International Women’s Day
Perhaps a day late but I spent the day thinking about International Women’s Day and what it means. History here is important. The UN began this day in 1975 to celebrate women’s’ rights and world peace. In 1977 member states were invited to declare March 8th International Women’s Day.
The media amplifies that we are obviously not at a place in time when it makes zero sense not to have International Women’s Day. After all, we do not have International Men’s Day nor do we need one. I have interviewed hundreds of women founders. Some I have written about every Monday for years and noted that day was always about the Woman Entrepreneur of the week. Now I have moved that into a Monday podcast. Hearing their stories about their families, their lives, their careers just confirms the fact that all of these female founders are very driven complicated layered people. And each generation has its own culture.
I read that Women on Corporate Boards have doubled over the last decade. The attitude portrayed by the media is that it sucks, women will never have equality on boards for 30 years at this pace, why, why, why and when? Here is the thing, let’s look at the data and the amplification over the last few decades and the shifts that have been made. We have been hoping for equality from the time of Adam and Eve. Based on that, things could shake up quickly in the next few years.
Remember in the 60’s women had three options. Nurse, Teacher or homemaker. Sure there were some outliers but those jobs were career guiders. Now we can start companies, take companies public, run publicly trading companies, and have our hand in every single industry out there. Some more than others and from all different angles. We have a voice and aren’t afraid to use it. We know that the future of equality is not that far in the future because we are going to work to get it. That is the big difference that doesn’t show in the data. The working women out there are demanding change. Sometimes it is subtle and sometimes it is right in your face but it’s there.
International Women’s Day came and passed and I look forward to the day when we don’t need to celebrate ourselves because we have changed the world so that we all stand equally with an equal voice and equal respect.
Comments (Archived):
.I celebrated Int’l Womens Day with my wife, our daughter (a co-founder of a startup, Weezie Towels — you had a pod cast with her co-founder), My Perfect Granddaughter, and one more grand on the way.The picture out there for women is good and getting better.The USA is in a time of staggering employment opportunities — the last month’s numbers were +100,000 at 273,000 than expected while Dec and Jan numbers were revised upward by an additional 85,000.Taken in toto, this is an average new job creation rate of more than 243,000 a month. Huge numbers.The Congressional Budget Office — on the eve of the Trump election victory and inauguration — forecast a total job creation of 441,000 new jobs in their forecast for 2020. In three months, the reality has dwarfed the CBO forecast. Huge, good news.But, wait — there’s more!1. Women are the ones getting most of the new jobs — 71.2% of the jobs gained since the Trump admin took office have been filled by women.This compares to 45.7% before Pres Trump took office.2. Prime age women unemployment is 3.4% — the lowest rate of female unemployment since 1953.3. The “female employment v population” ratio is 74.7%, a 3.4% improvement since Pres Trump took office and within 0.2% of its historic high.4. These jobs have been good jobs with a 6% year-over-year improvement in comp for the production/non-supervisory workers v 3% for management.5. New unemployment insurance claims continue their downward spiral with 216,000 in February. The status of less than 300,000 unemployment insurance claims has continued for 216 consecutive weeks, the longest such streak since the 1960s. [Worth noting that the labor force has more than doubled in that time period.]There is much work to be done, but there is also much progress about which to crow.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…