This week, we kicked off our new interview series with the women of user experience design firm Cooper! On Monday we introduced User Experience Director Shannon McGarity, who started off building big companies' very first websites and now designs, consults, and teaches at Cooper. On Monday, we'll have an interview with one of her colleagues- someone with a very different background and point of view, but a shared goal of creating productive, positive user experiences.
Current events have been on my mind a lot this week, but I found time for a few things around the internet that caught my attention.
Women fought for the right to their own passports, instead of being add-ons to their husband's, like Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald on her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald's.
1) Passports are a critical component of traveling abroad, but married women in the 1920s had to fight for the right to be issued passports in their own names- instead of just being listed as "wife of" Mr. Whomever!
2) My enduring love of The Babysitters' Club is no secret, and I enjoyed this piece on how the series encouraged entrepreneurship, independence, and professional ambition in its readers.
3) The collegiate school year is drawing to a close, and this graphic from the Gates Foundation on college student demographics was fascinating.
4) More millennial women are earning more than their male partners, and it's stirring up some complicated feelings from all parties. Some of the issues were rooted in deeply-entrenched gender roles, or unspoken expectations, but some felt more gender neutral. That is, I imagine that many primary earners regardless of gender probably feel like this woman, who said, "It's a huge responsibility. I pressure myself to stay in the job I'm at even if I'm unhappy there."
5) Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is a proponent of women being as fully engaged in the labor force as men. She says, "If women worked at the same rate as men, the US economy would be 5% bigger."
6) And if you're still figuring things out career-wise, get some perspective from 25 famous women on their own career breakthroughs.
7) Simone Biles isn't the only woman who's had a good comeback to a sexist comment. Here are 12 more.
