(Bloomberg) — Two years after the dual shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic and global Black Lives Matter protests led to greater calls for economic and racial equality, leaders across business and government are convening at Bloomberg’s Equality Summit to take stock of what’s changed and how to measure progress.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said some of the $65 billion in broadband funding will be used to train and hire women and minorities into relevant jobs. Natasha Cazenave, executive director at the European Securities and Markets Authority, pledged her support for quotas. First Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Nadia Calviño also said she’s “very supportive” of quotas. * See a full lineup here. Catch up on yesterday’s panels here, and click here to read daily coverage from Bloomberg Equality.
Biden Administration to Use Broadband Funds to Hire Women, Minorities (9:56 a.m. NY)
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the Biden administration will use a swathe of the billions of dollars of funding enacted for broadband construction and money from a proposed semiconductor support package to hire women and minorities.
The $65 billion initiative to provide universal broadband, enacted as part of the infrastructure bill in November, will create some 150,000 jobs, Raimondo said. “I am determined to make sure that those jobs go to women, go to people of color, go to people who don’t have a college degree,’’ she said.
“We’re going to use some of the $65 billion on highly effective apprenticeship and technical-training initiatives,’’ she said. Some of that will involve providing “wrap-around services’’ like child care and transportation, which are essential to helping boost the participation of women, she said.
The template will also be applied to a $52 billion initiative for chip production that’s embedded in legislation under consideration in Congress to boost U.S. competitiveness, Raimondo said. Only 10% of workers in the semiconductor industry are women, and 4% are Black, according to the Commerce Secretary. “Everyone deserves a shot’’ at those high-paying jobs, she said. The new bill is a “massive opportunity.”
ESMA Executive Director Also Supportive of Quotas, ‘Structured’ Policies for Women (8:53 a.m. NY)
Initiatives by European authorities to have more women on corporate boards show that quotas do have an impact, according to Natasha Cazenave, executive director at the European Securities and Markets Authority.
At her own employer, which is Europe’s markets cop, women account for 54% of managers, yet “a more structured, conscious policy” could help sustain that, she said.
First Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Is ‘Very Supportive’ of Quotas (8:16 a.m. NY)
As the European Union weighs requiring quotas for women on boards, First Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Nadia Calviño said she is “very supportive” of them.
The economist said her thinking evolved on the issue. “One day I realized that there are biases, that there are glass ceilings, and not so much glass ceilings, but very hard ceilings to break,” she said. “We can’t wait 125 years to reach equality, we need to do something now. Quotas are game changers, they are a shock to a system.”
Quotas have been shown to increase gender and racial diversity on boards both in the U.S. and E.U.
(Updates with new panels.)
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