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As Husbands Do Domestic Duty, These Women Are Free to Achieve

Marielle Jan de Beur often catches the 6:27 a.m. train to Grand Central Terminal, waiting on the Westchester platform with a swarm of dark-suited men, and then walks 10 blocks to a Park Avenue office fronted by the fountain where Audrey Hepburn cavorted in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," playing a woman scheming to marry a wealthy man.

But when the elevator lets her off at Wells Fargo, she enters another zone, where the gender dynamic that has long underpinned the financial industry is quietly being challenged. Ms. Jan de Beur and some of her colleagues rely on support that growing numbers of women on Wall Street say is enabling them to compete with new intensity: a stay-at-home husband.

In an industry still dominated by men with only a smattering of women in its highest ranks, these bankers make up a small but rapidly expanding group, benefiting from what they call a direct link between their ability to achieve and their husbands' willingness to handle domestic duties. The number of women in finance with stay-at-home spouses has climbed nearly tenfold since 1980, according to an analysis of census data, and some of the most successful women in the field are among them.

When Ms. Jan de Beur flew to Hong Kong last spring to persuade Asian investors to re-enter the bond market, her husband took their daughter to try on confirmation dresses. Her colleagues Allison Poliniak and Gina Martin Adams share a running commentary on their husbands' efforts in the kitchen. Nicole Black recently texted her husband, Drew Skinner, as she headed home after a long day of earnings calls. "You want to hit the gym? Go for it," he replied, agreeing to spend another hour with their two small sons.

"While I was dating Drew and getting married and having kids, I've gone from vice president to director to managing director," Ms. Black said.

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Marielle Jan de Beur in her Wells Fargo office, talking to her husband, who stays home with their children. Credit... Karsten Moran for The New York Times

These marriages are Wall Street-specific experiments in money, work, family and power. In interviews, dozens of couples provided field notes on their findings.

Many discovered that even with babysitting and household help, the demands of working in finance made a two-career marriage impossible. The arrangement can be socially isolating, they said, leaving both partners out of a child-rearing world still full of "Mommy and Me" classes. The couples told of new questions of marital etiquette, like who makes the big financial decisions or buys the wife's jewelry when she makes upward of a million dollars a year and the husband earns little or nothing.

It is not clear, however, if these couples are leaders in the march toward gender equality or examples of how little is shifting on Wall Street. The banks say they want to hire and retain more women.

But the solution that turns out to work so well for these women is an inaccessible option for many others, since it requires one spouse to give up a career and the other to earn enough money to support the family. Rather than changing the culture of the banks, which promote policies on flexible hours and work life balance, these women say that to succeed they must give in to its sometimes brutal terms, from 4:45 a.m. wake-ups onward through days of ceaseless competition.

Along the way, the couples have come to question just what is male behavior and female behavior, noting how quickly their preconceived notions dissolve once they depart from assigned roles. The men echo generations of housewives, voicing concern over a loss of earning power and car pool-induced torpor but also pride in their nurturing roles. The women describe themselves as competitive, tough and proud of every dollar they bring in.

Mothers working in finance with stay-at-home spouses have increased steadily since 1980. They remain less than 2 percent of all married women in finance. Credit... The New York Times

"We're almost like an opposite '50s couple," said Mr. Skinner, Nicole Black's husband. "I'm staying at home, I do the dishes, I do the laundry, I do everything the housewife does. I'm just a dude."

Not every marriage proceeds as smoothly. One female banker told colleagues that she recently became irritated with her husband, who works part time, telling him, "I wish I had a wife."

"You can get one when I can get one," he replied.
Role Reversals
Rye, N.Y., is not an obvious place to mount a stand against established social roles. The town, on the moneyed coast of Long Island Sound, has long been populated by bankers, including John J. Mack, the former chief executive of Morgan Stanley. The clubs at the end of Stuyvesant Avenue have dress codes and sports like lawn bowling, and despite high property taxes, the town has no school buses, a special torture for working parents.

But even Rye has a set of bankers with stay-at-home husbands, among them Ms. Jan de Beur, an executive in Wells Fargo's research department, and her architect-turned-artist husband, Jim Langley.

When they married 13 years ago, some of Ms. Jan de Beur's male colleagues scoffed, suggesting that she would become useless in the workplace. Marriage turned out to be one of her better career moves. By the time she became pregnant, her husband was working extremely long hours for an architecture firm that was pressuring him to relocate, and he made less than half of what she did. The solution seemed obvious.

Jim Langley with his son Holbrook at the family home in Rye, N.Y. Credit... Damon Winter/The New York Times

Ten years later, the life they have put together feels comfortable and well ordered: two bright, talkative children, 10 and 7 years old; a white-clapboard house that feels more cozy than imposing; and time in a sunny third-floor studio for Mr. Langley, who keeps books of work by Andrew Wyeth and Winslow Homer on his shelves. He has moments of wonder with his children, like playing kickball during a summer rainfall and making anatomical sculptures from tree branches.

In interviews, Ms. Jan de Beur, driven and precise, praised her husband's nurturing skills. Mr. Langley sounded proud if a bit taken aback by his wife's success. "I'm aware of how lucky I am," he said.

Still, his wife, along with other women in the same situation, suspects that the arrangement is harder on the men. Some of Mr. Langley's peers say the chatter at backyard gatherings about bonuses can make them wince: If a half-million-dollar salary is considered unimpressive in some Wall Street circles, where does that leave them?

When people ask what he does, Mr. Langley could say artist - he gives the buildings and landscapes he paints expressive personalities of their own - but he has just begun trying to sell his work. Other fathers in similar situations say they often tell white lies: They are retired, they are consultants, they work at home.

Mr. Langley generally goes with "stay-at-home dad."

"That's what I call myself," he said over lunch at a restaurant in Rye, the other tables filled with groups of women. "I wouldn't say I like it."

What response does he get?

"There's usually a long pause," he said.
Feeling Excluded
Half a century ago, Betty Friedan wrote "The Feminine Mystique" not far from where some of the female bankers live today. Even though their husbands have had far different experiences and options than Ms. Friedan's frustrated 1960s housewives, they sometimes express similar sentiments.

Some wonder what has come of their education, confess that they do not know how to make their way back to work after what they had hoped would be a temporary break, or admit that they do not quite understand their wives' work. Others have turned themselves into eager helpmates, booking their spouses' massages and mastering complicated cooking techniques.

But many of the wives say their husbands approach parenthood differently than women do. The stay-at-home mothers in Rye often congregate at spinning or yoga classes, but their male counterparts all seem to have a hobby involving a boat: sailing, building wood kayaks and, in Mr. Langley's case, depicting fishing dinghies and half-finished hulls in his paintings. Despite their wealth, the men seem largely resistant to relying on nannies and babysitters, facing down screaming toddlers and constant meal preparation with go-it-alone stoicism.

Brandee McHale, a managing director of Citigroup's charitable foundation, says her husband, a former Marine, does not multitask, noting that for him, "Laundry is an activity." But she also appreciates that he will focus just as intently on tossing a football with their children.

A few women said that they resented the fact that their husbands did not cook or clean up, but that they had trouble telling them so, for fear that they would sound as if they were treating them like employees.

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Nicole Black and her husband, Drew Skinner, have a "true role reversal" which allows Ms. Black to focus on her work. Credit Credit... Karsten Moran for The New York Times

When Kristine Braden, also of Citigroup, was stationed in the Philippines, she knew that her husband was never going to devote himself to hosting parties for her clients or setting a perfect table, the way some wives of male bankers did. (The couple entertained at restaurants or at home together on weekends.) Few of the men are willing to take on corporate spouse duties, like attending or hosting Wall Street dinners with the alpha men who work at the banks.

The husbands often feel excluded from the social infrastructure that women have built up over generations to make stay-at-home life more manageable and fun. ("You want awkward? Try a swim play date," one father said.) Every man interviewed said that many school notices, invitations and Girl Scout troop updates were still sent to their wives, a river they are constantly trying to divert.

When Ed Fassler, married to Marcie Fassler, a vice president of operations at PNC Financial Services in Pittsburgh, was helping out with a school wrapping paper sale, the mothers gathered to go over the order - and excluded him. "My husband wouldn't be happy if you're in my house with us," the organizer told him.

In March, Mr. Langley is renting space to mount a show of his paintings, and his home studio is cluttered with canvases and taped-together snapshots of the local landscape. In a test run in September, he offered two paintings for sale at an art auction in town. It was a community charity event, the buyers friends from the neighborhood. When both pieces sold, the larger fetching $1,400, husband and wife both felt relief.
Maintaining Focus
In search of remedies, four of JP Morgan Chase's top women decided to fan out across the country last summer to find out why too many women at the nation's largest bank, and across the industry, still seemed somewhat stuck in their ascent.

For years, JP Morgan and other banks have tried recruitment and retention efforts aimed at women, including "speed mentoring" (Wells Fargo), wine tastings to get to know management (Morgan Stanley), efforts at hiring women who had taken time off to raise children (Goldman Sachs) and clubs for female bankers (Citigroup alone has 60).

When Diane Schumaker-Krieg, Ms. Black's and Ms. Jan de Beur's boss, worked at Credit Suisse years ago, the chief executive at the time, Mr. Mack, even flew her and other promising women to his home for a golf tutorial to help them network on the greens.

Still, women make up just 16 percent of bank executives, according to the consulting firm Catalyst, and only a tiny number run the huge revenue-generating businesses like investment banking and trading, barely a change from a generation before.

In their meetings with 2,500 women at seven JP Morgan offices, the four executives - including Mary Callahan Erdoes, the chief executive of the bank's asset management division, and Marianne Lake, the chief financial officer - heard the same messages again and again.

Flex time allowing employees to work from home one or more days a week carried stigma, the women felt. Some said they were reluctant to chase promotions that could require moves upending their families. Many female bankers still quit after having children.

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On a Sunday at their home in Charlotte, N.C., Nicole Black says she is successful in her high-pressure job because of the responsibilities taken on by her stay-at-home husband, Drew Skinner. Credit Credit... Travis Dove for The New York Times

One morning last month, around the time Ms. Lake was departing for a similar round of meetings in Asia, Ms. Black arrived at her cluttered desk at Wells Fargo's office in Charlotte, N.C., and slid on her headset to hear the latest Viacom earnings.

She tapped out a message for institutional investors, dropped in on a morning meeting to brief salespeople and traders, wrote a memo to clients about why she was downgrading Cisco's debt, and gave a talk to the sales force on a new bond, all before the clock struck 9:30. During that sprint, she was focused entirely on her work.

Ms. Black and others say that is the real gift of a stay-at-home spouse: avoiding domestic distractions and competing better against other bankers, many of them men with stay-at-home wives.

If Ms. Black gets a call on Tuesday afternoon asking her to attend an out-of-town dinner the next night, she can go. Ms. Jan de Beur took two trips a week on average last spring. Candida P. Wolff, the head of global government affairs for Citigroup, often travels about one and a half weeks each month.

Being the breadwinner often means being taken more seriously in the workplace, they have learned. When one former banker was interviewing at a private equity firm, she said her prospective employers wanted to know what her husband did and seemed pleased that he had a low-paying but flexible job and handled more parenting duties. It dawned on her that the presumption men had often benefited from - that they would not be diverted by household demands - was finally applying to her too.

On the home front, the women cast the deciding votes on major financial decisions. "It's not like when you and I were growing up and Dad made all the decisions, but I still control the purse strings," Ms. Black said.

At Wells Fargo's modernist tower on Park Avenue, Ms. Schumaker-Krieg, the global head of research, economics and strategy for the bank, is making new recommendations on how to retain and advance female employees. She has spent decades persuading women on her team not to quit, even when they are put on bed rest during pregnancy or give birth to a child with special needs. And she would like others in the industry to follow suit.

She acknowledges that part of the problem is the fundamental nature of the business: the ceaseless race to score the big deals and anticipate market moves. Soon she will complete year-end tallies, ranking the research analysts, including Ms. Black and Ms. Jan de Beur, against their competitors and each other.

Some of the women with stay-at-home husbands are her top performers. When she calls those men "the wind beneath our wings," she sounds both kind and calculating; the more domestic responsibility the men are willing to assume, the more their wives can help the bank make money.

"It's easy to slide into irrelevance by backing off just a little," she warned.

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Wall Street Mothers, Stay-Home Fathers (Published 2013)

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As Husbands Do Domestic Duty, These Women Are Free to Achieve Marielle Jan de Beur often catches the 6:27 a.m. train to Grand Central Terminal, waiting on the Westchester platform with a swarm of dark-suited men, and then walks 10 blocks to a Park Avenue office fronted by the fountain where Audrey Hepburn cavorted in "Breakfast at Tiffany's," playing a woman scheming to marry a wealthy man.

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Glancing into the 50-metre-deep hole the two tusk hunters smiled. Together, they heaved out a caramel-coloured mammoth tusk from the soil where it had been frozen for at least 10,000 years. Their dog, too, seemed to be interested in the find. "Because it's been locked in the ice for that long it still smelled of the meat, it still smelled of the animal," says Amos Chapple, who spent three weeks photographing mammoth tusk hunters at work in the Siberian region of Yakutia.

The tusk hunters cleaned their find with dry grass and quickly wrapped it in cling film to keep it moist and preserve valuable weight that would push up its price when it came to selling it. Then the precious cargo, along with two other tusks, went on a winding five hour speedboat journey down a river in northeastern Siberia. The 65kg relic was later sold for $34,000 (£26,800) to a Chinese dealer waiting in the tusk hunters' village, earning them a total of around $100,000 (£77,000) in just eight days. Everything they left behind - mammoth skulls and bones - was consumed by the elements.

The frozen land of Siberia is rapidly thawing. Parts of it are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The permafrost - soil that remains frozen year-round - is protected by a surface layer of dirt and sediment that thaws in summer and refreezes in winter. But in 2018, some parts of this layer did not freeze at all, leaving the permafrost exposed to even warmer temperatures than usual. For decades, residents of this frozen land, where temperatures regularly dip below minus 30 degrees Celsius, would often stumble upon the remnants of woolly mammoths that died out 10,000 years ago. But as the ground thaws, Siberia is revealing its ancient treasure hoard faster than ever. Now, fuelled by Chinese demand for ivory, tusk hunters are racing to retrieve so-called "ice ivory" from the Siberian permafrost.

An estimated 80 per cent of Siberian mammoth tusks end up in mainland China, via Hong Kong, where they are carved and turned into elaborate sculptures and trinkets. Russia exported 72 tonnes of mammoth tusk in 2017 but exports have dropped off as a growing underground trade in tusks appears to be eating into the official trade. While collectors can obtain licences, they increasingly complain of pressure from the authorities who confiscate their finds and demand high tariffs. To avoid losing business, many are sidestepping existing regulations and selling their tusks quickly but for less money to Chinese dealers who come to buy them directly. Some see the legal mammoth trade as a relief valve that gives consumers an alternative to elephant ivory. But is the shadowy trade in the extinct species putting even more pressure on one of the world's most endangered animals?

Mammoth hunting is an enticing profession for the daring or desperate residents of Yakutia. All of the tusk hunters Chapple encountered in the isolated camp were local to the area, but each one had a different motivation that brought them to search beneath the permafrost. One was a self-made millionaire through the mammoth tusk trade, some had full-time jobs during the rest of the year, and others broke into the business more recently after watching viral videos that made the excavations look like a quick win. Everybody knows the drill: pick a spot and blast away. "A lot of these guys are in quite desperate situations," says Chapple. Many take out bank loans to finance the petrol needed for the pumps. "If they can just get one of these tusks, it can change their lives."

Some use powerful firefighter pumps to melt away the ice and bore deep underground. Others burrow labyrinthine caverns under the ground and navigate below the dripping mud with huge chunks of ice hanging over them. "All it takes is a roof collapse and they're entombed forever," says Chapple, who photographed the "mammoth hunt" for Radio Free Europe, a US government-funded broadcaster in Eastern Europe. It's dangerous but lucrative work where a lucky few could strike it rich. For most collectors in this impoverished region, though, an entire season of backbreaking labour in the mud will end up losing them money.

Along this 120km stretch of river, the only movement interrupting the excavations are occasional patrol boats with environmental protection officers accompanied by police looking for hunters who don't have a licence to sell their finds legally. If word gets out that a boat is approaching, "they throw camouflage netting over the equipment and melt away far into the forest like Chechen guerrillas," says Chapple.

Although the trade is still not fully regulated, searching for and selling mammoth tusks is completely legal in Russia as long as collectors obtain a licence. Alexei - a licensed dealer who asked to be identified by a pseudonym - has been exporting mammoth tusks for seven years. In the past two years, his business has been struggling as the black market really started taking off. With Russian authorities slowing down the legal trade, his Chinese customers are starting to turn to smugglers for their supply of mammoth ivory instead. "We suffer big losses," he says. "Almost two tonnes of legally mined material were taken from me for inspection. A year-and-a-half has passed and the tusks are still being examined."

Confiscating ivory from licensed collectors and dragging out checks for years may be an attempt to better control the trade, says Alexei, but it risks achieving quite the opposite. "It kills the legal market in Yakutia and pushes people to do illegal business." Due to the nature of the business, it is difficult to estimate how many tusks are exported illegally, but Alexei believes it could be as much as 50 per cent today, compared with 20 per cent in 2016. These underhand deals not only make it impossible for authorities to keep the trade in check, there is one other beneficiary that misses out on the ancient treasures: science.

Since the 1990s, the Academy of Sciences of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (ASSR) has received many rare specimens from licensed ivory collectors that it could not otherwise afford, including carcasses of woolly mammoth, woolly rhino and cave lion cubs. Where collectors might have left the skulls and bones of prehistoric megafauna scattered around excavation sites in the past, they now know their value and hand them over to scientists for free. "We have an agreement with these guys," says Valerii Plotnikov, a senior researcher at the ASSR. A collector remains the owner and receives a cut of the profits when the specimens are exhibited abroad.

Last year, a Yakutia resident unearthed a severed wolf head estimated to be around 40,000 years old. With a full head of hair, fangs, tongue and even brain tissue largely intact, Plotnikov's team could use DNA analysis and CT scanners - a tool that uses x-rays to create a 360-degree image of internal organs and tissues - to study this ancient predator and compare the genetic information to that of modern wolves.

As an adviser to the Russian Ministry of Culture, Plotnikov takes photos and measurements of the mammoth tusks the collectors bring into Yakutsk in order to estimate their age, size and weight - and determine their cultural value. This allows collectors and dealers to request a licence to export the tusks from Moscow to China. It's a months-long process that has now become even more complex. Three months ago airport police in Yakutsk confiscated several tonnes of tusks from a licensed collector and are still holding them. The slow checks end up losing collectors money. As a result, many start selling their goods on the black market, and the long-established trading companies that used to buy tusks in bulk and sell them on to China are now being undercut by illegal traffickers. "If the whole business becomes illegal, scientists will not have a chance to take measurements of these tusks," says Plotnikov. "It's terrible, but what can we do?"

Lucy Vigne is a very different kind of ivory hunter. Determined to combat ivory smuggling and elephant poaching, Vigne has spent years investigating the global ivory trade with her late colleague Esmond Martin. When the pair last visited the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, they primarily came across mammoth ivory in specialty shops. In 2011, the independent researchers counted and photographed 6,541 items in 30 outlets - some of them with posters in the windows advertising their mammoth wares. Because of the brown outer layer, large cracks and stains, the mammoth ivory available for purchase was mostly carved into sculptures and figures, some priced at £7,800, rather than mass produced into jewellery and chopsticks as was the case with elephant tusks.

Mammoth ivory has steadily gained popularity since the early 2000s but, when China banned the import and sales of elephant ivory in 2017 to solve the poaching crisis, ivory carvers and vendors started switching to the ancient material en masse. "The carvers in China are some of the best in the world and have great expertise in carving all sorts of materials, so they are willingly adapting to it," says Vigne.

Vigne, who was raised in England and now lives in Kenya, returned to the port city in late 2018 to find the number of mammoth ivory items for sale had soared. Guangzhou is just two hours away from Hong Kong so bringing in mammoth tusks in bulk is simple and profitable. With a wealthier population interested in luxury goods, buyers in Guangzhou - a city famous for both its ivory carving factories and shops - seem to have accepted the elephants' long-extinct ancestors as an authentic substitute. While Russian "ice ivory" was sold as an exclusive collector's good in the past, smaller items such as pendants, bangles and beaded bracelets have become affordable substitutes for the mass market. A small pendant, for instance, can sell for as little as 250 yuan (£27) in the market areas for jade stones, jewellery and antiques. Retailers in the new shopping centres and airport gift shops charge several times that price.

When elephant ivory was legally and widely available in mainland China, some vendors struggled to persuade consumers into buying mammoth items and ended up closing their outlets due to low sales. Those specialising in mammoth ivory and catering to a wealthier clientele were already doing better when Vigne and Martin visited in 2011. With lower imports and rising prices, these specialist vendors believed, the limited commodity would eventually become a profitable investment.

For the average buyer, Vigne says, the fact that their ivory trinket started life attached to a woolly mammoth doesn't make it any less attractive. With an estimated ten million mammoths still buried in Siberia's permafrost, the ancient animal outnumbers the 350,000 African elephants by far. Chinese consumers will happily buy mammoth ivory as long as it resembles the white ivory they are used to. Traditional ivory carving goes back to the 14th century and, historically, was the preserve of emperors, scholars and the upper-class. Today, ivory is still a status symbol for the new middle class, often cherished for its aesthetic. "Although people aspire to own 'ivory', in reality, many would be unable to distinguish between elephant and mammoth ivory or even ivory substitutes," says a spokesperson from TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring group working in the region.

But the strong similarities between the two makes telling the difference between legal mammoth ivory and illegal elephant ivory difficult. When mammoth tusks are traded in their entirety, they are relatively easy to identify because, unlike those of elephants, they have a brown, outer peel and tend to be larger and twisted. To identify the origin of a piece of tusk or carved sculpture, dealers and vendors have to resort to a photocopier or scanner and take a photo of the stacked chevron-like pattern visible in a cross-section of ivory. Closest to the root of the tusk, which is essentially an elongated tooth, it's easy to discern these intersecting lines. If the angle these lines meet at is less than 90 degrees, the tusk belongs to a mammoth. If it is over 90 degrees, it is that of an elephant. It is not a fool-proof system, though, especially if the pieces are small, painted and carved upon.

"It's easier to mix smaller items of elephant and mammoth ivory. That does happen, either accidentally or because a vendor is not experienced since they used to be sold in the same shops," says Vigne. When scouring the market areas and shops of southern China before the ban, she would ask to see both mammoth and elephant ivory in shops. "If one is looking at several on a counter, it's very difficult for the shopkeeper to remember which pendant came from where because they can look identical," says Vigne.

While elephant ivory was banned from mainland China in 2017, it will be available in Hong Kong until 2021. This left a four year window to potentially smuggle ivory purchased legally in Hong Kong into southern China. It is not clear how much mammoth ivory ends up in mainland China every year, but customs data shows that on average 36 tonnes of raw tusks and unworked tusk pieces are brought into Hong Kong every year as there is no import tax. Of that, 29 tonnes of mammoth tusks are re-exported to mainland China.

Recent investigations by TRAFFIC suggest that a few shops in China, Hong Kong and even the US have labelled elephant ivory as "mammoth" or "bone". Since law enforcement officials are unable to check every single item sold in a store, vendors might sell elephant ivory illegally, under the guise of it being mammoth ivory. The state of New York prohibits the domestic sale of elephant ivory since 2014 and mammoth ivory since 2016 and convicted a Manhattan-based antiques vendor in 2017 of intentionally mislabelling elephant as mammoth ivory during the transition period. Mammoth ivory is also banned in India. There is no comprehensive assessment that demonstrates how widespread the practice is in China and where on the trade route the laundering may be happening, because mammoth comes from Russia and elephant from Africa. "What we've got to remember is that raw [elephant] tusks are being smuggled off the African continent hidden in large shipments by criminal networks," says Vigne. "They're not laundering elephant ivory. It would look rather odd if tusks came out of Africa and are labelled as mammoth ivory." Those wanting to crack down on the illegal elephant ivory trade and potential mammoth laundering will have to map out the marketplace first.

Mammoth ivory has been touted as an "ethical" alternative for the continuing illegal ivory trade that is threatening an entire living species with extinction, but at what cost? Earlier this year, economists from Texas A&M University and the University of Calgary investigated how the supply of unearthed mammoth ivory affected the poaching of wild elephants between 2010 and 2012. They estimated that the 80 tonnes of mammoth ivory that were exported from Russia in an average year reduced poaching from 55,000 elephants per year to 34,000.

Conservationists and campaigners, on the other hand, see the mammoth ivory trade as a way of sustaining a criminal industry and fear it could provide a loophole for intentional mislabelling and laundering. In August, delegates taking part in CITES, the world's biggest conference on wildlife trade, debated whether woolly mammoths should become the first extinct species to be listed as endangered in an attempt to regulate the trade and clamp down on ivory smuggling. As the trade in mammoth ivory is almost unregulated and undocumented today, the rationale behind the proposal put forward by Israel was to remove any loopholes that could facilitate mislabelling and laundering of illegal elephant ivory. With all the complexities trade regulations entail, would a total ban on mammoth ivory stop the trade altogether?

Douglas MacMillan, a University of Kent professor focusing on the economics of conservation, isn't convinced. "A mammoth ivory ban would drive prices for elephant ivory higher and therefore increase the incentive to poach them," he says, adding that demand and prices for elephant ivory have been falling rapidly in China in the last five years - as a result, many ivory carving factories had shut down by the time the ban on elephant ivory came into force in 2017.

And it appears that demand for ivory might be dwindling anyway. In September, a WWF-funded survey of 2,000 people in China found that 73 per cent of respondents would not buy ivory, compared to 57 per cent in 2017 before the domestic ban on elephant ivory went into effect. Respondents cited concerns about the extinction of elephants and the cruelty related to ivory trade. Most consumers are aware that elephant ivory is illegal, which seems to have rubbed off onto mammoth ivory. "Most ordinary people do not understand the difference between a mammoth and an elephant, and since the ban on elephant ivory, they simply are afraid to buy anything," says Russian dealer Alexei.

Israel ended up withdrawing its motion to regulate the trade in long-extinct woolly mammoths, pending further research into the extent of laundering and mislabelling. But there are still major question marks around what stockpiles exist, where manufacturing and sales takes place and how laundering of elephant ivory could be prevented. With a supply chain stretching out across three continents, if not more, the true scale of the mammoth ivory trade will remain in the dark unless traders and governments are willing to publicly release their export and import figures. Until then, any possible solutions will have to be put on ice.

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The climate crisis has sparked a Siberian mammoth tusk gold rush

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Glancing into the 50-metre-deep hole the two tusk hunters smiled. Together, they heaved out a caramel-coloured mammoth tusk from the soil where it had been frozen for at least 10,000 years. Their dog, too, seemed to be interested in the find.

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Wall Street women with stay-at-home spouses have become more common. Women in finance say their husbands' willingness to handle domestic duties is key to their success. The number of women in the finance industry with a stay- at-home husband has climbed nearly tenfold since 1980.        biggest feminist movement that has ever occured was in new york. it's an industrial area, lots of businesses and firms. 

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Wall Street women with stay-at-home spouses have become more common. Women in finance say their husbands' willingness to handle domestic duties is key to their success. The number of women in the finance industry with a stay- at-home husband has climbed nearly tenfold since 1980.        biggest feminist movement that has ever occured was in new york. it's an industrial area, lots of businesses and firms. 

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could never happen in egypt due to cultural reasons. women are seen to be more fitted as housewifes rather than successful business women. sexism is normalised in the middle east,  men are the dominant gender.  men's ego are in arab countries to fragile to allow a women to be better than him in the workforce

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china has an increasing demand for ivory and Siberia is hoarding the ancient treasure quickly to meet the demands as the ground thaws and reveals them. 80% of the mammoth tusks discovered in Siberia are sold to china via Hong Kong where they are carved and turned into sculptures. Russia exported 72 tonnes of tusks in 2017. Many people who hunt for tusks are desperate for money. Can be dangerous as ice can collapse on top of them. Tusks are traded illegally 50% of the time as authorities confiscate them for inspection.

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china has an increasing demand for ivory and Siberia is hoarding the ancient treasure quickly to meet the demands as the ground thaws and reveals them. 80% of the mammoth tusks discovered in Siberia are sold to china via Hong Kong where they are carved and turned into sculptures. Russia exported 72 tonnes of tusks in 2017. Many people who hunt for tusks are desperate for money. Can be dangerous as ice can collapse on top of them. Tusks are traded illegally 50% of the time as authorities confiscate them for inspection.

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https://globalnews.ca/news/7758963/canada-greenhouse-gas-emissions-oil-gas-study/

This article talks about the greenhouse gasses emitted by Canada. They promised by 2050 their greenhouse emissions will be zero, however they ran the numbers and with 0.5% of the world's population, Canada will account for 16% of all carbon that can be emitted while keeping climate change manageable. Environmental groups have met with the government 303 times. The production of carbon is expected to ride in Canada until 2039.

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tusk hunters want to retrieve the "ice ivory" that was revealed when the ground thawed in Siberia. A large amount of tusks end up in china. Some believe legal mammoth trade is positive as it is an alternative to elephant ivory. however others believe it is putting more pressure on the endangered species. many people in this industry are desperate for money. however many don't realise how much money is needed for supplies etc... you must obtain a license to trade mammoth tusks in some countries however in some countries it is illegal.

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tusk hunters want to retrieve the "ice ivory" that was revealed when the ground thawed in Siberia. A large amount of tusks end up in china. Some believe legal mammoth trade is positive as it is an alternative to elephant ivory. however others believe it is putting more pressure on the endangered species. many people in this industry are desperate for money. however many don't realise how much money is needed for supplies etc... you must obtain a license to trade mammoth tusks in some countries however in some countries it is illegal.

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chine lifted its two child policy and is now allowing couples to have up to three children. this us due to the decreasing fertility rate. People in china however do not want more children especially the women. women now choose to focus on their careers and have around 1 or 2 children. as well as this it is difficult to support a child both physically and financially. infant mortality rates are not as high as they were so families do not need to have many children to ensure some survive and living conditions as a whole have improved drastically. many people believe that the government has no right to dictate how many children they can have. many say that they don't believe this policy will be effective either just as the two child policy was not as effective as the government hoped it would be

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this article talks about the ethnic cleansing of palestinians and how social media has been a huge impact of hearing their voices.

Instagram is changing the way it showcases content after being accused of suppressing pro-Palestinian messages during the recent Gaza conflict. The app had favoured original content in its "stories" feature over existing, re-shared posts.

this relates to globalisation, how the world is more interconnected as a result of social media and the internet.