How Society Pays When Women’s Work Is Unpaid
Claire Cain Miller, The New York Times
This piece delves into “time poverty,” or how women’s unbalanced responsibility for unpaid household work robs them of time for other things, like building careers with the earning power of men. This issue is a 2016 priority for Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Gates Foundation. “This is one of those root inequalities that exist all over in society and we just don’t talk about it very much,” she tells Miller. “If we don’t bring it forward, we basically won’t unlock the potential of women.”
A Detergent Commercial Makes a Simple, Powerful Point About Inequality
Frida Garza, Quartz
Sometimes advertising does more than sell products and services — it powerfully moves its audience. Such is the case with detergent company Ariel India’s #ShareTheLoad campaign, which examines how gender norms lead to unequal allocation of household chores. Its simple-yet-powerful message has grabbed the attention of women like Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, as well as women across India. Garza writes: “Even if it’s just marketing, Ariel India’s #ShareTheLoad commercial asks an important question: Is laundry only a woman’s job? And answers it boldly: Nope.”
The Single American Woman
Rebecca Traister, New York Magazine
Traister’s work paints a detailed picture of the dramatic rise of single American women as a growing demographic with increasingly potent economic and political power. “We are living through the invention of independent female adulthood as a norm, not an aberration, and the creation of an entirely new population: adult women who are no longer economically, socially, sexually, or reproductively dependent on or defined by the men they marry,” she writes. It’s a fascinating read, from start to finish.
What It’s Really Like to Work in Hollywood*
(*If you’re not a straight white man.)
Melena Ryzik, The New York Times
Conversations ahead of this Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony have centered on two subjects: the likely winners and the lack of racial and gender diversity among the nominees. We explored the diversity issue in our series on women in Hollywood last year, and The Times has repeatedly tackled it as well. This collection of quotes and images from non-white, non-male actors, directors and other people trying to make a mark in the business offers an interesting, if sobering, exploration of the subject.
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