Calling all intellectually curious, engaged, and excited readers: We're looking for fall interns for Double X. We have positions to fill in both the D.C. and New York offices. Interested applicants should e-mail us a résumé, three clips (published articles, blog entries, and classroom assignments all acceptable), and a short critique of the site. Please specify whether you want to be considered for the D.C. or NYC position, and what your availability will be (part-time or full? away for certain weeks?) for September through December. The deadline for applications is July 1.

Tags: internship

From the department of small comforts:  The sentencing Monday of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years in prison by North Korean authorities is likely to shine a bright light on the situation facing North Korean women who seek refuge in China that was the subject of their documentary project for Current TV.

My colleague Blaine Harden has an excellent and eye-opening piece on the situation in today's Washington Post, detailing how the much-discussed gender imbalance in China has led to a market for North Korean wives among rural Chinese men.

The women want to escape poverty and starvation in North Korea, and the Chinese men desperately want wives. Such complementary population needs don't lead to positive outcomes for the women however, because, as Harden reports, the women—and eight out of 10 recent defectors are women, he writes—are often finding their exits through men who turn out to be traffickers, offering them freedom and then selling them off as brides to strange Chinese men once across the border. Or, once across the border on their own, they fall prey to marriage brokers, because as stateless illegals in China, they risk deportation back to North Korea—where they may be sent to forced labor or reeducation camps—should they seek help from Chinese authorities.

"If I had a chance to meet with President Obama, I would first like to tell him how North Korean women are being sold like livestock in China and, second, to know that North Korean labor camps are hell on earth," one North Korean sold into three different marriages in China before being returned to North Korea told Harden.

The whole disturbing story is worth a read.

Worth pondering, too, in light of the spate of articles about how the gender-imbalance in China is allowing Chinese women to lead more liberated lives and have their pick of suitors.

Tags: china, euna lee, laura ling, north korea

Well, I'm glad the famous ones have off-days, too. Susan Orlean (staff writer at The New Yorker, author of The Orchid Thief, Meryl Streep muse) has been tweeting this morning about how hard it is to be an at-home writer—especially if you're a woman and a mother. She first posted: "When I was pregnant people said, Yr job is so flexible—perfect w/a baby! Clearly, they knew nothing about writing and/or kids." This has touched off a conversation between Orlean and other Twitterers about women and writing, a favorite topic here at the XX Factor. Orlean and her readers are discussing whether women have different styles of focus than men do, the extent to which writing is different from other professions, and why there are no "queens of non-fiction."

I certainly sympathize with the difficulties of being an at-home writer—which is why I'm currently sitting in a drop-in freelancer's cubicle here at the Slate Group's swanky new West Village office. (Thanks Slate Group!) Part of me thinks that working from home might actually be easier with kids around, since my problem has always been how vast and echo-y my apartment seems to become whenever I have to shift from, say, television-watching into work mode. The emptiness of the apartment begins to reflect the emptiness of the page, both start freaking me out, and then I just go back to watching television.

Of course, you can't tactfully avoid kids with a pair of noise-cancelling headphones, the way you can tune out office-mates when you really need to concentrate. (At least, I'm guessing you can't?)

Work-at-home XX-ers, what are your coping mechanisms? And do you think it really is worse for women—and moms? And finally, what's your verdict on Twitter and writing: helpful social lifeline, or insidious procrastination tool?

Tags: freelance, office, Susan Orlean, women writers

A new study from the University of Michigan shows that in metropolitan areas where men are scarce, they are less likely to propose marriage and tend to spend more time playing the field. This is not even remotely surprising, but ScienceDaily reports that there are other societal effects when there is a surplus of women in a reigon:

For instance, studies have shown that when women outnumber men, hemlines actually rise, overall, as women to do more to physically attract men. Also, the rates of divorce and out-of-wedlock births are higher, and interests in women's rights increases. Surpluses of men tend to be associated with more conservative social norms and restricted roles for women.

Short skirts and women's rights, or muumuus and marriage? The former somehow sounds more enticing.

Tags: dating, gender studies, marriage, university of michigan