Women

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Justin Trudeau’s Cabinet is 50% Women

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet (CNBC)

The new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is working swiftly to make his own mark on his country: Last week, he debuted his new cabinet, which looks very different from the previous one (or most governing bodies, for that matter).

Trudeau’s cabinet is 50% women. That’s right, exactly half. Fifteen men, and fifteen women, along with Trudeau himself. Trudeau’s reasoning for his cabinet’s equality? “Because it’s 2015.” (Finally!) He also wanted a cabinet that “looked like Canada.”

But his actions aren’t just benefitting women; they’ll benefit the whole country:

The countries with the most female lawmakers have made major strides on issues such as education, labor-force participation and paid leave. [Sweden, Rwanda, and Finland] ha[ve] either a parliament or a ministry that is at least 50% female, while women make up only 19% of the U.S. Congress and only four of Obama’s 15 Cabinet members.

With this action, Trudeau sends a clear message: He respects and values women as peers and intellectual equals. And he intends to lead the twin charges of equality and diversity during his term. Incidentally, these terms have no limit. But I hope Trudeau is in power and makes needed changes for a long time to come.

Viola Davis is the First African-American Woman to Win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress

Emmy-winning actress Viola Davis (NY Daily News)

Acclaimed actress Viola Davis made history last night when she became the first African-American actress to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. Davis plays lawyer and law professor Annalise Keating in ABC’s “How to Get Away with Murder,” now in its second season.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is finally beginning to recognize more diverse talent. Davis was up against Taraji P. Henson for “Empire,” which was the first time two Black women were nominated in the same category. Davis acknowledged Henson and 2013 and 2014 nominee Kerry Washington in her acceptance speech.

Some context for this win and occasion: The category has been awarded since 1953. Debbie Allen was the first Black woman nominated in the category in 1982. It begs the question: what took so long?!

Beth Comstock is GE’s First Female Vice Chair

GE Vice Chair Beth Comstock (Fast Company)

Big news from a major corporation: Conglomerate General Electric named Beth Comstock a new Vice Chair. She oversees marketing for the company, becoming chief marketing officer in 2003. Oh yeah, she’s the first woman to hold the executive position (no big!). She joins three other men as her fellow vice chairs.

Comstock’s official title is Vice Chair of Business Innovations (pretty cool, huh?). Per “Fast Company,” here’s what the Business Innovations unit actually is and does:

[It] accelerates new business and helps established commercial ventures transition into GE’s technology universe. The Business Innovations arm houses GE Lighting, GE Ventures & Licensing, software commercialization and corporate marketing, sales, and communications.

Comstock is credited with helping GE focus on the future, in terms of the “industrial internet.” The concept marries data analysis with GE’s traditional, industrial products. CEO Jeff Immelt has called her “a catalyst for digital innovation and growth.”

I can’t wait to see how she’ll evolve GE into the future.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is Pregnant with Twin Girls

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (The New Yorker)

Last week, Marissa Mayer, best-known as Yahoo’s CEO (one of the most-well known female CEOs in tech, if not the world), announced that she’s pregnant with twin girls. She made the announcement in a way befitting her industry: on Yahoo’s Tumblr.

The twins will be the second and third children for Mayer and her husband, Zachary Bogue. Mayer gave birth to her first child, her son Macallister, in September 2012. (That year was a momentous one for her: She became CEO of Yahoo earlier in July.) Mayer announced her pregnancy the same day that Yahoo announced her as their new CEO.

Mayer has said she’ll work through her pregnancy before her due date in December. She also worked through most of her first pregnancy.

After her son’s birth, Mayer famously didn’t take a break for maternity leave, returning to work only two week after giving birth. She also installed a nursery right next door to her office.

It’ll be interesting to see if having to care for two babies at once slows her down at all, and if she changes her views on feminism and working from home.

How Many Media Company Employees Had Ashley Madison Accounts?

Ashley Madison homepage (Ashley Madison)

Happy Friday! Ashley Madison: It’s the hack that keeps on giving. Every day brings a new joy. And here’s this one: The good people at “Gawker” (who’ve been doing a great job covering this whole thing) took a deep-dive into the data, all 9.7 GBs of it. Why? Well, to see how was dumb enough to use a work email as their AM registration email. (Personally, I’m surprised that nobody got called on the carpet after their network got wind of that verification email in their inbox.)

Now, you’d think that most people would know to use a throwaway email for this kind of thing, right? You’d think that, and you’d be wrong. At the time of the data dump, “Wired” reported that 15K+ domains belonging to the government and military were found, comprising .04% of the total emails found.

Here’s what Sam Biddle at “Gawker” found. (Incidentally, no emails registered to the Gawker domain were found).

‘Gawker’ Ashley Madison Email Data Analysis (Gawker)

So yeah, have some common sense as to when to use your work email. Have a great holiday weekend!

Trends: Companies Expanding Maternity/Paternity Leave Policies

Netflix 2014 logo (Under Consideration)

A very positive trend has sprung up recently: Companies are their expanding parental leave policies. The main goal is to recruit more women with work-life balance policies, and to retain talent by allowing time off for family matters. Because trouble at home often means distracted employees and lower productivity. (I feel like that’s on a modern-day Mather Work Incentive poster somewhere.)

Big strides have been made this year: Consulting powerhouse Accenture bumped up its maternity leave policy to 16 weeks in March, which applies to both full-time and part-time employees. In April, Johnson & Johnson announced a new eight-week paid leave policy. In June, major bank Goldman Sachs began offering new fathers and “non-primary caregivers” four weeks of paid leave. (The company currently offers 16 weeks of paid maternity leave.) The U.S. Navy and Marines mandated an 18-week maternity leave policy, effective immediately, in July.

This trend has become especially prevalent in the tech industry, with a lot of changes occurring just this past month. In August, Microsoft recently announced a new parental leave policy, in which employees would get paid at 100% of their salary for 12 weeks. New mothers will have eight weeks of paid maternity leave, which, combined with disability leave, could entitle them to 20 weeks of paid leave.

Adobe’s policy also changed: Mothers will now receive 26 weeks of paid leave, up from the nine weeks off from the previous policy. It’ll be a combination of medical leave (10 weeks) and paternal leave (16 weeks).

Netflix announced they’re bumping up their maternity and paternity leave policies to an unlimited amount of time. New mothers and fathers are allowed to take as much time off as they like during a child’s first year, whether though birth or adoption. (Netflix isn’t a stranger to expanding time off: Employees already get unlimited vacation time.) But the policy isn’t all inclusive: It only applies toward salaried employees, so hourly workers aren’t able to take advantage of it.

It’ll be interesting to see if (when) other companies follow suit, and if paid parental leave will eventually be federally mandated. These are definitely steps in the right direction.

#ThrowbackThursday: Paid Maternity Leave Around the World

Paid Maternity Leave Around the World (Blogspot)

Yeah, this is a #TBT, but it’s relevant to today. In fact, it’s still happening today. The United States is one of the few countries left in the world that doesn’t pay for maternity leave. Crazy, right?!

This map just lays it out. I hope the U.S. comes to its senses soon, and enacts paid maternity leave for all new (and reoccurring) mothers.

Why Is the Number of Sexual Assaults Rising in New York City?

New York City skyline (The Huffington Post)

Certain types of violence are on the rise in the city that never sleeps. In addition to shooting and homicides increasing year-over-year, the number of rapes and sexual assaults has also increased.

But is it enough to panic over? Let’s look at the numbers. “The New York Times” reports:

From Jan. 1 to May 31, there were 540 rapes recorded in the city, an 8 percent increase over the same period last year, and more than 1,128 misdemeanor sex crimes, representing a rise of 18 percent.

But on the bright side, some types of sexual violence has declined within the city:

According to national data from the Centers for Disease Control in 2012, the rate of stranger rape as a percentage of all rape is 14 percent; in New York City this year, the rate is half that. Of the 540 reported rapes, 39 were committed by someone the victim did not know, according to the police.

But why are the overall numbers climbing? The phenomenon can be attributed to a simple economic principle: the complement effect. Numbers are climbing because more people are reporting them. And that’s a good thing! The more people that are aware of these crimes and can report them, the more accurate a picture we can get of just how rampant sexual assaults are.

I’m interested to see if this is, or will be, the case in other cities.

FDA Approves “Female Viagra” Addyi

The experimental drug flibanserin, made by Sprout Pharmaceuticals, is at the center of a regulatory controversy.

Yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Addyi (also known by its generic name Flibanserin) for public consumption. The drug, produced by Sprout Pharmaceuticals, is being touted as a “female Viagra,” a way to “even the score” sexually against men (who have many option to treat waning sexual desire). In some circles, it’s seen as a big breakthrough for women’s sexual health.

Interestingly, Addyi is the first drug to specifically treat waning sex drives for both men and women. (Viagra solved a purely medical/physical issue rather than a psychological one.) Addyi targets the central nervous system, putting it in line with an antidepressant.

Addyi purports to help women with hypoactive sexual disorder (i.e. lack of sexual desire.) But it works on a woman’s mind instead of her body. Rather than facilitating blood flow to the genital region, as Viagra does, the drug takes a two-pronged approach:

Flibanserin targets two neurotransmitters in the brain that can help inspire sexual desire. The first is dopamine, which helps control the brain’s reward and pleasure centers and could help drive up our interest in sex. The second is norepinephrine, which affects parts of the brain that control our attention and our response to things in our environment and could help direct our attention to a sexual partner.

The ultimate goal is that a woman’s level of desire would increase over time.

(Side note: Apparently, Viagra was marketed to women in 2004. The drug did increase blood flow to the women’s genitals, but didn’t affect their level of sexual desire.)

But the drug isn’t completely out of the woods yet: there are still some concerns regarding side effects. Doctors and pharmacists will need to undergo specific training of the drug before dispensing it, and will need to keep track of the women who take it. The biggest side effects include low blood pressure, sleepiness and “sudden fainting,” especially when taken with alcohol. (I have to say, I don’t really understand the point of making a drug to help with sex that can’t be paired with alcohol, but that’s just me.)

There’s also an argument that the drug “doesn’t work safely enough to justify its approval:” Women who took the drug during clinical trials reported a 37% increase in sexual desire, which averaged out to not even two more “satisfying sexual experiences” per month. The boost over the placebo group was even smaller.

It’s expected that Addyi will be covered under most health insurance plans, requiring a co-pay, and will inhabit a price range similar to that of Viagra. The drug should hit the market as soon as October (i.e. less than two months), with some outlets reporting an exact date of Oct. 17th.

I have to say, I’m really curious to see how this will do. I want to see how well it’ll perform (heh) sales-wise, and how many women report the side effects. But most of all, I want to see how this drug will influence the female-desire drugs that will surely come after it.

Jen Welter is the NFL’s First Female Coach

Jen Welter coaching the Arizona Cardinals (AZ Central)

Late last month, the Arizona Cardinals announced a new hire to the their coaching staff, someone that brings plenty of experience. Jen Welter has coached linebackers and special teams for the Texas Revolution of the Indoor Football League. She brings 14 years of professional football experience during her time in the Women’s Football Alliance, and holds advanced degrees in psychology and sports psychology. She also won two gold medals playing for the United States on two separate occasions during the International Federation of American Football Women’s World Championship within this decade.

Welter will be the first woman to coach on a National Football League (NFL) team.

But she’s used to blazing trails: She was the first female coach for the Indoor Football League, another men’s professional sports league. Welter was hired to that position this past February.

As for her day-to-day work, CNN reports:

Welter will work with the Cardinals’ inside linebackers and will coach throughout training camp and the preseason as a training camp/preseason intern.

It’s fantastic that the NFL is continuing to break barriers: Earlier this year, the league hired Sarah Thomas, its first female official. The two actually met during a recent preseason game.

Sex & Stats: Where Numbers Come to Bang

Statistics. Economics. Sex.