Year: 2018

United States (Conversation) – On Nov. 22, 1968, an episode of “Star Trek” titled “Plato’s Stepchildren” broadcast the first interracial kiss on American television. The episode’s plot is bizarre: Aliens who worship the Greek philosopher Plato use telekinetic powers to force the Enterprise crew to sing, dance and kiss. At one point, the aliens compel Lieutenant Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Captain Kirk (William Shatner) to embrace. Each character tries to resist, but eventually Kirk tilts Uhura back and the two kiss as the aliens lasciviously look on. The smooch is…

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(Conversation) – Companies with more gender-balanced boards are less often sued for breaching environmental laws, suggesting that these companies are more mindful of protecting the environment. That is the key finding of my research, published in the Journal of Corporate Finance. I studied 1,893 environmental lawsuits filed against any of the firms listed on the Standard and Poor’s 1500 composite index in the United States from 2000 to 2015. I found that for every additional woman appointed to a corporate board, the company experienced an average 1.5% reduction in litigation…

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World Wide (Conversation) – Weak political commitment, inadequate resources and persistent discrimination against women and girls: these are just some reasons that many countries still don’t openly and comprehensively address sexual and reproductive health and rights. This is borne out by figures. Each year in developing countries, including those in Africa, more than 30 million women don’t give birth at a health facility. More than 45 million have inadequate or no antenatal care. And over 200 million women want to avoid pregnancy but don’t have access to modern contraceptive methods….

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France (GV) – On August 1, 2018, the French National Assembly unanimously adopted a bill supporting the fight against sexual harassment and violence. One key element of the law, proposed by Gender Equality Minister Marlene Schiappa, is the creation of a policy against sexual harassment, or “sexist outrage”, defined as: Imposer à une personne tout propos ou comportements à connotation sexuelle ou sexiste qui soit porte atteinte à sa dignité en raison de son caractère dégradant ou humiliant, soit créé à son encontre une situation intimidante, hostile ou offensante (Art. 621-1.-I.) The…

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(Conversation) – Crowds cheered as local lawmakers on August 18 unveiled a street sign showing that Rogers Avenue in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn would now be called Jean-Jacques Dessalines Boulevard, after a Haitian slave turned revolutionary general. When Dessalines declared Haiti’s independence from France in 1804 after a 13-year slave uprising and civil war, he became the Americas’ first black head of state. Supporting the French colonial perspective, leaders across the Americas and Europe immediately demonized Dessalines. Even in the United States, itself newly independent from Britain, newspapers recounted…

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United States (TexasTribune) – The basement of a federal building in downtown Austin, 10 floors below U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s office. Space in a “fashionable” South Carolina office park. Branches of major hotel chains in Los Angeles, Miami and Seattle. These facilities rarely appear together on government lists, but they all have something in common: They’re nodes in a little-known network of holding areas where people in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spend hours or even days on their way to other locations. The government’s now-suspended “zero…

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