Can’t say I entirely approve of such things – what is the POINT? I can’t help asking – but interesting that a British woman is about to break the record for walking to the south pole unassisted. No, that’s not the women’s record, that’s THE record. I must find an occasion to use this on Comment is Free some time, where a certain set of commentators always get very exercised about how I’m being “unrealistic” about women’s physical capabilities.

Two years after giving up her job as a marketing manager in Berkshire, Ms McKeand, 33, was on course to knock a full day off the previous record of 41 days 8 hours.
To complete her trek Ms McKeand, from Newbury, Berkshire, has spent nearly six lonely weeks dragging a 100 kilo (220lb) sledge across 690 miles of ice plains in temperatures as low as minus 35C.

President-elect Rafael Correa appointed seven women to his Cabinet on Wednesday, including Ecuador’s first female defense minister, saying he wanted to promote gender equality in his South American nation.
In other appointments to his 17-member Cabinet, Correa named women to head the foreign, health, housing, and social welfare ministries. He said he would keep outgoing President Alfredo Palacio’s ministers of tourism and the environment, the only women in the current Cabinet.
Correa, who takes office Jan. 15, said he would “try to achieve gender equality.” He acknowledged it was “something we are not going to reach, but at least we will get close.”

Makes the number of British female senior ministers look pretty paltry, doesn’t it? As a writer on Comment is Free today noted, women are still notable only for their tiny numbers in so many areas of public life.

A march to demand full abortion rights in the UK is planned for March next year. If I can, I’ll be there.

(Found via the Jim on The Daily Maybe’s Carnival of Socialism No 11, which focuses on gender and sexuality, while also managing to address the question of whether oral sex can save the planet…?)

Nicole Cooke, a Briton, is a winner of the Tour de France – but of course that’s the women’s Tour de France, so you can be excused for not having heard of her. And you’re much less likely to see her in the Olympics, since the male cyclists have 11 events, the women seven…

One of those usual questions raised by misogynists. A Harvard study has the facts and figures (PDF), in short, they don’t start playing…

ABSTRACT—Only 1% of the world’s chess grandmasters are women. This underrepresentation is unlikely to be caused by discrimination, because chess ratings objectively reflect competitive results. Using data on the ratings of more than 250,000 tournament players over 13 years, we investigated several potential explanations for the male domination of elite chess. We found that (a) the ratings of men are higher on average than those of women, but no more variable; (b) matched boys and girls improve and drop out at equal rates, but boys begin chess competition in greater numbers and at higher performance levels than girls; and (c) in locales where at least 50% of the new young players are girls, their initial ratings are not lower than those of boys. We conclude that the greater number of men at the highest levels in chess can be explained by the greater number of boys who enter chess at the lowest levels.

Seems clear enough – I spent a brief period as the “great white hope” of the North Rocks chess club when as a 13-year-old I drew with a visiting master playing multiple boards (pure fluke I’m sure). But it was only because I was a very odd adolescent girl that I was there in the first place.

(Thanks Tony for the link!)