Company Culture
IVF patients usually pay for their fertility treatments out-of-pocket, and just one fertility cycle can add up to $22,000 (ouch). Luckily, a few companies are willing to help support their employees throughout this process. Tesla, eBay, and Spotify cover unlimited treatments, and Adobe, Lyft, Facebook, Pinterest, iCIMS, Achieve3000, and Akamai cover up to four cycles. Fast Company
Aerie appears to be listening to gen-Z expectations of representation of diverse beauty. A new ad campaign included, but didn’t gawk at, disabled models with their ostomy bags, crutches, wheelchairs, and insulin pumps. Fast Company
Journalism has diversity issues, full stop. Going beyond a lack of diversity within reporters, there is also a lack of women voices within the articles they write — only 24 percent of news subjects internationally are women. So, Bloomberg decided to do something about it. The business news organization launched an initiative called New Voices, which provides one-on-one training for female executives to prepare them for television interviews. Additionally, Bloomberg’s short term goal is to get the percent of women Bloomberg TV interviewees to 30 percent. Poynter
Quick Hits
News of layoffs at media companies like Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and Vice have swirled in the news lately. Usually, companies have a code to be transparent and fair in their decisions on who to cut depending on tenure and rank, but these rules unintentionally hit employees of color and women the hardest. Why? Because it’s only been in recent years that companies have made significant strides in hiring these groups, so these employees are in more junior positions, and thereby are quicker to get axed than white workers. Harvard Business Review
Could VR be the key to improving a culture of chauvinism and sexual harassment in workplaces? This is the question Morgan Mercer, a survivor of workplace sexual violence, set out to explore. She quit her job to found Vantage Point, a company that seeks to improve sexual harassment training through virtual reality technology and provide a safe space for employees to practice responses to instances of harassment. Fast Company
Target will expand its offering of digitally native brands by carrying products from Flamingo, a NY-based startup that focuses on women’s body hair removal. Women’s body hair removal products have often seemed like an afterthought for companies like Gillette, or have mainly focuses on razors, like Venus. Flamingo, however, has that modern digital appeal and aesthetic (think pink pastels) like Glossier, and offers a range of razor and wax-based solutions. Bloomberg
New Jersey has become the fourth state to raise its minimum wage to $15/hour. CBS
Happy Black History Month!
Black women historically have played huge roles in activism compared to other demographics. Candice Payne, a 34-year-old Chicago real estate broker, exemplified this tradition by purchasing 30 hotel rooms that are sheltering more than 100 homeless people in the city to protect them from the fatal polar vortex. Who says superheroes aren’t real? NY Times
In observance of Black History Month, the New York Times is attempting to right some of the wrongs of its past by publishing the obituaries of prominent black people the paper failed to report on. NY Times
It’s no secret that companies generally don’t do a great job hiring, retaining, or supporting black workers. Adia Harvey Wingfield explains why, citing an overreliance on social networking to fill available positions, bad diversity policies, and disproportionate placement of black workers in less secure jobs such as HR or the public sector. Knowing these reasons is key to doing better in the long run. Harvard Business Review
Black mothers who lost their sons to police brutality are being honored in artist Sheila Pree Bright’s latest photo project. NY Times
A suspect in the shooting of 24-year-old Candice Elease Pinky remains at large. Over 20 trans women were killed in the US in 2018, and over 80 percent of those were trans women of color like Pinky. Thankfully, she survived, but she suffered five gunshot wounds and was misgendered in reports, a microaggression that only furthers transphobia and resulting violence. Refinery29
Around the World
In Germany: Chancellor Angela Merkel hasn’t made much of a habit of emphasizing feminism in her political career, instead downplaying her gender to rise through the ranks of the male-dominated Christian Democrats in Germany. For the first time in more than thirteen years, she has given a rare interview to a German newspaper where she talks about her experience as a female politician and her thoughts on feminism. NY Times
In South Korea: A new bill proposed to the National Assembly seeks to require the legislative body to fill 50 percent of its seats with women, compared to the 17 percent of seats women hold in it currently. Under the proposal, parties that fail to meet the quota would be subject to fines. Bloomberg
In Australia: Women now make up nearly 30 percent of board members in the country’s ASX 200 index, a large jump from the 10.2 percent of directorships held by women in 2010. Quartz
