Posted by Dear Baby S
Last year, you were close to outraged by international women’s day. You could not understand why women get a day for themselves. Why would they need one? You have a quiet powerful older sister and don’t really see any inequality there. And she goes on about #girlpower all the time. You see girls and boys playing together in your classroom and in the playground and, if anything, you are a bit shocked at the privilege girls have because they can wear a bracelet or earrings and you can’t wear the bracelet Little Girl C made for you. And let’s be honest, we often talk about who the boss of the house is and the answer is more often than not “Mummy”. Even Daddy agrees. So why?
You are only 7 years old, and as such you don’t understand how things get to change as girls start to grow up. Hey, I don’t blame you! I was in my 20s when I first understood gender inequality. When I first started work, I thought of becoming an anti-feminist and declaring myself against quotas. I usually sided with the male side and had no sisterhood in my early years in banking. I guess I only started to change as I started to lack role models and being often the single female in a room. And I was young, which made some condescending tones starker.
So let me tell you 10 reasons why I believe we still need an international women’s day. And these are not all of them, they are only 10 that I think you may be able to understand soon enough.
1. As early as age 6, girls are significantly less likely than boys to associate brilliance with their own gender. It does not matter whether they have good or bad grades, they just stop believing a brilliant person is a woman. This makes girls be less ambitious and dream smaller. And it is not just children that think this, their parents think it too. Did you know that parents are 2.5x more likely to ask “is my son gifted” than “is my daughter gifted”? Even though in American schools, girls are 11% more likely to be in gifted schools. We just seem to think the opposite. (You can read the studies here)
2. When girls start becoming teenagers, their body changes fast. Alongside it, there is a whole industry ready to grab their attention with beauty products, slimming techniques and photoshopped supermodels showing them an ideal body and being that is really void of any meaning or personality. They dress the same to conform, they wear the same products, they walk in packs. Their single identity is not built yet and everyone around them is commenting on their looks. “You are so grown up!” is not always a good think. “Am I too fat?”, “Am I more grown up than others?”, “Was I not grown up enough before?”. Did you know that in the UK, 75% of those affected by an eating disorder are women? And that most eating disorders develop in the teenage years?
3. At about the same age, girls and boys are studying science and maths at the same rate. However, as they get to college age, women are much less likely than men to say they intend to go into science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM). By the time they graduate from college, men outnumber women in every of these fields and women are but 20% of bachelor degrees. Can you see how much your sister loves maths? At today’s rates, chances that she pursues a degree in these fields are much slimmer than for you, my little mathematician! If we consider that today’s day and age is moving as technology and science moves, women are not having the equal level of contribution and, importantly, of profit in this growth. (Check out this report)
4. When girls become women and finish their studies and chose to go to the job market, the saga continues. How easy is it to get a job? The World Economic Forum confirms that women face greater difficulties in their search for employment. A lot can be said for the recruitment gender bias. First, job advertisements are written in a way that stop women from applying, But that’s not all. When women do apply, guess what happens? For equal-performing candidates, men are 1.5x more likely to be hired than women. The last and most difficult of all? Similarity bias. Humans like to be surrounded by people like them, so if men are doing most of the hiring, they are likely to hire men as well, even if they don’t mean to. (Read more here)
5. For those that make it there and get a job and even get promoted, life is not smooth either. In fact, people often hold negative opinions of women that are in what are viewed as “men” roles, like scientists, engineers or CEOs. First, a woman has to prove her competence more and is viewed as competent only if she is extremely successful – the bar is higher. Second, if a woman is indeed successful and competent, she is usually less liked. In the world of business or science, you need to be competent and liked. So women are facing a losing game. Oh, and they are 2x more interrupted then their male counterparts when expressing an opinion. How do you like being interrupted Baby S?
6. The motherhood penalty is something that may shock you as well. As you know, we need women to carry babies in their tummies for 9 months and they are often breast-feeding for the first few months of life of the baby. Whilst most women are able to work through pregnancy, women interrupt work to care for their little babies when they are born. In many countries, men also have the right to take time off to care for their babies, but the share is still low. Some women are paid while their away, but this is not a universal fact. Some get their jobs back after, but again, not always. And many are forced to leave their jobs while their kids are small and then are unable to return to the workforce. Numbers show that for those between 25 and 54 with at least 1 child under the age of 6, female participation in the workforce is 53% and male is 96%. Almost half of the women at this age wanting a job are unable to get one that is aligned with their family. (See the ILO Report here)
7. For the women that are able to stay in the workforce or that are not forced to leave the workforce all together, the stats continue to be against them. There is something called the gender pay gap. Yes, women also make less money than men, I know again you can’t see why. In 2019, for each dollar a men earned in labour income, women earned only 51 cents. For the same job (if they are able to get one), women they get paid less. You may wonder “Why Mummy, that’s not fair!”. You are still at the age where you get easily disgruntled by feelings of uneven treatment, with yourself or others. Well, in the European Union, as of 2022, women earned on average 13% less than men, for equivalent roles. Oh, and that was reported as a good thing here. In simple terms, in a given year, women stop getting paid on November 15, though they keep working till the end of the year. This is not only because bluntly women are paid less for the same job, but also because there are less women in high paid jobs, which was something very prevalent in Finance. Women are not the boss.
What do you mean women are not the boss Mummy?
8. Indeed, Baby S, women are not in charge. Whilst women are close to achieving parity in many recruitment circles, being hired just as much as their male counterparts at entry-level positions, the progression tells a different story. Women remained just under 30% of the leadership positions in 2023. That means that for each 10 people in charge, only 3 are women. Surprising right? Only because you are 7, no one else seems to be surprised by this and everyone else seems to cheer on because the number has finally increased from 25% for many years to 30% in the latest report.
9. If you think it is only in big companies, let me remind you of a stat I shared with you almost 3 years ago, when I was part of the team launching the EMEA Multicultural Innovation Lab at Morgan Stanley. For each 100 dollars that are invested in start-up businesses, only 3.5 dollars go to women. And you know what? It is down since we spoke about this in 2021, it used to be 4 dollars. Again you will ask why, and again like in all these fields you will be given many explanations. Women are more risk averse, they build lifestyle businesses, they are just not asking for money, they are not networking enough. But bluntly, those are excuses. Once a business reaches Series B, the gender gap seems to start going away. Maybe women get smarter? Or the few that make it there are just so awesome that they beat all the odds that are against them.
10. And to close, when women retire, there is something called, the pension gap. When people get older and they stop working, they typically get a state or private pension, depending on where you live in the world and which company you worked for. Data shows that in Europe, pension payments to women aged 65 and over are 25% lower, on average, than those to men. So not even in old age, can women benefit from a fair share. After all, if they earned less through life, it is only normal they earn less in retirement right? Basic maths.
Dear Baby S, I am not here to make you feel bad. I am here because you are going to grow up on the other side of all these stats. And it will be up to you and more baby turned men like you, to change this. It will be up to you and those like you, to allow your Big Sister to dream, to feel good in her body, to study science and be an astronaut as she has often claimed (probably while doing gymnastics in space). It will be up to you to stand up to these stats and continue to not accept them, continue to not believe their fairness and fight for their change. It is up to you to say
“But that’s not right!”
This is why we need an International Women Day Baby S. But who knows, perhaps in your lifetime, we will stop needing one.
Photo by Álvaro Serrano on Unsplash