UK

Third of construction workers suffer with anxiety

12 December 2021

HIGH LEVELS of mental distress and a reluctance to seek professional help among UK construction workers is leading to increased alcohol consumption, non-prescription drug use and even self-harm according to a new major study.

Early findings from a major new study of the mental health of self-employed construction workers and those working in small firms show that intense workloads, financial problems, poor work-life balance and Covid-19 pressures on the supply of materials are combining to significantly raise stress and anxiety levels. This mainly male workforce has long been known to contain workers who are reluctant to talk about their mental health. Preliminary survey findings from over 300 respondents suggest that almost a third are now living with elevated levels of anxiety each day. Construction workers from a range of trades that are often to hard to reach, from bricklayers, to groundworkers to plasterers, told researchers from Mates in Mind and the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) that the continuing stigma of mental illness prevents them from discussing it beyond close friends or family members.

"We have a real concern that the data shows that sole traders and those working in smaller firms with more severe anxiety were least likely to seek help from most sources. This means that too many construction workers every day are going under the radar and are not seeking support from healthcare professionals or mental health charities" says Sarah Casemore, managing director of Mates in Mind. "This represents a real hidden crisis which threatens the viability of a major sector of the UK economy and many of those who work in it."

The study, funded by a research grant from B&CE Charitable Trust, is investigating both the extent of mental health problems in this important workforce and the extent to which new, more accessible, forms of support and guidance on mental wellbeing can be offered to individuals experiencing distress, depression, or anxiety. As reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the suicide rate among construction workers is already three times the national average for men, equating to more than two construction workers taking their own life every day.

Head of HR Research Development at IES: Stephen Bevan who has led the survey component of the research said today, ‘we have been concerned to find that so many construction workers are finding it hard to disclose their mental health problems and that these are also causing them to lose sleep, develop severe joint pain and exhibit greater irritability with colleagues and even family members. We are hoping that our upcoming interviews with some of our participants will shed more light on the types of support which they feel comfortable and confident to use.’

Mates in Mind, as a charity dedicated to improving mental health in construction and related industries, will be using the insights from this research to shape a series of interventions to educate, inform and support workers whose mental health is causing problems with sickness absence, an increased risk of accidents at work and, ultimately, the risk of an exodus from the sector.  

Steve Hails, director of business services & HSW at Tideway and Chair of the Board of Trustees of Mates in Mind said that "this valuable research undertaken by IES, funded by B&CE, confirms what we suspected when Mates in Mind was formed as a charity by the Health in Construction Leadership Group (HCLG) with the vital support of the British Safety Council. Those working for the smaller organisations, sole traders or self-employed - the vast majority of workers in our sector - do not have access to the necessary mental health support to allow them to thrive within our industry.  The next phase of the research is essential to help us understand what that support should look like and how Mates in Mind can assist with the required improvements."

Nicola Sinclair, head of the B&CE Charitable Trust, said: “This research from Mates in Mind is incredibly important to the construction industry as it shines a bright light on a very real problem that is often overlooked. The information gathered will hopefully prove to be an important first step in ensuring that all construction workers have access to help when it comes to mental health and stress related issues.

“We are delighted that the Occupational Health Research Award has been put to such good use and we encourage other institutions and organisations to consider applying for the 2022 award before the applications close on Friday 21 January.”

Space Tourism and Nature Writing

December 12, 2021   •   By Christopher Schaberg

Four Fifths a Grizzly: A New Perspective on Nature that Just Might Save Us All

DOUGLAS CHADWICK

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

— William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence”

¤

WHEN THE 90-YEAR-OLD actor and comedian William Shatner, best known for playing Captain Kirk on Star Trek, returned on October 13, 2021, from his four minutes in suborbital space, he was effusive: “What you’ve given me is the most profound experience.” He was struck by “how vulnerable Earth looked from that altitude.” Tearful with joy, Shatner phrased his feelings somewhat counterintuitively: “I’m so filled with emotion with what just happened. […] I hope I never recover from this.” To recover makes it sound like an injury occurred. What exactly happened to Captain Kirk up there?

Shatner’s post-launch comments reflected a powerful, if vague, ecological awareness: “Everyone needs to have the philosophical understanding of what we’re doing to Earth.” I was struck by this claim in particular, as it resonated with a book I happened to be teaching the week of the Blue Origin launch.

In a seminar called “Ecological Thought,” my students and I were reading and discussing Douglas Chadwick’s Four Fifths a Grizzly (Patagonia, 2021), a book that promises (according to its subtitle) to offer “a new perspective on nature that just might save us all.” The book blends travel writing, basic ecology, and biology lessons with fabulous photo spreads and textbook-like informational callouts. It is a beautiful book, materially speaking — and it seems to assume that such beauty, carefully rendered and reproduced, can be harnessed to jolt the reader into a state of environmental enlightenment. It might just work. It’s a residue of that Romantic fantasy of Nature as the ideal teacher — and yet, it’s a fantasy that even the Romantics were keenly self-critical about. See Frankenstein. See Wordsworth. See Blake, whose poem “Auguries of Innocence” begins with images of natural enlightenment and sublimity, but devolves into a kind of mortal delirium.

The publisher of Four Fifths a Grizzly, the high-end outdoor apparel company Patagonia, itself feeds off Romantic tropes of extreme wilderness, solitary reflection, and sublime views. But the company is also clear about its attempts to be more modern, espousing environmental activism in place of (or at least in tandem with) rash consumerism. Even though it is implicated in advanced consumer culture, Patagonia is blunt about the fact that ecosystems are at risk around the planet, which is where Four Fifths a Grizzly ostensibly intervenes.

The thesis of Chadwick’s book: Nature is not something “out there” but intimately part of us, indeed part of everything. This perspective, while not exactly new, is in line with texts from disparate disciplines that we had studied in our class. So far, so good. Four Fifths a Grizzly is also a colossal mess. It tries to do too much, feels incredibly under-edited, doesn’t deliver on its cover promises, and is ridiculously over-designed.

One of my students noted that it was trying too hard to be a coffee-table book; another student called the book a “massive fail”; and a third suggested that it was a book for suburbanites who fly to Colorado once a year to go skiing. Another student pointed out how apolitical it was: while it professes to be intellectually interested in threats to biodiversity, there’s barely a mention of climate change or pollution, much less of our own responsibility for these things. Yet one more student pointed out that one of the photographs (on page 102) is an actual ad for Patagonia. My students are smart, and they know smarm when they see it.

I was trying to temper my students’ reactions so that they’d see how the book’s themes were basically in line with the those of the other books we were reading; the style and intended audience were just different, I opined. There are moments of good travel writing in the book, and delightful instances of scientific wonder (such as Chadwick’s extended essay on strawberries). But, on the whole, I had to agree with my students: there was something unsettlingly retro about the book, even as it is pitched as a forward-looking compilation.

On the last text-page of the book, an extended photo caption explains what readers will find on the following pages: “The aquanaut and the astronaut: the planktonic larva of a brittle star and Bruce McCandless II, making the first untethered spacewalk, February 3, 1984. Different as they might seem in some respects, both of these life forms are free-floating and both are made from the very same stuff: water and stardust.” What follows are two photographs: on the verso page a close-up of the larva of an echinoderm (related to a starfish), and on the recto page, a photograph of the astronaut floating in space.

Four Fifths a Grizzly, pages 270–271

The images echo one another: two beings with legs and arms, drifting. The implicit suggestion is that grasping nature is always a matter of scale and attention: depending on how zoomed in or out you are, you see (and appreciate) different things — and you realize that everything is interconnected. (Again, not a novel idea: Charles and Ray Eames showed this in their own way in 1977.)

We were finishing Four Fifths a Grizzly on the day that Shatner took off in the New Shepard spacecraft, a.k.a. the dick rocket, making the aquanaut and the astronaut more than an illuminating juxtaposition. It was also weirdly consonant with Shatner’s takeaway of the Blue Origin launch. Does the rarefied view from above Earth amount to the same thing as looking closely at a small organism? Can both these spectacles result in a profound ecological epiphany? Is space travel a new kind of nature writing?

To pair with Four Fifths a Grizzly, I gave my students a few excerpts from Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, a lyrical collection of “essayettes” that record daily “delights” the author encounters over a year of his life (2015–2016). Gay’s short narratives often involve fruits, flowers, and other vegetal life, which I thought might help us make real some of Chadwick’s more abstruse connections.

But Gay teaches us something different. To pay attention to the world — even when delighting in it — is also to see and take note of social problems and pernicious systems. It is to recognize deep structural inequalities and patterns of violence. It is to realize that even among all this beauty, we’re still in a mess that’s anything but apolitical.

Humans used to do or think a lot of things that most of us now consider wrong: slavery, public executions, brutally colonizing lands, wiping out entire animal populations, believing the Earth is flat, imagining stars as holes in the sky, and so on. These practices and beliefs are anathema to what it means to be a modern human in the 21st century. Today space travel has passionate proponents, and some of them think it’s our destiny: the only way for humans to survive their otherwise inevitable extinction on this planet.

Chadwick’s book holds out hope for a more sustainable form of coexistence on Earth, even as it shies away from thornier environmental problems in the present. The title, Four Fifths a Grizzly, serves as a koan for a larger lesson: all beings share life with every other entity. Space travel off Earth may seem earnest in its attempt to continue life and spread this organic world. But such launches might also turn out to be something we look back at with bemusement. What were people thinking? Didn’t we realize with every rocket that blasted billionaires into orbit, we were ignoring the very ground that sustains us? Even arguably accelerating environmental catastrophe?

After his brief visit to space, William Shatner was widely quoted saying, “Everybody in the world needs to do this.” It almost sounds like the subtitle of Douglas Chadwick’s book. But it could also be turned on its head, in the spirit of Ross Gay’s essayettes: if it’s about taking sheer delight and finding humility in the face of the planet, everybody is already able to do this. Look around. Pay attention. Take care. But you don’t need to go to space to “do this.” And however sublime, views of nature don’t absolve humans of the problems we’ve caused.

¤

​​Christopher Schaberg is Dorothy Harrell Brown Distinguished Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans. His new book, Pedagogy of the Depressed, will be published in January.

Space Tourism and Nature Writing (lareviewofbooks.org)

Plastics, fertilizer, and synthetic rubber: Report calls out chemical industry’s use of fossil fuels

By 2030, petrochemicals could account for more than a third of growth in oil demand. Here's what governments can do

By ZOYA TEIRSTEIN
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 12, 2021 2:59PM (ES

Pumpjack at oil industry against cloudy sky during sunset in North Dakota, USA (Getty Images)

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.

Everyone knows that the fossil fuel industry drives global warming. A new report shows that the chemical industry contributes to the climate crisis, too. But the conversation about solutions to climate change has largely omitted the role that chemicals and petrochemicals play in exacerbating the crisis, and the report says policymakers should start thinking about ways to green the industry.

The chemical sector doesn't just make products like inks, solvents, glues, and soaps. It also makes products out of oil and gas like plastics, fertilizer, and synthetic rubber. The chemical industry often relies on fossil fuels to power its factories and make its products. And some of these chemicals, like refrigerants, are potent greenhouse gases themselves. All of those emissions add up.

The report, published by the nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform with input from other environmental nonprofits, shows the chemical industry is responsible for 7 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions — some 3.3 gigatons of greenhouse has emissions a year. That's orders of magnitude less than the 89 percent of global carbon emissions that the fossil fuel industry produces, but it's still a significant contribution, especially considering the fact that world governments are scrambling to slash emissions wherever possible as climate change accelerates and the window to take action grows narrower. Yet chemicals, the report said, "continue to be overlooked in efforts to mitigate climate change."

Emissions from the chemical industry are on the rise. In the U.S. alone, emissions from this sector increased 43 percent between 1990 and 2019 to meet growing demand. By the end of this decade, petrochemicals — chemicals derived from oil and gas — could account for more than a third of growth in oil demand, more than the freight, aviation, and shipping industries. In short, if governments don't intervene, the chemical industry could become an increasingly serious obstacle to global efforts to decrease emissions.

In addition to the role chemicals and petrochemicals could play in exacerbating global warming, the industry also poses a risk to the communities in which it operates — areas the report shows are often inhabited by people of color and low-income residents. Some of these communities are already experiencing chemical disasters due to extreme weather fueled by warming temperatures, and more neighborhoods could experience such disasters as extreme weather continues to plague the United States and other countries. An analysis of the industrial facilities regulated under the federal Risk Management Program, which use, manage, or store hazardous chemicals, showed a third of these facilities in the U.S. — nearly 4,000 buildings — are at risk of being impacted by wildfires, flooding, hurricane storm surge, or coastal flooding.

So what can legislators do to better protect residents from hazardous substances and prevent the chemical industry from tanking the planet? The report recommends that the Environmental Protection Agency put more stringent measures in place requiring chemical manufacturing facilities to become more energy efficient. Chemical and petrochemical companies could transition their factories and facilities to renewable energy, which would reduce emissions from at least one facet of their operations. Legislators could also continue to pass laws outlawing single use plastics, which help reduce demand for oil-based products. And they could pass more laws that phase out chemicals that produce greenhouse gases like hydrofluorocarbons, which are used in refrigeration. Lastly, the EPA could conduct risk assessments of neighborhoods and communities that are home to hazardous chemical facilities and require those facilities to plan for extreme weather disasters.

"We can't solve the climate crisis without significantly reducing and replacing fossil fuels throughout the chemical industry," Darya Minovi, policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, said in a press release. "The chemical industry must do its part to stop our global temperatures from rising to the point of no return."


Zoya Teirstein is a contributing writer from Grist.org.

80% of Gen Z workers say they’ve taken a nap on the job

Published Sun, Dec 12 2021
Ashton Jackson@ASHTONLINNELL

Westend61 | Westend61 | Getty Images

As Americans continue to work from home due to the ongoing pandemic, employees have more freedom to do other things, like take naps. Though sleeping at work may seem irresponsible to some, a recent report shows that employees who consider themselves “nappers” were 18% more likely than non-nappers to say they had gotten a promotion in the past year.

Plushbeds, a luxury manufacturer for bedding, mattresses, and pillows, surveyed 1,000 Americans to investigate the napping habits of U.S. workers. The results showed a positive impact not just in people’s everyday lives, but in the workplace as well.

The study, published in October of this year, found that napping at work was more common than not, with more than 2 in 3 respondents saying they have napped at work before. Gen Z’ers were most likely to admit taking workplace naps at 80%, compared to 70% of Millenials. People who consider themselves nappers took a quick snooze to help with things like productivity and creativity at work

“For increasing productivity at work, people figured the ideal naptime was 20 to 30 minutes,” the study said. “To feel more creative, respondents felt that 10 to 20 was plenty.”

To maximize naps even more, combining coffee with a 20-minute snooze also made people more alert at work. Dubbed the “nappuccino” by management and behavioral expert Daniel Pink, this technique helps lessen the amount of adenosine, the chemical responsible for tiredness, in the body. “It’s magic! When you wake up, you’re immediately hit with that extra boost of caffeine,” he told CNBC Make It. “But it can also be a restorative ritual that you can look forward to after working for a few hours.”

According to the study, nappers were more likely to be in a managerial role and to have received a promotion in the last year than non-nappers. Fifty-five percent of nappers worked in a managerial role, compared to 41% of non-nappers. Fifty-three percent of nappers had also received promotions in the last year, compared to 35% of non-nappers.

Though nappers seem to have a better quality of life, non-nappers were likely to make more money. “People who didn’t hit the hay during the day were twice as likely to find themselves making $100,000 or more on an annual basis,” according to the report. Non-nappers also cited other issues with sleeping on the job, like grogginess, inability to sleep at night, and simply not having the time to take one.

The authors cited another article published by Sleep.org in March, which reported that 70% of Americans say they’re regularly sleep-deprived, possibly explaining the need for an afternoon nap to get through the day. Due to this, many workers think that napping at work should be destigmatized.

“Rather than being scolded, many respondents think that napping should be integrated into the workplace,” the study said. ” Some suggested the introduction of a napping room, nap pods, a stipend for sleep aids, and even paid nap breaks. Others would simply appreciate if naps were encouraged or even just allowed when they’re on the clock.”

There were several sleep perks employees wanted to see, with 42% wanting designated nap rooms. 36% of respondents simply wanted permission to nap if needed, and 32% wanted a healthy nap culture in their offices.

Crowned figure holding a falcon discovered in Oslo’s medieval park

Image Credit : Ann-Ingeborg Floa Grindhaug and Jani Causevic.
ARCHAEOLOGY

A crowned figure holding a falcon has been found in Oslo’s medieval park, representing one of the earliest visual examples of falconry in Scandinavia.

The figure was discovered during excavations by the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) during preparatory works for the medieval park in the Old Town of Oslo, where archaeologists have also found traces of buildings, streets, water pipes and wells.

NIKU archaeologist Ann-Ingeborg Floa Grindhaug found the figure which she first thought was a large fish bone, but upon further inspection saw the smiling face of a figure with a crown and a kestrel on its arm.

The figure is 7.5 cm long and is made of organic material, decorated on both sides, but has a somewhat flat oval cross section.

The design of clothing and hair shows that it is from the middle of the 13th century and was probably made at a workshop in Oslo.

Kjartan Hauglid, art historian and researcher at NIKU said: “There is no doubt that the figure wears a crown on its head, however, it is a little more difficult to decide whether it is a king or a queen”.

“This is among Scandinavia’s earliest visual representations of falconry, i.e., hunting with falcons. We know of only a handful of similar finds with falcon symbols in Northern Europe.” added Hauglid.


One possible theory is that the figure depicts King Håkon Håkonsson who gave falcons as a gift and even exported them. King Håkonsson was king of Norway from 1217-1263 and was known as a major player in the field of falconry.

NIKU
Header Image Credit : Ann-Ingeborg Floa Grindhaug and Jani Causevic.

Taxi for Vladimir: Putin says he drove cab after Soviet fall


Russia was the centre of the Soviet Union that grew to include 15 republics from the Baltics in the West to Central Asia (AFP/Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV)

Sun, December 12, 2021

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the collapse of the Soviet Union spelled the end of "historical Russia," revealing he drove a taxi to make ends meet following the USSR's fall.

Putin, a former agent of the Soviet Union's KGB security services, who has previously lamented the USSR's fall, said the disintegration three decades ago remains a "tragedy" for "most citizens".

The comments, reported by state-run news agency RIA Novosti Sunday, were excerpts from an upcoming film by broadcaster Channel One, dubbed "Russia. Recent History".


"After all, what is the collapse of the Soviet Union? This is the collapse of historical Russia under the name of the Soviet Union," the Russian leader was cited as saying.

A loyal servant of the Soviet Union, Putin was dismayed when it fell apart, once calling the collapse "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century".

Putin is sensitive to the perceived expansion of Western military ambitions into ex-Soviet countries and Russia this week demanded that NATO formally scrap a 2008 decision to open its door to Georgia and Ukraine.

The end of the Union brought with it a period of intense economic instability that plunged many into poverty, as newly independent Russia transitioned from communism to capitalism.

RIA-Novosti, reporting from excerpts of the documentary, said Putin had revealed that he worked occasionally as a taxi driver to boost his income.

"Sometimes I had to earn extra money," Putin said.

"I mean, earn extra money by car, as a private driver. It's unpleasant to talk about to be honest but, unfortunately, that was the case."

Russia was the centre of the Soviet Union that grew to include 15 republics from the Baltics in the West to Central Asia.

In 1991, wracked by economic woes the Soviet Union disintegrated and Russia became an independent nation.

jbr/gw

STANFORD PROFESSOR SAYS HE’S BEEN TESTING MATERIALS RECOVERED FROM UFO CRASHES

HE'S NOT KIDDING, IS HE?

Bones Day

Stanford professor Garry Nolan grew up reading sci-fi, and made his name debunking a supposed alien skeleton he saw posted online, publishing a paper discrediting the claim that the tiny skeleton was an “alien baby” using genetics and biology.

“The UFO community didn’t like me saying that,” said in the recent Vice interview. “But you know, the truth is in the science.”

Nolan doesn’t seem quite as skeptical about the alleged unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) — that’s the government’s preferred term for what’s usually called a UFO — evidence he’s inspecting now. After the CIA approached Nolan, he says, the government asked him to examine data from pilots who had gotten close to putative UAPs.

“You didn’t even have to be an MD to see that there was a problem,” he told Vice. “Some of their brains were horribly, horribly damaged. And so that’s what kind of got me involved.”

The Verdict

Nolan tells Vice that he’s also analyzed about 10 or 12 recovered metal fragments from purported UFO crashes on behalf of the government, and he says some of the samples don’t “play by the rules” of human-created materials — leading to the tantalizing, if remote, possibility that they might be bits of technology we don’t yet understand.

“Let’s say we didn’t have transistors today and one of these objects dropped a big chunk of germanium doped with other elements, or, you know, these little transistors,” he told Vice. “We would not have a clue as to the function, and we would ask ‘why would anyone put arrays of germanium with these strange impurities in them… what is this thing?'”

Nolan told Vice that the government often holds onto records of weird or unique medical cases and analyzes them later, when enough similar cases have come in to provide clues. Of course, just because the feds are collating info on mysterious phenomena doesn’t mean there’s not a perfectly reasonable explanation for them.

Color us skeptical, but it is worth investigating. According to Vox, the Pentagon even agrees. We just want more than sample analysis and MRIs before we’ll sign onto the idea that actual aliens have visited Earth.

More on UFO shenanigans: New Pentagon Group Accused of Trying to “Bury” UFOs Again

Pansexual astronaut Cameron Bess on launching with Blue Origin and why diversity matters in space


By Elizabeth Howell 

SPACE.COM

published about 8 hours ago

Bess rode to suborbital space Saturday (Dec. 11) carrying items for the LGBTQ+ community.

Pansexual Twitch streamer Cameron Bess fulfilled a lifelong dream to go to space on Saturday (Dec. 11), framing the opportunity as an important representation moment for the LGBTQ+ community.

Bess launched on a suborbital trip with Blue Origin as one of six space tourists on the company's New Shepard rocket. They flew with their father, Lane Bess, as one of the mission's four paying passengers that joined "Good Morning America" host Michael Strahan and Laura Shepard Churchley, daughter of the first American in space Alan Shepard, on the flight.

“My entire life I've wanted to make people who feel like they didn’t have a place feel welcome," Bess, who livestreams under the Twitch handle MeepsKitten, told Xtra in early December.

"I'm no hero here; I'm just going for a ride," they added.

Video: Watch Michael Strahan and crew float in space with Blue Origin


Blue Origin New Shepard NS-19 passenger Cameron Bess holds up a toy football while floating in weightlessness during their suborbital spaceflight on Dec. 11, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin)


Blue Origin New Shepard NS-19 passenger Cameron Bess holds up a "Meowdy" message while floating in weightlessness during their suborbital spaceflight on Dec. 11, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

Bess rode into space alongside their father Lane Bess, who is principal and founder of a technology-focused venture fund called Bess Ventures and Advisory, during the Blue Origin NS-19 flight.

The Besses are the first parent-child duo to fly in space together, with Cameron also adding to a tiny number of known LGBTQ+ astronauts who have made it to space, among more than 600 spaceflyers overall.

Bess carried the pansexual flag with them to suborbital space, along with a paw to represent the "furry" community that has interests in anthropomorphic animals, meaning animals with human-like qualities. (Bess has an entire furry suit they were showing on Twitter, but due to mass restrictions, there was no room for the entire ensemble in the New Shepard spacecraft.)

The new commercial astronaut joins just two other known LGBTQ+ individuals who have reached space: NASA astronauts Sally Ride (now deceased) and Anne McClain (who is still with the corps). Ride only disclosed her same-sex relationship posthumously, while McClain's was made public due to a legal situation with her ex-spouse.

Bess, saying they are very grateful their father is so supportive of who they are, took part in pre-flight activities such as posing with the pansexual flag and signing a commemorative postcard with the word "Diversity."


"It's cheesy," Bess said of the postcard on Twitter, "but it's a good hope for the future."


Follow Elizabeth Howe

It’s time for democracies to protect dissidents from spyware

Ali Al-Ahmed, Matthew Hedges

December 12, 2021


Image Credits: filo / Getty Images

Ali Al-Ahmed is the founder and director of the Institute for Gulf Affairs.
Matthew HedgesContributor

Dr. Matthew Hedges is a postdoctoral teaching assistant at the University of Exeter.

The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics.

Governments that purchase spyware tend to share a common pretext: the need to fight terrorist and other public safety threats. But we know that when autocratic regimes acquire state-of-the-art surveillance technology, they also intend to use it against activists, journalists, academics and any other dissenting voices they deem a threat. Spyware programs — used to infect phones and other hardware without the owner’s knowledge in order to track movements and steal information — are tools of repression just as surely as guns.

There have been too many well-documented cases to ignore this basic 21st century reality. Yet companies continue to sell their spyware to despotic governments, in some cases claiming ignorance about what is likely to happen next. This trend has rocked the community of political dissidents across the globe and has put them at greater risk of arrest and much worse.

We know because this technology has been used on us. As a naturalized American from Saudi Arabia and a British academic, we count ourselves and many colleagues among the victims.

One of us, Ali Al-Ahmed, saw the Saudi government steal his personal data from Twitter, then use it to track down, imprison and torture his Twitter followers.

The other one of us, Matthew Hedges, was a graduate student on a research trip to the United Arab Emirates when he discovered that authorities had hacked his phone even before he arrived in the country. He was arrested in 2018, charged with spying and initially sentenced to life in prison. Ultimately held for six months, he was kept in handcuffs and fed debilitating drugs.

Painful though these experiences continue to be for us, we are relatively safe living in the United States and Britain. But our experiences are all too common. They highlight the ongoing, systemic abuse that authoritarian regimes inflict on people every day, in violation of international law and all principles of human rights.

By enabling despots to track citizens’ every move, spyware vendors make this kind of maltreatment possible. Dissidents around the world will have targets on their backs until democratic governments crack down on companies that turn a blind eye to this use of their wares.

The time has come for decisive action from democratic countries, including the United States, to curb this abuse. Leaders in Western democracies talk about the need to rein in Big Tech. And yet, in the endless tug-of-war between government regulation and tech companies, “users have become the main casualties,” as a new report from Freedom House, a watchdog organization, put it. Too often, ordinary online citizens are vulnerable to predation by their own governments.

China and Russia get the lion’s share of global public attention for state-sponsored hacking and repression for the sheer scale of their operations. But U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia are often among the worst offenders.

For example, some of the Middle East’s most ruthless suppressors of dissent, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, buy spyware from the Israeli company NSO Group. These governments have used NSO’s Pegasus software to hack into the phones of numerous human rights activists and critics — often well beyond their own borders.

Sometimes the autocrats running these regimes have purely personal motives, as in the case of Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. A British court found that he used Pegasus to spy on his ex-wife and several of his children.

The public only learned of this because an NSO Group official called a prominent British lawyer late one night to tip her off about the surveillance. As bad as the sheikh’s abuse of Pegasus was, more alarming is that NSO Group knew he was using their technology for illicit ends. In this case, senior managers felt sufficiently exposed to blow the whistle, but the firm has not divulged what it may know about other abuses by its clients.

Nor is NSO Group alone in selling spyware to police forces and intelligence services known to abuse human rights. The Israeli firms Candiru and Cyberbit are in the same business. Products from the German company Finfisher and the Italian firm Hacking Team (now rebranded Memento Labs after a 2015 scandal) have also been linked to abuses.

NSO has reportedly terminated its contracts with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, saying they misused Pegasus. But corporate self-enforcement is not enough. Democratic governments must send a clear message to these companies: that they will face export bans, and senior company staff will face sanctions if their products are used to violate human rights.

Another important step would be for the U.S. Commerce Department and its counterparts in Britain, the European Union and other democracies to expand the use of blacklists that restrict trade with companies enabling abuse. The Commerce Department already includes NSO Group, Candiru, Russian company Positive Technologies and the Singaporean firm Computer Security Initiative Consultancy on its “Entity List,” meaning that those outfits can’t buy components from U.S. sellers without a special license. But a broader global campaign of this kind could go further.

Finally, democratic countries should establish transparent, uniform rules for using spyware. This past week, the White House hosted a virtual Summit for Democracy of global leaders with the express purpose of fighting authoritarianism and promoting human rights. As this coalition gets to work, spyware should be at the top of its agenda.

Clearly, we have entered a new era of electronic espionage and digital repression. Only by enacting stronger regulatory and legal protections can democracies ensure their survival, enable free speech to flourish and safeguard their citizens’ well-being.

New study: Women of color in tech aren’t just underrepresented, they’re also undervalued

Joan C. Williams, Center for Work Life Law
December 12, 2021

Image Credit: Maskot/Getty Images

There’s been a lot of discussion about how we see few women of color in tech because there are few of them in the STEM pipeline. But a forthcoming study my team conducted as part of the Kapor Center’s Women of Color in Computing Collaborative shows that the pipeline is only part of the problem. We found robust evidence of bias, which was associated with women of color in tech being the equivalent of 37.6 percentage points less likely than white women to see a long-term future for themselves at their companies. Women of color in tech were also 16.4 percentage points more likely than white women to report that they have left or considered leaving a company because of its culture.

Here’s the bottom line: Tech is less of a meritocracy than we like to think. Women of color were dramatically more likely than white women to report bias in hiring, assignments, promotions and compensation, performance evaluations, and access to sponsorship network. Our prior study found that white women engineers were dramatically more likely to report bias in workplace systems than white men.

Before I dip deeper into the study’s findings, an important note on the study itself: We had 216 responses to our 10-minute survey that used Likert-scale and open-ended questions designed to pick up how bias plays out in the workplace. It ran from December 2019 to May 2020 and was supplemented by qualitative data from 11 one-on-one interviews. The survey was open to all women in tech, and we promoted it via affinity groups, alumni groups, and employee ERGS, and our team’s personal networks. The racial/ethnic breakdown was: 10.6% white, 28% Black or African American, 40% Latinx or Hispanic, 28% East, South, or Southeast Asian, 21% Multiracial, 12% Native American, Alaska Native, and other underrepresented groups. (Note that this adds up to more than 100% — individuals who selected “multiracial” and also specified racial/ethnic groups are counted more than once as are some individuals who selected a racial group and indicated their ethnicity.) 68% were individual contributors, 23% were managers, and 9% held other tech roles. While the sample sizes for this survey were small, our group has previously collected data using the Workplace Experiences Survey from approximately 18,000 individuals in different industries. This existing data gave us a useful baseline to understand how the experiences of women of color in computing compare on average to women of color in other industries (letting us know that women of color in computing are reporting high baseline levels). At the same time, we were able to compare the effect sizes of the differences between white women and women of color, and among women of color in different racial/ethnic groups, in the current study to the average effect sizes of the differences we find in other industries. This approach allows us to understand what the data for this study are saying, even if we are unable to conduct null hypothesis significance testing.

A key recurring theme in the responses we got from our latest survey was that women of color in tech have to put in a lot more work than their colleagues do. Women of color in tech were 39.3 percentage points more likely than white women to spend more time than colleagues do on DEI work. Typically, this is work that isn’t part of their job description. Some women of color we spoke to had even been handed all of HR to do on top of their regular jobs, and others were treated as de facto office managers — only to find their performance assessed based solely on their job-description jobs. Women of color also had to do more in their regular jobs to prove their worth, as well as more self-editing to make their colleagues comfortable with them. In short, women of color did a lot more work that is unpaid, unrecognized, and undervalued — which means less time and energy for highly valued work and life outside of work.

Women of color in tech reported higher rates of every pattern of bias. One powerful form is prove-it-again bias, where some groups have to prove themselves more than others. My team’s earlier study of US engineers found that about one third of white men said they had to prove themselves more than their colleagues, but nearly two thirds of women did. Our new study found that women of color had to prove-it-again at a rate 23.4 percentage points higher than white women. “I felt that I had to prove myself even more when it came to saying I could help out on the project. ‘I know what I’m talking about.’ Even doing things like showing up to work early, [working during] lunch break …,” one Black respondent reported. Notice how bias meant that she literally had to work longer hours than her colleagues.

Prove-it-again bias also plays out in tech specs. “For tech specs developed by men, it seems like they don’t mind if they don’t include as much detail, but any technical spec I’ve seen created by a woman on my team has always had an immense level of detail,” said a Latina respondent. Women of color were 24.7 percentage points more likely than white women to say they had to put in extra effort to be perceived as team players. They also were more likely to say their mistakes matter more, their successes matter less, and to be assumed incompetent. “I was testing one of our mobile apps … and he immediately launched into how to properly test it … And I had to cut him off midsentence and say, ‘I’m a software engineer, you do not need to explain how to take a screenshot to me,’” said a Native American respondent.

You might assume that the stereotype that “Asians are good at STEM” would help women of Asian descent. Not so. In fact, Asian women were particularly likely to report that they are seen as less qualified even when they have the same credentials as their colleagues.

Another pattern of bias is the tightrope, which reflects that white men typically just need to be authoritative and ambitious to succeed, while other groups face the far trickier task of being authoritative and ambitious in ways that colleagues see as “appropriate.” Often this entails walking a tightrope between being seen as “too meek” and “too much.” “When I do say something, you have a problem with the way I say it. When I don’t say anything, then you have a problem that I’m not saying it,” said a Black respondent. A 2016 report of women in Silicon Valley found that 84% of those surveyed reported being labeled as “too aggressive.” Women of color, we found, were 29.4 percentage points more likely than white women to report that, when they had business disagreements with coworkers, their behavior was misinterpreted as anger or hostility. “I wasn’t angry, I just wasn’t deferential,” said a Latina in our prior study of women in STEM. All this means that women of color need to be politically savvier to succeed: “When I have a strong opinion about something, I take special care in choosing my words,” said a Native American respondent.

Tightrope bias also affects access to plum assignments. In our prior study of US engineers, 85% of white male engineers but only 43% of Black women reported the same access as colleagues had to the best assignments. Women of color were 19.8 percentage points less likely to report fair access to desirable assignments than white women, and 18.4 percentage points less likely to report that they had fair access to opportunities to develop and present creative ideas.

All this affects promotions. A 2021 study that combined elements of tightrope and prove-it-again found that bias explained 30 to 50% of the gender promotion differential between men and women.

In prior studies of other industries, we have found that women of color encounter maternal wall bias — gender bias based on motherhood — at about the same rate as white women. However, in tech, women of color were 16.7 percentage points more likely than white women to say that having children changed colleagues’ perceptions of their competence and commitment. Motherhood triggers strong negative competence and commitment assumptions that can lead to hyperscrutiny: “Nobody here at work tells you, you have to quit your job… . But, in reality, what women deal with is somebody giving them a look when they are not at their desk for a couple of hours,” said a Black respondent.

Maternal wall bias can result in networking and other choice opportunities drying up. A Black woman’s manager regularly played golf with his white male direct reports, but when she asked to be included he said, “Oh, I know you like to leave on time to get home with your kids.” Women of color also reported likely-illegal behavior like penalizing women for taking maternity leave: “I pointed out to [my supervisor], well, I’ve accomplished more in these 10 months than I did in the previous 12, so why is my ranking lower? And her response was, ‘Well, out of sight out of mind.’”

To fix all this will take more than a sincere conversation. It will take companies willing to adopt a sustained, evidenced-based approach to interrupting bias in both everyday workplace interactions and business systems. To address structural racism requires structural change. One starting place: Tech workplaces need to stop dumping DEI, HR, and office management onto women of color. When women of color do DEI work, they need to be provided with sufficient administrative support so that all they need to do is the initial contact with someone who is coming to give a talk or sit on a panel, not the million follow-up tasks. Success in DEI work also needs to be rewarded equally with success in accomplishing other work tasks. That’s a “bias interrupter”– a process change designed to interrupt bias.

Actions have consequences. Tech companies need to take a closer look not just at the pipelines of talent flowing into their company but at creating conditions for women of color to thrive. An easy way to do that is to measure how they fare on promotions and compensation as well as performance evaluations. Bias and perceived fairness in workplace systems accounted for 67% of the variation in women of color’s career satisfaction, 66% of the variation in a sense of belonging (with unfairness in promotions most strongly linked), and 59% of the variation in intent to stay with their employer. Next step? They leave.

Joan C. Williams is a Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Work Life Law at University of California Hastings Law. Her most recent book is Bias Interrupted: Creating Inclusion for Real and For Good.