Would E.T. report back to their home planet that Earth was not meant for women? Honestly, that’s our feeling as we continue to digest the news from the past several days. There is the heartbreaking and terrifying and rage-inducing massacre of seven women in Georgia, six of them of Asian descent, to consider — learn more about the victims, whom we never hear enough about, here, and read about why Asian American women aren’t that surprised by what transpired here.
And across the pond, thousands of women gathered in the U.K. to mourn the murder of a young marketing executive killed on her way home from visiting a friend. In the case of the horror in Georgia, a police spokesperson said the alleged shooter was having a “bad day;” in London, police went door-to-door in the victim’s neighborhood and told women to stay inside for their own safety, effectively saying the streets and cities aren’t for us.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, hundreds of women are victims of femicide every year and Australia is facing a reckoning after allegations of sexual against powerful men in government. The examples of the persistent hatred of and violence against women are endless. Yes, very sadly, we would wager that E.T. would deem our planet currently unfit for women. Nevertheless, we fight on! The present state of affairs does not have to be — will not be! — our future.
Other news to note 📝
The new New York normal? Another day, another allegation against Gov. Andrew Cuomo. A current employee of the governor’s office said Cuomo “would ogle her body, remark on her looks, and make suggestive comments to her.” The aide is the latest in a series of women who have publicly accused the New York governor of inappropriate behavior. Cuomo continues to deny any wrongdoing. [NYT]
WTF is going on with the Olympics? Yet another official had to resign, this time for proposing that a famous female comedian be dressed as a pig. The 2021 Olympic Games creative chief is stepping down following revelations that he suggested that entertainer Naomi Watanabe, who owns a plus-sized clothing label and is a body positivity advocate, appear as an “Olympig” in the opening ceremony. Last month, the Tokyo Olympics chief was forced to resign because of multiple sexist comments. [BBC]
To say that it drives us crazy when the very few women who get the prestigious title of chair at a company are referred to as “chairman” is an understatement (see image for reference). Finally, that’s changing — well, at least at JPMorgan. The use of “chairman” for women remains startlingly ubiquitous in corporate filings, news articles and bios and it’s total bs. Kudos to JPMorgan, the largest U.S. bank, for making the move to gender-neutral terms. May many more follow. [Bloomberg]
Can you imagine if a top woman executive decided to call herself “technoqueen” or “master of coin”? Such were the super bro-y moves of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, ahem, Tesla Technoking Elon Musk and Tesla Master of Coin (AKA CFO) Zack Kirkhorn. We shudder to think of the kind of vitriol and ridicule that would be hurled at a female tech CEO who pulled an inexplicable and irrational stunt like that. [WSJ]
Speaking of brotastic™️ moves, young men rated their abilities in totally nonexistent mathematical fields quite highly as compared to their female counterparts, according to an academic study brought to our attention in a recent New York Times op-ed. The study of more than 60,000 teenagers across the world found that “boys are much more likely to be bullshitters than girls,” with the young men participating professing to be proficient in the completely made-up concepts “subjunctive scaling,” “declarative fractions” and “proper numbers.” [Institute of Labor Economics]
Pursuant to the above, women beginning their STEM careers get lower salaries than their male peers and the gender confidence gap is at least partly to blame. “Employers offer salaries that are reflective of self-promotion behaviors,” says Adina Sterling, a Stanford Business School professor who conducted research on how new graduates score themselves on common engineering tasks. Sterling’s study found that men typically give themselves higher scores than women and that the differences in these scores is often reflected in salary gaps. “We don’t have a way of vetting overconfidence,” Sterling notes. [Axios]