By Louise Livesey | 11 August 2008, 09:33

The TUC have (maybe worthwhile-ly) managed to state the bleeding obvious - migrant women are most likely to be paid less than the national minimum wage The research found:

• “worrying” trends including long working hours, insecure jobs and poor pay.


• An estimated 35,000 women who migrated to the UK to work faced a disproportionate risk of being illegally underpaid.


• Around one in seven recent migrants were found to be working more than 48 hours a week


• Recent migrants were also more likely than other groups not to have a written contract.


• Recent migrants were more than twice as likely as other workers to be paid less than the minimum wage.

Meanwhile Sweden, responding to the apparent “threat” of the 46 gender reassignment surgery cases per year, is going to try and legislate that all gender reassignment cases must go through prerequisite castration (i.e. before long-term treatment commences). (From The Local). Wherever you stand on the debates around transgenderism this can be seen as a way of enforcing bodily standards on people and reducing gender to simply the reproductive organs.

Meanwhile Jen Sorenson has a really interesting article up here on why there are so few female political cartoonists.

Drawing cartoons and comics has traditionally been a guy thing—a somewhat nerdy guy thing, but a guy thing nonetheless. Without role models who look like you, or friends with similar interests, any activity becomes less inviting. It might not even cross your mind as a possibility.

From Campus Progress