The Persistent

Careers — 4 min read Photo: Miguel Bruna on Unsplash The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 In 1965, the Harvard Business Review published a survey of 2,000 executives — both women and men — asking about their attitudes toward female leaders. Twenty years later, researchers repeated the exercise. They did so again in 2006, and have continued tracking how perceptions of women in leadership have evolved at 20-year intervals ever since.

It’s official: Wedding season is in full swing. And we love celebrating love in all its forms, especially when there’s a party involved. But there’s one major question to consider besides who to bring and what to wear – and that’s what to get the happy couple. If you’re lucky, the couple has a registry and will tell you exactly what they want and need at different price points.

The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 Gender quotas have long been a contested topic in corporate governance. Proponents argue they create a necessary mechanism for increasing diversity at the highest levels of decision-making. Critics counter they encourage box-ticking — with resulting board appointments, driven by compliance over merit. But new research suggests there’s more to this debate than meets the eye.

The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 For years, one explanation has dominated conversations about why heterosexual couples are more likely to struggle when women become the primary breadwinner. The theory goes like this: When women earn more than their male partners, they become less financially dependent, less committed to the relationship and therefore more likely to leave. It makes sense, in a way.

Infertility — 3 min read Photo: Everett Collection The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 What makes a woman’s biological clock tick? Until now, it was widely thought that changes to a woman’s eggs (part of the natural aging process), is what makes it harder to conceive as women approach menopause. But new research suggests that's not the full story: The age of a woman's uterus matters, too.

The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 It lasted just 10 minutes and 19 seconds, but Mary Wallace Funk had waited 60 years for it. In July 2021, Funk, who only ever went by “Wally,” joined three other passengers — including Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and an 18-year-old Dutch student Oliver Daemen. Minutes later, the spacecraft crossed the Kármán line, widely regarded as the boundary of space, before returning safely to Earth.

The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 Money: They say it makes the world go round. And as long as we’re living in a capitalist system, it’s important to understand the best ways to save , smart ways to spend, and how to make your money work for you (or whatever it is that finance bros like to say online). Especially if you’re a woman. The thing is, too many of us tip-toe around money or leave it to others to take care of.

Global Politics — 6 min read Artwork by Franziska Barczyk. The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 Akram can’t remember exactly when he decided to join the protests that erupted in the streets of Herat last month. He had been angry for months, years even, at the way the Taliban had treated women and minorities in Afghanistan since they returned to power half a decade ago.

In late June, I found myself at Le Poisson Rouge, a subterranean concert venue in New York City’s West Village. More than a decade had passed since I’d last been there, when I showed up for an event called “Macaulay Culkin’s iPod,” at which the “Home Alone” actor parked himself at the bar and played his favorite songs. My friend Elizabeth and I sat and watched with curiosity. It was 2014.

The Persistent is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. 💛 When Hannah* a tech worker and restaurant server in Toronto, first made a profile on a dating platform designed to connect people in a “sugar” arrangement, she was 25 and looking to make money on the side. She was working at a “pretty well-known bar,” but it still wasn't enough money, she says.