In this session,  Noreen Farrell, Executive Director of Equal Rights Advocates, and Marie Konstance, the Consulting Lead for Catalyst have an insightful conversation, moderated by Gwen Young, COO of the Women Business Collaborative on what pay parity will look like in the new year, the latest data, and what pay parity really means.  

Watch the recording on Linkedin here, or below!

The post #WBCFasterTogether Series: What Does Pay Parity Look Like in 2022 appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

In this session, Gwen Young, COO of WBC, met with our newest host, Linda Peek Schacht, on January 13th at 12pm EST Gwen introduced Linda as she joins the LinkedIn Live series to host two sessions per month. In addition, Gwen and Linda gave an overview of what to expect for this series over the next year, and how each of the themes and issues covered fit into WBC’s overall mission of equal pay, position, and power for all businesswomen.

Watch the recording on Linkedin here, or below!

The post #WBCFasterTogether: Leading the Trends in 2022 appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Gwen Young, COO of WBC, hosted Amy Cross, Founder of GenderFair for the first #WBCFasterTogether Linkedin Live Series Session of 2022 on January 6th Gwen and Amy discussed the current scope of the gender pay gap, and how organizations and companies can create measurable change to close this gap forever.

Watch the recording on Linkedin, here!

or below:

The post WBCFasterTogether Series – Demanding Equal Pay from Manifesto to Action appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Nonprofit Collaborative Grows Participation by More than 200% Since its Founding; Remains Committed to Accelerating Progress Across Nine Key Action Initiatives

Published via PR Newswire and Yahoo Finance on December 14th, 2021

WASHINGTON, Dec. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Women Business Collaborative (WBC) has established itself as the leading collaborative and high-growth movement committed to achieving equal position, pay and power for all women in business. Founded in 2019, the nonprofit alliance of business organizations and leaders has grown to include more than 60+ women’s organizations, 40 corporate sponsors and 400+ Council Champions.

WBC’s vast network of business organizations and leaders are focused on achieving long-term results around Nine Action Initiatives, including: more women CEOs, in the C-Suite and on Boards; a demand for gender and pay parity; increasing capital for women entrepreneurs; driving more women as controllers of capital allocation; parity for women in technology; and leveraging learning and development to drive pipeline promotions. With diversity, equity and inclusion at of the core of the collaborative’s mission, every WBC Initiative has a goal to advance diversity.

Since WBC’s founding, the number of collaborating women’s business organizations has grown from 19 to 62 and corporate sponsorship has grown from five to nearly 40 top companies. Supporters include Diversified Search Group, Wells Fargo, Capital One, IBM, Bank of America, BCG, Cigna, and Deloitte. WBC’s flagship Summit hosted a record 3,600 participants this past September.

“We’re incredibly thankful for the passion and commitment that each of our partners and champions offer to this critical movement,” said Edie Fraser, CEO of WBC. “While Boards have seen a sea change and there’s been a major surge of women-owned and minority-owned businesses seeking capital, there is still much more to be done to accelerate gender parity for women. We project further acceleration in 2022.”

In 2021 the WBC with Catalyst, C200 and Ascend released the 2^nd annual Women CEOs in America Report.   According to the report, women comprise 8.2% of the Fortune 500 companies and are about 7% of CEOs across public and private companies. WBC monthly Women Joining Public Boards report shows an average of 42% women being named to public boards and one third of these women of color.

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WBCollaborative, Instagram @womenbusinesscollaborative and join the discussion with #WBCFasterTogether.

The post WBC Reports Major 2021 Progress Toward Gender Parity for Business Women appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Gwen Young, WBC COO, and Edie Fraser, WBC CEO, hosted the final #WBCFasterTogether session of 2021 on December 16th, 2021! Gwen and Edie summarized the progress and achievements of the WBC from the past year, while previewing what’s to come in 2022 for the women’s business movement.

Watch the recording on LinkedIn or below on Youtube!

The post WBCFasterTogether Series: Building the Movement – 2021 and Beyond appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

This release was published on PRNewswire on Sep 20, 2021, 08:16 ET

Among the Summit’s Featured Speakers are CEOs from GM, Walmart, P&G, BlackRock, State Street, Dow, Progressive, Siemens, PepsiCo, IBM, Humana, Sodexo, CVS, TIAA, and others

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Women Business Collaborative (WBC) – the fastest growing alliance of top business organizations driving impact to create equality for women in business — will convene more than 3,000 participants, including CEOs, thought leaders and the workforce-at-large, at its third Annual Summit  “Empowering Through Gender Equity and Diversity,” taking place virtually, September 21-22, 2021.

With 8.4% of Fortune 500 CEO positions currently held by women – up from 5.7% in 2019, women appear to be on the rise in Corporate America.  Committed to accelerating the progress to include more women across all leadership roles, the WBC Annual Summit brings together the organizations, companies and leaders that are working tirelessly to create cultures of diversity, equity and inclusion across every industry and area of business.

Key data points and best practices for how these leading organizations are taking action will be shared and highlighted throughout the Summit.

“We are crystal clear that all are no longer just talking, but now collaborating on building pathways and nontraditional ways of accelerating women business leaders,” said Edie Fraser, CEO of WBC. “Over the next several days, we will hear from trailblazers in DEI, work to better understand the intersectionality of diversity and discuss how to continually advance the WBC’s Nine Action Initiatives to create equal position, pay and power for all businesswomen.”

In addition to the day and half of engaging discussions, WBC will recognize and highlight achievements in diversity throughout the program. WBC’s 2021 Excellence in Gender and Diversity CEO Award recognizes top officials in major companies for their efforts to diversify their companies and increase opportunities for women in business roles. The 2021 awardees include: Mary T. Barra, Chair and CEO, General Motors; David Taylor, Chairman, President & CEO, P&G; Ronald P. O’Hanley, Chairman and CEO, State Street Corporation; Doug McMillon, President & CEO, Walmart, Inc.; Jim Fitterling, Chairman and CEO, Dow; Laurence D. Fink, Founder, Chairman and CEO, BlackRock, Inc.; Tricia Griffith, President & CEO, Progressive Insurance; and Barbara Humpton, President and CEO, Siemens Corporation.

The full Summit program, agenda, list of speakers, session descriptions and information on how to register for the event can be found here: WBC’s Virtual Annual Summit: Empowering Through Gender Equity and Diversity.  Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WBCollaborative, on Instagram @womenbusinesscollaborative and join the discussion with #WBCFasterTogether.

The post Women Business Collaborative (WBC) 3rd Annual Summit to Convene Leading CEOs and Business Organizations to Accelerate Gender Equity Across the Global Workforce, September 21-22, 2021 appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

There is a photograph of a woman from 1910 holding up a sign that says “equal pay for equal work.”  One hundred and ten plus years later, we are still working towards that goal.  Pay equity has a direct impact on leadership equity.  It also is one of the key issues impacting leaders who are caregivers to children, aging adults and themselves.  It impacts financial stability, what personal and professional choices we make, and how we take care of ourselves.

Over the past 40 years more and more women have managed to move into leadership. They have started and run successful businesses. They have moved into community leadership positions. But it has not been easy. We continue to run into the default view on gender roles:  dad is the primary breadwinner, mom is the primary caregiver -regardless of educational background or profession. We need to recognize the problem with these long held cultural views of gender roles and how it continues to impair how women are viewed as leaders. We need to understand the cost it has to our health and our ability to be the leaders the world needs us to be.

Many of us feel like we are in a vice, pushed from both sides, taking care of children and/or aging adults and trying to grow a professional career.  We continue to be told we are supposed to be superwoman, able to just push through, do more, sleep less, ignore our health and wellbeing because that is what women are supposed to do, the ideal for us to attain.  That ideal is a barrier to closing the gender equity leadership gap.

The caregiving barrier became clearly underscored with the onset of the pandemic.  Choices had to be made as to who was going to stay home and who would be the primary caregiver to children and/or to aging adults.  Even before the pandemic, on average, a working caregiver to an aging adult in their lives working at any level will spend an additional 21 hours a week doing administrative or direct care, according to AARP research.  That is in addition to all other personal and professional responsibilities. It is not the same for our male counterparts.

The female leadership pipeline starts to dry up at around age 35 to 40.  But the challenges start earlier. Women make less than their male counterparts in the same positions with the same educational background and are subject to both the glass ceiling and the sticky floor when it comes to pay equity.  After grinding it out, women fall further behind when they take time off for caregiving.  Because they make less, paying for caregiving becomes more difficult.  Women are also more likely to tap into retirement money to care for an aging parent.

All of this also takes a toll on personal health and wellbeing and financial stability.  It makes it more challenging for a woman to take on a new leadership role.  We need an integrated approach so working women can step into leadership and have resources that support a caregiver in a healthier, more balanced way.

At the Women Business Collaborative (WBC), there is a focused discussion to help get better policies in place, discuss how we can meaningfully address the cultural biases that derail policies, and create a path for women to become leaders. Multiple WBC Action Initiatives are dedicated to emphasizing and breaking down these issues. From the Women in the Pipeline group which works to establish strong relationships and leadership development amongst women leaders, to the Gender and Pay Parity focus area, spreading awareness of the pay gap and lack of representation, WBC is making waves in a society that has traditionally mistreated its women in the workforce.

We need to recognize that without our health, without a better approach to working women that are caregivers, we cannot lead well.  Our legacy can be that more women will have a better professional and personal path forward.  Companies will get the financial benefits of keeping these talented women in their leadership pipeline. We can better close the gender equity leadership game by putting more thought into caring for the caregivers.

The post Leaders That Care: Women, Leadership Pay Parity and Caregiving appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Whether your goal is to promote women into the C-Suite, a woman as your company’s next CEO, to diversify your board of directors, or to help women into their first leadership job – your goals cannot be achieved if you don’t accelerate female talent, especially women of color, from the start of their career and through the leadership pipeline. To check out WBC’s own Resources for Parity Guide covering six categories of services, click here!

The post Resources For Parity Guide appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Want to flex some power as fierce women business leaders?  On this Equal Pay Day 2021, join the Women’s Business Collaborative movement to reach pay parity!

Today is Equal Pay Day, kicking off a year of days marking how far into this year women from different demographics must work to reach the average earnings of men in 2020.  March 24’s kick off reflects latest census data showing that women of all races collectively earned, on average, just 82 cents for every $1 earned by men of all races. Black, Native, and Latina women will have to wait until August, September, and October, respectively, until their average full-time earnings catch up to men.

Even when we set aside the overrepresentation of women in lower paid jobs contributing to these disparities, the gender and race pay gap persists in similar jobs across all industries. It worsens as women progress in their career and leads to  significant income loss over their professional lives.

In a year of COVID-19, job insecurity and loss, and radical changes in how we work, the pay parity goals of the Women’s Business Collaborative have never been more important. Women – especially women of color- are more likely to have been laid off or furloughed during the COVID-19 crisis.  As women left the workforce in droves to tend to family care and remote learning, their wage penalties increased. A new report from PayScale shows that women often incur a pay penalty on returning to work after a prolonged absence, earning 7 percent less on average than men in the same position.

As Equal Rights Advocates and business leaders across the country know, equal pay is a key part of fair employment practices and diverse workforces. It also drives market advantage. Competitive – and fair– pay is critical for recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and high performers, particularly for younger women. We are inspired by employers of different sizes and in different sectors implementing innovative policies and practices to identify and close gender wage gaps and advance equal pay for their employees. They are conducting equal pay audits and remediating pay disparities based on sex, race and other protected status factors. Many are embracing salary transparency, banning the use of negotiation, and not considering prior salary history (disadvantaging female candidates) when setting hiring pay. Indeed, many businesses were proactive on this front in advance of laws passed in a number of states.  Ending reliance on prior salary is particularly important now, as many women return to the workforce after pandemic related job lapses.

Together, the women’s business community can set an example for employers nationwide when it comes to pay parity. Now is the time to reassess your businesses compensation system to ensure that women workers and businesses emerge from this pandemic stronger than they entered it.

To become a corporate ally of Equal Pay Days, and showcase pay parity innovations you lead, join the Equal Pay Today Corporate Circle of Equal Rights Advocates. Contact ERA Executive Director Noreen Farrell at nfarrell@equalrights.org.

The Women Business Collaborative is an unprecedented alliance of national professional women’s organizations collaborating together to achieve equal position, pay and power for all business women. We are also a social movement of tens of thousands of diverse professional women and men, business organizations, public and private companies and the media accelerating change through collaboration, advocacy, action and accountability.

We are #WBCFasterTogether.

The post Walk the Walk: A Call to Businesses for Concrete Action on Equal Pay appeared first on Women Business Collaborative.

Hannah Grove joined WBC Advisory Council having recently retired from State Street (NYSE:STT) and after 22 years of a portfolio career including public and private company board service.

Each year during March we celebrate the achievements of women, or significant milestones and movements that have advanced women.  While acknowledging these accomplishments are important, I fear that in looking back and embalming women’s achievements in the past tense we take our eyes off the acute urgency of what needs to change now, and in the future, to strengthen women’s equality and opportunities.  As a former Chief Marketing Officer, I can’t help but think that we have a brand problem here. So, what if instead of Women’s History Month we celebrate Women’s Future Month?

We are at a critical point in 2021– yes, there has been progress in placing more women on boards, in leadership positions, and in the overall workplace, but we also have to be honest with ourselves that the forward march has been bordering on glacial. Even more disturbingly, the resulting representation is by no means as diverse as it should be in terms of Black, Hispanic, Asian women or LGBTQ+ representation.  And, despite it being the 21st century, it seems as if a medieval manners manual is still in circulation in some parts, suggesting that women should be seen and not heard in meetings. Add to this the persistent pay gaps and the truly alarming predictions we are seeing about women leaving the workplace during and post-pandemic, or losing their jobs (again, disproportionately women of color), and we might well see history repeat itself in ways that we simply cannot afford or tolerate.

The solution in my view lies in concrete action, collaboration, commitment, metrics and accountability.  I had the good fortune of a 22-year career at State Street (NYSE: STT) and benefited first-hand from the application of these solutions and the unwavering support from a series of enlightened and committed CEOs. I joined the Women’s Business Collaborative (WBC) because of its Nine Action Initiatives – each one aimed at tackling the systemic challenges and issues that hold women back with clear outcomes, including achieving gender parity in the C-Suite by 2030.  Simply put, women won’t run more businesses unless they have the opportunity to actually do so.  The WBC is also a true movement with both men and women uniting many of the organizations that are addressing these issues to accelerate the pace of change.  I am also encouraged by the Biden Administration’s recently announced Gender Policy Council and the fact that it reports directly to the President.  In the words of co-chair Jennifer Klein “it’s not just a council, it’s a plan to take a government-wide approach to gender equity.”  This is exactly what we need now and for the future in both public and private sectors.

So, in celebration of Women’s Future Month, I will end on a high note, looking up at the skies. As I watched NASA achieve its extraordinary landing on Mars last month, I was equally spellbound by the number of women in the control room – all ages and ethnicities.  The mission Perseverance is aptly named and serves as a reminder that anything is possible when you go bold, don’t give up, and focus squarely on the future.  And, as the secret message embedded on the Mars Rover’s canopy says, let’s “Dare Mighty Things.”

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