Most of you will know Ann Hathaway, whether it be from a biography of Shakespeare, from education, popular literature or the internet. The image most people have of her is based on a few facts. When they married, for example, William was eighteen while Ann was twenty-six and several months pregnant. In his will, [...]

In an earlier post I wrote about (and disagreed with) Neil Forsyth’s view of revenge as a universal human emotion. I think that, although the urge to retaliate may be found in many cultures, and reciprocity is seen as the basis of our social organization by sociobiologists like Matt Ridley, ways of thinking about [...]

In the Netherlands women are underrepresented (to put it mildly) in the higher strata of academia. Of all full professors in my country, only 10 percent are women. No kidding.
According to this AAUP report, 24 percent of full professors in America were women in 2006. In a European context, 10 percent is also a low [...]

I wrote two posts on the gender of reading last year (1, 2). My parents, who revealed that they read my blog (hello mum and dad!), gave me the Dutch translation of Stefan Bollmann’s Frauen, die Lesen, sind Gefährlich (Women who read are dangerous, translated into English as Reading Women) as a present at my [...]

This cartoon adorns the web page of the UvA Onderwijsconferentie - a conference on university education at the University of Amsterdam. Below the image, the words: “Surely, you wouldn’t want to remain stupid, would you?” It’s left up to your imagination to figure out how the female student is supposed to cure her stupidity. I [...]

In the Dutch feminist magazine Opzij, sociologist and columnist Jolande Withuis this month writes about the gender of reading.
Jolande Withuis remarks that men who are depicted with books often do not read their books, but self-consciously look at us, or stare into the distance. We often know who they are, because their books are [...]

Today I met professor Nicole Pellegrin from France, who has just been inaugurated as the new “Belle van Zuylen” (or Isabelle de Charrières)-professor at Utrecht University, and who focuses in her research on representations of femininity in word and image. She showed me the website of a virtual exhibition she worked on at the University [...]