While election results are still pouring in, there are enough ‘women vs. women’ primary races that come December, the California state Senate is likely to be comprised of 53% women.

According to the US Census, women comprise about 49.9% of California’s population. But women do not have half of the state’s political representation, and have never had anywhere near it.

But now women are poised to take more than half of a state legislative body, in the California state Senate, at least. The Bay Area News Group reports that women are expected to achieve gender parity in the California state Senate, with the results of the March 5 primary elections coming in.

Yes, a number of districts are still too close to call. But as the News Group explains, “enough districts are held by women not up for election this year or have two women who are advancing to the general election that women are expected to hold 53% of Senate seats by the end of the year, according to data from Close the Gap California.”

(Close the Gap California is an advocacy group that works to recruit women to run for the state’s legislature.)

“It’s great that the California state Senate can reach this significant milestone, especially because democracy is best served when the makeup of elected bodies closely reflects the populations they represent,” state Senator Catherine Blakespear (D-San Diego County) told the News Group. “We still have a long way to go to reach gender equity across all segments of society where important decisions are being made, such as in corporate boardrooms, on nonprofit boards and in the highest elected offices, including governor, U.S. senator and president.”

Meanwhile in the other state legislative body, the California Assembly, women hold 32 out of 80 seats, and therefore hold about 40% of that chamber.

Related: Sister Roma Honored In State Capitol For Pride Month, Despite GOP Lawmakers Throwing A Fit [SFist]

Image: California state capitol building interior, State Senate room (Getty Images)

Some historic heart-related news on Valentine's Day, as UCSF has recorded the first heart transplant performed entirely by a team of women — a first for the school, and possibly the first in history.

The historic nature of a heart transplant surgery performed at UCSF Parnassus this past December did not occur to anyone in the room at the time of the surgery. It was not until after the procedure that UCSF cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Amy Fiedler says she noted to colleagues, "Hey, this is pretty crazy, we’re all women on the team," and "We’ve never been part of anything like this before." Because, as the Chronicle notes in a Valentine's Day article about hearts in the clinical sense, it was the first all-woman heart transplant surgery team in the 159-year history of UCSF, and possibly the first ever anywhere.

“The patient, the surgeon, the cardiac anesthesiologist, the perfusionist and all the fellows and nurses were female,” as the Chronicle explains. “If the donor was a female, which is information not released, that would make nine.”

The patient learned of this after the procedure, having seen a social media post that coincided with the timing of her own heart transplant surgery

“I knew that was me,” San Francisco woman Fatou Gaye told the Chronicle, adding that it “makes me feel so happy and proud that women can and do get it all done.” The Chron identifies the entire surgical team as “Fiedler, Dr. Laura Scrimgeouer, Dr. Jaqueline Measer, Dr. Charlene Blake, perfusionist Ashley Risso, registered nurse Ruiza Coronel, and a contract nurse.”

It’s not possible to know whether this was the first all-woman team to perform a heart transplant surgery, as statistics are only kept on patients, not on the attending staff. But we do know it's the first at UCSF, as Dr. Fiedler is the first female heart transplant surgeon at UCSF.

But the United Network for Organ Sharing, a nationwide organization that matches organ donors with recipients, has been monitoring all 88,000 heart transplants in the U.S. going back to 1988. A representative from that organization tells the Chronicle this was “likely” the first all-woman team.

And in a coincidental historical aside, the day after this all-women team performed that heart transplant, UCSF also recorded its 20,000th organ transplant, though that surgery was performed by a separate team.

Related: New UCSF Parnassus Hospital Design Unveiled By Architects of deYoung Museum [UCSF]

Image: UCSFHealth.org

Sure, go ahead and laugh at those seventysomething silver-haired biddies recording rock music in the image above. Those seventysomething silver-haired biddies are the seminal Summer of Love musical act The Ace of Cups, a long-forgotten four-year phenom credited as being San Francisco’s first (and only) girl band of the late 1960s. The Ace of Cups shared stages with Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, The Band, and even opened for Jimi Hendrix — at Hendrix's personal request — and single-handedly destroyed a number of stereotypes of what girl groups were supposed to be before eventually splitting up in 1972. But with Summer of Love remembrances flower-powering at full blast, KQED reports that the Ace of Cups have reunited to record the debut album they never got around to recording during their heyday — hence their quick slip into obscurity.

Girl bands were treated as something of a novelty in the 1960s. While no one could argue with the influence and legacy of Motown hit machines like The Supremes or Martha and the Vandellas, women in rock bands were still expected to dress in matching outfits and shoehorn themselves into a Phil Spector formula of looking cute and performing songs written for them by men.

As we see in the KQED documentary above, Ace of Cups wrote all of their own songs and never intended to be a girl group. It just so happened that all five of them were women — women who could play instruments and were in the right place at the right time.

The Ace of Cups started the Summer of Love mostly playing benefits for the Haight-Ashbury Clinic, or whomever they knew who’d gotten arrested lately. But the weekend after Jimi Hendrix performed at the Monterey Pop Festival, Hendrix personally requested that Ace of Cups open for him at a free Golden Gate Park concert. Of course they obliged, and were immediately on the shortlist as a sought-after opening act at The Fillmore and The Avalon. (The Ace of Cups also performed at the notorious 1969 sh*tshow trainwreck known as the Altamont Speedway Free Concert, where guitarist Denise Kaufman was hit in the head with a full beer can and required surgery to remove bits of her skull from her eyeball).

Record companies were lining up to offer contracts to Ace of Cups. Manager Ron Polte — who also managed Quicksilver Messenger Service — insisted they were worth more than they were being offered, and kept holding out for a more lucrative deal.

The Ace of Cups would never get signed to a record deal. Some had kids and left the band, being replaced by male musicians, and the act never generated the same appeal.

“Our brother bands, they were having children too,” Denise Kaufman told KQED. “But they had wives and girlfriends. They could still go out and play and tour and do whatever they did.”

A 2003 release called It's Bad For You, But Buy It! cobbled together whatever random recorded bits the band had ever done. The Cuppers then reunited in 2011 for a party called Wavy Gravy's 75th Birthday Boogie, paving the way for their reunion album.

We do have one video from the Ace of Cups’ upcoming album. “Basic Human Needs” is seen above and is surprisingly good — despite the involvement of Wavy Gravy — thanks to some magnificently engineered Ladysmith Black Mambazo-style African gospel choralia in the background.

The full Ace of Cups triple album is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2018. Meanwhile, Denise Kaufman (the one who got hit by the beer can!) is appearing on a 5:30 p.m. panel tonight at the San Francisco Public Library event called The Gender Revolution.

Related: Rare Photo Collection From 1967 Shows Haight Street Fashions In The Summer Of Love

Women are paid less than men. This discrimination manifests across numerous professions, even when factors like experience and education are taken into account. However, a new study by Glassdoor confirms what many in San Francisco may have long suspected — the position of computer programmer has the highest gender pay gap of any occupation in the country.

The study, published yesterday, is titled "Demystifying the Gender Pay Gap," and its authors note that "[today], the gender pay gap remains around 75-80 cents per dollar on average, and hasn’t budged in a decade."

That number is an average across professions, however, and things get decidedly worse when a closer look is taken at programming.

"The occupation with the highest gender pay gap was computer programmer, with a gap of 28.3 percent," the study finds. "This amounts to women earning on average 72 cents per dollar earned by men, after controlling for all differences between jobs, companies and workers—a gap that is roughly five times larger than the U.S. average 'adjusted' gender pay gap of 5.4 percent."

Seventy-two cents on the dollar.

Interestingly, this wage discrimination is not as pronounced in the tech industry as a whole. Don't get us wrong, it still exits in tech, however "the overall information technology (or 'tech') industry is close to the U.S. average and falls in the middle of the pack among industries." It appears the worst of the worst is specifically reserved for programming.

And while this report might elicit a "no duh" response from some, seeing the numbers laid bare is still pretty shocking. Fingers crossed someone in tech can figure out a way to disrupt the pay gap, but we're not holding our breath.

Related: 60% Of Women In Tech Are Sexually Harassed (And More Numbers To Make You Throw Up)

Yesterday in Silicon Valley, Hillary Clinton sat down on stage for an interview with Re/Code's Kara Swisher, who opened with the joke, "I was just interviewing President Obama and I'm looking forward to interviewing another president." This was at the Lead On Watermark Conference for Women at the Santa Clara Convention Center, and Swisher wasted no time trying to get Hillary to announce her candidacy and stop dilly-dallying. And Mrs. Clinton wasted no time laying out the broad strokes of her campaign themes, a central tenet of which is restoring bipartisan cooperation in Washington.

She tells the eager audience that she still has "a lot to think about" before she makes her candidacy official. But she'd love to "bring people from right, left, red, blue, and get them into a nice warm purple space where we're actually talking and trying to solve problems."

And when Swisher asks her what her campaign might look like, should she finally decide to run. Clinton says, "We have to restore economic growth with rising wages for the vast majority of Americans. And we have to restore trust and cooperation in our political system so that we can act like the great country we are."

For those who are curious as to the answer to the question, "IPhone or Android?", Clinton's answer is "IPhone, but also Blackberry." In case you didn't know, D.C. runs on Blackberry.

Listen to her thoughts on women in tech, Edward Snowden, net neutrality, and her explanation of the rise of ISIS in this 34-minute interview below.

This week's cover. Will post first thing in the morning. pic.twitter.com/UIgR97sHS9

— jim impoco (@jimpoco) January 28, 2015

Alas, poor Newsweek.

Once the Pepsi to Time's print newsweekly Coke, in recent years the venerable publication was passed around more than your HBOgo password, briefly married to The Daily Beast in a doomed ceremony officiated by Tina Brown, then purchased in 2013 by IBT Media, a company that journalist Benjamin Reeves alleges has strong ties to a San-Francisco-based Korean cult.

Even Newsweek's relaunch under new management was fraught, with a first (online, it didn't start issuing print copies until later last year) issue cover story claiming to unmask the creator of Bitcoin, a report that's been aggressively debunked and left its subject plotting a lawsuit against the publication.

So what's left, I guess, except to troll? At least, that was how many responded when Newsweek's Editor in Chief, Jim Impoco tweeted their newest issue's cover from his — preposterously — verified (5014 followers gets you verified these days? OK!) account on Wednesday night.

You get the picture.

But, according to Impoco, the cover was apparently a group effort, from a bunch of women!

The "about" is especially interesting. Does Newsweek have half-women in their office? Quarter-women? Do they have snails on staff?

If you're interested in reading a bunch more angry tweets about the cover, Mediaite's aggregated a lot of 'em here. But media site Fishbowl NY's Chris O'Shea was dismissive of these complaints, saying that "there’s no reason for outrage," and that if tweeters "read the accompanying article, they’d see that the cover is almost perfect."

And he's not wrong, in that the article the cover refers to is actually fine! By award-winning journo Nina Burleigh, it does a deft job of discussing the challenges women face in the male-dominated tech industry (as women have in many other male dominated industries throughout the ages, I will note before you accuse me/SFist of being "anti-tech").

"However, it definitely conveys that Silicon Valley sees women as objects, and that’s a big problem. Which is exactly what the Newsweek cover story explains," O'Shea scolds.

Whatever the case, we'll leave the last word to SFist pal Susie Cagle, as her animation seems to encapsulate Newsweek's entire bag quite neatly. Push play now!

As the conversation continues about diversity in tech, Google has finally released data on the company's gender and ethnicity breakdown. The numbers, a Google exec freely admits, are "not where we want to be when it comes to diversity." But a larger picture of Silicon Valley shows diversity in tech has actually gotten worse in recent years.

Overall, Google is 70% men and 30% women. Ethnically, Google is made up of 61% white people, with the next closest ethnic group being Asians at 30%.

When you filter out the "non-tech" employees, the numbers lean even more heavily to the male side: 83 percent men. Finally, when you look at the breakdown of people in leadership roles at Google, you can see why the company was so reluctant to release the numbers earlier: those Google leaders are 79 percent males and 72 percent white.

"There are lots of reasons why technology companies like Google struggle to recruit and retain women and minorities," Google Senior VP of People Operations Laszlo Bock explains, pointing to figures such as women only early 18 percent of the Computer Science degrees in the U.S. or Blacks and Hispanics make up less than 5 percent of CS degrees. To rectify the situation (and deflect any bad PR that could come with the data), Bock explains that the company has been investing millions in bringing computer science education to women and girls, as well as historically black universities.

But the reason for Google's reluctance to share this data might be more complicated than just bad PR. As Mother Jones reports today, most large companies are required to divulge the sort of data Google posted online yesterday, but Google, Apple and Oracle effectively convinced the Labor Department to hide their numbers years ago by calling it a "trade secret."

To get a bigger picture of the diversity problem in Silicon Valley, Mother Jones unearthed Labor Department data on the top 10 tech firms including Apple, Google, Oracle, eBay, Facebook and others. The biggest take-away from reporter Josh Harkinson's research is not simply that Google and tech firms are still overwhelmingly white and male, but that things have actually gotten less diverse in the past 10 years. Advocate groups for women and minorities in tech have pinned that decline on everything from the Valley's reluctance to groom women for leadership positions to importing skilled workers on H-1B Visas.

For more insights, including a debunking of these tech companies' efforts to diversify their workforces, Harkinson's report over at Mother Jones is a must-read this morning.

[Mother Jones]
[Google Blog]

When the difficult topic of domestic violence victims came up last year in a vote, I stood with the victims while David Campos did not. [David Chiu, 2/13/14]

As the battle between second-term San Francisco Board of Supervisors members David Campos and David Chiu for the hearts (and votes) of California's 17th Assembly District heats up, things are starting to get a little exciting!

Last night, at an AD 17 Town Hall meeting, Chiu was asked "How have you championed women's issues?" His response was a pointed one, clearly referring to his opponent's decision to give SF Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi his job back. As you might recall, Mirkarimi was suspended from his position after a conviction for false imprisonment following a New Year's Day, 2012 fight with his wife. Mirkarimi needed only three votes to get his job back, and he got four, from Supes Olague, Campos, Avalos, and Kim.

Chiu has also announced on Facebook that he'll be at City Hall for One Billion Rising for Justice "to end violence against women" this afternoon. While Campos makes no such announcement, he did record a PSA for the event in 2013.

Previously on SFist:
Live-Blogging Ross Mirkarimi's Judgment Day

Startup co-founder Peter Shih — whose anti-San Francisco rant sparked an outcry that, among other things, resulted in these flyers strewn about town on Friday — published an apology over the weekend. Shih's screed, if you recall, attacked transgender folks, women, cyclists, and Karl (just to name a few).

"I want to sincerely apologize to everyone who read my poorly written blog post about San Francisco. I made idiotic and childish, but worse yet, thoughtless, hurtful and offensive comments that I am deeply sorry about," Shih writes in a blog post regarding his misogynistic and violent missive. "There are no excuses for my poor judgment, so I make none. I take full responsibility that this mistake was completely my own."

"I don't deserve any forgiveness for the stupidity of my actions and words, but I sincerely hope to demonstrate by my future behavior to humbly build up and not tear down the communities and people around me," he adds.

Shih's initial piece, since removed (but thanks to Susie Cagle, you can view it here), prompted simmering contempt for new tech money funneling in the Bay Area to erupt. In addition to finding these anti-Shih flyers posted around the City, #PeterShihFacts turned into a trending topic on Twitter. This gave everyone — from your average Joes to journalists from typically respected mastheads (e.g., S.F. Chronicle, Mother Jones, San Francisco Magazine) — a chance to grab a pitchfork and publicly humiliate Shih for his post.

Items like Shih's are nothing new. Sarah Lacy of the ethically-challenged PandoDaily, published this worrisome tirade back in July, complaining about not being able to get from the Mission to her MidMarket office during the BART strike. Clearly, the City has had enough and are now telling San Francisco's startup culture to, in the wise words of Walter White, tread lightly.

Previously: Startup Bro Backlash Leaps Off The Internet, Into Real Life
Startup Bro Not Completely Stoked On S.F.'s Startup Bro Scene

It's no secret that the male-female ratio within the food industry is lopsided toward the XY chromosome. Not so much a secret as it is a shame, actually. Which is why SFChef's upcoming dinner featuring scores of exceptional female chefs in the Bay Area is so important. Now, it gives us pause that there's even a dinner dedicated to lady chefs, if you will, but that is where we're at. For that reason alone you should attend Masters of their Craft: Celebrating the Great Female Chefs and Sommeliers of San Francisco, if you can swing it.

Another good reason: 40% of each ticket benefits the Chronicle's Season of Sharing fund.

The dinner takes place on Sunday, July 28 at Prospect and hosted, if you will, by owner/chef Nancy Oakes, chef Pamela Mazzola, and general manager Kathy King. Yes, the tickets are pricey (at $450), but your money will go to a much-needed cause. Further, you get the enjoy the fine fare of the following females:

Participating Chefs

Host Chef Nancy Oakes, Boulevard and Prospect
Host Chef Pam Mazzola, Prospect
April Bloomfield, Tosca
Dominique Crenn, Atelier Crenn
Loretta Keller, Coco500 and Seaglass
Gayle Pirie, Foreign Cinema
Melissa Perello, Frances
Jennifer Puccio, Marlowe and Park Tavern
Sarah Rich, Rich Table
Dana Younkin, Boulevard

Participating Pastry Chefs

Emily Luchetti, Farallon and Waterbar
Maya Erickson, AQ
Melissa Chou, Aziza
Lori Baker, Baker & Banker
Nicole Krasinski, State Bird Provisions
Belinda Leong, B. Patisserie
Lisa Lu, Boulevard

Participating Sommeliers

Lead Sommelier Shelley Lindgren, A16 and SPQR
Dominique Henderson Clay and Jennifer Warren, A16
Nissa Suteja, Acquerello
Petra Polakovicova, Epic Roasthouse
Stevie Stacionis, Guild of Sommeliers and 'A Drink with Friends'
Emily Horenian, Spruce
Haley Guild Moore, Stock & Bones
Jimenez Rivera, SPQR
Nicole Kosta, The Mandarin Oriental

Buy your ticket(s) here.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Food and Wine staff selected five Rising Star Chefs was announced over the weekend “to find and highlight some of the Bay Area's freshest talent, those young chefs who we think are destined for stardom.” This year, once again, no women made the list. Alas.

The 2013 Rising Star Chefs aren't lacking in flavor, but it is missing a strong female presence. And for the past four years, no women have made the list. But this year, restaurant critic Michael Bauer is reacting to the backlash he’s getting, posting this article early this morning, kind of haphazardly listing local standout female chefs.

What's the missing link between these females cropping up in his head and actually making the rising stars list? We don’t know, exactly. (We don't blame the Chronicle so much as we do our city's XY-chromosone favoritism in the kitchen. Ironically enough.) For this part, Bauer posted a disappointed email he received regarding the female slight, and said he’d “love to hear from the rest of you.”

In related news, Kyle Itani, the ramen master at Hopscotch we featured in Friday's Eat This Tonightt, made the list. Rounding out the top five are: Devin Mc David, pastry chef at Quince and Cotogna; Robin Song, chef at Hog & Rocks; Mark Pensa, chef de cuisine at Acquerello; and Brandon Rodgers, chef de cuisine at Benu.

Santa Cruz police released a sketch of a man who beat and raped a visiting 21-year-old woman visiting the UCSC campus on Sunday afternoon. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, the suspect is "believed to be about 5 feet 10 inches tall with a stocky build, dark hair and green eyes. He had a mustache and goatee, and was wearing blue jeans and a dark blue T-shirt at the time." He fled toward Steinhart Way shortly after the attack.

While walking a wooded path between the Upper Quarry amphitheater and the Classroom Unit buildings along a path at 12:30 p.m., the suspect struck her in the head and torso several times before assaulting her. The woman called 911 and was treated at a nearby hospital.

Police have posted these flyers around campus.

Campus authorities have alerted students to be on alert. Any information about the case should be directed to UC Santa Cruz authorities at 831-459-2231. Anonymous reports can made by calling 831-459-3TIP or via online at http://police.ucsc.edu.

A 21-year-old woman survived being raped and beaten while visiting the UCSC campus Sunday afternoon. The suspect, described as "a white man in his 30s with pale skin and a round-shaped face," attacked her around 12:30 p.m. as she walked between the Upper Quarry Amphitheater and the Classroom Unit buildings.

Santa Cruz Sentinel has more details on the suspect:

He was described as a white man in his 30s with pale skin and a round-shaped face. He was about 5 feet 10 inches tall and 200 pounds with a muscular or stocky build with dark-black, medium-length hair and green eyes. The suspect also had a dark, full mustache and goatee.

He wore a dark blue T-shirt with lettering on the front, dark blue Levi-type jeans and a black belt with a silver buckle, as well as Oakley-style sunglasses on top of his head. He had a tattoo on his upper-right bicep area and spoke with a voice that sounded like a "deep growl" and smelled of cigarettes...

Campus authorities have alerted students to be on alert. Any information about the case should be directed to UC Santa Cruz authorities at 831-459-2231. Anonymous reports can made by calling 831-459-3TIP or via online at http://police.ucsc.edu.

San Francisco police are on the lookout for this mustached suspect, wanted in connection for two seemingly random attacks on women walking alone near 23rd Street in the Mission. The most recent incident happened around 1 a.m. on February 2nd, when a female victim was walking in the opposite direction of the suspect along Bartlett between 22nd and 23rd Streets. The man reportedly started punching the woman and she put up her hands to protect herself until the man fled the scene.

At the moment, SFPD says robbery or sexual assault does not appear to be this guy's motive, but they do believe he may be the same suspect involved in an even more violent attack near 23rd and Church on January 6th. The circumstances are similar: the woman was walking alone around 2:40 a.m. and the suspect lunged at her as he passed in the opposite direction. In this case, the suspect threw the woman to the ground, straddled her and slammed her head on the ground before fleeing the scene when the victim screamed for help.

A third, similar attack occurred along 23rd Street near Guerrero in early January, but appears unrelated based on the suspect descriptions. In that case a woman, who later shared the details on Facebook, was jumped and pinned down by a man in what she believed was a possible rape attempt. The suspect fled the scene when neighbors heard her screams for help. He was later described as a 5-foot-8 Asian man, approximately 160 pounds between the ages of 20 and 30, with a buzz cut and a slight beard. The attack triggered a march for solidarity protesting random violence against women in the neighborhood.

Anyone who may recognize this suspect, or have any information on the attacks is encouraged to call SFPD Inspector Rico Castillo at (415) 734-3004. Tips can also be left anonymously on SFPD's tip line at (415) 575-4444 or via text to TIP411 with "SFPD" at the beginning of the message.

Previously: Woman Violently Assaulted During Possible Rape Attempt In The Mission
[BCN/Appeal]

Muni wants to name their tunnel-boring machines, and now is your chance to help name them! These state-of-the-art, 300-foot-long excavators will be named after historic San Francisco women. And because San Francisco is San Francisco, the selection isn't too exciting. Big Alma, Juana, Mom Chung, Firebelle Lil, and Mary Ellen are our ONLY choices.

This buffet of noted XX-chromosone carriers, though estimable, is a bit off. Preferable names are as follows:

Isadora Duncan (because dance!)
Carol Channing (if you need us to tell you why, you need to figure out where and how your life went so wrong)
Phyllis Diller (her laugh alone is reason enough)
Jeanette MacDonald (who stood there, in the ruins, and sang)
Denise Hale (she's the reason you're watching Downton Abbey)
The female cast of The Joy Luck Club (best quality heart)
Vivian and Marian Brown (you know why)

Alas.

Cast your vote at centralsubwaysf.com.