This week in our WiC roundup: Snap Inc. corrects equal pay snafu; fintech offers flexibility; an inspiring Google app; and more.

Eryn Leavens, Special Features & Copy Editor

February 17, 2017

5 Min Read
WiCipedia: Fintech Flexibility, Snap Missteps & Women of Wearables

This week in our WiCipedia roundup: Snap Inc. corrects equal pay snafu; fintech offers flexibility; an inspiring Google application; and more.

Women in Comms will be hosting its first networking breakfast and panel discussion on Wednesday, March 22, in Denver, Colo., ahead of day two of the Cable Next-Gen Technologies & Strategies conference. Register here and join us!

  • Fintech, the WiFi-connected lovechild of finance and tech, has been a rapidly evolving industry in the past few years, and women have been drawn to it -- yet the gender split is nowhere near equal. The Guardian reports that fintech offers more flexibility in terms of location and timing than regular finance, which may be a better fit for women with families and other responsibilities. It's also an industry that is innovative and ready to break the status quo. "Given that it's a new and expanding sector, women in fintech have more opportunities to move up the career ladder, which can lead to 'plum jobs in bigger, well-established banks.' The old establishment is beginning to embrace innovation and is open minded to changes in banking culture, that was so very male-oriented for so many years," The Guardian states. (See WiCipedia: Feminist Fight Club, FinTech Femmes & Feminine Freebies.)

    Figure 1: The Equality Equation Innovation + Flexibility = Equality. We hope. Innovation + Flexibility = Equality. We hope.

    • It's been a big week for issues surrounding women in tech and pay inequality. Shortly after the hire of Jennifer Park Stout as head of global public policy, Snap Inc., parent company of Snapchat, has amended the public salary of its sole female director, Joanna Coles. The New York Times explains that Coles's salary was leagues below her male counterparts at the company, and has been rectified with a new four-year contract, which puts her earnings on par with the two lower-paid men on the board, while the other two appear to make more than twice as much. Recode, on the other hand, claims that Coles's compensation was even with the boys' club from the get go; her contract just needed to be updated and the media latched on to yet another "women get paid less" headline: "The bad report got amplified, resulting in an uproar on social media, including attacks on Snap for continuing to be such obvious frat bros and also on Coles for being such a lady wimp." The NY Times lists the current full compensation breakdown, much of which is composed of stock. (See Is Magic Leap a Mirage of Misogyny & Deceit?, WiCipedia: Gendered Job Descriptions, Glass Cliffs & Gaslighting and US Sues Oracle for Pay, Hiring Discrimination.)

    • We often say that girls need to be immersed in STEM by a very young age, but how young is too young to actually apply for jobs? Chloe Bridgewater of the UK decided that seven seemed old enough, at least for an informational interview. In her handwritten letter (ironic, isn't it?), posted below, Bridgewater tells Google (Nasdaq: GOOG)'s CEO Sundar Pichai (a.k.a. google boss) about her love for robots, go karts and bean bags, even though her sister Hollie prefers dolls, the BBC reports. "My dad told me to give you a application to get a job in google. I don't really know what one of them is but he said a letter will do for now," Bridgewater pens. Pichai responded with a very warm (typed) letter to the girl, encouraging her to continue learning about technology and to apply when she finished school. He better keep this little one's letter on file; we'd like an update in 15 years. (See 5 Things We Love for Women in Comms Now .) Figure 2: Getting a Head Start (Source: BBC) (Source: BBC)

    • Reaching a female audience doesn't come naturally when the creators of the product are all male, and this is especially apparent in the wearables industry. When men design wearables, they're historically bulkier and clunkier than when women have a hand in the design process (virtual reality headset, case in point). TechCrunch interviewed Marija Butkovic, co-founder of Women of Wearables, who "pointed out the mistake the industry makes when there are only men developing a range of products that are unintentionally tailored to alienate half of their potential customers. 'They are clunky, oversized and just not visually appealing for women.'" Not only would hiring more women in wearables create gender equality within the industry, it would undoubtedly sell more product, which is the goal after all, isn't it? (See IoT for Idiots.)

    • Lest we forget the world of politics in this week's WiCipedia, President Trump has announced that he wants to make it easier for women to start companies. Along with daughter Ivanka Trump and Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, The Independent Journal Review reports that a joint task force between the US and Canada is being formed to discuss how issues around work and family affect women. Trump admitted that "the system is not working so well for [female] entrepreneurs," and Trudeau stated that diversity in the workforce is a priority for the success of companies. The issues on the table so far address equal pay, family leave and access to funding for entrepreneurs, and will include a panel of successful women in business. (See WiCipedia: After-School Coding, Salary Probing & Pro-Parenthood Companies, WiCipedia: Icelandic Inequality, Diminishing WiT & Presidential Impact and WiCipedia: Election Aftermath, Telecom Advances & Wunderkinds.)

      — Eryn Leavens, Special Features & Copy Editor, Light Reading

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About the Author(s)

Eryn Leavens

Special Features & Copy Editor

Eryn Leavens, who joined Light Reading in January 2015, attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before earning her BA in creative writing and studio arts from Hampshire College in Amherst, Mass. She also completed UC Berkeley Extension's Professional Sequence in Editing.

She stumbled into tech copy editing after red-penning her way through several Bay Area book publishers, including Chronicle Books, Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull Press and Seal Press. She spends her free time lifting heavy things, growing her own food, animal wrangling and throwing bowls on the pottery wheel. She lives in Alameda, Calif., with two cats and two greyhounds.

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