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Traditional marriage laws are swept aside in landmark decision by Supreme Court
By Steve Doughty and Vanessa Allen
Last updated at 9:10 AM on 21st October 2010
Judges yesterday tore up England's marriage laws to offer couples binding prenuptial contracts.
They used the test case of a German heiress worth £100million and her millionaire French husband to bring a revolutionary change to the laws around marriage and divorce.
Their Supreme Court ruling means that prenuptial agreements which set down a couple's divorce settlement before their wedding will have full legal status in England for the first time.
The deals will mean that brides and grooms will know they can keep their own cash and property in the event that their marriage crashes.
Only manifestly unfair contracts would be overturned by the courts.
In the case, paper industry heiress Karin Radmacher won the right to protect her fortune and hundreds of millions of pounds controlled by her family out of the hands of her former husband, a City banker turned academic.
But in the process of deciding the case, the Supreme Court judges swept away hundreds of years of legal precedent that a married couple should be together for life and their property should be shared - something enshrined in the Church of England's marriage ceremony since 1662 when the groom says: 'With all my worldly goods I thee endow.'
Prenup deals have long held influence in courts in America and Europe.
But in England the courts have rarely enforced them and judges have usually chosen to ignore them.
Miss Radmacher, 41, had fought a four-year court battle to withhold the vast majority of her fortune from her ex-husband, former investment banker Nicolas Granatino after he claimed that the contract was unfair because he had not realised the true extent of his wife's vast fortune.
Mr Granatino demanded a £9.2million pay-out and was initially given £5.5million, but that was later reduced to £1million in the Court of Appeal.
Yesterday the Supreme Court told him he will receive just £70,000 a year from his ex-wife for the next 14 years, until their youngest child turns 22.
Court President Lord Phillips said that the law cannot prevent a couple deciding how to arrange their affairs should they come to live apart and that all English courts should follow the precedent.
'In future it will be natural to infer that parties who enter into an ante-nuptial agreement to which English law is likely to be applied intend that effect should be given to it,' he said.
But the decision came only after serious division among the judges of the country's new leading court.
One Supreme Court justice, Baroness Hale, called the ruling undemocratic and damaging to marriage, and added that it was wrong that it should have been made by a court comprising eight male judges and only one woman.
In a strongly-worded statement of dissent, Lady Hale said there were six legal reasons why the ruling was wrong, one being that it was 'inconsistent with the continued importance attached to the status of marriage in English law'.
She said her fellow judges were treating married couples in the same way as unmarried people and added that it was 'wrong to equate married with unmarried parenthood'.
'Marriage still counts for something in the law of this country and long may it continue to do so,' she said.
Lady Hale also said the ruling was unfair to the poorer partner in a marriage - 'usually, though by no means invariably, she'.
The controversy spread outside the court, with bishops warning that the decision undermines marriage and lawyers saying that judges have usurped the rights of Parliament and elected MPs to make the law.
Brenda Long, a partner at law firm Blandy & Blandy, said: 'This ruling means the judiciary has overstepped its prescribed role of interpreting law and actually created law instead,' she said.
Mr Granatino, 39, who attended court wearing scruffy jeans and a blue jumper refused to comment after the hearing.
But Miss Radmacher, who wore a white mini-dress with a plunging neckline, said: 'I'm delighted that Britain has upheld fairness.'
Prenups are commonly recognised in countries around the world.
In the U.S. all states now recognise prenups, but some judges have opposed them because they were seen as damaging to marriage.
They are also recognised in France and Germany.
Heiress who hangs on to her millions
For heiress Katrin Radmacher, a prenuptial agreement was the ultimate test of love.
Far from being an unromantic business contract, she insisted it was the only way she could know Nicolas Granatino truly wanted her and not just her £100million fortune.
The besotted groom, an investment banker, signed the deal and insisted he did not want a penny from his fiancee, who he had met just eight months earlier.
Later, he would claim that he had somehow failed to notice that his bride-to-be was one of Europe's wealthiest women.
Mr Granatino - himself the heir to a multi-million pound fortune - said he believed the Radmacher family were 'well off'.
But their vast fortune from a paper-making empire was not 'particularly evident' to him during visits to their family home in Germany, he said.
He said: 'At the time of signing the pre-nup agreement I didn't know even broadly about her wealth.
She was renting a perfectly nice single-bedroom flat in Chelsea, and I visited the family's chalet in Verbier.'
The couple met at London's Tramp nightclub in November 1997 and married a year later.
At the time Mr Granatino was an investment banker with JP Morgan, earning more than £120,000-a-year, and boasted he would soon be a billionaire.
But after four years of marriage he told his wife he was desperate to quit his job and wanted to return to university.
He began a doctorate at Oxford University, where as an academic his annual earnings were reduced to around £30,000.
The couple, who by then had two daughters, Chiara and Chloe, began to spend more time apart and eventually separated in August 2006, after eight years.
During the ensuing High Court divorce battle, Mr Granatino asked for £9.2million, despite the pre-nup agreement.
The judge ruled that Mr Granatino was entitled to £5.5million from his ex-wife, including £2.5million for a house, £25,000 for a car and £700,000 to pay off his debts.
But the Court of Appeal later reduced the pay-out to £1million. Mr Granatino's legal team, which included Sir Paul McCartney's divorce lawyer Fiona Shackleton, said he faced financial ruin and even bankruptcy if his divorce settlement was not increased, and took the case to the Supreme Court.
But Miss Radmacher's lawyers argued he could always return to banking if he was really facing 'financial catastrophe'.
More significantly, he can also expect to inherit millions from his tax exile father Antoine Granatino, the former vice-president of computer giant IBM.
The French industrialist has an estimated £30million fortune and lives in a luxury apartment in Kensington, next to Hyde Park, with a holiday villa in Antibes.
Miss Radmacher's solicitor said the Supreme Court ruling meant she would now pay him £70,000-a-year until 2024, when their youngest daughter turns 22.
The maintenance payments are tax-free, making them the equivalent of a £130,000
annual salary.
Mr Granatino will also live rent-free in one of her multi-million pound homes in London, and will have free use of a holiday home in France.
Study predicts women in power, Muslims heading West
By Karin Zeitvogel (AFP) - 1 day ago
WASHINGTON -- In the next 40 years, an unprecedented number of women will be in positions of power, Muslim immigration to the West will rise, and office workers will be unchained from their cubicles, a report released last week says.
South America will see sustained economic growth and the Middle East will become "a tangle of religions, sects and ethnicities," says the report by Toffler Associates, a consultancy set up by the author of the 1970s blockbuster "Future Shock."
Toffler Associates released its predictions for the next 40 years to mark the 40th anniversary of "Future Shock," in which author Alvin Toffler studied the 1970s to see what would happen in the future.
His prognosis 40 years ago was that technology and science would develop at such an accelerated pace that many people would be unable to process the enormous amounts of new information available and would disconnect from life.
Some of "Future Shock's" prognoses have come true, including that news would travel around the world instantly, that same-sex couples would wed and raise families, and that violence and environmental disasters would increase and have broad consequences -- like the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
So it might be worth paying heed to what Toffler Associates foresees for the next 40 years, including container ships getting larger to meet increasing demand for faster, cheaper delivery of goods, and the Suez and Panama Canals being "improved."
They envision more and more people growing their own food to reduce their dependence on large manufacturers and distributors, and the proliferation of high-speed Internet and low-cost video-conferencing freeing office workers from their cubicles and working from anywhere in the world.
Only a very small number of states will continue to behave as "rogue" nations, Toffler Associates says, naming North Korea and Iran.
"A true test for political leaders will be in how they handle relationships with these nations and to what extent they allow them to control geo-political agendas," the consultancy says.
China will position itself as a global economic power, allying with Brazil and India to influence currency use and with Venezuela and African nations to ensure its energy needs are met.
The United States, meanwhile, will depend on China for 17 rare earth metals that are essential to produce everything from weapons components to radars to wind turbines and hybrid cars.
The development of alternative energy forms will create "losers in a post-petroleum world" including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, several Gulf states, Russia and Venezuela, the report says.
Christianity will rise rapidly in the global South, while Muslims will migrate in increasing numbers to the West, where their presence will reshape public attitudes and government policies.
Climate change will fuel conflict as melting sea ice exposes mineral wealth and oil fields in the Arctic and as rising sea levels force large populations from their homes.
An aging population will cause spending on long-term care services for the elderly to nearly quadruple by 2050, and social security and Medicare, the US health insurance for the elderly, will cease to "exist as we know them," Toffler managing partner Deborah Westphal told AFP.
"We don't know what will replace them; we just know that we will be in a different type of society with different types of people and different needs," she said.
As for women, they will take on leadership positions around the globe at a never-before-seen rate, as countries realize "you can't be successful with just 50 percent of the population participating in decision-making," Westphal said.
And in the next 40 years, information-gathering will speed up even more as the world enters the Petabyte Age, Toffler Associates predicts.
Petabytes -- which are 10-to-the-15th-power bytes, or measures of computer files, hard disk space, and memory -- are used today only to measure the storage space of multiple hard drives or collections of data.
Between now and 2050, measuring data in petabytes will become the norm, and so will data saturation, Toffler Associates predicts.
Mines cave-in in China and Ecuador
Malaysia Sun
Sunday 17th October, 2010
20 miners are dead and another 17 are missing underground in a Chinese mine accident.
The mine in the city of Yuzhou in the central province of Henan collapsed during a sudden coal and gas outburst according to officials.
276 miners were at work below ground when the accident occurred.
While most made it to the surface, rescuers have been held up in looking for the others due to high gas levels in the mine.
Meanwhile, in scenes reminiscent from those in neighbouring Chile, emergency teams headed underground at a gold mine in Ecuador only to find miners had died in a rockfall.
Hoping to rescue the four workers who had become trapped, the rescuers dug through debris closest to the men.
Three of the four workers at the Casa Negra mine, near the town of Portavelo, were found dead on Saturday, while the status of the fourth man is still unknown.
The Ecuadoran miners were trapped early on Friday, shortly after Chile completed its historic, successful rescue of 33 miners who had been stuck underground in the San Jose mine for a record period of nearly 10 weeks.
Shame list flagged for wife beaters
* Liam Houlihan and Sue Hewitt
* From: Sunday Herald Sun
* October 17, 2010 12:40AM
VICTORIA will push for federal laws to allow police across the country to track domestic violence offenders.
The plan, to be considered at a meeting of the nation's attorneys-general in December, would help stop thugs who bash women going interstate and offending again.
"Victoria's domestic violence and sexual assault laws lead the nation and a national approach to intervention orders is an important next step," Government spokesman Stephen Moynihan said.
"A future Brumby Labor Government will work with the Commonwealth and other states to achieve this."
Thousands of offenders could be kept on a "shame list" as police and the courts struggle to cope with an increase in violent attacks on women by their partners.
Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland is working with states and territories to establish a scheme for the automatic nationwide registration of domestic and family violence orders against thugs.
"The working group is examining a range of measures including establishing a database to assist police to enforce domestic violence orders across state and territory borders," a spokesman for the Attorney-General said.
"This would provide law enforcement authorities in the new state with information about a victim's past vulnerability."
Domestic violence victim Emily Twigg said the register would be a step forward for women.
"This will help protect women from the worst kind of repeat offenders," Ms Twigg said.
"It is only right that thugs who abuse women don't get a chance to reoffend just by changing states.
"I applaud those pushing these reforms to empower police to monitor violent offenders and protect the community."
Domestic violence expert Prof Cathy Humphreys welcomed the move and said it would attract widespread support.
But she did not support women having access to the register to assess potential partners because it would complicate the issue.
"We have to get all the states to agree and with the issue of privacy it would make the proposal too cumbersome - we have to take it one step at a time," she said.
Justice advocate Steve Medcraft said if authorities allowed the public to check the register it could save lives.
"Wife beaters don't have a certain look and if women could check out men, it could protect them," he said.
He called for the proposal to go further and record reports, as well as convictions, for domestic violence.
"Some women never press charges, but it doesn't mean there isn't any domestic violence," Mr Medcraft said.
"But if suspicions or reports of incidents were also recorded, police could establish a pattern of behaviour and if an emergency call comes in about a suspected offender, they will realise it could be a dangerous situation."
Crime Victims Support Association president Noel McNamara said the register meant that if the offender moved interstate local authorities would known they were a serial offender.
He wanted to beef up the proposal by making it compulsory for people on the register to notify police if they dramatically changed their appearance or moved states.
The Victorian Centres Against Sexual Assault Forum convenor Carolyn Worth said that presently if an offender with an intervention order crossed borders, local police were unaware of the court order.
She did not support calls for the register to be public because it created a "lynch mentality" and offenders could change their behaviour.
With Laura Speranza
No old boys' club here: Quebec's push for gender parity
GLORIA GALLOWAY
Ottawa-- From Friday's Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Oct. 15, 2010 2:38PM EDT
The suggestion that quotas be imposed to increase the participation of women in Canadian politics sparks a visceral response from those who label such measures as unwarranted and anti-democratic.
But Quebec has been setting targets to get more women into that province's legislature and senior administrative positions for several years. And Premier Jean Charest is proud of the strides that have been made. Mr. Charest spoke to The Globe and Mail this week to outline the steps he has taken.
What have you done to increase the number of women MPs sitting as Liberal members of the Quebec National Assembly?
Within the party, when I became leader, we actively sought to increase the number of women candidates. And I was very involved in that personally. The issue isn't so much whether or not we are able to attract them as whether we can actually offer them ridings in which they will get elected. Parties have had the bad habit of increasing their percentages of [female] candidates by putting women in ridings where they can't hope to get elected. And we did the reverse. And it did create some tension within the party. But it did allow us to increase substantially the number of women who ran for us as candidates.
Have you managed to do better than the federal Parliament where just 22 per cent of MPs are women?
At this point, in the Assembly in Quebec, close to 30 per cent of the elected members are women. We are at 29.8 per cent. That's close to the record we had in 2003, which was 40 women. We now have 37 out of 125. In my caucus, it's 32.3 per cent. In the Péquiste caucus it's 29.4 per cent. And in the ADQ they are at 25 per cent but there are only four members - one woman out of four. You have to be careful [looking at percentages of women in small caucuses]. I used to have parity. When I was in federal politics, there was Elsie Wayne and me [in the two-person Progressive Conservative caucus after the 1993 election].
What about the management of boards and provincial Crown corporations? I understand you have significantly increased the number of women in those jobs.
I very deliberately set out objectives to name more women and our people kept saying there were none and they were looking and, you know, they couldn't find any. And so I became frustrated with that and in 2006 I decided that we would legislate parity on Crown corporations. So we brought in the law that makes it mandatory, by 2012, that 24 of our Crown corporations have gender parity on the boards. We wanted more women but they could not be found. And when we brought in the law, all of a sudden, they were discovered.
What have you done to increase the number of women in your government?
In 2007, when we became a minority government, I brought in a cabinet with gender parity. And it had a very interesting life because when we became the government again in 2008 we weren't quite at parity. There was a majority of one man. At this point, I lost one of my ministers, Claude Béchard, who passed away recently. And now, because of that, we have a majority of women in cabinet, 12 women and 11 men. It makes a big, big difference.
What sort of difference has it made to policy?
It has had a big reflection on the policy frameworks in Quebec. Our family policies, for example, are very forward looking. The family policies we have cost us a lot of money [like] the universal daycare. The parental leave program that we negotiated with the federal government is the most flexible in North America and has put a very strong accent on men having access to parental leave, which is key to returning women into the labour market ... it has allowed us to increase the birth rate. We now lead Canada.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
Why Women Still Won't Vote for Women
By Phyllis Chesler
FoxNews.com
It is 2010, ninety years after American women first won the right to vote, and nearly fifty years after Betty Friedan's influential work "The Feminine Mystique" was published, and women still do not want to vote for women.
And women definitely do not want to vote for Republican women.For example, in Connecticut, Republican Linda McMahon has only 34 percent of the female vote as compared to Democrat Richard Blumenthal who has 61 percent of the female vote. In Delaware, Republican Christine O'Donnell has only 25 percent of the female vote as compared to her Democratic opponent Chris Coons, who leads with 58 percent of the female vote; in Nevada, Democrat Harry Reid is beating Republican Sharron Angle by a 51-33 margin. According to pollsters, Sharron Angle is a "staunch conservative, something that tends to turn off female voters."
Possibly, women as a group may view the Democratic Party as better on certain issues such as women's reproductive rights and equal rights in the workplace. On the other hand, like men, many women have also lost their jobs, pensions, and homes, and will equally bear the consequences of a foreign policy gone wrong.
Whatever the reason, female candidates just can't seem to please the female electorate. Women criticized Hillary Clinton for craving power in a non-feminine and "emotionless" way--and liked her when she showed emotion, not when she discussed policy. Women judged her harshly for sticking by her man--and then just as harshly for doing so in order to further her own political ambitions. Women, including progressive women, wanted perfection in their first female Presidential candidate. No political or character "hair" out of place. Thus, Professor Susan J. Douglas had this to say about Hillary:
"Hillary, by contrast, seems to want to be more like a man in her demeanor and politics, makes few concessions to the social demands of femininity, and yet seems to be only a partial feminist. She seems above us, exempting herself from compromises women have to make every day, while, at the same time, leaving some of the basic tenets of feminism in the dust. We are sold out on both counts. In other words, she seems like patriarchy in sheep's clothing. If she's a feminist, how could she continue to support this war for so long? If she's such a passionate advocate for children, women and families, how could she countenance the ongoing killing of innocent Iraqi families, and of American soldiers who are also someone's children? If it would be so revolutionary to have a female as president, why does she feel like the same old poll-driven opportunistic politician who seems to craft her positions accordingly?"
Today, women describe Linda McMahon as too "relentless" for a woman-- but certainly not for a politician. Women say they don't like McMahon because she is "buying her seat" with money (as if this is not exactly what men do), and because she is attacking her opponent in "needlessly personal and caustic ways" (ditto).
Until pollsters start asking Republican women if they, also, dislike and will not vote for a female Republican candidate, let me suggest that what may also be going on is some vast unfinished psychological business between women.
As the author of "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman," allow me to spell it out for you. Like men, women are also sexists. They still expect women to behave in "feminine" or maternal ways; this includes choosing a man as a protector, not as an opponent to publicly defeat in a very aggressive, "male" way.
Women and girls are more comfortable with expressing their aggression indirectly in less visible ways, through gossip, slander, and ostracism.
In addition, despite exceptions, women do not necessarily like, respect, or trust other women. Even more important, woman do not like another woman getting more attention than they themselves get; cheerleaders, beauty queens, gorgeous actresses are envied and ostracized more often than befriended by other girls and women. Female politicians are in the limelight; their female voters are not.
Psychologically, women do not like "difference." Women feel safe when their female intimates dress, think, and behave as they do. If a female candidate looks, acts, or thinks "differently" from the female majority, women feel that their own life choices are not being honored. Thus, tough Republican businesswoman, Carly Fiorina, who faces tough career politician Barbara Boxer in California, has been advised to soften her image, to literally pose in her kitchen and wear pink--something she has done.
Yes, feminist women have worked hard for both male and female feminist candidates, and some Republican women are now working hard for Republican candidates, both male and female. And yet, the problem of our collective sexism still remains and will continue to determine how campaigns are conducted and who wins.
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D. is professor emerita of psychology and the author of thirteen books including "Woman's Inhumanity to Woman" and "The New Anti-Semitism." She has written extensively about Islamic gender apartheid and about honor killings. She once lived in Kabul, Afghanistan. She may be reached through her website: www.phyllis-chesler.com.
Politician''s remark irks Japanese women[/size]]Politician''s remark irks Japanese women
Tokyo, Oct 15(Kyodo) A senior politician's remark that Japanese women "find pleasure" in staying at home, made at an international conference earlier this month, has drawn criticism from various quarters, specially from the fairer sex.
Yoshikatsu Nakayama, vice minister of economy, trade and industry, made the remark during the Women's Entrepreneurship Summit, jointly hosted by Japan and the United States, on October 1 in the central Japanese city of Gifu, which was . "Japanese women find pleasure in working at home and that has been part of Japanese culture," Nakayama said during the conference attended by around 300 businesswomen and other participants from the 21 member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. "That should be given more credit through (raising their husbands') salaries, but it has become impossible as the situation surrounding men became severe," he said.
The 65-year-old politician who holds the third-highest position at the industry ministry also said that Japanese women hold the power behind the throne, and repeated that it was part of Japanese culture for them to stay at home. The remarks surprised conference participants and appalled many others as they spread widely through Twitter and by word of mouth, said participants and members of a protest group created after the politician made the remarks which has caused a furore.
"I was embarrassed because his remarks revealed how backward Japan is," said a Japanese woman who runs her own business and attended the conference. A US participant told her that in the United States, no one would say such a thing in public even if he or she held sexist ideas, she said. Women angered by the remarks formed a protest group on October 7 to demand Nakayama, a House of Representatives member from the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, to retract the remarks and apologise. Some women said they were disappointed because they previously thought that the DPJ was positive about promoting women's social participation. The group, led by Fusako Okada, is soliciting protest e-mail messages to send to the industry ministry.
So far, women in Hokkaido, Aichi, Toyama, Kyoto, Kochi, and Nakayama's hometown in Tokyo's Taito Ward, have cooperated, the group said. Nakayama told Kyodo News on Thursday that he "regrets" what he said. "I would like to do what I can, albeit small, for women to play a greater role in business," he said. The Switzerland-based World Economic Forum said recently that Japan ranked 94th out of 134 countries in terms of gender equality. Last year, a United Nations committee recommended that the Japanese government deal with discrimination against women in laws, employment and wages.(Kyodo)EKA
Fathers set to win fairer family rights
COMPANIES will be forced to give fathers who request it flexible working hours so that they can play a greater role at home and in child-rearing.
Minister for the Status of Women Kate Ellis is set to launch a major campaign to change workplace equality laws and social attitudes to enable more men to share the parenting responsibility.
Ms Ellis said after creating an equal environment for women in the workplace, it is now time to give men the opportunity to be stay-at-home dads.
"I intend to pursue reform of our workplace equality legislation through the Parliament, to achieve greater choice and flexibility for Australians of both genders," she said.
Australian companies from blue-collar industries to corporate organisations are reluctant to let men work part-time. Ms Ellis said that more family-friendly working arrangements were already in place for women.
"Men can also be discriminated against in the workplace when it comes to caring for the kids," she said.
Under proposed amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act, companies will be forced to give working fathers more flexible hours so they can take greater responsibility for child care. Men, as well as women, will now be formally protected from discrimination based on their caring and family responsibilities.
Yet-to-be-released research into Australian families by the Department of Equal Education, Employment and Workplace Relations reveals there has been major shift from the traditional male breadwinner and a female caregiver to households where both parents are dual income earners and carers.
"Despite these shifts Australian women continue to do the greater share of unpaid caring and domestic work," Ms Ellis said.
Dr Graeme Russell is the author of First Time Father and a specialist on fathering. He said five years ago, his research showed that only two per cent of men opted to be primary caregivers, but that figure was now closer to five per cent.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, of the 1.5 million couple families, 95 per cent of mothers worked part-time compared to five per cent men.
When both parents were employed full-time, mothers spent 17 hours caring for the children, more than double that of men.
Leon Naufahu wanted to be there for his two sons and walked away from his marketing career four years ago to become a stay-at-home dad. His wife Monique continued her real estate career.
"I couldn't have asked for flexible hours, it's just not viewed as realistic for men, and still isn't," the 39-year-old from Rozelle said.
Ms Ellis said incentives like changes under the Fair Work Act meant men and women now had the right to request flexible work arrangements from employers.
2 Ferndale women are accused of violence[/size]
BY BILL LAITNER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Two women are accused of attacking the men in their lives in separate incidents in Ferndale that authorities say could have had deadly results.
Police said one woman shot her husband in the neck, while another drove over a curb trying to run down her ex-boyfriend. Both incidents happened Thursday.
In the first case, police responded at 1 a.m. Thursday to a home on Alberta, where Carla McCrory, 41, said her husband, 26, was suicidal, Lt. William Wilson said.
"The man had been shot in the neck with a 9-mm pistol, but evidence did not coincide with an attempted suicide. Eventually, McCrory admitted to shooting her husband," Wilson said. The man was hospitalized and survived.
McCrory was charged with assault with intent to commit murder, punishable by up to life in prison, and use of a firearm while committing a crime, a two-year felony. She is being held on a $1-million cash or surety bond.
At 8 p.m., police went to 8 Mile and Fair, where a woman was accused of using another weapon: a 2010 Ford Focus.
A 29-year-old-man told police that his ex-girlfriend and the mother of his daughter -- Maria Missouri, 29, of Hazel Park -- tried to run him over after dropping off their daughter at his home, Wilson said.
"While he was partially in the car with the door open, Missouri drove off at a high rate of speed (until) he jumped out. Missouri then chased after him ... over the curb, a sidewalk and into a yard, where he hid behind a fence," Wilson said.
Missouri was charged with felonious assault with a dangerous weapon. She faces up to four years in prison if convicted.
What if men and women really do want different things?
Margaret Wente
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Why don't more women run big companies? Why is there no female Bill Gates? Why do so few women go into politics?
These were the questions posed by this week's Globe and Mail series on women in power. The series focused on the dramatic gender gap at the top of the pecking order. Why, in an age of alleged equality of opportunity, when young women are getting university degrees at nearly twice the rate of men, aren't more women running stuff?
The situation - and the explanations for it - haven't really changed in 10 or 15 years. Invariably, everyone agrees that until we find better ways to get women in top power spots, society is wasting an enormous amount of human potential.
Well, maybe. Or maybe not.
After 30 years of gnawing at this question, I've come to two conclusions. The first is that the usual explanations for the power gap - subtle stereotyping, networks that unintentionally exclude women, female-unfriendly work cultures, etc., etc. - are true, but also pathetically inadequate. The second is that no matter what we do, most of the world's most powerful institutions will continue to be mostly run by men for the foreseeable future.
This week, I ran across a blog posting by Penelope Trunk, a talented young entrepreneur who started a web-based company in Madison, Wisc. In it, she explains that although she has decided to move her company to Washington, D.C., she's not going with it. I believe her story tells you more about women and power than a dozen Catalyst surveys.
"It's weird to be the founder of a company and not be where all the action of the company is. But honestly, I'm relieved," she writes. "There is good evidence that you have to be crazy to do a startup ... Because you are not likely to make money - you are likely to die broke. And you work insane hours - longer than any other job - and you do it over and over and over again. This is not sane.
"...[T]here is a mania that entrepreneurs exhibit that is very attractive to investors," she continues. "The trick is to make sure you're investing in someone who is on the border of insane, but not insane."
Ms. Trunk is staying behind in Madison because she got married to a farmer and has two young kids. This life is not compatible with borderline insanity. "It's hard to not be the centre, but I want to be the centre of my family," she writes.
Her blog drew an avalanche of response, some of it quite hostile. "Stop stereotyping female entrepreneurs," demanded a female entrepreneur, writing in Forbes. "Articles like this are at best insulting to both women and men, and at worst dangerous ammo that perpetuates the stereotype that women are unfit to be entrepreneurs. It's called subtle sexism, and it unravels the tremendous progress society has made toward the goal of gender equality."
But what if men and women really do want different things? Might that - rather than sexism - help explain the fact that few female entrepreneurs are backed by venture capitalists? As Ms. Trunk writes: "Really, you could tell that story on one page: Startups move at break-neck pace, under a lot of pressure to succeed bigger and faster than any normal company. And women don't want to give up their personal life in exchange for the chance to be the next Google."
Human nature is malleable. But on the whole, female ambition really is different from male ambition. Women want challenging work, so long as it's compatible with having close personal relationships. By contrast, a fair number of men are driven to succeed, no matter what. This relentless will to dominate and win is at least as much hormonal as it is cultural. It is fuelled by testosterone, and it also explains why some men are willing to take insane risks. Men are far more likely than women to wind up as either millionaires or roadkill.
Meantime, a million years of evolution have hard-wired women to be risk-averse, for obvious reasons: If they're not around, their babies will die. Risk aversion is extremely useful for raising children, as well as for making sure the food gets on the table and that society proceeds in an orderly and humane manner. These are not small things. Civilization would survive quite well if something wiped out half the men. If half the women were wiped out, civilization would probably collapse.
Culture can shape behaviour quite profoundly - within limits. Despite those alluring rumours of Amazons and matriarchies, every human culture known to exist has been dominated by men. So why are we so shocked that we haven't managed to totally rewire the sexes in 50 years?
So, has anything changed in the past decade or two? Actually, quite a lot. More and more women are leading major institutions, such as universities and public-sector agencies, where collaboration is the key. They make up more than half the new doctors and lawyers - professions that, not incidentally, give them plenty of flexibility to raise a family. In the U.S. (though not, regrettably, in Canada), politics is increasingly filled with female powerhouses - Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Meg Whitman, and (choke) Sarah Palin. Your own smart and motivated daughters will probably be able to achieve almost anything they set their minds on - if they want it badly enough.
And if they wind up wanting something else? I won't get fussed. There are many ways of contributing to the human project. Being boss is just one of them.
Falmouth mother spends benefits money on £4,500 boob job
3:41pm Thursday 7th October 2010
A Falmouth mother who spent her benefits money on a £4,500 boob job has made national headlines today.
Kelly Marshall appears on the front page of the Daily Star, as well as in Closer magazine.
In the articles the 32-year-old, who has five children by four different men, claims that she and her children should not have to “miss out on nice things” just because she has never worked.
Kelly, who first fell pregnant at 15, claims almost £29,000 a year in benefits.
But instead of spending the handouts on her children, she used the taxpayers’ money to boost her cup size from a 34A to a 34DD.
In the article she claims she now wants to spend yet more money on liposuction, Botox and a tummy tuck.
Her children are also expecting to receive £2,000 worth of Christmas presents this year and the family has already been on two foreign holidays since the beginning of the year.
Each of the four bedrooms has a flat-screen Tv and she has a wardrobe purely for her jeans collection.
She is quoted as saying: “I’m not a working mum but that doesn’t mean I can’t be a good mum. People have this idea we are spongers. I’m not.”
What do you think about this? Do you know Kelly? Contact us at [email protected], call 01326 213341 or leave a comment in the box below.
