Women are stepping forward to run for Congress in unprecedented numbers.
As of the end of the first week in December, 354 women have announced they are running for the House (291 Democrats and 63 Republicans) and 38 women are running for the Senate (25 Democrats and 13 Republicans). [NYTimes, 12/5/17]
In addition to the above, 75 women have set their sights on running for governor.
[Meet the Press: First Read, 1/29/17]
A new study by McKinsey finds that companies with diverse executive teams posted higher profits than those with more homogeneous leadership. To those of you who thought, “duh!” while reading the last sentence, there is one thing that makes this research unique—and important: scale. McKinsey examined the financial data of more than 1,000 major companies across 12 countries. [Broadsheet, 1/22/18]
For the first time in its more than 1,000-year history, Oxford University offered more British women undergraduate admission than men. Among the UK 18-year-olds taking undergraduate places in Autumn 2017, 1,070 are women and 1,025 are men. [The Guardian]
There were 1,223 directors on 1,100 films released from 2007-2017. Women accounted for only 4 percent of them. [Annenberg Inclusion Initiative]
Of the 3,000 largest U.S. companies on the Russell 3000 index, 624 companies have not one woman on their board of directors. On the whole, women occupy just 16% of available board seats. [Quartz]
Gender bias goes away when grant reviewers focus on the science:
“Women lose out when reviewers are asked to assess the researcher, rather than the research, on a grant application, according to a study on gender bias. Training reviewers to recognize unconscious biases seems to correct this imbalance, despite previous work suggesting that it increased bias instead.” [GA Blog, 1/29/18]
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