March 8th is International Women’s Day, a global holiday celebrated annually that gives focus to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women. The United Nations observes the holiday in connection with a particular issue, campaign, or theme in women's rights each year. This year’s theme is #InspireInclusion.
Timnit Gebru is one of the most impactful advocates of Artificial Intelligence DE&I. She is the Co-Founder of the Black in AI initiative, the Founder of The Distributed AI Research Institute, and was named by Time as one of its 100 most influential people in AI. Gebru was the Former Co-Lead of Google’s Ethical AI team, with a focus on ensuring Google’s AI products did not hold racial bias. However, following the publication of her paper that challenged the ethics of AI language models at large and criticized Google’s approach to this complicated matter, she left that position (Gebru says she was fired; Google says she resigned).
Women couldn’t get their own credit cards until 1974. Although the Equal Pay Act was passed in 1963 requiring men and women to be paid equally when doing the same work, it wasn't until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) was passed in 1974 that women were able to get their own credit cards in their own name.
Rare Beauty, owned and founded by Selena Gomez in 2020, is a cosmetic company that aims to break down unrealistic standards of perfection by promoting inclusivity and addressing mental health initiatives and education. Their inclusivity focus includes offering over 48 shades of concealer to ensure everyone can feel seen and find a match. A percentage of all Rare Beauty sales are donated to the Rare Impact Fund, which provided over $1.2 million in grants to mental health organizations in their first year.