Medical Treatments for Transgender Minors--Oral argument in Supreme Court

 Yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about the Tennessee ban on transgender treatment for minors.

Supreme Ct. Hears Case on Medical Treatments for Transgender Minors
"The Supreme Court heard oral argument in United States v. Skrmetti, a case on whether Tennessee’s ban on transgender medical treatments for minors violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Tennessee enacted its law in March of 2023, which stated that there was a “compelling interest” to protect minors from physical and emotional harm by banning health care providers from administering hormone/puberty blockers and surgery to minors for transgender purposes. Transgender minors and their families sued the state, and the Justice Department intervened on their behalf, arguing the law discriminated on the basis of sex. A district court then stopped the ban on hormone and puberty blockers, but the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision. The Justice Department then appealed to the Supreme Court. Chase Strangio, who argued on behalf of trans minors and their parents, was the first openly transgender lawyer to argue before the Court. 

Opening statement (text compiled from uncorrected Closed Captioning):

"MR. CHIEF JUSTICE, AND MAY IT PLEASE THE COURT, THIS CASE IS ABOUT ACCESS TO MEDICATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN SAFELY PRESCRIBED FOR DECADES TO TREAT MANY CONDITIONS INCLUDING GENDER DYSPHORIA. BUT SB-1 SINGLES OUT AND BANS ONE PARTICULAR USE. IN TENNESSEE THESE MEDICATIONS CAN'T BE PRESCRIBED TO ALLOW A MINOR TO IDENTIFY WITH OR LIVE AS A GENDER INCONSISTENT WITH THE MINOR SEX. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT PARENTS DECIDE IS BEST FOR THEIR CHILDREN. IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT PATIENTS WOULD CHOOSE FOR THEMSELVES, AND IT DOESN'T MATTER IF DOCTORS BELIEVE THIS TREATMENT IS ESSENTIAL FOR INDIVIDUAL PATIENTS. SB 1 CATEGORICALLY BANS TREATMENT WHEN AND ONLY WHEN IT'S INCONSISTENT WITH THE PATIENT'S BIRTH SEX. TENNESSEE SAYS THAT SWEEPING BAN IS JUSTIFIED TO PROTECT ADOLESCENT HEALTH, BUT THE STATE MAINLY ARGUES THAT IT HAD NO OBLIGATION TO JUSTIFY THE LAW AND THAT SB 1 SHOULD BE UPHELD SO LONG AS IT'S NOT WHOLLY IRRATIONAL. THAT'S WRONG. SB 1 REGULATES BY DRAWING SEX-BASED LINES AND DECLARES THAT THOSE LINES ARE DESIGNED TO ENCOURAGE MINORS TO APPRECIATE THEIR SEX. THE LAW RESTRICTS MEDICAL CARE ONLY WHEN PROVIDED TO INDUCE PHYSICAL EFFECTS INCONSISTENT WITH BIRTH SEX. SOMEONE ASSIGNED FEMALE AT BIRTH CAN'T RECEIVE MEDICATION TO LIVE AS A MALE, BUT SOMEONE ASSIGNED MALE CAN. IF YOU CHANGE THE INDIVIDUAL SEX, IT CHANGES THE RESULT. THAT'S A SEX CLASSIFICATION FULL STOP, AND A LAW LIKE THAT CAN'T STAND ON BARE RATIONALITY. HERE TENNESSEE MADE NO ATTEMPT TO TAILOR ITS LAW TO ITS STATED HEALTH CONCERNS. RATHER THAN IMPOSE MEASURED GUARDRAILS SB 1 BANS THE CARE OUTRIGHT NO MATTER HOW CRITICAL IT IS FOR AN INDIVIDUAL PATIENT. THAT IS A STARK DEPARTURE OF PEDIATRIC CARE IN ALL OTHER CONTEXT. SB 1 LEAVES THE SAME MEDICATIONS AND MANY OTHERS ENTIRELY UNRESTRICTED WHEN USED FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE EVEN WHEN THOSE USES PREVENT SIMILAR RISKS. THE SIXTH CIRCUIT NEVER CONSIDERED WHETHER TENNESSEE COULD JUSTIFY THAT SEX-BASED LINE BECAUSE THE EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE REQUIRES MORE, THIS COURT SHOULD REMAND SO THAT SB 1 CAN BE UNDER THE CORRECT STANDARD. I WELCOME THE COURT'S QUESTIONS. 

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HT: Kim Krawiec

 

Medpage Today summarized the hearings under this headline:

Supreme Court Appears Likely to Uphold Bans on Transgender Care for Minors
— Justices' decision is not expected for several months

IVF for sex selection: legal in the U.S

Slate has the story:

The Parents Who Want Daughters—and Daughters Only. Sex selection with IVF is banned in much of the world. Not in the U.S. by Emi Nietfeld

"Sex selection was once controversial in the U.S. and is banned in almost every other country. Many Americans unaware of the process still assume that it’s that way. In reality, it has now become a standard part of IVF here. For some, the option to sex select is a perk of an otherwise exacting process. For others, it’s the whole point of doing IVF in the first place.

...

"Still, “the very act of sex selection is sexist,” argues Arianne Shahvisi, a professor of philosophy at Brighton and Sussex Medical School in the U.K., where elective sex selection is illegal.

...

"It’s not just the U.K. Virtually all the industrialized world—including Canada, Australia, and every European country besides Cyprus—bans sex selection except in rare medical cases. Most nations prohibit the practice on the grounds that it promotes sexism and that the children born from it may be harmed by gendered expectations. Widespread preference for a certain sex can also skew the population—as in India and China, where abortion and infanticide of girls have resulted in tens of millions more men than women. 

...

"In 1994 the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, the nonprofit that provides the industry’s professional guidelines, condemned sex selection for nonmedical reasons. Yet with no enforcement power, the guidelines remained just that. Unlike in most peer nations, IVF in America is mostly privately paid and weakly regulated. Instead, market forces dominate. By 2018, despite the ASRM’s recommendation that they not offer sex selection, 75 percent of clinics continued to provide the service. Since then, the ASRM’s ethics committee has updated its position to a neutral stance."

Vatican statement on gender-affirming surgery and human dignity

 A new statement from the Vatican has been widely covered in the press.

Here's the story from the National Catholic Reporter:

Vatican condemns surrogacy, gender-affirming surgery, gender theory in new doctrinal note. Vatican doctrinal chief calls it 'painful' that some Catholics support gay criminalization  BY CHRISTOPHER WHITE, April 8, 2024

"Sex change operations, gender theory and surrogate motherhood pose grave threats to human dignity, according to a major new Vatican document released on April 8. 

While the highly anticipated treatise, "Dignitas Infinita: on Human Dignity," which has been the source of much speculation for months, offers a broadside against the creation of new rights motivated by sex and gender, it is largely a reiteration of long-held Catholic teaching on a number of social and moral concerns. 

The new document, however, seeks to elevate a number of social themes emphasized by Pope Francis during his decadelong papacy — such as poverty, migration and human trafficking — as being equally a part of the full panoply of potential threats to human dignity as bioethical concerns, such as abortion and euthanasia.   

...

"Among the newly identified threats to human dignity are poverty; war; the travail of migrants; human trafficking; sexual abuse; violence against women; abortion; child surrogacy; euthanasia and assisted suicide; the marginalization of people with disabilities; gender theory; sex change; and digital violence.

Gender theory, according to the document, is a subject of considerable debate among scientific experts, and risks denying "the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference."  

The document repeats a frequent warning of Francis against "ideological colonization," where the pope has sharply criticized western governments for allegedly imposing their sexual values on the developing world. All efforts to eliminate sexual differences between men and women must be rejected, says the document. 

At the same time, the document also begins with a caveat that all persons, regardless of their sexual orientation, must be respected, and "every sign of unjust discrimination is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence."

"For this reason," the document continues, "it should be denounced as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation."  

Last year, Francis became the first pope to specifically condemn the criminalization of homosexuality and said that the Catholic Church must work towards an end to what he described as "unjust" laws that criminalize being gay. At present, at least 67 countries have laws criminalizing same-sex relations. 

In its brief section on gender-affirming surgeries, the document avoids using the term "transgender" and instead offers a muted prohibition against medical interventions for such purposes.

...

"Catholic LGBTQ groups criticized the new Vatican document within hours of its publication, saying it failed to acknowledge the concrete experience of transgender and nonbinary individuals.

New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group that had an historic meeting with Francis at the Vatican last October, said in a statement that the text "fails terribly" and shows the limits of the church's understand of human dignity.

...

"The new document also goes on to repeat the pope's recent call for an international ban on the rising practice of surrogate motherhood, declaring that the "legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a 'right to a child' that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life."  

In January, Francis used his annual "State of the World" address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See to push for a global ban on surrogacy. 

While the pope had previously condemned the practice, the pope's sweeping remarks on the topic — where he called it a "grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child" — marked the first time he had made such a specific policy proposal. Last month, the Vatican's ambassador to the United Nations, Archbishop Gabriele Caccia, also pressed for an international prohibition against the practice. "

Claudia Goldin wins the 2023 Nobel Prize in Economics

 The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 was awarded  today to the indefatigable

Claudia Goldin "for having advanced our understanding of women’s labour market outcomes"

Here's her latest NBER working paper, which appeared yesterday:

Why Women Won

Claudia Goldin

WORKING PAPER 31762, DOI 10.3386/w31762, October 2023

Abstract: How, when, and why did women in the US obtain legal rights equal to men’s regarding the workplace, marriage, family, Social Security, criminal justice, credit markets, and other parts of the economy and society, decades after they gained the right to vote? The story begins with the civil rights movement and the somewhat fortuitous nature of the early and key women’s rights legislation. The women’s movement formed and pressed for further rights. Of the 155 critical moments in women’s rights history I’ve compiled from 1905 to 2023, 45% occurred between 1963 and 1973. The greatly increased employment of women, the formation of women’s rights associations, the belief that women’s votes mattered, and the unstinting efforts of various members of Congress were behind the advances. But women soon became splintered by marital status, employment, region, and religion far more than men. A substantial group of women emerged in the 1970s to oppose various rights for women, just as they did during the suffrage movement. They remain a potent force today.

 Here's the concluding paragraph:

"Women won some of their most important workplace rights in the 1960s because of a set of fortuitous events. They continued to win in the early 1970s because of a movement that gave them influence. They won yet more because groups that were supportive of their cause—college graduates, single women, Black women—expanded relative to others. They won when they had the political clout to get men, especially those in Congress and the White House, to see that women’s rights were as valid as civil rights. Yet, women’s rights had setbacks when, in light of many gains, women abandoned the movement. Women’s rights has had a truly “strange career.”

Scientific honors and gender gaps

 Changing from an old equilibrium to a new one can involve some actions that may not persist once a new equilibrium is reached.  Here's a paper on the awarding of scientific honors.

Gender Gaps at the Academies by David Card, Stefano DellaVigna, Patricia Funk & Nagore Iriberri

NBER WORKING PAPER 30510  DOI 10.3386/w30510  September 2022

"Historically, a large majority of the newly elected members of the National Academy of Science (NAS) and the American Academy of Arts and Science (AAAS) were men. Within the past two decades, however, that situation has changed, and in the last 3 years women made up about 40 percent of the new members in both academies. We build lists of active scholars from publications in the top journals in three fields – Psychology, Mathematics and Economics – and develop a series of models to compare changes in the probability of selection of women as members of the NAS and AAAS from the 1960s to today, controlling for publications and citations. In the early years of our sample, women were less likely to be selected as members than men with similar records. By the 1990s, the selection process at both academies was approximately gender-neutral, conditional on publications and citations. In the past 20 years, however, a positive preference for female members has emerged and strengthened in all three fields. Currently, women are 3-15 times more likely to be selected as members of the AAAS and NAS than men with similar publication and citation records."

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That paper is a followup to their previous paper on Econometric Society Fellows, which has just come out in the current issue of Econometrica:

ECONOMETRICA: SEP 2022, VOLUME 90, ISSUE 5

Gender Differences in Peer Recognition by Economists

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA18027
p. 1937-1971

David Card, Stefano DellaVigna, Patricia Funk, Nagore Iriberri

We study the selection of Fellows of the Econometric Society, using a new data set of publications and citations for over 40,000 actively publishing economists since the early 1900s. Conditional on achievement, we document a large negative gap in the probability that women were selected as Fellows in the 1933–1979 period. This gap became positive (though not statistically significant) from 1980 to 2010, and in the past decade has become large and highly significant, with over a 100% increase in the probability of selection for female authors relative to males with similar publications and citations. The positive boost affects highly qualified female candidates (in the top 10% of authors) with no effect for the bottom 90%. Using nomination data for the past 30 years, we find a key proximate role for the Society's Nominating Committee in this shift. Since 2012, the Committee has had an explicit mandate to nominate highly qualified women, and its nominees enjoy above‐average election success (controlling for achievement). Looking beyond gender, we document similar shifts in the premium for geographic diversity: in the mid‐2000s, both the Fellows and the Nominating Committee became significantly more likely to nominate and elect candidates from outside the United States. Finally, we examine gender gaps in several other major awards for U.S. economists. We show that the gaps in the probability of selection of new fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences closely parallel those of the Econometric Society, with historically negative penalties for women turning to positive premiums in recent years.

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Update: here's the published version of the NBER paper, in PNAS, JANUARY 24, 2023, VOL. 120, NO. 4:

Gender gaps at the academies

David Card https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6914-6698 card@econ.berkeley.edu, Stefano DellaVigna, Patricia Funk, and Nagore Iriberri

This contribution is part of the special series of Inaugural Articles by members of the National Academy of Sciences elected in 2021. January 19, 2023 120 (4) e2212421120

https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2212421120

What is needed to gain support for effective algorithms in hiring, etc?

 Here's an experiment motivated in part by European regulations on transparency of algorithms.

Aversion to Hiring Algorithms: Transparency, Gender Profiling, and Self-Confidence  by Marie-Pierre Dargnies, Rustamdjan Hakimov and Dorothea Kübler

Abstract: "We run an online experiment to study the origins of algorithm aversion. Participants are either in the role of workers or of managers. Workers perform three real-effort tasks: task 1, task 2, and the job task which is a combination of tasks 1 and 2. They choose whether the hiring decision between themselves and another worker is made either by a participant in the role of a manager or by an algorithm. In a second set of experiments, managers choose whether they want to delegate their hiring decisions to the algorithm. In the baseline treatments, we observe that workers choose the manager more often than the algorithm, and managers also prefer to make the hiring decisions themselves rather than delegate them to the algorithm. When the algorithm does not use workers’ gender to predict their job task performance and workers know this, they choose the algorithm more often. Providing details on how the algorithm works does not increase the preference for the algorithm, neither for workers nor for managers. Providing feedback to managers about their performance in hiring the best workers increases their preference for the algorithm, as managers are, on average, overconfident."

"Our experiments are motivated by the recent debates in the EU over the legal requirements for algorithmic decisions. Paragraph 71 of the preamble to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires data controllers to prevent discriminatory effects of algorithms processing sensitive personal data. Articles 13 and 14 of the GDPR state that, when profiling takes place, people have the right to “meaningful information about the logic involved” (Goodman and Flaxman 2017). While the GDPR led to some expected effects, e.g., privacy-oriented consumers opting out of the use of cookies (Aridor et al. 2020), the discussion over the transparency requirements and the constraints on profiling is still ongoing. Recently, the European Parliament came up with the Digital Services Act (DSA), which proposes further increasing the requirements for algorithm disclosure and which explicitly requires providing a profiling-free option to users, together with a complete ban on the profiling of minors. Our first treatment that focuses on the workers aims at identifying whether making the algorithm gender-blind and therefore unable to use gender to discriminate, as advised in the preamble of the GDPR and further strengthened in the proposed DSA, increases its acceptance by the workers. The second treatment is a direct test of the importance of the transparency of the algorithm for the workers. When the algorithm is made transparent in our setup, it becomes evident which gender is favored. This can impact algorithm aversion differently for women and men, for example if workers’ preferences are mainly driven by payoff maximization.

"The treatments focusing on the managers’ preferences aim at understanding why some firms are more reluctant than others to make use of hiring algorithms. One possible explanation for not adopting such algorithms is managerial overconfidence. Overconfidence is a common bias, and its effect on several economic behaviors has been demonstrated (Camerer et al. 1999, Dunning et al. 2004, Malmendier and Tate 2005, Dargnies et al. 2019). In our context, overconfidence is likely to induce managers to delegate the hiring decisions to the algorithm too seldom. Managers who believe they make better hiring decisions than they actually do, may prefer to make the hiring decisions themselves. Our paper will provide insights about the effect of overconfidence on the delegation of hiring decisions to algorithms. Similar to the treatments about the preferences of workers, we are also interested in the effect of the transparency of the algorithm on the managers’ willingness to delegate the hiring decisions. Disclosing the details of the algorithm can increase the managers’ trust in the algorithm."

Gender neutral words in gendered languages

Novel pronouns haven't been widely adopted in English, but committees now have chairs or chairpersons, and there are some attempts not merely to avoid assigning male or female genders to words when they're not needed (like chairman), but also to avoid suggesting genders at all.  That's going to be tougher in languages in which all words have genders, or in which the conjugation of verbs involves choosing a gender.  Take Spanish for instance.

The NY Times has the story:

In Argentina, One of the World’s First Bans on Gender-Neutral Language. The city of Buenos Aires blocked the use of gender-inclusive language in schools, reigniting off a debate that is reverberating across the world.   By Ana Lankes

"Instead of “amigos,” the Spanish word for “friends,” some Spanish speakers use “amigues.” In place of “todos,” or “all,” some write “todxs.” And some signs that would say “bienvenidos,” or “welcome,” now say “bienvenid@s.”

...

"Similar gender-neutral language is being increasingly introduced across Latin America, as well as in other languages, including English and French, by supporters who say it helps create a more inclusive society.

...

"The city government in Buenos Aires, the nation’s capital, last month banned teachers from using any gender-neutral words during class and in communications with parents. 

...

"The policy, among the first anywhere to specifically forbid the use of gender-neutral language, provoked a swift backlash. Argentina’s top education official criticized the rule and at least five organizations, a mix of gay rights and civil rights groups, have filed lawsuits seeking to overturn it.

"Jaime Perczyk, Argentina’s education minister, compared the measure to prohibitions against left-handed writing under the fascist dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain.

...

"Argentina is a surprising place for such a heated debate on gender-neutral language because the country has largely embraced transgender rights. In 2012, it became one the first countries in the world to pass a law allowing people to change their gender on official documents without requiring the intervention of a doctor or a mental health therapist."

The No Club, by Babcock, Peyser, Vesterlund and Weingart

 I had the pleasure of hearing Lisa Vesterlund talk about her new book, The No Club: Putting a Stop to Women’s Dead-End Work, by Linda Babcock, Brenda Peyser, Lise Vesterlund, and Laurie Weingart.

One nice market design suggestion comes from the (well documented) observation that it's disproportionately women who volunteer for 'non-promotable' tasks, such as note-taking at meetings, and writing up the minutes afterwards. These are tasks that anyone can do pretty well, so the suggestion is that they should be assigned by lottery, rather than by seeing who volunteers...

Muriel Niederle wins the Austrian Käthe-Leichter-Preis for "outstanding achievements in the field of social, human and cultural sciences"

 Here's the announcement (with help from Google Translate):

Lifetime Achievement Prize goes to Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger (WU), Käthe-Leichter State Prize to Christine Zulehner (University of Vienna) and Muriel Niederle (Levin Endowed Professorship in Stanford)

"Vienna (OTS) - The Käthe-Leichter State Prize for women's studies, gender research and equality in the world of work honors outstanding achievements in the field of social, human and cultural sciences.

"Women's Minister Susanne Raab presented this year's prizes on Wednesday: The Lifetime Achievement Prize went to Dr Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger, who works at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and the Käthe-Leichter State Prize to Dr Christine Zulehner, who works at the university Vienna, and to Dr. Muriel Niederle, who teaches at Stanford University."

Working remotely may lessen income inequality between men and women: Claudia Goldin in the WSJ

 Here's Claudia Goldin in the WSJ, on how income inequality between men and women may be lessened by the growth of remote work. (She argues that women pay a price for flexible hours, since the highest paying jobs are "greedy" for long and on-call work.)

How the Pandemic Could Make the Future Brighter for Women in the Workplace. It could lead to less gender inequality at work, and more equity at home By Claudia Goldin Dec. 11, 2021

"Whereas the job with flexible hours paid far less than the greedy job before the pandemic, previously greedy jobs are now more flexible and the previously flexible jobs are now more productive. The working couple with children can now have a more equitable household without giving up as much income. The on-call parent will be able to compete for the previously greedy job, and employers will expand the previously flexible jobs, because these jobs have become more productive. As a result, the difference between the wages of the previously greedy and previously flexible jobs will narrow.

"Consider the mergers-and-acquisition work that once had to be done in Tokyo, or the contract that needed to be signed in Zurich. They actually don’t need to be done in person, we have learned. The on-call, at-home parent, generally the mother, hadn’t been able to do these transactions. But now they can be accomplished without being away during the evening and without flying across an ocean. The flexible job has become more productive and the greedy job has become more flexible."

Muriel Niederle receiving the Morgenstern Medal: intro and speech (video)

Here's the video of Muriel Niederle receiving her  2021 Oskar Morgenstern Medal.

Starting at minute 25:45 you can hear Jean Robert Tyran introducing Muriel and her work. She is honored for her work in market design and her studies of gender in economic environments. The introduction is well worth listening to.  Muriel's talk begins at minute 52, and is called "A Gender Agenda." (She begins by noting "A lot of economists are not female.")

Repugnance watch: Gender-affirming medical care for transgender adolescents becomes a crime in Arkansas

 Here's a recent article in repugnance to certain kinds of medical care involving transgender children as they approach puberty:

Increasing Criminalization of Gender-Affirming Care for Transgender Youths—A Politically Motivated Crisis by Benjamin C. Park, BS1; Rishub K. Das, BA1; Brian C. Drolet, MD, JAMA Pediatr. Published online September 13, 2021. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.2969

"On April 6, 2021, Arkansas passed Act 626, to be known as the “Arkansas Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act,”1 thus becoming the first state to outlaw gender-affirming care (GAC) for transgender youth. Many other states are considering similar bills, some of which include provisions that impose criminal penalties on health care professionals.

"Although Act 626 is among the more severe examples of antitransgender legislation, the United States has a history of similar legislation. Since 2015, coordinated attacks against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights have escalated in an unprecedented fashion. The targets of these attacks have shifted from marriage equality, bathroom access, and sports participation to the most recent attacks on transgender youths and their bodies. Act 626 is a part of recent nationwide efforts to limit access to GAC for transgender youths. This year represents a critical time for transgender young people, with new bills targeting their access to health care in at least 21 states.

"Approximately 1.4 million adults (0.6% of adults in the United States) and 150 000 youths (0.7% of youths aged 13-17 years in the US) identify as transgender.2 A large body of research dedicated to transgender health indicates that GAC, including prescribing or using puberty blockers such as gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists, (GnRHa), hormone therapy (eg, testosterone or estrogen therapy), and gender-affirming surgery, is medically necessary for patients experiencing gender dysphoria.3 The discordant effects of societal gender roles and gendered activities on transgender youths are exacerbated during puberty, when masculinizing and feminizing anatomical changes take place. Transgender youths may find that pubertal changes worsen the dissonance between their anatomy and their gender identity, contributing to gender dysphoria and increasing the risk for negative health outcomes."

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You can find the bill here (the first link gives you the text of the bill in pdf):

HB1570 - TO CREATE THE ARKANSAS SAVE ADOLESCENTS FROM EXPERIMENTATION (SAFE) ACT.

The act is long and explains itself as protective of children from medical procedures it regards as unproven. This looks like the action paragraph directed at physicians:

"20-9-1502. Prohibition of gender transition procedures for minors.

"(a) A physician or other healthcare professional shall not provide gender transition procedures to any individual under eighteen (18) years of age.

"(b) A physician, or other healthcare professional shall not refer any 17 individual under eighteen (18) years of age to any healthcare professional for gender transition procedures."

New legislation expressing repugnance to gender transition

 Trans people are facing new obstacles from state legislatures, concerning sports teams, healthcare, and toilets.  Here's a story from the Guardian.

Mapping the anti-trans laws sweeping America: ‘A war on 100 fronts’. In an extraordinary attack on trans rights, conservative state lawmakers proposed more than 110 anti-trans bills this year  by Sam Levin

"On the first day of Pride month, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, signed a law banning transgender girls from participating on girls’ sports teams in middle school through college.

"It was just one of 13 anti-trans bills conservative lawmakers in the US passed this year, and one of more than 110 bills that were proposed – by far the largest number in US history.

...

The most common anti-trans proposals were focused on sports, many of them specifically seeking to ban trans girls from competing on girls’ teams.

...

"The bulk of the other anti-trans bills sought to outlaw gender-affirming healthcare, with at least 36 proposals related to medical treatments across 21 states.

"In April, Arkansas passed the first ban on affirming healthcare for youth, with a policy that threatens to discipline or revoke the licenses of doctors who provide it. Experts and clinicians had strongly objected, arguing that the state was prohibiting care that is considered standard and best practice, and advocates said it was one of the most extreme anti-trans bills to ever be enacted.

...

"Five states also considered anti-trans bathroom bills, with Tennessee ultimately passing two separate laws. One prohibits trans kids from using bathrooms and locker rooms at school that match their gender. Another requires that if businesses allow trans people to use the correct bathrooms, they have to post a sign that says, “This facility maintains a policy of allowing the use of restrooms by either biological sex, regardless of the designation on the restroom.”

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And elsewhere (from the WSJ):

Hungary Bill to Restrict How Media Depicts Homosexuality, Transgender Rights. Legislation restricts content depicting individuals who are gay or who no longer identify with the gender they were assigned at birth  By Drew Hinshaw

"The bill—which prompted thousands of protesters to throng the capital of Budapest on Monday—is part of a wider battle within Europe, as a small camp of Central and Eastern European governments, led mainly by socially conservative nationalists, pass legislation aimed at slowing the rising acceptance of gay and transgender rights on the continent.

The region, along with neighboring Russia, has seen a series of laws and government-backed measures similar to the bill passed in Hungary. In 2013, Russia’s parliament unanimously passed a federal law banning the dissemination of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” among minors.

"More recently, nearly 100 local governments in Poland declared themselves “Free from LGBT Ideology,” with signs posted around small towns that read “LGBT Free Zone.” Those moves prompted the EU to cancel some funding that would have gone to infrastructure and economic development in those parts of Poland.

"Last year, Romania’s parliament adopted a bill, later scrapped by a high court, restricting schools and colleges from teaching that “gender is a concept different to biological sex.”

Economics at the extremes (of gender and salary): UC Berkeley report

 This report includes two figures in which the discipline of Economics is near one of the extremes.  The regression models on gender and salaries are interesting too.

UC BERKELEY FACULTY SALARY EQUITY STUDY, ANNUAL UPDATE, 2020  OFFICE OF THE VICE PROVOST FOR THE FACULTY, DECEMBER 2020

Test design and gender gaps in performance--evidence from a national exam in Chile, by Coffman and Klinowski

Here's a recent paper from PNAS:

The impact of penalties for wrong answers on the gender gap in test scores
Katherine B. Coffman and   David Klinowski
PNAS April 21, 2020 117 (16) 8794-8803;

Abstract:
Multiple-choice examinations play a critical role in university admissions across the world. A key question is whether imposing penalties for wrong answers on these examinations deters guessing from women more than men, disadvantaging female test-takers. We consider data from a large-scale, high-stakes policy change that removed penalties for wrong answers on the national college entry examination in Chile. The policy change reduced a large gender gap in questions skipped. It also narrowed gender gaps in performance, primarily among high-performing test-takers, and in the fields of math, social science, and chemistry.

U.S medical school enrollments by sex: women outnumber men for the first time

There are now more women than men applying to U.S. medical schools, being accepted (to the first year class) and enrolled (in all four years). See the 2019 Fall Applicant, Matriculant, and Enrollment Data Tables from the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC)

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Here's the recent history leading up to this:

In the 1950's, almost all medical school grads were men. As the number of women grew, the medical labor market had to start accomodating married couples both looking for residencies.  This is the first year in which the total enrollment of women exceeds that of men, but of course the last few years have seen that coming in the number of women matriculating: women first-year medical students outnumbered men already in 2017..

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Here's a news story from the Washington Post about these statistics:
The Big Number: Women now outnumber men in medical schools
By Linda Searing Dec. 23, 2019

"In the medical profession overall, male doctors still outnumber female doctors, 64 percent to 36 percent, according to 2019 data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. But that may be changing, according to a report from the health-care company AthenaHealth. Its survey of 18,000 physicians at 3,500 practices on its network found that, in 2017, 80 percent of doctors 65 and older were men, but 60 percent of doctors younger than 35 were women. The disparity between male and female doctors appears to extend to their chosen field of specialization. A joint report this fall from the American Medical Association and AAMC finds that male doctors dominate orthopedic surgery (85 percent), neurological surgery (82 percent) and interventional radiology (81 percent), and female doctors dominate obstetrics and gynecology (83 percent), allergy and immunology (74 percent) and pediatrics (72 percent). Specialties with a nearly equal balance of male and female doctors are sleep medicine, preventive medicine, pathology and psychiatry. Overall, medical schools this year experienced about a 1 percent increase in applicants and in new enrollees, which the AAMC says contributes to an enrollment growth of 33 percent since 2002. Still, it notes, the country faces a projected shortage of 122,000 doctors by 2032."

Repugnant blood samples (for gender testing in pregnancy) in China

The South China Morning Post has the story: blood samples for gender tests apparently are a leading indicator of abortion of female fetuses:

Chinese blood mule, 12, caught trying to smuggle 142 samples into Hong Kong for sex testing
"Youngster apprehended at Shenzhen port with more than 1.4 litres of blood from expectant mothers in her backpack
Samples had papers requesting DNA tests to show if fetuses were male or female"

Congratulations to Claudia Goldin: BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award

Here are the first two paragraphs of the announcement...

The BBVA Foundation recognizes Claudia Goldin for pioneering economic analysis of the gender gap
"The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Economics, Finance and Management category has gone in this eleventh edition to the American economic historian Claudia Goldin “for her groundbreaking contributions to the historical analysis of the role of women in the economy, and for her analysis of the reasons behind gender inequality.”

"Goldin “is credited with founding the field of empirical analysis of the gender gap,” remarked the committee on announcing its decision, starting with her seminal 1990 publication Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. This hugely influential book examined the roots of wage inequality between men and women, questioning the conventional explanations.

Repugnance watch: Gender identity. 8-year-old transgender boy barred from Cub Scouts in NJ and NYC issues an "intersex" birth certificate,

Two (otherwise unrelated) recent news stories suggest that social attitudes towards gender identity may be tested in the new year in ways that resemble the transformation that has taken place in our collective outlook on sexual orientation.

The first story concerns the cub scouts.  It happened in Secaucus, NJ, and NorthJersey.com has a report: 8-year-old transgender boy barred from Cub Scouts

"From the moment he joined, 8-year-old Joe Maldonado eagerly looked forward to camping trips and science projects as a member of the Cub Scouts. But his expectations were dashed after his mother said she received a phone call from a Scouting official who told her that Joe would no longer be allowed to participate because he was born a girl.

"Kristie Maldonado said she was stunned because her son had been a member of Cub Scout Pack 87 in Secaucus for about a month and his transgender status had not been a secret. But some parents complained, an official from the Northern New Jersey Council of Boy Scouts told her — even though her son had been living as a boy for more than a year and was accepted as a boy at school, she said
...
"Joe's case could be the first time someone has been barred from participating in Scouting because of transgender identity, said members of the LGBT community. And it comes as the Boy Scouts of America appeared to be emerging from a period of turmoil involving sexual-orientation issues, reversing long-standing bans against gay Scouts and gay Scouting leaders over the past few years. Those policy changes were made amid an internal debate that saw at least one local council defy national Scouting decrees by hiring a gay camp counselor and pressure brought from corporations that withheld donations from the organization.

"The Boy Scouts did not address the transgender issue at the time, LGBT advocates said, perhaps because the organization had no written policy related to gender identity. Transgender rights only recently emerged as a national issue, often focusing on the use of restrooms based on gender identity. Dozens of North Jersey school districts, including Secaucus, have granted that right, among others, to transgender students.
...
"Effie Delimarkos, the communications director for the Boy Scouts of America, said in a statement that the organization’s Cub Scouts programs are for boys age 7 to 10 and that "the classification on the participant’s birth certificate” would be used to “confirm legal status.”
...
"Delimarkos said in her statement that the Boy Scouts consider membership for transgender children to be a separate issue from that of gay children.

“No youth may be removed from any of our programs on the basis of his or her sexual orientation,” she said, but added: “Gender identity isn’t related to sexual orientation.”
**************

The second story concerns a newly reissued birth certificate issued by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH):
Nation's First Known Intersex Birth Certificate Issued in NYC

"On Tuesday, 55-year-old Sara Kelly Keenan received something in the mail she's been waiting for her entire life: an accurate birth certificate.

Keenan was born intersex, with male genes, female genitalia and mixed internal reproductive organs. Now, Keenan, who uses female pronouns, is making history. Hers is believed to be the first birth certificate ever issued in the United States that reads "intersex" in the gender field, instead of "male" or "female."

Claudia Goldin interview on the history of labor force participation by women, among other things

The interview is in Econ Focus, published by the Richmond Fed: Claudia Goldin

Here's one paragraph:
"EF: What changed in society that allowed this revolution to occur?

Goldin: One of the most important changes was the appearance of reliable, female-controlled birth control. The pill lowered the cost to women of making long-term career investments. Before reliable birth control, a woman faced a nontrivial probability of having her career derailed by an unplanned pregnancy — or she had to pay the penalty of abstinence. The lack of highly reliable birth control also meant a set of institutions developed around dating and sex to create commitment: Couples would "go steady," then they would get "pinned," then they would get engaged. If you're pinned or engaged when you're 19 or 20 years old, you're not going to wait until you're 28 to get married. So a lot of women got married within a year or two of graduating college. That meant women who pursued a career also paid a penalty in the marriage market. But the pill made it possible for women who were "on the pill" to delay marriage, and that, in turn, created a "thicker" marriage market for all women to marry later and further lowered the cost to women of investing in a career."