Women – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Tue, 27 Aug 2019 21:18:41 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 Key Uncertainties About the Future of Women https://lifeboat.com/blog/2019/08/key-uncertainties-about-the-future-of-women Tue, 27 Aug 2019 21:18:41 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=95378

In the past several months, the issue of ensuring a truly equal future for women in society has risen up the agenda of global challenges – whilst at the same time indicators suggest the actual gap is growing globally. From harassment and #metoo to #timesup and the rights to equal pay and equal access in education, the workplace, and the boardroom, women have been succeeding in spotlighting the issues and arguing for their rights.  So, as we look to the future, some fundamental questions arise: What is the future of women?  Are women’s futures different from men’s futures?  How do we proceed in the coming years to embed a gender equality mindset while accounting for the unique challenges women face? 

This article draws on insights from our recent book – The Future Reinvented – Reimagining, Life, Society and Business to explore how business and society can adjust to ensure a more positive future for women, focusing on what we consider to be critical agenda issues. We conclude with our advice and dreams for the future of women.

Areas which could benefit significantly from the increased participation of women

As we look to the forces shaping our world, it is clear that society as a whole could benefit significantly from the increased participation of women in the future of technology development, elected governmental roles, and higher education. For example, we need to better understand that an algorithm can be racist or sexist before integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into our social systems and institutions. The new book by Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble, Algorithms of Oppression, is a great example of the kind of critical thinking about its broader social implications that the technology sector needs. 

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Raising the Profile of Women Futurists https://lifeboat.com/blog/2017/12/raising-the-profile-of-women-futurists Wed, 06 Dec 2017 10:45:58 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=74185 An Interview with Jennifer Gidley

by Tracey Follows, Founder/Director of the Female Futures Bureau

Jennifer Gidley is a former President of the World Futures Studies Federation (2009–2017), a UNESCO and UN partner and global peak body for futures studies scholarship, she led a network of hundreds of world leading futures scholars and researchers from around the globe. An adjunct Professor at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, UTS in Sydney, futurist, author, psychologist and educator, Jennifer is a prolific author of dozens of academic papers, serves on several academic boards, and most recently authored Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures (Springer, 2016) & The Future: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2017). 

Tracey: I spoke to Jennifer about her perspective on Female Futures.

One of the issues we discuss a lot at The Female Futures Bureau is why more female futurists don’t have a higher profile.  And Jennifer agrees that it’s not because they aren’t around:

“I actually believe there are a large number of female futurists globally, and probably always have been. I would suggest that there are as many women involved in futures studies and foresight work as there are men…”

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Death Reversal — The Reanima Project — Research Whose Time Has Come https://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/03/death-reversal-the-reanima-project-research-whose-time-has-come https://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/03/death-reversal-the-reanima-project-research-whose-time-has-come#comments Wed, 09 Mar 2016 08:49:23 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=23275 I have spent the last 30 years in various aspects of the biopharmaceutical industry, which for the most part has been a very rewarding experience.

However, during this time period, having been immersed many different components of therapeutic development and commercialization, one thing has always bothered me: a wide array of promising research never makes it off the bench to see the translational light of day, and gets lost in the historical scientific archives.

bqiinclab

I always believed that scientific progress happened in a very linear narrative, with each new discovery supporting the next, resulting ultimately in an eventual stairway of scientific enlightenment.

What the reality turned out to be was much more of a fragmented, research “evolutionary tree”, with dozens of potential pathways, only very few branches of which ever resulted in scientific maturity, and not always the most fruitful ones by any means.

The premature extinction of these promising discovery pathways were the result of a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, funding priorities, competing industrial interests, “out of vogue” concepts, lack of intellectual properties, non-existent regulatory models, conflicted legislative initiatives, and even religious implications.

In 2016, as in previous years, we continue to see these “valleys of death” swallow up pathways of scientific possibility, with few popular segments attracting the majority of attention and support.

gene sequencing

The preponderance of resources focused on the somatic mutation model of carcinogenesis, despite an endless range of research highlighting that the disease is extremely heterogenic and rarely ever follows such a clonal model, is one example that continues to be inappropriately manifested in the oncology system, decades into the “war on cancer”.

On a similar plane, the jettisoning of most studies of the biophysical aspects of human genetics, despite the gross incompleteness offered by the central dogma to explain higher biological form and function, is another example that has become all too pervasive in the research community.

And then there are the areas of human consciousness, memory, and information processing / storage, where in many ways we are still operating in the dark ages, with materialists and dualists battling it out for centuries.

One topic that I have written quite a bit about is that of death, specifically that of the death of the human brain — http://www.singularityweblog.com/is-death-reversible/

brainimage

While I am a staunch supporter and advocate of the life-extension / anti-aging movement, I am equally vocal about our need to develop technologies, products, and services that can actually reverse our ultimate transition between the living and dead states, a transition that occurs annually for 60 million humans around the globe.

Death, however, is unfortunately seen by many as a natural, biological progression for human beings, and in many circles, deemed an unnecessary area of scientific research and exploration.

I beg to differ.

Far too often, death arrives too early and too unexpectedly for many of us and our loved ones. And the best modern medicine has to offer today is “Sorry. There is nothing else we can do.”

But what if there was?

There are a variety of species across the natural world that are capable of regenerating and repairing themselves from forms of severe CNS damage that bring them to the transitional grey zone between life and death. Along the evolutionary timeline however, this ability gradually disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago and does not manifest in higher species.

lizard and lady

Now, in the 21st century, with the convergence of the disciplines of regenerative biology, cognitive neuroscience, and clinical resuscitation, we may finally be poised to take back these capabilities for humans.

Over the years, clinical science has focused heavily on preventing such life and death transitions and made some initial progress with suspended animation technologies, such as therapeutic hypothermia. But once we transition through the brain death window, currently defined by the medical establishment as “irreversible” (per the 1968 Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School definition), we are technically no longer alive.

surgeons

To add insult to injury, a human can be declared dead, even while our bodies can still circulate blood, digest food, excrete waste, balance hormones, grow, sexually mature, heal wounds, spike a fever, and gestate and deliver a baby. It is even acknowledged by thought leaders that recently brain dead humans still may have residual blood flow and electrical nests of activity in their brains, just not enough to allow for an integrated functioning of the organism as a whole.

Several prominent cases in the media over the past few years have further served to highlight the current situation, as well as the substantial anatomical and functional differences between the state known as brain death, and other severe disorders of consciousness, such as coma, and the vegetative and minimally conscious states.

It is now time to take the necessary steps to provide new possibilities of hope, in order to counter the pain, sorrow, and grief that is all too pervasive in the world when we experience a loved one’s unexpected or untimely death, due to lesions which might be potentially reversible with the application of promising neuro-regeneration and neuro-reanimation technologies and therapies.

bqaproduction

It is time to undertake the required research, based on 2016 technological knowledge, in order to bring about such transformational change.

My name is Ira S. Pastor and I am the CEO of the biotechnology company Bioquark Inc.

Welcome to the unveiling of the Reanima project.

Reanima Video

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An A-Z of Women Pushing Boundaries in Science and Tech | Motherboard https://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/03/an-a-z-of-women-pushing-boundaries-in-science-and-tech-motherboard Tue, 08 Mar 2016 16:37:27 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=23235 145744049718343

“March 8 is International Women’s Day, and to mark the occasion we’ve put together a list of just a small sample of women currently doing groundbreaking work in the fields of science and tech.”

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Here’s What Happened When We Asked Elon Musk About Equal Pay For Women — By Emily Peck | Huffington Post https://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/03/heres-what-happened-when-we-asked-elon-musk-about-equal-pay-for-women-by-emily-peck-huffington-post Wed, 02 Mar 2016 18:32:52 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=23017 BEVERLY HILLS, CA - FEBRUARY 25: Elon Musk attends The Dinner For Equality co-hosted by Patricia Arquette and Marc Benioff on February 25, 2016 in Beverly Hills, California.  (Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for Weinstein Carnegie Philanthropic Group)

“The SpaceX CEO’s answer was encouraging.”

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Defend Your Research: What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women — By Anita Woolley and Thomas W. Malone | Harvard Business Review https://lifeboat.com/blog/2016/02/defend-your-research-what-makes-a-team-smarter-more-women-by-anita-woolley-and-thomas-w-malone-harvard-business-review Thu, 11 Feb 2016 16:46:08 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=21952 Pallas_Athena_by_Franz_von_Stuck

“The finding: There’s little correlation between a group’s collective intelligence and the IQs of its individual members. But if a group includes more women, its collective intelligence rises.”

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5 Steps Toward Gender Diversity Every Company Can Take Right Now — By Claudia Chan | Fast Company https://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/12/5-steps-toward-gender-diversity-every-company-can-take-right-now-by-claudia-chan-fast-company Thu, 17 Dec 2015 13:53:42 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=20058 3054664-poster-p-1-5-steps-toward-gender-diversity-every-company-can-take-right-now

“Plenty of forward-thinking companies have innovation divisions that try and predict the future, disrupt old models, and develop cutting-edge products. They don’t nest those divisions inside their human resources departments. So why shouldn’t gender diversity efforts be a part of corporate innovation?”

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Ada Lovelace Day — Today — 13 October 2015 https://lifeboat.com/blog/2015/10/ada-lovelace-day-today-13-october-2015 Tue, 13 Oct 2015 14:43:27 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=18362 ada

“Celebrating the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths”

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