Last week, as we heard woman after woman tell her tale of sexual harassment, of her reduction to a sexual commodity, I kept thinking: the media tells us about the huge settlements that big corporations pay,--$32 million for poor Bill O’Reilly. How many millions for poor Weinstein? For poor Cosby? In exchange, they get silence. But what about the economic cost to all us women?Who is reporting or calculating the financial cost to women from having their confidence undermined? Or from their exit from a field they could excel in, if only they could put up with pawing and shaming?
Now the silence has ended, and a murmur of female voices weaves a net big enough to capture big changes. Brit Marling’s recent post in The Atlantic names the financial stakes with power. She started as an economist, a Wall Street intern for Goldman Sachs. When she found it soul-killing, she went into acting, and then noticed Hollywood’s stories were only those told by a handful of powerful white males, where women were bit players in sexy outfits. She became a screenwriter and producer, and her skills show in this moving piece about her encounter with Weinstein. I invite you to read it in full, and rise to the challenge she presents: to consider what consent requires, and to reconsider what stories we decide to watch. She says about #MeToo:
"I’m telling [my] story because in the heat surrounding these brave admissions, it’s important to think about the economics of consent. Weinstein was a gatekeeper who could give actresses a career that would sustain their lives and the livelihood of their families. He could also give them fame, which is one of few ways for women to gain some semblance of power and voice inside a patriarchal world. They knew it. He knew it. Weinstein could also ensure that these women would never work again if they humiliated him. That’s not just artistic or emotional exile—that’s also economic exile.
"It’s important, too, to keep in mind where this power imbalance comes from. In the U.S., women were only allowed to have credit cards in their own names as of 43 years ago. Men had a two-decade head start (the credit card was invented in 1950). In the 1960s a woman needed to bring a man along to cosign any credit application. It’s stunning how recently women were afforded no financial autonomy. This is, of course, connected to the fact that women didn’t have bodily autonomy either. A woman’s husband could beat her or have sex with her without her consent in this country with no real legal recourse until the 1970s."
Read her whole tale here, and think about the costs, not just to a handful of a**holes with lawyers—but to half our nation’s people. What has been the economic cost of sexual shaming to you, your choices, your confidence, your bank account?
www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/harvey-weinstein-and-the-economics-of-consent/543618/#article-comments
Women's Economic Status
The International Finance Corporation with the World Bank estimates that women perform 66 percent of the world’s work, produce 50 percent of its food, but earn just 10 percent of global income.
Women comprise two-thirds of the world’s illiterate people, and one-third of the world’s girls are married before age eighteen.
Women own 30 percent of registered businesses worldwide, but only 1 percent of property.
Say what?!
Lean In, Gentlemen
Here's a new report from LeanIn.org, the nonprofit founded by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, who in the past has advised us women wanting to be appreciated at the workplace to speak up for ourselves, and yes, to make a case for a raise. But "Women in the Workplace 2017," based on surveys from 70,000 employees at 222 corporations, shows a more complex picture of gendered and cultural perceptions.
Women of color have a tougher time making headway, and it’s not for lack of trying or for asking for raises. And the numbers of female leaders in relationship to our numbers in the population show a consistent underrepresentation, regardless of the occupational field. Men tend to believe women are doing better advancing on the job front than they in fact are. Men also believe they are helping their female partners more than their female partners report they actually do. So guys, lean in and take initiative in cooking and childcare, and look around you to notice whether women are well represented in your department's leadership—and whether work policies include support for having an actual everyday life. Without a wife.
We admire this report but still have to point out that the numbers given for consumer banking in this do NOT represent investment banking on Wall Street, where EconoMan still rules and the numbers of women leaders remain strikingly low and lower paid than peers. And its focus is strictly on big-corporate America, not where most women tend to work, and where the same obstacles and misperceptions about race and gender persist.
This image is from Chris Skinner’s blog, from an article titled “Banks’ Leadership Teams Are Fatally Flawed.” https://thefinanser.com/2017/05/banks-leadership-teams-fatally-flawed.html/. We’ll just add to his good article that the bigger the bank, the more their boards look this way.
Here’s a story on Lean In's report from Fortune. It’s worth a read.
http://fortune.com/2017/10/10/women-in-the-workplace-2017/
The 37-page Women in the Workplace 2017 report itself is here, with an apt headline, "Getting to gender equality begins with realizing how far we have to go":
womenintheworkplace.com/
So What Exactly Is Screwnomics* ???
Screwnomics* is the unspoken but widely applied economic theory that women should always work for less, or better, for free.
And who thought he didn't have to talk openly about this, or stop taking us and our Mother Earth for granted?
EconoMan is my Screwnomics' name for the money guys in charge of how we live. Let's change his attitude, shall we?
The Gini-coefficient is not about a girl named Gini
The Gini-coefficient is a complex measurement of income inequality that nations take an interest in. Why? Because, as I write in Screwnomics:
"Too little for the majority has made for an era of global disruption, huge migrations of populations, and wars over energy sources, food, and water. This disruption is why the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and its spy-wonks track Gini-coefficient ratios country-by-country, as does the UN, the World Bank, and the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). All are aware that people deprived of what they need to live will tend to object—sometimes violently.
"Yet current US policy—or rather our lack of it—allows the freewheeling operations of economic vultures on Wall Street. Vulture traders and hedge funds also watch these Gini-coefficient numbers, country-by-country. They are looking for the weakest to prey on."
Who has the highest rate of income inequality? Turkey? Sudan? NOPE. It's the US, says gini-research.org, an organization of scholars from around the world examining trends in search of insights and warnings. So who exactly is preying on whom becomes the question, yes?! The organization is here: gini-research.org/articles/home
Their US report, all 119 pages, is linked here. The projects' reports were published by Oxford Press in 2014. gini-research.org/system/uploads/443/original/US.pdf?1370077377
Help us get the word out. Like our Facebook page and tell your friends, too. And look for our book, Screwnomics: How Our Economy Works Against Women and Real Ways to Make Lasting Change, out in bookstores, April 2018.
