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Tag: Gender issues

  • A gender perspective on the global migration of scholars – report

    A gender perspective on the global migration of scholars – report

    Newswise — International recognition is key to many successful academic careers, but research published today shows female scientific researchers are less internationally mobile than their male counterparts, although the gender gap has shrunk.

    Scientists tend to move from one country to another to advance their careers.  But  researchers from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, have found female researchers continue to be under-represented among internationally mobile researchers. In addition to moving less, female researchers also originate from and move to fewer countries, as well as migrating shorter distances, than their male counterparts.

    The study shows that gender inequality among mobile academic scientists varies across countries and over time on a global scale, and it reveals how it affects the demographic composition of the scientific workforce across the origin and the destination countries. The researchers provide a global and dynamic view on the global migration of scholars by gender.

    According to the paper, ‘While the US remained the leading academic destination worldwide, the shares of both female and male scholarly inflows to that country declined from around 25% to 20% over the study period, partially due to the growing relevance of China.’

    Lead author Xinyi Zhao, from the Leverhulme Centre and the Max Planck Institute adds, ‘Current literature points to gender inequality in science across countries. But a lack of relevant data on the migration of scholars has made it difficult to answer whether male and female scientists migrate equally.’

    Co-author Ridhi Kashyap  from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre, says, ‘While gender inequalities remain, our findings support a growing feminisation of scholars migrating internationally. However, female researchers are still restricted in moving as globally and as freely as their male counterparts.’

    Gender gaps among researchers and international scholars favouring men were smaller in high-income and upper-middle income countries, than low-income countries. The US, UK, and Germany remained popular with female and male mobile scholars, but in these global hubs of international science, gender gaps nonetheless persisted.

    In a handful of countries such as Portugal, Brazil and Argentina, near gender equality among mobile researchers was seen. Others such as Japan and South Korea had significant gender gaps in favour of men.

    Co-author Emilio Zagheni, from the Max Planck Institute, concludes, ‘Our study indicates that opportunities for women to advance their academic careers through international mobility have increased. While we unveiled a key and welcome trend, we also note that more research is needed to understand underlying mechanisms, including the roles played by families and by science policies in shaping gender differences in the drivers and outcomes of relocations.’

    The team used bibliometric data on over 33 million scientific publications from Scopus, a global database of scholarly publications, to estimate the international migration of female and male researchers around the world from 1998 to 2017. This allowed the researchers to document and analyse cross-national trends in a systematic way.

    University of Oxford

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  • Life in a violent country can be years shorter and much less predictable – even for those not involved in conflict

    Life in a violent country can be years shorter and much less predictable – even for those not involved in conflict

    Newswise — How long people live is less predictable and life expectancy for young people can be as much as 14 years shorter in violent countries compared to peaceful countries, according to a new study today [3/2] from an international team, led by Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science. It reveals a direct link between the uncertainty of living in a violent setting, even for those not directly involved in the violence, and a ‘double burden’ of shorter and less predictable lives.

    According to the research, violent deaths are responsible for a high proportion of the differences in lifetime uncertainty between violent and peaceful countries. But, the study says, ‘The impact of violence on mortality goes beyond cutting lives short. When lives are routinely lost to violence, those left behind face uncertainty as to who will be next.’

    Lead author Dr José Manuel Aburto from Oxford’s Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, adds, ‘What we found most striking is that lifetime uncertainty has a greater association with violence than life expectancy. Lifetime uncertainty, therefore, should not be overlooked when analysing changes in mortality patterns.’

    Using mortality data from 162 countries, and the Internal Peace Index between 2008-2017, the study shows the most violent countries are also those with the highest lifetime uncertainty. In the Middle East, conflict-related deaths at young ages are the biggest contributor to this, while in Latin America, a similar pattern results from homicides and interpersonal violence.

    But lifetime uncertainty was ‘remarkably low’ between 2008-2017, in most Northern and Southern European countries. Although Europe has been the most peaceful region over the period, the Russian invasion of Ukraine will impact this.

    In high-income countries, reduced cancer mortality has recently helped to reduce lifetime uncertainty. But, in the most violent societies, lifetime uncertainty is even experienced by those not directly involved in violence. The report states, ‘Poverty-insecurity-violence cycles magnify pre-existing structural patterns of disadvantage for women and fundamental imbalances in gender relations at young ages. In some Latin American countries, female homicides have increased over the last decades and exposure to violent environments brings health and social burdens, particularly for children and women.’

    Study co-author Professor Ridhi Kashyap, from the Leverhulme Centre, says, ‘Whilst men are the major direct victims of violence, women are more likely to experience non-fatal consequences in violent contexts. These indirect effects of violence should not be ignored as they fuel gender inequalities, and can trigger other forms of vulnerability and causes of death.’

    According to the report, lower life expectancy is usually associated with greater lifetime uncertainty. In addition, living in a violent society creates vulnerability and uncertainty – and that, in turn, can lead to more violent behaviour. 

    Countries with high levels of violence experience lower levels of life expectancy than more peaceful ones, ‘We estimate a gap of around 14 years in remaining life expectancy at age 10 between the least and most violent countries…In El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Colombia the gap in life expectancy with high income countries is predominantly explained by excess mortality due to homicides.’

    Study co-author Vanessa di Lego, from the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, adds, ‘It is striking how violence alone is a major driver of disparities in lifetime uncertainty. One thing is for certain, global violence is a public health crisis, with tremendous implications for population health, and should not be taken lightly.’

     

    About the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science

    This major new interdisciplinary research centre, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and directed by Professor Melinda Mills, is tackling the most challenging demographic problems of our time. Based at the University of Oxford, the Centre is at the forefront of demographic research that impacts academia, society and policy. Together with academic and industry partners, our researchers use new types of data, methods and unconventional approaches to disrupt conventional thinking across important issues such as COVID-19, climate change, and life expectancy. More information on the Centre can be found here.

    About the University of Oxford

    Oxford University has been placed number one in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the seventh year running, and ​number two in the QS World Rankings 2022. At the heart of this success are the twin-pillars of our ground-breaking research and innovation and our distinctive educational offer.

    Oxford is world-famous for research and teaching excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research alongside our personalised approach to teaching sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

    University of Oxford

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  • Female and male hearts respond differently to stress hormone

    Female and male hearts respond differently to stress hormone

    Newswise — (SACRAMENTO, Calif.) A new study published today (Jan. 20) in Science Advances shows female and male hearts respond differently to the stress hormone noradrenaline. The study in mice may have implications for human heart disorders like arrhythmias and heart failure and how different sexes respond to medications.

    The team built a new type of fluorescence imaging system that allows them to use light to see how a mouse heart responds to hormones and neurotransmitters in real time. The mice were exposed to noradrenaline, also known as norepinephrine. Noradrenaline is both a neurotransmitter and hormone associated with the body’s “fight or flight” response.

    The results reveal that male and female mouse hearts respond uniformly at first after exposure to noradrenaline. However, some areas of the female heart return to normal more quickly than the male heart, which produces differences in the heart’s electrical activity.

    “The differences in electrical activity that we observed are called repolarization in the female hearts. Repolarization refers to how the heart resets between each heartbeat and is closely linked to some types of arrhythmias,” said Jessica L. Caldwell, first author of the study. Caldwell is a postdoctoral scholar in the UC Davis School of Medicine Department of Pharmacology. “We know that there are sex differences in the risk for certain types of arrhythmias. The study reveals a new factor that may contribute to different arrhythmia susceptibility between men and women,” Caldwell said.

    Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the U.S.

    Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States. It accounted for about 1 in every 4 male deaths and 1 in every 5 female deaths in 2020. Despite the impact on both sexes, cardiology research has largely been performed on male subjects.

    In this study, the researchers were interested in looking at factors that may contribute to arrhythmias. Arrhythmias are a type of heart disorder where the electrical impulses that control heartbeats don’t function properly. They affect somewhere between 1.5% to 5% of the population.

    Methods

    The novel imaging system uses a mouse, called the CAMPER mouse, that has been genetically modified to emit light during a very specific chemical reaction in the heart — cAMP binding.

    The cAMP molecule (an abbreviation of cyclic adenosine 3’,5;-monophosphate) is an intermediate messenger that turns signals from hormones and neurotransmitters, including noradrenaline, into action from heart cells.

    The light signals from the CAMPER mouse are transmitted by a biosensor that uses fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET). This FRET signal can be picked up at high speed and high resolution by a new imaging system specially designed for hearts. This allows the researchers to record the heart’s reaction to noradrenaline in real time, along with changes in electrical activity.

    This new imaging approach revealed the differences in the breakdown of cAMP in female and male mice and the associated differences in electrical activity.

    Including female mice leads to discoveries

    The researchers had not planned to study sex-based responses, according to Crystal M. Ripplinger, senior author of the study. But the researchers started seeing a pattern of different reactions, which led them to realize the differences were sex-based.

    Ripplinger, an electrical and biomedical engineer, is a professor in the Department of Pharmacology.

    When she started her lab at the UC Davis School of Medicine over a decade ago, she exclusively used male animals. That was the norm for most research at the time. But several years ago, she began including male and female animals in her studies.

    “Sometimes the data between the two sexes is the same. But if the data start to show variation, the first thing we do is look at sex differences. Using both male and female mice has revealed clues into differences we would never have suspected. Researchers are realizing you can’t extrapolate to both sexes from only studying one,” Ripplinger said.

    She notes that with the current study, it’s not clear what the differences in cAMP and electrical activity may mean.

    “The response in the female mice may be protective — or it may not. But simply documenting that there is a measurable difference in the response to a stress hormone is significant. We are hoping to learn more in future studies,” Ripplinger said.

    Additional authors on the study include I-Ju (Eric) Lee, Lena Ngo, Lianguo Wang, Donald M. Bers, Manuel F. Navedo and Julie Bossuyt from UC Davis; Sherif Bahriz from UC Davis and Mansoura University; Bing (Rita) Xu and Yang K. Xiang from UC Davis and VA Northern California.

    This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Veterans Administration Merit Grant.

    Resources

    UC Davis Health

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  • Salary Transparencies Spur Universities to Pay Females More Equitably

    Salary Transparencies Spur Universities to Pay Females More Equitably

    Newswise — Publicly available salary information prompts organizations to reduce the gender pay gap, according to a new study from the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy.

    The research counters previous assumptions that salary transparency creates more equal pay because it allows individual employees to negotiate for higher compensation.

    “We find that when there is a standardization process that makes searching for compensation information very easy, then organizations as a whole have an incentive to improve equality to reduce the threat of public scrutiny,” said Elizabeth Lyons, associate professor of management at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and coauthor of the study.

    The study assesses how universities in Ontario responded to a policy—first implemented in 1996—that required all organizations to make salary information for those making over $100,000 public. The study finds these universities increased female pay by about 4%. Outside the province, where compensation data are private, female pay did not have the similar significant increase over the same time period in the study

    “Universities most likely to anticipate higher scrutiny, such as top ranked institutions, responded more aggressively and quickly to improve gender pay equality by slowing the growth of male salaries as well as by increasing female pay,” Lyons said.

    Concerns organizations have over salary transparency are that it could lower worker morale and, in the university setting, could affect how donors or students perceive the institution. For private companies, backlash from customers over unequal pay could also harm a firm’s reputation.

    The paper published in the journal Strategic Management compares compensation of 32,000 different university employees across 1,400 academic departments in Canada over a 24-year period. The authors were able to access salary information for the provinces outside Ontario through a Statistics Canada dataset available to researchers.

    “Importantly, salary transparency does influence gender pay inequality but not in the way we thought it would,” said Lyons, who coauthored the paper with Laurina Zhang, an assistant professor in strategy and innovation at Boston University. “We expected that salary transparency would reduce inequality because females were going to see what their male counterparts were making and try to negotiate for more equal pay, but the data did not reveal changes at the individual level.”

    They were also surprised that despite little media attention around gender pay equality at the time the policy in Ontario was first implemented, institutions reacted by trying to get in front of the issue to reduce the gender pay gap.

    “The strategy seemed to work because we did not see high profile news stories about gender inequality on Ontario college campuses,” Lyons and Zhang said.

    They added the results have major implications for salary transparency in the U.S., where organizations are under more pressure today to pay female and male workers equally than Canadian organizations were at the time of the study. It is estimated women in the U.S. make up to 14% less than men in the same position.

    Mandates to make salary information public have been implemented in many states across the U.S. like California, Florida and Texas.

    While some firms or governments argue salary transparency can be invasive, even dangerous, the authors conclude the findings imply that facilitating low-cost public monitoring of gender inequalities can motivate organizations to enact change.

    The full paper, “Salary Transparency and Gender Pay Inequality: Evidence from Canadian Universities,” can be accessed at this link.

    University of California San Diego

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  • Study reveals average age at conception for men versus women over past 250,000 years

    Study reveals average age at conception for men versus women over past 250,000 years

    Newswise — BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The length of a specific generation can tell us a lot about the biology and social organization of humans. Now, researchers at Indiana University can determine the average age that women and men had children throughout human evolutionary history with a new method they developed using DNA mutations.

    The researchers said this work can help us understand the environmental challenges experienced by our ancestors and may also help us in predicting the effects of future environmental change on human societies.

    “Through our research on modern humans, we noticed that we could predict the age at which people had children from the types of DNA mutations they left to their children,” said study co-author Matthew Hahn, Distinguished Professor of biology in the College of Arts and Sciences and of computer science in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering at IU Bloomington. “We then applied this model to our human ancestors to determine what age our ancestors procreated.”

    According to the study, published today in Science Advances and co-authored by IU post-doctoral researcher Richard Wang, the average age that humans had children throughout the past 250,000 years is 26.9. Furthermore, fathers were consistently older, at 30.7 years on average, than mothers, at 23.2 years on average, but the age gap has shrunk in the past 5,000 years, with the study’s most recent estimates of maternal age averaging 26.4 years. The shrinking gap seems to largely be due to mothers having children at older ages.

    Other than the recent uptick in maternal age at childbirth, the researchers found that parental age has not increased steadily from the past and may have dipped around 10,000 years ago because of population growth coinciding with the rise of civilization.

    “These mutations from the past accumulate with every generation and exist in humans today,” Wang said. “We can now identify these mutations, see how they differ between male and female parents, and how they change as a function of parental age.”

    Children’s DNA inherited from their parents contains roughly 25 to 75 new mutations, which allows scientists to compare the parents and offspring, and then to classify the kind of mutation that occurred. When looking at mutations in thousands of children, IU researchers noticed a pattern: The kinds of mutations that children get depend on the ages of the mother and the father.

    Previous genetic approaches to determining historical generation times relied on the compounding effects of either recombination or mutation of modern human DNA sequence divergence from ancient samples. But the results were averaged across both males and females and across the past 40,000 to 45,000 years.

    Hahn, Wang and their co-authors built a model that uses de novo mutations — a genetic alteration that is present for the first time in one family member as a result of a variant or mutation in a germ cell of one of the parents or that arises in the fertilized egg during early embryogenesis — to separately estimate the male and female generation times at many different points throughout the past 250,000 years.

    The researchers were not originally seeking to understand the relationship of gender and age at conception over time; they were conducting a broader investigation about the number of mutations passed from parents to children. They only noticed the age-based mutation patterns while seeking to understand differences and similarities between these pattens in humans versus other mammals, such as cats, bears and macaques.

    “The story of human history is pieced together from a diverse set of sources: written records, archaeological findings, fossils, etc.,” Wang said. “Our genomes, the DNA found in every one of our cells, offer a kind of manuscript of human evolutionary history. The findings from our genetic analysis confirm some things we knew from other sources (such as the recent rise in parental age), but also offer a richer understanding of the demography of ancient humans. These findings contribute to a better understanding of our shared history.”

    Additional contributors to this research were Samer I. Al-Saffar, a graduate student at IU at the time of the study, and Jeffrey Rogers of the Baylor College of Medicine.

    Indiana University

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  • Does COVID change the body’s response to other threats? Depends on your sex

    Does COVID change the body’s response to other threats? Depends on your sex

    Newswise — New Haven, Conn. — The long-term effects of infection on the immune system have long intrigued John Tsang, a Yale immunobiologist. After the body has faced down a pathogen, does the immune system return to the previous baseline? Or does a single infection change it in ways that alter how it will respond not only to a familiar virus but also to the next new viral or bacterial threat it faces?

    Tsang, a professor of immunobiology and biomedical engineering at Yale, has long believed that the immune system reverts to the previous stable baseline after viral infection.

    The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 allowed him and colleagues to test that theory. The answer, they found, depends on the individual’s sex, according to a study published Jan. 4 in the journal Nature.

    For the study, a team led by Tsang, who at the time was at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and colleagues, including lead author Rachel Sparks, also from NIAID, systematically analyzed immune responses of healthy people who had received the flu vaccine. From that data, they then compared the responses between those who had never been infected by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and those who experienced mild cases but recovered.

    To their surprise, they found that immune systems of men who had recovered from mild cases of COVID-19 responded more robustly to flu vaccines than women who had had mild cases or men and women who had never been infected.

    In essence, the baseline immune statuses in men previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 was altered in ways that changed the response to an exposure different from SARS-CoV-2, the authors said.

    “This was a total surprise,” Tsang said. “Women usually mount a stronger overall immune response to pathogens and vaccines, but are also more likely to suffer from autoimmune diseases.”

    The findings may also be linked to an observation made early in the pandemic: Men were much more likely to die from a runaway immune response than women after contracting the COVID-19 virus. Even mild cases of COVID-19, the new findings suggest, might trigger stronger inflammatory responses in males than females, resulting in more pronounced functional changes to the male immune system, even long after recovery.

    Their unbiased analysis of immune system status down to the individual cell level revealed several differences between COVID-recovered males and healthy controls and COVID-recovered females, both before and after receiving flu vaccinations. For instance, previously infected males produced more antibodies to influenza and produced increased levels of interferons, which are produced by cells in response to infections or vaccines. Generally, healthy females have stronger interferon responses than their male counterparts.

    Understanding the lingering effects of COVID-19 on the immune system is crucial, the authors say, since more than 600 million people worldwide have been infected so far, and the emergence of “long-COVID” symptoms in some people continues to be a major health concern.

    “Our findings point to the possibility that any infection or immune challenge may change the immune status to establish new set points,” said Sparks. “The immune status of an individual is likely shaped by a multitude of prior exposures and perturbations.”

    Tsang thinks these findings may also help scientists create better vaccines against diverse threats by, for instance, mimicking how mild COVID-19 changes the male immune baseline.

    Other researchers included William Lau, a computational biologist at the National Institutes of Health, and Can Liu, a systems immunology graduate student at the University of Maryland who is also affiliated with NIAID.

    Yale University

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  • Men may not ‘perceive’ domestic tasks as needing doing in the same way as women, philosophers argue

    Men may not ‘perceive’ domestic tasks as needing doing in the same way as women, philosophers argue

    Newswise — Philosophers seeking to answer questions around inequality in household labour and the invisibility of women’s work in the home have proposed a new theory – that men and women are trained by society to see different possibilities for action in the same domestic environment. 

    They say a view called “affordance theory” – that we experience objects and situations as having actions implicitly attached – underwrites the age-old gender disparity when it comes to the myriad mundane tasks of daily home maintenance.

    For example, women may look at a surface and see an implied action – ‘to be wiped’ – whereas men may just observe a crumb-covered countertop.    

    The philosophers believe these deep-seated gender divides in domestic perception can be altered through societal interventions such as extended paternal leave, which will encourage men to build up mental associations for household tasks.

    Writing in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, they argue that available data – particularly data gathered during the pandemic – suggest two questions require explanation. 

    One is “disparity”: despite economic and cultural gains, why do women continue to shoulder the vast majority of housework and childcare? The other is “invisibility”: why do so many men believe domestic work to be more equally distributed than in fact it is?

    “Many point to the performance of traditional gender roles, along with various economic factors such as women taking flexible work for childcare reasons,” said Dr Tom McClelland, from Cambridge University’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

    “Yet the fact that stark inequalities in domestic tasks persisted during the pandemic, when most couples were trapped inside, and that many men continued to be oblivious of this imbalance, means this is not the full story.”

    McClelland and co-author Prof Paulina Sliwa argue that unequal divisions of labour in the home – and the inability of men to identify said labour – is best explained through the psychological notion of “affordances”: the idea that we perceive things as inviting or “affording” particular actions.

    “This is not just looking at the shape and size of a tree and then surmising you can climb it, but actually seeing a particular tree as climbable, or seeing a cup as drink-from-able,” said Sliwa, recently of Cambridge’s philosophy faculty and now at the University of Vienna. 

    “Neuroscience has shown that perceiving an affordance can trigger neural processes preparing you for physical action. This can range from a slight urge to overwhelming compulsion, but it often takes mental effort not to act on an affordance.”

    There are dramatic differences in “affordance perception” between individuals. One person sees a tree as climbable where another does not. Objects offer a vast array of affordances – one could see a spatula as an egg-frying tool or a rhythmic instrument – and a spectrum of sensitivity towards them. 

    “If we apply affordance perception to the domestic environment and assume it is gendered, it goes a long way to answering both questions of disparity and invisibility,” said McClelland.

    According to the philosophers, when a woman enters a kitchen she is more likely to perceive the “affordances” for particular domestic tasks – she sees the dishes as ‘to be washed’ or a fridge as ‘to be stocked’.

    A man may simply observe dishes in a sink, or a half-empty fridge, but without perceiving the affordance or experiencing the corresponding mental “tug”. Over time, these little differences add up to significant disparities in who does what.  

    “Affordances pull on your attention,” said Sliwa. “Tasks may irritate the perceiver until done, or distract them from other plans. If resisted, it can create a felt tension.”

    “This puts women in a catch-22 situation: either inequality of labour or inequality of cognitive load.”

    This gender-based split in affordance perception could have a number of root causes, say philosophers. Social cues encourage actions in certain environments, often given by adults when we are very young children. Our visual systems update based on what we encounter most frequently.

    “Social norms shape the affordances we perceive, so it would be surprising if gender norms do not do the same,” said McClelland.

    “Some skills are explicitly gendered, such cleaning or grooming, and girls are expected to do more domestic chores than boys. This trains their ways of seeing the domestic environment, to see a counter as ‘to be wiped’.”

    The “gendered affordance perception hypothesis” is not about absolving men say Sliwa and McClelland. Despite a deficit in affordance perception in the home, a man can easily notice what needs doing by thinking rather than seeing. Nor should sensitivity to domestic affordances in women be equated with natural affinity for housework.

    “We can change how we perceive the world through continued conscious effort and habit cultivation,” said McClelland. “Men should be encouraged to resist gendered norms by improving their sensitivity to domestic task affordances. 

    “A man might adopt a resolution to sweep for crumbs every time he waits for the kettle to boil, for example. Not only would this help them to do the tasks they don’t see, it would gradually retrain their perception so they start to see the affordance in the future.”

    Collective efforts to change social norms require policy-level interventions, argue the philosophers. For example, shared parental leave gives fathers the opportunity to become more sensitive to caring-task affordances.

    Added Sliwa: “Our focus has been on physical actions such as sweeping or wiping, but gendered affordance perceptions could also apply to mental actions such as scheduling and remembering.”

    University of Cambridge

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  • Education boosts entrepreneurship in high growth industries

    Education boosts entrepreneurship in high growth industries

    Newswise — AMES, IA – A new study from Iowa State indicates more education increases entrepreneurship in the U.S., especially for women.

    Economics Professor John Winters and graduate student Kunwon Ahn co-authored the recently published paper in Small Business Economics.

    “The benefits of education are often debated. Some worry it’s mostly about signaling rather than skill development, but our study provides a piece of evidence that additional years of education after high school can boost self-employment in high growth industries,” said Winters.

    To build their economic model, the researchers relied on the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Ahn and Winters examined employment and education data on nearly 8.2 million people born in the U.S. between 1963 and 1990. They then spliced their samples by state and birth year to link changes in education levels to changes in self-employment rates. 

    The researchers categorized industries as “high growth,” “low-to-middle growth” and “shrinking” based on industry employment growth data between 2006 and 2019 from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.

    “Some of the high growth industries are what we’d expect: e-commerce and computer and data processing services. But they also included child care, veterinary services, and newer sub-industries in health, education and social services that emerged with smartphones and the explosion of apps,” said Winters.

    Food processing, trucking and grocery stores were among the low-to-middle growth industries. Automobiles, electronics and other sectors of manufacturing dominated the shrinking industries category, along with some retailers that sold clothing, movies and music.

    After crunching the numbers, the researchers found:

    • Additional schooling led to more self-employment in high growth industries for men and women.
    • Additional schooling led to more self-employment in low-to-medium growth industries for women but not for men.
    • Additional schooling led to less self-employment in shrinking industries for men. The researchers could not make any definitive conclusions about shrinking-industry self-employment for women because the results were not statistically significant.

    “Essentially, more education shifted the overall number of self-employed men from shrinking and low-to-medium-growth industries to high growth industries. For women, more education increased self-employment overall,” said Winters.

    Han Solo’s confidence

    As for possible explanations for the different effects education has on men and women, Winters said it may have something to do with confidence.

    “The percentage of businesses that fail early on is very high. So, nascent entrepreneurs need to be confident in order to take the leap into self-employment,” said Winters. “Think of Han Solo in Star Wars who said, ‘Never tell me the odds.’ He’s a textbook case of an overconfident entrepreneur.”

    Winters pointed to previous research showing men historically tend to be more confident and even overconfident compared to women. Along with increasing skills, education can help open doors and aspirations.

    “Education is empowering. For men who are overconfident, additional schooling may not affect their confidence much, but it can provide skills to help them in more productive and higher growth industries. For women, education may have an even greater impact on encouraging them to jump into entrepreneurship by increasing their confidence in addition to their skills,” Winters said.

    Data limitations and future research

    One of the challenges with the research project was measuring entrepreneurship. The American Community Survey asks people if they are self-employed, which Winters said is not necessarily the same as being an entrepreneur.

    “We tend to think of an entrepreneur as someone who wants to grow their business and have employees. Self-employment is broader,” said Winters.

    To shed further light on this, the researchers looked at whether the survey respondents who were self-employed had a business that was incorporated or unincorporated. Incorporating a business limits the owner’s personal liability for business debts. It provides legal protection but comes with additional paperwork and fees.

    Since businesses with more employees or aspirations to grow are more likely to be incorporated, the researchers used the legal status as a proxy for entrepreneurship. They found education increased incorporated self-employment for both women and men.

    In order to have large enough sample sizes for every state between 1963 and 1990, the researchers used employment and education data from white, non-Hispanic adults.

    “Our empirical method only allows us to look at people born in the United States, and we need large comparable groups for our approach to give accurate results,” explained Winters. 

    Winters said he’d like to see more research that explores how education can enhance entrepreneurship as a whole and for different demographic groups.

    “Education and entrepreneurship are both massively important topics, and better understanding how they work together is critical for a prosperous future,” notes Winters. “Our paper is only scratching the surface, but we hope future research sheds light on things like the influence of college major, student debt, and where entrepreneurs start their businesses.”

    Iowa State University

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  • New Equitable Giving Lab will provide insights into equity and funding gaps for under-represented populations

    New Equitable Giving Lab will provide insights into equity and funding gaps for under-represented populations

    Newswise — The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IUPUI is creating a new digital resource, The Equitable Giving Lab, that will bring an equity lens to philanthropy by measuring funding for under-resourced groups. The Equitable Giving Lab will address the current lack of centralized data on charitable giving to diverse communities and is made possible through anchor funding from Google.org.

    The Lab will provide information about charitable giving to nonprofits focused on the LGBTQ+, BIPOC, military veteran, and women’s and girls’ communities. It will be the first resource to measure charitable contributions from individuals, foundations, and corporations to these organizations, including trends over time.

    The Equitable Giving Lab will be a one-stop source for high-quality, publicly available data about charitable giving to organizations focused on each of these under-resourced communities. It will help nonprofits, journalists, researchers and the public understand giving patterns to these organizations. The Lab will also better equip donors and funders who want to prioritize equity and inclusion with data to inform effective strategies and to create greater impact.

    “The Equitable Giving Lab will serve as the gold standard for understanding the current funding landscape and where gaps exist. The COVID-19 pandemic, along with the movement for racial justice, brought renewed attention to vast disparities among diverse populations. Measuring the scale of under-investment in specific communities is the next step needed to better align resources with society’s most urgent needs,” said Una Osili, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research and International Programs and Dean’s Fellow for the Mays Family Institute on Diverse Philanthropy, both at the school.

    The Women & Girls Index (WGI)—the first comprehensive index that measures charitable giving to women’s and girls’ organizations in the United States—was created in 2019 by the Women’s Philanthropy Institute, part of the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, and is updated annually. The WGI will serve as the model for creating and updating similar indices for the LGBTQ+ community, racial and ethnic groups, and military veterans over the next few years, and will be incorporated into the Equitable Giving Lab. In addition to informing practice, data from the indices will help scholars of nonprofits and philanthropy apply an equity lens to their research.

    “While there is growing awareness of the equity gaps in philanthropy, there is a significant lack of research on this topic,” said Amir Pasic, Ph.D., the Eugene R. Tempel Dean of the school. “Most philanthropy data is in aggregate form; the Equitable Giving Lab will bring a more nuanced lens to this information. We thank Google.org for supporting this advancement in understanding and addressing these equity gaps.”

    “The expertise needed to analyze and share high-quality, longitudinal data can be costly and time-consuming, and only a handful of organizations have the requisite interest and skill,” said Andrew Dunckelman, Head of Impact and Insights at Google.org. “We are impressed by the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s research accomplishments, especially their development of the Women & Girls Index, and we are pleased to support this important innovation in measuring charitable giving to these communities.”

    Community leaders and sector experts will be recruited to provide insights on research and development of the Lab and the individual indices.     

    Indiana University

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  • Keck Medicine of USC launches Gender-Affirming Care Program

    Keck Medicine of USC launches Gender-Affirming Care Program

    Newswise — LOS ANGELES — When Bridget, 57, moved from the East Coast to Los Angeles, she sought health care to maintain and monitor her hormone therapy. 

    She was quickly disappointed. One provider admitted they knew nothing about transgender health, and another labeled her transgender status as a “medical problem.” 

    She then discovered the Keck Medicine of USC Gender-Affirming Care Program and met with Laura Taylor, MD, a Keck Medicine family medicine specialist and medical director of the program. Taylor has been Bridget’s primary care doctor ever since.

    As Bridget experienced, transgender people often face barriers to equitable health care. According to a 2021 study from the Center for American Progress, one in three transgender adults said they had to teach their doctors about transgender health to receive appropriate care. Nearly one-half reported having negative or discriminatory experiences with a health care provider. 

    To address the many health care disparities faced by transgender individuals, Keck Medicine has launched the Gender-Affirming Care Program to meet the comprehensive needs of the transgender, nonbinary and gender-diverse community. Services include everything from routine health care, such as preventive cancer screenings, yearly checkups and flu shots, to gender-affirming hormone therapy and surgery.  

    The program is comprised of physicians from several disciplines including family medicine, plastic surgery, gynecology, urology and otolaryngology. Specialists in voice, occupational and physical therapy are also available to patients.

    A nurse navigator coordinates care with the providers to ensure patients receive seamless specialized treatment. The physicians and program staff have collectively received more than 600 hours of gender-affirming sensitivity and inclusivity training.

    “Our program brings together a multidisciplinary group of physicians across specialties to address the specialized needs of this underserved population,” said Taylor. “We’re proud to offer a full range of health care services in a safe and supportive environment.”

    Another key aspect of the Gender-Affirming Care Program is that it was designed with input from the local transgender community.

    “Due to historic marginalization of the transgender population, some within the community view medical providers with distrust,” said Roberto Travieso, MD, surgical director of the program. “It was important to make our local community part of the process as we built the program.”

    As part of its outreach, Keck Medicine partnered with The [email protected] Coalition, the largest trans-led nonprofit organization in Los Angeles that advocates for the needs of transgender, gender non-conforming and intersex immigrants across the country.

    This collaboration helps Keck Medicine establish a strong foundation within the transgender community and provides ongoing feedback on how the program can best serve patients.

    The Gender-Affirming Care Program was in development for several years, but came to full fruition with the arrival of Taylor and Travieso to Keck Medicine, respectively in 2020 and 2021. Taylor is trained in LGBTQ+ health care and Travieso is fellowship-trained in gender-affirming surgery.

    The program leaders hope to hire and train more gender-affirming practitioners, build more mental health services into care and foster additional community partnerships.

    Meanwhile, for patients like Bridget, the Gender-Affirming Care Program is a gift.

    “I am doing really well under Dr. Taylor’s care, and feeling happy and healthy,” she said.

    ###

    For more information about Keck Medicine of USC, please visit news.KeckMedicine.org.

    Keck Medicine of USC

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  • Report blasts Virginia schools’ handling of sex assaults

    Report blasts Virginia schools’ handling of sex assaults

    LEESBURG, Va. — A special grand jury convened at the direction of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has issued a scathing report against a northern Virginia school system accusing it of mishandling a student who sexually assaulted classmates at two different high schools last year.

    The grand jury report accuses the Loudoun County Public Schools superintendent of lying to the public to cover up what occurred, and authorities of ignoring multiple warning signs that could have prevented an assault.

    “It is our considered judgment that (the second assault) never should have occurred,” the grand jury states in the report. “Had any one of a number of individuals across a variety of entities spoke up … then the sexual assault most likely would not have occurred. But nobody did.”

    Youngkin issued an executive order on his first day in office in January requesting an investigation of the school system’s conduct in connection with the assaults. The school system sought to quash the investigation, calling it politically motivated. But the Virginia Supreme Court ruled earlier this year it could move forward.

    The school system’s conduct became a major issue in the 2021 gubernatorial campaign, as Youngkin cited Loudoun schools as an example of administrators who placed social justice initiatives above student safety and educational fundamentals.

    The assaults received outsize attention because the student who was convicted in both attacks is a biological male who wore a skirt in one of the attacks, playing into a national debate over how schools should treat transgender students and whether they should be allowed to use restrooms different than their biological sex.

    The report also accuses school administrators and lawyers of stonewalling the special grand jury’s investigation. The report notes that school board members went out of their way in testimony to describe the assailant’s attire as a kilt rather than a skirt, something the report suggests was a coordinated effort by the school system’s legal team to push a coordinated narrative about what occurred.

    A school system spokesman said the district would issue a statement responding to the report later Monday.

    The first assault occurred in a girls’ bathroom stall at Stone Bridge High School in May 2021. The student was charged in juvenile court and barred by court order from returning to Stone Bridge. Administrators then transferred him to nearby Broad Run High School, where the second assault occurred in October 2021.

    The grand jury report accuses the school system superintendent, Scott Ziegler, of lying about the assault at a school board meeting in June 2021, after the first assault occurred.

    As the school board debated policies governing transgender students and whether they can use the restroom of their preference, a school board member asked Ziegler if the schools had a problem with sexual assaults occurring in bathrooms.

    Ziegler responded that “to my knowledge we don’t have any record of assaults in our restrooms.” But emails show that Ziegler had been informed of the Stone Bridge assault and in fact had sent an email to board members informing them of the incident.

    The report says teachers at both schools warned administrators of the student’s disturbing conduct weeks before each assault occurred. Even the student’s grandmother spoke up and warned the student’s probation officer, referring to her grandchild as a “sociopath,” according to the report.

    Two weeks before the first assault, a teaching assistant wrote an email to another teacher and administrator noting that the boy sat on girls’ laps during study hall “and seems to have a problem with listening and keeping his hands to himself.”

    The email resulted in a call to the student’s mother, but the grand jury report shows administrators seemed as concerned with whether the teaching assistant followed proper protocol in reporting her concerns as they were about the student’s conduct.

    And the report faults administrators for passing the student off to Broad Run with insufficient communication about the risk he posed. At Broad Run, an art teacher reported to the principal that girls in the class were uncomfortable because the student was following them. Separately, he asked multiple students about posting nude photos online, according to the report.

    The only punishment was an admonishment and requiring him to “write on a piece of paper that he would not commit such conduct again,” according to the report.

    Attorney General Jason Miyares, whose office conducted the investigation, thanked grand jurors and said he looks “forward to the positive change in LCPS resulting from their work.”

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  • AP PHOTOS: Pageant celebrates transgender life in India

    AP PHOTOS: Pageant celebrates transgender life in India

    GUWAHATI, India — Anilya Boro may not have won the crown at India’s Miss Trans NE pageant this year, but having her parents there in support was a validation in its own right.

    “I must prove to my parents that I can do something as a girl,” said the 22-year-old. “I didn’t win a title, but I am very happy that my parents were at the show to support me. Now they have accepted my decision to live as a girl and undergo surgery, but they don’t want me to rush through.”

    Twenty transgender women sashayed on a stage dressed as ethnic and tribal characters in the beauty pageant, drawing rounds of applause from the audience. The contestants came from India’s remote eight northeastern states, some of them nestled in the Himalayas in a relatively undeveloped region known for its stunning natural vistas.

    The event on Wednesday promoted the beauty and uniqueness of the northeastern region and community pride to uplift the transgender community, said Ajan Akash Barauah, the organizer.

    It wasn’t easy to hold the show with no corporate funding. Ajan turned to friends and organizations supporting the transgender cause to finance the pageant.

    Sexual minorities across India have gained a degree of acceptance, especially in big cities, and transgender people were guaranteed equal rights as a third gender in 2014. But prejudice persists and the community continues to face discrimination and rejection by their families. They’re often denied jobs, education and health care.

    Ajan lived in the Indian capital for 13 years as a fashion designer and moved to her hometown of Guwahati in northeastern Assam state after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country.

    She had won the title of Trans Queen in 2014, in a pageant held in the southern city of Vishakhapatnam, and later decided to help the community in the northeastern region.

    “The Miss Trans NE pageant on Nov. 30 was only for men who identified themselves as women. Next year, it will include transgender men as well,’’ Ajan said.

    Anilya is keeping her sights high, dreaming of one day winning the Miss Universe title. Her mother, Aikon Boro, said Anilya wore only girl’s clothes since she was 6 or 7, feeling the most comfortable in them.

    “Everybody in the family tried to change her habits and behavior but she didn’t listen. Now the family members have accepted her as a transgender person,’’ she said.

    The top prize at Miss Trans NE went to Lucey Ham from Itanagar in Arunachal Pradesh state which borders on China, while Aria Deka and Rishidhya Sangkarishan, both from Assam in the far northeast, were runners-up.

    “I am overwhelmed with joy. I have nothing to say. I will never forget the biggest moment of my life,” Ham said after she was crowned the winner.

    Creating awareness about transgender people and educating them about their rights was what got Ajan involved with the event.

    “They should know about gender equality everywhere. Even when you go to the office or a hotel or a public toilet you have the right to ask for proper facilities,” Ajan said.

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  • Man charged with threatening doctor over transgender care

    Man charged with threatening doctor over transgender care

    BOSTON — Federal prosecutors have charged a Texas man with threatening a Boston physician who cares for transgender children.

    Thirty-eight-year-old Matthew Jordan Lindner of Comfort, Texas, faces a charge of transmitting interstate threats. He was arrested Friday in Texas by the FBI and is expected to appear in federal court in Massachusetts at a later date.

    Authorities say the targeted physician works for a national LGBTQ health education center based in Boston. In August, Jordan allegedly called the center and left a profane and threatening voice message in which he said a group of people were coming for the physician.

    Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said that while the threat targeted a specific doctor, it also victimized LGBTQ people and their families.

    Over the summer, doctors and other staffers at Boston Children’s Hospital also received violent threats related to its medical care for transgender youth. Authorities noted the threats began after false and misleading claims about the hospital and its work spread online.

    It was unclear Saturday if Lindner is represented by an attorney. A message left with Lindner on Saturday was not immediately returned.

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  • Human rights groups criticize Cuba’s new criminal code

    Human rights groups criticize Cuba’s new criminal code

    HAVANA — Cuba enacted a new penal code this week that activists and human rights organizations warned Friday could further limit free expression and snuff out protests at a time of deepening discontent on the island.

    The code, a modified version of the country’s 1987 regulations approved by the Cuban government in May, will ripple to journalists, human rights activists, protesters, social media users and opposition figures.

    The changes come amid deepening discontent in Cuba produced by compounding crises and as the government continues to dole out harsh sentences to participants — including minors — in the island’s historic 2021 protests.

    Among some of the changes are increases in the minimum penalties and prison sentences on things like “public disorder,” “resistance” and “insulting national symbols.”

    The new code also establishes criminal categories for digital offenses, saying that people disseminating online any information deemed to be false could face up to two years in prison.

    It also prohibits the receipt and use of funds made to finance activities “against the Cuban state and its constitutional order,” which human rights groups say could be used against independent journalists and non-governmental groups. Conviction could bring four to 10 years in prison.

    The government has described the new code as “modern” and “inclusive,” pointing to stiffening penalties on gender-based violence and racial discrimination. Following its approval, Rubén Remigio Ferro, Cuban Supreme Court president, said on state TV that the code is not meant to repress, but rather protect “the social peace and stability of our nation.”

    But human rights watchdog groups, many of which are not permitted on the island, raised alarms about the new code Friday.

    “This is clearly an effort to provide a legal avenue for repression and censorship and an effort by Cuban authorities to undercut the little civic space that exists in the island and impede the possibility that Cubans will take to the streets again,” said Juan Pappier, senior investigator for Human Rights Watch in Latin America.

    Pappier, alongside an Amnesty International report, said the code is “plagued with overly broad” language that could be used by Cuban authorities to more easily punish dissent.

    Cuba has faced significant international criticism for the treatment of protesters in anti-government demonstrations in July 2021.

    A total of 790 participants of the protests face prosecution for sedition, violent attacks, public disorder, theft and other crimes, according to the latest figures released in January by Cuba’s attorney general’s office.

    More than 500 are serving prison sentences, according to numbers from opposition organization Justice 11J, which advocates for those on trial or serving prison sentences in connection with the protests.

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  • Colorado governor visits shooting site as community heals

    Colorado governor visits shooting site as community heals

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — In a crowded brewery, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis embraced Richard Fierro, the veteran hailed as a hero after tackling a shooter who killed five people and injured 17 others at the LGBTQ enclave Club Q last week.

    There was a festive atmosphere Tuesday at Atrevida Beer, owned by Fierro, where patrons clutched pints of beer, a long line stretched across the room to the door, and above the bar was printed a message: “Diversity, it’s on tap.”

    Fierro’s event, where Polis and the Colorado Springs mayor both made an appearance, was the paradigm of a catchphrase Fierro has repeated since the shooting: “Be nice, hug each other, take care of your neighbor.”

    The hugs seemed contagious. Fierro squeezed Wyatt Kent, a drag queen whose 23rd birthday was being celebrated the night of the shooting, and chatted with his family.

    Kent, who’s drag name is Potted Plant, was still reeling from the horrific night. Kent remembered shots, then collapsing below Kelly Loving, who had been shot in the chest. Squeezing her hand as they asked Siri to call 911, Kent then held Loving’s head, repeating “one more breath, just one more breath” before paramedics arrived.

    The bleeding from Loving’s chest, was “like a hole in an air mattress,” said Kent, pausing and looking away. Loving was among the five dead, along with Daniel Aston, who Kent was in a relationship with. Aston had left strawberries, roses and a card for Kent’s birthday before he was killed.

    Kent, who’d written 119 poems about Aston, went completely numb in the days afterward. Then, they began connecting with Aston’s family and friends, those “who loved him, it’s really healing,” they said.

    Club Q’s community had been a steadfast support network, said Kent, one which has continued to undergird the community’s healing since the tragedy.

    “If I pour myself out into others they will pour themselves out back into me,” said Kent, “and that’s what this community has always done.”

    The broader Colorado Springs community is pouring out support for the survivors, too. At his brewery, Fierro was honored with $50,000 from a local credit union.

    “I’ve never had that much money in my life,” said an astonished Fierro, who reiterated that “everyone in (Club Q) was a hero.”

    Matt Gendron, chief engagement officer at Ent Credit Union and who’s employee had been in Club Q that night, said that Fierro “saved the lives of many people, including one of our family members.”

    Earlier that day, Polis solemnly walked along a line of flowers, crosses and signs bearing the photos and names of the victims outside Club Q in Colorado Springs.

    When he reached the end, he picked up a piece of pink chalk and drew a heart and wrote “We remember” on the pavement in front of the memorial, which had been covered with tarps to protect it from snow until his arrival.

    “Five people are lost forever. We celebrate their lives. We mourn them,” Polis said while speaking to reporters afterward at the site.

    Polis, who spoke earlier in the day to relatives of those killed as well as the injured, wore a gay pride ribbon pinned to the zipper of his puffy jacket. The Democrat, who became the first openly gay man elected governor in the U.S. in 2018, said he was concerned about rhetoric associating mainly transgender people with grooming and pedophilia and feared it could “inspire acts against the LGBTQ community.”

    But he was also optimistic about the future of the club, a sanctuary for the LGBTQ community in the mostly conservative city of 480,000, located about 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Denver.

    “Club Q will be back and the community will be back,” he said.

    The attacker opened fire Nov. 19 with a semiautomatic rifle inside the gay nightclub before being subdued by patrons and arrested by police who arrived within minutes, authorities have said.

    The motive remains under investigation and one person is in custody.

    Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, was being held without bond on suspicion of murder and hate crimes. Aldrich was arrested at the club after being stopped and beaten by patrons.

    Hate crime charges would require proving that the shooter was motivated by bias, such as against the victims’ actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

    Prosecutors have not yet filed formal charges against Aldrich, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, according to court filings by his lawyers.

    Aldrich was arrested last year after a relative reported Aldrich was threatening her with a homemade bomb and other weapons, according to authorities.

    Ring doorbell video obtained by The Associated Press shows Aldrich arriving at their mother’s front door with a big black bag the day of the 2021 bomb threat, telling her the police were nearby and adding, “This is where I stand. Today I die.”

    Authorities at the time said no explosives were found.

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  • Gay club owner: Shooting comes amid a new ‘type of hate’

    Gay club owner: Shooting comes amid a new ‘type of hate’

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The co-owner of the Colorado Springs gay nightclub where a shooter turned a drag queen’s birthday celebration into a massacre said he thinks the shooting that killed five people and injured 17 others is a reflection of anti-LGBTQ sentiment that has evolved from prejudice to incitement.

    Nic Grzecka’s voice was tinged with exhaustion as he spoke with The Associated Press on Wednesday night in some of his first comments since Saturday night’s attack at Club Q, a venue Grzecka helped build into an enclave that sustained the LGBTQ community in conservative-leaning Colorado Springs.

    Authorities haven’t said why the suspect opened fired at the club before being subdued into submission by patrons, but they are facing hate crime charges. The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, has not entered a plea or spoken about the incident.

    Grzecka said he believes the targeting of a drag queen event is connected to the art form being cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Even though general acceptance of the LGBTQ community has grown, this new dynamic has fostered a dangerous climate.

    “It’s different to walk down the street holding my boyfriend’s hand and getting spit at (as opposed to) a politician relating a drag queen to a groomer of their children,” Grzecka said. “I would rather be spit on in the street than the hate get as bad as where we are today.”

    Earlier this year, Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill barring teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with younger students. A month later, references to “pedophiles” and “grooming” in relation to LGBTQ people rose 400%, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.

    “Lying about our community, and making them into something they are not, creates a different type of hate,” said Grzecka.

    Grzecka, who started mopping floors and bartending at Club Q in 2003 a year after it opened, said he hopes to channel his grief and anger into figuring out how to rebuild the support system for Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ community that only Club Q had provided.

    City and state officials have offered support and President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden reached out to Grzecka and co-owner Matthew Haynes on Thursday to offer condolences and reiterate their support for the community as well as their commitment to fighting back against hate and gun violence.

    Grzecka said Club Q opened after the only other gay bar in Colorado Springs at that time shuttered. He described that era as an evolution of gay bars. Decades ago, dingy, hole-in-the-wall gay venues were meant largely for finding a hookup or date, said Grzecka. But he said once the internet offered anonymous ways to find love online, the bars transitioned into well lit, clean non-smoking spaces to hang out with friends. Club Q was at the vanguard of that transition.

    Once he became co-owner in 2014, Grzecka helped mold Club Q into not merely a nightlife venue but a community center – a platform to create a “chosen family” for LGBTQ people, especially for those estranged from their birth family. Drag queen bingo nights, friendsgiving and Christmas dinners, birthday celebrations became staples of Club Q which was open 365 days a year.

    In the aftermath of the shooting, with that community center having been torn away, Grzecka and other community leaders said they are channeling grief and anger into reconstituting the support structure that only Club Q had offered.

    “When that system goes away, you realize how much more the bar was really providing,” said Justin Burn, an organizer with Pikes Peak Pride. “Those that may or may not have been a part of the Club Q family, where do they go?”

    Burn said the shooting pulled back a curtain on a broader lack of resources for LGBTQ adults in Colorado Springs. Burn, Grzecka and others are working with national organizations to do an assessment of the community’s need as they develop a blueprint to offer a robust support network.

    Grzecka is looking to rebuild the “loving culture” and necessary support to “make sure that this tragedy is turned into the best thing it can be for the city.”

    “Everybody needs community,” he said.

    ———

    Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Gay club owner: Shooting comes amid a new ‘type of hate’

    Gay club owner: Shooting comes amid a new ‘type of hate’

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The co-owner of the Colorado Springs gay nightclub where a shooter turned a drag queen’s birthday celebration into a massacre said he thinks the shooting that killed five people and injured 17 others is a reflection of anti-LGBTQ sentiment that has evolved from prejudice to incitement.

    Nic Grzecka’s voice was tinged with exhaustion as he spoke with The Associated Press on Wednesday night in some of his first comments since Saturday night’s attack at Club Q, a venue Grzecka helped build into an enclave that sustained the LGBTQ community in conservative-leaning Colorado Springs.

    Authorities haven’t said why the suspect opened fired at the club before being subdued into submission by patrons, but they are facing hate crime charges. The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, has not entered a plea or spoken about the incident.

    Grzecka said he believes the targeting of a drag queen event is connected to the art form being cast in a false light in recent months by right-wing activists and politicians who complain about the “sexualization” or “grooming” of children. Even though general acceptance of the LGBTQ community has grown, this new dynamic has fostered a dangerous climate.

    “It’s different to walk down the street holding my boyfriend’s hand and getting spit at to a politician relating a drag queen to a groomer of their children,” Grzecka said. “I would rather be spit on in the street than the hate get as bad as where we are today.”

    Earlier this year, Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a bill barring teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation with younger students. A month later, references to “pedophiles” and “grooming” in relation to LGBTQ people rose 400%, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign.

    “Lying about our community, and making them into something they are not, creates a different type of hate,” said Grzecka.

    Grzecka, who started mopping floors and bartending at Club Q in 2003 a year after it opened, said he hopes to channel his grief and anger into figuring out how to rebuild the support system for Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ community that only Club Q had provided.

    City and state officials have offered support and President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden reached out to Grzecka and co-owner Matthew Haynes on Thursday to offer condolences and reiterate their support for the community as well as their commitment to fighting back against hate and gun violence.

    Grzecka said Club Q opened after the only other gay bar in Colorado Springs at that time shuttered. He described that era as an evolution of gay bars. Decades ago, dingy, hole-in-the-wall gay venues were meant largely for finding a hookup or date, said Grzecka. But he said once the internet offered anonymous ways to find love online, the bars transitioned into well lit, clean non-smoking spaces to hang out with friends. Club Q was at the vanguard of that transition.

    Once he became co-owner in 2014, Grzecka helped mold Club Q into not merely a nightlife venue but a community center – a platform to create a “chosen family” for LGBTQ people, especially for those estranged from their birth family. Drag queen bingo nights, friendsgiving and Christmas dinners, birthday celebrations became staples of Club Q which was open 365 days a year.

    In the aftermath of the shooting, with that community center having been torn away, Grzecka and other community leaders said they are channeling grief and anger into reconstituting the support structure that only Club Q had offered.

    “When that system goes away, you realize how much more the bar was really providing,” said Justin Burn, an organizer with Pikes Peak Pride. “Those that may or may not have been a part of the Club Q family, where do they go?”

    Burn said the shooting pulled back a curtain on a broader lack of resources for LGBTQ adults in Colorado Springs. Burn, Grzecka and others are working with national organizations to do an assessment of the community’s need as they develop a blueprint to offer a robust support network.

    Grzecka is looking to rebuild the “loving culture” and necessary support to “make sure that this tragedy is turned into the best thing it can be for the city.”

    “Everybody needs community,” he said.

    ———

    Jesse Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Mother, friends, performers among dead at Colorado gay club

    Mother, friends, performers among dead at Colorado gay club

    A loving boyfriend. A 28-year-old bartender who loved to perform. A mother visiting from a small town who enjoyed hunting. These are among the victims of the rampage at an LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs that left five people dead and 17 others with gunshot wounds.

    Club regulars and newcomers — gay and straight, transgender and cisgender — flocked to Club Q over the weekend to dance, enjoy a comedy show or work behind the bar. What began as a typical Saturday evening of dancing and drinking at the preeminent LGBTQ establishment in the conservative-leaning Colorado city south of Denver ended in tragedy when a gunman entered and began spraying bullets before he was tackled and subdued.

    The 22-year-old suspect is facing five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury.

    Here are the five people killed:

    DANIEL ASTON

    Daniel Aston, 28, grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and moved to be closer to family in Colorado Springs two years ago. He worked as a bartender and entertainer at Club Q and cherished the venue as a sanctuary where as a transgender man he could be himself and perform to a lauding audience, his mother Sabrina Aston told The Associated Press.

    The self-proclaimed “Master of Silly Business,” Aston had a propensity for making others laugh that started as a child when he would don elaborate costumes and write plays acted out by neighborhood kids. In college, where he was president of his school’s LGBTQ club, he put on fundraisers with ever-more flashy productions.

    ″(Daniel’s shows) are great. Everybody needs to go see him,” his mother said. “He lit up a room, always smiling, always happy and silly,” she said.

    DERRICK RUMP

    Derrick Rump, 38, a bartender at Club Q, was remembered as a loving person with a quick wit who adopted his friends as his family.

    “He was living his dream and he would have wanted everyone to do the same,” said his mother, Julia Thames, who confirmed his death to ABC News.

    She said in a statement that Rump was “a kind loving person who had a heart of gold.”

    “He was always there for my daughter and myself when we needed him; also his friends from Colorado, which he would say was his family also,” she said in the statement.

    Rump’s friend, Anthony Jaramillo, told CBS News that Rump was “loving, supportive, with a heavy hand in his drink pouring, and just a really good listener and would not be afraid to tell you when you were wrong instead of telling you what you wanted to hear and that was really valuable.”

    KELLY LOVING

    Kelly Loving, 40, had been talking to a friend on a FaceTime call from inside Club Q just minutes before the shooting started. Natalee Skye Bingham told The New York Times that the last thing she said to Loving was: “Be safe. I love you.”

    “She was like a trans mother to me. I looked up to her,” Bingham said. “In the gay community you create your families, so it’s like I lost my real mother almost.”

    Bingham, 25, said Loving had only recently moved to Denver and was visiting the club while on a weekend trip to Colorado Springs.

    “She was a tough woman,” Bingham said. “She taught me how it was to be a trans woman and live your life day to day.”

    Loving’s sister, Tiffany Loving, offered condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the shooting as well as those struggling for acceptance in the world.

    “My sister was a good person. She was loving and caring and sweet. Everyone loved her. Kelly was a wonderful person,” she said in a statement.

    RAYMOND GREEN VANCE

    Raymond Green Vance, 22, went to Club Q on Saturday night with his girlfriend, Kassy Fierro, and her father, Rich, the co-owner of Atrevida Beer Co., a local brewery in Colorado Springs. The group was there to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

    “My sweet baby. ill never be able to heal from this. i want to wake up from this horrendous nightmare. i pray u hear me when i call for you. im so sorry. ill never forgive myself for taking everyone there. i will love you til the day i get to come back home to your arms,” Kassy Fierro wrote in a Facebook post Monday accompanied by a photo of the couple.

    Vance’s family in a statement described him as a kind, selfless man with a promising future. He worked at a FedEx Distribution Center, loved video games and was “willing to go out of his way to help anyone,” the family said.

    “Raymond was the victim of a man who unleashed terror on innocent people out with family and friends,” they wrote in the statement.

    ASHLEY PAUGH

    Ashley Paugh, 35, was a loving mother and wife with a “huge heart,” said her husband, Kurt Paugh. She volunteered with an organization that helped children in foster care and delivered Christmas trees to the homes in which they were placed to brighten their holiday seasons.

    “She was my high school sweetheart — and she was just an amazing mother. Her daughter was her whole world,” her husband said in a statement.

    She also enjoyed hunting, fishing and riding four-wheelers.

    A resident of La Junta, a 7,500-person town about a two-hour’s drive from Colorado Springs, Paugh was visiting for the day with a friend when they went to Club Q on Saturday night for a comedy act. She was scheduled to organize the delivery of trees to homes with foster children in Pueblo and Colorado Springs this week, her husband said.

    ———

    Associated Press News Researcher Rhonda Shafner in New York and reporter Jesse Bedayn in Colorado Springs contributed to this report. Bedayn is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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  • Gay bar shooting suspect faces murder, hate crime charges

    Gay bar shooting suspect faces murder, hate crime charges

    COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The man suspected of opening fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs was being held on murder and hate crime charges Monday, while hundreds of people gathered to honor the five people killed and 17 wounded in the attack on a venue that for decades was a sanctuary for the local LGBTQ community.

    Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, faces five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury in Saturday night’s attack at Club Q, online court records showed.

    Authorities said the attack was halted by two club patrons including Richard Fierro, who told reporters Monday night that he took a handgun from Aldrich, hit him with it and pinned him down with help from another person.

    Fierro, a 15-year U.S. Army veteran who owns a local brewery, said he was celebrating a birthday with family members when the suspect “came in shooting.” Fierro said during a lull in the shooting he ran at the suspect, who was wearing some type of armor plates, and pulled him down before severely beating him until police arrived.

    “I tried to save people and it didn’t work for five of them,” he said. “These are all good people. … I’m not a hero. I’m just some dude.”

    Fierro’s daughter’s longtime boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, 22, was killed, while his daughter hurt her knee as she ran for cover. Fierro injured his hands, knees and ankle while stopping the shooter.

    The suspect remained hospitalized with unspecified injuries but is expected to make his first court appearance in the next couple of days, after doctors clear him to be released from the hospital.

    The charges against Aldrich were preliminary, and prosecutors had not filed formal charges in court yet. The hate crime charges would require proving that the gunman was motivated by bias, such as against the victims’ actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

    Local and federal authorities during a Monday news briefing declined to answer questions about why hate crime charges are being considered, citing the ongoing investigation. District Attorney Michael Allen noted that the murder charges would carry the harshest penalty — life in prison — whereas bias crimes are eligible for probation.

    “But it is important to let the community know that we do not tolerate bias motivated crimes in this community, that we support communities that have been maligned, harassed and intimidated and abused,” Allen said. “And that’s one way that we can do that, showing that we will put the money where our mouth is, essentially, and make sure that we try it that way.”

    Additional charges are possible as the investigation continues, he said.

    About 200 people gathered Monday night in the cold at a city park for a community vigil for the shooting victims. People held candles, embraced and listened as speakers on a stage expressed both rage and sadness over the shootings.

    Jeremiah Harris, who is 24 and gay, said he went to Club Q a couple times a month and recognized one of the victims as the bartender who always served him. He said hearing others speak at the vigil was galvanizing following the attack at what for more than 20 years had been considered an LGBTQ safe spot in the conservative-leaning city.

    “Gay people have been here as long as people have been here,” Harris said. “To everybody else that’s opposed to that … we’re not going anywhere. We’re just getting louder and you have to deal with it.”

    The other victims were identified by authorities and family members as Ashley Paugh, 35, a mother who helped find homes for foster children; Daniel Aston, 28, who had worked at the club as a a bartender and entertainer; Kelly Loving, 40, whose sister described her as “caring and sweet”; and Derrick Rump, 38, another club bartender who was known for his quick wit and adopting his friends as his family.

    Vance’s family said in a statement that the Colorado Springs native was adored by his family and had recently gotten a job at FedEx, where he hoped to save enough money to get his own apartment.

    Thomas James was identified by authorities as the other patron who intervened to stop the shooter. Fierro said a third person also helped — a performer at the club who Fierro said kicked the suspect in the head as she ran by.

    Court documents laying out Aldrich’s arrest have been sealed at the request of prosecutors. Information on whether Aldrich had a lawyer was not immediately available.

    A law enforcement official said the suspect used an AR-15-style semi-automatic weapon. A handgun and additional ammunition magazines also were recovered. The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

    Thirteen victims remained hospitalized Monday, officials said. Five people had been treated and released.

    Officials on Monday clarified that 18 people were hurt in the attack, not 25 as they said originally. Among them was one person whose injury was not a gunshot wound. Another victim had no visible injuries, they said.

    Colorado Springs, a city of about 480,000, is 70 miles (110 kilometers) south of Denver. Mayor John Suthers said there was “reason to hope” all of the hospitalized victims would recover.

    The assault quickly raised questions about why authorities did not seek to take Aldrich’s guns away from him in 2021, when he was arrested after his mother reported he threatened her with a homemade bomb and other weapons.

    Though authorities at the time said no explosives were found, gun-control advocates have asked why police didn’t use Colorado’s “red flag” laws to seize the weapons his mother says he had. There’s no public record prosecutors ever moved forward with felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich.

    It was the sixth mass killing this month, and it came in a year when the nation was shaken by the deaths of 21 in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. It also rekindled memories of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49 people.

    President Joe Biden talked to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis by phone and will continue to press Congress for an assault weapons ban “because thoughts and prayers are just not enough,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.

    A makeshift memorial that sprang up in the hours after the attack continued to grow Monday, as a stream of mourners brought flowers and left messages in support of the LGBTQ community. The shooting site remained cordoned off.

    “It’s a reminder that love and acceptance still have a long way to go,” Colorado Springs resident Mary Nikkel said at the site.

    Since 2006, there have been 523 mass killings and 2,727 deaths as of Nov. 19, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.

    ———

    Bedayn is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

    ———

    Associated Press reporters Haven Daley in Colorado Springs, Colleen Slevin in Denver, Darlene Superville in Washington, Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Jeff McMillan in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana, and news researcher Rhonda Shafner from New York contributed.

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  • Transgender youth, teens more likely to have sleep disorders

    Transgender youth, teens more likely to have sleep disorders

    Newswise — Teens and young adults who are transgender are four times more likely to have a sleep disorder compared to cisgender youth, a Michigan Medicine-led study finds.

    Researchers analyzed claims data from more than 1.2 million young people aged 12 to 25, of which 2,603 identified as transgender or gender-nonconforming. Results published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine reveal that transgender youth are 5.4 times more likely to have insomnia and three times more likely to have sleep apnea or other sleep disorders.

    Sleep health has rarely been examined in transgender and gender-nonconforming youth, but these results show a concerning number of individuals with disorders that harm sleep quality, says first author Ronald Gavidia, M.D., M.S., sleep medicine physician in the University of Michigan Health Department of Neurology’s Division of Sleep Medicine and an assistant professor of neurology at U-M Medical School.

    “Given this higher prevalence of sleep disorders in relation to cisgender youth, clinicians should consider screening and testing this population for such disorders,” Gavidia said.

    Reports on transgender youth and adults have shown a high prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms, which are known to affect sleep quality and health. Researchers suspect suboptimal mental health may contribute to the association between transgender and gender-nonconforming identity and insomnia.

    “Transgender and gender-nonconforming identity may precede mental health disorders and both influence insomnia diagnosis,” said senior author Galit Levi Dunietz, Ph.D., M.P.H., epidemiologist in the Department of Neurology’s Division of Sleep Medicine and assistant professor of neurology at U-M Medical School.

    Of transgender youth in the study, more than half had pursued gender-affirming therapy. That group was half as likely to have any sleep disorder than transgender individuals who did not pursue the therapy.

    Gender-affirming therapy, the authors conclude, could be protective against worsening sleep health brought about by psychological stressors from prejudice and discrimination against the transgender community.

    “As mood disorders and insomnia have a bidirectional relationship, gender transition through affirming therapies could improve mental health, which, in turn, may decrease the proportion of insomnia by improving gender dysphoria, poor mood and minority stress,” Gavidia said.

    Researchers say future studies should further examine the burden of sleep disorders prior to and following gender-affirming therapy for these populations.

    Additional authors include, Daniel G. Whitney, Ph.D., Shelley Hershner, M.D., both of Michigan Medicine, Ellen M. Selkie, M.D., M.P.H., University of Wisconsin-Madison, Riva Tauman, M.D., Tel Aviv Souraski Medical Center, Sackler School of Medicine.

    This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, as well as the University of Michigan Office of Health Equity and Inclusion Diversity Fund.

    Paper cited: “Gender identity and transition: relationships with sleep disorders in US youth” Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. DOI: 10.5664/jcsm.10158

    Michigan Medicine – University of Michigan

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