International | Business

Media fawns over Nike ‘empowering’ women ad, forgets about abused women in its factories

Source:
A new Nike ad which busts stereotypes about women in sport is receiving wide praise in the media for “empowering” girls to be the best they can be — but the adoring coverage of the sports giant is missing something crucial. While reaction to the ad has been mostly positive, some have been pointing out some major double standards — most notably, Nike’s treatment of women in its factories across the world. A report released by the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) in 2016 about a Vietnamese Nike factory employing 8,500 people, found that the vast majority of workers are young w
North America | United States | Activism

These Sister Act-Ivists Grow Medical Marijuana, But Their Town Wants To Shut Them Down

Source:
Sister Kate and Sister Darcy are on a mission to share the healing benefits of cannabis with the world – that is if their business doesn’t get shut down first. Reports Reuters, the non-religious – but spiritual – sisters have been growing and selling marijuana for medicinal purposes in Merced, California (where it is legal) for three years now. Unfortunately, their business is in jeopardy since Merced City Council issued a temporary ban on marijuana cultivation after a 6-0 vote on January 4, 2016. The nuns’ business, Sisters of the Valley, sells high-quality medicinal salves,
North America | United States | Business

Pattie Sellers: Women are more than 100 years away from parity in the C-suite

Source:
In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote, “At the current pace of progress, we are more than 100 years away from gender equality in the C-suite.” But Fortune assistant managing editor Pattie Sellers, who has spearheaded Fortune Most Powerful Women for the past 17 years, believes that it will take even longer. “When we started the Most Powerful Women list in 1998, there were two female Fortune 500 CEOs. Today, there are 23—less than 5%,” Sellers told Becky Quick, co-anchor of CNBC‘s Squawk Box, on Wednesday. But that number will soon
Africa | South Africa | Business

Women engineers quit over men’s attitudes

Source:
The South African engineering sector has evolved to become more gender-balanced, as employment equity measures increasingly ensure equal opportunities for men and women. That might be the long-term goal of the engineering sector, but it is certainly not the current reality. In 2013, the Engineering Council of South Africa said almost 11% of the total number of engineers registered with the council were women, but that professional women engineers totalled only 4%. Is it that women aren’t pursuing careers in engineering, or is there an underlying issue that challenges the opportuniti
South Asia | Australia | Business

Is this the week we finally accept Australia has a “women problem”?

Source:
This week gender equality has enjoyed some decent airtime on the national agenda. On Sunday the Labor party announced it would seek to achieve 50% representation for female MPs by 2025. On Monday Christopher Pyne called for the Liberal party to make it easier for women to enter politics. On Tuesday NEEOPA and the Workplace Gender Equality Agency hosted an event about pay equity at Channel 10. Liberal MP Dr Sharman Stone spoke out strongly about the need for action from the coalition and that night Lateline interviewed Kelly O’Dwyer and Kate Ellis on the issue of boosting the number
Asia | Business

Asia’s Women Crack Glass Ceiling, But Fail to Break Through

Source:
Asia's women are taking one step forward, two steps back when it comes to gender equality. Family structures and entrenched notions of what constitutes women's work are holding back the region's female population from scaling the corporate ladder, according to the International Labor Organization. The proportion of women graduates who studied construction, engineering and manufacturing has stagnated or even fallen in some countries, including Malaysia, Mongolia and Japan, UNESCO data shows.
International | Business

Women World Cup champs win waaaaay less money than men

Source:
The U.S women's World Cup team are champs. But they're being paid far less than men on losing teams. The women's team won $2 million from FIFA for winning this year's tournament. Last year, the German men's team collected $35 million after winning the 2014 World Cup. That works out to a little less than 6 cents on the dollar. In fact the 16 men's teams that were eliminated in the first round of last year's World Cup each got $8 million, or four times as much as the championship women. The U.S men's team, which finished 11th, won $9 million.
Asia | China | Business

Women Must Get Pregnant ‘On Schedule,’ Chinese Company Tells Staff

Source:
How much say should an employer have over when — and whether — an employee gets pregnant? That’s the question Chinese Internet users were debating Friday after a controversial notice from a company in central Henan province to employees went viral on China’s social networks. According to the notice, a copy of which was published online by the Dahe Daily provincial newspaper, married women working at the Jiaozuo city credit cooperative must be on the job for one year before they are allowed to apply to have a child. They must also schedule their pregnancy in advance so as no
Asia | Singapore | Business

Low representation of women on boards in Singapore: Survey

Source:
The representation of women on corporate boards in the Republic is lower than the global figure, according to a report released on Wednesday (Jun 24) by Deloitte Global. In Singapore, women take up 9 per cent of board seats, the survey revealed. This is lower than the global percentage, where women hold 12 per cent of board seats. However, the percentage of women Singapore holding leadership positions in the boardroom is higher as compared to the global percentage. Women make up 7 per cent of board chairpersons in Singapore, while women make up 4 per cent of board leaders globally.
Europe | U.K. | Business

A third of working women say they’re discriminated against

Source:
New research reveals that one in three working women in the UK admits to feeling disadvantaged in the workplace. The report, from recruitment consultancy Badenoch and Clark, revealed that 31% of respondents believe that men are offered greater opportunities at work. The issue was noticeably more prevalent in the private sector: almost a quarter (20%) of private sector respondents believed they had been passed over for promotion due to gender. In the public sector the figure was just 8%. All respondents cited a number of factors holding back aspiring female managers, including the percept
Africa | Business

Women business leaders are knocking on the doors of Africa’s boardrooms

Source:
Women business leaders in Africa say companies on the continent need to work harder at including female members on their boards, a new report (pdf) by the African Development Bank (AfDB) reveals. Africa’s influential financial institution examined the boards of companies that are listed on the stock exchanges of 12 of the largest economies in the region. They found the continental average of women sitting in boardrooms to be 4.6% lower than the global average. The data shows for the majority of African companies, there is at least one woman board director. Nevertheless, 32.9% of fi
Europe | U.K. | Business

Women reveal all the sexist questions they’ve been asked at job interviews

Source:
As part of a photo series by employment law firm Thomas Mansfield, university graduates were asked to reveal the weirdest and most offensive questions they’ve been asked while interviewing for jobs. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the women’s responses proved just how prevalent gender discrimination in the workplace continues to be. From inquiries about how willing they would be to flirt with customers, to requests for them to wear more make-up, to asking whether or not they get PMT (and, presumably, PMS), the questions got intimate and very inappropriate. “Unfortunately, the experience o
Asia | Japan | Business

Only one of Japan’s top executives is female – and she’s not even Japanese

Source:
More bad news for working women in Japan: only one of the country’s top firms employs a female executive, and she’s a white American woman who resides in New York City. Bloomberg looked specifically at corporate executives working for firms listed on the Nikkei, a stock index that is essentially the Dow Jones for the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The report found that Nicole Seligman, president of Sony Entertainment and Sony Corporation of America, was the only woman in a pool of 185 executives making at least JPY 100 million (US$980,000). According to a recent study by Catalyst, a nonprofit
North America | United States | Business

It takes just 2 years before corporate America drains women of their ambition

Source:
Everyday conversations with managers have a big impact on how people view their future at a company — and that turns out to be a bad thing for women in the workplace. A new report out from Bain & Company finds that after just two years in the workplace, women's career ambitions have been drastically lowered. In the chart below, you can see that women's ambitions and confidence drop significantly after two years, while men's roughly stay the same. Both genders see a jump in ambition and confidence once they get to the senior level.