Company Culture
As Papa John’s continues to make amends for the racial insensitivities and slurs said by former CEO John Schnatter in a phone call, the pizza chain has promised a $500,000 grant to Bennett College. Bennett is one of only two women’s historically Black colleges in the US, and is in danger of losing its accreditation due to insufficient funding. A press release from the company said, “We shared last year that the values that would drive the transformation of Papa John’s would be equity, fairness, respect, and opportunity.” I don’t know about you, but I’d say helping preserve Bennett College is a pretty good start. Papa John’s
For many women of color, it can be frustrating when beauty searches only yield looks designed for white skin and hair. So, to make its beauty category more inclusive, Pinterest launched a new feature that allows users to select makeup and hairstyle results by various skin tone palettes for more relevant results. Pinterest
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has modified its parental leave policy. In the past, the foundation offered a year of paid time off to new parents. Now, the nonprofit will offer employees six months of paid leave plus a $20,000 stipend to contribute to childcare expenses. KUOW
Quick Hits
Companies with female leadership raised $1 billion more in venture capital funding in 2018 than 2017 (yay!). Unfortunately, they still only received 2.2 percent of venture capital invested during the year, a number unchanged from 2017. #Investinfemalecompanies2k19!!!!! Fortune
In the past decade, two-thirds of mothers that filed complaints of workplace breastfeeding discrimination — such as being denied the opportunity to take a break to pump, being denied a private space to do so, suffering lewd comments, etc. — eventually lost their jobs. Fortune
Reporting workplace sexual assault can also result in a woman losing her job. At least, that was the case for Jennifer Glover, who was violently sexually assaulted during a training exercise when she worked as a guard at a Nevada nuclear facility. Read her harrowing account of months of harassment — just be prepared for a few somewhat graphic descriptions of violence. NY Times
Apparently some men have such little confidence in their abilities to professionally interact with women that they're planning to avoid them altogether as a response to the #MeToo movement. This New York Times article dives further into this ridiculous strategy being employed by some men in the workplace. Unfortunately, this could negatively impact women’s ability to progress within their organizations if male supervisors refuse to meet with them for networking and mentorship. NY Times
New in Women’s Health
More than 100 million menstruating people around the world are using apps to track their periods, but they might not realize that these apps are selling their data. Apps such as Flow, Glow, Ovia, and Clue can help users predict when they’ll menstruate and when they have the highest chance of becoming pregnant. To make these predictions, however, users have to enter quite a lot of very personal health data like their sexual activity, weight, and lifestyle. And period-tracking apps are making a pretty penny selling that information to the highest bidder. Bloomberg
According to the CDC, rates of opioid overdose by women ages 34-50 have skyrocketed nearly 500 percent. Fortune
Are you a bit unsure of what New York’s new abortion law actually entails? At the very least, someone in your Facebook feed probably is. The New Yorker clearly spells out what will and won’t change about late-term abortion once the policy takes effect. The New Yorker
Around the World
Chinese women face an even larger wage gap than American women. On average, Chinese women spend 2.1 hours on housework — three times more than Chinese men do. Overall, women in China spend 3.8 hours a day on unpaid work like cooking, cleaning, and childcare (and only 3.5 hours on paid work), while men only spend 1.53 hours on unpaid work (and 5.25 hours on paid work). Bloomberg
The United Arab Emirates announced the winners of its‘Gender Balance Index’ awards Sunday. Pretty cool, right? One small problem: all the award recipients were male! Technically, three of the four awards given were given to various government agencies, but no women were present among those receiving the awards. NY Times
The practice of Chhaupadi, the banishing of a menstruating woman from the house to sleep in a hut, is illegal in Nepal but remains common in rural, traditionally Hindu communities. Menstruating women in this tradition are thought to be harbingers of bad luck, and are thus forced to sleep outside in a hut or shed so they won’t come into contact with their family. A mother and her two young sons were found dead in one such hut — they had lit a fire to stay warm in Nepal’s bitter winter cold and suffocated. Their deaths have resulted in calls for increased enforcement of laws banning the practice. BBC
