Posted 5:25 PM by heather
FrontPage magazine.com :: Egyptian Women Power by MEMRI
"And now some religious figures, among them the Mufti of Egypt, Dr. 'Ali Jum'ah, and Dr. Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, are leading the opposition to Sheikh Al-Azhar's decision and are completely ruling out a woman's presiding as a head of state. Why is this, honorable sirs? They answer: because of a woman's physiological disposition and her suffering during menstruation. My goodness, did menstruation prevent Margaret Thatcher from presiding as head of state? Does it prevent Egyptian peasant women from working the fields like men, from dawn to dusk? Does it prevent young female athletes from participating in Olympic competitions, where they play and compete with men? Who says that menstruation is an illness that interferes with a woman's work? What is more, pregnancy and childbirth don't interfere with women's work in the fields, in factories, in offices, and in embassies … the word 'menstruation' sounds strange and even ridiculous when men say it, especially when most women involved in politics, in presidential elections, and in other elections are over fifty years old, so that menstruation is irrelevant…"

Posted 1:32 PM by heather
The Chronicle: 3/4/2005: Primed for Numbers:

"Other studies establish a clear link between hormones and mathematical abilities, says David C. Geary, a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri at Columbia and author of Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences (American Psychological Association, 1998). 'In transsexuals, when you suppress male hormones, their spatial abilities go down,' he says. 'When you give male hormones to women, their spatial abilities go up.'

A similar effect happens with female hormones, like estradiol and progesterone. During menstruation, when those substances are less concentrated in the bloodstream, women perform better on tests of spatial ability than they do closer to ovulation, Mr. Geary says. (Verbal abilities follow the opposite pattern during the menstrual cycle.)"