While Title IX certainly places pressures in the budgets of intercollegiate athletic programs, it is not directly responsible for the elimination of most men's teams. Title IX has had an uneven implementation since the 1970s. Male wrestling teams have been cut at faster rates during periods of relative dormancy of Title IX. Moreover, there are many sources of excess and waste in athletic budgets, which, if rectified, would provide more than enough resources to prevent the further attrition of men’s teams.

“Coming Out of the Editorial Closest” refers to the unusual circumstance of a man editing” Gender Issues during an editorial interregnum brought about by the abrupt resignation of an editor for personal/medical reasons. The year's plus time during which I, in effect, edited this journal, taught me many things. (1) That in the short run at least, issues of ascribed status and biosocial designation are overruled by the essentially universal premises of scholarship in social science. (2) Appeals to evidence based on experience and commonly accepted standards of data are paramount. (3) An appreciation for different points of view in any particular subject, especially policy issues, requires public awareness rather than gender specificities. This statement is hardly intended to be definitive, but it is suggestive, especially at a time when gender, class, and race stratification are viewed as entry tickets to some editorial and scholarly positions. My own experience convinces me that while gender issues are most often best covered by women—or at least those intimately concerned with the problems of the status of women in society—this does not preclude possibilities that “outsiders” can serve a useful and constructive role in the development of specialist journals.

This is the first in a series of articles stemming from Project Hope International's month long visit to Thailand in June 2002. Project Hope International is a non-governmental organization based in greater Washington, D.C., which fights against child sexual exploitation and trafficking in girls and women into the international sex trade, specifically in Thailand and the United States. Thailand undeniably deals with serious problems of child sexual abuse and exploitation, as well as trafficking of children into the sex trade. However, the sex trade in Thailand today is not the same as it was thirty years ago. There has been a gradual decrease in the numbers of Thai women and girls in the sex trade, and an increase in the numbers of females from neighboring countries in the Mekong sub-region, as well as non-citizen, hill-tribe girls from Northern Thailand. The goals of our research trip to Thailand were threefold: first, we wanted to learn about the current problems of the sex trade and how they have changed over the last ten years; second, we wanted to visit the child welfare centers, and meet the most prominent activists in Thailand who are targeting the political, social, and economic problems surrounding the child sex trade in Thailand; and, finally, we wanted to be able to bring the information we acquired to dispel myths promulgated by many nearsighted NGOs who work on trafficking issues. In this article, problems of researching the sex trade in Thailand are discussed, and a brief overview of the current situation surrounding the trafficking of females into Thailand is provided. In examining the extraordinary efforts of non-governmental organizations and international organizations, we place these issues in the context of how Thailand fits into the broader international anti-trafficking movement. We then provide some information on the most recent court cases that have prosecuted sex offenders and pedophiles and look at some of the reasons why girls get involved in prostitution, albeit on an increasingly voluntary basis in certain regions. Finally, evidence is provided that the government and police are slowly committing themselves to fighting trafficking in females for sexual exploitation.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand how altruistic behavior varies by gender, race, age, and dress. Eagly & Crowley’s (1986) social role theory maintains that the traditional male sex role promotes heroic and chivalrous helping behavior. Based on this theoretical insight, we hypothesized that men would be more likely to exhibit helping behavior than women (regardless of their race, age, or dress), especially if the person requiring assistance was a woman. We also expected that fewer women than men would offer assistance to another, especially if the person in need of help was a man. To test our hypotheses, we went to the downtown Waterside Festival Marketplace, where male and female actors “dropped” a stack of books. We found no significant differences in helping behavior between male and female subjects, all else being equal.

Jobs held largely by women have low pay for the amount of education they require. Why is this? One hypothesis is that employers prefer to hire men, and all workers prefer better jobs, so that women can get in only when a job's rewards (relative to its skill requirements) are low enough that men no longer want the job. Thus, wages affect sex composition. Others see the causal arrow to run the other way. In this view, the sex composition of jobs affects the wage that employers offer; employers' biased perceptions lead them to see jobs as less important and less payworthy if they are filled largely by women. These explanations are not mutually exclusive; the causal arrow may run both ways (or neither way). In this paper we use CPS data from 1984 to 1991 and a cross-lag panel model to examine these effects. Jobs are defined with a detailed occupational category within a specific broad industry category. We find that jobs with a higher percentage of females at one point have slower wage growth (or steeper wage decline) for both men and women in the ensuing years. But we find no effect of earlier wage rate on later sex composition. For those interested in reducing gender inequality in earnings, these findings suggest the utility of “comparable worth” policies.

Although I find the analysis in this paper superior to earlier papers that simply attempt to measure wage differentials across occupations, the analysis still remains flawed and the underlying assumptions of the authors are not clearly stated and can be questioned. The authors assume that firms erect barriers that prevent women from entering certain occupations and that, therefore, also prevent women from taking advantage of higher relative pay. The idea that there might not be a sufficient number of women who want to work in or are qualified for any given occupation is not considered. The authors also do not give an adequate theoretical explanation for their finding of a positive correlation between profitability and smaller gender wage gaps. Economic theory sometimes suggests the opposite conclusion and therefore it is up to the authors to provide an alternative theoretical explanation. It is also assumed that all productivity factors have been “controlled for” in the analysis and that any wage gap that exists between men and women is due to “bad” discrimination. The conclusion of the paper therefore being that if affirmative action is having an effect on wage differentials between men and women (which their evidence indicates is the case for some industries) that this is a positive effect. However, if the assumptions upon which this conclusion is based are questionable, then the conclusion is questionable as well. Affirmative action legislation that decreases the wage gap between men and women may actually be counter-productive.