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Organizers of the BRIT Awards are looking to using gender-neutral award categories in efforts to make awards more inclusive to musicians.

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The organisers of the BRIT Awards, Britain's biggest music awards, are reportedly considering making their award categories gender-neutral.

According to The Sunday Times, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) which organises the awards might ditch separate awards for Best Male Solo Artist and Best Female Solo Artist.

Although all other categories, including Producer of the Year and British Breakthrough Act are gender-neutral, the solo artist categories have remained gendered since the awards began in 1977.
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Campaigners who support the change say that it will make the awards more inclusive of musicians who identify as non-binary.

Sam Smith, who performed at the BRIT Awards 2019 and was nominated for the Best Male Solo Artist award, came out as non-binary and genderqueer around a month after this year's ceremony.

They said at the time: "Maybe I'm not a man, maybe I'm not a woman, maybe I'm just me and maybe that's okay." They later said that they want to be referred to with them/ them pronouns.

The BRIT Awards could follow the VMAs in becoming gender-neutral

MTV's Video Music Awards (VMAs) made the decision to get rid of gendered award categories in 2017, and the Best Female Video and Best Male Video awards were combined into one genderless Artist of the Year moonman trophy.

Earlier this year, Lady Gaga called on the Oscars to also adopt gender-neutral award categories.

Speaking to media after the ceremony on February 24, she sent a message of love to LGBT+ fans, and added that the ceremony should move away from gendered categories.

"I have a true dream in our future as we evolve as humanity that these award shows not be male and female, but that we include everyone," she said.

Sources at the BPI reportedly told The Sunday Times that there would not yet be any changes to the award categories at the February 2020 BRIT Awards.
Gallery: All the most stylish stars at the Brit Awards 2019 (Microsoft Photos)

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The BRIT Awards considers gender-neutral award categories

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The organisers of the BRIT Awards, Britain's biggest music awards, are reportedly considering making their award categories gender-neutral. According to The Sunday Times, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) which organises the awards might ditch separate awards for Best Male Solo Artist and Best Female Solo Artist.

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A couple had a hippo at the Texas zoo eat a watermelon with Jell-O in it to reveal the gender of their baby. It had gotten mixed opinions as a lot of people believe it was taken too far and could harm the animal.

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Hippo Helps Reveal Expectant Couple’s Baby's Sex

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In this blog post a personal view is shown on what a woman's place is. This view goes along with the ideas that society has engrained that men serve to do labor and woman need to be a mother and caregiver. Constructs in society pose as argument for her viewpoint.

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Women were created to nurture. It's the way God made us. If women don't have children, they will nurture something or someone. Have you noticed in all this fight for women's rights that most women choose to take on the careers that are nurturing such as nursing and teaching? Women are dominant in these fields because it is in their nature to nurture.

If you are married, God wants you to nurture the husband and the children He has given to you. This is his intended purpose. I love what this one man wrote on one of my posts:

"Men and women are not equal in many respects. If we were, we would have fifty fifty men/women as firefighters, secretaries, construction workers, nurses, engineers, ditch diggers, teachers, police officers, having babies, lawn care specialists mowing your grass, social workers, race car drivers, and lawyers. Men/women are suited for tasks that are not equal but vitally important to how we as humans can survive. But, that does not mean we don't have equal value. Feminist seeks to throw the natural abilities we have out the window that messes up the balance that God has created."

I love driving by construction sites on the roads or highways. If you look closely, the ones who are managing the large cranes, climbing the electrical poles, and doing the heavy lifting are always men. Sometimes I will see women holding the signs to direct the traffic but the majority of the difficult, back breaking, and dangerous jobs are held by men because they were created to do these things. They are called to be the protectors and providers of societies. Women were not.

Most of the careers that women are seeking outside of the home can be used at home. We nurse our children to health the best that we are able. We teach them the ways of the Lord and how best to live. We help our husband with his tasks as a secretary helps her boss. We care for those who need help in our churches and neighborhoods. God's intention for us is to have these activities happening in and from the home, not away from the home.

Teaching young women to be keepers at home isn't something that I made up. It's something God commands that I teach (Titus 2:3-5). If you have a problem with it, you have a problem with God's commands. You can try to water it down all you want by giving examples of other "career" women in the Bible but I would rather trust that God's commands are perfect and simply obey Him. God's commands to us are clearly stated. No example in the Bible will negate His commands to us. Instead of fighting what He wants, begin believing that He knows what is best for us.

The aged women likewise, that they be in behaviour as becometh holiness, not false accusers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things; That they may teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
Titus 2:3-5

*Painting by Robert Coombs

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Women were created to nurture. It's the way God made us. If women don't have children, they will nurture something or someone. Have you noticed in all this fight for women's rights that most women choose to take on the careers that are nurturing such as nursing and teaching?

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Following a request from a little girl the standard little green army men are also going to feature army women. She was not impressed with pink versions that were offered and felt that they needed to exist because he friends mom was in the army.

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Look alive, Santa Claus: Plastic Army Women will be deployed into toy stores by Christmas 2020.

As Chicago's NBC 5 reports, the gender-reversed toy troops from BMC Toys made their debut at the Chicago Toy Soldier Show on Sunday, thanks in part to some nudging from a 6-year-old girl who was underwhelmed by the standard green Army men.

"She wanted us to do a Google search to see if they did in fact exist because if they did she wanted us to get some," Vivian Lord's mom Brittany told Good Morning America. "We could only find some pink ones and she quickly pointed out those were not women but just men in pink and Army men don't wear pink."

The Little Rock, Ark. youngster wrote to several toy companies urging them to create a female version of the classic figurines.

"Why do you not make girl army men[?]," she wrote in her letter. "My friend's mom is in the Army to[o] so why don't you make them to[o]?"

It was just the call to arms BMC Toys owner Jeff Imel needed to actually manufacture the idea he'd first toyed with a few years ago.

The Scranton, Pa.-based company got to work, and the figurines are now a reality, with green female soldiers wielding binoculars and guns. According to his blog, Imel hopes to expand the poses - adding running figures, rifles and bazookas - and has already received requests for Navy and Air Force sets.

And while the toys won't be available to buy until the 2020 holiday season, Imel has already received an enthusiastic response both from girls like Lord - who told GMA she's "happy and proud" about her role in getting them made - and the generations that came before her.

"I'm especially surprised by the number of messages I've received from women who wanted a set of 'Little Green Army Women' as kids, even back in the 1960s," he wrote in his blog. "Many look forward to sharing a set with their granddaughters and completing the circle of a long-lost childhood wish."

"Nice to represent the female sacrifices and contributions to all military for real," read one Twitter comment.

"Being a female veteran ... this speaks volumes!!" a fan tweeted.

"It helps show that girls can be soldiers too," another commenter noted. "This is not an attack on anyone's masculinity."

And yet, some are already complaining.

We won't truly be equal until as many women are killed in combat as men have been throughout history
- verbaledge (@verbaledge420) September 15, 2019

😂😂😂 those soldiers are gender less. What are they doing to make them look female? How dumb
- George Brown (@georgebrownmem) September 14, 2019
Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

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Plastic Army Women set to hit toy stores after 6-year-old girl's inspiring letter

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Look alive, Santa Claus: Plastic Army Women will be deployed into toy stores by Christmas 2020. As Chicago's NBC 5 reports, the gender-reversed toy troops from BMC Toys made their debut at the Chicago Toy Soldier Show on Sunday, thanks in part to some nudging from a 6-year-old girl who was underwhelmed by the standard green Army men.

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In this we can see how Halloween costumes differ between men and women for the same costume concept. Men's costumes are often shown as practical or funny while women are given sexy costumes for things that are being sexualized for no reason.

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Best Friends Swap Men And Women's Halloween Costumes

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College students burned a Latina authors book because they didn't like what she said about white privilege's. Responses differed with some faculty simply saying it was their first amendment rights.

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Students at a Georgia university burned a Latina author's book after she talked about white privilege at a campus event.

Video showing a group of laughing students gathering around a flaming grill, watching pages of the book "Make Your Home Among Strangers" burn, has been widely shared on social media. The footage was shot shortly after author Jennine Capó Crucet spoke at Georgia Southern University's campus in Statesboro on Wednesday.

Capó Crucet's acclaimed novel tells the story of a young Cuban American girl who is accepted to a prestigious university in the U.S. It has been required reading in some freshman classes at the university.

The book burning came after a white student asked Capó Crucet during a question-and-answer session why she "made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged," the university's student newspaper, the George-Anne, re ported.

"I noticed that you made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged," the student said. "What makes you believe that it's okay to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we're taught? I don't understand what the purpose of this was."

Capó Crucet responded, "I came here because I was invited and I talked about white privilege because it's a real thing that you are actually benefiting from right now in even asking this question."

JaQuaylon Taylor, 18, a freshman at the university, told NBC News that the student's question at the talk "threw everybody off ... There was a lot of negativity in that space."

After video of Capó Crucet's book getting torched circulated, the author said in a statement Friday that she had been invited to " give a talk on issues concerning diversity and the college experience, one that expanded on the themes of my novel."

Capó Crucet said that after the student's question, which she said led to students shouting back and forth at each other across the room, she asked faculty to follow up with the student who had posed the question and any others who may be similarly upset, "because a compassionate and continuing conversation needed to occur."

"We weren't going to answer these questions in one night of discussion," she said in her statement.

Capó Crucet said that after the session, she was moved out of the lodging the university had arranged for her in town into another hotel and that later she learned "a crowd had formed outside her original accommodations." She also saw the videos of the book burning.

She added that many students at the campus had told her "how much the story of the novel's protagonist mirrored their own."

"To think of those students watching as a group of their peers burned that story - effectively erasing them on the campus they are expected to think of as a safe space - feels devastating," she wrote.

Georgia Southern said in a statement to NBC News on Saturday that book burning does not align with its values, but that "it's within the students' First Amendment rights."

University President Kyle Marrero said in an email to the college community on Friday that many students as well as members of the campus faculty and staff "are concerned and disappointed about the incidents."

Marrero, who is Puerto Rican, said the incidents are "another example of freedom of expression and a continuing debate of differing ideas, which are tenets of our ongoing efforts to align with our values and initiatives encompassing inclusive excellence."

Among those expressing disappointment were honors program students, who said in a statement, "Book burning is never an act done out of respect."

"Learning can only occur when we strive to listen and understand one another in an atmosphere of civility and respect," the statement said.

Capó Crucet was scheduled to deliver a similar talk at the university's Savannah campus later this week. Jennifer Wise, a university spokeswoman, told NBC the author's team had canceled the second appearance.

Capó Crucet, who teaches at the University of Nebraska, tweeted on Thursday that the event was canceled because "the administration said they could not guarantee my safety or the safety of its students on campus because of open carry laws." A 2017 Georgia law lets people with a state concealed-weapons permit carry guns on parts of public college campuses.

"Make Your Home Among Strangers" touches on issues around white privilege and racism and is based on Capó Crucet's own life.

She was the first person in her family to be born in the United States after her family moved to Florida from Cuba. After growing up in Hialeah, a suburb of Miami that is majority Latino, Capó Crucet experienced somewhat of a culture shock as a first-generation student at Cornell University, which has a Latino student population of roughly 13 percent.

" The barriers that minority students face at majority-white colleges and universities are well documented," said Georgia Southern's writing and linguistics department in a statement. "We regret that Crucet's experience in Statesboro ended as it did. We call on students to remain civil in disagreement, even on difficult issues."

At the campus Capó Crucet visited, Latino students made up roughly 6 percent of enrollment in 2017, according to data on the university's website. The university as a whole had Latino enrollment of 6.4 percent.
Follow NBC Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Associated Press contributed.

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Georgia college students burn Latina author's book after she talked about white privilege

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Students at a Georgia university burned a Latina author's book after she talked about white privilege at a campus event. Video showing a group of laughing students gathering around a flaming grill, watching pages of the book "Make Your Home Among Strangers" burn, has been widely shared on social media.

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Ilhan Omar embraces her intersectionality and believes that this is one thing Trump fears about her. Within her is many things Trump hates and as a result she is always on his mind.

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Ilhan Omar brags that Donald Trump is 'terrified' of her, claims she lives 'rent-free' in his head and says impeachment fills her with 'joy' during Samantha Bee interview

Ilhan Omar was asked by Samantha Bee why she thinks Trump focuses on her

She said her 'intersectionality' as a woman, refugee, and Muslim 'terrifies' him

Said she lives 'rent free' in Trump's head, but he doesn't take up space in hers

Omar said that upholding the law by impeaching Trump brings her 'joy', along with the thought that Donald Jr might be upset

Ilhan Omar bragged that President Trump is 'terrified' of her and that she lives 'rent-free' inside his head because he spends so much time focused on her.

Omar - part of the so-called Democrat 'squad' including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Talib and Ayanna Pressley - argued it is her 'intersectonality' that most intimidates Trump.

In an interview with Samantha Bee, the Minnesota representative said she gets 'joy' from upholding the law by impeaching Trump and joked that the thought of Donald Jr being unhappy also makes her smile.

'I sit on the intersectionality of many identities he despises: Woman, immigrant, Muslim, refugee, hijabi - in one beautiful package,' she told Samantha Bee.

'I think he's terrified by any women who are practising shine theory who have each-other's back,' she added.

Shine theory is the philosophy of helping to bring out the best in friends or colleagues, in the hope that they will do the same for you.

Quizzed by the Full Frontal host about how it feels to be attacked by Republican politicians and conservative commentators, she insisted it doesn't bother her.

'I don't really care because the people who are working to take me out of context are vilifying and diminishing my voice anyway,' she said.

'Just because I live rent free in their head doesn't mean they live rent free in mine.'

Speaking about the impeachment inquiry now investigating Donald Trump - which 'the squad' was fundamental in pushing for - she denied it was about getting rid of a president she personally dislikes.

Instead, she insisted, it is about upholding the rule of law.

'A lot of people think we take joy in impeaching this president because we don't like him,' she said.

'But we take joy in making sure that when we say we're going to protect the rule of law, that the American people know that we are serious about that..

The inquiry was launched after it was revealed that Trump pressured Ukraine's leader Vlodomir Zelensky to dig up dirt on rival Joe Biden.

At the same time, the US was withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, leading to accusations of a 'Mafia-style shakedown' of a foreign leader.

Trump has repeatedly denied there was anything wrong with the call, while lawyer Rudy Giuliani has insisted that he was acting to defend the US.

Parallel investigations into Trump's in-office dealings by various House committees are putting reports together which could then form the basis for impeachment proceedings against him.

Trump has described the efforts as a 'coup' and 'treason' and has even suggested America would suffer a Civil War-like fracture if he is kicked from office.

Omar and 'the squad' have been the target of vociferous attacks by Trump in the past, including at a rally in July where he said: 'Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.'

Of the four politicians Trump was referring to, only Omar was born outside of the US - living for a time in a Somalian refugee camp before emigrating to America.

Trump has also helped to push claims that Omar married her brother in an apparent immigration fraud, a theory that multiple investigations have been unable to get to the bottom of.

Omar has been married to at least two men in religious and legally binding ceremonies, but it is not clear whether her second husband - Ahmed Nur Said Elmi - is related to her.

She has vehemently denied the allegations, accusing her critics of racial bias.

Speaking in the glad-handing interview about her identity, Omar said: 'I escaped war at the age of eight, lived in a refugee camp for four years, I know what destruction looks like.

'Now I'm a member of Congress. I am, in so many ways, the American story.'

Speaking about the US, sh added: 'We're very comfortable being the hero in every story but we're not comfortable any time someone reminds us we've been a villain.

'It's my job make sure that we end this story as a hero.'

Quizzed about her hopes for the 2020 election, she said: 'We're fighting for the soul of our country, for values of equality, pluralism, religious liberty - the values that my grandfather was excited about and talked about when we lived in the refugee camp.

'We need a president who can live up to that.'

When Bee joked that the description doesn't sound like Joe Biden, she responded: 'Definitely not Biden.'

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Ilhan Omar brags that Trump is 'terrified' of her 'intersectionality'

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Ilhan Omar was asked by Samantha Bee why she thinks Trump focuses on her She said her 'intersectionality' as a woman, refugee, and Muslim 'terrifies' him Said she lives 'rent free' in Trump's head, but he doesn't take up space in hers Omar said that upholding the law by impeaching Trump brings her 'joy', along with the thought that Donald Jr might be upset Ilhan Omar bragged that President Trump is 'terrified' of her and that she lives 'rent-free' inside his head because he spends so much time focused on her.

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A white attorney discusses an encounter she had with police. She expresses her biggest fear was the police shooting her dog, and how if she was black that fear would have switched to a fear of herself being shot. She uses her white privilage in a positive way.

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This Texas Attorney Recognizes Her White Privilege | NowThis

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Mattel recently debuted a doll that is gender neutral. It comes in a variety of skin tones and allows for the child to customize it with different characteristics. They hope this will allow them to be more inclusive and allow more children to see themselves represented.

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Mattel launches gender-inclusive doll line

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Idris Elba uses his male/class privilege for good. He shows his support for the #metoo movement and explains that its only bad for "men with something to hide".

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Idris Elba Is Talking About The 'Me Too' Movement

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This article focuses on ways in which the world is designed for men while ignoring women. The differences ignored can be dangerous for instance, the fitting of body armor. Women in non traditional feminine roles have to face challenges men don't.

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When broadcaster Sandi Toksvig was studying anthropology at university, one of her female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. "This," said the professor, "is alleged to be man's first attempt at a calendar." Toksvig and her fellow students looked at the bone in admiration. "Tell me," the professor continued, "what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar."

Women have always tracked their periods. We've had to. Since 2015, I've been reliant on a period tracker app, which reassures me that there's a reason I'm welling up just thinking about Andy Murray's "casual feminism". And then there's the issue of the period itself: when you will be bleeding for up to seven days every month, it's useful to know more or less when those seven days are going to take place. Every woman knows this, and Toksvig's experience is a neat example of the difference a female perspective can make, even to issues that seem entirely unrelated to gender.

For most of human history, though, that perspective has not been recorded. Going back to the theory of Man the Hunter, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics, the stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future, are all marked - disfigured - by a female-shaped "absent presence". This is the gender data gap.

These silences, these gaps, have consequences. They impact on women's lives, every day. The impact can be relatively minor - struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm, for example. Irritating, certainly. But not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety tests don't account for women's measurements. Not like dying from a stab wound because your police body armour doesn't fit you properly. For these women, the consequences of living in a world built around male data can be deadly.

The gender data gap is both a cause and a consequence of the type of unthinking that conceives of humanity as almost exclusively male. In the 1956 musical My Fair Lady, phoneticist Henry Higgins is baffled when, after enduring months of his hectoring put-downs, his protege-cum-victim Eliza Doolittle finally bites back. "Why can't a woman be more like a man?" he grumbles.

When 'women's work' is deadly

The formula to determine standard office temperature was developed in the 1960s around the metabolic resting rate of the average man. But a recent Dutch study found that the metabolic rate of young adult females performing light office work is significantly lower than the standard values for men doing the same activity. In fact, the formula may overestimate female metabolic rate by as much as 35%, meaning that current offices are on average five degrees too cold for women. This leads to the odd sight of female office workers wrapped in blankets in the summer, while their male colleagues wander around in shorts.

Not only is this situation inequitable, it is bad business sense: an uncomfortable workforce is an unproductive workforce. But workplace data gaps lead to a lot worse than simple discomfort and inefficiency. Over the past 100 years, workplaces have, on the whole, got considerably safer. In the early 1900s, about 4,400 people in the UK died at work every year. By 2016, that figure had fallen to 135. But while serious injuries at work have been decreasing for men, there is evidence that they have been increasing among women. The gender data gap is again implicated, with occupational research traditionally focused on male-dominated industries.

Every year, 8,000 people in the UK die from work-related cancers. And although most research in this area has been done on men, it's far from clear that men are the most affected. Over the past 50 years, breast cancer rates in the industrialised world have risen significantly - but a failure to research female bodies, occupations and environments means that the data for exactly what is behind this rise is lacking. "We know everything about dust disease in miners," Rory O'Neill, professor of occupational and environmental policy research at the University of Stirling, tells me. "You can't say the same for exposures, physical or chemical, in 'women's work'."

Cancer is a long-latency disease, O'Neill says, so even if we started the studies now, it would take a working generation before we had any usable data. But we aren't starting the studies now. Instead,we continue to rely on data from studies done on men as if they apply to women. Specifically, Caucasian men aged 25 to 30, who weigh 70kg. This is "Reference Man" and his superpower is being able to represent humanity as a whole. Of course, he does not.

Men and women have different immune systems and hormones, which can play a role in how chemicals are absorbed. Women tend to be smaller than men and have thinner skin, both of which can lower the level of toxins they can be safely exposed to. This lower tolerance threshold is compounded by women's higher percentage of body fat, in which some chemicals can accumulate. Chemicals are still usually tested in isolation, and on the basis of a single exposure. But this is not how women tend to encounter them.

In nail salons, where the workforce is almost exclusively female (and often migrant), workers will be exposed on a daily basis to a huge range of chemicals that are "routinely found in the polishes, removers, gels, shellacs, disinfectants and adhesives that are staples of their work", according to the Canadian researcher Anne Rochon Ford. Many of these chemicals have been linked to cancer, miscarriages and lung diseases. Some may alter the body's normal hormonal functions. If these women then go home and begin a second unpaid shift cleaning their home, they will be exposed to different chemicals that are ubiquitous in common products. The effects of these mixing together are largely unknown.

Most of the research on chemicals has focused on their absorption through the skin. But many of the ones used in nail salons are extremely volatile, which means that they evaporate at room temperature and can be inhaled - along with the considerable amounts of dust produced when acrylic nails are filed. The research on how this may impact on workers is virtually nonexistent.

Part of the failure to see the risks in traditionally female-dominated industries is because often these jobs are an extension of what women do in the home (although at a more onerous scale). But the data gap when it comes to women in the workplace doesn't only arise in female-dominated industries.

Little data exists on injuries to women in construction, but the New York Committee for Occupational Safety & Health (NYCOSH) points to a US study of union carpenters that found women had higher rates of sprains, strains and nerve conditions of the wrist and forearm than men. Given the lack of data, it's hard to be sure exactly why this is, but it's a safe bet to attribute at least some of the blame to "standard" construction site equipment being designed around the male body.

A female police officer had to have breast-reduction surgery because of the health effects of wearing her body armour

Wendy Davis, ex-director of the Women's Design Service in the UK, questions the standard size of a bag of cement. It's a comfortable weight for a man to lift - but it doesn't actually have to be that size, she points out. "If they were a bit smaller, then women could lift them." Davis also takes issue with the standard brick size. "I've got photographs of my [adult] daughter holding a brick. She can't get her hand round it. But [her husband] Danny's hand fits perfectly comfortably. Why does a brick have to be that size?" She also notes that the typical A1 architect's portfolio fits nicely under most men's arms while most women's arms don't reach round it.

NYCOSH similarly notes that "standard hand tools like wrenches tend to be too large for women's hands to grip tightly".

In the UK, employers are legally required to provide well-maintained personal protective equipment (PPE) - anything from goggles to full body suits - to workers who need it, free of charge. But most PPE is based on the sizes and characteristics of male populations from Europe and the US. The TUC found that employers often think that when it comes to female workers all they need to do to comply with this legal requirement is to buy smaller sizes.

Differences in chests, hips and thighs can affect the way the straps fit on safety harnesses. The use of a "standard" US male face shape for dust, hazard and eye masks means they don't fit most women (as well as a lot of black and minority ethnic men). A 2017 TUC report found that the problem with ill-fitting PPE was worst in the emergency services, where only 5% of women said that their PPE never hampered their work, with body armour, stab vests, hi-vis vests and jackets all highlighted as unsuitable.

When it comes to frontline workers, poorly fitting PPE can prove fatal. In 1997, a British female police officer was stabbed and killed while using a hydraulic ram to enter a flat. She had removed her body armour because it was too difficult to use the ram while wearing it. Two years later, a female police officer revealed that she had had to have breast-reduction surgery because of the health effects of wearing her body armour. After this case was reported, another 700 officers in the same force came forward to complain about the standard-issue protective vest.

But although the complaints have been coming regularly over the past 20 years, little seems to have been done. British female police officers report being bruised by their kit belts; a number have had to have physiotherapy because of the way stab vests sit on their body; many complain there is no space for their breasts. This is not only uncomfortable, it also results in stab vests coming up too short, leaving women unprotected.

The tyranny of the toilet queue

In April 2017, the BBC journalist Samira Ahmed wanted to use a toilet. She was at a screening of the James Baldwin documentary I Am Not Your Negro at London's Barbican arts centre, and it was the interval. Any woman who has ever been to the theatre knows what that means. This evening, the queue was worse than usual. Far worse. Because in an almost comically blatant display of not having thought about women at all, the Barbican had turned both the male and female toilets gender neutral simply by replacing the "men" and "women" signage with "gender neutral with urinals" and "gender neutral with cubicles". The obvious happened. Only men were using the supposedly "gender neutral with urinals" and everyone was using the "gender neutral with cubicles".

Rather than rendering the toilets genuinely gender neutral, they had simply increased the provision for men. "Ah the irony of having to explain discrimination having just been to see I Am Not Your Negro IN YOUR CINEMA", Ahmed tweeted, suggesting that turning the gents gender neutral would be sufficient: "There's NEVER such a queue there & you know it."

On the face of it, it may seem fair and equitable to accord male and female public toilets the same amount of space - and historically, this is the way it has been done: 50/50 division of floor space has even been formalised in plumbing codes. However, if a male toilet has both cubicles and urinals, the number of people who can relieve themselves at once is far higher per square foot of floor space in the male bathroom than in the female bathroom. Suddenly equal floor space isn't so equal.

But even if male and female toilets had an equal number of stalls, the issue wouldn't be resolved, because women take up to 2.3 times as long as men to use the toilet. Women make up the majority of the elderly and disabled, two groups that will tend to need more time in the toilet. Women are also more likely to be accompanied by children, as well as disabled and older people. Then there's the 20-25% of women of childbearing age who may be on their period at any one time, and therefore need to change a tampon or a sanitary pad.

Women may also require more trips to the bathroom: pregnancy significantly reduces bladder capacity, and women are eight times more likely to suffer from urinary-tract infections. In the face of all these anatomical differences, it would surely take a formal equality dogmatist to continue to argue that equal floor space between men and women is fair.

The gadgets built for one-size-fits-men

In 1998, a pianist called Christopher Donison wrote that "one can divide the world into roughly two constituencies": those with larger hands, and those with smaller hands. Donison was writing as a male pianist who, due to his smaller than average hands, had struggled for years with traditional keyboards, but he could equally have been writing as a woman. There is plenty of data showing that women have, on average, smaller hands, and yet we continue to design equipment around the average male hand as if one-size-fits-men is the same as one-size-fits-all.

The average smartphone size is now 5.5 inches. While the average man can fairly comfortably use his device one-handed, the average woman's hand is not much bigger than the handset itself. This is obviously annoying - and foolish for a company like Apple, given that research shows women are more likely to own an iPhone than men.

One woman found her car's voice-command system only listened to her husband, even though he was in the passenger seat

The tech journalist and author James Ball has a theory for why the big-screen fixation persists: because the received wisdom is that men drive high-end smartphone purchases. But if women aren't driving high-end smartphone purchases - at least for non-Apple products - is it because women aren't interested in smartphones? Or could it be because smartphones are designed without women in mind? On the bright side, Ball reassured me that screens probably wouldn't be getting any bigger because "they've hit the limit of men's hand size".

Good news for men, then. But tough breaks for women like my friend Liz who owns a third-generation Motorola Moto G. In response to one of my regular rants about handset sizes she replied that she'd just been "complaining to a friend about how difficult it was to zoom on my phone camera. He said it was easy on his. Turns out we have the same phone. I wondered if it was a hand-size thing."

When Zeynep Tufekci, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, was trying to document tear gas use in the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013, the size of her Google Nexus got in the way. It was the evening of 9 June. Gezi Park was crowded. Parents were there with their children. And then the canisters were fired. Because officials "often claimed that tear gas was used only on vandals and violent protesters", Tufekci wanted to document what was happening. So she pulled out her phone. "And as my lungs, eyes and nose burned with the pain of the lachrymatory agent released from multiple capsules that had fallen around me, I started cursing." Her phone was too big. She could not take a picture one-handed - "something I had seen countless men with larger hands do all the time". All Tufekci's photos from the event were unusable, she wrote, and "for one simple reason: good smartphones are designed for male hands".

Voice recognition could be one solution to a smartphone that doesn't fit your hands, but voice-recognition software is often hopelessly male-biased. In 2016, Rachael Tatman, a research fellow in linguistics at the University of Washington, found that Google's speech-recognition software was 70% more likely to accurately recognise male speech.

Clearly, it is unfair for women to pay the same price as men for products that deliver an inferior service. But there can also be serious safety implications. Voice-recognition software in cars, for example, is meant to decrease distractions and make driving safer. But they can have the opposite effect if they don't work. An article on car website Autoblog quoted a woman who had bought a 2012 Ford Focus, only to find that its voice-command system only listened to her husband, even though he was in the passenger seat. Another woman called the manufacturer for help when her Buick's voice-activated phone system wouldn't listen to her: "The guy told me point-blank it wasn't ever going to work for me. They told me to get a man to set it up."

Immediately after writing this, I was with my mother in her Volvo Cross Country watching her try and fail to get the voice-recognition system to call her sister. After five failed attempts I suggested she tried lowering the pitch of her voice. It worked first time.

In the tech world, the implicit assumption that men are the default human remains king. When Apple launched its health-monitoring system with much fanfare in 2014, it boasted a "comprehensive" health tracker. It could track blood pressure; steps taken; blood alcohol level; even molybdenum and copper intake. But as many women pointed out at the time, they forgot one crucial detail: a period tracker.

When Apple launched their AI, Siri, users in the US found that she (ironically) could find prostitutes and Viagra suppliers, but not abortion providers. Siri could help you if you'd had a heart attack, but if you told her you'd been raped, she replied "I don't know what you mean by 'I was raped.'"

From smartwatches that are too big for women's wrists, to map apps that fail to account for women who may want to know the "safest" in addition to "fastest" routes; to "measure how good you are at sex" apps called "iThrust" and "iBang" the tech industry is rife with other examples. While there are an increasing number of female-led tech firms that do cater to women's needs, they are seen as a "niche" concern and often struggle to get funding.

One study of 12 of the most common fitness monitors found that they underestimated steps during housework by up to 74% (that was the Omron, which was within 1% for normal walking or running) and underestimated calories burned during housework by as much as 34%. Meanwhile, Fitbit users have complained that the device fails to account for movement while doing the extremely common female activity of pushing a pram (and, yes, men push prams, too; but not as often as the women who do 75% of the world's unpaid care).

How women are put at risk on the roads

Men are more likely than women to be involved in a car crash, which means they dominate the numbers of those seriously injured in them. But when a woman is involved in a car crash, she is 47% more likely to be seriously injured, and 71% more likely to be moderately injured, even when researchers control for factors such as height, weight, seatbelt usage, and crash intensity. She is also 17% more likely to die. And it's all to do with how the car is designed - and for whom.

Women tend to sit further forward when driving. This is because we are on average shorter. Our legs need to be closer to reach the pedals, and we need to sit more upright to see clearly over the dashboard. This is not, however, the "standard seating position", researchers have noted. Women are "out of position" drivers. And our wilful deviation from the norm means that we are at greater risk of internal injury on frontal collisions. The angle of our knees and hips as our shorter legs reach for the pedals also makes our legs more vulnerable. Essentially, we're doing it all wrong.

Cars have been designed using car crash-test dummies based on the 'average' male

Women are also at higher risk in rear-end collisions. We have less muscle on our necks and upper torso, which make us more vulnerable to whiplash (by up to three times), and car design has amplified this vulnerability. Swedish research has shown that modern seats are too firm to protect women against whiplash injuries: the seats throw women forward faster than men because the back of the seat doesn't give way for women's on average lighter bodies. The reason this has been allowed to happen is very simple: cars have been designed using car crash-test dummies based on the "average" male.

Crash-test dummies were first introduced in the 1950s, and for decades they were based around the 50th-percentile male. The most commonly used dummy is 1.77m tall and weighs 76kg (significantly taller and heavier than an average woman); the dummy also has male muscle-mass proportions and a male spinal column. In the early 1980s, researchers based at Michigan University argued for the inclusion of a 50th-percentile female in regulatory tests, but this advice was ignored by manufacturers and regulators. It wasn't until 2011 that the US started using a female crash-test dummy - although, as we'll see, just how "female" these dummies are is questionable.

In 2018, Astrid Linder, research director of traffic safety at the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute, presented a paper at the Road Safety on Five Continents Conference in South Korea, in which she ran through EU regulatory crash-test requirements. In no test is an anthropometrically correct female crash-test dummy required. The seatbelt test, one of the frontal-collision tests, and both lateral-collision tests all specify that a 50th-percentile male dummy should be used. There is one EU regulatory test that requires what is called a 5th-percentile female dummy, which is meant to represent the female population. Only 5% of women will be shorter than this dummy. But there are a number of data gaps. For a start, this dummy is only tested in the passenger seat, so we have no data at all for how a female driver would be affected - something of an issue you would think, given women's "out of position" driving style. And secondly, this female dummy is not really female. It is just a scaled-down male dummy.

Consumer tests can be slightly more stringent than regulatory ones. The 2011 introduction of female crash-test dummies in the US sent cars' star ratings plummeting. When I spoke to EuroNCAP, a European organisation that provides car safety ratings for consumers, they said that since 2015 they have used male and female dummies in both front-crash tests, and that they base their female dummies on female anthropometric data - with the caveat that this is "where data is available". EuroNCAP acknowledged that "sometimes" they do just use scaled-down male dummies. But women are not scaled-down men. We have different muscle mass distribution. We have lower bone density. There are differences in vertebrae spacing. Even our body sway is different. And these differences are all crucial when it comes to injury rates in car crashes.

The situation is even worse for pregnant women. Although a pregnant crash-test dummy was created back in 1996, testing with it is still not government-mandated either in the US or in the EU. In fact, even though car crashes are the No 1 cause of foetal death related to maternal trauma, we haven't yet developed a seatbelt that works for pregnant women. Research from 2004 suggests that pregnant women should use the standard seatbelt; but 62% of third-trimester pregnant women don't fit that design.

Linder has been working on what she says will be the first crash-test dummy to accurately represent female bodies. Currently, it's just a prototype, but she is calling on the EU to make testing on such dummies a legal requirement. In fact, Linder argues that this already is a legal requirement, technically speaking. Article 8 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union reads, "In all its activities, the Union shall aim to eliminate inequalities, and to promote equality, between men and women." Clearly, women being 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash is one hell of an inequality to overlook.

Designers may believe they are making products for everyone, but in reality they are mainly making them for men. It's time to start designing women in.

* This is an edited extract from Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez (Chatto & Windus, £16.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.

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The deadly truth about a world built for men - from stab vests to car crashes

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When broadcaster Sandi Toksvig was studying anthropology at university, one of her female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. "This," said the professor, "is alleged to be man's first attempt at a calendar." Toksvig and her fellow students looked at the bone in admiration.

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First deafblind woman to graduate from Harvard

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First deafblind woman to graduate from Harvard

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Haben Girma discuses her experiences as a deafblind woman. She discuses ableism and her experiences as an African American woman.

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Haben Girma is an Oakland native, disability rights lawyer and the first deafblind graduate of Harvard Law School. At age 27, she was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2016 for her work and advocacy in law and policy, and was also honored by Obama as a Champion of Change in 2013. On Wednesday, she shared her experiences and insights at Stanford Law School.

Reading from a Braille tablet that produced questions as event moderator and Stanford lecturer Lindsey Felt typed them, Girma addressed questions about pursuing her dreams despite her disability, as well as the powers of technology in advocacy.

The event was jointly hosted by the Diversity and Access Office, the Office of Accessible Education (OAE) and the Stanford Association of Law Students for Disability Rights. It included not just a talk with Girma but also a book signing for Girma's new memoir, "Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law." Girma possesses near-total lack of sight and hearing, a combination that makes common paths of education difficult.

"I was warned by so many people that law school would be incredibly difficult and there's tons and tons of reading," Girma said. "But, I like reading."

Girma's memoir highlights her childhood growing up as a first-generation African American in a refugee household in Oakland, California. She quotes her parents as being a strong force in her life inspiring her to persevere through the struggles they faced emigrating from her home in Eritrea. Girma was moved to put her story to paper because it's what she does daily: "Writing is also a form of advocacy."

Girma's appreciation of literacy belied her childhood experience of education as a particular source of adversity. She cited specific instances of problems at school, especially teachers who didn't take her needs into account.

"Disabled students should also have that same privilege to just be a student, rather than having to be a student, an advocate, a teacher," she said.

"When you're disabled and you're in an environment that's not accessible, you're forced to mature and grow up very quickly," she added.

And that maturity is a blessing, she said, adding that she wishes "there were more access and more inclusion for all kids with disabilities."

Girma also said that ableism, "the idea that people with disabilities are inferior to the nondisabled," is an ongoing opponent in the world and, for her, it's an opponent in everything from hailing an Uber to getting a job.

Girma has been a lifelong advocate for individuals with disabilities, and in the process, has many times served as an advocate for herself. She recalled using the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to fight injustices in her own life, describing the ADA as being a key role in her decision to become a disability rights lawyer.

"As a deafblind student in college, I witnessed advocates using the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to change social attitudes," she wrote on her website. "Impressed by the success of these advocates, I felt inspired to join them."

On Wednesday, Girma proposed that the key in fighting ableism and increasing accessibility lies at the intersection of accessibility and technology: "Technology is great when we design with inclusion in mind."

She witnessed technology advance as she grew up, and she believes "the solutions we use should also adapt and change."

"We wanted to celebrate disability awareness this month and continue to have the disabled community here at Stanford have a voice and be brought into the discussions that are happening all the time about diversity and inclusion," said Robin Cole, one of the event organizers in the OAE. "Sometimes that is a group that is not always represented."

Correction: This article has been corrected to indicate that the event was jointly hosted by Diversity and Access Office, the Office of Accessible Education, and the Stanford Association of Law Students for Disability Rights. Contact Lauryn Johnson at lauryn'at' stanford.edu.
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First deafblind woman to graduate from Harvard Law talks accessibility, ableism - The Stanford Daily

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The Wednesday event was held at the Stanford Law School and hosted by the Office of Accessible Education, and included not just a talk with Girma but also a book signing for Girma's new memoir "Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law."

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This article discusses the importance of intersectionality within feminism. It displays how the movement is an intersectional issue and how without intersectionality their is no movement.

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As the saying goes, behind every great man is an even greater woman. But as more and more people are recognizing the validity of the gender equality movement, behind every great man is not a woman; she is beside him, she is with him, she is not behind him. Though the understanding of what feminism actually means has come a long way since the days of labeling feminists as man-hating anarchists, people still haven't grasped the concept intersectional feminism.

Simply put, there cannot and will not be a revolutionizing movement without intersectionality.

Feminism is by definition , the "theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes." Intersectional feminism on the other hand, recognizes the cross-section of the different types of oppression women are experiencing. In the fight for gender equality, we cannot leave behind women of color who also face discrimination because of their race; for them, discrimination is not exclusive to their gender as traditional feminism might suggest.

This notion applies to a wide scope of cross-sectional identities people tend to gloss over: race, socioeconomic status, gender identity and physical ability. A transgender person of color with a disability cannot prioritize which part of their identity is in most need of liberation. Society should not expect all women to fit the script of a one-size-fits-all movement that belongs to white, middle-class, cisgender, heterosexual and able-bodied women.

Looking at intersectionality in the context of violence, research bisexual women to be far more likely to experience sexual violence than other women. Of the people in LGBT-based hate crimes, 78 percent were people of color.

Basically, while all women are at risk for gendered violence in the United States, some groups of women are far more at risk.

It would be narrow-minded to restrict the feminist movement to exclusively focus on women without considering the other layers of inequality that minority women face. Take the gender pay gap: A woman makes approximately 72 cents to every dollar that a man makes, but that's not the . Compared to a white man's dollar, a white woman makes 72 cents, an African-American woman 64 cents and a Hispanic woman 56 cents.

If intersectionality isn't recognized as an integral part of this movement, it won't just be men who have left behind women, it will be white women who have also left behind women of color.

The "women first" trap takes away from solving the broader systemic issue of inequality because it disproportionately affects minority groups. Systems of oppression will overlap and the discriminatory effects will be compounded, but focusing on intersectionality will allow society to directly address the problem at its core, not cherry-pick which issue is more important, because they're all important.

Someone once told me there's a crack in everything, and that's how light gets in. But cracks are also what is responsible for things falling apart, and if we aren't intersectional in our fight for equality, the most vulnerable and marginalized are going to fall through those cracks.
Alice is a freshman in LAS.

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As the saying goes, behind every great man is an even greater woman. But as more and more people are recognizing the validity of the gender equality movement, behind every great man is not a woman; she is beside him, she is with him, she is not behind him.

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This quote captures the overall goal of intersectionality. It displays the message that many people are striving to bring forth.

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This plate that was sold at Macy's has started controversy. Many have stated that it is fat shaming as it is trying to set portions based on jean types.

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This article discuses Jameela Jamil's take on a policy she has been fighting for. This policy would ban posts from company's and influencers promoting weight loss products to users 18 and under on Instagram.

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Jameela Jamil's long-running crusade - to regulate the selling and promotion of weight loss products and cosmetic procedures on social media - has just won a major victory.

From today (Wednesday 18 September), Instagram - which has around one billion users - will begin rolling out a new policy focused on these very products - detox teas, diet pills, 'appetite-suppressing' lollipops - the list goes on.

Under these new rules, if a post promotes a weight loss product or cosmetic procedure and has a price tag fixed to it, users who are younger than 18-years-old will be prohibited from viewing the post.

The second major policy move is the banning of any content that makes a 'miraculous claim' about diet or weight loss products. So, for example, if an influencer posts a picture of themselves sipping diet tea, promoting their discount code, and telling their followers how they managed to lose 10lbs rapidly solely due to the tea, it will be removed for violating the new community guidelines.

Speaking to ELLE UK ahead of the announcement, Jamil told us she was thrilled at the changes and excited that corporations, who hold the power monopoly, are putting their foot down.

'It sets the tone that this is not ok in our society,' she tells us. 'We have hyper-normalised flogging nonsense to young impressionable people. These people are selling hair growth gummies, but wearing extensions or photoshopping themselves to look slimmer and selling a weight loss shake. There are so many lies being told and we've accepted that as a cultural norm.

'For huge corporations - who are the main access points for these companies to sell their products to young people over the internet - to say they don't condone this sends out a huge ripple across the earth. It says that if giant corporations are willing to take a stand against this then it must be really serious'

Fans of the i_weigh founder - a body positivity platform where people are encouraged to list all their values beyond their aesthetic - will know she has long campaigned for such regulations to be introduced.

Jamil has frequently called out celebrities and influencers who have promoted diet products, by blasting the lack of scientific evidence behind their claims, as well a subconscious messaging for followers to change themselves. She has also used her own experience of having an eating disorder when she was growing up to remind people of the devastating effects of this constant messaging.

After The Good Place actress launched a petition to 'Stop Celebrities Promoting toxic Diet Products On Social Media' (which was signed by more than 250,000 people), she met with Instagram who were also concerned by such advertising.

'The issue is at its peak because, in my day, you'd have to search for ages to find this toxic information, but now it finds you because of algorithms that know your age, sex and what you're into,' she explains. 'Therefore it's the worst it's ever been. Teenage suicides, eating disorder rates, the amount having cosmetic surgery and committing self-harm - they are all at the highest they've ever been. There's no way this isn't a correlation with what they're being exposed to online.'

Instagram say they listened to the likes of Jamil and other campaigners while also encouraging community feedback, speaking to youth specialists and working with experts like Dr Ysabel Gerrard, a lecturer in digital media and society at the University of Sheffield, to formulate this policy change.

For those concerned that this type of content ban should go beyond the age of 18, Instagram say they didn't want the new measures to branch into censorship, it's about protecting under 18s. The new regulation is in line with several changes the platform has made over the past few years to curtail the pressure associated with social media, for example introducing screen time limits and testing removing the 'like' function in some countries.

For Jamil, she has her own advice too on how to make the platform more positive. She credits Instagram for championing the success of i_weigh, a nice place to be and heroes other campaigners like Tess Holliday and Ashley Graham for saying they are sick of the status quo.

'Curate your space. Just like as in your personal life, you have to do that online,' she advises. 'I don't follow models, people who sell weight loss products, or anyone who makes me feel bad about the way I look, live my life or if I have enough money.

'Anyone who makes me feel bad about myself or my life I mute, block or delete. You have the power; we've become used to thinking we have to follow these people who lie to us, don't care about us or our physical or mental health, they just our want money.'

Over the next few weeks, Instagram will roll out an additional function so you can report a post if you think it violates the new guidelines.

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Jameela Jamil Has Successfully Campaigned For Instagram To Change Its Policy On Diet Products

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Jameela Jamil's long-running crusade - to regulate the selling and promotion of weight loss products and cosmetic procedures on social media - has just won a major victory. From today (Wednesday 18 September), Instagram - which has around one billion users - will begin rolling out a new policy focused on these very products - detox teas, diet pills, 'appetite-suppressing' lollipops - the list goes on.

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My activism project for WGS 350 which looks at aspects of rape culture and how it is relevant to college students. The podcast serves as feminist praxis as well as providing content on the Instagram to bring awareness.

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This Facebook page looks at news events regarding feminism and feminist topics of interest. The page serves to enhance knowledge of what is going on in the world through an easy to understand outlet.

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This video displays what a woman had to go through to enter the last abortion clinic in Kentucky. It demonstrates both the activism of the escorts but the video in itself also raises awareness of how these women are treated for receiving care.

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The Baltimore museum of art recently announced that it will now only be acquiring works created by women. They do this in order to raise awareness and shift the identity of how fine art is seen as male dominated.

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Artist Amy Sherald is one of the female artists whose work was recently purchased by the Baltimore ... [+]
ASSOCIATED PRESS

The Baltimore Museum of Art has announced that in 2020, only artwork created by women will be added to its permanent collection. In a bold move to reduce the gender imbalance in the museum's collection, every single piece acquired next year, whether through a purchase or donation, will have been created by a woman. Big ideas like this one are exactly what we need if we expect to eliminate gender bias any time soon.

Museum director Christopher Bedford announced the policy telling The Baltimore Sun, "To rectify centuries of imbalance, you have to do something radical." And centuries of imbalance may actually be an understatement-only a paltry 4% of the 95,000 pieces in the museum's current permanent collection were created by women. To help rectify this situation, BMA expects to spend up to $2 million next year to purchase art created by female artists, and, in addition, each of the 22 exhibits on view at the museum will have a female focus.

Not everyone agrees with Bedford's controversial decision. When the museum announced it would sell seven pieces in its collection by artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Franz Kline to purchase paintings and sculptures by women and minorities, the museum got major pushback. In an op-ed penned by the son a former BMA trustee, the decision was described as "horrendous." The author believed that while it's fine to add female artists to the collection, the museum shouldn't sell off paintings by men to facilitate it.
Radical Steps Are Needed To Fight Gender Bias
The museum could have taken the easy route-slowly accumulating more works by women, without selling off other pieces. But the radical move sends a much stronger message. "This how you raise awareness and shift the identity of an institution," Bedford said. I couldn't agree more.

As a society, we have been discussing how to combat gender bias and increase diversity and inclusion in areas including the arts, the workplace, the C-suite, the sports field, and STEM fields for quite some time. Action items in this space include groundbreaking ideas like prioritizing diversity, getting senior management on board, and reviewing progress. While there is nothing wrong with these ideas, they lack oomph. They will likely lead to progress, but at a snail's pace.

BMA went outside the box. Their efforts will bring about real change, and not in fifty years, but right now. Few others in recent history have attempted such bold moves for reducing gender bias (notable exceptions include a few companies who have adopted pay transparency, California's mandate that more women need to be on corporate boards, and those who came forward in the #MeToo movement to expose the treatment of women in Hollywood and elsewhere.) It's these big ideas that are real game-changers for women.
Why Artist Gender Matters
Why is it a game-changer to increase the representation of female artists in a museum? Acquiring works by female artists goes far beyond supporting the artists themselves (although that's important too). Imagine a young girl, perhaps an aspiring artist, visits the museum. She sees that 96% of the works in the museum were created by male artists. It sends a strong message that great artists are all men, and that there is little interest in celebrating the art created by female artists. In other words, it's not exactly motivating. It's the same message that girls and women get when they pursue STEM fields or aspire to C-suite jobs.

BMA's new policy won't reverse the historic marginalization of female artists, but it's a bold move in the right direction. Hopefully, their move will inspire other organizations to take equally radical steps in addressing their own gender bias.

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Baltimore Museum Of Art Will Only Acquire Works By Women

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In a bold move, the Baltimore Museum of Art has announced that in 2020, only artwork created by women will be added to its permanent collection. Big ideas like this one are exactly what we need if we expect to eliminate gender bias any time soon.