RULING THE WEEK
As we all hunker down to weather the coronavirus pandemic, let’s remember that women are going to bear a large share of the load.
When it comes to infection and death rates, the disease appears to be affecting men more than women. Men have a higher death rate from COVID-19, and slightly more men than women appear to be infected right now.
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But the social and economic disruption caused by the virus will likely hit women hard. “The vast majority of nurses, flight attendants, teachers and service industry workers are female, and their jobs put them on the front lines of the outbreak,” writes Janet Paskin in Bloomberg Businessweek. “At home, women still do more caretaking, so when the virus closes schools, restricts travel, and puts aged relatives at risk, they have more to do.”
There’s also the risk that women’s dominance in the service fields and their tendency to be family caregivers could expose them to the disease at higher rates than men, shifting the medical burden as well. “In most societies women are more likely than men to be caregivers for the sick in both health-care settings and at home. In this capacity, women are more exposed than men to infectious agents,”according to a 2007 WHO report about gender and disease.
And then there’s the unintended consequences of staying at home. For victims of domestic violence, for example, home is not safe. “In China, activists have reported a surge in domestic violence cases as millions of people have been under quarantine,” writes Melissa Jeltsen in HuffPo. “Perpetrators of domestic violence commonly try to isolate victims and cut off their relationships with coworkers or friends or family,” Allison Randall, vice president for policy and emerging issues for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, told Jeltsen. “Not being able to go to work and connect with your colleagues, it can certainly increase your vulnerability.”
-- “‘Not good enough’: How Rep. Katie Porter’s relentless questioning led the CDC chief to commit to free coronavirus testing” WaPo
Welcome back to Women Rule. I hope you’re all staying healthy. In social media news, Ariana Grande was the most tweeted about woman in 2019, followed by Beyoncé, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Halsey and Hillary Clinton, according to Twitter.
Facebook added two new women to its board, making the board 40 percent female. Globally, women still hold just 20 percent of seats on the boards of public companies. That’s not high enough, but it’s higher than it used to be, in part thanks to California’s law requiring companies headquartered in the state to have at least one woman on their board.
Read on to see what stories Maya Parthasarathy gathered for our reads of the week section … Subscribe here.
2020 WATCH -- WOMEN BREAK FOR BIDEN -- Joe Biden saw big wins in the Democratic primaries on Tuesday, winning female voters by 23 points. Women made up 54 percent of the electorate. WaPo’s Daily 202
-- “Women leaders demand female VP pick from Dem nominee,” by Holly Otterbein: “In a letter to the Democratic National Committee and the eventual winner of the primary, top officials at EMILY’s List, the American Federation of Teachers, Working Families Party and several other groups argued that mobilizing women is an essential component in defeating President Donald Trump.
“‘Democratic victory in 2020 will depend on record-breaking participation by women,’ they wrote. ‘Women are the backbone of the Democratic party. Women are a majority of Democratic voters, volunteers and donors.’
“The women who signed on to the letter called for the Democratic nominee to make five other commitments, including appointing a majority-women cabinet, investing in women-led mobilization efforts, and making women-focused economic issues such as paid family leave a priority in the first 100 days.” POLITICO
NEW WOMEN RULE PODCAST -- This week, Anna spoke with Katia Beauchamp, CEO of Birchbox, which delivers a personalized monthly cosmetic box to your door. Here’s what she had to say about making sure she’s not judging herself through other people’s eyes.
“Just like all of you, I source my value externally in my worst moments. … I know it’s a fallacy when I catch myself needing someone else’s validation and needing someone else to tell me what I’m capable of. I’m human. Of course, I go there. If you notice it and you pay attention and you’re like, ‘Wow. I’m just giving all of this power to someone else.’”
“One thing that really has helped me do this is meeting someone I really respect … and then having this opportunity to have a conversation with them. And then thinking, like, ‘Do they know everything? Are they exactly sure how to navigate all of the questions that are in front of them for their companies, for their lives?’ Absolutely not. And the ones that I end up being so impressed by … are the ones who have the humility to own it.” Subscribe to the podcast … read the article
CHART OF THE WEEK -- Check out this moving chart depicting the female share of U.S. bachelor degrees by academic field over the past half-century. AEI
#METOO LATEST -- “Harvey Weinstein Is Sentenced to 23 Years in Prison,” by Jan Ransom: “The startling sentence meant that Mr. Weinstein, who is 67 and in poor health, might spend the rest of his life in prison. Just before the sentencing, Mr. Weinstein, who was sitting in a wheelchair, told the court that he was remorseful, but also ‘totally confused’ about what had happened to him.” NYT
SPORTS NEWS -- “U.S. Soccer Federation President Resigns in Wake of Sponsor, Player Backlash,” by Rachel Bachman: “U.S. Soccer Federation president Carlos Cordeiro resigned Thursday night in the face of a fierce backlash against the federation’s defense of a pay-discrimination lawsuit against it by the U.S. women’s national team. …
“‘My one and only mission has always been to do what is best for our Federation, and it has become clear to me that what is best right now is a new direction,’ Cordeiro wrote. ‘The arguments and language contained in this week’s legal filing caused great offense and pain, especially to our extraordinary Women’s National Team players who deserve better. It was unacceptable and inexcusable.’”
“The filing, rebutting claims that U.S. Soccer violated the Equal Pay Act, asserted that a ‘higher level of skill’ and ‘more responsibility’ are required of members of the men’s national team than the women’s team. The arguments sparked outrage from former players and, later, objections from U.S. Soccer sponsors Coca-Cola, Visa, Deloitte and Budweiser.” WSJ …
-- What’s next? Cordeiro will be replaced by U.S. Soccer board Vice President and former U.S. women’s player Cindy Cone. She’ll be the federation’s first female president and will serve until 2021, when an election will determine the next president.
IWD TALK -- “U.N. chief: Gender inequality biggest human rights challenge,” by the Associated Press: “Calling himself ‘a proud feminist,’ U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres lashed out at men who abuse power and declared before Sunday’s observances of International Women’s Day that the fight for gender equality is ‘the biggest human rights challenge we face.’
“Twenty-five years after 189 countries adopted a 150-page road map for achieving equality for women, a new report by UN Women says the reality is that millions of women still face poverty, discrimination and violence. It notes over 70% of lawmakers and parliamentarians and managers are men and nearly 500,000 women and girls over the age of 15 are illiterate.” POLITICO
LETTER FROM ILLINOIS -- “Bill would allow campaign funds to cover child care in effort to create ‘a system that’s more available to moms,’” by Antonia Ayres-Brown and Jamie Munks: “‘Why should women have to wait until they’re in their 50s and 60s to make a mark, when, if our system supported women in their 20s, 30s and 40s, we could be making a mark already?’” said Alexandra Eidenberg, a Wilmette resident who founded We Will, a bipartisan lobbying organization that encourages women to get involved in the legislative process.
“Under Illinois law, candidates are prohibited from using campaign funds for personal expenses that they would have incurred regardless of their candidacy, such as laundry or rent. The law doesn’t mention child care costs, which have ballooned in recent decades and become one of many working parents’ largest monthly expenses, leaving it unclear whether those expenses are allowed.” Chicago Tribune
HISTORY DEPT -- In honor of Women’s History Month, the White House Historical Association has curated a digital collection of stories highlighting women who shaped White House history as First Ladies, activists, pioneers, enslaved women, picketers and more.
I talked to White House historian Lindsay Chervinsky about some of her favorite stories in the collection: “One story that I think it really important to highlight is Gracey Bradley. She ... worked as an enslaved seamstress in the White House and was also Sarah Yorke Jackson’s ladies maid, sometimes nursed the children,” Chervinsky says. Since the former working space of the White House has been renovated, “those renovations and the modern touches tend to obscure some of the labor that took place. … It was very much a site of slavery.”
Alice Roosevelt Longworth was “so fiesty that her dad told her that no daughter of his would smoke in the White House, and so she climbed on top of the roof to smoke,” Chervinsky says. Longworth, who went on diplomatic missions for her father, carried a snake in her purse that she would pull out when conversation lagged. White House Historical Association
WHAT RULERS ARE READING
2020 LONGREAD -- “The Original Sandernista,” by Bridget Read: Jane Sanders “told Connie Schultz, the wife of Sherrod Brown, to get a desk in Brown’s office when he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, the same year as Bernie Sanders. By then, Sanders had, in addition to being mayor of Burlington for eight years, served 16 years as a representative in Congress. He and Jane had been married since 1988. Schultz, a journalist on a leave of absence from the Cleveland Plain Dealer, recalls asking Jane about the desk, ‘Why would I do that?’ ‘They need to know you’re there,’ she replied.
“To Jane, the desk was a symbol that she was there to work, not just to visit occasionally as the senator’s wife. ‘They,’ in Schultz’s memory, referred to the senator’s staff and those with whom he would be working in government. It was not a reference to the public, which didn’t, and still doesn’t, necessarily know much about Jane Sanders at all. ... One reason she’s remained unfamiliar to many voters is because of the location of those desks. Hers have almost always been, in some way or another, inside the offices of her husband. Though Jane, a community organizer when she met Bernie, has held other jobs over the last 39 years, none has lasted longer than working for him. Their romantic and political lives are arguably more intertwined than any other presidential hopeful pair of the last decade. ...
“On Super Tuesday, Biden bested Sanders by ten points with women overall. Jane, as the top woman in the Bernie Sanders project, the person who has his ear, could theoretically help Bernie bring them in. Yet in an election in which candidates have been asked more than once to address the gender pay gap, Jane is a woman who has worked for her husband for free. She doesn’t tell stories on the campaign trail about sexism or use the word patriarchy; she has said she has never really ‘done gender politics.’” The Cut
-- “Elizabeth Warren did better with college-educated white men than with working-class women,” via Vox
AROUND THE WORLD -- “Mexican Women Stay Home To Protest Femicides In ‘A Day Without Us,’” by James Doubek: “What would happen if all the women in a country simply disappeared? Mexico got a preview Monday, when women across the country stayed home as part of a 24-hour strike to protest staggering levels of violence against women. Calling it ‘a day without us’ or ‘a day without women,’ countless women skipped work, school and social functions, leaving classrooms half full, trains and buses empty and fewer cars on the streets.
“About 10 women are killed in Mexico each day. There’s a name for the killing of women because of their gender: femicide. Mexico has tracked femicides for the past eight years. In February, the country's attorney general said femicides have increased 137% over the last five years, four times more than the general homicide rate.” NPR
-- “The Best Foreign Policy Puts Women at the Center,” via Foreign Affairs ... “‘How Do I Know Where Your Socks Are?’” via NYT ... “What It’s Like to Be a Leftover Woman,” via The Atlantic
IN THE POLLS -- “Americans overestimate voters’ prejudices against women and ethnic minorities”: “The researchers found that Democrats, in particular, appear to overestimate the prejudices of American voters. For instance, Democrats in the survey guessed that only 61% of Americans, and 43% of Republicans, would say that they are willing to vote for a woman as president. But according to the Gallup poll, 94% of Americans, including 90% of Republicans, said they would be prepared to pick a woman.
“The Democrats polled by Mr. Mercier made similar misjudgments about Americans’ expressed willingness to vote for ethnic minorities, Muslims and gays (see chart). Republicans surveyed by Mr. Mercier also tended to overestimate their party’s voters hostility towards minority candidates, though not nearly to the same degree as Democrats. Might respondents be hiding their real prejudices from pollsters? In fact, past research has found that people are generally truthful when polled about their willingness to vote for candidates who belong to ethnic-minority groups.” The Economist
TECH TALK -- “Internet ‘is not working for women and girls,’ says Berners-Lee,” by Ian Sample: “Women and girls face a ‘growing crisis’ of online harms, with sexual harassment, threatening messages and discrimination making the web an unsafe place to be, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has warned. The inventor of the world wide web said the ‘dangerous trend’ in online abuse was forcing women out of jobs, causing girls to skip school, damaging relationships and silencing female opinions, prompting him to conclude that ‘the web is not working for women and girls.’” The Guardian
WOMEN IN ART -- “Women’s Art Is Every Kind of Art,” by Julianne McShane: “Underrepresentation of female artists is a problem many institutions share. Women account for only 13 percent of artists represented at 18 major museums across the country, including [Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts], according to a study published last year in the online journal PLOS One. The M.F.A. has accepted women’s works into its collection since its founding 150 years ago, when the Arts and Crafts movement unfolded here. (Those pieces are the focus of ‘Boston Made: Arts and Crafts Jewelry and Metalwork,’ through January.) But female-identifying artists have represented only 5 percent of the M.F.A.’s acquisitions in the last decade.
“The seven galleries of ‘Women Take the Floor’ — divided into themes like landscape and action painting, textiles, printmaking and photography and abstraction — were meant to fix this oversight. Works were pulled from the museum’s collection as well as private collections, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Danforth Art Museum in Framingham, Mass.” NYT
IN THE MEDICAL WORLD -- “When surgery becomes ‘women’s work’: the devaluation of gynecologic specialties,” by Sarah Temkin: “Surgical specialties were particularly resistant to the inclusion of women, with the exception of obstetrics and gynecology. After decades of increasing percentages of women entering gynecology, the field became the first majority women surgical specialty in 2012. This should have been embraced as evidence of the legitimate role for women in surgery. Instead, it led to a devaluation of gynecology as a specialty. …
“The ... collective abandonment by men of now female-dominated fields is, at least in part, because of the gender-specific stigma and wage penalty associated with working within a ‘feminine’ occupation. A tipping point, when approximately one-third of a field becomes women, leads to a precipitous decline in men employed in the field. In gynecology, this point has passed: Women comprise 58% of practicing OB-GYNs and 84% of trainees.
“Gender segregation across occupations drives much of the gender wage gap. As the share of women in a field increases, wages go down, even when controlling for education and skill. A documented negative correlation exists between the percentage of women working within a specialty and the mean salary. For OB-GYNs, salaries are currently lower than for any other procedural specialty. Similar work on women’s reproductive tracts is reimbursed at lower rates than on men’s reproductive tracts. For example, a surgeon is paid 45% more for a biopsy of a penis than of the vagina.” STAT
BOOK CLUB -- “Stop Telling Older Women to Step Aside,” by Leslie Bennetts on “In Our Prime: How Older Women Are Reinventing the Road Ahead,” by Susan J. Douglas: “A University of Michigan communications professor whose previous books deconstructed the role of sexism in the idealization of motherhood as well as in the media and pop culture, Douglas devotes much of ‘In Our Prime’ to documenting various forms of social tyranny that blight women’s lives, from the anti-aging industrial complex to the grim financial realities facing women, who are 80 percent more likely to spend their later years in poverty than men are.” NYT
-- “Rebecca Solnit’s Memoir Is Much More Than a Feminist Manifesto,” via The New Yorker
WOMEN RULERS
SPOTTED at the Junior League of Washington’s annual Women’s Leadership Breakfast at the Hamilton last Friday, featuring speakers Carly Fiorina, Tammy Haddad, Michelle Rice and Rajshree Agarwal: Cameron Normand, Charlyn Stanberry, Meredith McPhillips, Molly Fromm, Rebecca Ballard, Cheryl Teare, Meghan Ogilvie.
TRANSITIONS -- Joe Biden has named Jen O’Malley Dillon as his new campaign manager. O’Malley Dillon managed Beto O’Rourke’s campaign for president and served as deputy campaign manager for Obama’s 2012 reelection bid. … Lydia Polgreen, editor-in-chief of HuffPost, will be head of content at podcast operation Gimlet Media. … Jenifer Fernandez Ancona is returning full-time to Way to Win, the donor collaborative she co-founded in the wake of Trump’s election, to spearhead political strategy and strategic communications.
WISDOM OF THE WEEK -- Phyllis Kurlander Costanza, head of UBS in society and CEO UBS Optimus Foundation: "This new decade demands we solve the world’s greatest challenges. If someone had told me at the beginning of my career that finance skills would be integral to helping millions, I wouldn’t have believed them. In the two decades I’ve worked with philanthropists and investors, I’ve witnessed the impact strategic investing in the right places, for the right reasons, has on communities around the world. To create sustainable impact, we must harness the power of financial capital and invest in communities, mobilize people and develop emerging markets. So, if you want to change the world, study finance.” Connect with Phyllis here
IMPACT PARTNER -- The era of #MeToo unearthed a number of unsafe conditions in the workplace. Caitlin Corcoran advocates for a safe work environment in the restaurant world. Read more about what Caitlin Corcoran is doing to change the culture in her restaurant.
MARKETPLACE -- Each month, we highlight a female founder by sharing her company's story. This February, we're featuring Dionna Dorsey, founder and creative director of District of Clothing, a Washington D.C. based lifestyle brand created to empower, inspire action, conversation and mindfulness.
“Being a Black woman is my essence and the lens through which I see and respond to the world. It's intrinsic to all that I am, create and do and therefore is of great significance when it comes to my work, especially with District. I feel compelled to empower, encourage, inspire action and conversation, and to embolden self-love for others — all of which is inspired through my life experience as a Black woman.” Use the code POLITICO for 10% off your purchase.
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