As women stride into the 21st century, who will lead and how will they lead? Women are creating real change and there’s no doubt that they will impact the future economy in a significant way.
When asked, 60% from GenZ say they want to personally drive world change. When asked what would improve their confidence the most, GenZ women say it would be improving their public speaking.
Women have risen above the fight to be simply be “allowed” and today, there’s a new level of momentum, driven by a convergence of women feeling empowered. Women are finding their voices, taking risks and driving some of our most innovative companies, such as 23andME and NextDoor.
With the celebration of International Women’s Day on March 9, Women With Impact asked leading women to share their views about where and how women will be impacted and create change over the next decade.
The pay parity between men and women across sectors and industries will be greatly narrowed. Recently, laws that prohibit employers from asking for previous compensation, along with an increase in pressure for U.S. companies to follow the United Kingdom in being more transparent on diversity and pay parity, are already making a difference for women. When employees are hired, especially at the junior level, they will all get paid equally, regardless of what they made before. Ultimately, the gap in pay — currently with women making about 76 cents for every $1 earned by men — will fall by the wayside.
Closing the gap could have meaningful impact on children and families given that 80% of single-parent families are headed by single mothers and nearly a third of those families live in poverty. Improving the financial opportunities for women through diversity and pay will benefit our broader economy and the communities we live in.
For the first time in history, women hold more than 40% of the world’s wealth. That power can make a huge impact in philanthropy, a sector, like business or technology, long dominated by men. Women like Priscilla Chan of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Laurene Powell Jobs of Emerson Collective, Laura Arnold of Arnold Ventures, and Tricia Raikes of the Raikes Foundation are using their privilege and networks to create new, innovative approaches to our most intractable problems and to bring more attention, as well as funding, to truly effective organizations that need support to scale.
Women are also driving powerful resources in uniquely collaborative ways. Women’s funds — collective giving groups — supported $1.2 billion in giving last year. Women leaders are not waiting for traditional philanthropy; they are breaking new ground. Today, half of boomer nonprofits are led by women and 75% of millennial nonprofits are led by women. In the United States, women make up 75% of the nonprofit workforce, which translates to roughly 9.2 million women.
These women are mobilizing new resources, like Fatima Goss Graves and Sharyn Tejani, who head the National Women’s Law Center and Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund. They have raised $22 million in two short years while building a corps of 800 lawyers to support women who have experienced sexual harassment. Ai-Jen Poo, who is the co-founder and executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, has also partnered with Cecile Richards to create SuperMajority, which provides women with tools to mobilize and advocate for issues most important to them.
Women understand the complexity of the challenges they face, so they work together, they collaborate, they co-create and do whatever is necessary to get the job done.
As women’s confidence increases, women will acquire greater stakes in companies they are helping to build. This speaks volumes, not only for building their wealth, but for having the financial ability to invest in others.
A good example would be women’s health, which receives just 4% of research dollars and is woefully underfunded. Women’s health issues are different from men. Diseases like Alzheimer’s and heart disease present differently in women. That’s why National Tech Labs was started and the women that work there are geeks; they understand they can have a real impact on this industry.
The number of women of color in key front office position in sports will jump over the next decade. She has been tracking the progress of women of color for 20 years and one interesting trend has been the shift of women in human resources and customer service areas. As these women come into their 50s, they have amassed a skillset in talent management, acquisitions and customer experiences. Cynthia Marshall, the new CEO of the Dallas Mavericks and the first African American to lead an NBA team, Davis, and others are coming through the pipeline in many major sports. Women of color in some of the traditional industries — financial services, consumer goods and even tech — will make their way into the sports arena. There will be a normalizing of this idea of work/family balance not being a big deal. It will just be the way companies operate in only three to five years.
College binge drinking has become a ritual that many students see as part of their higher education experience. With more young women viewing college binge drinking as empowering — as a means of throwing off ‘good girl’ stereotypes — we should anticipate more transgressive behaviors among them on college campuses as we do with young men. Binge drinking, for example, is correlated to greater numbers of women being victims of violence. Jails, more typically populated by men in our population, have in the last few decades begun to see a marked increase in the number of women incarcerated. And sexual misconduct cases on college campus are more often than not associated with excessive consumption of alcohol, which should not be understood in any way as ‘blaming the victim.’ Alcohol, while no longer acceptable as an excuse for misconduct, renders the question of consent much murkier.
We can take steps now to help avert a crisis by recognizing there’s a vulnerability; how do we teach all students to see through the specious marketing schemes targeting women and marginalized groups that simplistically equate transgression with a state of empowerment?
As a result, women like Warson are beginning to seek out those comfort shoes in an effort to focus their time on energy on things that really matter. The fashion industry will, as a result, wake up and pivot to designing clothing that celebrates the feminine and bolsters women in the power. The designs of Nina McLemore are one example: strong bold colors without low cuts or the frivolous that can distract. Simple, clean-cut office uniforms are in vogue. This will translate into other areas like purses; women will learn to simplify rather than lugging five pounds of stuff, and designers will follow suit.
Gretchen Carlson, journalist and founder of LiftOurVoices
If you strip your partner of access to money, you also strip them of their ability to care for themselves or make decisions in their own best interests. It is often difficult for victims to leave an abusive relationship — they can become dependent on the perpetrator, they can lack the resources, knowledge, and confidence to break the cycle. Schwab believes that in the next decade financial literacy will become a powerful tool in helping women leave abusive relationships. While financial literacy isn’t a cure for such a potentially devastating and complicated array of crimes, it does represent a powerful tool in self-protection, and a path to a better future.
Beth Comstock, former Vice Chair at GE, Nike board member, and Author
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