Hillary Clinton, Parliament Square, Uber: Broadsheet April 25

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Uber releases its second diversity report, female CEOs are making just as much as their male counterparts, and Hillary Clinton may be less straight-laced than she lets on. Have a wonderful Wednesday.

EVERYONE'S TALKING

• Corner office cash. A new study by two professors who looked at the compensation of corporate leaders at 2,282 companies from 1996 to 2014 found that there may be no pay gap between male and female CEOs of publicly traded companies. Unlike a similar study last year that found that women chiefs make more than men, this one had a far larger sample and controlled for "chief executives’ tenure, characteristics of the firms (size, performance and risk), and the size and independence of the boards." (The previous study looked only at the 21 female CEOs in office—vs. 382 male chiefs.)

While this is definitely good news for the fewer than 5% of public companies chiefs who are women, what does this mean for those of us who aren't CEOs? For me, the major takeaway is the importance of pay transparency. Professor Vishal Gupta of the University of Mississippi, one of the study's authors, surmises that the pay gap at the top may have narrowed because the chief executive role is so publicly prominent. “We think it is a visibility issue,’’ he said. “[Executive pay] is highly visible to all the stakeholders.”

From where I'm sitting, that makes the top action item to combat the gender wage gap quite clear: Make pay more public—like the U.K. has just done and like the U.S., under President Obama, once aimed to do. New York Times

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES

• McSally says #MeToo. Arizona Rep. Martha McSally alleges that her high school running coach pressured her into having sex with him. “Even though he didn’t physically force me, it certainly was an emotional manipulation,” McSally told the publication. She credits the experience with her later career decisions and says she became “an endurance athlete and a fighter pilot because I was looking for ways to not be powerless.” Wall Street Journal

• Uber unimpressive. Uber's second diversity report was released yesterday, showing incremental progress in some areas (and none in others): Women make up 38% of Uber’s global workforce in 2018 (an uptick of 1.9 percentage points from last year), 20.9% of leadership (down from 22%), and 15.6% of technical leadership (up from 11.3%). Fortune

• Odds of being John. The NYT has updated its Glass Ceiling Index, and finds a number of jobs in which it is more likely to meet a named John than a woman—despite the fact that Johns represent 3.3% of the U.S. population, while women represent 50.8%. New York Times

• A FLOTUS's fusillade. One of today's top trending stories was the revelation that Hillary Clinton once unleashed a “f-ck-laced fusillade” on aides in a 2016 debate prep session. "Aides understood that in order to keep it all together onstage, Hillary sometimes needed to unleash on them in private,” writes New York Times reporter Amy Chozick in Chasing Hillary, her memoir about the decade she spent reporting on the former First Lady. Guardian

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

• Rodgers at risk? Washington Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers is the only female member of House Republican Conference—but that may soon change. Politico reports that McMorris Rodgers' tenure as chairwoman of the Conference is in danger as her fellow GOP members question her effectiveness and are weighing whether to challenge her. Politico

• Fawcett is the first. Millicent Fawcett secured a spot on London’s Parliament Square yesterday, a century after women in the U.K. won the right to vote—a cause that was her life’s work. The statue represents two firsts: It's the first statue of a woman and the first by a woman (artist Gillian Wearing was the sculptor) to have a home in the iconic plaza. Fortune

• China's #MeToo snowballs. Yue Xin, a student at elite Peking University, accused the school of trying to muzzle her in an open letter posted online Monday. She wrote that she submitted an open-records request about a 20-year-old rape allegation involving a then-professor. After the request was rejected last Friday, a university official burst into her room and forced her to delete materials related to the case from her phone and laptop, then told her to sign a statement swearing off further involvement. “I’m afraid and furious. Applying for open information constitutes what kind of crime?” she wrote. Despite Yue's name being blocked by censors, the letter has since gone viral. Wall Street Journal

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