skirt! world: Feb. 15

Unequal sports opportunities

A federal court ruled last week that the University of California Davis’ elimination of women’s wrestling in 2000 was part of systemic failure by the university to provide equal opportunities for women in varsity sports, the Sacramento Bee reported. The court reversed a Sacramento judge’s summary judgment in favor of the university and sent the case back to him, saying the four women who initiated the 2003 lawsuit raised issues that should be decided by a jury.

Parents’ age and autism risk

A new study shows that older women have a greater risk of having children with autism, the Web site HealthDay reported. Researchers found that women over age 40 are 50 percent more likely to give birth to a child with autism than women having babies in their 20s.

The study also showed there was a higher autism risk in when the moms were young but the dads were older. Fathers over age 40 having children with women in their 20s had an almost 60 percent increase in risk.

WOMEN’S BLOOD BENEFITS

Three years after the U.S. blood-banking industry recommended against transfusing plasma from female donors because of a potentially life-threatening antibody reaction, researchers have found that plasma from women may actually be better, not worse, for heart surgery patients, reported the Los Angeles Times.

In a study of patients treated before the new guidelines were implemented, those receiving plasma from women were only half as likely to suffer lung complications from the surgery and were 45 percent less likely to be hospitalized or die in the 10 days after surgery, a Duke University Medical Center team reported.
The long-term survival rates, however, were the same whether plasma came from men or women.

HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN OHIO

About 1,000 American-born children are forced into the sex trade in Ohio every year, a new report on human trafficking said last week.

Ohio’s weak laws on human trafficking and its proximity to the Canadian border are among key contributors to the illegal activity, according to a report by the Trafficking in Persons Study Commission, the Associated Press reported.

EDUCATED WOMEN

One of the reasons women came out so much better than men in the recent recession is because of their education, reported the Wall Street Journal.

Government statistics showed that women earned 166 associates degrees and 135 bachelor’s degrees for every 100 men earned over the past two decades.

It also helped that more women were in education, government and health care, which were all sectors that held up better in the recession.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, women had about 720,000 more nonfarm payroll jobs than men in January.

THE ATTRACTION OF ALTRUISM

A new study out of Canada found that altruism is kind of a turn-on for women, reported BBC News. Women in the study were shown dating profiles of men. Researchers found that the women gravitated to the profiles indicating that the men did volunteer work.

“In some of the profiles we gave hints to indicate kind, altruistic interests such as 'I enjoy helping people’ and 'I volunteer at the food bank,’ ” said the lead author of the study, Pat Barclay from University of Guelph, Canada.
“We found that women showed a strong preference for relationships with altruistic men in this study, even though the clues to altruistic traits were fairly subtle.”

Men, however, didn’t feel the same way. While men in the study still showed a preference for altruism, the less subtle it was the more off-putting they found it.