Dr. Donna Strickland became the third woman — after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963 — to win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Francis H. Arnold won the prize in Chemistry, becoming the fifth woman to do so. [Jacey Fortin, NYT]
The new president of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank is Mary Daly, the current research director. With her promotion “three of the 12 regional fed banks will be led by women. One of three Fed governors is female. The Atlanta Fed’s president is the first African-American regional bank president in the central bank’s century of existence.”
Daly’s path to this position was a bit unusual. She lived on her own as a teenager and dropped out of high school. She then earned a GED and went to college.
Daly got her bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1985. She then got a master’s degree in 1987 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She earned a PhD in economics from Syracuse University in 1994 and began working at the San Francisco Fed in 1996. [WSJ, 9/15-16/18]
Women are more likely than men to see civility, compassion as essential qualities for political leaders
| Women | Men | All Adults | |
| Be honest and ethical | 90 | 91 | 91 |
| Work well under pressure | 79 | 79 | 79 |
| Be able to work out compromises | 77 | 79 | 78 |
| Stand up for what they believe in | 74 | 75 | 75 |
| Maintain tone of civility and respect | 75 | 61 | 68 |
| Be compassionate and empathetic | 72 | 60 | 66 |
| Serve as a role model for children | 71 | 59 | 65 |
| Be willing to take risks | 50 | 40 | 45 |
| Be persuasive | 44 | 45 | 45 |
| [PEW, 9/20/18] | |||
A law passed by the California Assembly and signed by Governor Brown
requires that corporations incorporated in California or headquartered in California and listed on major U.S. stock exchanges must by the end of 2019:
- have at least one female director and by the end of 2021
- have at least 3 female members if the board has six or more members
- have 2 female directors if the board is 5 members
- and have at least 1 female director if the board size is 4 or fewer members.
[Forbes, 10/1/18]
For every $1 in company equity held by men in startups, women hold 47 cents. Despite accounting for 35% of the equity holding population in the study, women held only a share of 20%. When it comes to the stock compensation for female start-up founders the situation is even more bleak. Male founders each hold nearly $2.2 million worth of company equity, compared with about $858,000 for woman. [WP, 9/20/18]
In 2014, 41% of women said they believed that many Americans were not ready to elect a woman to higher office and that was a major reason why there are fewer women than men in those sorts of positions. When the question was asked again in 2018 the number of women who held that belief had grown to 57%.
In 2014, 31% of men shared that view and by 2018 that number had grown to 32%. [PEW]
“This is what GenderAvengers dream of! When our Avenger of the Week, Lawrence Black, Professor of Modern History and Head of Department, and the other organizers of University of York’s Brexit and History Conference were made aware that the speaker list was all male, he postponed the conference! You heard that right: he made no excuses and no promises to do better next time, simply admitted that #manels are wrong and don’t reflect the values of his department.”
[GA, 10/12/18]