Tech-Savvy Critics Aim to Upgrade the Tampon Dispenser

From The Wall Street Journal authored by Alexandra Bruell:

“Food and soda vending machines made some major technological advances over the years. Some allow mobile payments. Others can customize soda flavors.

Sanitary napkin and tampon dispensers, however, have been stuck in time.

Most of the dispensers found in women’s bathrooms in department stores, offices and public venues were designed several decades ago. They still require quarters. They often get jammed, or sit empty because no one has manually checked the supply levels, leaving women who forget their own supplies without a basic necessity.

Manufacturers have begun making some improvements, but critics say they have a long way to go to add modern features such as electronic payments or real-time inventory tracking so that janitors can restock when products run low.

“The tampon dispenser hasn’t changed in decades,” said Stephanie Loffredo, who works in the advertising industry and is developing a modernized machine. “It’s a forgotten-about technology no one is thinking about. It hasn’t evolved at all.”

A “Free the Tampons” campaign, led by advertising veteran Nancy Kramer, is advocating for free access to tampons and pads, arguing that they are as necessary to women’s hygiene as toilet paper or soap. Some states, including California and New York, have adopted legislation mandating that schools that meet certain criteria provide students with free tampons and napkins.

“This is becoming a new requirement for schools,” said Nilofar Yagana, business director for accessories at Bobrick Washroom Equipment Inc., of North Hollywood, Calif. “Nobody pays for paper towels. It makes business sense for us as well.” The new laws also have led dispenser makers to make upgrades.”

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West Point is about to graduate its largest class of black women

From CNN authored by Tony Marco:

“Thirty-four black women are expected to graduate from West Point next week.

That will be the largest class of African-American women to graduate together in the military academy’s lengthy history, West Point spokesman Frank Demaro said.
“Last year’s graduating class had 27,” said Demaro. “And the expectation is next year’s class will be even larger than this year’s.”
Last year, the school appointed Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams as its first black superintendent.
In 2017, the academy for the first time selected an African-American woman, Simone Askew, to serve at the top of the chain of command for cadets.
“It makes me feel prideful that the academy is acknowledging diversity,” 2012 West Point alum Shalela Dowdy said.”

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GETTING TO GENDER EQUALITY WITH ECONOMICS AND PURCHASING POWER

From W2.0 authored by W2.0 Staff:

“In 2014, Donna Miller was on vacation with her sisters, Dr. Karen Nern and Dr. Freddi Pennington. All former business executives, with five daughters and three granddaughters between them, they started talking about their frustration with the lack of women in senior leadership positions and the fact that one out of every four women is impacted by domestic violence. One of those women was their mother – a beautiful, strong, intelligent author and college professor who had been a survivor as an adolescent before marrying their father.

Their mother had high expectations of them, and also taught them to use their talents to make a difference. They started mulling over what the three of them could do to drive positive change, and came to the blinding realization that women have all the power they need. No matter how much money women earn relative to men, they make around 80% of ALL purchasing decisions.

With that simple but powerful number in their heads, they felt that if women would buy from the companies that support them – women-owned or women-led companies – and a portion of the proceeds support efforts to reduce domestic violence, they could use that purchasing power to shatter glass ceilings and change lives in a matter of quarters rather than decades.

And so Purse Power was born.

Purse Power is a tool that allows any shopper to find women-owned and women-led companies they can prioritize and purchase from. And a portion of the proceeds does in fact go straight to efforts that combat domestic violence.”

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After men in Spain got paternity leave, they wanted fewer kids

From Quartz authored by Corrine Purtill and Dan Kopf:

“In March 2007, Spain introduced a national policy granting most new fathers two weeks of fully paid paternity leave. The policy proved exceptionally popular, with 55% of men eligible in the first year opting to take the paid time. The amount of leave covered by the program was doubled in 2017 and expanded to five weeks in 2018, with additional increases expected between now and 2021.

Economists studying the effects of the original 2007 policy examined what happened to families that had children just before and just after the program began, and found differences in the outcomes. While the early cohort of men who were eligible for paternity leave were just as likely to stay in the workforce as the men who weren’t eligible, they remained more engaged with childcare after their return to work, and their partners were more likely to stay in the workforce as well. In that sense, the program seems to have done what policy makers would have hoped.

Unexpectedly, though, the researchers also found that families who were eligible for the paternity leave were less likely to have kids in the future. In a study published in the Journal of Public Economics(paywall), economists Lídia Farré of the University of Barcelona and Libertad González of University of Pompeu Fabra estimate that two years on, parents who had been eligible for the newly introduced program were 7% to 15% less likely to have another kid than parents who just missed the eligibility cutoff. While the difference dissipated further into the future, even after six years, parents who had been eligible for the leave were still less likely to have a child again.”

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Hollywood working moms and the brutal conflict between family and career

From The Los Angeles Times authored by Meredith Blake:

“Nearly every mother in Hollywood has a horror story.

There was the time screenwriter and showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna was 8½ months pregnant and a studio executive joked, “I guess today would be a bad day to punch you in the stomach.” There was the time Nisha Ganatra, director of the upcoming Mindy Kaling film “Late Night,” went on a scouting trip to India when she was a new mom and found herself driving around the country in a van “with 15 dudes,” pumping breast milk in “a woodshed in the middle of a desert and an outhouse behind a restaurant.” There was the time a dream job offer fell through for Oscar-nominated “Mudbound” cinematographer Rachel Morrison because producers panicked that she’d be going back to work a few weeks after giving birth — something she was willing to do to help realize one of the most exciting scripts she had ever read. The experience, she says, “made me acutely aware of the prejudices in this industry, specifically in my line of work.”

Being a working parent in the United States, the only developed nation in the world without a federal paid parental leave policy and where the cost of childcare can consume a single paycheck, is challenging no matter one’s gender or line of work. It is especially hard on mothers, who are more likely to rearrange their work schedules to take care of their families and, according to research, are often hit by a “motherhood penalty” — losing out on raises and job opportunities because they are perceived as less professionally committed than their child-free peers (and men with children). Numbers can vary, but a groundbreaking 2001 study by sociologists Michelle Budig and Paula England found a wage penalty of 5% to 7% (depending on experience) for each child a woman has.

For women in entertainment — an industry where the hours are grueling and unpredictable and travel to faraway locations is the norm — the conflict between work and family can be brutal. While executives at places like Netflix get generous paid leave and many studios have on-lot childcare centers, Hollywood is powered by an army of freelance artists and crew members who do not have reliable access to such perks.”

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What Do You Do When You Become The Statistic You Desperately Hoped To Avoid?

From Above the Law authored by Amy D. Cubbage:

“When I got out of law school, freshly minted as an attorney, I was prepared to change the world for women lawyers. My law school class in the mid-1990s was only 30 percent women, and we felt it.  We were told in ways both subtle and direct that we didn’t belong.  So when I graduated and joined the largest law firm in my state, I had a mission.  I didn’t just want to make money and rise through the associate ranks to become a partner — I wanted to prove that women belonged, and I wanted to be an example for others coming behind me.

Fast forward 10 years.  I’d done what I set out to do. I’d become a partner in a large law firm. I had a (reasonably) thriving practice. I’d helped other women coming up behind me.  Then I become a mother.”

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Moms Are Fighting To Use Campaign Funds For Child Care

From The Huffington Post authored by Molly Redden:

“Josie Raymond only campaigned once with her daughter before she realized she had to hire a babysitter. She was in the thick of a competitive race for a Kentucky House seat, and she could easily spend all day canvassing suburban Louisville — but her toddler couldn’t.

“We got through 11 doors before she had to pee,” Raymond deadpanned.

Raymond wasn’t sure her family could afford more babysitting bills. So in July, she became the first-ever candidate in Kentucky to ask state election officials if she could pay for child care with campaign funds.

She wasn’t the only one asking. In May 2018, Liuba Grechen Shirley, a candidate for U.S. Congress in New York, won a groundbreaking ruling from the Federal Election Commission that allowed her to use campaign dollars for child care in specific, campaign-related cases.

Inspired by that victory, mothers running for office in at least seven states have pushed election officials to clarify what decades-old state campaign finance laws have to say about child care.”

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Tech companies step in to stop date rape

From Axios authored by Alexi McCammond:

“In the U.S., 37 states require schools to teach abstinence as part of sex-education. Zero states mandate that they address drug-facilitated sexual assault, otherwise known as date rape.

Why it matters: This isn’t like getting struck by lightning. Having a tasteless, colorless rohypnol — a “roofie” — dropped in your Merlot is a pervasive problem for women and men of all ages, yet students aren’t taught about it. So tech companies are stepping in to help people identify and handle the problem.

  • The number of drug-induced date rapes in the U.S. appear to be on the increase, although there are not absolute numbers, according to the Department of Justice. The West Virginia Foundation for Rape Information Services asserts that “75% of acquaintance rape involve drugs or alcohol.” And, in a 2015 study of one hospital, 33% of sexual assault cases involved date rape drugs given without the victim’s knowledge.

Numerous companies are offering devices to detect a contaminated drink. They market straws, drink stirrers, coasters, and strip tests, among other products, to test on the spot whether their drinks have been spiked with drugs.

  • The SipChip is a quarter-sized plastic chip that operates like a pregnancy test, but screens for six different common date rape drugs.
  • You place a drop of liquid on the chip (or submerge it in your drink) and get the result in as little as 30 seconds. The appearance of two pink lines mean your drink is good; one tells you it’s been spiked.
  • The products aren’t perfect. They’re single-use, have an expiration date, and don’t say what exactly (or how much) is in your drink.

Between the lines: Drug detection products, despite their flaws, are especially helpful when you have a pretty short timeframe to handle the situation of being drugged. When it happened to me in college, for example, the cocktail of drugs that was slipped into my drink wouldn’t leave my system for 72 hours. That’s longer than usual, the doctor told me.”

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COULD AN APP HELP YOU STOP FIGHTING ABOUT CHORES?

From Mel Magazine authored by Tracy Moore:

“Men typically excel at both playing and inventing pointless competitive games, but one man has potentially done civilization a solid and applied his gamification skills toward something that actually kind of matters: household chores.

Manhattan civil engineer Bob Ford, a mid-30s father and husband, has developed an app called Labor of Love, set to launch at the end of this month. It aims to help couples not only split up chores more equitably, but with the added incentive of a points-based system that generates rewards for completion. You can even add kids’ chores to the mix and reward them for completing tasks, too.

Ford designed the app out of necessity: His wife had stayed at home for a few years with their son, but as he aged toward elementary school, she decided to go back to school herself to become a lawyer. At home, things mostly went on as they always had while she attended law school, with her juggling childcare and classes, but once she began putting in the long hours as a lawyer, Ford was suddenly faced with a dirty house and childcare responsibilities he’d scarcely noticed were being handled by his wife when he was the only earner. Like many couples, they were blindsided by how the new normal would change their household responsibilities. They bickered.

Labor of Love’s design came from collaboration between them as a result of those spats: Couples both add tasks around the house — laundry, grocery runs, dusting, paying bills, mowing the lawn, etc. They set reminders so the tasks are finished on a schedule. But the key feature of the app is a points system that assigns values to every task and keeps track of who has done what. As the tasks get done and add up to a final tally, each partner is rewarded with a treat of their choosing.”

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What’s Keeping More Women From Board Seats: Little Turnover

From The Wall Street Journal authored by Vanessa Fuhrmans:

“A stubborn paradox reigns across U.S. boardrooms: Companies are appointing more women to board seats than ever, yet the overall share of female directors is barely budging.

The reason isn’t the pipeline, say recruiters and researchers. It is that board seats rarely become available in the first place.

More than a decade typically goes by before a director leaves a board seat, according to a new study from the Conference Board, a business research group. Examining Russell 3000 companies, which represent the vast majority of U.S.-traded stocks, it found the average director stays in the job for 10.4 years and about a quarter of them step down only after 15 years.”

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