Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Stitch Fix readies for an IPO, Lupita Nyong’o is the latest woman to share her Harvey Weinstein experience, and company diversity reports aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Have a relaxing weekend.
EVERYONE'S TALKING
• Data dump. I will never look at corporate diversity reports the same way after reading this fascinating investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
In a quest to uncover hard, detailed data about diversity in Silicon Valley, Reveal requested EEO-1 reports from 211 of the biggest San Francisco Bay Area-based tech companies. These reports, which companies with more than 100 employees are required to send to the federal government each year, break down their workforce by race, gender and job categories such as professionals, managers, and executives. Companies are not required to release this information to the public, and only 23 of the 211 agreed to share their most recent reports.
Many big names—including Dropbox, Instacart, Netflix, PayPal, and Pandora—declined to share their data. And among those that did, the results were grim. For instance: Twitter, Square, 23andMe, Google, and Lyft do not report a single black, Latino or multiracial female executive in 2016.
Why go through the hassle of asking for the EEO-1s when some of the companies involved already release their own diversity reports? To begin with, those reports often separate gender and race, providing zero insight into the stats for women of color. Companies can pick and choose which data points to reveal—or conceal. And without the underlying data, there's no way to fact-check their claims. Indeed, several companies walked back prior diversity claims when questioned about their EEO-1 by Reveal.
My takeaway? Data are precious. And company-created diversity reports should not be mistaken for data. Reveal
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
• IPOing in style. Stitch Fix, the styling startup led by CEO and founder Katrina Lake, has filed to go public, with an initial offering size of $100 million in Class A stock (though that is likely to change). Journalists are already digging though the company's financials, which TechCrunch at least dubs "pretty great." Fortune
• #HerToo. Lupita Nyong’o is the latest woman to speak out about her run-ins with Harvey Weinstein. Perhaps the most stomach-turning allegation is that he asked to give her a massage—and insisted on taking off his pants—at his home, just rooms away from his children. New York Times
• The freelance gap. According to a new report, the gender pay gap is more pronounced among freelancers and consultants than it is in corporate settings. Female freelance writers, editors, graphic designers, artists, and others who bill for their own work make 32 cents less on average than their male counterparts. That’s significantly larger than the 24-cent difference calculated by Payscale and the 19.5-cent cent gap reported in recent U.S. Census numbers. Fortune
• Welcome to the new school. Speaking on a local NBC affiliate, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–Texas) said women—who are typically the victims of unwanted sexual advances—deserve equal blame for such abuse. "I’m from the old school that you can have behaviors that appear to be inviting; it can be interpreted as such,” she said. As Fortune's Claire Zillman notes in her story, Johnson's remarks are a textbook case of victim blaming—a practice that plays a major role in discouraging women who've been harassed from coming forward. Fortune
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Kathleen Pierce-Gilmore, formerly of PayPal, has joined Raise as president and COO. Tenia Davis from iManage has also joined Raise as chief people officer.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
• Step up. Roxane Gay weighs in on the Weinstein allegations—and the outpouring of women's stories of harassment and abuse that has followed. "They share these experiences because all of us know that this moment demands our testimony: Here is the burden I have carried. Here is the burden all women have carried," she writes. "But we’re tired of carrying it. We’ve done enough. It’s time for men to step up." New York Times
• A model entrepreneur. Cindy Crawford talks about her move from super model to entrepreneur (she has her own home furniture collection and skin care line, among other things). "I wanted to insert myself more into the projects I was doing,” she said, noting that modeling is more about taking direction from others. “I wanted to have skin in the game... I wanted to be able to profit from it.” Fortune
• Chelsea, lately. Chelsea Handler announced that Season 2 of her late night show Chelsea will be the last. She said she's halting the show to pursue more political activism—and hinted that she has a documentary in the works. Time
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ON MY RADAR
These are the young female artists to watch Bloomberg
The Bush twins want to set the record straight New York Times
Putin mentor's daughter Ksenia Sobchak to run for president The Guardian
The working woman's magazine New Yorker Cartoons
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| Quentin Tarantino, who says he has known for decades about Weinstein's alleged misconduct toward women and now feels ashamed he did not take a stronger stand. |
