North America | United States | Military

More Women in US Military Academies, But Still a Lot More Men

Source:
The percentage of female students nominated by U.S. lawmakers for admission to U.S. military academies has been rising over the last 25 years. But men are still nearly three times more likely than women to get a nomination, says a study released Tuesday. A member of Congress must nominate most applicants to the Naval Academy, the Air Force Academy and the Military Academy at West Point. The schools provide a cost-free education, then require graduates to serve a number of years in the armed forces. Currently, women represent about 27% of Naval Academy students, 22% of Air Force Academy
North America | United States | Career

Kylie Jenner, Beyoncé And The Highest-Paid Women In Entertainment 2019

Source:
For the second time ever, Taylor Swift has sung and danced her way to the top of the annual global Celebrity 100 list of the world’s highest-earning entertainers, making $185 million in the last 12 months. She’s joined on the list by fellow musicians including Beyoncé (No. 20 on the overall list, $81 million), newcomer Ariana Grande (No. 62, $48 million) and divas boosted by lucrative Las Vegas residencies: Jennifer Lopez (No. 76, $43 million), Lady Gaga (No. 90, $39.5 million) and Celine Dion (No. 100, $37.5 million). Though the top of this year’s Celebrity 100 is packed with femal
Asia | Japan | Culture

Women outperform men after Japan medical school stops rigging exam scores

Source:
Women have outperformed their male counterparts in entrance examinations for a medical school in Japan that last year admitted rigging admission procedures to give men an unfair advantage. Juntendo University in Tokyo said that of the 1,679 women who took its medical school entrance exam earlier this year, 139, or 8.28%, had passed. The pass rate among 2,202 male candidates was 7.72%. It was the first time in seven years that the pass rate among women was higher than among men, the Asahi Shimbun reported. The university attributed the exam results to its decision to “abolish the u
Middle East | Qatar | Politics

Taliban meets with women’s rights activists, others after talks with Afghan officials collapse

Source:
The sudden cancellation of eagerly awaited talks between Taliban officials and Afghan leaders, planned to begin last Friday in Qatar, seemed a stunning reversal in slow-going efforts to bring a peaceful negotiated end to the 17-year Afghan war. As it turned out, the moment did not go entirely to waste. On Saturday, about 20 Afghan emigres from Europe and the United States, including three women, privately met Taliban representatives in Doha, the Qatari capital. They said they spoke for more than six hours with the group’s chief negotiator, Sher Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, and a dozen other
Europe | Sweden | Economy

If the world followed Swedish women’s lead, we could add $6 trillion to the global economy

Source:
A new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers says that if the world’s biggest economies bench-marked their workforces to Sweden, which has a 69% female employment rate, the total global GDP gain could be as much as $6 trillion. The Women in Work Index 2019, released today (March 5), uses a number of measures to gauge workplace equality, including countries’ employment rate—that is, the number of people employed as a share of the working age (15-69) population. Its authors suggest that if countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) caught up to Sweden’s
North America | United States | Business

Google reviewed pay equity and learned it was underpaying men

Source:
When Google reviewed its own pay structure recently, it yielded an unexpected result: It was underpaying more men than women for doing similar work, the company revealed in a blog postpublished Monday. The annual analysis comes as Google faces a class-action lawsuitthat alleges it denied career opportunities to women and systematically paid them less than men preforming similar work. The tech industry as a whole also is grappling with enduring criticism about a lack of diversity and dysfunctional work environments.
North America | United States | Economy

What’s Best for Women? Property Rights, Innovation, and Economic Growth

Source:
Women’s advocacy groups say Donald J. Trump’s cabinet will be one of the most hostile in recent memory to so-called women’s issues, the New York Times is reporting. But this assumes that all women should support bigger government. In truth, there are many reasons women might not want a higher minimum wage or expanded Medicare and Medicaid. Yes, women make up two-thirds of minimum-wage workers and disproportionately depend on Medicare and Medicaid. But perhaps one reason so many women voted for Donald Trump despite his blatantly misogynistic comments and campaign, much to everyone’s
North America | United States | Career

Portraits of working women – in pictures

Source:
A truck driver, butcher and firefighter are some of the subjects in the latest project by the photographer Chris Crisman. This series portrays women at work and focuses on occupations traditionally seen as male dominated. Crisman’s children were part of the inspiration for Women’s Work - to show them that they could be anything they wanted to be, and to illustrate that gender should not define employment possibilities
North America | History

The Forgotten History of Female Mapmakers

Source:
In the 1970s, early in her career as map librarian at the New York Public Library, Alice Hudson started researching women mapmakers throughout history. With few other women in her chosen field, she wondered how many had come before her. “I thought I might find 10,” she tells CityLab. But over the years, as she combed through maps, censuses, newspapers, and tips from colleagues, she was amazed by how many women there were in the early days of mapmaking. By the late ‘90s, she’d found over a thousand names of women who had drawn, published, printed, engraved, sold, or traded maps prior
International | Sports

The Real Story of the First Woman to Run the Boston Marathon

Source:
Kathrine Switzer, a 20-year-old journalism major from Syracuse who finished an hour behind Gibb in 1967, was wearing a race number obtained by pretending she was a man on her race application and using only her first and middle initials. She became the face of women’s running when photos of enraged race director Jock Semple trying to physically remove her from the race ricocheted around the world. Switzer went on to a successful career as an author, speaker and TV commentator, won the 1974 New York City Marathon, finished second in Boston in 1975, and earned Runner’s World’s Female Runn
Europe | Sweden | Politics

How one Kurdish woman went from child soldier to Swedish lawmaker

Source:
In pitch dark one night in 1991, some 50 people marched from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq toward the Turkish border, unarmed and clad in traditional local attire. As they approached the frontier, a Turkish reconnaissance helicopter began to hover in the area, complicating their plan to sneak into Turkey. Only one woman marched among the men — 19-year-old Amineh Kakabaveh. She kept calm despite the building tension. Evading the helicopter and the border guards, the travelers managed to reach the Turkish border town of Silopi around midnight. The young Kakabaveh could have hardly imagined