On careers, contraceptives and conquering the world.
The yearly Forbes Women Summit will take place in NY next week. I’ll have the opportunity to hear insights about success and empowerment from a fantastic group of women, all exceptional leaders in their fields of work—Samantha Power, Gayle King, Laverne Cox, and Lilly Ledbetter to name a few. These women are at the top of their careers, conquering the world, and leading the way for new generations to come.
But when it comes to the world of work, progress toward gender equality has been unacceptably slow. Both in the US and globally, this is particularly true for female labor force participation (there was a negligible 2% change in the gap between men and women over the last 20 years, from 28% to 26%) and women’s’ economic empowerment (women make 75 cents for ever dollar a man makes, and women hold the majority the vulnerable, informal and low-paying jobs).
There is no excuse for these statistics; we have the data and evidence we need to drive change. We know the cost of not including women in the labor force (McKinsey estimates we are loosing out on $28 trillion in global GDP, which is equal to the economies of China and US combined). Through research by the UN Foundation’s Roadmap for Economic Empowerment, we know which interventions work best to empower women economically. And although there is still much to be done, governments, civil society and the private sector have increased their efforts when it comes to women and work: from skills development to leadership training, from micro financing to promoting innovation and entrepreneurship, from job creation to anti-discrimination laws. These are all critical interventions to empower women economically—and we need more of them. However, there is often a critical piece missing: access to contraception.
As I think of the impressive women I will meet next week, and all the highly successful women I know and work with, I wonder: How many of us would be where we are in their careers today if we had not had access to contraception?
I would certainly not. I completed my PhD and had over a decade of work experience under my belt before having my first child. I made this choice in large part because I wanted to be economically secure before having children.
We actually have a great deal of data that show that my experience is not unique.
A study of over 5,000 women in the US, conducted by economist Martha Bailey, estimates that one third of women’s wage gains since the 1960s were made possible by the pill. Of the 30% increase in women’s wages attributed to contraception, two-thirds of that came from women having greater workplace experience. The rest came from women’s access to education and their resulting choices to enter high-earning, male-dominated fields. Having access early on is also critical: women in states where the pill was accessible at 18 were making 8% more each year by the 1980s than their counterparts who hadn’t had access until later in life. One can only imagine that the effects would also persist if adolescent girls (under 18) had increased access to contraception.
Global data show the same: women are better able to participate in the economy when they can plan their families. Female labor force participation declines 10-15 percent with each additional child among women age 25-39. Everywhere in the world, fertility rates fall with increased female education, leading to increased purchasing power and higher quality jobs.
Despite vast amounts of data, we often forget how important contraception really is to the economic empowerment of women—family planning programming, funding and interventions usually end up classified as health-related (under the purview of and with funding from departments of health and the health sector). But the tide is shifting. The new Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by 193 countries last year, include access to family planning both under the health goal and under the gender equality goal, underscoring how it contributes to both. The McKinsey report I mentioned earlier actually looked at family planning as one of 15 areas we need to focus on to reap the economic benefits of gender equality. But there is still much progress to me made.
The bottom line is this: access to contraception is not only a health issue—it’s also a women’s empowerment issue, with significant impacts on poverty, work and wages. Let’s not allow decision-makers and leaders forget that.
