0.
One juror, Steve Sammut, 62, said it was difficult coming to a verdict.
“We were split there for a while,” he said, adding that a key point was how Ms. [Ellen] Pao’s reviews at Kleiner deteriorated over time. He also said the witnesses for Kleiner, most of whom came from the firm, helped seal the case.
Another juror, Marshalette Ramsey, 41, said she believed Ms. Pao was discriminated against. The male junior partners at Kleiner “had those same character flaws that Ellen was cited with,” but they were promoted, she said.
“I’m going home emotional,” said Ms. Ramsey.
–Ellen Pao Loses Silicon Valley Bias Case Against Kleiner Perkins by David Streitfeld, New York Times, March 27, 2015
1.
I have found that people describe me in many different ways.
Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban.
And some, the girl who fought for her rights.
Some people, call me a “Nobel Laureate” now.
However, my brothers still call me that annoying bossy sister. As far as I know, I am just a committed and even stubborn person who wants to see every child getting quality education, who wants to see women having equal rights and who wants peace in every corner of the world.
-From the acceptance speech of Malala Yousafzai, winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Kailash Satyarthi
2.
I was meeting with a Boston-based VC in his office. He had a window behind his head and, unbeknownst to him or the other people in the office, I could see a reflection in that window of what was going on behind my head in the corridor (all-glass offices can be quite revealing in this way.) As I pitched him, one of his partners engaged in a pantomime in the corridor, making a circle with the fingers of one hand while poking his other fingers through the circle, then thrusting his hips in a sexual fashion. I found it rather hard to concentrate on my pitch.
–It’s Different For Girls, Heidi Roizen, March 2014
3.
Karasek wasn’t satisfied. In February of this year, she and 30 other current and former Berkeley students, some as old as 60, filed two complaints with the U.S. Department of Education charging that the school violated their Title IX rights by mishandling their cases and, in some instances, discouraging them from filing reports. The 70-page, 35,000-word document alleges negligence, botched investigations, and general incompetence, and includes incidents that date to the 1970s. It comes on the heels of a federal complaint Karasek and LaVoie filed with the Department of Education last May alleging violations of the Clery Act, a 1990 law that requires universities to publish a comprehensive list of crimes on campus. And it’s one of at least 13 such complaints filed by women within the last year against Swarthmore College, Dartmouth College, the University of Akron, and the University of Southern California, among others.
–Changing How Colleges Deal With Rape by Claire Suddath, BusinessWeek, April 3, 2014
4a.
By the time Rolling Stone’s editors assigned an article on campus sexual assault to [Sabrina] Erdely in the spring of 2014, high-profile rape cases at Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Vanderbilt and Florida State had been in the headlines for months. The Office of Civil Rights at the federal Department of Education was leaning on colleges to reassess and improve their policies. Across the country, college administrators had to adjust to stricter federal oversight as well as to a new generation of student activists, including women who declared openly that they had been raped at school and had not received justice.
There were numerous reports of campus assault that had been mishandled by universities. At Columbia, an aggrieved student dragged a mattress around campus to call attention to her account of assault and injustice. The facts in these cases were sometimes disputed, but they had generated a wave of campus activism. “My original idea,” [managing editor Will] Dana said, was “to look at one of these cases and have the story be more about the process of what happens when an assault is reported and the sort of issues it brings up.”
–A Rape on Campus: What Went Wrong by Shelia Coronel, Steve Coll, and Derek Kravitz, Rolling Stones, April 5, 2015
4b.
We would like to apologize to our readers and to all of those who were damaged by our story and the ensuing fallout, including members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity and UVA administrators and students. Sexual assault is a serious problem on college campuses, and it is important that rape victims feel comfortable stepping forward. It saddens us to think that their willingness to do so might be diminished by our failings.
–Everything We Know About the UVA Rape Case by Margaret Hartmann, New York, April 6, 2015
5.
“For guys,” she said, in a slightly mystified, irritated tone, “I think they have maybe 13- or 15-player rosters, but all the way down to the last player on the bench, who doesn’t get to play a single minute, I feel like his confidence is just as big as the superstar of the team.” She smiled and shook her head. “For women, it’s not like that.”
–The Confidence Gap by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, The Atlantic, May 2014
6.
This morning, a friend noted a discrepancy between two recent headlines at The Mac Observer:
March 5: “Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer to Retire, Luca Maestri to Take Over”
May 7: “PR Queen Katie Cotton Leaving Apple”
I tweeted the two headlines and corresponding URLs, with a single word of commentary: “Hmm”. I said no more partly because I was near the 140-character limit, and partly to see what the reaction would be. Some got it, but many repliers missed my point, mistakenly thinking it was related to an exodus of executives from the company.
My point was to draw attention to the disparate job descriptions: “Apple CFO” vs. “PR Queen”.
–Titles by John Gruber, Daring Fireball, May 8, 2014
7.
In four studies, Bowles and collaborators from Carnegie Mellon found that people penalized women who initiated negotiations for higher compensation more than they did men. The effect held whether they saw the negotiation on video or read about it on paper, whether they viewed it from a disinterested third-party perspective or imagined themselves as senior managers in a corporation evaluating an internal candidate. Even women penalized the women who initiated the conversation, though they also penalized the men who did so. They just didn’t seem to like seeing someone ask for more money.
–Lean Out: The Dangers For Women Who Negotiate by Maria Konnikova, The New Yorker, June 10, 2014
8.
With Frozen, Jennifer Lee cracked two glass ceilings at once: She became the first woman to direct a Disney animated feature and the first writer to ascend to the director’s chair on one of the company’s animated films (she cowrote Wreck-It Ralph). And she did it with a risky project. “It was a big musical with two female leads,” says Lee, who quit her job as a graphic designer in book publishing to enroll in film school at age 30. “So it was a let’s-try-to-be-fearless-and-see-what-happens kind of thing.” What happened was, the fairy tale of two sisters, released last Thanksgiving, earned $1 billion and became the highest-grossing animated movie of all time, not to mention a multiple Oscar winner and merchandising juggernaut–thanks in large part to Lee’s collaborative style (songwriters Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez helped pen the script).
–Most Creative People 2014 by Bruce Fretts, Fast Company, May 12, 2014
9.
For her analysis, Armstrong divided the cohort in two, with wealthier women in one group and the working-class ones in the other. Each group tended to band together, with the poorer half feeling excluded from Greek life and other high-status social activities. Several of the low-income students, for example, balked at the cost of the $50 “rush” t-shirt, Armstrong said.
The rich women tended to view casual sex as problematic only when it was done outside of steady relationships, and even then, only when it included vaginal intercourse. Meanwhile, frequent “hooking up,” which to them included kissing and oral sex, did not a slut make. “I think when people have sex with a lot of guys that aren’t their boyfriends, that’s really a slut,” as one put it.
The poorer women, by contrast, were unaware that “hooking up,” in the parlance of the rich women, excluded vaginal intercourse. They also tended to think all sex and hook-ups should occur primarily within a relationship.
The two classes of women also defined “sluttiness” differently, but neither definition had much to do with sexual behavior. The rich ones saw it as “trashiness,” or anything that implied an inability to dress and behave like an upper-middle-class person.
One woman, for example, “noted that it was acceptable for women to ‘have a short skirt on’ if ‘they’re being cool’ but ‘if they’re dancing really gross with a short skirt on, then like, oh slut.’”
The poorer women, meanwhile, would regard the richer ones as “slutty” for their seeming rudeness and proclivity for traveling in tight-knit herds. As one woman said, “Sorority girls are kind of whorish and unfriendly and very cliquey.”
Armstrong notes that midway through their college experience, none of the women had made any friendships across the income divide.
–There’s No Such Thing as a Slut by Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, May 28, 2014
10.
An Ohio middle-school student named Sophie told local news channel FOX19 that she wore a T-shirt on which she had hand-written the word “Feminist” to school on class picture day. She wore the shirt through the school day without incident, and wore it in her class picture.
However, when photos were released later, she found that the school had doctored the photo to erase the word “feminist” from her shirt.
The school’s principal, Kendra Young, told FOX19 that the photo was doctored to remove the word “feminist” to avoid any “unintended controversies.” She admitted that the shirt does not violate any school policies or dress codes, but said that the reasoning behind the decision was that students buy the photos, and she wanted to avoid any possibility of any controversy.
–School erases feminist T-shirt from class photo by Nisha Chittal, MSNBC, April 17, 2015
10a.
July 2, 2014 – Diane Nelson, DC’s president, commented on the difficulties of making a Wonder Woman movie last year, saying, “We have to get her right, we have to. She is such an icon for both genders and all ages and for people who love the original TV show and people who read the comics now. I think one of the biggest challenges at the company is getting that right on any size screen. The reasons why are probably pretty subjective: She doesn’t have the single, clear, compelling story that everyone knows and recognizes.”
10b.
February 23, 2015 – [T]his weekend brought good news on the Wonder Woman front: shooting will begin this fall for the hero’s upcoming solo adventure, with — as previously confirmed — Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad vet Michelle MacLaren in the director’s chair.
In an unrelated casting story over at Deadline, the trade reports that filming for Wonder Woman will begin later this year, with Gal Gadot in the leading role. Gadot will make her first appearance as the hero in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016 before moving onto her solo film, which is set for release in 2017. The actress will then reprise the part for the first Justice League film, hitting theaters later in 2017.
10c.
April 13, 2015 – “Given creative differences, Warner Bros. and Michelle MacLaren have decided not to move forward with plans to develop and direct Wonder Woman together.”
-Link credits to Comics Alliance
11.
“At one point, Whitney Wolfe was promoted as Tinder’s “inventor” and co-founder in fashion magazines like Harper’s Bazaar. She named the app, and her marketing savvy was often cited as the reason it found an audience among young women. Her role in the company was widely touted as an exception to male-dominated startup culture.
According to the lawsuit, [Justin] Mateen told Wolfe, who was 24 years old at the time, that “he was taking away her ‘Co-Founder’ title because having a young female co-founder ‘makes the company seem like a joke’ and ‘devalues’ the company.” Mateen had also been designated a co-founder of the company despite joining after the fact, and argued that Wolfe’s title undermined him.
The suit says that Mateen spewed constant invective at Wolfe, often in front of colleagues, calling her (among other things) “disgusting,” a “desperate loser,” a “slut,” and a “whore.” It includes damning text messages from Mateen that further berated her. When Wolfe complained to Sean Rad, Tinder’s CEO, her concerns were ignored. She alleges that Rad eventually forced her out of the company because of the abusive situation with Mateen.”
–Tinder Co-Founder’s Lawsuit Reflects Tech Industry’s Rampant Sexism by Mary Emily O’Hara, Vice News, July 2, 2014
12.
When Silvia Tomášková, director of the Women in Science program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, brings up famous female scientists with her students—and this has been happening since she started teaching 20 years ago—she gets the same reaction: “Marie Curie.” Tomášková always tries to move them on. “Let’s not even start there. Who else?” What about Vera Rubin, who confirmed the existence of dark matter? The experimental physicist Chien-Shiung Wu? Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood starlet who invented a communications technology that paved the way for Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth?
–We Need to Stop Ignoring Women Scientists by Rachel Sawby, Wired, April 2015
13.
Scandal
The Good Wife
Broad City
The Mindy Project
Girls
Parks and Recreation
Orange Is The New Black
Veep
Homeland
Dora
Glee
Orphan Black
Agent Carter
Law & Order: SVU
14.
The petition spelled out a sorry history. “As of May 1, 2014, more than 100 USA Swimming coaches have been banned for life, making this one of the worst sexual abuse scandals in the U.S. Olympics sports world,” it stated. “Many of these coaches had well-known, long histories of sexual abuse, yet [Chuck] Wielgus enabled these men to continue to coach for years. … [He] has not been a leader in protecting victims; he has instead responded to outside pressure, and only after other avenues of obfuscation have been exhausted.”
–Unprotected by Rachel Sturtz, Outside Magazine
15.
Mo’ne Davis was on the mound for the first time since her suffocating performance in the Mid-Atlantic Regional championship, when she shut out Delaware-Newark National to lead Taney Youth Baseball Association of Philadelphia to the Series. Most of the announced 15,648 in attendance recognized the potential for something historic to unfold.
Could she live up to the hype?
Yes.
–A Mound Becomes a Summit by William C. Rhoden, New York Times, August 15, 2014
16.
Gloria Steinem turned 80.
17.
Anita Sarkeesian, creator of the popular Tropes vs. Women video series, is at the center of yet another death threat. The Standard Examiner reports that the director of Utah State University’s Center for Women and Gender, along with several other people, received an email promising a mass shooting if they didn’t cancel a speaking engagement for Sarkeesian, who was scheduled to talk at the center on Wednesday morning.
–‘Massacre threat forces Anita Sarkeesian to cancel university talk by Adi Robertson, The Verge, October 14, 2014
18.
Twin Peaks is the most successful example of a new generation of restaurants, what people in the industry euphemistically refer to as “the attentive service sector” or, as they’re more casually known, “breastaurants.” Twin Peaks Chief Executive Officer Randy DeWitt doesn’t care much for the word, not that he’s complaining. Last year, Twin Peaks was the fastest-growing chain in the U.S., with $165 million in sales.
–Twin Peaks:’Hooters Just Wasn’t Racy Enough’ by Devin Leonard, BusinessWeek, September 25, 2014
19.
Over the next 12 years, Christensen personally tried roughly 40 sexual-assault cases and supervised the prosecution of another 300. His decision to focus on sex crimes was unconventional in the military. A JAG was expected to be a generalist — to learn about environmental and labor law, about contracts and medical malpractice claims — and to spend only a few years trying cases. But Christensen liked the challenge of helping victims who had no one else in their corner. He knew the base commanders often did not have their best interests at heart. Instead commanders worried that a court-martial could lead to the loss of a prized fighter pilot. It could create turmoil at the base and produce a blemish on their own records. These pressures, Christensen had come to learn, all conspired to upset the scales of justice. Time after time, he witnessed commanders demonstrating their support for the accused by sitting behind him in the courtroom; in one case, after a pilot was found not guilty of rape, the commander leapt from his perch and yelled, “Yeah!” Commanders selected the jury, which sometimes issued sentences far lighter than those meted out in civilian courtrooms. He saw one commander withdraw an airtight rape case days before trial, without explanation. He saw another commander testify at sentencing that the noncommissioned officer who had just been convicted of sexually molesting his daughter, a 13-year-old with a developmental disability, was nonetheless of great value to the unit and should therefore be retained. The judge granted his request.
–The Military’s Rough Justice on Sexual Assault By Robert Draper, New York Times Magazine, Nov. 26, 2014
20.
In the capital city of Stockholm the number of women in street prostitution has been reduced by two thirds, and the number of johns has been reduced by 80%. There are other major Swedish cities where street prostitution has all but disappeared. Gone too, for the most part, are the renowned Swedish brothels and massage parlors which proliferated during the last three decades of the twentieth century when prostitution in Sweden was legal.
In addition, the number of foreign women now being trafficked into Sweden for sex is nil. The Swedish government estimates that in the last few years only 200 to 400 women and girls have been annually sex trafficked into Sweden, a figure that’s negligible compared to the 15,000 to 17,000 females yearly sex trafficked into neighboring Finland. No other country, nor any other social experiment, has come anywhere near Sweden’s promising results.
By what complex formula has Sweden managed this feat? Amazingly, Sweden’s strategy isn’t complex at all. It’s tenets, in fact, seem so simple and so firmly anchored in common sense as to immediately spark the question, “Why hasn’t anyone tried this before?”
In 1999, after years of research and study, Sweden passed legislation that a) criminalizes the buying of sex, and b) decriminalizes the selling of sex. The novel rationale behind this legislation is clearly stated in the government’s literature on the law:
“In Sweden prostitution is regarded as an aspect of male violence against women and children. It is officially acknowledged as a form of exploitation of women and children and constitutes a significant social problem… gender equality will remain unattainable so long as men buy, sell and exploit women and children by prostituting them.”
In addition to the two pronged legal strategy, a third and essential element of Sweden’s prostitution legislation provides for ample and comprehensive social service funds aimed at helping any prostitute who wants to get out, and additional funds to educate the public. As such, Sweden’s unique strategy treats prostitution as a form of violence against women in which the men who exploit by buying sex are criminalized, the mostly female prostitutes are treated as victims who need help, and the public is educated in order to counteract the historical male bias that has long stultified thinking on prostitution. To securely anchor their view in firm legal ground, Sweden’s prostitution legislation was passed as part and parcel of the country’s 1999 omnibus violence against women legislation.
http://esnoticia.co/noticia-8790-swedens-prostitution-solution-why-hasnt-anyone-tried-this-before
21.
For years, we thought it was us. That we were failures. We thought that if we just did twice as well as the pasty hoodie-wearers around us we’d move up through the ranks too. Instead you got twice as much work out of us than you did out of our male peers, and tossed us a few scraps of “women’s networks” and “Lean In Circles” instead of promotions and raises.
Fuck that, we’re done. It’s not us, it’s you.
22.
I asked Gomperts why, as a Greenpeace activist, she chose abortion as her cause. She thought for a minute. Her philosophy, she said, was about the “reduction of suffering” but also about self-determination. She said she was “interested in finding the blind spots of the law.” She liked upending the system. “I enjoy that,” she said. “If I was interested in money, I’d have a company in the Cayman Islands, getting all the tax deductions I could to get rich.”
–The Dawn of the Post Clinic Abortion by Emily Bazelon, New York Times Magazine, August 28th, 2014
23.
In his new book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power, President Carter has focused his attention on what he calls “the most serious and unaddressed worldwide challenge” of our time – the discrimination and abuse of women and girls. The book reflects his wisdom and perspective having traveled to over 145 countries and been a firsthand witness to a system of discrimination that extends to every nation in which women are routinely deprived of education, healthcare and equal opportunity, “owned” by men, forced to suffer servitude and child marriage, or trapped, along with their children, in cycles of poverty, war and violence.
In his groundbreaking book, he also writes about the most shocking and disturbing human right abuses, ranging from the infanticide of millions of newborn girls and selective abortion of female fetuses, female genital mutilation, the global pandemic of rape, including rape being used as a weapon of war, and the worldwide trafficking of women and young girls. The book also covers many timely issues that impact women and girls in the United States, such as the way incidences of sexual assault and rape are treated with relative impunity on some of our most prestigious college campuses as well as in the U.S. military, or the social undercurrent of discrimination that results in fewer promotions, lower pay, and unequal representation in leadership positions in politics and many others sectors of society.
–Jimmy Carter on His New Book Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Marianne Schnall, Huffington Post, March 31, 2014
24.
Hillary Clinton launches her 2016 presidential campaign.
25.
Both agree they had sex. But what actually went on between them that night, and throughout their yearlong relationship, would become highly contested. After the relationship ended, Clougherty accused Lonsdale of sexual assault. Stanford investigated whether he broke the university’s rule against “consensual sexual and romantic relationships” between students and their mentors and, later, whether he raped her. The findings from the investigations have sparked a war of allegations and interpretations, culminating last month with dueling lawsuits, filled with damaging accusations. This case, which has been picked up by the media, does not fit neatly into the narratives that have fueled an ongoing national conversation about sexual assault of students on campus. But it exposes the risks of Stanford’s open door to Silicon Valley and the pressure that universities are under to do more for students who say they’ve been raped. It also reveals the complexity of trying to determine the truth in a high-stakes case like this one.
–The Stanford Undergraduate and the Mentor by Emily Bazelon, New York Times Magazine, Feb. 11, 2015