We don't need to disparage masculinity in order to celebrate the qualities and contributions of women, or to encourage social equality of the genders
One of brightest students in my university department was seriously intellectual and widely read, always taking an active and constructive part in seminars. The student was approached by two others who complained that the student took up too much space and time, and should step back. No professor ever advised such a thing to this…
From entertainment to business to news media, the evidence is clear: audiences want gender diversity
What would happen if news media struggling to survive applied the productivity mantra “What gets measured gets done” to the sources they quote? Business research, Hollywood sales data and anecdotal evidence from the news industry all suggest it’s worth a try. In many western democracies – the U.S., the U.K. and Canada included – most…
They have a history of grassroots social activism and community involvement, and it serves us all well
Angela Merkel has announced that this will be her last term as German chancellor. This has created some concern, as many credit her with navigating her country, the European Union and even the global community through many stormy waters in recent years. When we look around the world, however, we see that there is no…
Ontario lawyers are being asked to agree to principles that may run counter to their beliefs
The Law Society of Ontario wants to compel all lawyers who wish to practise in the province to agree to the society’s version of a progressive agenda. It would be a dangerous precedent. The society may also make it mandatory for lawyers to attend sessions on such subjects as “unconscious bias” and apparently any other…
But despite what some marketing may suggest, that doesn't mean winning at all costs
For 30 years, Gillette used “The best a man can get” as its tagline. It sounded good and it appealed to the cultural standard of competition – the idea that to be a real man, you needed to be the best, even if it meant to win at all costs. Gillette advertisements showed how men…
Discrepancies are more often the result of different choices men and women make, on and off the job
For decades, politicians, pundits and activists have clamoured about a gender pay gap and have cited statistics purporting to show that the economy is unfair to women. Women, after all, get paid only around 70 to 80 cents for every dollar earned by men. However, for just as long, studies have shown that this discrepancy…
Gender Gap Tracker makes big data public to motivate media to achieve gender parity among experts
An Iranian big data engineer, a Spanish computational linguist and a Canadian social activist walk into a research lab. They don’t miss the drinks they could order if they’d gone to the bar, because they’re on a mission to change the world. We hear a lot about how artificial intelligence is taking away jobs and…
New online tool gives fitness tracker-style incentive for media to achieve gender parity in their sources
Could the incentivizing power of a fitness tracker be adapted to help achieve gender equality in the media, enhancing Canadian democracy in the process? After a year of collaboration with a team of big data scientists, we’re about to find out. Despite the increasing attention paid to the importance of women’s voices, in news media…
Gillette has stepped boldly into the socio-political minefields of #MeToo, bullying, spousal abuse and male self-absorption
It’s tempting to take the recent’s ‘controversy’ over the Gillette shaving company’s new advertising campaign at something less than face value. For starters, controversy itself is no longer the conversational cutting edge it once was. In this era of fake-versus-false news, universal short attention spans and ludicrous overstatement as the entry price for even being…
Only a free market will balance out pay inequities. If a company fails to compensate fairly, employees will simply move on
From conception to implementation, pay equity is a sham. It’s obscured in double speak, packaged in seemingly laudable goals and promises great results. However, it can’t deliver them because it’s based on false premises. Any good that comes of it is far outweighed by the harm. That’s why Canadians should be wary of any legislation…
One of brightest students in my university department was seriously intellectual and widely read, always taking an active and constructive part in seminars. The student was approached by two others who complained that the student took up too much space and time, and should step back. No professor ever advised such a thing to this…
