D&I Friday Read No. 353

Today we are talking about bias in AI, a mother trying to destigmatize disability, mental health during lockdowns, and a new report about childcare demands during the pandemic.

Gender
According to a new global report, women spent on average 173 additional hours on unpaid childcare during the pandemic, while men spent an extra 59 hours. This has obviously resulted in income loss and widened the gender gap globally. Read more here.

Bias
Bias in artificial intelligence remains a risk, but regulators have started to look into it – and some tech companies are now using AI to reduce bias in AI. Interesting article with good insights about the current situation.

Mental Health
The pandemic resulted in lockdowns almost everywhere in the world, and a lot of people assumed that isolation is harder for extroverts than for introverts. Psychologists have now looked at people’s mental health during lockdowns and how it was influenced by different personality types – and interestingly, there was barely any difference. Read more here.

Inclusion
Sirio Persichetti is a 7-year-old boy from Italy who has a special type of cerebral palsy. His mother is sharing his journey on social media to destigmatize disability. Watch the video.

D&I Friday Read No. 331

Discrimination
According to a statement from the US Department of Labor, Google has agreed to pay $3.8m to settle a discrimination lawsuit. The company was accused of systematically discriminating women and Asian engineers, after monitors discovered pay disparities and discrimination during the hiring process. Read more here.

Race
Across all FTSE 100 firms, there is not a single black executive left – and only 10 out of the almost 300 people in the top three roles have ethnic minority backgrounds. Noteworthy is also the lack of Black employees in the leadership pipeline (according to a report, it is less than 1%).

Gender
“How vulnerability makes you a better leader” – touching (and partially graphic) TED Talk from Tracy Young. The construction engineer and CEO of a tech start-up is sharing her journey trying to adapt in a male-dominated business culture.

Inclusion
What started in 2012 with a letter from Matthew Walzer (a then 16-year-old with cerebral palsy) asking Nike to design hands-free shoes – has now resulted in the global launch of a shoe collection that can make life for people with special needs more inclusive.

D&I Friday Read No. 264

Gender
“Don’t flaunt your body”. What sounds like business advice from decades ago, was actually part of an executive training that women at Ernst & Young attended in 2018. The training material telling women how to behave around men was made public this week and sparked a lot of outrage on social media. Read more here.

Inclusion
The American bank JP Morgan Chase announced this week that they will stop asking questions about criminal records in their job application process. The company started the “second chance” program last year and has since then hired over 2000 people with a criminal history.

Neurodiversity
Unemployment rates for people with Autism are very high – but a software company from New York uses neurodiversity as their competitive advantage. 75% of Ultranauts staff are on the autism spectrum and the company has adjusted its recruitment processes and workplace environment accordingly.

Inclusion
Although 7-year-old João Vicente from Brazil has cerebral palsy, he has always dreamed of skateboarding. His mom was finally able to help him when a local company started building skateboard adaptations. Worth watching!

D&I Friday Read No. 211

Diversity
According to a paper published by researchers from Monash University and University of Chicago, adding anti-discrimination statements to job adverts may actually hurt diversity initiatives. The economists placed job adverts across the US – and those that included an equal-opportunity statement, received significantly less applications from minority candidates.

Gender
Apparently carrying a baby emasculates a man… James Bond actor Daniel Craig got mocked by TV presenter Piers Morgan after he was spotted with his infant daughter in a baby carrier. Thousands of dads reacted to the tweet and shared pictures of themselves while babywearing.

Bias
Who is the boss? As a promotion for their start-up competition, Uber and Girlboss just launched an advert that is illustrating gender bias. Worth watching!

Inclusion
Nike just surprised University of Oregon running club member Justin Gallegos with a 3 year professional running contract – making him the first Nike-sponsored athlete with cerebral palsy. Watch the video!

D&I Friday Read No. 115

Gender
Meetup, the company behind the popular social networking app with the same name, was founded in 2002 and until 3 years ago, the team consisted of mainly white men. Since then their CEO and founder, Scott Heiferman, has managed to transform his team, one step at a time. Very interesting read!

Race & Gender
According to a study from MIT, the popular ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft treat African Americans and women differently to how they treat white men. The researchers found out that riders with non-white sounding names were twice as likely to be cancelled than white ones – and women were taken on longer (and more expensive) trips. Read more here.

Inclusion & Tech
The one thing that is bringing inclusion forward is technology. Apple just launched their new accessibility website, showing how their assistive tech can help people – for example Sady. Sady is living with cerebral palsy and can not speak or use her body from her neck down, but thanks to assistive tech, she is able to work as a video editor! Read more here.

Race
ProPublica, a non-profit newsroom, revealed last week that Facebook allows advertisers to exclude users by race when placing housing adverts. Facebook calls it “ethnic affinity” and say it’s very common to advertise to specific target groups only – but experts are very concerned about this, as it can clearly be used to discriminate certain racial or ethnical groups.