The Case For A Meat Tax

A lot of the talk around fighting climate change is focused on big business and the auto industry. But what about meat? 

The livestock sector generates nearly 15 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2013 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. That footprint is roughly equivalent to the one created by cars, planes, trains and boats combined: Transportation produces around 14 percent of global emissions.

Though public awareness of the environmental effects of meat and dairy consumption is relatively lower, a new report suggests that people are willing to adopt financial incentives, like a meat tax, that would encourage them to shift their diets away from those items.

Researchers at Chatham House, a London-based policy institute, surveyed people across 12 countries and focus groups in Brazil, China, the United Kingdom and the United States, and found that many would welcome a food charge if it helped alleviate high emissions levels -- though concerns about costs and alternatives to meat remain.

The report cautions that consumer knowledge alone won't be enough to cut back on these emissions. The push will have to come from government policy and business coalitions, including retailers and producers in the food supply chain.

"You only see the impact on consumer behavior when you put additional incentives," said Antony Froggatt, a senior research fellow at the institute who co-authored the study. A meat tax, in addition to helping curb emissions, could also benefit people's health and generate tax revenue.

Less visibility might explain why people are more attuned to the environmental impact of their cars, for example, than their meals. Refilling a gas tank over a lifetime reinforces the connection between a driver and gas pollutants, while most people's initial reaction to emissions resulting from food is centered on packaging, not the consumption itself, Froggatt said.

Participants in focus groups reported limited access to meat alternatives, which also tend be more expensive. "There's concern about prices and the impact on poorer people," Froggatt said. Unless alternatives are easily available, something like a meat tax would be "detrimental," he added.

The researchers say that stores and schools could lead the way in raising awareness of these foods. Offering fruit and vegetables at the front of a supermarket, for example, could significantly boost shoppers' likelihood of selecting something other than meat or dairy. The government could also provide subsidies for plant-based foods to support low-income households.

With the COP21 climate talks set to begin in Paris next week, many expect the participating countries to reach a global agreement about curbing carbon emissions. Some of the world's biggest polluters, including the U.S. and India, have already made reduction commitments for 2020.

But a deal on meat consumption is unlikely to be on the table. As of last month, only 21 of the national proposals include commitments to reducing livestock emissions.

"This is very low on the policy agenda," Froggatt said. "But part of the discussion will be what do we do next, and how do we increase our ambition. We hope diet is given greater consideration. Attention placed on the food sector is overdue."

The Case For A Meat Tax

A lot of the talk around fighting climate change is focused on big business and the auto industry. But what about meat? 

The livestock sector generates nearly 15 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2013 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. That footprint is roughly equivalent to the one created by cars, planes, trains and boats combined: Transportation produces around 14 percent of global emissions.

Though public awareness of the environmental effects of meat and dairy consumption is relatively lower, a new report suggests that people are willing to adopt financial incentives, like a meat tax, that would encourage them to shift their diets away from those items.

Researchers at Chatham House, a London-based policy institute, surveyed people across 12 countries and focus groups in Brazil, China, the United Kingdom and the United States, and found that many would welcome a food charge if it helped alleviate high emissions levels -- though concerns about costs and alternatives to meat remain.

The report cautions that consumer knowledge alone won't be enough to cut back on these emissions. The push will have to come from government policy and business coalitions, including retailers and producers in the food supply chain.

"You only see the impact on consumer behavior when you put additional incentives," said Antony Froggatt, a senior research fellow at the institute who co-authored the study. A meat tax, in addition to helping curb emissions, could also benefit people's health and generate tax revenue.

Less visibility might explain why people are more attuned to the environmental impact of their cars, for example, than their meals. Refilling a gas tank over a lifetime reinforces the connection between a driver and gas pollutants, while most people's initial reaction to emissions resulting from food is centered on packaging, not the consumption itself, Froggatt said.

Participants in focus groups reported limited access to meat alternatives, which also tend be more expensive. "There's concern about prices and the impact on poorer people," Froggatt said. Unless alternatives are easily available, something like a meat tax would be "detrimental," he added.

The researchers say that stores and schools could lead the way in raising awareness of these foods. Offering fruit and vegetables at the front of a supermarket, for example, could significantly boost shoppers' likelihood of selecting something other than meat or dairy. The government could also provide subsidies for plant-based foods to support low-income households.

With the COP21 climate talks set to begin in Paris next week, many expect the participating countries to reach a global agreement about curbing carbon emissions. Some of the world's biggest polluters, including the U.S. and India, have already made reduction commitments for 2020.

But a deal on meat consumption is unlikely to be on the table. As of last month, only 21 of the national proposals include commitments to reducing livestock emissions.

"This is very low on the policy agenda," Froggatt said. "But part of the discussion will be what do we do next, and how do we increase our ambition. We hope diet is given greater consideration. Attention placed on the food sector is overdue."

Why Mark Zuckerberg's Paternity Leave Is A Win For Women

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Hoodie-wearing Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that he’ll take time off -- two whole months! -- after his wife Priscilla Chan has their first baby.

This is a big deal for working men both at Facebook and in the U.S. (and their families). Guys here rarely take paternity leave -- few companies even bother offering it. For the chief executive of a Fortune 100 company to take leave, is just unheard of.

Zuckerberg’s move signals that it’s OK for men to prioritize family over their jobs -- at least for a hot second when you have a brand-new infant at home. There’s a good chance he’ll inspire other fathers to take time off.

And that is amazing news for women -- that’s right, women -- who face serious penalties and discrimination at work for becoming mothers. When men take paternity leave, it is a signal that juggling work and family isn’t just “lady business,” it promotes real understanding and empathy between the sexes at work and goes a long way in eliminating outdated, useless stereotypes that harm everyone.

“It fosters a different sense of cooperation when the women and men are both taking leave and understanding what it’s like to have newborns at home,” Nancy Altobello, the vice chair for talent at the consulting firm EY, told The Huffington Post this summer while explaining why the firm encourages fathers to take paternity leave.

Working women and men are both up against certain stereotypes and expectations when they become parents. For men, this mostly works in their favor on the job and hurts them at home. Women, well, they’re just screwed either way.

Priscilla and I are starting to get ready for our daughter's arrival. We've been picking out our favorite childhood...

Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on  Friday, November 20, 2015

There’s a cultural expectation that a good father prioritizes his job because he is the breadwinner -- indeed, fathers often make more money after having kids, studies have found.

And despite the fact that women are the sole or primary breadwinner in 40 percent of U.S. households with children, it’s assumed they’ll prioritize family over work and, as a result, become less reliable and less hard-working.

“Mothers are less likely to be hired for jobs, to be perceived as competent at work or to be paid as much as their male colleagues with the same qualifications,” Claire Cain Miller explained last year in the New York Times, citing an extensive 15-year study that showed women’s pay decreased 4 percent for each child they had. Men’s pay increased more than 6 percent after having kids.

Some research has found that the pay gap between mothers and non-mothers is wider than between men and women. 

If a woman signals that work is her priority -- over her children -- she runs into problems. She’s judged extremely harshly for being a terrible mother.

“Women are fundamentally [supposed to be] oriented to the family not to work," Robin Ely, a professor at Harvard Business School, who studies gender expectations at work, explained to HuffPost a few months ago. “The expectation is if you don’t do it, then you’re not a good mother.”

When Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced this fall that she’d only be gone a couple of weeks after she gives birth to twins in December, critics pounced. “Marissa Mayer’s Two-Week Maternity Leave Is Bullsh*t,” was the Daily Beast's headline. There were similar hot takes all around the internet.

Referring to Mayer’s two-week maternity leave stint in 2012 after she had just landed at Yahoo, the Telegraph summed up her double-bind pretty well: "Her 14-day maternity leave caused many to question her priorities as a parent. Others cast doubt on her dedication to her career."

Men face a different challenge: one that's become more problematic as more young dads of Zuckerberg's generation actively want to be more involved parents. These men run into problems because guys are often stigmatized or penalized if they demonstrate that work isn’t their top priority.

“The idea of a guy taking paternity leave was just [makes face] for my managers. Guys just don’t do that. They teased me," one consultant at a prominent firm told researchers from Boston University in a recent study.  "Then one of the partners said to me, ‘You have a choice to make: Are you going to be a professional or are you going to just be an average person in your field? If you are going to be a professional then that means nothing can be as important to you as your work.'"

Tell that to his little baby. Men who take paternity leave set themselves up to be more involved parents for that child's entire life. Seems important, yah? Oh, and fathers who are more involved at home certainly make life easier for their partners. Too often it's working women who wind up taking on more of the parenting work in dual-income couples.

Men want time with family, stigmas often keep them from doing so. @JoshLevs #AllIn

— marcyheinz (@marcyheinz) November 22, 2015

Paternity leave is a really powerful lever in changing these outdated paradigms. In Sweden, which provides paid time off for fathers, women’s earning potential rises 7 percent on average for every month a dad takes off. 

Some enlightened employers are recognizing this -- including Facebook, Spotify and Netflix -- and treat parental leave in a gender neutral way, offering equal amounts to men and women.

Facebook offers four months leave to dads -- but most do like Zuckerberg and only take two.

There’s still a long road till we get to equality. 

Microsoft Is More Male Than Last Year, Insists This Is Progress

Back in December, Microsoft’s chief executive publicly vowed to do better at diversity. The company, like its rivals in the tech industry, is overwhelmingly white and male. “We will make progress every year towards building a more diverse workforce,” CEO Satya Nadella told shareholders.

One year later, the company is even more male-dominated -- and ever-slightly less white -- according to Microsoft's latest report on demographics, released Monday afternoon. 

The overall percentage of women the company employs declined to 27 percent from 29 percent in 2014, according to the report. And 8.9 percent of the company’s workers are either black or Hispanic, up from 8.5 percent last year. Asian employees comprised 29.3 percent of workers, up from 28.8 percent.

Yet, because Microsoft did place a couple more women in leadership roles and because much of the decrease in female employees comes from overseas layoffs, the company is actually framing the news as positive overall.

“If we’re seeing gains at the top, we’re technically progressive,” Gwen Houston, Microsoft general manager of global diversity and inclusion, told The Huffington Post. “The trend is moving in the right direction, but we still have a long way to go.”

Tech companies are under increasing pressure to diversify. Publishing an annual diversity report is now a standard practice in the industry, though the reports typically contain depressing news. Facebook, Google and Twitter's diversity reports all revealed a similar level of blinding white-dudeness.

Though the numbers aren't getting much better, tech companies' increased attention and openness to diversity has certainly moved the needle in certain ways. Many tech companies are now doing training on unconscious bias, and some -- including Microsoft and Facebook -- are insisting that managers at least consider at a diverse slate of candidates before they choose someone to hire. 

At least people are talking about this stuff.

The drop in female employees at Microsoft this year was a direct result of the company’s decision to restructure its smartphone business, Houston said. The company laid off 7,800 employees on the struggling phone side -- a disproportionate number of whom were women working in overseas factories making the phones, she said.

Houston emphasized that three of the 11 people who report directly to Nadella are women, up from two last year. In the boardroom, if shareholders approve, three of Microsoft's 11 directors will be women, up from two out of 10 a year ago.

"The goal at the leadership level is to dial up the numbers, so women and people of color can see their presence affirmed at the top of the house," Houston said.

At the lower end, 31 percent of the company’s interns are women, up from 28 percent last year. And 30 percent of entry-level hires were women, up from 27 percent.

A big problem in tech is the so-called "leaky pipeline" -- women leave tech in higher numbers then men because, the theory goes, the culture is overwhelmingly male and often hostile to women.

Earlier this year, Microsoft increased the amount of parental leave it offers to workers to 20 weeks -- a move that may help retain more women in the long run, though Houston said it was too soon to tell.

“All our efforts to hire is for nothing if we can’t retain folks,” Houston said.

And more than a year ago, the company got rid of its famously harsh annual performance review system that pitted workers against one another. Studies have found that performance reviews can often be biased against women.

The new system is more inclusive and drives collaboration between workers, said Houston. And that helps retain women and people of color, she said.

For the past 15 years, Microsoft has been sponsoring a program to get more high school girls interested in tech careers, and it’s just now paying off, Houston said. “They’ve finished high school and college and now they’re working inside Microsoft,” she said.

She said the company has also instituted mandatory unconscious bias training, which is also available to the public. 

Nadella faced criticism last year for saying women don't need to ask for raises and should simply have faith that the system will deliver fair pay.

Since then, he's been more mindful about what he says. 

Houston said Nadella initiated a new practice to check in with people at the end of a meeting to see if everyone feels their voice was heard. "He'll ask, 'How did we do? Did people feel heard?'" she said. 

Now, other managers are also doing this at the end of meetings.

It gives employees a license to speak up, Houston said. “It sounds little but was powerful.”

Elon Musk Just Dropped Another Hint That Tesla May Take On Uber

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said Thursday night the electric automaker is beefing up its self-driving car software. 

Ramping up the Autopilot software team at Tesla to achieve generalized full autonomy. If interested, contact autopilot@teslamotors.com.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2015

We are looking for hardcore software engineers. No prior experience with cars required. Please include code sample or link to your work.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2015

Should mention that I will be interviewing people personally and Autopilot reports directly to me. This is a super high priority.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 20, 2015

The urgency of Musk's offer, and the fact that he chose to tweet it to the public, could signal that the company is preparing to launch a self-driving mobility service akin to the one being built by Uber, the $51 billion ride-hailing service. 

Tesla declined to comment on Thursday night about how many engineers it hopes to hire and its future plans for them.

"We're going to let the tweets speak for themselves," a Tesla spokeswoman told The Huffington Post in an email.

Tesla launched its Autopilot feature last month. The current software enables restricted self-driving functions that allow the cars to steer themselves on highways and even to drive themselves on private property wherever an owner summons them. 

But the current software is limited. Soon after it became available, drivers began posting daring, if at times reckless, videos to YouTube that demonstrated the cars' inability to detect some badly worn lane markers, resulting in near-collisions with other vehicles. All along, Musk has insisted that drivers must remain attentive to the road and ready to grip the wheel at any time. 

Tesla's autonomy efforts at first glance may appear to be in keeping with the auto industry zeitgeist. 

There's currently a race in the auto and tech industries to perfect the self-driving vehicle. Google -- with its fleet of bug-like prototype vehicles puttering around Mountain View, California -- has probably garnered the most attention for its autonomous car program. 

In July, the University of Michigan opened a testing facility, designed to look like a town, where a consortium of traditional automakers and tech firms can test the software for their vehicles.

In March, Mercedes debuted a sleek, futuristic self-driving concept car around San Francisco. Two months later, its parent company, Daimler, unveiled an autonomous 18-wheeler. Then last month, General Motors announced "aggressive" plans of its own for self-driving vehicles. 

But despite these advances, Tesla's main competitor in the self-driving space may be Uber.

Earlier this year, the transportation company poached nearly "everybody" in the robotics department at Carnegie Mellon University, including the director, for its self-driving program. Adam Jonas, a revered analyst at Morgan Stanley who covers the auto industry, predicted that self-driving technology would radically upend traditional car companies. Fewer people will own cars, he said, and will instead rely on fleets of self-driving vehicles that come on demand, like Uber or Lyft drivers do now.

In August, Jonas wrote a memo to clients predicting that Tesla would launch a self-driving competitor service to Uber by 2018. After pressing an uncharacteristically tight-lipped Musk during an analyst call, Jonas doubled down on his prediction, forecasting that Tesla would announce a mobility app within the next two years. 

It could be that Musk, burning through investors' cash as he is, is just making sure Tesla remains a leader in the self-driving sphere. But -- perhaps if his tweeted job offer yields the right candidates -- Tesla could be moving beyond electric luxury cars and storage batteries fairly soon.

How Google Is Embracing Team Work And Workplace Wellness

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) -- Google coddles its employees with free food, massages and other lavish perks, yet some of its best engineers still grouse about their jobs and bosses as they struggle to get assignments done.

The Internet company tackled the puzzling problem with a study that concluded how teams work together is more important than who is on a team.

That's not exactly rocket science, but it's an example of how companies are spending more time trying to understand how to build the most productive and cohesive teams. It's a high priority because the best products and ideas increasingly are springing from people working together.

"It's becoming difficult to think of companies that aren't depending on teams," says Amy Randel, a professor of management at San Diego State University. "And usually nothing is more important than having a goal that inspires and organizes people's efforts."

Google's study, based on data analysis, found that teams work best when their members feel like they can take risks, can count on each other, have clear goals and believe their work matters.

Some of those findings were reinforced by a recent study published in the Academy of Management Journal by Jasmine Hu, an assistant professor of management at Notre Dame University and Robert Liden, a management professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. That analysis of 67 different teams working at six different companies found employees excel when they feel their work will help the colleagues, customers and community.

"The social aspect of teams is very important because many times people are just not motivated to work for money alone," Hu says. "They want to have the opportunity to achieve a positive impact on the lives of others."

All of Google's 60,000 employees work on at least one team, and some are on two or more.

Google itself was born from one of technology's most famous partnerships between former Stanford University graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. They followed in the footsteps of other legendary duos such as Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen and Apple co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Today, Google's teams range in size from three to 70 people and are usually project oriented. For two years the company has studied more than 200 teams, identifying what motivates the most effective groups while looking for the ideal mix of traits and skills.

Although most industries are embracing teamwork, Silicon Valley is at the forefront of the trend. Technology firms are typically more collaborative, in part because people writing different parts of software code or building machines need to do one part of a larger project.

Google's first workplace study, which it released in 2014, showed effective managers are good coaches who empower rather than micromanage. That research, called Project Oxygen, is now taught in MBA programs and has been adopted by companies hoping to emulate the innovative culture of Silicon Valley.

The research released Tuesday has already reshaped Google's workforce through training, reviews and new standards.

The transformation is helping to enrich Google, already one of the world's most profitable companies. The revenue produced by sales teams, who market advertising, apps and partnerships, varied by nearly 50 percent based on their own reported feelings of psychological safety, according to Abeer Dubey, a Google director.

"So is this a Google truth or a universal truth?" asked Dubey. "We personally feel this is fungible."

In a region where innovation is driving a booming economy, retaining and motivating the workforce is critical to business, and because engineers almost always work in teams, understanding how to boost their performance is crucial.

"Team work matters, and if you want to have the best team of employees possible, you will manage them intelligently," said Lindy Greer, who teaches at Stanford University's business school. "If you just put people together they're going to crash and burn unless they have conflict resolution training, a manager who can coordinate roles and opportunities to learn with one another."

---

You can read Google's blog post here.

---

Liedtke reported from San Francisco.

Please Stop Blaming Women For Making Less Money Than Men

Despite what you may have heard, women are no worse at negotiating than men.

However, women must do more negotiating than men if they want to get ahead at work. Not simply for pay, but also for the right conditions that will help grow their careers.

The modern day workplace was constructed by men, for men. It’s assumed that men are ambitious and want promotions, that they have the kind of home life that will support long hours at the office and that they don’t need flex time to take care of children. Women are often penalized for ambition or judged for not seeming to pay enough attention to their home lives, as recent research from Erin Reid at Boston University found.

Even the office air conditioning was created with a guy in mind.

That means that if a women wants a promotion, she needs to ask. If a woman wants a different kind of schedule or work arrangement, she must ask. If she wants a role that will lead to the C-suite or the editor-in-chief’s office, she needs to ask. If she wants credit for doing extra work, that’s another negotiation, too. Need a space to pump breastmilk? Negotiate!

Deborah Kolb, a professor emerita at Simmons College who advises many top female executives on their careers, calls these asks small “n” negotiations. And they happen every day in the workplace.  

 

“They are totally tied to your success at work. They are about the jobs you want, the opportunities you get and the support you need,” Kolb, the author of the recent book Negotiating at Work: Turn Small Wins Into Big Gains, told HuffPost. And women must do more of this asking, Kolb explains, because of the way organizations are structured. "There's nothing associated with our biology that makes us bad negotiators," she says.

There are a lot of well-intentioned people out there who think teaching women to negotiate better can help close the gender pay gap. (Women make 79 cents to every male dollar, and the gap is bigger for women of color.) Indeed, the city of Boston recently launched a new gender pay parity initiative that includes giving free negotiation classes to working women. 

But simply blaming women for making less than men -- which is what you’re doing by trying to “teach” them to get better at salary negotiation -- isn’t going to fix this.

Instead, we need to address structural issues with the modern-day workplace that hold women back from getting to pay equality. And these issues have little to do with harmful stereotypes about women’s ability to be as “aggressive” or “confident” as their male counterparts when negotiating for pay.

Blaming women for making less than men -- which is what you’re doing by trying to “teach” them to get better at salary negotiation -- isn’t going to fix this.

Kolb notes that women are often placed in less visible or valued roles at work, for which they get less credit and compensation than men. They’re then forced to negotiate for the credit for that work in a way that their male counterparts may not have to do. They also must negotiate to get out of those roles.

In a piece about the way media company Gawker treats its female editors and reporters, Dayna Evans portrays a male-centric workplace that epitomizes the problem. At Gawker, Evans writes, women are doing the "invisible work" while men are getting the big, attention-grabbing bylines.

"'Gawker’s gossip sites often operate off of more or less 'invisible' female management behind the scenes,'" one editor told Evans. "'It’s hard for those women to get recognized for their work, because it’s not on the top of the masthead or on bylines, but they’re the ones pulling the strings each day. Their work isn’t missed until they leave out of frustration or get forced out. It’s a shameful cycle.'"

This isn’t just a Gawker problem.

At law firms, women are more likely to become "nonequity" partners -- where they can expect to make about one-third of what equity partners earn. Female partners are also less likely to get credit for their work, according to reporting from Julie Triedman at The American Lawyer. The same is true for female engineers at tech firms -- they're less likely to get their names on patents for their work, an economist recently told me.

At one manufacturing company, Kolb told HuffPost, women were being consistently hired into the human resource department while men were getting the so-called operational roles at the heart of the business -- the jobs that often pay better and are stepping-stones to the CEO's office. "That meant the women had to negotiate to put themselves forward for the operational roles," Kolb said.

At venture capital firms, men become investment partners -- the critical roles -- while women are shuttled into communications or marketing jobs. Only 6 percent of partners at VC firms are women. At investment banks, male partners work with clients, while the women more frequently get asked to run offices and do internal work -- think human resources -- that isn’t always as valued.

At newspapers, men more frequently cover economics and business, the kind of reporting that lands you on the front page and at the top of the masthead. Women are shuttled into covering personal finance or style -- not a natural path to the editor-in-chief’s office. At Gawker, most of the women work at its feminist website, Jezebel.

As a manager, I've negotiated pay with plenty of men and women. Some men were terrible negotiators; some women were excellent. There was never a clear trend line on gender, in my experience.

Back in Boston, the negotiation classes, which started in October, have women practice asking for raises and promotions, and teach them how to respond to job offers.

That’s not a bad thing -- women should feel confident about asking for more money.

But there’s more to this puzzle than pay. "Certainly you want to get paid fairly if there are inequities in pay," Kolb says. "But to think everything is pay is a problem. You want to negotiate the conditions that are going to make you successful, and the pay will follow."

And if companies and legislators are serious about fixing the pay gap, they’d do well to think about the frequency with which women (and men) need to negotiate their roles.

Google recently conducted an experiment meant to help get more women promoted. The company sent out an email asking women who were interested in promotions to raise their hands if they wanted one. The result: More women asked for promotions. A success -- but was it?

The onus shouldn't always be on employees to engineer their own promotions. It should absolutely be part of a manager's job to spot and promote talented workers before they ask. And those managers should be aware that there is a bias toward promoting men. But for the most part, that's not how it works.

Years ago, I was bored with what I was doing at work and feeling increasingly anxious about how little money I was making. I hadn’t had a meaningful raise in years. I was also pregnant with my second child -- not typically the conditions that signal to your higher-ups you’re in the market for a promotion.

I could’ve asked for more money, but instead I asked for a new job. It was a new role that had just opened up and was probably a bit of a stretch. I figured I’d never get it, but I really needed more money for the second kid. So I raised my hand.

It was a great move. I was respectfully interviewed by some higher-ups -- one who had no idea who I was and another who seemed surprised I wanted a job with more responsibilities. When they told me a little while later that I wasn't ready for the role, they also said it was good that I'd asked for it. The message: Now we know you're ambitious.

I wonder if a man would have needed to give them that kind of reminder.