According Geri Stengel of the Ventureneer and a contributor at Forbes, Women have a powerful tool for improving the lives of other girls and women — with money. She went on to add “Gender is the most powerful determinant of how we see the world and everything in it,”“It’s more significant than age, income, ethnicity, or geography.” said Bridget Brennan, Forbes writer and an expert on marketing to women.
The following are 5 incredible ways women can use their purses to confront some of the challenges women and girls still face in this social — another means of helping to achieve UN Women gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls.
1. Purchasing Power
Women account for 85% of all consumer purchases in United States, according to She-economy. Women can use their purchasing power to buy products from companies that treat the women who work for them equitably. Brands take note: Products and services are already out that make it easy for women to measure workplace equity and allow them to take action.
2. Portfolio Power
Women have decision-making power over $11.2 trillion or 39% of all investable assets in the U.S., according to Harness the Power of the Purse: Winning Women Investors, by Andrea Turner Moffitt. That’s a whole lot of money that women can use to make an impact. An overwhelming percentage of women — 90% — want to make a positive impact on society, the report notes. Research by U.S. Trust confirms this.
3. Philanthropic Power
Progress in other areas is slower. Only 7% of philanthropic giving in the United States is allocated to the issues of women and girls, according to The State of the Field of Gender Lens Investing. Despite greater interest in women and girls, there has been little impact on a large majority of women’s organizations around the world, according to the Association for Women’s Rights in Development.
4. Political Power
More women vote than men, but women lag way behind men in political contributions, according to an analysis of data from Crowdpac, done by Upshot and reported in The New York Times. Only about 30% of big campaign donors are women and the estimated gap in overall fundraising is even larger, because the average contribution from a man is much larger than the average for a woman. Women give more to liberals and to other women.
5. Preneur Power
Social enterprises aimed at serving the needs of the developing world that integrate gender throughout their business model prosper as a result of engaging both women and men in the entire enterprise value chain, according to Women and Social Enterprises: How Gender Integration Can Boost Entrepreneurial Solutions to Poverty a research report by Acumen and the International Center for Research on Women. Adoption and use levels of products and services increase when women are included in the design, production, and marketing and sales.
Lastly, in the words of Suze Orman, “the only action you will regret is the one you did not take.”
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