Tag Archives: equality

Vote with your pocketbook

Do you realize the power you wield to change the world?

Women represent 85% of the purchasing power in the United States and worldwide hold trillions of dollars of wealth.

What are you doing with this power?

I advocate you pay attention to where you put your money through purchases, investments, and even payroll in your company to make sure your part of the solution to ensuring women have equal access to jobs, opportunities for advancement and access to capital to start and grow businesses in parity with their male peers. You may not realize it, but white women still make 78 cents to every dollar men make in the same jobs. Hispanic and black women fair even worse!

The Anita Borg Institute has created a list of the top 13 companies in the world for women to work and advance.  Although you may not want a tech job at one of these firms, knowing that they employ and advance women is good info when making purchase decisions.  ABI investigated 35 companies with almost half a million employees and ranked them on women at entry, mid and senior positions.  They also looked at recruitment and promotion of women.

Based on their findings, here is your go to list for personal and business choices (not in ranked order):

  1. BNY Melon (investment company)
  2. Accenture (management consulting)
  3. American Express (yep, possibly in your wallet)
  4. Apple
  5. eBay
  6. GoDaddy
  7. Goldman Sachs (another investment firm)
  8. Google
  9. IBM
  10. Rackspace Hosting (cloud management)
  11. Salesforce (cloud computing)
  12. T. Rowe Price (investment firm)
  13. USAA (insurance)

The list may not be part of your standard purchases, but it is a start.  It makes me interested in looking for information about women in leadership positions in consumer product companies, as well as other categories of companies that will help us make informed choices.

woman balance work family

How to Keep Women Engaged in Jobs and Careers

Women are leaving the IT industry in droves, according to a recent article in CIO.

The article goes on to describe six things women want in order to stay engaged in any job.  Although the things they cite are important, they are not the full picture.

What are women looking for?

  1. Equal pay
  2. Flexible work schedule and paid leaves
  3. Female role models and mentors
  4. Recognition
  5. Opportunity for advancement
  6. Meaningful work that makes a difference beyond their job.

Although each of these items may be important, the discussion in this article, and in most conversations on this topic, ultimately revolved around women leaving to raise families, not being welcomed back after having children, or marginalized as they juggle both career and families. These are problems.

Yet, this perspective continues to perpetuate a stereotype of women not prioritizing work and career advancement as the cause of lower pay and career opportunities.  However, a study at Harvard Business School of alumni showed that high powered and well trained women, with plenty of career drive, still earned less than their male colleagues, did not rise to as high of positions, and were often left out of critical business deals necessary for their success–even though 93% of them never left the workforce to raise children.

As Sheryl Sandberg noted in a recent interview, how many men are asked how they handle work and family? She is asked this all the time.

Women continue to be underrepresented at the top of organizations–large and small.  We can continue to “fight” this, and probably should continue to make waves, until true equal rights have been achieved.

But more important than fighting this, we need to change the game.  How do we do that?

Actively look for ways to promote and support other women.  We represent 51% of the population.  If we put our influence in numbers behind each other, we can do more good than demanding changes from the status quo.  When Gandhi pushed the British out of India, he created force through numbers–rather than attempting to increase the power and influence of the Indian population within the status quo.

If women move their purchasing power, their investment money, and their own hiring practices to promoting women we could greatly shift the balance of power–within a much shorter time horizon than our current trajectory.

Look for women you can promote, mentor, buy from or invest in.  They are all around you.

Your choices can make a difference.

 

 

Equality

I love this quote from fellow Harvard grad, Sheryl Sandberg:

“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half of our homes.”

Statistically, we are a far distance from this goal since under 20% of countries and companies are headed by women and possibly fewer homes are run by men.

Yet, maybe the first place we can find equality is in the small realm of our own home and family.  If each of us discussed with our partners a new plan that empowered us both, balanced the supporting chores like shopping, cleaning, and cooking between us, and the children felt equal involvement from both parents across the car pools, sports meets, and homework, plus financial and other major decisions were made through discussion and collaboration  — then we would be creating a microcosm of the world we want to create.  From this environment our children would be learning to expect and replicate equality in their outer world.

And what about our internal landscape.  Do we give equal weight to our own feminine and masculine sides?  Do we nurture ourselves?  Do we listen to our intuition?  Do we take time to ensure our own bodies are not polluted and abused?  If we balanced our inner masculine and feminine how might that improve our intimate relationships, our families, our daily world?

Maybe we are closer to achieving this outer goal of equality than we realize.  Maybe it will require some honesty about our inner landscape.  And maybe the result won’t be men running half of the homes and women running half of the companies and countries.  However, it must be that women feel empowered to create a life they choose and that the companies and countries they run, if they choose to, will listen to their feminine wisdom–not expect them to behave like men.  It must be that men are allowed to be fully engaged in their families, expect to pick up half of the “home making” duties, and are empowered to bring their masculine strengths to the running of a family home–not behave like a women.

Whatever the current reality is; we can change it.  Women and men will hold equality in leadership–it is possible.  It will take women finding our voice, speaking our truth, and expecting others to listen.  It will require listening to their truth.  It will require vision, courage and determination.  And most importantly, it will require women honoring women–in all walks of life, in all positions, in all ways.  If we were boldly supporting each other, no man or organization could keep us down.  And from a position of strength we can better learn to honor our male colleagues in a way that empowers greatness in us both.

When we learn to honor each others’ strengths, invite other people’s wisdom into the conversation and look for collaborative solutions–we will find our world gentler, more enlivening and prosperous!

Isn’t that the goal, really?

 

Creating our own “Good ol’ Boys Club”

Do you work hard and have great ideas but just somehow feel like you are swimming upstream or just don’t quite get where you thought you would? Do you question your abilities, your credentials, and maybe wonder if you really have what it takes? At a Harvard conference last year I learned some things about women and success that just might change your trajectory!

I spent two days at Harvard Business School reconnecting with classmates and getting to know others as 800 women (and a few brave men) gathered to celebrate 50 years since women were first admitted to HBS!

It was a powerful group of women — full of life, wisdom, and ability to make things happen. We laughed at stories from the early days, were inspired by women who have shaped our world, and were informed by new research about the state of women’s lives and careers.

What struck all of us was how far we had come and yet how much had not really changed in many areas. Robin Ely, HBS Professor and Senior Associate Dean, showed research about where Harvard women are today. I was overwhelmed at some of the statistics about the world my daughters face. Somehow being highly educated, having a successful career, and tucking my head in my own family and business life has left me with the illusion that women are getting close to parity with men in areas of influence.

I learned this is not true. We only hold few spots at the top of corporations — a percentage that has remained flat for the past 10 years, few are heads of state in world governments, and a mere 4-7% of venture capital funds go to women entrepreneurs, despite the large influx of deals presented by women. Why fifty years after entering the Harvard business school do we still hold so few positions of influence?

If you speculate, like I did, that many women leave the workforce to pursue family – the research says 90% of women surveyed were still in careers. We cannot point there.  We can also no longer point to less opportunity in education. In fact, more women graduate with high-level degrees than men today. So what happens?

Two critical things that you and I can influence are paramount to what we found.

First, men have years and generations ahead of them willing to mentor and help them move ahead, get a deal, and fund their ideas.

Women, ironically, do not use their gift of connecting when it comes to business and government. We choose to “earn” our way, prove our worth and ensure we are confident before we proceed – rather than ask for a favor.

In fact, Sheryl Sandberg’s talk pointed to the idea that women will go for a promotion only when they meet all the criteria (maybe even a few extra) whereas men will go for it when they meet 20% of the job requirements assured they will learn the rest! Men will use their contacts, after hour gatherings, and other venues to get promotions, funding, and basically advance their career.

Men are also more willing to bet on each other with their checkbooks. And they fund people they are more like – white males.

So our task – yes you and me, is two-fold:

Join groups, make contacts, and find other women to become your “good-old-girl” network. Start to look at other women as your source of power. And for the love of God, start asking for what you need. Call on other women (or men), ask someone to mentor you, write that letter or make that phone call asking someone to give you money for your idea or to help promote it. Stop waiting until you’re sure you or your project is a completed masterpiece.

Second, start to look for ways to empower other women and younger women.

What do you know, what can you share, who can you mentor? Rather than continue to push in on the existing power structure, we women need to change the game. All new innovation from the Declaration of Independence or Facebook changed the game – they did not just incrementally make email better, or improve the monarchy!

Join with me. Join with other women. Ask for help. Give help in money and time to other women.

Let’s change the game!

Are you free?

Are you free? Independent? Sovereign?  What does it mean to be these things?  For some it can mean being alone and lonely.  For others it can represent a burst of life force and spontaneity.  For yet others it is in rebellion or pushing away from someone or something.

Today in the United States we are celebrating our nation’s beginnings as a free state.  While enjoying the festivities, I encourage you to look at your own definition of independence and then assess your own internal nation-state.  Where do you hold yourself hostage?  What parts of your life would you like to emancipate?  What can you do today, this week, this month to feel more self-reliant?

Be bold.  The beginning of anything important never started with meek and mild attitudes or timid actions.  Where do you want to be and what do you want to be doing?  More importantly who do you want do be? Use the energy and momentum of today, stand on the shoulders of great people who were willing to risk it all to be free.  “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.’ ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Take steps today to free yourself from whatever is holding you back from letting your light shine.  Be your own fireworks!