AI thinks men can't clean toilets
Plus: 📺 Anna Kendrick 🏆 get what you want negotiating ⛰️ adventure travel
Dr Samantha Pillay had used AI to create images many times before.
But her quest for a picture of a man cleaning a toilet turned into an enlightening - and hilarious - journey into the gender bias embedded in AI models. Read her story below.
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The Female Lead Team
We’re talking about…
🤠 Born to be wild: Women now make over half of the bookings with adventure travel companies. The trend isn’t just driven by younger women: a global study of found that adventure travel is the most sought-after category for over 50s.
💰 True crime compassion: Actress Anna Kendrick said she's donated her fee from her Netflix film about a serial killer, Women of the Hour, to victims' charities, because she would have felt "gross" making money from it.
🍼 Post-baby boost: Mothers who feel supported by their employer when they return after a baby feel 20% more committed to their job and 30% more confident than those who don’t feel supported, The Female Lead and Peanut’s new research found.
💸 Crypto curriculum: Women are becoming more interested in cryptocurrency investment, and are more eager than men to learn more before parting with cash: 54% of women prefer to take a course or study before investing, versus 50% of men.
⚽ Social sports: A new study claims female sports fans want teams and athletes to show a social conscience. The research into female sports fandom said that their values are “far more than personal preferences”.
Inspire me…
“For me the key to being a good role model is to be authentic… You don’t need to show your whole life but you need to be visible, and not only during the good times. Just make sure you put [on social media] the times when you are nervous, when you have to do additional work to make sure that you are on top... Be yourself.
-Miriam González Durántez, lawyer and founder of Inspiring Girls
All I wanted was an AI image of a man cleaning a toilet
By Dr Samantha Pillay, surgeon and author
When I set out to create an AI image of a man cleaning a toilet, I didn’t expect it to be a challenge.
I’m a surgeon and writer, and do a lot of work around gender equality. I wanted an image for a social media post to highlight the inequality in unpaid domestic work, in honour of Women’s Equality Day.
So I turned to Midjourney, the AI image generator. I’ve created countless images using AI before, and usually get what I want after a few attempts of entering prompts. It takes about 30 seconds to generate four images.
Yet, when I tried to create an image of man hard at work scrubbing a toilet, something seemed off.
Toolbox: 3 ways to get what you want when negotiating
From Alison Fragale, psychologist, professor, speaker, and author.
🤔 Why: In negotiations, it’s easy to feel caught in a double bind: push for what you want and get labelled “aggressive” (or worse). Or sit back and take what’s offered. Then you don’t get what you want.
🔧 How: There are three evidence-based tools that help all negotiators (regardless of gender) get more of what they want without damaging the relationship.
1) Ask more questions. The best negotiators as twice as many questions as the average negotiator. Get the other person talking about what’s important to them so you can find an outcome that both parties like, with questions such as, “What’s most important to you?” or “What would make this a win for you?”
2) Make the first offer. The person who proposes the first solution gets the better deal in the end. By moving first, you avoid being the first to say no. To avoid coming across as aggressive, justify the first offer with an explanation or data. For example: “This is the amount we’ve budgeted this year”.
3) Propose three solutions. We like choices and we like people who give us choices. When a negotiator proposes three solutions, they are seen as more cooperative and problem-solving. This shows that you are not trying to force them to do it “your way,” which allows you to still get a good outcome without coming across as demanding.
Final thought
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