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Measuring the Impact of #MeToo on Gender Equity in Hollywood The #MeToo movement has brought issues of sexual harassment and gender inequities to the forefront around the world. But how much of a tangible impact has it had on the experiences of women in the workplace? In this piece, the authors discuss their research that examined representation of women in Hollywood before and after the allegations against producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017.
They compared various representation metrics for films produced by production teams that had worked with Weinstein in the past with films whose teams had not worked with Weinstein, inferring that those who had been associated with Weinstein in the past would likely be more impacted by the movement. They found that production teams who had worked with Weinstein (and thus who were probably more impacted by the #MeToo movement) hired more female writers after October 2017, and those female writers were more likely to work on films with male protagonists and protagonists that defied traditional gender stereotypes. While this is a narrow dataset focused on just one industry, the authors argue based on these findings that the #MeToo movement has in fact made a significant, positive impact on the representation and support of women in the workplace. |
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The Psychological Benefits of Commuting to Work Many people who have been working from home are experiencing a void they can't quite name.
In 1994, an Italian physicist named Cesare Marchetti noted that throughout history, humans have shown a willingness to spend roughly 60 minutes a day in transit. This explains why ancient cities such as Rome never exceeded about three miles in diameter. The steam train, streetcar, subway, and automobile expanded that distance. But transit times stayed the same. The one-way average for an American commute stands at about 27 minutes.
Marchetti's Constant, as those 60 minutes are known, is usually understood to describe what people will endure, not what they might actually desire. But if you take the richest people of any era - who can afford to design their lives however they like - and calculate the transit time between their home and workplace, what do you find? J. P. Morgan: a roughly 25-minute ride by horse-drawn cab. John D. Rockefeller: an elevated-rail ride of about 30 minutes.
In a 2001 paper, two researchers at UC Davis attempted to divine the ideal commute time. They settled on 16 minutes. To be sure, this was a substantial shortening of the study participants' actual commutes (which were half an hour, on average). But it was not zero. In fact, a few wished for a longer commute. Asked why, they ticked off their reasons - the feeling of control in one's own car; the time to plan, to decompress, to make calls, to listen to audiobooks. Clearly, the researchers wrote, the commute had some "positive utility." |
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How 'Chaos' In The Shipping Industry Is Choking The Economy In San Francisco Bay, the traffic jam of container ships has gotten so bad that the U.S. Coast Guard has been asking ships not to enter the bay at all. Robert Blomerth, director of the USCG's San Francisco Vessel Traffic Service, said last week that there were 16 container ships waiting in the open ocean outside the Golden Gate to get in and unload their cargo. He says it's "completely abnormal."
When we spoke to Gene Seroka, the head of the Port of Los Angeles, he said his port had 19 ships waiting to dock and they're now waiting, on average, about five days to get in. In normal times, they don't have to wait at all.
Lars Jensen, CEO of Vespucci Maritime, has spent 20 years studying the industry and he says what's going on is unprecedented. "The container shipping industry is in a state of chaos that I don't think it has ever been since it was invented," he says. |
The Telegram Billionaire and His Dark Empire Telegram is one of the world's most popular chat apps - and possibly the most dangerous. There is little regulation of the platform, which is popular with criminals and terrorists. Who is the mastermind behind it?
Pavel Durov squats shirtless in the lotus position on a hotel roof, the skyline of Dubai stretching out in the background. The Instagram photo, which looks like it could be one of thousands of other selfies from random influencers, is one of the rare signs of life from one of the world's richest and most influential internet entrepreneurs. Some call the 36-year-old "Russia's Zuckerberg" because he founded the Russian Facebook clone VKontakte in 2006. But his latest investment is much more significant: Telegram, arguably the world's most dangerous messenger service.
Little is known about the Russian billionaire, who is considered to be the richest person in his adopted home of Dubai. And what he does say in public often sounds puzzling. "The outside world is a reflection of the inside one," he wrote as the caption under his Instagram photo.
Durov's app is a global player, having been installed on 570 million smartphones. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the app has been more popular than ever, and the messenger service is considered to be one of the few communications platforms that can keep pace with products from Silicon Valley. Millions of users switched this year from WhatsApp to Telegram. |
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The Key to Landing Your Next Job? Storytelling. Four tips that will help you get noticed (and get ahead) in your career.
Storytelling is a powerful tool when it comes to influence and persuasion. Science tells us that voicing our opinions is often more polarizing than persuasive, and statistics, even when used as evidence, are difficult to retain. But if you blend the two together and weave them into an engaging narrative, suddenly, you can tug at heart strings and change minds.
This means you, job candidate, have a lot of power. With the right narrative, you can make anyone you want feel great - about you. All you have to do is organize your ideas into a story that elicits positive emotions, resulting in a rush of the feel-good hormone, dopamine, in your listener's brain. As Medina points out, "Dopamine greatly aids memory and information processing ... it creates a Post-It note that reads, 'Remember this.'"
So how can you weave storytelling into your next job application? Here are four tips that will help you get noticed - and get ahead - in your career. |
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5 Ways That Big Companies Make Space for Innovation The most important question facing business leaders is simply this: Can your company invest in innovations that cannibalize its core products while exceeding quarterly financial targets? It must do the former to survive as its core markets decline and continue to do the latter to boost its value to investors.
Sadly, the models proposed for accomplishing these goals leave something to be desired. The late Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen proposed that companies should respond to disruptive technologies by setting up a separate subsidiary and charging it to compete with the parent. HBS professor Michael Tushman advocates creating an ambidextrous organization that can both exploit current opportunities and extend into new ones.
There is scant evidence that these approaches produce sustained, rapid revenue growth. |
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