Why Aren’t Women Advancing More in Corporate America?

From The New York Times authored by Emily Bazelon:

“MORE THAN 40 years ago, the Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter published a pivotal book, “Men and Women of the Corporation.” Kanter showed that the disadvantages women experienced at work couldn’t be attributed to their lack of ambition: Women aspired to leadership as much as men did. But organizations often funneled women into jobs that didn’t have much of a career ladder.

By understanding gender-based expectations at work, some women were able to overcome them. From the 1970s into the 1990s, women made serious progress in the workplace, achieving higher positions, closing the gender wage gap and moving into male-dominated fields. Then that progress stalled, especially at the top. Why?”

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Attorney pays it forward with children of incarcerated in mind

From The Oklahoman authored by Carla Hinton:

“In her heart, an Oklahoma City attorney considers children of the incarcerated part of her extended family.

Francie Ekwerekwu, 30, said she knows what it is like to live without a parent due to imprisonment because her own father was incarcerated from the time she was age 5 until she turned 27.

“I feel like these kids are my brothers and sisters,” she said.

That empathy fuels her passion for her work with The Education and Employment Ministry, also known as TEEM.

By working on behalf of people coming out of jail and prison, Ekwerekwu said she feels like she is indirectly helping their children and entire families lead better lives.

“Who is the underdog here and how can they be helped?” said she of youths who have incarcerated parents.

“I’m like wow, I know that life.”

The attorney currently represents TEEM’s community sentencing clients in Oklahoma County family court, walking them through such issues as child custody, paternity and divorce. Before that, she worked exclusively as the nonprofit’s attorney arguing for lower bail bonds for the agency’s clients.”

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SFMoMA to Sell 1960 Rothko to Help Diversify its Holdings

From The New York Times authored by Robin Pogrebin:

“At a time when museums around the country are trying to diversify their collections, staffs and trustees, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has announced plans to sell Mark Rothko’s “Untitled” (1960), mainly to “address art historical gaps” like works by women and people of color.

The deep burgundy oil on canvas, one of the artist’s color field paintings, is expected to bring $35 million to $50 million at Sotheby’s in New York in May. The proceeds will also be used to create a new endowment fund for future acquisitions.”

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The Psychological Trap of Freelancing

From The Cut authored by Charlotte Cowles:

“For most of my career, I was paid a salary. It was not very much, especially at the beginning, but it also seemed to exist on a different plane from my actual job. I worked as hard and as much as I could, and then twice a month a dollar amount materialized in my checking account. My time did not feel tethered to this money. My paycheck was just a byproduct of going into an office every day, and a pretty arbitrary one at that.

But once I started freelancing, things changed. I became hyperconscious of how much money I could (or should) charge for my time, and this made me unhappy and mean when my nonworking hours didn’t measure up to the same value. It was akin to the rage of watching cab fare tick up while you’re sitting in traffic, minutes and dollars dribbling away before your eyes. A freelancer friend recently commiserated: “I went outside to get coffee and ran into three different neighbors who wanted to chit-chat. I wanted to scream, ‘For every word that comes out of your mouth, I’m losing money!’”

The upside of becoming aware of the time/money connection is that I got better at managing my finances and asking for bigger fees — a good thing, especially when compared to how lackadaisical I’d been in this department previously. But I was also stressed out. I started sleeping less, and I stopped hanging out with my friends as much as I wanted. And I would sometimes fall apart completely, frittering away a Saturday in bed and feeling horrible about it.”

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Why Are We Still Dismissing Girls’ Pain?

From The New York Times authored by Laurie Edwards:

“I have a rare and painful genetic respiratory disorder called primary ciliary dyskinesia. I was 23 when doctors diagnosed my condition, but I had been sick my whole life. Again and again, I was told that I was suffering from nothing more than stress — that it was all in my head.

This is a common experience for young women. We have long known that women with some conditions are more likely than men to be under-treated for pain, and that doctors are more likely to dismiss reports of illness as psychosomatic when they come from women. Now, a recent study from Yale researchers shows how early this gender bias starts. The study found that when adult participants were asked to rate the perceived pain of a child receiving a finger prick to draw blood, they attributed more pain to the child they thought was a boy than they did to the child they thought was a girl.

The study’s authors associate these findings with “explicit gender stereotypes” that characterize men as more stoic about their pain and women as more emotional — and therefore, less credible.”

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‘You don’t look like a lawyer.’ Female lawyers and lawyers of colour angered by mistaken identity in court

From The Hamilton Spector  authored by Jacques Gallant:

“During the early years of her career, Lori Anne Thomas would sit near the front of the courtroom, only to be told to move by court staff as the area was reserved for lawyers.

Except she is one.

“I’ve heard more than enough times, ‘You don’t look like a lawyer.’ I know exactly what that means, which is that I’m not a tall, white man,” said Thomas, a Toronto lawyer who specializes in criminal law and who recently became president of the Canadian Association of Black Lawyers.”

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Do You Believe You Need to Be Perfect?

From The Cut  authored by Reshma Saujani:

“‘I didn’t know until I was in my late 20s that I had choices in life,’ Ruth told me. She and I met while sitting side by side at a nail salon and struck up one of those unusually intimate conversations the way one sometimes randomly does with a complete stranger. Ruth got the message when she was young that an appropriate path for her was to become a teacher, get married, have kids, and then stay home to raise them. It didn’t even dawn on her that she had other options — that is, until she was 28 and a friend of hers joined the Peace Corps and moved to South America. “All of a sudden I thought, wait a minute … you mean I can do that?!” At age 62, Ruth says she sometimes wonders what turns her life might have taken if she’d looked within and asked herself what she really wanted.

Something interesting happened when I first started talking with women about perfection. I’d start off by asking them what I thought was a softball question to open the conversation: “Do you believe you need to be perfect?” I assumed the answer would obviously be yes, but nearly all of them said the exact opposite. I began to wonder if maybe I had it all wrong. Then I realized they were answering the question from the very same style of thinking I was trying to unravel. They were giving me what they assumed was the right answer — the perfect answer — the answer that said of course they know that the pursuit of perfection is a demoralizing waste of time and energy. And yet all the stories I was hearing were telling a very different tale.”

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AN APP THAT FACILITATED CYBERBULLYING SHIFTS TO THE WORKPLACE

From Wired  authored by Paris Martineau:

“Sarahah, the anonymous gossip app notorious for promoting cyberbullying among teens, is pivoting to the workplace. On Thursday, the company launched a second private messaging app, Enoff, which aims to combat workplace harassment by providing an anonymous platform for employee feedback. Enoff joins a crowded field of apps and platforms designed to provide a safer venue for workers to report sexual misconduct and other pressing workplace issues, inviting the question of whether another is really necessary from a company with a complicated history of enabling online harassment.”

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ENTIRE INDUSTRIES ARE BEING BLACKLISTED BY INSURERS OVER #METOO LIABILITY

From The Intercept authored by Susan Antilla:

“SIXTEEN MONTHS INTO #MeToo, companies seeking sexual harassment insurance are facing intense scrutiny from insurers — a trend that could put pressure on firms to institute organizational change.

A recent report, authored by an insurance industry consultant, reveals new measures that insurers are taking to mitigate the risks of writing harassment policies, including decisions to exclude entire industries from their portfolios.

The increased vigilance comes as harassment complaints filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are on the rise, perhaps sparked by the wave of #MeToo revelations. The EEOC received 7,609 sexual harassment charges in its 2018 fiscal year, up nearly 14 percent from 2017. These numbers don’t include an unknown number of complaints settled by victims who never contacted the federal regulator.

Ten of the 32 insurance companies polled by Richard S. Betterley, publisher of the Betterley Report, said they were not underwriting the legal industry. Financial firms, including brokers, investment banks, and venture capital operations landed on the prohibited lists of eight insurers. Seven insurers said they’d blacklisted companies in the entertainment industry. Betterley shared a copy of his report, completed in December, exclusively with The Intercept and Type Investigations.”

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Rachel Brosnahan Is the New Face of Late Aunt Kate Spade’s Label Frances Valentine and Shares How She’s Honoring Her Memory

From People authored by Sharon Kanter:

“Rachel Brosnahan’s new fashion project is a meaningful one.

The award-winning star of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is the new face of the spring campaign for Frances Valentine, the label Kate Spade founded in 2016. Not only is the actress, 28, one of the brand’s most loyal supporters, she’s also the niece of the late designer, who tragically died by suicide at the age of 55 in June 2018.

“In the wake of Katy’s passing, my family and I were so overwhelmed and encouraged by the love and support we received from those who were touched by Katy’s work, many of whom were strangers from around the world,” she tells PEOPLE exclusively in this week’s issue. ‘When you lose someone you love, you search for boundless ways to keep their memory alive. This felt like a way to do that through her beautiful creations and an opportunity to share them with all of those who her work meant so much to.’”

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