Employment, Skills and Human Capital
In a recent poll, one-third of Americans say the pandemic has affected their household’s access to food. Yale researchers are charting the course of mighty “rivers” in the sky that are holding steady in the face of climate change — for now. When it comes to climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, we often think first of power generation or heavy industry transport. Research by the Global CCS Institute think tank has shown that carbon capture and storage projects have grown by 50% over the last 9 months. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 239.6 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.88 million. More than 6.6 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data. Even when kids spend five hours a day on screen – whether computers, television or text – it doesn’t appear to be harmful. That’s what my colleagues and I at the University of Colorado Boulder discovered after analyzing data taken from nearly 12,000 participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study – the largest long-term study of its kind ever in the U.S. Genomics experts worldwide released a paper highlighting advances in rare disease, cancer, population health and carrier screening at the 10th Annual Individualizing Medicine Conference on Saturday, Oct. 9. Researchers in the Netherlands are developing laser technology to enable “virtually painless” injections without needles in what they call a breakthrough that will ease fear and lower the threshold for vaccinations. Concrete often begins to crack and crumble after a few decades of life — but curiously, that hasn’t been the case with many Roman structures. The structures are still standing, exhibiting remarkable durability despite conditions that would destroy modern concrete. Rooftop solar panels are up to 79% cheaper than they were in 2010. These plummeting costs have made rooftop solar photovoltaics even more attractive to households and businesses who want to reduce their reliance on electricity grids while reducing their carbon footprints. New leaders may want to let trust build over time, rather than establishing lots of it right away, according to a new study with military cadets. Some have called NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope the “telescope that ate astronomy.” It is the most powerful space telescope ever built and a complex piece of mechanical origami that has pushed the limits of human engineering. On Dec. 18, 2021, after years of delays and billions of dollars in cost overruns, the telescope is scheduled to launch into orbit and usher in the next era of astronomy. Almost 15 years after introducing a critical choice-making framework, behavioral economists Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler reflect on its continuing impact on business and society. The COVID-19 pandemic, now in its 19th month, has meant different things to different people. For some, it’s meant stress over new school and work regimes, or anxiety over the prospect of catching COVID-19 and dealing with the aftereffects of an infection. But for others, it’s created space and freedom to pursue new passions or make decisions that had been put off. In the world of work this week…research shows a majority of workers can do their job in less than 40 hours a week. So why are we still stuck in the same work week, even amid such radical shifts in the way we work over the course of the pandemic? It’s time to redefine our relationship with work. Plus, more highlights you might have missed this week: A boost to productivity growth is a commonly cited macroeconomic silver lining of the COVID-19 crisis. After lockdowns and social distancing forced consumers and firms to adapt to digital channels, even for services a credible narrative of a productivity tailwind has emerged. Images of wildfires scorching trees, hurricanes flattening houses and flash floods upturning cars are the very real – and more frequent – signs of the impact of climate change. In February this year, as the UK was still under tight COVID-19 restrictions, cases of seasonal flu dropped to zero. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 239.1 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.87 million. More than 6.56 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data. Hundreds of kilometres from shore, and covering two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, the high seas are a world that few of us will ever see. After more than a year in the field, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina concluded: “There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. Perhaps the wildest, and the least understood, are the world’s oceans.” Just 5% of employed people in the UK worked from home in 2019. The onset of the pandemic and the overnight shuttering of offices during the first lockdown meant 47% of employees were doing the same in April 2020. In his autobiography, Miles Davis complained that classical musicians were like robots. Fear is one of the central emotional responses during the pandemic. Every day brings a new level of stress: concerns about getting sick, the stigma of testing positive, financial difficulties due to not being able to work, separation from loved ones in lockdown (or being locked in an unsafe household). The list goes on. Metals are all around us, from our phones and cars to our homes and office buildings. The economic recovery has fueled a rapid acceleration in inflation this year for advanced and emerging market economies, driven by firming demand, supply shortages, and rapidly rising commodity prices.Show Agenda posts
View more Employment posts
Poll: One-third of Americans say pandemic has impacted their access to food
Saturday 16th of October 2021
Atmospheric rivers are stable for now — but change could be on the way
Saturday 16th of October 2021
Feeding the world without destroying it: this week’s Radio Davos COP26 podcast
Friday 15th of October 2021
Investment, bans and goals: Everything to know about the environment this week
Friday 15th of October 2021
COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 15 October
Friday 15th of October 2021
How much screen time is too much for children?
Friday 15th of October 2021
What are the benefits of genetic testing? Experts explain
Friday 15th of October 2021
Needle-free injections could become a reality, thanks to lasers and the ‘bubble gun’
Friday 15th of October 2021
What can a 2,050-year-old Roman tomb teach us about modern construction?
Friday 15th of October 2021
Solar panels on half the world’s roofs could meet its entire electricity demand – new research
Friday 15th of October 2021
Leadership: why trust should grow, not peak immediately
Friday 15th of October 2021
Scientists will soon be able to see how the universe began, thanks to this new telescope
Friday 15th of October 2021
How does ‘nudging’ work as an intervention technique?
Friday 15th of October 2021
COVID-19: How your emotions can affect your perception of time
Friday 15th of October 2021
5 work trends this week: Working less and dealing with stress
Friday 15th of October 2021
Why we shouldn’t overstate the pandemic’s effect on productivity growth
Friday 15th of October 2021
What is ‘eco-anxiety’ and how can we ease young people’s fears for the planet?
Thursday 14th of October 2021
Is it a cold or COVID-19? An expert explains
Thursday 14th of October 2021
COVID-19: What you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic on 14 October
Thursday 14th of October 2021
VR can encourage people to save our oceans. Here’s why
Thursday 14th of October 2021
Hybrid working is fuelling demand for more tech and bigger homes – both are bad news for the planet
Thursday 14th of October 2021
What Miles Davis tells us about AI
Thursday 14th of October 2021
New study shows 10 ways to better deal with trauma and stress
Thursday 14th of October 2021
All the metals we mine each year, in one visualization
Thursday 14th of October 2021
IMF: Will inflation remain high?
Thursday 14th of October 2021
Gender Parity
Media and entertainment companies are increasingly recognizing the challenge of closing the gap between intention and action on fostering diversity and inclusion. “COVID-19 has revealed and worsened inequalities and is a reminder of just how unsustainable and fragile the world’s economies and democracies are,” according to a new United Nations blueprint for a post-COVID recovery that seeks equality and justice for women. Women and girls account for 50% of the population, yet most health and physiology research is conducted in males. Women make up the majority of people living with mood disorders in Canada. However, treatments and resources that are adapted to their needs are still lacking. Looking for ways to feel better, many women are turning to social media platforms like Instagram. Over the past year, more than 1.5 billion women worldwide were not tested for some of the most prevalent and pernicious diseases women face: cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure and sexually transmitted diseases/infections (STDs/STIs). In the fight against climate change, entrepreneurship and innovation – known as “greentech” – are essential. Women are more affected by climate change than men, and yet greentech is currently a male-dominated field; in Canada, only 1 in 10 greentech business founders are women and only 19% of greentech startups have at least one female founder. When it comes to creating climate solutions, the female perspective is sorely lacking. The gender pension gap exists in virtually every retirement income system around the world. The range is remarkable, with Japan having an almost 50% gap whereas Estonia’s gap is less than 5%. By today’s values, on an average wage this gap can represent $8,400 per year in the US and £6,000 per year in the UK. In the decade leading up to 2020, we saw significant, albeit slow, progress towards making education and work more equitable and inclusive. “Nothing bad happens when women have more money” states Sallie Krawcheck, a former Wall Street executive and the CEO and founder of Ellevest, a female focussed investment platform. Sallie is one of a growing group of influential and vocal women who are espousing the idea of financial feminism, which stands for financial inclusion and equality for women, not only relating to their earnings, but also to building and keeping wealth. Building trust in digital payments is crucial to unlocking the potential of women merchants in India. Being an adolescent anywhere is challenging. This is particularly true in sub-Saharan Africa, where adolescents have some of the world’s highest rates of HIV infection, unintended teenage pregnancy, and intimate partner violence. Water for human consumption is increasingly inaccessible, due to poor management, degradation of water sources, the effects of climate change and more. Zarifa Ghafari was one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors but has fled the country as a result of the Taliban’s advances. The words of the Islamic hymns being rehearsed in a small studio just outside Cairo are well known among Egyptian Muslims, but they have never sounded so different. Here, they are being sung by women. Progress on reaching gender parity has stalled and even gone backwards in the COVID-19 pandemic. Women remain underrepresented in a number of high-profile fields like finance and STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). With women’s jobs close to twice as likely to be cut during this recession as those held by men, the pandemic has set the world back 36 years in its quest to achieve global gender parity. Gendered differences in men’s and women’s behavioral traits — namely, risk preferences and overconfidence — generate differences in job search behavior and may explain as much as 25 percent of the difference between men’s and women’s earnings in their first jobs, according to survey data on job search behavior analyzed by Patricia Cortés, Jessica Pan, Laura Pilossoph, and Basit Zafar in Gender Differences in Job Search and the Earnings Gap: Evidence from Business Majors (NBER Working Paper 28820). While the market seemingly recovers from the effects of the pandemic, the recession’s effects on Black, Brown and other underrepresented communities have been devastating, with experts calling the economic comeback “the most unequal in modern US history.” Artificial intelligence (AI) has become embedded in everyday life around the world, touching how we work, play, purchase and communicate. The power of AI lies in its potential to improve lives, but this potential can only be realized if AI represents the entire population. Increasing diversity in AI development is crucial to delivering equitable outcomes. At the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, experts were quick to warn us about the disproportionate impact the crisis would have on socially excluded groups, such as women. The urgent need to respond to the health crisis was undeniable, but at the same time, understanding the differentiated effects of the pandemic on excluded groups would be key to enable the design of inclusive and resilient recovery efforts . Yet, social distancing measures created new challenges for those seeking to gather evidence on such impacts. We needed innovative approaches to collect data and we needed them fast. If you want to be a leader, start talking. It doesn’t even particularly matter what you say, according to a study testing the appropriately-named “babble hypothesis”. A shortage of skilled workers is intensifying in Canada, potentially threatening the pace of the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and that has policymakers looking at a largely untapped market for new construction workers: Women. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Farida Mercedes, an HR executive at a global cosmetic company, was on the cusp of a promotion. She had worked 17 years with the company. Her six- and seven-year-old sons needed a full-time parent to help them navigate the newfound challenges of online learning. Mercedes and her husband, a corrections officer, never discussed who would leave their job to help the kids during their school day. “I took that burden on myself, and he was very supportive,” she said. “But it just was no question.” Kamala Harris’ election as US Vice-President has drawn attention to the fact that female and minority leaders are underrepresented in all walks of life. This is especially evident in the corner office of US companies. Despite their unique leadership qualities, data from 2017-2018 for S&P 1500 firms shows that women hold only 5%, and minority representatives only 7% of CEO positions. Recently, the TIAA named Thasunda Brown Duckett as its CEO, only the second-ever Black female chief executive in the Fortune 500.Show Agenda posts
View more Gender posts
4 ways media and entertainment could be more equitable and diverse
Thursday 14th of October 2021
This is the UN’s plan for a gender-equal recovery
Wednesday 13th of October 2021
Why are males still the default subjects in medical research?
Monday 11th of October 2021
What is ‘Instagram therapy’ and can it help women?
Monday 11th of October 2021
Women could lead longer, healthier lives – first global index of women’s health urges action from policymakers
Wednesday 29th of September 2021
Why the world needs to invest in female climate entrepreneurs
Monday 27th of September 2021
How to fix the gender pension gap
Monday 27th of September 2021
SDIS21: Society & the Future of Work – What are the challenges in making society and work more sustainable?
Thursday 16th of September 2021
4 ways to address the gender finance gap and empower women
Wednesday 15th of September 2021
This is the main barrier stopping female merchants from using digital payments
Tuesday 14th of September 2021
Lessons from Tanzania: How soccer and sex education can change girls’ lives
Friday 10th of September 2021
How improving water security is tackling the gender gap in Mexico City
Wednesday 1st of September 2021
‘They’re not able to govern without 50% of the population.’ Former mayor speaks out for women in Afghanistan
Friday 27th of August 2021
All-women Islamic choir smashes gender taboos in Egypt
Thursday 26th of August 2021
Gender gap: This is how we can build an equal economic recovery
Wednesday 25th of August 2021
How to avoid gender bias in job postings
Sunday 22nd of August 2021
Agenda Dialogues: Mind the Gender Gap – Delivering an Equal Economic Recovery
Wednesday 18th of August 2021
What risk and overconfidence can tell us about the gender pay gap
Sunday 15th of August 2021
How to nurture inclusivity and create a more diverse workforce
Friday 13th of August 2021
5 ways to get more women working in AI
Thursday 12th of August 2021
World Bank: This is how COVID-19 has affected women’s employment
Tuesday 10th of August 2021
People who speak more are more likely to be considered leaders
Monday 9th of August 2021
How can Canada encourage more female workers to join the construction trade?
Thursday 5th of August 2021
This is how the US female workforce has been affected by COVID-19
Friday 30th of July 2021
CEO diversity: does it explain CEO-to-employee pay ratio?
Friday 30th of July 2021
