North America | United States | Business

Women in the world: Where the U.S. falters in quest for equality

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It's considered an "international bill of rights for women." It promises to end discrimination, establish equality and fight against violence. Nearly all the 193 member states of the United Nations have ratified it. Only seven haven't: Iran, Palau, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tonga. And the United States. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women -- or CEDAW, as it's known -- was adopted by the United Nations in 1979. It's the biggest treaty creating specific guarantees for women and girls since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established in 1948, when
International | Business

Uber partnership with UN women’s group hits dead end

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It looks like a United Nations group devoted to women's rights won't be partnering with controversial car-hailing service Uber after all. "UN Women will not accept an offer to collaborate on job creation with Uber, so you can rest assured about that," the group's executive director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said last week during an event at the UN's 59th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW59), which wrapped up yesterday in New York after a two-week run. A short clip of Mlambo-Ngcuka's remark surfaced on YouTube earlier this week. In a statement sent to various news outle
North America | United States | Business

Google chairman gets called out for cutting off a woman while talking about diversity

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On Monday, Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and acclaimed Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson were wrapping up a SXSW Interactive panel that had focused on diversity, when an audience member called out the two men for repeatedly interrupting their fellow panelist, the United States' Chief Technology Officer Megan Smith. Even more awkward? The audience member who posed the question was apparently Judith Williams, who heads up Google's unconscious bias program. During a Q&A session with the audience, Williams, who is Google's Global Diversity and Talent Programs manager, asked
North America | United States | Business

Silicon Valley’s diversity problem goes beyond hiring practices

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Workplace diversity advocates hope to shine a spotlight on the industry’s hiring efforts, which remain abysmal. At Twitter, only 10 percent of tech jobs in its global workforce belong to women. Among its U.S. employees, just 4 percent of those lucrative positions are filled by black or Latino people. The numbers aren’t much different at places like Facebook, Google and Yahoo. Even Apple, which can point to above-average diversity, still counts just 20 percent of its tech hires as female, and black or Latino workers make up only 13 percent. Anecdotes of implicit gender bias reinforce wha