Women at Work: Progress Obstructed

For eons, women toiled as equal partners alongside men, providing comparably valuable assets to the community. Slowly, over time, however, the term ‘woman’s work’ took a dark turn and began to be used to denigrate women’s efforts as less significant than those of men. That bias continues to cost countless women millions of dollars in lost earnings and related economic opportunities.

The ironic reality is that the whole community—including its men—suffers when women and their contributions aren’t respected as equals. As the world works to assimilate the changes driven by COVID-19, disrupted industries, and rising technologies, more women are embracing new roles that were previously denied them and demonstrating clearly that their economic clout can match—or beat—that of their male colleagues or competitors.

Biases are Barriers to Economic Growth

Today’s women continue to face innumerable and often invisible challenges that impede their opportunities to pursue their dreams, both at work and in their lives. Across the global population:

• Women are typically the foundation for their household and family, assuming the vast majority of domestic and caregiving duties, usually with no pay or other employment-related perks.
• Even in areas where schools are available, girls are often less educated than boys, and adult women aren’t as literate as men.
• In many cultures, girls are more valued for their reproductive capacity than their talents or skills. Female children as young as nine can be married with the expectation of becoming mothers as early as possible.
• Women are also less likely to join the workforce in any capacity, being tied to home-related activities or unable to qualify for outside work that might be available near them. Even when they find work outside the home, they are often expected to maintain household standards despite their added obligations to their employer.

The consequence of these cultural norms is that women remain significantly behind men in terms of earning capacity, forward or upward mobility, and self-actualization. In fact, in 2023, the United Nations Development Programme released the results of a 10-year study for its Gender Social Norms Index that showed that nine in ten men around the world (90%) continue to harbor inherent biases against women and that the activities and behaviors that perpetuate inequality haven’t improved since 2010. Another globally respected entity, the WorldBank, estimates that economic losses caused by gender inequality total as much as $160 trillion annually.

Unless these biased and damaging norms are addressed, the women affected by them – and their daughters after them – will remain ever-dependent on the men who keep them contained within these small cultural parameters.

America’s Women Face Obstacles, Too, Especially in Business

Despite America’s layers of rules and regulations designed to reduce or eliminate gender biases, those remain decidedly entrenched in U.S. society, especially when business is involved. Data suggests that women entrepreneurs are at a disadvantage on many fronts compared to male business owners:

• They receive only 4% of commercial loan funds, so banks and other lending institutions are perpetuating the discrimination.
• When they do receive loans, often the terms of those agreements differ from similar contract with men. Women holding those loan notes usually pay higher interest rates than men and are given a shorter repayment term than men.
• Finding venture capital (VC) funding is also not an option for most new female business owners. A 2023 review by Forbes revealed that only 1.9% of all VC investments went to female-founded start-ups in 2023, even though additional research suggests that women-owned businesses generate higher returns than those launched by men. That 1.9% accounts for only $3.4 billion of the total $170 billion in VC investments in all of 2023.

Other research shows how underinvesting in women-owned enterprises often results in poorer returns for investors. That data revealed that organizations run by women perform 63% better than entities founded by all-male teams and that internal rates of return on investment (ROIs) for women-led companies averaged 112% versus only 48% for male-led enterprises. The studies underscore the reality that the bias against women in business is not just unfair; it’s also not good business.

Doing Better Business Means Doing More With and For Women

Improving the welfare of women at work can only enhance the status and productivity of the entity, in the opinion of Forbes columnist Paolo Gaudiano, an Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and the founder of DEI tech start-up aleria.tech. He measures the economic impact of gender bias on corporations’ activities and financial fortunes. His work focuses on women in particular because they form the most extensive “historically underappreciated group” (HUG) in most companies.

Gaudiano’s research indicates companies that fail to include/enrich/embrace women in their workforce can and often do suffer significant financial losses as a result. Put another way, companies are likely to lose money through lost productivity, lower levels of morale, and higher rates of turnover and attrition when they treat their female employees worse than they treat their male workers. Examples he gives of ‘poor treatment’ include instances where:

• Colleagues overlook the female subject matter expert and look to a less-qualified male coworker for answers.
• Bosses give credit to male workers for female-generated ideas and efforts.
• Substantive work discussions are held without including relevant women workers, who are left with no opportunity to contribute their perspective to the conversation.

Gaudiano notes, too, that these disparaging events occur more often in other underrepresented groups, too – the BOPOC and differently-abled communities as examples. Even white, cisgender, heterosexual males with no disabilities can suffer these slights.

Gaudiano isn’t the only expert espousing escalated investments in women-owned entities. Data from the Gates Foundation suggests that increasing the economic capacity of women in business could boost the global economy by as much as $10 trillion by 2030. The possibility of achieving that kind of payoff would indicate that investing more resources – money, time, support – into woman-owned companies would be a boon to them and their entire community.