William Byrnes' Tax, Wealth, and Risk Intelligence

William Byrnes (Texas A&M) tax & compliance articles

Posts Tagged ‘Gender’

Sexual Violence during War and Peace

Posted by William Byrnes on October 1, 2014


Dr. Jelke Boesten, Kings College (London) (faculty profile and books)

http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/sexual-violence-during-war-and-peace-jelke-boesten/?K=9781137383440

book coverThe idea that rape is widely used as a weapon of war has taken root in international institutions, influencing how post-conflict justice and transitional justice are perceived and pursued. Despite this global attention, there has been no progress eradicating or even mitigating sexual violence in war or in peace and very little progress prosecuting crimes of sexual violence. With particular reference to post-conflict justice, this book asks what sexual violence means from a socio-political perspective and in what ways contemporary “peacetime” violence is linked to wartime rape. Evidence from Peru and the internal armed conflict of 1980-2000 shows that acts of wartime rape are deeply embedded in existing configurations of gender and power and that sexual violence serves not only wartime terror but also peacetime hierarchies.

Posted in book | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Are Unisex Mortality Tables Coming to America?

Posted by William Byrnes on October 6, 2011


“Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus,” goes the saying from the popular self-help book. But in a recent ruling, the European Court of Justice said that, although statistically verifiable, you’d better not acknowledge the 100 million mile (sorry, kilometer) gap between men and women when you’re pricing life insurance premiums.

The highest court in the EU ruled earlier this year that the long-standing practice of basing insurance premiums on gender is sex discrimination that is prohibited under EU law. Despite hundreds of years of data verifying the simple fact that women live longer than men, insurance carriers in the EU will soon be prohibited from considering gender when setting insurance premiums.

Under EU law, “[e]quality between women and men must be ensured in all areas, including employment, work and pay.” The European policy generally has been applied to remove gender discrimination in the workplace. But a 2004 European Directive “prohibits all discrimination based on sex in the access to and supply of goods and services.” And that directive has been specifically applied to access to life insurance.

Read this complete analysis of the impact at AdvisorFX (sign up for a free trial subscription with full access to all of the planning libraries and client presentations if you are not already a subscriber).

For previous coverage of the Life Insurance Gender Gap in Advisor’s Journal, see Is the Life Insurance Gender Gap Really Closing? (CC 11-68).

Posted in Wealth Management | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

 
%d bloggers like this: