Before the turn of the 21st century, during the so-called "second wave" of feminism, I actually drank the Kool-Aid.
I thought women could, should and would change the world. Catch phrases at the time were all about how the personal is political. It made a lot of sense to me - then and now - because I could look around and see palpable, unacceptable gender inequities in the home, in the workplace, in government, at all levels. More, I could see that women's ways of thinking and working were dismissed, not valued.
These many years later, for sure, women's roles have changed, most everywhere you look. But honestly? I thought we'd be much further along by now in securing women's parity.
Who represents us? 19% women in the House; 20% in the Senate
Some benchmarks to prove that point: Two decades ago at the UN's Beijing women's conference in 1995, world leaders pledged to work toward achieving 30% women members in their national legislatures. Today, a scant 44 among those 190 countries have met the goal. The US is not one of them. The 114th Congress, elected in 2014, boasted a record number of women. That added up to only 104 among the 535 members of Congress, or 19% women in the House and 20% women in the Senate. Women make up 51% of the population.
Who represents us?
Last August, presidential candidate Jeb Bush, presumably running to be president of all the people, not just men, announced, "I'm not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues." Public indignation and a social media firestorm forced Bush to walk back that statement, but you know, first utterances out of people's mouths are usually what they really believe. Marco Rubio believes women who've been raped or are the victims of incest should bring those babies to term. Carly Fiorina continues to lie about Planned Parenthood while the videos purportedly showing sales of fetal tissue have now been discredited and banned from public view by a federal judge.
Too few voices in Congress and state capitals are demanding solutions for women. How far have we really come?
We've shifted to "second-generation bias"
I believe we've now shifted from first generation discrimination into what many call "second generation bias." Whereas discrimination against women used to be blunt, blatant and condoned, nowadays it's subtle, intangible and even occasionally unintentional.
What does this mean in practical terms? First, despite women's inroads into dozens of professions, men still make the rules and decide the teams. Second, challenges for women have moved beyond getting hired. Hurdles to clear now involve being valued and promoted. It's all about advancement.
By the career metrics men use, women are hardly fast tracking. Since the 1963 Equal Pay Act, which banned sex discrimination, and despite a half-century of "progress," women still, on average, earn 79 cents to every male dollar. Women of color fare even worse. As of 2010, US women have earned more doctoral degrees than have men. Yet women continue to earn less than men in all ten fields monitored by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of July 2015. The pay gap gets widest in the highest-paying fields. Harvard economist Claudia Goldin has found that female specialists such as doctors and lawyers earn only 66% of what male counterparts do.
Women are opting out of male-run companies
"Women are still underrepresented at every level in the corporate pipeline...," reports a high-profile study by McKinsey & Company and LeanIn.Org. Released in September 2015, "Women in the Workplace" surveyed 118 companies and nearly 30,000 employees and found, "... it will take twenty-five years to reach gender parity at the senior-VP level and more than one hundred years in the C-suite."
Is it any wonder so many women are opting out of male-run companies to assume the reins of their time, lives, families and futures? In fact, if you scan the horizon, you'll see change is looming, mostly because women are leaving corporate compounds to strike out on their own. The rise of the global She Economy is shaping the future hurtling toward us and fueling an unprecedented expansion of women's leadership.
Transformation began with women flexing their consumer muscle and purchasing power as CEO of the family amid a rising global middle class. Increasingly, however, that economic impact is bolstered and driven by women entrepreneurs.
Suffragettes demanded a voice and a vote and it took awhile
Around the world, women are launching businesses in never-before-seen numbers. On every continent, women are creating new marketplaces, new classes of customers and significantly greater GDP for their regions and the world. And as we've all learned, money talks. Economic power has a way of leading to political clout.
In the early 20th century, British and American suffragettes rewrote the rules of society by demanding that women have a voice and a vote in issues that affect their lives. It got messy and took awhile. Men weren't comfortable seeing women at the ballot box. Similarly, a century later, women are demanding greater power in business and across society. This is also taking awhile. Yet more and more women are no longer waiting for male recognition. They're taking charge by launching enterprises and leading on their own.
Women's entrepreneurship is changing women's future
As the number of female-owned firms grows, it's clear that women start and run businesses that are categorically different than companies run by men. As a result, worldwide and one business at a time, women's entrepreneurship is changing women's future.
Lately, I've been eyeing that Kool-Aid one more time.