Tag: women

Doc Talk: Gossip monger, peace protectors, women on the march, unshod walker

His specialty was tattling on the rich and famous, who were terrified of him. His audience was the common people, “Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea” as he referred to them. His style was barbed and slick, relying on innuendo to avoid lawsuits, and peppered with “slanguage” — words and phrases he coined or lifted and some of which like “blessed event” and “G-man,” have endured and others like “infanticipate,” “trouser crease eraser,” and “scallions” should have.

Despite this success, Winchell wanted to be taken seriously as a news reporter and political player. He was inspired by Franklin Roosevelt, gained access to him, and promoted the New Deal and Roosevelt’s other policies. A proud Jew, he denounced the Nazis as early as 1933, calling them “swastinkers,” and urged the United States to enter the war in Europe. He was also a supporter of racial justice.

But when Roosevelt died, so did a piece of Winchell. Scrambling for another powerful political contact, he made an ideological U-turn and supported Joseph McCarthy during his Communist witch hunt. When McCarthy and his red-baiting campaign crashed, Winchell tried his luck at the new medium of TV, but his show was a dud and his slide into obscurity began.

Conventional but polished, Loeterman’s mix of archival material and interviews is sparked by Stanley Tucci as the voice of Winchell spouting his greatest hits with snideness and savoir-faire.

“Walter Winchell: The Power of Gossip” can be seen on pbs.org/americanmasters and the PBS Video app.

Go to www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/walter-winchell-documentary.

From "Sinai Field Mission."
From “Sinai Field Mission.”Zipporah Films

In the desert

In advance of streaming Frederick Wiseman’s latest film, “City Hall,” starting Nov. 6, the Coolidge Corner Theatre has begun a series called Wednesdays with Wiseman. It pairs one of the director’s documentaries with a discussion between Wiseman and a distinguished guest. The next installment features the rarely screened “Sinai Field Mission” (1978). Wiseman’s interlocutor will be another Cambridge documentary luminary, Errol Morris.

The mission of the film’s title was established in 1976 by the United States to monitor the activities of the Egyptian and Israeli military during their disengagement after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. That was the theory, but in practice — as Wiseman shows with wry, fly-on-the wall acuity — the staff endures frustration, isolation, tedium, and bureaucratic absurdities in fulfilling with dedication a sometimes amorphous task. The opening scene, of one of them driving an SUV through the desert, passing the charred wrecks of military vehicles and an occasional camel, and stopping to dig a hole in the sand to conceal a sensor, embodies the Sisyphean nature of the assignment.

“Sinai Field Mission” opens Oct. 28 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre’s Virtual Screening Room.

Go to coolidge.org/films/sinai-field-mission.

2017 Women's March, Washington, D.C.
2017 Women’s March, Washington, D.C.VOA

Far from finished

After several millennia of men being in charge, the results have been catastrophic. Time for women to take over, and that’s exactly what they’re doing in Sara Wolitzky’s “Not Done: Women Remaking

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Impostor Syndrome Prevalence In Professional Women And How To Overcome It

Part of Kathy Caprino’s series “The Most Powerful You”

In my work as a career and leadership coach and consultant for mid- to high-level professional women, I’ve been stunned at the degree to which highly accomplished women frequently struggle with feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, low self-confidence and confusion about how they, in fact, reached the high levels they’ve achieved. In doing a deep dive with them, my research has shown that a full 98% of professional women experience at least one of the 7 most damaging power gaps that prevent individuals from reaching their highest and most thrilling potential, and 75% face three or more of these gaps at the same time. One of the most challenging is Power Gap #1 – not recognizing your special talents, abilities, and gifts. 

Earlier this month, KPMG released its 2020 edition of Advancing the Future of Women in Business: A  KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit Report focused on executive women demystifying imposter syndrome. To learn more about the prevalence of the impostor syndrome and what leaders, managers and others need to understand about it, I caught up this week with Laura Newinski, KPMG’s U.S. Deputy Chair and COO, to explore her thoughts on the findings with us. 

In her role, Newinski is responsible for the development of the U.S. firm’s strategy and the execution of its priorities. She has extensive experience serving Fortune 500 companies, and is recognized for her strong commitment to quality and integrity and consistent focus on building diverse and inclusive teams.

Here’s what Newinski shares:

Kathy Caprino: Why did KPMG conduct this study on imposter syndrome?

Laura Newinski: Each year, our firm hosts the KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit which brings together top leaders from business, politics, sports, and the media to help forge paths for women leaders to advance to the C-suite. The Summit provides hundreds of rising executive women, nominated by their CEOs to participate in the program, with high-impact leadership development content, access to today’s top leaders and year-long networking opportunities. 

As part of these efforts, we sponsor research or studies to better understand the specific issues women face in corporate America, and to glean insights on how we can continue to advance more women into leadership positions in the workplace. This year we surveyed 750 executive women from major companies, including many of the top brands—who are one or two career steps away from the C-suite—about their experiences, if any, with imposter syndrome and how they have successfully overcome it.    

Caprino: So, how did the study define “imposter syndrome?”

Newinski: In the study, imposter syndrome was defined as the inability to believe your success is deserved as a result of your hard work and the fact you possess distinct skills, capabilities and experiences. Rather, your inclination is to internalize that you got where you are by other means such as luck, or being in the right place at the right time.   

Caprino: Are

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Jennifer Nettles Was Honored for Fighting for Women in Country Music

Taylor Hill, Getty Images

Jennifer Nettles is getting some hard-earned recognition for her fight for women in the country music industry. Last night at the 2020 CMT Music Awards, the Sugarland singer was presented with the first-ever Equal Play award, which recognizes Nettles’ ongoing advocacy to get women’s albums heard on country music radio stations the same amount as their male counterparts. Nettles has pioneered the path for Equal Play, and last night, she received a well-deserved round of applause from her peers.

After a moving tribute video in which fellow country stars Maren Morris, Kelsea Ballerini, and Sheryl Crow expressed their gratitude for Nettles’ dedication to Equal Play, 2020 CMT Music Awards host Sarah Hyland presented Nettles with the award. The star thanked Hyland, made a joke about applying eyeshadow for the first time in a long time just for the virtual show (#relatable), and continued with a heartfelt speech.

“Thank you to all the fans, and especially my artists, my sisters out there who continue to burn the holy fire,” Nettles said.

“I am so proud to be a part of this legacy of women in country music with you, and I am so proud of the stories that we tell,” she continued. “We have more to do as soon as we can, and I can’t wait to do it alongside you, holding your hands. Thank you so very much.”

Last year, at the 2019 CMA Awards, Nettles made a bold statement when she wore a power suit and cape on the red carpet that read, “Play our f*@#!N records, please and thank you.”

Taylor Hill, Getty Images

The singer’s pink and white ensemble was the talk of the night—and sent a clear message to country music radio: They need to step up their game. In response, in January 2020 CMT committed to a 50/50 split in airtime for women and men country artists.

Since then, Nettles has continued to lead the fight for Equal Play and work toward women representation in the music industry. We’re so happy Nettles was given the recognition she deserves for fighting this important fight.

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Lily Allen launches sex toy, encouraging women to talk confidently about pleasure

Written by Amy Woodyatt, CNN

Lily Allen has teamed up with a German sex toy brand to launch her own sex toy — and start a discussion about female sexuality.
The British singer announced she is partnering with sex tech company Womanizer to release the “Liberty” — a sleek hot pink and orange product retailing at $99 — in an Instagram post on Thursday.

In addition to the release of the vibrator, Allen has been anointed chief liberation officer at Womanizer, and is heading up the company’s #IMasturbate campaign, encouraging women to embrace their sexuality.

“Sex toys are still seen as a taboo subject because they are, you know, related to masturbation and female pleasure. I think female pleasure in itself is a taboo subject,” Allen said in a video, adding that the first time she tried sex toys was “groundbreaking.”

“The only way to make taboo subjects no longer taboo is to speak about them openly and frequently and without shame or guilt,” she added.

Lily Allen has joined forces with German sex toy brand Womanizer.

Lily Allen has joined forces with German sex toy brand Womanizer. Credit: Womanizer

Womanizer are one of many brands working to revamp the aesthetics of sex toys.

In the past decade, a new crop of sex toy start ups have been working to offer consumers innovative and distinctive designs, and in some cases, challenge taboos around sexuality.

The sleek hot pink and orange product retails at $99.

The sleek hot pink and orange product retails at $99. Credit: Womanizer

Developers have been experimenting with product design, engineering and branding to create colorful, appealing, and even wearable technology which they hope are both marketable and loved by customers.

“I hope that this collaboration will lead to people feeling that they can talk more freely about masturbation and if somebody like me can talk openly about it without shame then they might feel inclined to try it out for themselves — a whole new world awaits,” Allen added.

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Deepfake bot on Telegram is violating women by forging nudes from regular pics

A free, easy-to-use deepfake bot found on the Telegram messenger app has victimized seemingly hundreds of thousands of women by replacing the clothed parts of their bodies in photos with nudity. More than 100,000 of these nonconsensual sexual images have been posted publicly online, but the bot has produced hundreds of thousands more that haven’t been traced. 

A website promoting the bot claimed that more than 700,000 images of women have been manipulated to replace their clothing with nudity, as of Thursday, and that more than 100,000 abusers have uploaded images to the bot. Those number couldn’t be independently verified. 

The victims are mostly private individuals, women whose photos were taken off social media or pulled from a personal stash of pics, according to a research report about the bot Tuesday, which traced more than 100,000 publicly posted images of victims of this bot. Some victims had originally been photographed in bathing suits or underwear. Some were wearing simple T-shirts and shorts. Some were visibly underage. All are women.

Deepfake porn isn’t new. Deepfake technology — artificial intelligence that makes sophisticated media forgeries — has been used early and often to fabricate pornography. But this Telegram bot takes the ease and access of this technology to a new level. 

“The innovation here is not necessarily the AI in any form,” said Giorgio Patrini, CEO of deepfake-research company Sensity and coauthor of the report. “It’s just the fact that it can reach a lot of people, and very easily.”

Computer manipulation of media has existed for decades, and sexual imagery has been weaponized online for as long as the internet could host photos. Whether it’s nude photos posted without consent or crudely doctored forgeries, sexual images have been weaponized to extort, threaten, humiliate and harass victims. 

A Sensity diagram of how nonconsensual sexual images are created and shared by the Telegram bot. 


Sensity

But only in the last few years has deepfake tech intensified the threat of manipulated sexual media, posing frightening implications for what may come. 

“The deepfake phenomenon is even more alarming because it doesn’t look Photoshopped. It’s much more easy for somebody without the technical knowledge to make one,” said Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami and president of the online-abuse nonprofit Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. “It also makes the ability to avoid this kind of abuse much more difficult.” 

With this Telegam bot, any woman who’s ever posted a selfie of herself from the waist up could be a potential victim. Even women out walking could be victimized if surreptitiously snapped by the wrong stranger. 

And in one of the most disturbing forms of abuse with this bot, photographs of children have been uploaded to the bot’s AI, automatically manipulated to sexualize the child and then shared publicly.

Neither Sensity’s report nor this article are disclosing the name of the bot, to avoid amplifying it. CNET viewed galleries

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Ice Cube is working with Trump and Black women are calling him out

Progressive Black women leaders are calling out rapper Ice Cube over the announcement this week that he is working with President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign on what he says is a plan to help Black Americans.

President Trump makes direct appeal to suburban woman in Pennsylvania campaign rally

UP NEXT

UP NEXT

The backlash began when Trump’s senior advisor, Katrina Pierson, tweeted out Tuesday her appreciation for Ice Cube and “his willingness to step up and work with” Trump amid an ongoing national debate on police reform, systemic racism and violence against Black Americans.



a man wearing a hat: Ice Cube is defending his decision to work with President Donald Trump on a plan for Black Americans.

© Phillip Faraone, Getty Images for REVOLT
Ice Cube is defending his decision to work with President Donald Trump on a plan for Black Americans.

Ice Cube, whose real name is O’Shea Jackson, has long been critical of Trump, but said on Twitter that the Trump White House had been more responsive to his “Contract With Black America” compared to Democratic leaders.

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“Dems said we’ll address the CWBA after the election. Trump campaign made some adjustments to their plan after talking to us about the CWBA.”

“Black progress is a bipartisan issue,” tweeted the rapper Thursday, who in the late 80s famously rapped “f*** the police” as a member of the group N.W.A.

Many fans expressed dismay at the rapper’s willingness to engage with the president – in 2016 Ice Cube tweeted he would never “endorse” Trump and he released a 2018 track called “Arrest the President”  – while progressive Black women leaders lamented that his 22-page plan lacked any specific recommendations for Black women, Black queer people or Black transwomen. 

“We grew up on Ice Cube, on his message against white supremacy, so it feels like a slap in the face because this is a president who has made it very clear that he’s anti-Black, anti-women and anti-trans folks,” said Karen Flynn, an associate professor in the departments of gender and women’s studies and African American studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. “Historically, Black women have consistently supported Black men, particularly heterosexual Black men, and we haven’t been given the same respect back.” 

Analysis: Rhetoric some call racist has marked Trump’s entire presidency

Since announcing his presidential campaign in 2015, Trump has repeatedly made disparaging comments about people of color, including calling Black Lives Matter protesters “terrorists” and “thugs.” He has defended white supremacists and recently restricted the federal government from conducting diversity training, despite research showing it fosters workplace equality and helps address race and gender disparities. He has also denied systemic racism exists in America’s law enforcement departments. 

Brittney Cooper, author of “Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower,” posted on Twitter Thursday: “Black men are breaking my heart with this caping for Cube-cum-Trump.” 

Black women absent from Ice Cube’s plan

Black women have a long history, experts say, of fighting for justice without recognition. 

On Twitter, #OscarsSoWhite creator April Reign wondered why Ice

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Elastic Sweeps Best Companies for Women in the Workplace Awards

Fairygodboss Recognizes Elastic as a Best Company for Women, Best Technology Company for Women, and Best Company Where CEOs Support Gender Diversity in 2020

Elastic (NYSE: ESTC) (“Elastic”), the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, today announced Fairygodboss named the company as a Best Company for Women in 2020 in three categories: Best Company for Women, Best Technology Company for Women, and Best Company Where CEOs Support Gender Diversity.

Fairygodboss is a leading marketplace where professional women looking for jobs, advice, and the inside scoop on companies meet employers who believe in gender equality.

The list is determined solely on the feedback women provide to Fairygodboss about working at Elastic.

“Elastic is focused on creating an environment where women can thrive and develop in their careers over the long term,” said Leah Sutton, senior vice president, global human resources, Elastic. “We work to build meaningful opportunities for women to advance, ensuring our company values help employees find balance so they can be more innovative, efficient, and present – from work to family. We stay engaged with the broader tech community, implement policies that support flexibility in the workplace, and are always working to continue to build a diverse team, which makes for a better Elastic and stronger company culture.”

Elastic focuses its recruiting efforts to attract and hire more women by partnering with hiring managers, building awareness through social media campaigns that showcase flexible working schedules and a supportive environment, and using specialized tools to create more compelling job descriptions and awareness around the impact of gendered language.

Within just the last year, Elastic has increased the number of women and non-binary employees hired by 6% across the company and has increased the number of women and non-binary employees hired in senior management roles by 9% overall.

“It takes each one of us to be engaged in purposeful collaboration and thoughtful dialogue to accelerate these efforts. We believe that our individual and collective efforts do make a difference, and the recognition from Fairygodboss shows us that we’re headed in the right direction,” said Sutton.

For more information about open positions within Elastic, review the Elastic careers page, and learn more about the Fairygodboss awards on the Elastic blog.

About Elastic:

Elastic is a search company built on a free and open heritage. Anyone can use Elastic products and solutions to get started quickly and frictionlessly. Elastic offers three solutions for enterprise search, observability, and security, built on one technology stack that can be deployed anywhere. From finding documents to monitoring infrastructure to hunting for threats, Elastic makes data usable in real time and at scale. Thousands of organizations worldwide, including Cisco, eBay, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, The Mayo Clinic, NASA, The New York Times, Wikipedia, and Verizon, use Elastic to power mission-critical systems. Founded in 2012, Elastic is a distributed company with Elasticians around the globe and is publicly traded on the NYSE under the symbol ESTC. Learn more at elastic.co.

Elastic and associated marks are trademarks or

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Can Ivanka Trump Help Her Father Win The Support Of White, Suburban Women Voters?

KEY POINTS

  • Ivanka Trump, 38, has already visited 10 battleground states and will visit three more
  • Ivanka has appeared in about six “virtual rallies” and is expected to have raised about $35 million for her father
  • Donald Trump has urged “suburban housewives” to support him

U.S. President Donald Trump – trailing his opponent Joe Biden in many polls – has instructed his daughter, Ivanka, to help him secure the support of college-educated suburban white women.

Biden currently leads Trump by some 20% among this crucial segment of voters, Politico reported.

Ivanka, 38, has her work cut out for her. She has already visited 10 battleground states — Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. The businesswoman, who is married to Jared Kushner, another senior Trump adviser, is expected to also campaign in Pennsylvania, Florida and North Carolina ahead of the election.

A Trump aide told Politico that Ivanka has appeared in about six “virtual rallies” and is expected to have raised about $35 million for her father at nine fundraisers since August.

“As a working mother who has dedicated her career to the improvement of women’s lives, Ivanka intrinsically understands the issues facing American families today,” said Mercedes Schlapp, a senior adviser for the Trump campaign.

During a recent rally in Pennsylvania, President Trump urged “suburban housewives” to support him, claiming that street protests in large cities would overspill violence into their communities and hurt their property values while endangering their safety.

“Can I ask you to do me a favor, suburban women?” he said. “Will you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”

However, while a good chunk of white women supported Trump in 2016, he may have trouble convincing them to vote for him now.

“The reality is that women voters are looking at the substance of what’s happened,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “It’s kind of late … to try suddenly to be having a different tone and tenor. I don’t think [Ivanka] alone can make up for what these women have been seeing [from Donald] the last four years.”

The Associated Press reported on a woman named Lori Goldman in affluent, suburban Oakland County, Mich., who is seeking to defeat Trump.

“We take nothing for granted,” she said. “They say Joe Biden is ahead. Nope. We work like Biden is behind 20 points in every state.”

Trump won Michigan in 2016 by almost 10,700 votes.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) told Politico that suburban women voters are “paying very close attention to what the president is saying and doing, not just recently, but over four years. No surrogate [like Ivanka] can undo that. They know exactly what he has done and not done.”

Not surprisingly, the Biden team also rejected Trump’s overtures to suburban white women voters.

“Trump has done nothing to earn the respect — much less the votes — of women over the past four years,

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Investors Step Up Pressure on Private Credit to Hire More Women

There better be women at the table.

There better be women at the table.

Photographer: iStockphoto/Getty Images

Photographer: iStockphoto/Getty Images

A specialized set of asset managers, responsible for investing $850 billion in higher-yield credit worldwide, is at risk of losing business unless it fixes its glaring shortage of women, especially in top jobs.

Pressure to increase diversity is largely coming from those who oversee the big pools of institutional capital that fund the private-credit industry, made up of lenders that finance companies too risky to get conventional loans. Some investors are making their position crystal clear: If you’re asking for our money, there better be women sitting across the table from us when we strike a deal.

“We want our money to be managed and invested in entities that share our values and our priorities,” said Kim Thomassin, executive vice president of stewardship investing at pension fund Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec, which has C$333 billion ($254 billion) in assets, including C$35 billion invested in private credit. “When the stewards of large sums of capital, the institutional investors like us, all get together, it’s billions and billions of dollars and, frankly, money talks.”

Women now hold about a fifth of the industry’s jobs and just 10% of the senior positions as of last year, according to London-based research firm Preqin. By comparison, women on average hold 52% of the management jobs in U.S. industry and 22% of the leadership roles in financial services, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Deloitte, respectively.

Gender Gap

Women in private credit hold few of the top jobs

Source: Preqin


In theory, the sector’s rapid growth should create opportunities for private lenders to bring more women on board. Private credit has surged threefold since the 2008 financial crisis. Analysts expect assets to reach $1 trillion in the next several years.

“Whenever you have growth there are always going to be more seats available at the table,” said Sylvia Owens, global private credit and real assets strategist at New York-based portfolio advisory firm Aksia.

In spite of private credit’s past expansion, female employment has changed little in recent years, suggesting that hiring more women won’t simply happen on its own: It takes someone pushing from the outside.

“If the clients drive it and demand it, and they are very committed to it, then it tends to happen,” said Theresa Shutt, the chief investment officer at Laval, Quebec-based Fiera Private Debt, where women hold more than 15% of the higher positions.

The Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust Funds, like Quebec’s provincial pension fund, is among those starting to insist. The $36 billion fund earlier this year approved a plan to invest as much as 5% of its assets in private debt, prioritizing managers focused on inclusion.

“Where there are investment managers completely devoid of diversity of any sort, that becomes an impediment to proceeding,” said State Treasurer Shawn Wooden, whose office manages the fund. Private credit, he added, needs “a lot of work.”

Some

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Two French women charged over ‘racist’ stabbing of veiled Muslim women

Two women accused of stabbing two other women wearing Muslim headscarves near the Eiffel Tower in Paris and trying to rip off their veils have been charged with assault and racist slurs, legal sources told AFP on Thursday.

The case comes amid heightened racial tensions following the jihadist killing last week of a French teacher who had shown his pupils cartoons of the prophet Mohammed.

The women accused over the assault were drunk when they came across a group of Muslim women and children in the Champ de Mars park at the foot of the Eiffel Tower.

The Muslim family complained about the other women’s dog, saying they felt threatened by it.

In the ensuing row one of the women with the dog pulled a knife and stabbed two of the veiled women, aged 19 and 40.

The 40-year-old woman sustained six stab wounds and is being treated in hospital for a perforated lung. 

The younger victim was stabbed three times and was also treated in hospital but has since been discharged.

Both victims claimed their attackers called them “dirty Arabs” and told them: “This is not your home.”

– ‘Witch hunt’ –

The incident caused a furore on social media with some people accusing the French media of remaining silent about an attack they saw as clearly anti-Muslim.

The main suspect has been placed in preventive custody while her friend has been released on bail, sources close to the investigation said.

The pair were charged late Wednesday with assault aggravated by the use of a weapon, drunkenness, racial insults and the fact that they acted together.

But the victims’ lawyer Arie Alimi has called for the women to face stiffer charges, accusing them of attempted murder linked to the victims’ race or religion. 

He said one of the women specifically took issue with the headscarves worn by several women in the Muslim family, referring to it as “that thing you have on your head”. 

He also accused the suspects of trying to rip off their victims’ veils and of aiming blows at the head.

The two suspects deny making racial insults.

Their lawyer Bernard Solitude warned against “blowing this story out of proportion” and said it was important to “stick to the facts: a row which degenerated after insults were made”.

Alimi accused the French authorities —  which have closed a mosque on the outskirts of Paris and moved to shut down several Muslim groups in the aftermath of the beheading of teacher Samuel Paty by an 18-year-old Chechen radical — of a “witch hunt”.

He argued it had the effect of helping jihadists “reach their goal, which is the stigmatising of Muslims leading to more individuals becoming radicalised”.

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