Gender Equality Archives

Your legacy: an open letter to Nancy Pelosi

Dear Speaker of the House-To-Be Pelosi,

Now that Democrats have taken back the House of Representatives and you are likely to hold the gavel as Speaker of the House, I urge you to take this opportunity to create a pool of women from which the NEXT woman Speaker of the House will be elected.

I appreciate your leadership, your legislative and political skills. You are a masterful strategist. You were instrumental in passing the Affordable Care Act in 2010, protecting it over the last two years and ensuring that Democratic candidates for the House had a platform to use in their election campaigns around affordable health care. I support you running to be Speaker once again, but I will be exceedingly disappointed if you do not use the opportunity to nurture and encourage other women leaders. It is your duty.

In January, there will be record number of women serving in the House: young women and older women, Christian and Muslim women, African American and Native American women, incumbents and newcomers. It is your responsibility to teach them what you know and give them the opportunity to lead. Formally or informally, mentor them. Strengthen the network of women legislators and encourage them to learn from and support each other. This work will increase the legislators’ ability to serve and help them (and you) deliver on your policy agenda.

While organizations and individuals have stepped up this year to recruit, train and support women running for office, you are uniquely qualified to foster women’s leadership within the House. I implore you to use your position, influence and experience. It could be your greatest legacy.

5 Ways to Support Today’s Young Women Leaders

Young women aren’t future women leaders. They are women leaders. Period.

Last month, I participated in two events that drove home that point. First, I spoke at the kick-off event for Gender Balance Consulting, a student-led organization at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School founded to increase its clients’ commitment to gender equality. Second, I moderated a panel on pathways to leadership for young women, cosponsored by the Girls Scouts of the Nation’s Capital, American University’s School of Public Affairs, and my firm, Smash Strategies.

The young women involved in these events are engaged across diverse issues: women’s economic participation, anti-bullying, building leadership. We need their voices in every place where decisions are made. While 56 percent of college students are women, only 40 percent of colleges have women student body presidents. Running for student government is important because those who do are 11 percent more likely to run for political office. (And, forty percent of women currently in Congress were involved in student government.)

We need to value and validate the leadership of these young women and support their work. Here are five ways we can play a role in their success:

1. “If you can’t see it, you can’t be it.” We all know this mantra. Talent and skill matter but so does seeing someone like you as a diplomat, a scientist, a lawyer, a doctor, fill-in-the-blank. Young women need diverse role models, and we need to be accessible to them and tell our stories. Women can learn from men, but men can’t give advice on navigating the workplace (or the world) as a woman. The panel on young women’s leadership featured such a group of speakers. One panelist discussed her challenges being an African-American woman and a corrections officer, another around being a working mom.
2. It’s not only about doing the job well, it’s about claiming credit. Women often don’t get the credit or the visibility as experts we deserve. Young women aren’t always encouraged to promote themselves and don’t hear that many women’s public voices. For example, men dominate the Sunday morning talk shows, filling eight of the 10 most frequent guest seats. And, less than 15 percent of the millions of quotes shared every day are by women and girls. This needs to change. We must encourage young women to write blogs and books, place them as speakers on panels, book them for media appearances, and nominate them for awards. Exposure is a validator.
3. Networks are important to success. Building a network starts from a young age (the school you attended, your sports team). Knowing a lot of people isn’t enough. We can help young women expand their networks by inviting them to events as our guests, by introducing them to others who can open doors, give feedback on ideas, and help find someone to build their skill set. We can coach them on how to ask for advice from others.
4. Confidence can be learned. In the Confidence Code, Katty Kay and Claire Shipman write about the confidence gap: women don’t consider themselves as ready for promotions as men do, predict they’ll do worse on tests, and overall underestimate their abilities. But, research demonstrates that acting confident can build that skill. Getting in the game makes a difference. We need to give constructive feedback to young women and give them opportunities to practice confident behavior. And, we should complement young women for their smarts and accomplishments, not just their looks.
5. We need to engage young men. As young women build their leadership portfolio, it’s important to engage other women and men. The work to empower women can’t be seen as a “zero-sum” game; it must expand opportunity for everyone. Men were about 20 percent of the audience at the Wharton School event, which helps to bring men into the conversation about the need for diversity in business leadership. We can encourage young women to engage young men, but we can do so as well.

Young women are coming into their own as leaders — not only of specific projects and companies — but of a culture that brings out the best in everyone. Together we can expand their reach and propel them further and faster. Let’s do it.

Equality and Effectiveness: Lessons Learned

About the Authors: Stephenie Foster is a Co-Founder and Partner at Smash Strategies, Yeva Avakyan is Associate Vice President, Gender Equality at Save the Children, and Kristin Kim Bart is Senior Director, Gender Equality, International Rescue Committee. All three are recognized experts in this field.

We recently participated on a panel marking the launch of Save the Children’s Gender Equality Hub. The Hub is a cross-functional team that has been established to oversee the development and implementation of Save the Children’s Gender Equality Strategy through collaborative, cross divisional efforts.

Each of us brought unique expertise on how to promote gender equality and empower women and girls. Collectively, our work spans the government, business, and non-profit sectors. Each sector is different, but we identified overarching lessons learned to increase the effectiveness of this work across sectors.

Why a focus on gender equality? In business and development, we ignore gender equality at our peril. While the term “gender” is often used interchangeably with “women and girls,” the terms are distinct. In short, gender equality is not just about women or girls, but about the different ways women and men experience their lives, have access to resources and take advantage of opportunities. A focus on gender broadens our perspective, so that policies and programs reflect these differential experiences and concentrates work on structural constraints to gender equality. Importantly, this helps us create systems and structures to promote equal opportunity and outcomes for everyone: women and men, boys and girls. It increases organizational effectiveness and helps ensure we use all of the talent available to solve problems and address challenges in a sustainable and durable way.

Here are some key lessons:

We must design, and operate, for change. Words aren’t enough. An organization needs to be purposeful in how it designs a gender strategy and implements it, and use this process to be clear about what success looks like. A gender equality strategy is relevant to both an organization’s internal operating environment and implementation of its outward facing work. It guides an organization’s substantive work to ensure that the differential impact of policies and programs is taken into account. Internal gender teams or working groups can help guide the work so that knowledge is shared within the organization, and the work isn’t siloed. These linkages between organizational and programmatic work ensure better coordination and implementation. Organizationally, gender mainstreaming across functions is important, but can dilute the focus on gender and decrease accountability for real change. It’s critical to ensure that there is a functional group (or person) that only focuses on gender, and helps hold the organization accountable. This helps ensure a sharp focus on gender equality doesn’t get lost along the way.
Organizational leadership is key. Commitment from the top sends a strong signal to others at every level of the organization that paying attention to gender is fundamental to success. But, that’s not enough. Leaders are needed at every level who are committed, and have the resources, financial and otherwise to integrate gender issues into the way the organization functions and to do their jobs. The organization’s leader should refer to gender issues or gender equality in public comments, on social media and during internal meetings throughout the year – not just around International Women’s Day in March. Attention to gender should be integrated into annual (or other) job evaluations so that everyone in the organization is held accountable for implementing a gender policy.
A vision about how a gender focus enhances organizational effectiveness is critical. In addition to a rights-based case for a focus on women and girls — and gender — it’s also important to make a case that focusing on gender translates into more effective policies and programs. In the economic sphere, the data is clear: When women’s participation in the labor force increases, GDP rises. When women start businesses, communities flourish. When women are promoted to senior management and appointed to corporate boards, companies do better. This compelling data is important to highlight and can provide an entry point to skeptics.
Meet people where they are. As a corollary, you will encounter organizational and individual roadblocks and skeptics. It’s important to understand that not everyone prioritizes the issue the way gender experts do. We need to listen to what people say and the concerns they raise, and respond in a way that respects their views. We won’t convince everyone (and there are some who will never be convinced), but it’s critical to make sure we use every opportunity to have this critical conversation and frame it in a way that moves people. Using data and research, and continuing to build the case for why a gendered approach matters using stories, as well as sex-disaggregated data and metrics, helps with these arguments. Sex-disaggregated data is fundamental. It examines differing needs, constraints, and opportunities for women/girls and men/boys. It provides the information to see if interventions are reducing gender disparities in access to, and control over resources, wealth, opportunities, and services, or increasing capability of women and girls to realize their rights and influence decision-making in the public sphere. You won’t know the differential impact of your programs if you don’t segregate the data.
Develop and customize training programs that are practical and help people do their jobs more effectively. Off-the-shelf tools and toolkits aren’t the only answer, but they help practitioners across disparate offices and locations get the start they need. More specialized, hands-on workshops where gender experts help the rest of the staff see how gender can be taken into account in their day-to-day tasks helps make the issue of gender manageable, and something that staff can relate to as they do their work.

Finally, we know it’s important to go beyond gender in recognizing that men or women are not homogenous groups. They have intersecting social identities of race, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, social class, physical ability among others. In doing a gender analysis, taking into account these intersecting inequalities is critical for understanding lived experiences, constraints and needs of different population groups. This is a long game, but worth every step. Making the case everyday — and in every meeting, forum and conversation — matters.

StartUps: Embedding a Focus on Gender From Day One

Businesses ignore women — and a focus on gender — at their peril. Everyone from startup founders to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies needs to promote women’s leadership, create safe and fair workplaces, support and engage women in the community, and ensure that their products and services reflect the differential experiences, and needs, of women and men.

When women’s participation in the labor force increases, GDP rises. When women start businesses, communities flourish. When companies have more gender diversity at the top, they are 21 percent more likely to experience above-average profits.

Startups founded by women are more profitable. According to the Vinetta Project, startups founded by women are 20 percent more likely to be revenue generating and there is a 35 percent higher return on investment (ROI) when financing a company founded by women.

Founding teams that include a woman outperform their all-male peers by 63 percent, according to First Round Capital,comparing performance data in their portfolio over a 10 year period. Women founders create companies targeted at new market niches. Many of the most innovative and promising women-led startups focus on how to manage and ease the time burdens women face. For example, in 2014, Kate Ryder founded Maven Clinic, an online platform connecting consumers with doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals with appointments in real time and a starting price of $18.

I spoke recently on a panel, “Women=Change,” held during DC Startup Week, a festival of programming for founders and entrepreneurs. The standing-room session addressed how focusing on women and gender can increase profitability and sustainability as well as how to concretely build this approach into business planning and development.

Four of my key takeaways:

Good news: investors are looking to invest more in women-led companies. In 2017, only two percent of venture funding went to women-led startups and ventures. That needs to change. But, more funds are investing in companies led by diverse founders. The Helm plans to only invest in women-led companies, and Backstage Capital announced a $36 million fund investing exclusively in companies led by black women founders.
Building a strong ecosystem is essential. Founders and new ventures need what is called an “ecosystem”: a supportive culture, enabling policies and laws, availability of financial and human capital, venture-friendly markets for products, and a range of institutional and infrastructural supports. In order to create such an ecosystem, government, business, financial institutions, investors and mentors must work together. More good news: there are groups bringing together these key actors, such as BEACON DC, a community-led campaign to make Washington, DC the most influential and supportive city for women entrepreneurs in the United States.
Have tough conversations early. If you have issues with people assuming your male co-founder is in charge, or one of your male colleagues takes credit for your ideas, have that uncomfortable conversation early (and often). Discuss this with your co-founder (or employee) to ensure your leadership role is acknowledged. Be clear about who will represent the firm at conferences, and meetings, and how those presentations will be structured.
Simple actions create a more inclusive culture. Rethink your recruitment and selection process. Job descriptions can be unintentionally biased by using phrases that emphasize an aggressive business culture. Use gender neutral titles, check the use of pronouns, and emphasize your commitment to diversity of all kinds. Hire people whose skill sets complement yours. Post jobs in multiple forums. Commit to the slate of candidates you interview being gender-balanced.

If you can embed this approach into your firm’s culture from day one, you are building for growth and sustainability. These actions can take time and thought, but in the end, will save you from playing catch up.

Gender vs. Women’s Empowerment in Development

In many discussions, the term “gender” is often used interchangeably with “women and girls.” These concepts both get at gender norms and roles, but are different. Here’s a overview of these terms and how they differ. In short, we’ve learned that gender equality is are not just about women or girls, but about the different ways women and men experience their lives, have access to resources and can take advantage of opportunities. It broadens our perspective, so that policies and programs take into account those differential experiences of women and men, and address structural constraints to gender equality. Importantly, taking gender into account also encourages programs to include men and boys – political, business and religious leaders as well as husbands, brothers and fathers – because their gender or social roles will also change.

While “sex” refers to the biological characteristics that define us as female or male, “gender” refers to the economic, political, and cultural attributes and opportunities associated with being male or female. How gender is defined varies among cultures and changes over time.

Gender equality is the concept that all human beings, both men and women, are free to develop their personal talents and abilities and make life choices without the limitations set by stereotypes, rigid gender roles, or prejudices. It does not mean that women and men are the same, but that their rights, responsibilities, and opportunities should not depend on whether they are born male or female.

The role of women and the idea of “gender equality” in development has changed over time. For a very long time, development programs did not take sex or gender into account. Commodities or services, such as food, healthcare or education, were provided by richer countries to developing ones without attention paid to the characteristics of the beneficiaries.

A few decades ago, discussions and program implementers began to take into account that women might have different needs than men and/or might prioritize assistance in a different way. An example — for a long time rice was distributed around the world in 50 lb bags. While most men could haul the bags onto their backs and carry them home, the weight made collection of this food almost impossible for women. A simple change, made at women’s request, made the bags of rice lighter so that women could transport them.

Next, development organizations began to consider how men and women benefited from their programs. For instance, asking if both boys and girls were able to attend school, and what the barriers might be if there weren’t equal attendance rates. Or, if an agriculture program was teaching how to improve crop yields, were both male and female farmers benefiting from that knowledge. If all of the intended beneficiaries were not being reached or the outcomes were not being reached as planned, implementers started asking questions.

In the last ten years, technical experts have moved from a focus on women to gender. What was acknowledged was that in order to “empower” women, their social or gender roles had to change. For example, if the aim of a program is to create more women business owners in order to increase her family’s income and move them out of poverty, then the program cannot focus solely on the female entrepreneurs-to-be. Training women about how to start and run a business is key, no doubt, but the program must also take into account the local laws that prevent women from having access to credit, and, very importantly, how her income will create a new balance of power within her home. We now know that when a woman, a wife, earns her own income it can change the gender roles of both the woman and her husband. If a women begins contributing to family income (when she didn’t before), this can make her husband feel shame that he cannot solely support his family and lead to an increase in violence against her. And the same is true when women learn more about how their bodies function, play a greater role in politics or even stay in school a few more years.

The United States government, particularly the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has kept abreast of this growing field of gender and development just as it has with other technical fields, gaining new knowledge and improving its programs to spend U.S. taxpayer dollars more efficiently as it ends extreme poverty. USAID collaborates with other governments, private companies and implementing partners to know more and do better for women around the world.

While the gap between the number of boys and girls in primary school has been eliminated, the number of women in elected office has increased and the number of women in the formal workforce is higher than it has ever been, now is a good time to remind ourselves about the importance of these issues, how we arrived at this moment and the need to continue this critical work.

Ensuring Women’s Participation in Upcoming Afghan Elections

Afghanistan has two elections scheduled in the next six months: Parliamentary and district council elections on October 20, 2018 and the Presidential election on April 20, 2019. These elections, the first in almost five years, will be watched closely by Afghans and the international community. Women must have every opportunity to participate fully in every phase of the electoral process: as candidates, election administrators, observers, and voters.

In order to ensure high levels of participation and engagement, Afghan women must be at the table as election planning occurs. The Afghan government, international donors, and Afghan civil society must ensure that they weave women’s perspectives and input into the strategies and tactics they are using to drive maximum participation. Electoral and governmental authorities must take concrete steps to ensure that women and men are equal participants in the Afghan political process, and must address electoral-related violence. This is essential to the credibility and transparency of the electoral process and is especially important as the Taliban is asserting itself across the country and apparently engaged in negotiations with U.S. officials.

Women in Afghanistan have made substantial progress since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, but that progress is tenuous. Women have demonstrated their commitment to public life: in the 2014 presidential run-off, 2.4 million Afghan women voted (38 percent of all voters), the highest number in Afghanistan’s history. According to the Asia Foundation, over 78,000 women have been appointed to government positions since 2001. Currently, women hold twenty-eight percent of Parliamentary seats, several cabinet positions, and numerous judicial positions. However, Afghanistan remains an insecure and dangerous environment, which is difficult for all Afghans, but particularly for women and girls.

Across the globe, violence against women in the electoral process is a threat to electoral integrity. It affects women’s ability and interest in participation at every level of the political process. Women can be targeted because of their political affiliations, or because they are active in politics and public life, or exercising their right to vote, still often seen as places for men.

In past Afghan elections, there have been substantial reports of violence, and threats of violence, targeted at women voters and candidates. There have been continual challenges finding enough women willing to work at polling stations, as well as a lack of women “body searchers,” to ensure that individuals entering women’s polling places are indeed women and not armed. There have been numerous efforts to address these issues: from electoral hotlines to extra security for women candidates to decreased fees for women seeking to run. But, these issues remain prevalent as Afghanistan enters this upcoming set of elections.

What can be done?: The Afghan Independent Election Commission (IEC) must focus on recruiting women for positions throughout the electoral administration system — from headquarters to polling centers and local electoral bodies — and for both permanent and temporary positions. At the same time, registration and polling centers must be accessible, safe and secure to ensure the full participation of women voters. Voter registration processes must reach women throughout the country and ensure that the act of registering or voting does not put them in harm’s way. The IEC and other relevant government entities must ensure there is sufficient security staff at women’s polling centers. Women candidates, throughout the country, must feel safe as they campaign. Finally, international and domestic electoral observation missions deployed across Afghanistan must be gender-balanced to ensure that they are able to fully report on the elections and reflect the different experiences of men and women in the process. Finally, there must also be a way to capture the lessons learned from the October elections and use them in the lead-up to those in April.

As internet access and the use of social media (mostly Facebook) increases in Afghanistan, there must be special attention paid to how social media is being used to shame and threaten women who are activists and candidates, and to share false information. The Afghan government and the international community must take steps to address election-related violence which deters women from voting, working at polling stations, campaigning for office, and serving as elected officials.

Protecting the hard-won gains that women have made since 2001 is critical. This is also an opportunity to reaffirm support for women’s participation and take concrete steps to increase women’s ability to fully participate in these elections. The Afghan government, the international community, Afghan civil society, and Afghan citizens all have a role to play.

SDG Five, Target Four

Within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), or Global Goals, Goal 5 is to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. For Goal 5, there are nine targets. In this blog post, we will focus on SDG5 Target 4, which focuses on the value of unpaid care and domestic work and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family.

The prevalence and invisibility of unpaid care work in the U.S. and abroad makes acknowledging and tracking data critical to developing policy solutions. UN Women’s “Progress of the World’s Women Report” acknowledges that “Domestic work makes all other work possible”—and this is true regardless of whether that work comes from domestic workers or unpaid family caregivers. The labor of domestic workers is critical to the function and growth of national and global economies.” (Source)

Unpaid care and domestic work are barriers to reaching gender equality as they reinforce discriminatory gender stereotypes that force women to stay in the home and limits participation in the public sphere, (Source) and contributes to the persistent gender gaps in labor force participation, activity rates, and wages. In terms of numbers, women comprise the majority of domestic workers, accounting for 80 percent of all workers in the sector globally; which means that approximately 55 million women participate in domestic work. (Source) There are at least two million domestic workers in the United States, and most of them are African American or immigrant women.

Around the world, women spend two to ten times more time on unpaid care work than men. (Source) According to a 2014 OECD study, women and men in the United States also spend their time differently. While men spent an average of 19 minutes per day caring for a family member, women spent 41 minutes. While men spent an average of 82 minutes per day doing “routine housework”, women spent 126 minutes. (Source)

One way to recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work is by creating more public services that can take care of the family care and household duties that are now disproportionately done by women. The United States remains the only country in the developed world that does not mandate employers offer paid leave for new mothers, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Twenty-five years ago President Bill Clinton signed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which included a provision giving eligible workers 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a new child. (Source) Because of the lack of support at the federal level, states and the private sector are now starting to address the issue. As of May 2018, twenty-one states had pending legislation for paid leave laws, in addition to the five states and District of Columbia that have paid family leave laws already. (Source)

Further, the U.S. Government also does not provide for child care, and quality child care is often very expensive. In a 2016 report, the cost of infant child care in 49 states plus the District of Columbia exceeded seven percent of the state median income for a two-parent family. (Source) Daycare is also often hard to find. A report from the Center for American Progress (CAP), found that 51 percent of the population in 22 states resides in “childcare deserts.” In those neighborhoods, the number of children under age five outnumber available daycare slots more than three to one. (Source)

Another way to reach this target of Goal 5 is through the provision of infrastructure and social protection and the prevention of abuse of those who work in the care sector. Of the 67 million domestic workers worldwide, 60 million are excluded from social security coverage. In the U.S., while the infrastructure for domestic work, such as access to clean water and availability of household appliances, generally exists, laws protecting domestic workers are often not enforced, or domestic workers are excluded from certain legal protections. (Source) As a result, beginning with New York in 2010, eight U.S. states (Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Nevada, Oregon and California and New York) have passed Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights, which protect workers from racial discrimination and sexual harassment, provides for one day off a week, and overtime and paid leave. Other states have yet to catch up. (Source)

Finally, in order to reach this SDG target, governments can actively promote shared responsibility for care and domestic work. From what I can find, the U.S. government has never had a campaign to increase the burden sharing for unpaid care and domestic responsibilities. There was a three- year “Make it Work” campaign centered around the 2016 U.S. elections that asked candidates to focus on child care, pre-Kindergarten and elder care; pay transparency and the fight for a higher, national minimum wage; as well as paid family and medical leave, earned sick days, fair scheduling, and workplace fairness for pregnant women. Family Values@Work is a network of coalitions in 21 states working to pass policies that value families at work such as paid sick days and affordable family leave. These policies are not only good for individual women and families, but provide support on a policy level for a more equitable division of labor and family responsibility.

More Women in AI = More Inclusive Tech

Every day and in every way, we depend on technology. It helps us access information and each other, and organize our business and personal lives. But, there are increasing concerns about technology: how it impacts privacy; how the designers of tech tools (spoiler alert: mostly white men) embed gender and other norms in what they design; and, how technology perpetuates offensive and dangerous offline behavior.

Certainly, there is differential access to the internet. Women globally have less access than men, and even in the U.S., where overall internet access rates are fairly equal, women with fewer resources were 50 percent less likely than men to be online, and 30–50 percent less likely to use the internet for economic and political empowerment.

Technology is a powerful connector. It is imperative that women and girls can use technology to fully access education and financial services, grow their businesses, and communicate with family and friends. At the same time, it is critical that technology reflects the lives of women and girls, and does not replicate offline harassment and gender-based violence.

In order to do that, we must increase the number of women — across the globe — who design technology. Women like these. Most artificial intelligence (AI), and the programs that utilize AI, are created by (white) men. Those programs and apps will be different than those created by a more diverse group. For example, a recent article documented that “smart speakers” like Alexa and Home have a hard time understanding commands by those who speak English with an accent.

Jobs designing technology must be filled by a broad range of people. Effective problem solving occurs when people with diverse voices, viewpoints and life experiences are involved. Research published by the Harvard Business Reviewsupports this approach, finding that diversity, both inherent and acquired, helps drive innovation.

Yet barriers limit the kinds of people who enter and remain in these fields; women, especially, are often left out of the talent pool. A report by the American Association of University Women found that, in the U.S., 80 percent of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) jobs are in engineering and computer science, but women comprise only 12 percent of the engineering and 26 percent of the computing workforce.

How can we make progress? Here are three steps:

Be purposeful in efforts to attract women: In the U.S., women earn about 20 percent of engineering degrees and 16 percent of computer science degrees. Key universities are increasing these numbers. According to a 2015 federal study, women earned over 40 percent of engineering degrees at schools like Franklin Olin, MIT, Yale, Howard, George Washington, Harvey Mudd, Brown, and Southern Methodist University. At Harvey Mudd, the percentage of women graduating with degrees in computer science increased from 12 percent to approximately 40 percent in five years. The school revised its introductory computing course and split it into two levels divided by experience, provided research opportunities for undergraduates after freshman year, and exposed young women students to the field by attending the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference.
If you can see it, you can be it: Across the globe, STEM camps bring young women together to learn and to encourage interest in STEM careers. In the U.S., young women engineers have started a social media campaign #ilooklikeanengineer to change gender stereotypes about what an engineer should look like. Helping women succeed in STEM jobs is equally important. The U.S. State Department’s TechWomen program supports women from over 20 countries, and pairs them with an American mentor at companies across Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area.
Promote STEM’s role in problem solving: When schools promote the impact that STEM jobs can have on solving problems, women are more attracted to those fields of study. Technology is more than a gadget; it’s a tool to solve pressing issues. To this end, Google Cloud’s Dr. Fei-Fei Li co-founded AI4All, an organization to cultivate diversity in the AI field through education, mentorship, and early exposure to its potential for social good.

Collectively, technology needs to help all of us. Taking these steps gets us closer to that goal.

African Women: Leaders in the Economy and Society

Expanding markets. Ensuring quality control. Accessing supply and value chains. Broadening networks. Addressing management challenges. Showcasing women’s leadership. And yes, advocating for change.

These are topics that a dynamic group of African women entrepreneurs are focusing on during their visit to the U.S. as part of the African Women’s Entrepreneurship Program (AWEP). AWEP was launched, in conjunction with the 2010 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Forum, as part of the U.S. Department of State’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). Every year, U.S. Embassies in Sub-Saharan Africa nominate leading women entrepreneurs to participate.

I worked with this group as they crystalized their professional and personal goals for the IVLP and made concrete plans to use new contacts and skills when they return home. We discussed the challenges they face as business leaders and women and the centrality of developing strong leadership and communication skills. The group brainstormed about how to address their challenges as leaders, managers, and innovators; how to successfully confront gender norms and policies that can hold back women’s economic success; and how to effectively exercise authority.While in the U.S., the group is meeting with government and business leaders as well as entrepreneurship experts. Their meetings address topics such as U.S. business practices and African access to U.S. markets, integrating African women into the global economy, and funding access for commercial expansion in Africa. These women are leading actors in economic growth and social advocacy in their communities and countries. AWEP’s alumnae have created thousands of jobs and established more than 20 women’s business associations across the Sub-Saharan region.

These women and countless others across the globe are central to creating jobs and economic growth. Research by McKinsey Global Institute shows that if women participated in the labor force at the same rate as men globally, GDP could increase from $12 to $28 trillion by 2025. This is an 11-26 percent increase, which at the highest level is roughly equal to the combined GDP of the U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies. In Sub-Saharan Africa, GDP would increase by 12 percent. Supporting women is not only important for these women and their communities and countries, but for all of us.

Here are some of my takeaways based on my conversations with this year’s AWEP participants:

Networks make a difference. Bringing women together creates strong networks and helps people learn from each other’s successes and mistakes. On visitor programs, participants meet and interact with many U.S. experts. But just as importantly, they meet and bond with each other, make connections based on shared experiences, and create lasting support systems. The AWEP group identified strengthening networks as key for two reasons: first, it helps each individual make connections and second, it provides a platform to share knowledge with others.

Documenting successes and leading by example are important. As the group noted, both quantitative data and qualitative documentation make the case for women’s economic impact. Research data is foundational and can win over those who are skeptical about the impact of women on the economy. And telling the stories of successful women-led businesses and their economic impact grabs and holds attention. These stories of women’s contribution to job creation and prosperity can inspire other women and help build support among policymakers. Additionally, harnessing interest in women’s economic empowerment can start conversations about how communities flourish when women are fully engaged and how to address other issues that hold women and girls back.

Governments and businesses are key partners to accelerating women’s economic participation. Entrepreneurs are innovators and bring their skills and talents to product development, but they need partners in government and business. For example, women have a harder time than men accessing finances. Governments can address many of the issues that create barriers, such as laws that make it hard for women to borrow money, and banks can support creative ways for women to handle funds, including mobile banking technology that would allow women at marketplaces to make deposits on the spot. Everyone must be part of the solution.

The bottoms line is that these business leaders are fully engaged, creative, and looking to make collective and individual impacts. Their efforts change lives and communities every day. Supporting them is a privilege.

Women. Drive. Economic. Growth. Period.

When women’s participation in the labor force increases, GDP rises. When women start businesses, communities flourish. When women are promoted to senior management and appointed to corporate boards, companies do better. We ignore this compelling data at our peril.

Business leaders, advocates and policy makers committed to economic growth and prosperity must use every strategy and tool to open doors and opportunity for women to participate in today’s global economy.

In early May, I moderated the opening plenary of the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society in Toronto, which convened 600 influential business, institutional and political global leaders to strategize about breaking down entrenched barriers to women’s participation and developing concrete

solutions. The Forum focused specifically on influencing the agenda of the G7, a powerful group comprising the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Italy and Canada, as well as the European Union. This discussion was particularly timely as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made empowering women one of the main themes of Canada’s 2018 G7 presidency.

The plenary examined how governments, the private sector and multilateral forums like the G7, can take action to accelerate women’s economic opportunity, and in the process, create more jobs, increase innovation, and transform societies. It highlighted the importance of enabling environments and corporate culture, the role of technology, and the importance of measuring impact. I was joined on the panel by four dynamic women leaders from the private, public and NGO sectors.

Here are my key takeaways.

First, most private sector leaders today recognize the competitive advantage of women’s economic participation, whether in the corporate c-suite, in non-traditional jobs, or as entrepreneurs. But, talk isn’t enough. Companies that make their commitment real have been able to attract, and importantly, retain women employees by challenging assumptions, promoting work/life balance, and creating an environment where everyone is valued. For example, Salesforce took an honest look at how women and men were being paid, and increased salaries when it found discrepancies. But these actions aren’t only important to women. Today, both men and women are seeking jobs and starting businesses that value their contributions, are flexible, and give them a sense of ownership.

Second, strong enabling and legal environments are critical. To succeed, women need skills, networks, and access to capital and markets. At the same time, women also need access to quality education, child care, clean water, health care and a sense of personal security. This includes legal frameworks that ensure non-discrimination, and protections against sexual harassment, assault and violence. There is good news. According to the most recent World Bank Women, Business and the Law Report, over the last two years, governments in 65 countries took concrete steps to improve women’s economic inclusion. However, women still face legal barriers in over 100 countries, and those barriers adversely affect their economic choices.

Third, technology is both a tool and a challenge. Technology is driving change and innovation across the globe, and has a tremendous impact on economic competitiveness. As we embrace technology, however, we need to be mindful that globally, there is a gender gap in online access. In urban poor areas, women are 50 percent less likely than men to be online, and 30–50 percent less likely to use the internet for economic or political empowerment. A 2015 report, Connected Women, found that women are 14 percent less likely than men to own a mobile phone. And, when women own phones, they use them differently than men do.

Finally, measurement matters and helps tell the story. We know that making the business case is important, and macro-level data, like that contained in the studies cited in this article, makes a difference at the policy level. We also need to look closely at what works on the individual and business level. Measuring success is about understanding how many women graduate from a vocational program, and also how that translates into impact and value.

Under the Canadian presidency, the G7 is deepening its focus on these critical issues. As advocates, policy makers and business leaders, we can help by continuing to gather data about how women are central to economic growth. Interventions must ensure women are treated equally and fairly, and have access to the tools they need to succeed, wherever they are on the path of economic participation and leadership.

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