]MP and doctor, Mal Washer, told the ABC.
“What is even more ridiculous or more repugnant is that we’re saying in these guidelines that if you go and have an illegal abortion where there is a 13 per cent chance of death on average and you happen to survive, we’re happy to give you counselling.
“Well, that’s good for those who didn’t die but for the 13 per cent, I think counselling dead people is pretty difficult.”

Of course this is only advice, and it is the Howard government… although hopefully not for long.

A message that I just sent to my MP:

I understand that on June 5, Ann Winterton will table a Ten Minute Rule Bill to impose mandatory counselling on women seeking an abortion.
This is a condescending, cynical attempt to chip away at women’s abortion rights that will lead to further delays in service provision: and some women already have to wait up to five week! for an NHS
abortion.
This is the third anti-choice Bill in less than a year, and reflects a contempt for parliamentary procedures in a refusal to accept the democratic decision.
Please make the effort to actively oppose this bill, by voting against it.

If you are in the UK, please do likewise.

(As a result of an alert from Abortion Rights.)

… you might even call it collateral damage.

US military veterans are twice as likely to be jailed for sexual assault as similar non-veterans.

The department of justice says it can’t understand why…