Poverty is sexist

March 8 was International Women’s Day. On my x0 blog I wrote about a report by Maria Shriver that noted that in the U.S. (1) Nearly two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women,  (2) The average woman is paid 77 cents for every dollar a man makes, and African American women earn only 64 cents and Hispanic women only 55 cents for every dollar made by a white man and (3) men make more money than women who have the same level of educational achievement, from high school diplomas to advanced graduate degrees.

You can read my original post on the X0 blog called Poverty is sexist.

I praised the group One for encouraging Chancellor Angela Merkel to select women’s economic empowerment as one of the key issues for the 2015 agenda at the G7 summit meeting being held in Germany.

Well, the summit has come and gone, and I was delighted to read recently that Angela Merkel did include women’s economic empowerment as one of those key issues.  The G7 committed to “increasing the number of women and girls in developing countries receiving technical and vocational training through G7 measures by one third by 2030”, noted the need to improve working conditions that allow women and men to balance family life and employment, and agreed to the G7 Principles on Women’s Entrepreneurship including encouraging girls’ participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields. More broadly, the G7 stated support for UN Women’s Empowerment Principles, and encouraged companies around the world to incorporate them into their practices.

High level conferences such as this don’t yield immediate policy changes anywhere, much less immediate results. None-the-less by placing a focus on the disproportionate financial burdens placed on women throughout the world, the G-7 summit took a step in the right direction. Good news is good.

 

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