Celebrating Women’s History Month

Earlier this month we kicked off Women’s History Month and the world celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8^th. This global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women is an important call to action to advance gender parity. Women’s History Month is a time to celebrate the achievements, resilience, and diversity of women’s experiences while also recognizing the ongoing fight for gender equality.

Last year, several employees of JeffreyM read and joined in on a discussion of Caroline Criado Perez’s book, “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men” , an excellent book exploring gender bias and the challenges it presents in both the workplace and our everyday life.

The book shines a light on the often overlooked, yet pervasive, ways in which women are excluded or marginalized in the design and implementation of policies, products, and systems.

Here were some takeaways and learnings:

Default Male Bias: The book emphasizes how many aspects of our world, from urban infrastructure to medical research, are designed based on the male experience, leading to a systemic bias that overlooks or neglects women’s needs and perspectives.

Impact of Gender Data Gap: Caroline Criado Perez highlights the pervasive lack of gender-disaggregated data, which hampers efforts to understand and address gender disparities effectively. Without accurate data, policies and systems are often blind to the realities faced by women. In the book, Perez makes a bold statement: “There is no such thing as a woman who doesn’t work. There is only a woman who isn’t paid for her work.”

Workplace Policies: Invisible Women explores how workplace policies and norms can disadvantage women, from the gender pay gap to the lack of accommodations for caregiving responsibilities, highlighting the need for more inclusive practices.

Intersectionality: While focusing on gender bias, the book acknowledges that women’s experiences are shaped by intersecting factors such as race, class, and sexuality, underscoring the importance of addressing multiple forms of discrimination simultaneously.

Advocacy and Change: By uncovering these hidden biases and disparities, Invisible Women empowers readers to advocate for change and demand more inclusive policies and systems that account for the diversity of human experiences.

Overall, Invisible Women served as a wake-up call to recognize and address the ways in which gender bias permeates every aspect of our lives, urging us to work towards a more equitable and inclusive world for all genders. At JeffreyM our goal is to continue to support women leading the way and do the work to break down these barriers.

Women are significantly under-represented in the tech industry relative to their overall percentage of the US population. Women hold only 26.7% of tech employment, and as it relates to leadership, men hold 79% of Executive tech roles.

However, here at JeffreyM we have 60% women staffed in roles at global tech companies like Facebook and Microsoft and 71% of managers are women. We believe that leadership and change starts at the top and that’s why at JeffreyM 67% of executive leadership and 100% of directors are women.

Creating an inclusive workplace where women feel empowered to show up and lead authentically is something we are proud of at JeffreyM!

This Women’s History Month, as we honor the trailblazers who have paved the way, let’s also empower future generations to continue challenging norms, breaking barriers, and creating a more inclusive world for all.

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