From a UNDP speech on Women’s Entrepreneurship Day to concerns about the coronavirus pandemic complicating existing wage inequality to inspiring and motivating stories about how women make it work in business, women and what they’re worth are even more in the spotlight than usual this week. We collected just a few articles about the obstacles, triumphs, concerns, and complex conversations around women in business—and paying women what they deserve. Read on to check them out, and join us in uplifting and valuing women every day.
Women’s Entrepreneurship Day, from UNDP—“We cannot afford not to invest in women and girls. We must work together to support and remove barriers to women’s economic recovery and empowerment, and entrepreneurship in its various forms is a powerful catalyst to make this a reality. Entrepreneurship can generate jobs for women and their peers and help them tackle the challenges faced by their communities. And as much as the COVID-19 crisis is a threat for women entrepreneurs, it has also provided an opportunity to do things differently.”
TechMae Proves How All-Female Digital Spaces Empower Women, from Entrepreneur—“Pamela Hibbler set out to build a networking app for women that could offer support and guidance for women in all facets of their lives. She is now CEO and co-founder of TechMae, a new women’s-only digital space dedicated to empowering and supporting other women. And Hibbler is just getting started.”
Women in Mid-30s May Never Know Equal Pay in Their Working Lives, from The Guardian—“To mark Equal Pay Day, the day that women in effect stop being paid because of the gender pay gap in the UK, Labour has said 8.5 million women will go their entire careers without receiving equal pay. It comes as research from the Fawcett Society reveals that 43 percent of working women, and 50 percent of Black and minority ethnic working women – compared with 35 percent of white working men – are worried about their job and promotion prospects because of coronavirus, while one-third of working women have lost work or hours because of pandemic-related childcare issues.”
Women in the UK Already Earn Less Than Men. The Coronavirus Is Making That Worse, from CNN—“Calling on the government to reinstate gender pay reporting and transparency, the trust’s Executive Director Wanda Wyporska said that 50 years after the UK Equal Pay Act was passed, “women are still being undervalued, underpaid and to add insult to injury, there is little if any progress on the gender pay and bonus gaps. And it’s disappointing to see how many of those companies selling predominantly to women, are keen to take women’s money, but not so eager to pay it to their women staff.”
For Equal Pay Day 2020, Let’s Have a New Conversation About Financial Gender Equality, from Stylist—“The question of why the pandemic has so badly affected some women’s employment and earnings doesn’t have a simple answer. One piece of the puzzle is the fact that women were more likely than men to work in fields that completely shut down over the spring lockdown, according to early analysis by the Resolution Foundation. Some groups of women have also suffered more than others. Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) women in the UK have experienced greater financial consequences as a result of the coronavirus pandemic than their white counterparts; women under 25 are disproportionately likely to work in sectors that have been worst affected by lockdowns; and lower-paid women have borne the brunt of cuts to working hours. It goes without saying that many women are members of more than one of these groups. To paraphrase a well-known coronavirus proverb, we might all be in the same storm, but we’re not all in the same boat.”
