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Why Gender Equality in the Workplace Isn’t Only A Problem for Women

In the wake of 2020, 1 in 4 women are considering ‘downshifting’ their careers or leaving the workforce, according to McKinsey & Company and Lean In’s annual “Women in the Workplace” report.

In 2015, when McKinsey started its annual survey on women in the workforce, the numbers said it would take 100 years to reach equity. Every year since, there have been incremental gains—until COVID-19 threatened to wipe out many of those gains. Femily, Silicon Valley’s gender advisor, interviewed McKinsey partner Jess Huang in a panel titled “2020: A Pivotal Moment for Women in the Workplace” for the 2021 SXSW virtual conference. They covered how hard women have been hit and also shared ways that everyone from bosses at work to partners at home can help right the ship.

“Before this year, we were seeing nice strides; we were seeing companies doing the right things to make their workplaces better for women,” Huang said. Many of the old paradigms in which women failed to negotiate for raises or ask for promotions were no longer prevalent, and women were no more likely than men to leave the workplace to stay home with kids. “But then this year hit, and things changed absolutely,” Huang added. More

A recent report by Mordor Intelligence shows the global biodegradable packaging market is expected to jump 40 percent, from $85 billion in 2018 to $119 billion by 2024. This indicates that more and more companies are switching to biodegradables.

Recyclable packaging is expected to jump 30 percent from $217.45 billion in 2018 to $281.86 billion by 2024.

Nielsen shows that 73 percent of consumers would “probably or definitely” change their consumption habits to reduce their impact on the environment. More

Why Corporate Sustainability is a Mainstay in 2020 and Beyond

Levi Strauss & Co. introduced a line of jeans in 2019 with 31 percent hemp, and by 2025 they hope to be selling 100 percent hemp jeans. Cotton, the main ingredient of their jeans, requires nearly 10,000 liters per kilo to grow; hemp needs less than 500 liters. Cotton production also generates much higher CO2 emissions. This is all part of the company’s attempt to experiment with ways to make its jeans more sustainable, which also includes a partnership with Evernu, which reconstitutes used fabrics so they can be used again.Similarly, Hasbro announced that it intends to phase out plastic from new product packaging, including polybags, elastic bands, shrink wrap, window sheets, and blister packs by 2022. Hasbro joined TerraCycle in a toy recycling program that turns old toys into “materials to be used in the construction of play spaces, flowerpots, park benches, and other innovative uses.”  Today, thousands of companies are working hard to reduce their carbon footprint, eliminate single-use plastics, and transform their products and services to be more sustainable. More

Digital Transformation: Hard, Expensive, and Worth It

“I love the term digital transformation,” said Lisa Nicholas, CEO of Digital Banking Services, wryly. “It’s so vague and broad. It covers so many things.” Digital Banking Services (DBS) helps financial institutions plan and execute a digital transformation—a long, painstaking, uphill journey that, when done right, can prepare a company for a future of ongoing disruption and growing customer expectations. Nicholas was referencing the vast number of business actions people claim under the digital transformation banner, from the minute to the sweeping. For example, some call plugging a new technology into a legacy business model digital transformation. But it’s not. True digital transformation involves making large changes at the organizational level: reimagining the business model, re-skilling employees, and embarking on an ongoing journey of experimentation and iteration. It generally costs a fortune—McKinsey suggested a company might need to double its annual costs for five years to cover the IT alone—and is such a headache that people often talk about DX the same weary, overwhelmed way they discuss home renovations. More

SXSW: Four Women Creatively Assault Institutional Sexism

You know that movie scene where all the people who have been victimized realize there are more of them than there are of the bad guy? That’s kind of what’s happening with women and marketing these days as a panel called Girl Culture pointed out in SXSW.

The panelists were filmmaker and VR and AR pioneer Nonny de la Pēna of Emblematic Group; documentary filmmaker Lauren Greenfield; CMO of consumer beauty at Coty Inc., Ukonwa Ojo; and moderator Margaret Johnson, chief creative officer for Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Women influence roughly 80 percent of the buying decisions and yet historically have held few positions of power in areas where they feature heavily, such as marketing and film making. But that is beginning to change. The #MeToo movement, for one thing, “taught women all over the world there’s power when we get together,” De La Pēna said. While the narrative about women was that they argue against each other and bring each other down, #MeToo changed the narrative. But more needs to change. More

Scimeca’s Italian Grocery: Like the Old Country

The first thing that hits customers when they walk in Scimeca’s Thriftway is the smell: sausage – pungent, spicy, meaty sausage. Some grocery stores smell like a water cooler. In Scimeca’s, the old family recipe being churned out in the back wafts over the cling peaches, the peanut butter, the toilet paper and the dandruff shampoos that make up two-thirds of the store. It summons the customer to the back, where the soul of Scimeca’s lives. More

Lonely Hearts Discover an Online Farming Dating Service

She was a 65 year old living in rural Ohio. She’d been lonely for a decade, she’d gone to church and prayed for a husband, and suddenly she saw an article about www.FarmersOnly.com, the dating site for farmers. She called website owner Jerry Miller at home: “I don’t know anything about computers but I have to get on this site,” she told him. He talked her through registering. The next night she called him again: “How do I get a picture on here?” Again, he coached her, finally offering to get it on the site for her if she mailed him the photo. A couple of nights later the phone rang again: “How do I send emails?”

It was about three weeks later that he heard from her again. Expecting to talk her through a technical problem, he was shocked to hear, “Thanks, I got married.”more