The Broadsheet: October 12th

EVERYONE'S TALKING

• Girl talk. After what's been a dark few days for U.S. women, the coverage around yesterday's International Day of the Girl was a ray of much-needed sunshine. Here are just a few things that caught my eye:

• Michelle Obama wrote an op-ed about the importance of girls education and unveiled a raft of new commitments—totaling more than $5 million—to her Let Girls Learn initiative.

• Wonder woman—yes, the superhero—will be officially “sworn in” as the UN Honorary Ambassador for the Empowerment of Women and Girls at an event at the UN Headquarters on October 21.

• Melinda Gates penned a Medium piece titled, "5 Reasons I'm Optimistic about the Future of Our Girls."

Okay, so it wasn't all rainbows and unicorns: Save the Children released a report that U.S. ranks 32nd out 144 nations—just behind Kazakhstan and Algeria—when it comes to opportunity for girls. Nevertheless, it was a pleasure to see so much focus on young women. Now, let's see if we can put girls in the spotlight for more than just one day a year.

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

• A sub-optimal response. According to a PwC survey of public company directors, 10% of board members still believe that the “optimal” board consists of somewhere between 20% and zero women. Fortune

• Sandberg staying put. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg put to bed rumors that she might join a future Hillary Clinton administration on Tuesday, saying at a tech industry conference that she plans to stay put at the social-media giant and doesn’t intend to take a role in government. WSJ

• Banking on it. A group of 72 U.K. banks, including HSBC UK, RBS, and Lloyds, have signed on to a commitment to get more women into finance. Even better: 60 of them have pledged to have women in at least 30% of senior roles by 2021, and 13 have vowed to reach parity. Fortune

• Ahn goes auto. YooJung Ahn, the woman behind Google's new self-driving car prototype, is not a car designer. Yet it is this lack of traditional automotive experience that gave her and her team "the freedom necessary to develop a Google moonshot that is now within reach: a self-driving car with no steering wheel or pedals that could shuttle a person from point A to B with a touch of a button." Fortune

• Being Banister. Cyan Banister is an award-winning angel investor, entrepreneur, and self-taught engineer. She is also genderqueer. In this Q+A with Backchannel's Jessi Hempel, she speaks publicly about her gender identity for the first time. Backchannel

• Parsing policy. Marissa Velez Kraxberger, the former CMO at Ivanka Trump’s clothing company, posted on Facebook saying that there was no maternity leave policy in place when she was hired and that employees had to fight to get a policy of eight weeks paid leave enacted. (According to Jezebel, Trump's company has not yet responded to a request for comment.) Jezebel

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Hollywood power players. Variety's new "Power of Women" package features interviews with Orange is the New Black star Laverne Cox, Miley Cyrus, Ava DuVernay, Helen Mirren and more.

• Inside woman? The latest batch of Clinton campaign emails released by Wikileaks reveal that current DNC chair Donna Brazile, who was then a vice chair, tipped the Secretary of State's staff off to a planned Twitter storm from Sanders’ African-American outreach team. The Observer

• Watch your words. The New York Times' Michael Barbaro writes about the problem with male lawmakers objecting to Donald Trump's talk on the Access Hollywood tape on the grounds that their mothers, sisters, and daughters deserve better. In that framing, he notes, "women are defined almost entirely by their relation to men. They are in need of protection and defense by men." New York Times

• Bathroom bill. A new U.S. law will equip both men’s and women’s bathrooms in federal buildings with changing stations. While this is just a, ahem, baby step, hopefully we will soon see more such stations widely available to both moms and dads. Quartz

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ON MY RADAR

More than 3,000 sexual assault survivors call for Republican leaders to stop 'enabling' Trump   New York Magazine

People are outraged by this Kim Kardashian robbery costume  Fortune

CoverGirl signs its first CoverBoy, James Charles  Elle

What's really behind Trump's obsession with Clinton's 'stamina'  New York Times

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