Thirty years ago there was a popular advertising campaign that touted “You’ve come a long way, baby”. That was about woman doing something as simple as smoking in public. Twenty years ago a woman’s financial power was still judged by how much her husband allowed here to spend and her work advancement was limited to traditional female business roles. Ten years ago we started seeing the first woman fighting there way into executive positions and today they have become a power unto themselves.
Marissa Mayer-CEO Yahoo
As little as 10 years ago there were only 4 female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies as of 2014 there 23 on this coveted list and over a third of all graduates with MBAs are now female.
While you still here talk of the “Glass Ceiling” in business, the latest numbers tell us that it may not be quite as solid as it once was. In fact if pay attention to how money and wealth moves it becomes abundantly clear those women of high net worth are a quickly growing sector of society.
Changes aren’t Coming, They are Here
Need more evidence consider these facts; according to a study published in the Harvard Business Review 51.3% percent of Americas wealth is controlled by woman and another study by The American College stated that 45% of all millionaires in the United States are now female.
Could you imagine the benefits that your business could reap if instead of following the old tried and true methods of marketing high end products and services to a male dominated clientele? You shifted your focus to the people that now truly control over half of the countries wealth and make up the single largest demographic of American millionaires.
Looking to the Future
While there is still much ground to be made up, by woman in the business world, it is obvious that much ground has already been gained and that as the matrices of wealth and power continues to shift toward a more balanced and equitable distribution of top positions that a greater of emphasis will have to be placed on woman as high end consumers.
If you consider the strides that have been made in the last 10 years [a 575% increase in Fortune 500 CEO positions] it is a sign of wonderful progress but considering that woman make up over half of the U.S. population, there is still much work to be done.
It’s been an exciting year for women. Throughout the world, glass ceilings are shattering as business, government and civic leadership positions are being grabbed by diverse collection of interesting, intelligent and motivated women. Below are just a few examples:
1. Rosalind Brewer. Few Fortune 500 companies could be considered more of an “old boys network” than Wal-Mart and its subsidiaries. Yet, one of the company’s largest divisions, Sam’s Club, is head by an African-American woman, Rosalind Brewer. Brewer, who has held the position of president and CEO at Sam’s Club since 2012, was named one of the 100 World’s Most Powerful Women by “Forbes” magazine in 2013.
Park Geun-hye
2. Park Geun-hye. Elected as president of South Korea in 2013, this 62-year-old former head of South Korea’s Grand National Party is just one of 33 female primer ministers or heads of state around the globe. She is the first female president of her country as well as the first female leader in northeast Asia.
3. Meg Whitman. When Meg Whitman joined Hewlett-Packard in 2011, first as CEO and later as president, she already had earned a rather impressive resume. After a decade as an executive at The Disney Company, Whitman led eBay through its growth years in the late 1990s and early 2000s. She also ran for Governor of California in 2010, losing to Jerry Brown. Whitman has been named among the women most likely to first female President of the United States by the “New York Times.”
Shirley M. Tilghman
4. Shirley M. Tilghman. Education is one sector where women have made inroads in gaining leadership positions. Currently more than 26 percent of America’s colleges and universities are led by female presidents. Shirley M. Tilghman was the first woman to hold that position at Princeton University, when she was chosen for the position in 2001. A leader in the field of molecular biology, Tilghman taught at Princeton for 15 years before moving to the school’s top position. (Princeton isn’t the only Ivy League university to be headed by a woman. Brown University is also led by a woman, Ruth Simmons.)
5. Hillary Clinton. No list of powerful women would be complete without mentioning Hillary Clinton. This Yale-educated, former U.S. Secretary of State has made it mainstream to discuss a woman running for the U.S. presidency. Whether she decides to decides to run again in 2016 or not, she has single-handedly changed the idea of a woman president from a novelty to a possibility.
Kimber Lanning, Founder & President, Local First Arizona, recipient of the 2013 Entrepreneurial Leadership Award was one of this year’s Positively Powerful Woman Award recipients on the Conversation On Leadership Summit panel following the Awards luncheon. Provocative, thoughtful and occasionally humorous questions were asked by experienced moderatorIlana Lowery, Editor-In-Chief, Phoenix Business Journal. Here’s what Kimber said when Ilana asked her what her “ahah” moment was. How would you answer this question? Tell us below about your moment of truth.
Conversation on Leadership Panel; Dr. Joel Martin, Kimber Lanning, Debbie Gaby, Jackie Thompson, Marian Yim, Rev. Sheriolyn Curry Lasley and Deborah Bateman
Why are some neighborhoods safe and others dangerous?
I recently listen to This American Life’s ” Harper High School, Part One and Two” and found myself feeling very uncomfortable. The kind of community environment referred to in this Podcast makes it impossible for teachers to teach or for students to learn. The young people who grow up here don’t know or understand the origin of their economic circumstance nor the conditions (PTSD) they suffer from, and we should not expect them to.
We are always responsible!
The condition that impacts the community surrounding Harper High School is replicated throughout this country. Young people, who we’ve declared to be our future, live in fear for their own lives. Living in a safe community or receiving a good education should not be viewed in relative terms.
When there are unsafe communities it seems justifiable to blame first the community it self and then the local or state government. This criticism is unfair, especially when we don’t include ourselves in the conversation. We definitely need to shift the conversation away from “blame” to that of “responsibility” and “ownership”. As long as any of us believe and act as if under-performing schools or unsafe neighborhoods etc are problems belonging to someone else we are feeding the problem instead of defeating it.
Collaborate: One of the many takeaways from the 12/3/12 COL was the importance of people finding ways (pushing themselves) to work together. We can not do it all by ourselves, we can all benefit from support and “ambassadors”. We can tell or feel when something is missing or just not right and it sometimes takes someone from the outside, who we trust, to tell us what that might be.
Another realization was how “certainty” limits opportunity. What is meant by this is that many of us have spent a lot of time categorizing conversations into themes that we are familiar with and felt certain we knew what was being said and all there was to know about who was saying it. When we make up my mind about what is going to be said, we have lost the opportunity to hear something new and different.
Opportunity is something unexpected, new, different and nothing we can be certain about. We found this TED talk by Dr. Ernesto Sirolli of the Sirolli institute to be a great illustration of some what we’ve learned.
