Ruth Institute Blog

by Denyse O’Leary

The new science of neuroeconomics is making big claims. Can they be justified?

Can neuroeconomics rescue shattered economies?

We are asked by some to believe that it can. “Neuroeconomics” is one of many new directions in neuroscience – scanning the brains of floor traders, for example. In ” Testosterone and high finance do not mix: so bring on the women ” in a recent issue of The Guardian, Tim Adams tells us that the new science of neuroeconomics is proving beyond doubt that “hormonally-driven young men” should not be left alone in charge of our finances. Research shows that too much testosterone impaired the risk assessment abilities of traders, and so does too much cortisol. The solution, he thinks — riffing off Michael Lewis’s The Big Short — is to get more women involved: Womenomics. Read more…

Convert From Radical Feminism Gathers Women to Defend Church Teaching

Note from Dr. Morse, who is a contributor to this volume,: “Erica’s personal journey  is precisely the story we are looking for at the Ruth Institute: people who have learned from experience that the sexual revolution is a lie. ‘The divorce at 12 was the hardest one.’   That is just an awful, and very telling statement.”

Note from Betsy: Here’s a quote from the article about Dr. Morse: “I knew Jennifer Roback Morse’s work and thought having an economist write on marriage was a good idea. She is well-respected, and her credentials are outstanding.”

by Judy Roberts

The popular media view of the Catholic Church as anti-woman gets a vigorous challenge in a new book edited by Erika Bachiochi. In Women, Sex, and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching (Pauline Books & Media), Bachiochi and eight other contributors expound upon the Church’s teaching on sex, contraception, marriage, abortion and priestly ordination from a pro-woman perspective. Bachiochi, a 35-year-old mother of five, lives in East Walpole, Mass., with her husband, Dan. She spoke to Register correspondent Judy Roberts. Read more…

By Pat Hagan

It’s a bit of a cliche that women settle down for love, and men for regular sex.

But scientists are claiming it’s true. A study shows that women agree to cohabit because they view it as a stepping stone to marriage.

Yet men move in hoping for more sex and to ‘test drive’ the relationship to see if it is worth sticking around. Read more…

by Elizabeth Landau – CNN.com Health Writer/Producer

by Amelia Hill

According to survey of 2,000 girls and women, around two-thirds have had mild to moderate mental health problems.

Almost a third of women aged over 18 have taken antidepressants, according to research published today which its authors claim reveals “generations of women in crisis” with mental health problems. Read more…

Lately there have been quite a few blog posts about the goings-on at last weekend’s Catholic Women’s Conference in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Dr J gave two talks.  They’re now available on our podcast page so you can go straight to the source.

Female without Apology

Marriage without Adjectives

This is a short excerpt from an outstanding chapter in the Women, Sex and the Church: A Case for Catholic Teaching anthology, to which I am a contributor. Angela Franks, Ph.D. contributed the chapter on contraception. As you know, the prohibition on contraception is one of the most controversial teachings of the Catholic Church. My arrangement with the publisher prohibits me from just posting the whole chapter. I’m giving you a short extract that gives a small taste of what Dr. Franks tackles in her chapter. Read more…

by Evelyn Birge Vitz and Paul C. Vitz

An awful lot of nonsense has been said about the supposed “double standards” between the sexual histories of men and the sexual histories of women.  The discussion of sexuality is full of it like so much verbal ipecac.  The typical whine goes like this “why is it that a man who’s been with a hundred women is a ‘stud’ while a woman who’s been with the same number of men is a “slut’?”

The short answer is because men value the sexual loyalty of women more than women value the sexual loyalty of men.  This also explains why hooking up is a much worse idea for women than it is for men.  Because a woman’s value as a lifelong partner for marriage diminishes with each passing dalliance.  For men, not so much.  This does not mean that hooking up is a good idea for men, just that it’s not as bad an idea as it is for women. Read more…

Ruth institute Advisory Board member Pat Fagan edits the Mapping America series for Family Research Council. In this month’s edition, he asks, “What increases the likelihood of a woman having two or more cohabitations in her lifetime?” Looking at two or more cohabitations is significant because this weeds out the couples who move in together right before getting married, and then staying married. All the research suggests that “serial cohabitation” is more risky than pre-marital cohabitation, and both of course, are more risky than not cohabiting at all. Read more…

Interesting, and relates to some of our other recent posts, for interested parties.

By Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers

The lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years by many objective measures, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. This decline in relative wellbeing is found across various datasets, measures of subjective wellbeing, demographic groups, and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men. Read more…

Interesting. Verrrrrrrrry interesting. It only makes sense that there would be consequences to putting foreign chemically junk in your body, right?

by Carolyn Moynihan

Why does HIV/AIDS strike more women than men globally? Why is sub-Saharan Africa the home of the world’s largest heterosexual HIV/Aids epidemic? Why does Thailand have an HIV infection rate of over one-in-100 adults, while Japan’s rate is 0.01 per cent and the Philippines’ 0.02 per cent? One answer to these questions can be found in an article published this week by the Population Research Institute deeply implicating hormonal contraception in the AIDS epidemic. Read more…