Carlos Maza, a video journalist for the US news site Vox, went public last week with a complaint that the rightwing YouTube personality Steven Crowder was engaged in a long-term homophobic harassment campaign. In a compilation video Maza created of some of his mentions on Crowder’s show, the host attacks Maza as a “gay Mexican”, a “lispy queer” and a “token Vox gay atheist sprite”.
via YouTube removes advertising from account accused of homophobic abuse | Technology | The Guardian
The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation
via The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation | McKinsey
Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. If women—who account for half the world’s working-age population—do not achieve their full economic potential, the global economy will suffer. While all types of inequality have economic consequences, in McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) report, The power of parity: How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth, we focus on the economic implications of lack of parity between men and women.
via How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth | McKinsey
The technology-driven world in which we live is a world filled with promise but also challenges. Cars that drive themselves, machines that read X-rays, and algorithms that respond to customer-service inquiries are all manifestations of powerful new forms of automation. Yet even as these technologies increase productivity and improve our lives, their use will substitute for some work activities humans currently perform—a development that has sparked much public concern.
via What the future of work will mean for jobs, skills, and wages: Jobs lost, jobs gained | McKinsey
By now, you’re no doubt aware of the war conservative politicians are waging on reproductive freedom in the U.S. So-called “heartbeat bills” are being passed with increasing frequency, access to abortion is eroding, punishments for doctors who provide the medical procedure are draconian and Roe v. Wade is in the crosshairs.
The onslaught is overwhelming, and it can be difficult to know what to do to help stop it — especially as abortion rights are often framed as a “women’s issue” that men need not trouble themselves with. But reproductive rights are human rights, not a fringe issue for men to ignore. As such, here are the five most useful things you can do right now to support the pro-choice movement…
via The 5 Most Useful Things Men Can Do to Support Abortion Rights – MEL Magazine
When it comes to hearing about new career opportunities, women are just as interested as men. LinkedIn’s recent Gender Insights Report revealed that 88% of women are open to new job opportunities compared with 90% of men, and they view jobs in almost equal numbers.
via 8 Tips to Improve the Gender Diversity of Your Recruiting Pipeline | LinkedIn Talent Blog
Rising inequality in Britain risks putting the country on the same path as the US to become one of the most unequal nations on earth, according to a Nobel-prize winning economist.
Sir Angus Deaton is leading a landmark review of inequality in the UK amid fears that the country is at a tipping point due to a decade of stagnant pay growth for British workers. The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, which is working with Deaton on the study, said the British-born economist would “point to the risk of the UK following the US” which has extreme inequality levels in pay, wealth and health.
via Britain risks heading to US levels of inequality, warns top economist | Inequality | The Guardian
Meanwhile, teachers in Las Vegas are voting this week on whether to join the nationwide strike wave, which has largely been led by educators. Hundreds of thousands of public school teachers and education workers struck last year, the overwhelming majority without the protection of traditional collective bargaining rights. So did thousands of nurses and hotel workers. Outside of the workplace, migrant women traveling with a caravan launched a hunger strike in Tijuana to protest delays in the asylum process; Irish women overturned that country’s abortion ban; and Spanish women led the resistance to the rise of the far right.
via Cinzia Arruzza on How Women Are Leading the Class Struggle
Councils in England will have a legal duty to provide secure homes for victims of domestic abuse under new plans announced by Theresa May.
People seeking refuge from abuse and violence can receive varying levels of support depending on their location.
But Mrs May has vowed to end the “postcode lottery” for victims and their children, creating a legal duty for councils to provide refuge.
One victim described the move as “absolutely momentous” news.
via Domestic abuse: PM vows to end ‘postcode lottery’ for victims – BBC News
Included on the Judiciary Committee’s speakers list was Julia Beck, a 26-year-old lesbian, self-described radical feminist, and a member of the group Women’s Liberation Front, or WoLF. But Beck was not there to testify in support of the Equality Act. Invited by Republican members of the committee, she was there to decry the protections that it would provide trans women. “If the act passes in its current form as HR5, then every right that women have fought for will cease to exist,” Beck asserted.
Beck is the latest trans-exclusionary radical feminist, or TERF, to become the darling of right-wing media and conservative politicians who, in recent years, have cloaked their transphobia by embracing the talking points of radical feminists like Beck. These seemingly odd bedfellows united publicly during the Equality Act hearing, where Republicans like Doug Collins and Louie Gohmert voiced their opposition to the Act in the name of women’s rights. The Equality Act, Gohmert said, represented “a war on women that should not be allowed.” Collins, an opponent of gay marriage and abortion rights, spoke approvingly of WoLF, before charging that the bill’s protections of trans people “would demolish the hard-won rights of women, putting them once again at the mercy of any biological man who identifies at any moment as a woman.”
via Julia Beck, TERFs, and the Right Wing Form an Unholy Alliance
