Gender

Physicians and surgeons still earn the most, but they have one of the widest gender gaps in pay of all jobs, especially in Pennsylvania, a new census analysis shows. The disparity is one finding from a Census Bureau analysis of full-time earnings nationwide in 1999, revealing some surprises, raising questions, and affirming stubborn patterns in pay inequality. While the earnings gap for women has improved markedly - from 53 percent of men's earnings in 1973 to 77 percent in 2002 - the Census Bureau noted that women still earned less in almost every income category.

I watched the Olympic Games in amazement not only over the spectacle - the sense of nationalism and pride inspired by the achievement of the American athletes - but also noting the irony of how individual differences such as race, ethnicity and gender that divide this nation are transcended during medal competition. Whether it was Shannon Miller or Kim Zmeskal, Carl Lewis or Evelyn Ashford, Oscar De La Hoya or Greg Barton, most Americans watching rooted for them because they represented this nation.

Chasing her older brothers in a pick-up soccer game in their backyard, Catie Depew runs with the liquid stride of a natural. Her father saw it when she was only 4, her brothers take it for granted, and this spring her coed teammates watched her dribble through defenders to rank among team leaders in goals and assists. But Catie, now 8, won't be playing with the boys anymore. The Horsham Soccer Association told the second grader at tryouts last month that if she wanted to play soccer with their club, she would have to play on an all-girls team.

Steve Harvey is a traitor to mankind. Or at least to men. His book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy and Commitment, offers surprising insights into the male mentality and gives women a few strategies for taming that unruly beast. Apparently there's a big market for this type of information. Act Like a Lady has spent the last seven weeks atop the New York Times best-seller list in the Hardcover Advice category. What qualifies the stand-up comic and radio host as a gender authority?

As a white, Christian, heterosexual, able-bodied male who was born in the United States with an uncomplicated gender identity, Andrew Lloyd hit the privilege jackpot. No one has stared at him, thinking he was in the "wrong" restroom. No one has asked him why he flaunts his sexuality when he holds hands with a girlfriend. No classroom building is inaccessible, because he can walk anywhere. "It was never 'Mom and Dad, people treat me differently. Why is that?' " said Lloyd, 21, a senior at West Chester University.

All seven of the babies allegedly killed in late-term abortions by Kermit Gosnell at his squalid West Philly clinic will be counted in homicide figures as black males, even though only one of the babies has been identified as such. Lt. Ray Evers, a police spokesman, said that the Police Department will count the race of the remaining six fetuses as black because "most of the folks that came in to Gosnell's house of horrors were black," he said. The gender, he said, will be listed as male for all of them.

Why did eight teen-agers beat and rape a jogger in Central Park? Mostly missing from the analyses of "wilding," and lost among the suggestions for preventing similar tragedies is one crucial issue: gender. In a society that equates masculinity with dominance and sex with violence, gang rape becomes one way for adolescents to prove their masculinity. Except for prison assaults, gang rape is a crime committed almost exclusively by males against females. Yet, Americans see everything but gender at work in the April 19 assault.

A few weeks ago, comedian Daniel Tosh apologized on Twitter to a female heckler who had been offended by one of his rape jokes. Performer Robert Dubac won't have to say he's sorry for any of the material in Free Range Thinking, his new one-man show playing at Act II Playhouse in Ambler. Not that Dubac would ever let things get to that point. Early in his 85-minute blend of stand-up and narrative, he drapes a piece of string across the stage and muses on the boundary that separates every joke from offending audiences or inviting laughter.

FROM A SAMPLER of cases where people have been victimized because of attributes such as color, gender, sexual orientation - and even "avoirdupois," op-edist Christine Flowers concludes that legislation specifically aimed at protecting those who fall into those categories can itself be discriminatory. The inference of course is that if you don't belong to one of those groups, you don't "deserve" the same protection. Thus we have some who make a gender distinction in domestic abuse cases, as if one partner deserves the title "victim" more than the other.

Montgomery County is studying the possibility of a nondiscrimination ordinance that would protect gay, lesbian, and transgender residents. A state law bans discrimination in the workplace, housing market and other areas based on race, ethnicity, disability, gender, age, and religion. Several counties, including Philadelphia, and municipalities have banned discrimination based on sexuality or gender expression. Democratic Comissioners Josh Shapiro and Leslie S. Richards promised to pass such an ordinance during their 2011 campaign.