| View this email in your browser. August 17, 2021
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Afghanistan’s all-girls robotics team asks for entry to Canada, Janet Yellen has another chance to shape the future of the Fed, and Sha’Carri Richardson is back in action. Have a thoughtful Tuesday.
– Take two. With the Tokyo Olympics finished, you might think the Broadsheet would take a breather from athletics coverage. But there’s more going on in the world of sports, for the women who returned home from Tokyo—and those who didn’t make it there.
Sha’Carri Richardson, the American track and field star who was disqualified from competing in the summer Games with Team USA after testing positive for marijuana, will return to competition next week. Notably, she’ll face off against three women who did end up medaling in Tokyo: Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson-Herah, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and Shericka Jackson.
While it was exciting to see Jamaica sweep the 100-meter race last month, Richardson’s absence from the competition was heartbreaking. She was poised to be a breakout star of the Olympics, only to be prevented from competing after a personal tragedy because of rules that many see as outdated.
Now, she gets a second chance of sorts. The Prefontaine Classic isn’t the Olympics, but those of us who were excited to see the “fastest woman in America” compete on the world stage can tune in to watch her face off against Tokyo’s champions. Richardson, for her part, is zeroed in on the task ahead. “She will be focused on executing her race to the best of her ability regardless of who is in the race,” her agent said.
Plus: it’s not just Richardson getting some worthwhile post-Olympics coverage. For more from the sports world, check out this moving story about the WNBA’s Breanna Stewart. Two days after she won a gold medal, she became a mother when her gestational surrogate gave birth to her and her wife’s first child.
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet, Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women, is coauthored by Kristen Bellstrom, Emma Hinchliffe, and Claire Zillman. Today’s edition was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.
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- More from Afghanistan. For more on the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan, read this piece from Lynsey Addario in The Atlantic. As a photojournalist in the country for much of the past two decades, she says she's "seen how hard the country’s women have fought for their freedom ... now they stand to lose everything." The Atlantic
- Appealing to Canada. According to reports, Afghanistan's well-known all-girls robotics team is appealing to the Canadian government to accept them into the country amid the Taliban takeover. The team's members are asking Canada because they competed at a robotics competition there in 2018 and met Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Vice
- Fed up. Janet Yellen's time as Fed chair came to a close a few years ago, but as Treasury secretary she can still shape the future of the institution. Yellen will be a voice in deciding who will lead the Fed when Jerome Powell's term ends in February. New York Times
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: HashiCorp added former Morgan Stanley international CIO Sigal Zarmi to its board. Instacart COO Asha Sharma joins the board of AppLovin.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
- Restaurant responsibility. In an op-ed for Fortune, lawyers from the ACLU's Women's Rights Project, who represent women who have filed a class-action lawsuit over sexual harassment in McDonald's restaurants, argue that the fast-food chain must take responsibility for such conduct in its locations. They share the experience of Emily Anibal, who says she was harassed at her first real job at her local McDonald's. (McDonald's has said that sexual harassment has "no place in any McDonald’s restaurant.") Fortune
- On board. Women gained a net 13 seats on S&P 500 boards this year—which means women hold 30% of board seats across the list for the first time. The average number of women directors is 3.3 out of 11. Bloomberg
- Members-only? London's Garrick club is a longstanding membership organization often used as a center of networking for judges and politicians. The club is still men-only, and female lawyers have been pushing to abolish those rules. Cherie Blair has joined the chorus calling for change, sharing her own experience being excluded as a young lawyer while her future husband Tony Blair entered the institution. Guardian
ON MY RADAR
Lorde doesn't want to be pop royalty anymore Wall Street Journal
How Yamiche Alcindor gets it done The Cut
Inside the conservatorship battle of Star Trek legend Nichelle Nichols LA Times
PARTING WORDS
"It’s not hard work for me. It might be for somebody else, but not me."
-Virginia Oliver, a 101-year-old lobsterwoman in Maine
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