Questões de Inglês

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Why We Need Gender Equity Now

By Katica Roy

We need gender equity now. Those are words often uttered in social justice circles, and recently, across a number of headlines. What does that mean? More broadly, how is gender equity different than gender equality?

If gender equality is the end, gender equity is the means.

Gender equality "does not mean that women and men will become the same, but that women’s and men’s rights, responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born male or female.”

Gender equity means fairness of treatment for women and men, according to their respective needs. This may include equal treatment or treatment that is different, but which is considered equivalent in terms of rights, benefits, obligations, and opportunities.

When we talk about opportunity, we are talking about ensuring opportunity is not limited simply on the basis of gender. We are talking about correcting for gender biases so that economic outcomes improve for all.

Why do we need equity?

Let’s start at the beginning. In no country are women in equal. In fact, the World Economic Forum projects it will take 170 years to reach gender equality globally, and 158 years in North America. That means it will take five more generations for us to see gender equality – or my great, great, great, great, grandchildren. That’s not only bad news for our daughters – it’s bad news for our sons because gender equality impacts the economic pie for all.

Many of the measures concerning gender equality interplay with the economy and more specifically, the workforce.

Here’s the current state:

• If there’s only one woman in your candidate pool, there’s statistically no chance she’ll get the job;
• Men are promoted at 30% higher rates than women during their early career stages;
• 90% of women leave the workforce because of other workplace problems (rather than having a child);
• Women are paid 79 cents on the dollar of their male colleagues (that drops drastically to 39 cents for the top 2% of wage earners in the U.S.);
• In a study of 21,980 firms from 91 countries, just over 50% of firms didn’t have any female executives (only 11% of firms had all female executives). (…)

In addition to women attaining 57% of bachelor degrees and above in 2015 (that trajectory is projected to continue), they are also the majority of university students in nearly 100 countries. Women are an educated cohort, particularly in the U.S., but they are not making it up the talent pipeline. Why not? Gender bias is causing a leaky pipeline.

How does equity lead to equality?

If gender equity is about fairness, then what we are talking about here is making up for the gap between gender bias and reality. How can we hack the system to give women an equitable shot?

Overall, gender mainstreaming is a very useful strategy. Why? It overlays the gender lens across any action, policy and more. (…)

From Forbes Woman. SEP 14, 2017. Disponível em:https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellevate/2017/09/14/why-we-need-genderequity-now. Adaptado. 

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WHY FACEBOOK WILL NEVER DIE
Despite scandals over fake news and data privacy, the social network is unlikely to disappear any time soon

By Bryan Lufkin

I was a freshman at Indiana University in 2004 when I first heard about a new website for people my age. I was chatting with some friends on AOL Instant Messenger in my dorm room, at the start of a new semester.

“Have you heard of The Facebook?” a couple of them asked. “You should sign up. It’s this new site for college kids.”

Fast forward to April 2018: founder and CEO of “The Facebook,” Mark Zuckerberg, sat before US Congress trying to convince lawmakers his social network, initially set up as a way for students to stay in touch with each other, does not pose a threat to the stability of Western democracy and does not treat its users’ personal information with disdain.

The hearing saw him admit that his company had not done enough to prevent the service it provides being used for fake news, foreign interference in elections and data leaks. In March, it emerged that a political consultancy called Cambridge Analytica used data harvested from millions of Facebook users without their consent. The scandal rocked Facebook to its core and has forced its founder to reconsider how it does business.

In the latest round of his grand apology tour Zuckerberg also faced the European Parliament and faced even tougher questioning, just as Europe is poised to introduce new laws that will give it some of the strictest data privacy rules in the world: General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

It’s a far cry from what my college pals and I used the site for 14 years ago: sending a friend request crushes from maths class or clicking through photos of last Friday’s frat party. As one of the first few thousands of users, I find Facebook’s evolution and societal function both equally fascinating and disturbing.

How has a university directory evolved to last as long as it has? Why did it flourish while competitors like MySpace failed? Why have so many users stayed, despite constant interface changes and scandals?

The biggest question of all that gnaws at the back of my mind is whether there is any stopping Facebook in the future? It looks increasingly like the answer is no.

Disponível em: http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180523-why-facebook-will-never-die. Em 26/05/18. Adaptado.

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The song below was performed by a gospel choir during the mariage ceremony of Prince Harry and the North American Megan Markle, held at Windson Castel on May 19, 2018.

    Stand By Me
    Ben E. King

When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is the only light we'll see
No I won't be afraid, no I won't be afraid
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

Chorus
So darling, darling
Stand by me, oh, stand by me
Oh stand, stand by me
Stand by me

If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
Or the mountains should crumble to the sea
I won't cry, I won't cry
No I won't shed a tear
Just as long as you stand, stand by me

Whenever you're in trouble, won't you stand by me
Oh stand by me
Oh won't you stand now?
Stand by me

(In: https://www.vagalume.com.br/ben-e-king/stand-by-me-traducao.html)

Based on the text below, answer question that follow it. The paragraphs of the text are numbered.

If children lose contact with nature they wont't fight for it

    [1] According to recent research, even if the present rate of global decarbonisation were to double, we would still be on course for 6°C of warming by the end of the century. Limiting the rise to 2°C, which is the target of current policies, requires a six-time reduction in carbon intensity.

    [2] A new report shows that the UK has lost 20% of its breeding birds since 1966: once common species such as willow tits, lesser spotted woodpeckers and turtle doves have all but collapsed; even house sparrows have fallen by two thirds. Ash dieback is just one of many terrifying plant diseases, mostly spread by trade. They now threaten our oaks, pines and chestnuts.

    [3] While the surveys show that the great majority of people would like to see the living planet protected, few are prepared to take action. This, I think, reflects a second environmental crisis: the removal of children from the natural world. The young people we might have expected to lead the defence of nature have less and less to do with it.

    [4] We don't have to undervalue the indoor world, which has its own rich ecosystem, to lament children's disconnection from the outdoor world. But the experiences the two spheres offer are entirely different. There is no substitute for what takes place outdoors, mostly because the greatest joys of nature are unplanned. The thought that most of our children will never swim among phosphorescent plankton at night, will never be startled by a salmon leaping, or a dolphin breaching is almost as sad as the thought that their children might not have the opportunity.

    [5] The remarkable collapse of children's engagement with nature - which is even faster than the collapse of the natural world - is recorded in Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods, and in a report published recently by the National Trust, Since the 1970s the area in which children may roam without supervision has decreased by almost 90%. In one generation the proportion of children regularly playing in wild places in the UK has fallen from more than half to fewer than one in 10. In the US, in just six years (1997-2008) children with particular outdoor hobbies fell by half. Eleven- to 15-year- olds in Britain now spend, on average, half their waking day in front of a screen.

    [6] There are several reasons for this collapse: parents' irrational fear of strangers and rational fear of traffic, the destruction of the fortifying lands where previous generations played, the quality of indoor entertainment, the structuring of children's time, the criminalisation of natural play. The great indoors, as a result, has become a far more dangerous place than the diminished world beyond.

    [7] The rise of obesity and asthma and the decline in cardio-respiratory fitness are well documented. Louv also links the indoor life to an increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other mental ill health. Research conducted at the University of Illinois suggests that playing among trees and grass is associated with a marked reduction in indications of ADHD, while playing indoors appears to increase them. The disorder, Louv suggests, “may be a set of symptoms aggravated by lack of exposure to nature”. Perhaps it's the environment, not the child, that has gone wrong.

    [8] In her famous essay the Ecology of Imagination in Childhood, Edith Cobb proposed that contact with nature stimulates creativity. Reviewing the biographies of 300 “geniuses", she exposed a common theme: intense experiences of the natural world .in the middle age of childhood (between five and 12). Animals and plants, she argued, are among "the figures of speech in the rhetoric of play... which the genius, in particular of later life, seems to remember”.

    [9] Studies in several nations show that children's games are more creative in green places than in concrete playgrounds. Natural spaces encourage fantasy and roleplay, reasoning and observation. The social standing of children there depends less on physical dominance, more on inventiveness and language skills.

    [10] And here we meet the other great loss. Most of those I know who fight for nature are people who spent their childhoods immersed in it. Without a feel for the texture and function of the natural world, without an intensity of engagement almost impossible in the absence of early experience, people will not devote their lives to its protection.

    [11] Forest Schools, Outward Bound, Woodcraft Folk, the John Muir-Award, the Campaign for Adventure, Natural Connections, family nature clubs and many others are trying to bring children and the natural world back together. But all of them are fighting forces which, if they cannot be changed, will deprive the living planet of the wonder and delight that for millennia have attracted Children to the wilds.

(Adapted from: https://www theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/children-lose- contact-with-nature)

TEXTO:

                
    When Sudan, the last northern white rhino bull, died
in March 2018, that left alive only two females of
the subspecies once common in Central and East
Africa.Both are descendants of Sudan and live in Kenya,
[5] and were considered infertile. But now, new hope is
emerging that extinction of the species can still be
prevented. Researchers have successfully created living
embryos in the laboratory from frozen sperm of the
northern white rhinoceros and egg cells from the southern
[10] white rhinoceros. It’s the most closely related
subspecies, with more than 20,000 southern rhinos living
in the wild.
    Although such hybrid embryos are not pure northern
white rhinoceros, the researchers are optimistic. They
[15] plan to take egg cells from the still living northern
rhinoceros females in autumn of this year, and to fertilize
them with stored sperm from the same species.They
then intend to implant the oocytes into fertile southern
rhinoceros females in early 2019. This method is also
[20] used in human reproductive medicine.
    Even if healthy rhinoceros calves can be
produced, whether the northern white rhino can be saved
in the long term remains unclear. As the sperm comes
from a few rhinoceros bulls, limited genetic diversity could
[25] endanger the health of a newly bred northern white rhino
population. Due to the smaller gene pool, such inbreeding
typically leads to higher rates of recessive disorders,
translating into higher death rates and poorer overall
health.
[30]    Still, the research unit is hoping that stem cell
technology can create more eggs and sperm from the
skin cells of 12 northern whites, increasing the supply
and genetic variety. If the scientists pull it off, they’ll
both rescue a seemingly doomed animal and provide a
[35] blueprint for protecting other animals teetering on the
edge of oblivion.

WHEN SUDAN...Disponível em: https://www.dw.com/en/researcherscreate-hybrid-northern-white-rhino-embryos/a-44527410. Acesso em: 1 nov. 2018. Adaptado.

TEXTO:

    What might your office or apartment have in
common with a NASA spaceship? Unfortunately the
answer may be poor air quality. Indoor air pollutants have
been ranked among the top five environmental risks to
[5] public health. Living and working in places rife with air
contaminants and lacking decent ventilation can cause
“Sick Building Syndrome”, which can cause headaches,
dizziness, nausea, and eye, ear, and nose
irritations.Given that people spend more than 90 percent
[10] of their time indoors, air quality matters. Furnishings,
upholstery, synthetic building materials, and cleaning
products in homes and offices can emit a variety of toxic
compounds, like formaldehyde. Indoor air pollution can
also be caused by pollen, bacteria, and molds, as
[15] outdoor air contaminants like car exhaust finds its way
into buildings. All of these are made worse in small
or poorly-ventilated spaces.
    Lucky for us, NASA scientists have been working
to understand this problem and find solutions.The good
[20] news is that there’s an easy and affordable way to
combat the presence of the yucky stuff we may be
breathing in, and it comes right from the natural world:
Use houseplants to clean the air. Plants purify theair,
making them part of what NASA calls “nature’s life
[25] support system,” although plants in bloom may be
contributing their own compounds to the air.
    So, how do houseplants clean the air? Plants
absorb some of the particulates from the air at the same
time that they take in carbon dioxide, which is then
[30] processed into oxygen through photosynthesis. But
that’s not all—microorganisms associated with the
plants are present in the potting soil, and these microbes
are also responsible for much of the cleaning effect.
    Beyond air quality, plants just make people feel
[35] better. For example, hospital patients with plants in their
rooms were more positive and had lower blood pressure
and stress levels. Similarly, indoor plants may make
people smarter by allowing them to stay alert and
reducing mental fatigue.

JANOWIAK, Maria. Disponível em: greatist.com/connect/houseplantsthat-clean-air. Acesso em: 1 nov. 2018. Adaptado.