Lindsey Vonn - Iron Woman of the Slopes

Lindsey Vonn is an ultimate iron woman.  Skiing in more races, winning more medals and coming back from more serious injuries than almost anyone in her sport - male or female - ever.  Vonn’s 43 World Cup downhill victories are more than anyone in history, male or female. She’s earned more season titles in downhill (8) than any other athlete. She’s won more World Cup races, (82) overall than any woman. And she is the first skier to win a race on the World Cup circuit for 15 years in a row.  All that means she’s raced more, and longer, and better, than nearly all other legends in ski history.

 

Born Lindsey Caroline Kildow in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Vonn was taught to ski by her grandfather, Don Kildow, in Milton, Wisconsin.  She grew up in the Twin Cities metropolitan area in Burnsville, Minnesota. Vonn was on skis at age two. Her father, who had won a national junior title before a knee injury at 18, reportedly "pushed" her very hard.(1)

When Kildow was 10 years old, she met Olympic gold medalist ski racer Picabo Street, whom she considers her hero and role model. A few years after  "Street was stunned watching a 15-year-old Lindsey ski for the first time in 1999. She marveled at Vonn's knack for following the fall line. 'The faster she went, the bigger the smile she got on her face,' Street said. 'You can't teach somebody to love the fall line like that little girl loved the fall line.'" (2)

Kildow commuted to Colorado to train for several years before her family moved to Vail, Colorado in the late 1990s.

 

The move clearly paid off when, in 1999, Lindsey Kildow and Will McDonald became the first American athletes to win the "Cadets" slalom events in Italy's Trofeo Topolino di Sci Alpino.3 In 1986, Picabo Street, had participated, but did not medal, in the same Topolino event.3   After climbing through the ranks of the U.S. Ski Team, she made her World Cup debut at age 16 in 2000 in Park City, Utah in 2000.

 

For the next 18 years —more than half her life—Vonn (Lindsey married Thomas Vonn in 2007, divorcing in 2011) started in 14 individual Olympic races, twenty-five World Championships and a mind-boggling 395 World Cup races. Of those 395 World Cup starts, she’s medaled on 137 occasions—more than a third of the time.

 

In 2008, Lindsey Vonn won the overall World Cup title. She became the second American woman to do so, following Tamara McKinney in 1983. American Bode Miller won the men's title to complete the first U.S. sweep of the men's and women's overall titles in 25 years (McKinney and Phil Mahre in 1983). She also won the World Cup season title in the downhill and the U.S. Alpine Championships combined title (downhill & slalom), marking her best ski season to date. Vonn set a new American record for the most World Cup downhill victories with ten, winning at Crans-Montana, Switzerland, on March 8.

 

In 2009, Vonn repeated as overall World Cup champion, repeated as downhill champion and also won the season championship in super-G by winning the final race of the season. During the season, she broke Tamara McKinney's American record of 18 World Cup victories when she won the super-G at Tarvisio in February. Her nine World Cup wins also set an American single-season record, surpassing Phil Mahre's total of eight in 1982.

 

In December 2011, she won all three races in Lake Louise (two downhills, one super-G) for her second career 'hat trick', and with her eleventh win at Lake Louise she surpassed Renate Götschl's record for most career wins at a single resort (ten in Cortina d'Ampezzo). Later that same month, Vonn notched her first World Cup victory on U.S. snow, at Beaver Creek, Colorado. Due to a lack of snow in France, its super-G was rescheduled in advance for a Wednesday on the Birds of Prey course. Her limited success on U.S. snow is primarily due to a lack of speed events; only three have been run in the U.S. during her career. It was the first home win by an American woman in 17 years.

 

Vonn won her fourth Overall World Cup Title in 2012. The season opened in October in Sölden, Austria, where Vonn had won her first giant slalom. This made Vonn the 6th woman to have won all events at least once.  The seasons of 2013 and 2014 were mostly consumed with recovering from injuries and illness. Vonn even had to skip the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Japan due to a serious knee injury. In the 2015 season, Vonn made a comeback and returned to top of the podium at the Women's World Cup downhill race at Lake Louise, Alberta, winning the event in only her second race back. In January 2015, she tied and then overtook Austrian Annemarie Moser-Proell for the most World Cup wins ever by a woman.

In November 2016, Vonn announced on her Facebook page that she had severely fractured the humerus bone of her right arm in a training crash. She had undergone surgery to repair the bone.  Vonn returned to the World Cup in January 2017, in the downhill race at Altenmarkt; she finished 13th. On January 20, in her second race back from injury, she won the downhill event in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, capturing her 77th win.

 

With Sunday’s bronze, Vonn racked up a few additional records. She became the first woman to win a medal at six different World Championships. The oldest female racer to win a World Championships medal. And she matched Annemarie Moser-Pröll’s record, set before Vonn was even born, for the number of World Champs medals in the women’s downhill.

 

Along the way, Vonn has had to persevere through injury after injury. Since her first World Cup victory, Vonn has sustained major injuries in more than half of her seasons. She’s sprained her ACL, gotten micro-fractures in her arm, broken her finger, gotten a concussion, torn her ACL and MCL and fractured her tibia (that was all at her super-G crash at the 2013 World Championships, as it happened), fractured her ankle, fractured her left knee, broken her arm and suffered spinal joint dysfunction.

 

That didn’t include her crash at the Lake Louise downhill in December 2017. At the time, she described her knee as “swollen”—an injury which, compared to her long litany of battle scars, didn’t even seem worth mentioning. But it turned out it was much more than that. “My crash in Lake Louise last year was much more painful than I let on,” Vonn revealed in her Instagram post announcing her retirement.  And that made her other victories last season, including first place at the Val d’Isère super-G just two weeks after the Lake Louise crash, even more impressive.

As she frequently says herself, she either “goes big or goes home.” Unfortunately, going big, at speeds and inclines this intense, can be career-threatening. Even life-threatening. But Vonn throws it all to the wind. She goes for the fastest line, the most aggressive stance—even when it winds up with her in the nets.

Vonn announced last fall that she would retire after the 2018-2019 season.  She expressed hope that she could still break the record for most World Cup wins. She didn’t quite make it.  Vonn remains behind record-holder Ingemar Stenmark, but is still the leader among women. Expressing some regret on her social media accounts writing:

“However, I can look back at 82 World Cup wins, 20 World Cup titles, 3 Olympic medals, 7 World Championship medals and say that I have accomplished something that no other woman in HISTORY has ever done.”

And

“I DID IT!!!! One last medal in my final race … I couldn’t have asked for anything more!” she wrote. “Thanks everyone for the years of support, it means the world to me! I’ll post more soon but first it’s time to go home!”

Asked in 2015 if she had ever wanted to quit skiing, Vonn shared an anecdote about crashing in 50 out of 55 races she competed in at 16, according to Vail Daily.4

“I wanted to quit because I wasn’t very good, I kept falling and I couldn’t figure out how to not fall. But I made a decision that I would keep going,” she said. “I didn’t really make any money but my dad helped me and I hired a trainer, and I just kept working hard and the next season it turned around and I started to do better, and I just continued to work hard. I never really gave up, but I did question it at one point.”

Vonn in March 2008

 

1. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/08/AR2005120802039.html

2. https://web.archive.org/web/20180615194501/https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/bond-between-lindsey-vonn-and-picabo-street.

3. "Trofeo topolino" Trofeo topolino. Archived from the original on February 22, 2014.

4. https://www.vaildaily.com/news/vonn-spreads-message-of-perseverance/

 

 

Running for Congress and Making History

Women made history on Tuesday night, winning more seats in Congress than ever before.

With still some races yet to be called, at least 92 had won in the House and 10 had won in the Senate (joining 10 already in the upper chamber) for a total of 112 women — the most women to serve in Congress at once in history. (The previous record was 107.)1

Women also hit a series of significant milestones. Deb Haaland (New Mexico) and Sharice Davids (Kansas) are the first Native American women elected to Congress. Rashida Tlaib (Michigan) and Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) are the first Muslim women set to represent their states in the House. And at 29, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Abby Finkenauer are due to be the youngest women to serve as lawmakers.

The wave has been building with a growing bench of women candidates who are coming up through various state legislatures. According to Rutgers’s Center for American Women and Politics, the number of women in state legislatures has grown fivefold since the 1970s. These government bodies often serve as a feeder for other statewide offices and congressional roles.2

One of the most valuable outcomes of this year even beyond the numbers is that seeing women in positions of power will increasingly seem normal.  A study from political analytics expert Amelia Showalter previously found that when more women are elected to statewide offices like governor, senator, and attorney general, the number of women in the state legislature saw significant increases down the line.3

The United States made a lot of progress, but there is still a long way to go.  As other countries have progressed more quickly in adding the representation of women at the national level; in the past two decades, the US has sunk from 52nd in the world for women’s representation to 104th today, according to data compiled by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. In the past year alone, the US has dropped nine places — from 95th to 104th — among more than 190 countries.”4

A 2015 Pew report offered similarly dismal findings. Pew’s survey determined that the US ranked 33rd among a list of 49 high-income countries, trailing Sweden and South Africa in the proportion of women who make up the national legislature.5

A number of other countries around the world have outpaced the US due to national policies, including quota systems, to actively promote women in government roles.  It is unlikely that the US will ever adopt a quota system but private organizations are stepping in to build supporting infrastructure. Emily’s List, a Democratic group that helps fundraise for and support women candidates who support abortion rights will spend $37 million on roughly 30 House races during the 2018 cycle. In addition to bolstering candidates’ campaign coffers, the organization is involved in recruitment and training of women.  The group saw outreach from more than 42,000 women this cycle. In 2016, the organization heard from just 920 women.

On to 2020!

1. http://cawp.rutgers.edu/2018-election-night-tally
2. http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/women-state-legislature-2018
3. https://www.vox.com/2016/6/6/11829852/clinton-woman-effect
4. http://archive.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif-arc.htm
5. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/01/26/despite-progress-u-s-still-lags-many-nations-in-women-leadership/
   
   

Katrina Lake Sews Together a $3 B Business

In taking Stitch Fix (www.stitchfix) public in November 2017, Katrina Lake became
not only the sole woman to take a tech startup public that year, but the 35-year-old
is also the youngest ever to take a company public.  Currently valued at more than
$3 billion, Stitch Fix serves almost 3 million customers, has 5,800 employees and
had revenues last year of $1 B.

Lake had originally enrolled in a pre-med program at Stanford. Her plan was to
follow in her father's footsteps and become a doctor.  She soon discovered,
however, that she was drawn more towards the study of economics so she shifted
gears and earned a B.S. in Economics.

After earning her degree, she worked for a retail consulting firm and at Parthenon,
a private equity group, in their retail and restaurant practices but it was during her
time studying entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School that she came up with
the concept for Stitch Fix. While working on a class project, Lake had the idea to
bring a better shopping experience to women without easy access to a wide range
of fashion options or the possibility/inclination to spend time shopping around. Stitch
Fix is a personalized shopping service that uses algorithms and recommendations
from stylists to curate boxes of clothing and accessories that match a customer's
style, size and fit preferences.  The concept is to make personal shopping more
affordable and less time-consuming.  

But Lake initially struggled to raise money in an industry dominated by male
investors.  "It was just a woman's product. I definitely think that it didn't help," Lake
has stated.1 "When you realize 94% of venture investors are male, it can't help but
make it harder."  But even after managing to raise early capital, things didn't exactly
go smoothly. In 2013, Lake asked one of her early investors, Lightspeed Venture
Partners, to remove one of its principals, Justin Caldbeck, from his role as a Stitch
Fix board observer due to his behavior. Caldbeck has since been the subject of
numerous sexual harassment claims.  Lightspeed agreed to remove him, but
according to multiple reports; it also asked Lake to sign a nondisparagement
agreement. Lightspeed later released a statement on Twitter acknowledging
that they received a complaint about Caldbeck from “a portfolio company” and
stating that they “should have done more.”2

In 2014, Benchmark Capital invested in the company at a $300 million valuation and
helped set the Company on a course for an IPO.

The Company's public debut was rocky as well.   Just before its debut on the
Nasdaq, the Company was forced to reduce the size of its offering because
investors were skittish after the June IPO of Blue Apron—a fellow "stuff-in-a-box"
company whose plummeting stock prices burned the investors who wrote checks
at the IPO. By the end of the first trading day, Stitch Fix’s share price dropped to
$15.15 from its opening price of $16.90. The next day, it dipped even lower.  But
things soon stabilized. Ten days after its market debut, Stitch Fix’s stock price rose
almost 54 percent. “An astonishing feat,” TechCrunch called it.3 The Company
ultimately raised more than $120 M in its IPO.

When Lake took Stitch Fix public, much was made of the fact that she was holding
her young son in her arms while ringing the Nasdaq Opening Bell.  It has become
an iconic image and an inspiration to the many young women who see and
understand the barriers but are contemplating starting or running a company
anyway.

Since going public,  Stitch Fix has been on a tear.  It has expanded its line to include
men's and plus-size clothing. It recently introduced Stitch Fix Kids.  

Says Lake, “we need more founder CEOs who are successful women to be in the
public eye. We need diversity on boards and management teams, in decision makers
and venture investors. All of those things have to change in order to create an
environment where diversity and inclusion are celebrated.”4




1.https://www.forbes.com/sites/moiraforbes/2018/08/09/katrina-lake-billion-dollar-business/#146d56cb727f
2. https://www.axios.com/how-lightspeed-responded-to-caldbecks-alleged-behavior-1513303291-797b3d44-6b7d-4cd1-89ef-7e35782a32e6.html
3.https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/27/stitch-fix-defies-odds-soars-over-50-since-lackluster-debut/
4. https://www.elle.com/fashion/a15895336/katrina-lake-stitch-fix-ceo-interview/

Katherine Johnson Takes Us to the Moon

One of our nation’s most prolific “computers” just turned 100.

In the early days of NASA, it was the computing power of humans - reading data and performing mathematical calculations - that drove the space program. One of those “human computers” as they were called then has spent her life breaking down barriers in the service of nothing less our exploration of space.  Katherine Johnson began her career at NASA (then referred to as the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics’ or NACA) in 1953. NASA, following state and federal segregation laws, required Johnson and all other African American employees to use separate restrooms, eat, and work in different locations than their white coworkers. In fact, the office where Johnson initially worked was the all-black West Area Computing section at Langley laboratory. The group, called “Colored Computers,” was headed by fellow West Virginian Dorothy Vaughan.  But Johnson's mathematical prowess and diligence were impossible to ignore.

NASA was eventually desegregated, but many barriers remained for women and African Americans. Women were not allowed to put their names on reports, even if the work was solely their own. In what must have been a proud moment of validation, Johnson became the first woman in her division to publish a report under her name (Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position, which detailed the equations that describe an orbital spaceflight where the craft’s landing position is specified.) This was the first time that a woman received author credit for a research report in the Flight Research Division.  This was after a male colleague had refused to put his name on it stating that she had done the majority of the work.

Johnson was born in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia in 1918.  With her intense curiosity and mathematical brilliance, Johnson raced through school.  By thirteen, she was attending the high school on the campus of historically black West Virginia State College. At eighteen, she enrolled in the college, where she worked under mentor W.W. Schieffelin Claytor.  Claytor, a math professor at the school, was the third African American to earn a PhD in Mathematics in the United States. Johnson graduated with highest honors in 1937 and took a job teaching at a black public school in Virginia.

She was then handpicked in 1939 as one of three students to help integrate the historically segregated graduate schools in West Virginia.  Johnson and two male students were selected by West Virginia State’s president to be offered spots at the state’s premier school, West Virginia University.  She left her teaching job and enrolled in the graduate math program. At the end of the first session, however, she decided to leave school to start a family with her husband.  This was a common choice for women then. She eventually returned to teaching after her three daughters started school.

In 1952, a relative told her about open positions at the West Area Computing section.  Johnson and her family moved to Newport News, Virginia so Johnson could pursue the position.  Just two weeks into Johnson’s tenure, Dorothy Vaughan assigned her to a project in the Maneuver Loads Branch of the Flight Research Division.  Over the next few years, Johnson analyzed flight test data and even completed trajectory analysis for Freedom 7, America’s first human spaceflight.  Ultimately, John Glenn refused to fly his orbits around the Earth unless the actual computer's calculations had been personally verified by Johnson. She also worked on the investigation of a plane crash caused by wake turbulence. It was during this time that her husband was diagnosed with cancer.  He died in December 1956.

For the remainder of her career, Johnson continued with her calculations.  She helped to map the Moon's surface in preparation for the 1969 landing, she created an observational system that allowed astronauts to identify their location more accurately, and, in one of her final projects; worked on a plan for a flight to Mars.

She retired in 1986 after a 35-year career at NASA.  Her work not only contributed to sending the first American to space but also laid the groundwork for the Space Shuttle program and prepared NASA for the transition to using computers.

Johnson has started to receive the recognition she deserves.  The popular 2016 movie Hidden Figures which told story of Johnson and other women mathematicians of color helped ensure that the story of Johnson and her colleagues at NASA is well recognized.  The Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility was dedicated at NASA Langley that same year. The movie was based on the book of the same name by Margot Lee Shetterly. And on her 100th birthday in August 2018, Johnson returned to her alma mater, West Virginia State University, which unveiled a statue of Johnson and a STEM scholarship in her name. She earned five NASA Langley Research Center Special Achievement awards for her outstanding work. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama in 2015 because of her groundbreaking career as a NASA “computer” and her significant contributions to sending the first successful manned space flights.  There is also her undeniable service as a role model women scientists and women scientists of color.

Her contributions to space science are even more noteworthy because they were accomplished with the headwinds of widespread bias and obstacles. During the recent ceremony at WVSU, keynote speaker and former astronaut Dr. Yvonne Cagle said:"What makes Katherine so extraordinary is she not only prevailed while segregation failed, Dr. Johnson has continued to persevere and thrive with the gracious poise and clarity that defies mere words of explanation, let alone definition."

https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Figures-American-Untold-Mathematicians-ebook/dp/B0166JFFD0/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1536404083&sr=8-5&keywords=Hidden+figures

Carrie Gracie and the Fight for Equal Pay at the BBC

In July 2017, the BBC, under pressure from the British government to be more transparent about its costs as a publicly funded broadcaster, published a list of its highest-paid stars.  It was on that day that Carrie Gracie, the broadcaster's China editor, took up the mantle in the fight for gender pay equality. It would be take more than a year, testifying before Parliament, leading a protest and standing firm during multiple rounds of negotiations before an exhausted Gracie could claim a victory in this ongoing fight.

The list focused on on air talent making more than one hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.  Sixty-two men and thirty-four women qualified for the list.  The highest earning woman was making £1.7 million less than the highest-earning man.  A scandal and media frenzy immediately broke out as some of the BBC's most famous female names were conspicuously absent.

The BBC had four foreign editors - one covering each of the Middle East, North America, China and Europe.  Two men and two women.  The two men were both paid well over £50,000 with one making well over £200,000.  They were both on the list published by the BBC.  Neither Gracie and Katya Adler, European Editor, were present on the list.  Gracie calculated that she and Adler were getting paid somewhere around fifty per cent less than their male colleagues.  

Gracie stared her career at the BBC in China in 1987 and by 1991 was a China correspondent with the BBC world service.  She worked hard to learn the language and the culture eventually marrying a Chinese citizen and having children in China.  She continued up the ladder becoming Beijing bureau chief in 1997.  She moved back to Britain in 1999 when her first child, a daughter, was diagnosed with leukemia.  It was then that she moved into television becoming a morning presenter on the BBC’s new network, continuing to cover China from London.  In 2005, she embarked on a 10-year to chronicle the transformation of a rural community.  She ultimately received a Peabody Award for “White Horse Village.”  Along the way, in 2011, she was also diagnosed with breast cancer.  She was back at work in 8 months following a double mastectomy and extensive chemotherapy.  

In 2013, the BBC offered the then 51-year-old the new position of China editor.  Since first covering China in 1987, the country had transitioned into a world power economically and, increasingly, militarily.  Gracie says she accepted on the condition that she be paid as much as her male colleagues.  BBC management assured her she would be and offered her £120,000, eventually raising it to £130,000 to cover the cost of boarding school in England for her teenage son.  Gracie joined the European editor, the Middle Eastern editor and the North American editor as one of four people at the BBC coordinating the news for a major geographic region.

After the list was published, Gracie signed a letter written by a group of colleagues calling themselves the BBC Women. The letter was sent to Tony Hall, the corporation’s director general. Gracie commented in an article published by the New Yorker, “once you know the truth what are you going to do with it?  Are you going to quit, live with it or try to act?”  

A few weeks later, Gracie wrote privately to Tony Hall.  The BBC then offered her a 33% raise - a substantial amount but one that kept her salary far lower than her male peers.  She turned it down and filed a grievance. She resigned her position as China editor and returned to London to resume her role as a presenter in the TV news room.

The fight was on.  And it would be a long one.

On January 7, she published an open letter on her personal website  (https:carriegracie.com). An excerpt:

Enough is enough. The rise of China is one of the biggest stories of our time and one of the hardest to tell. I cannot do it justice while battling my bosses and a byzantine complaints process. Last week I left my role as China editor and will now return to my former post in the TV newsroom where I expect to be paid equally.

For BBC women this is not just a matter of one year’s salary or two. Taking into account disadvantageous contracts and pension entitlements, it is a gulf that will last a lifetime. Many of the women affected are not highly paid “stars” but hard-working producers on modest salaries. Often women from ethnic minorities suffer wider pay gaps than the rest.

This is not the gender pay gap that the BBC admits to. It is not men earning more because they do more of the jobs which pay better. It is men earning more in the same jobs or jobs of equal value. It is pay discrimination and it is illegal.

On learning the shocking scale of inequality last July, BBC women began to come together to tackle the culture of secrecy that helps perpetuate it. We shared our pay details and asked male colleagues to do the same.

Meanwhile the BBC conducted various reviews. The outgoing director of news said last month, “We did a full equal pay audit which showed there is equal pay across the BBC.” But this was not a full audit. It excluded the women with the biggest pay gaps. The BBC has now begun a ‘talent review’ but the women affected have no confidence in it. Up to two hundred BBC women have made pay complaints only to be told repeatedly there is no pay discrimination at the BBC. Can we all be wrong? I no longer trust our management to give an honest answer.

….

“We have felt trapped. Speaking out carries the risk of disciplinary measures or even dismissal; litigation can destroy careers and be financially ruinous. What’s more the BBC often settles cases out of court and demands non-disclosure agreements, a habit unworthy of an organisation committed to truth, and one which does nothing to resolve the systemic problem.”

Gracie instantly became the standard-bearer for the fight.  When she quit, more than 130 female broadcasters and producers at the BBC released a statement criticizing the BBC for their handling of the situation and climbing that “up to 200 women that we know of in various grades and roles across the BBC” had made complaints alleging pay discrimination. #IStandWithCarrie became a popular hashtag.  Gracie now had the support of hundreds of “BBC Women” supporting each other and strategizing through private chat groups and email exchanges.  Colleagues began sharing salary information to uncover inequities.  

At the end of January 2018, Gracie appeared before a parliamentary committee conducting a hearing to examine the issue of pay at the BBC.  She testified for 2 1/2 hours.  Four of the BBC’s senior executives also appeared at the hearing.  Prior the hearing, the BBC, under increasing pressure from the government, the press, the public, and its female employees, had published results from what it described as an “equal pay audit.”  Although the findings illustrated a gender-based pay gap of 9%, the BBC claimed that “there does not appear to be any form of systemic discrimination against either men or women.”

Responding to Gracie’s grievance, the BBC acknowledged having “inadvertently underpaid” her since 2014 and offered her more than £100,000 in back pay.  Gracie turned down the offer.  The BBC also claimed that the role of China editor was not as demanding as the one done by her male colleague covering North America.  Gracie vowed to fight on until the BBC agreed to acknowledge that her work “was of equal value to the men who I served alongside as an international editor.”

 During the hearing Gracie pointed out, “we are not in the business of producing toothpaste or tires at the BBC,” she said. “Our business is truth.  If we are not prepared to look at ourselves honestly, how can we be trusted to look at anything else in our reporting honestly.”  The Guardian described her testimony this way, “In turn both forensic and passionate, Gracie singlehandedly very publicly exposed the gender pay gap at the BBC.  By the end, the broadcaster’s reputation was in tatters.”

Like many organizations, the BBC had allowed hiring managers to negotiate contracts as they saw firm with little oversight.  Management described many of the highest packages as “anomalies” but there was no getting around the fact that the “anomalies’ all appeared to awarded to men.    The corporation was clearly trying to avoid what could become historic levels of liability under British laws that awarded as much as six years’ worth of back pay, including pension restitution.  For years, the BBC had been quietly settling discrimination and harassment claims using nondisclosure agreements as shields.  

The pressure on the BBC was continuing to mount.  On March 8, International Women’s Day at exactly 9% short of an average working day - BBC employees gathered in front of Broadcasting House.  Gracie led the protestors - many holding white placards emblazoned with an equal sign - in a chant during the protest.  According to BBC women, more than 1,000 women had asked the corporation to review their pay levels.  

Still things dragged on.  At the end of May as the deadline for her agreement passed without a resolution, Gracie went on leave from the BBC.  She was contemplating a lawsuit.  Then Tony Hall reached out directly to unstick negotiations.  On June 29, they released a joint statement.  It read in part, “the BBC acknowledges that Carrie was told she would be paid in line with North America Editor.  The BBC is committed to the principle of equal pay and in acting in accordance with our values.  The BBC acknowledges the specific circumstances related to Carrie’s appointment, apologises for underpaying Carrie, and has now put this right.”

Gracie made a short statement to the press.  She said, “Today at the BBC I can say I’m equal, and I would like women in workplaces up and down this country to be able to say the same.”She donated the settlement - like more than $400,000 to the Fawcett Society, a charity established in 1866 by suffragettes with the stipulation that it be used to provide” legal assistance to low-paid women and to fund strategic litigation. 

Research,  Publications and Resources:

“Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women” Claudia Goldin.  (https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Gender-Gap-Long-Term-Development/dp/0195072707/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1534079061&sr=8-2&keywords=claudia+goldin)

Institute for Women’s Policy Research (https://iwpr.org/)

"How the BBC Women are Working Toward Equal Pay," Lauren Collins  July 23, 2018 New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/07/23/how-the-bbc-women-are-working-toward-equal-pay)

National Partnership for Women & Families (http://www.nationalpartnership.org/)

“Understanding Black Women’s Pay,” Serena Williams Fortune Magazine, July 31, 2017 (http://fortune.com/2017/07/31/serena-williams-black-women-equal-pay/)

“Carrie Gracie leaves BBC’s reputation in shreds over equal pay.” John Crace. The Guardian January 31, 2018 (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/31/carrie-gracie-leaves-the-bbcs-reputation-in-shreds-over-equal-pay)

Lean In (https://leanin.org/)

"Britain’s Equal Pay Scandal” March 24, 2018 BBC One Panorama (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09x4mfw)

"It's Harder for a Woman to Be Wealthy," Elizabeth Day July 13, 2018 The Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/work/harder-woman-wealthy/)