MAMAMUSE

Dad Shift's campaign is genius in its simplicity. By attaching life-sized baby slings to iconic male statues across London, they're shining a spotlight on a critical issue: the UK's woeful paternity leave, the worst in Europe. They didn't choose just any statues. Imagine strolling past the regal Laurence Olivier at the South Bank, suddenly a father. Or Gene Kelly, mid-dance outside Leicester Square, cradling a baby. Then there's Thierry Henry near the Emirates, and Tony Adams at Arsenal’s home. Each one transformed, reminding us of the importance of father-baby bonding and the need for parental equality. Bravo. It's about time we shift the conversation.

"A French man admits in court to drugging his wife so that he and dozens of men could rape her [for a decade]" Many of you in my network are likely following the case of Gisèle Pelicot. If you do not already know, Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle’s ex-husband drugged Ms. Pelicot, 71, his wife of 50 years, over almost a decade in order to rape her while she was comatose. Then, he invited upwards of 50 men to come into their house and join him in raping her. “They (Gisèle’s rapists) are a cross-section of working and middle-class rural France, ranging in age from 26 to 74; they include truck drivers, soldiers, a nurse, an IT specialist and a journalist. Most are accused of going to the retired couple’s house in the town of Mazan and raping Ms. Pelicot once. A handful are accused of returning and raping her repeatedly.” Despite the absolutely devastating experiences Gisèle has endured, she made the relatively rare decision to have her trial be public. Why? She wanted to shift the shame onto the perpetrators of this coordinated, mass rape, instead of feeling ashamed about the extreme sexual violence committed against her while she was drugged. The egregious crimes committed against Gisèle expose the dreadful undercurrents influencing ordinary men in even small towns to commit blatant offenses. These crimes highlight the constant fears faced by women of all ages worldwide. "'We are all Gisèle!': Feminists rally across France in response to mass rape trial." Accordingly, a mass movement predominantly led by women is now underway. This movement seeks to shift the shame onto the perpetrators of these horrific acts of sexual violence against women. To that end, I argue that we can do more than just shift the shame onto perpetrators of sexual violence. We can each understand what we can do on a day-to-day basis locally to prevent such horrific abuse. As depicted in the rape culture pyramid diagram below, mass rapes do not just happen. They stem from a misogynistic, violent male dominance culture that we can all work to change at our local levels. And to that, I will ask: Will you speak up the next time you hear a friend making sexist, misogynistic assumptions towards women? Will you speak up the next time you hear a rape or murder “joke”? Will you hold an individual accountable when you witness non-consensual touching (sexual or non-sexual)? The rape culture pyramid clearly demonstrates tangible actions that can be prevented if men and women work in partnership to be aware of these behaviors and speak out against them. What will you do? #AllMenCan Cindy Gallop MAMAMUSE Caroline Criado Perez Mark Greene Ernie Collette Samantha Katz Jeremy Stockdale Lucy Morgan Lissette Alvarez-Holland Michael Flood Matt Tyler Hunter Johnson Rob Sturrock Dr. Zac Seidler

“What we've seen in the past decades, the major freedom that I've noticed is the freedom to exercise power” I recently discussed the complexities of online freedoms with Alessandro Polidoro, a prominent Italian attorney based in Berlin, known for his expertise in technology law. Alessandro has been actively involved in shaping policies at the European level, particularly advocating for stricter enforcement of the Digital Services Act to ensure accountability among Very Large Online Platforms in the pornography industry. He also served as the Lead Attorney in strategic litigation under the General Data Protection Regulation to address severe privacy violations by a major porn platform. During our conversation, particularly relevant given that September is Sexual Freedom Month, I asked Alessandro how female reproductive and sexual health founders, content creators, and educators can navigate and exercise their freedoms amidst prevalent online censorship. Alessandro shared that freedom to exercise power by a heteronormative, predominantly white male demographic, systematically marginalizes and censors female and queer reproductive and sexual health information. Alessandro stressed that the challenges encountered by female reproductive and sexual health founders in communication and commerce extend beyond legal and technological issues; they are profoundly rooted in cultural. "When you give these super powerful technological tools in the hands of people that are just exercising power for their own interests, and they don't even have the cultural instruments to understand the complexity of the field in which they are operating. That's where the monsters come out. So it cannot be only a legal solution. It cannot only be a technological solution. The solution must be cultural." In light of this, I would love to learn how members of my LinkedIn community in the reproductive and sexual health space are working to change culture during Sexual Freedom Month! Please feel free to DM or tag me, so I can help amplify your work! Varda Messer Jillian Rothe Jessica Stahl Kiana Robinson Laura Miano Melissa Jolley MAMAMUSE Diana Lin Roswitha Verwer Karishma Swarup

"When I talk to anyone who is in the traditional venture capital or founder ecosystem, they ask conventional questions on followers, engagement and metrics. The hardest part is that we do not use that as our standard metrics of success because we are getting censored." This past summer, I had the opportunity to discuss digital suppression with Nakshathra Suresh and Hannah Klose from eiris. During the interview, I shared insights into the challenges that MAMAMUSE™, along with thousands of sex educators, female reproductive and sexual health founders, and sextech entrepreneurs, routinely encounter as they strive to create and promote content related to their products and services. The pervasive censorship of content related to female reproductive and sexual health by major online platforms is not just a suppression of free expression; it's an active detriment to the founders, educators, and creators within the women’s health, femtech, and sextech sectors. When platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok systematically shadowban and remove content that discusses these vital health topics, they directly impair the ability of founders to engage with their audience, share essential reproductive and sexual health information, and grow their ventures. As platforms enforce community guidelines that disproportionately impact content on women's health, startups in the femtech and sextech spaces find themselves marginalized. The removal of their content leads to a devastating loss of followers, a plunge in engagement metrics, and, most critically, an erosion of their ability to attract funding. Investors in traditional VC circles rely heavily on these metrics to gauge a venture’s potential for success. However, when such metrics are compromised by external censorship, these ventures are unfairly labeled as underperforming or unviable. The misalignment between what these startups aim to achieve and how success is traditionally measured in the business ecosystem is clear. While traditional VC queries focus on engagement numbers and follower counts, the real impact of these companies lies in their societal contributions—improving health outcomes, enhancing well-being, and empowering individuals with essential knowledge on their reproductive and sexual health. These are not quantifiable by mere numbers or conventional business metrics. Cindy Gallop Karishma Swarup Gigi Fong Opal Turner Yudara Kularathne MD, FAMS(EM) Carine Carmy Center for Intimacy Justice censHERship

As women, we all know about the pay gap, the wealth gap, and the funding gap, but do you know about the Exit Gap? According to new research by The Big Exit: - Less than 1% of businesses that sold were female-founded, and these businesses were, on average, valued 30% lower compared to their male-founded counterparts - Male-founded businesses in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) sectors were valued 1.5 times higher on average compared to their female-founded counterparts. - In the consumer sector, male-owned businesses were valued 18% higher than female-owned businesses. Ultimately, “despite identical businesses being run by a man and a woman, the male-led business is likely to be valued and sold for more.” What does this tell us about the way the dominant male ecosystem looks at women’s work? Historically and until this day, women’s work is not as highly valued as men’s, and work less valued by every measure is assigned to women on the basis of sex. As women, we are fighting a two front war: 1) one against ingrained perceptions and 2) the other against the harsh realities these perceptions create: 1) Perceptions of Women’s Labor: Men often see women's work as consisting largely of traditional, unpaid, invisible tasks such as caregiving for children and elders (care labor), managing household responsibilities (domestic labor), and providing social and emotional support (emotional labor). This association leads to a pervasive implicit bias in professional settings where women, performing at equal or superior levels to their male counterparts, are undervalued and underpaid. In industries dominated by male leadership, such as VC, this bias frequently results in women being paid less for equal or superior work—plain and simple. 2) The Reality Created by These Perceptions: The skewed perceptions men hold, whether consciously or unconsciously, about the value of women’s work perpetuate a cycle that diminishes and devalues their contributions. By translating these biased perceptions into active practices, men not only reinforce, but also legitimize this ongoing cycle of undervaluation. This cycle not only justifies the male-dominated industries continued undervaluation of future women's contributions but also sets a precedent that perpetuates this discriminatory practice towards future female founders. This creates a damaging and self-perpetuating pattern that continues to undermine and marginalize women’s work, reinforcing flawed and discriminatory valuation standards. Are women paid less because women, and therefore what women do, are less valued by society–or are women and what women do valued less in society because women are paid less, thus command less material clout? I believe the former is true. Women’s work is valued less, because women are valued less.  What actions is the traditional investment ecosystem taking to address this gender bias? Cindy Gallop Samantha Katz MAMAMUSE™ Lien De Pau

Prof. Claudia Goldin made history by becoming the first woman to win a solo Nobel Prize in Economics. She was recognized for her ground-breaking work on the key drivers behind gender differences in the labour market. Goldin’s work shows that although historical factors such as disparities in education have narrowed in modern times, the earnings gap between men and women remains.   One reason for this is a lack of opportunities. This is where behavioural science may be able to help by identifying implicit biases and engineering a choice architecture to help tackle them.   Acknowledging the difficulty in proving that discrimination on the basis of gender in the workforce exists, Goldin and her colleagues at Harvard University turned their attention to one occupation which attempted to combat gender-biased hiring – musicians.   Before 1980, none of the “Big 5” symphony orchestras in the U.S. contained more than 12% female musicians due to both implicit and explicit biases in the hiring process. To combat these, orchestras began implementing “blind” auditions – that is, the candidate performed behind a screen so that the committee could not identify them as male or female.   This helped a little, but less than expected until they added a carpet.   What?   It turned out that the committee could hear the click of women’s shoes as they walked on stage and even that was sufficient to bias their decisions!   Analyzing data from 11 orchestras who implemented these changes revealed some shocking statistics. By hiding the identity of the musician in the audition, there was a 50% increased likelihood of a female musician progressing to the next round of auditions.   Goldin further estimated that blind auditions accounted for about 25% of the increase in the number of female orchestra musicians from 1970 to 1996. (Other factors like training more female musicians also contributed to this growth).   So, what does this teach us? 👉 Being blind to the #gender (as well as to other things like race) can improve impartiality in #hiring 👉 Biases are persistent and creep into decision making through the smallest of gaps (e.g. no carpet!) 👉 A carefully designed choice architecture can help to mitigate hiring biases and enhance #equity in the workplace Do you know of other innovative ways organisations are changing hiring processes to be as unbiased as possible?   #DiversityAndInclusion

To the women in my network, who else is still surprised by the limited and barely discussed hormone-free, over-the-counter birth control options available for women? With all the advancements in life sciences and startups, how do we still lack birth control options for women that also protect against STIs? Historically and still widely accepted today, societal norms suggest that women are merely passive participants in sexual activities— women are quite literally f***ed. In modern ties, women strive to be independent, yet once they engage in sexual activity, they are often relegated to merely accepting their fate based on a man’s choice to use protection. Recognizing this significant gap in women's healthcare, Lisa Kinsella has stepped up to innovate a solution. Her creation, LUWI (Let Us Wear It), represents a groundbreaking step towards empowering women in their sexual health. LUWI offers a hormone-free, over-the-counter contraception that doubles as a chemical-free STI prevention measure. Designed as a finer liner, LUWI acts as a discreet second skin inside the body, offering better heat and sensation transfer than a condom, while being colorless, odorless, and tasteless. This not only provides a comfortable alternative to condoms, which 62% of men find unpleasant, but also places control directly in women's hands without relying on a male partner to provide protection. From Cancer Survivor to CEO, Lisa’s commitment to improving sexual health outcomes for both men and women is so inspiring, but not without its challenges. “We have to bring products that serve the needs of women to the market,” says Kinsella. “Otherwise, we just have a world where the products that are available are all what the venture capitalists—the majority of which are men—think are needed. Yet that's not representative of what the rest of the country needs.” What happens when women aren’t in the room where deals for change are made, she says, is that innovation for women’s health and wellbeing hits a wall. That’s why Kinsella has pivoted from seeking only VC funding—which is granted to just 2% of women-led businesses and to less than 1% for women of color—to focusing on crowdfunding with a Start Engine campaign.” If you’re interested in supporting Lisa’s mission, learn more here: https://lnkd.in/eyU74Mit

So proud to be part of this initiative and a HUGE shoutout to Rachel Bartholomew for all her work on this project! #FemTech

The simplest insights are often the most powerful. But simple does not mean easy. 🎯 --- The mindful use of language is the most underrated skill of our time, a time when we are incentivized to react, comment, and provide "hot takes". --- Words are tools of creation. As leaders we can use them to build bridges or to destroy them. 🌉 --- When we talk about inclusive language, this goes far beyond fluency in #DEI lexicon. 🗣️ It means using a language of connection. A language that is: - True - Simple - Nuanced - Approachable --- We create the world by the way we speak to each other. ✅ --- ✍️ What does inclusive language mean to you? ♻️ Share this post if you care about the power of words.

Another thing missing in the Surgeon General Advisory on parental stress and mental health…   Zero mention of MENTAL LOAD. (well, ok, there was one paragraph about “the significant mental labor involved with parenting” but… )  Perhaps this oversight relates to the disproportionate mental load on mothers and how the advisory completely avoided discussing the gender imbalance in parental stress? (Despite the fact that the citation for that paragraph on the “significant mental labor with parenting” came from a review article on the gender differences! 😒)  Or maybe it relates to the fact that research connecting the mental load of parenting with stress and mental health is still in very early stages? Either way, I wrestle with mental load as parental stressor too – the concept of carrying around a *constant to-do list* in your brain doesn’t fit neatly into my definitions of stress. That does not mean that mental load isn’t stressful. It just means that we have work to do to define it from a stress perspective. Here is where my thinking goes:   – When does mental load become stressful? Why would the brain perceive mental load as a stressor?     – Is the stress related to the emotional labor of mental load?  Or is it related to holding a range of cognitive tasks that add elements of lack of control and unpredictability that trigger the stress alarm?   – As it relates to our body, our brain, and our health, exactly *what IS the stress of mental load?* I seek granularity because I feel like the answers could directly relate to the effectiveness of solutions targeting mental load reduction, and, therefore, reduce parental stress (especially for mothers). To get there, I am starting to dissect all things mental load with Haley Swenson. Those discussions coming soon! In the meantime, I dug into what we know and what I’m hoping to learn more about when it comes to the mental load of parenting as it relates to stress: https://lnkd.in/gw4SvJEG (highlighting the important research from Leah Ruppanner, Liz Dean, Brendan Churchill, Allison Daminger, Richard Petts, Darby Saxbe, Eve Rodsky, Elizabeth Aviv, Jodi Pawluski) #MentalLoad #maternalhealth #parentalstress