Ivanka Trump, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, Female Friendships: Broadsheet August 3

EVERYONE'S TALKING

• Friends with business benefits? Claire nodded to this story by Mallun Yen yesterday, but I couldn't let it go by without getting your thoughts.

In her piece, titled "How Friendship Holds Women Back in Their Careers—and What They Can Do About It," Yen writes about ChIPsNetwork.org, a site she co-founded that's dedicated to "connect[ing] women in technology, law, and policy for the purpose of helping build bigger books of business." But while the network succeeded in creating connections and fostering friendships, writes Yen, the women it brought together didn't end up making business deals.

So, Yen started polling the women in circle, asking what was stopping them from doing business with their smart, ambitious friends. "Women told me that when they asked a friend for business, they feared it would damage their personal relationships, took rejection personally, and became gun-shy about making another pitch...Women who received an ask from a friend said they didn’t expect their friends to hit them up for business and when they did, it sometimes caused an unspoken tension that dampened their enthusiasm for the relationship."

Her conclusion: "Women’s friendships tend to become deeply personal and intimate very quickly. Trying to make the leap directly from intense personal relationships to business can feel abrupt and awkward to both sides. So the very thing about female friendships that is deservedly celebrated may also be holding us back from generating vital business with each other."

Yen has some interesting suggestions for how women can dislodge this barrier and rewire their friendships in way that opens the door to including the more transactional back-and-forth of the business world.

But I'm curious—does this dynamic sound familiar to you? Have you been on the losing end of one of those asks, or perhaps, have you found a way to mix business and friendship in a way that works? I'd love to hear about it (and may use your answer in a future edition): Kristen.Bellstrom@fortune.com  Fortune

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

• Words<Actions. Ivanka Trump deviated from her dad's line on two issues during an interview with Axios yesterday. Trump said she is "vehemently against" separating families at the border, and that she does not view the media as the "enemy of the people." Her critics were not charmed, asking how Trump, a White House official, could claim to be so against a policy she seemingly did nothing to stop. Fortune

• My opinion: Get more women's opinions. To get a sense of how well women's perspectives are represented in the opinion pages of major publications, Foreign Policy Interrupted reviewed foreign policy op-eds in the NYT, Washington Post, WSJ, and LA Times in 1996, 2006, and 2016. In total, women penned just 15% of the 3,758 op-eds the group reviewed. That share did increase over time, but still topped out in 2016 at just 19%. CJR

• Meet the mavericks of Mavericks. Take a look into the lives of the women who compete in the fascinating and sort of insane (in a good way!) sport of big wave surfing. These six women are slated to become the first to compete at Mavericks, a famous spot outside of San Francisco: California Sunday Magazine

• Value watchers. I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Weight Watchers CEO Mindy Grossman to talk about how she is working to put WW's mission statement—“inspiring healthy habits for real life”—to work within the company. Among the steps Grossman is taking: every corporate decision is put through what she calls a “purpose filter,” a sort of internal checklist of values that matter for Weight Watchers and its stakeholders. Fortune

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Felicis Ventures has named Victoria Treyger as its fourth managing director.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Better late than never. The Chicago City Council has renamed Congress Parkway, a prominent downtown street, for Ida B. Wells, whom the NYT commemorates as a "pioneering newspaper editor, anti-lynching campaigner and suffragist." The move comes as Wells' family is preparing to build a monument—also in Chicago—in her honor.  New York Times

• Get greedy. Refinery29 is in the midst of an interesting series on women and greed. While the included stories touch on everything from Paris Hilton to Instagram, all have one nagging question in common: "Women deserve to take their piece of an increasingly shrinking pie — but how much is enough and who gets to decide that?" Refinery29

• Read different. This excerpt from Small Fry, the upcoming memoir from Lisa Brennan-Jobs, daughter of Apple founder Steve Jobs, is a juicy weekend read. (Spoiler! Jobs does not come out looking like Dad of Year.) Vanity Fair

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ON MY RADAR

Newsrooms must stand up to targeted campaigns of harassment  The Verge

A medical school in Japan didn’t want too many women. So it lowered their grades.  Washington Post

‘It can happen even to guys’: Ohio State wrestlers detail abuse, saying #UsToo  New York Times

How do we define the female gaze in 2018?  Vulture

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