How Women Lose Ground Right From the Start in Business

As if you didn’t know, women face a steeper climb when seeking initial funding for business ventures. Cindy Gallop is doing a fantastic job in tracking this. In a series of Tweets, she linked to a number of articles on the subject.

Sabina Matos, candidate for Congress from Rhode Island, will be supported with a large advertising buy from Emily’s List and Elect Democratic Women. (Image credit: Sabina Matos for Congress)

The top link below discusses the types of questions potential investors ask founders. It turns out that, to no one’s surprise, women are asked different questions than men. The questions for women generally focus on potential losses, whereas men were asked about the potential for gain. The takeaway here is that, right from the get-go, men are seen as more likely to succeed, so they are asked about aspirations, hopes, and ideals. On the other hand, women are quizzed about strategies for minimizing losses.

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Barbie Calls Out Hollowness of American Feminism, Offers No Solutions

Since July 21st, not a day has passed that I have not read about or discussed Barbie. Having finally seen it, I can say with certainty that I get the hype. Margot Robbie proves her incredible talent and range once again as stereotypical Barbie in the film. The sets and costumes lived up to every Barbie fantasy my 6-year-old self could have dreamed of. And the cherry on top was the use of the iconic Indigo Girls song, “Closer to Fine” as the anthem for Barbie’s journey from Barbieland to the real world.

Issa Rae plays the President of Barbieland, a world where Barbie’s promises for girls are realities. (Image Credit: Mattel)

Barbie as a product sold girls like me the dream that we could be anything, but as a 17-year-old woman, I now know the situation is a bit more complex. The Barbie movie plays with this contrast in ways that help us see the hollowness of American feminism, but the question remains what to do about this hollowness, and the movie doesn’t offer much help with that question.

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Leadership Giving: Highlighting the Success of Women Leaders

The last couple of posts have had a focus on men and the difficulties they are supposedly facing. Let’s turn that around and focus on the success of women as leaders who stand up to their difficulties and manage to break out of the constraints they face and achieve some significant accomplishments. The first two below do just that.

Hypatia was the first great woman in science. (Image credit: Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution The Cosmic Companion)

One: Hypatia Capital 

On the face of it, Hypatia Capital is an investment firm. However, the first two sentences of the mission statement very clearly indicate it is much more than that. It is an idea supported by concrete proof. Hypatia has created an ETF called WCEO. As the mission statement says:

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The Negative Impacts of SCOTUS Ruling, and Of Boys and Men

During his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court, now-Chief Justice John Roberts said the court’s role was to “call balls and strikes” and not engage in judicial activism. Oddly, SCOTUS has been judicially hyper-active of late. In the past weeks yet another precedent, bolstered by many decades of case law, was unceremoniously overturned. Affirmative Action (AA) in the college admission process has been the law of the land since the early 1970s, and passed its first Supreme Court challenge in 1977. Sadly, it is no more. 

Protesters for the movement to defend diversity hold a sign outside the Supreme Court. (Image credit: Defend Diversity)

Per the ruling, colleges may not consider the applicant’s race as relevant for admission. Colleges are, however, allowed to consider–and give preferential treatment to–relatives of alumni. What’s wrong with this picture? Coming from a background of privilege entitles you to be, well, entitled. Coming from a background of slavery entitles you to get to the back of the line. But, they say, the students of color who are negatively affected by the ruling are actually from the upper middle class, so they will have lots of other choices of colleges. That might be true, but, they will be excluded from entrance into the ruling class. And note that five of the six members of the SCOTUS majority went to law school at either Harvard or Yale. This includes Clarence Thomas, who admits he was the beneficiary of AA, and he’s apparently still bitter about it. 

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The Political Will to Change Patriarchy: Where Women Sit Matters

For inspiration today, I’d like to turn to a news story set in Rosh Ha’ayin, a municipality in the northeast of Tel Aviv. The municipality was recently promoting a children’s performance where the seats closest to the stage were reserved for men, while the seats in the back of the hall were reserved for women. They claimed that this arrangement was made to “meet the needs of the entire population, based on their preferences.

Getty Images and Dove announced a new program called #ShowUs to grant funding for women. (Image credit: Getty Images)

The Israel Women’s Network demanded that Rosh Ha’ayin end the gender segregated seating. 

“Separation between men and women in the public space, particularly between boys and girls, as part of an event supported by public funding, is forbidden and violates the law,” Gili Zinger, the director of the legal department at the Israel Women’s Network, wrote to the Rosh Ha’ayin municipality. 

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Tina Turner: Her Music and Life Represented Survivors Everywhere

Greetings to All! As Kiersten mentioned, my name is Kevin Marek, and I will be collaborating with her at PW to keep you up to date on some of the latest developments in the world of feminist giving. Without further ado, let’s see what is out there at the moment.

Tina Turner made visible the domestic abuse that many women suffered silently. Her feminist giving spans both her life story and her amazing music career. (Image credit: Wikipedia, Creative Commons)

Tina Turner: Her Music and Life Story Represented Survivors Everywhere 

Tina Turner became an iconic figure in the entertainment world, and her music lives on, instantly recognizable to tens of  millions of people worldwide. Her recent passing created an outpouring of sadness combined with celebrations of her legacy. She burst onto the scene in the late 1960s with the song Proud Mary, but did not become a full-fledged superstar until the 1980s. However, it was in the time between that she made perhaps her most significant contribution to our society.

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Ms. Foundation Honors Duchess Meghan and LaTosha Brown

Hello there, lovely philanthropy women friends! We are having a beautiful start to spring here in New England, and as we head into spring there will be some exciting new events in feminist giving. Here are just a few of the big doings in gender lens philanthropy.

LaTosha Brown and Duchess Meghan to be Honored by Ms. Foundation

The Ms. Foundation for Women announced the honorees for the 2023 Women of Vision Awards: Celebrating Generations of Progress & Power.” This year’s annual gala, marking the 50th anniversary of the nation’s oldest women’s foundation, will take place at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City on May 16. Among those to be honored are Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and (familiar to readers of Feminist Giving!) LaTosha Brown. Each year, the foundation honors visionary leaders and game-changing grantee partners committed to the Ms. Foundation’s mission of advancing women’s collective power and creating safe, just and equitable futures for all. 

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Women’s Philanthropy Via the Inclusion, Equity and Diversity Lens

Women’s Philanthropy thought leader, Kathleen Loehr, is retiring. In a truly unique model of legacy, she is leaving her papers and research to the Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) at Indiana University. And, she’s leaving her exclusive methods, treasured insights and archive to me and seven other hand-selected women she has chosen to continue living out her legacy and growing Women’s Philanthropy: The Women’s Philanthropy Alliance.

Yolanda F. Johnson shares a bullet point list of strategies to make sure your women’s philanthropy has a DEI lens. (Image credit: YFJ Consulting)

I am honored to be a part of this elite group of industry experts and thought leaders on Women’s Philanthropy, and I will do my best each and every day to make Kathleen proud. My journey thus far is a personal one, which led me to understand how, even as an expert in DEI for Philanthropy and a philanthropist myself, I had somehow compartmentalized gender along the way. The danger here is that if I can do it, anyone can, and so I vowed to craft my work in Women’s Philanthropy in the most impactful way as possible.

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Top 10 Feminist Giving Moves for March 2023 and Bargain on Book

Well, hello my lovely feminist giving friends! I hope you are all getting on fine. It’s time for another update on some of the gender lens philanthropic and investing activity in the world. Before we start, I want to alert readers that we have a limited number of copies of Feminist Giving available at a reduced rate for sale on Ebay. So if you don’t already have your copy of the book, now is your chance to pick one up at a great price, either for yourself, a friend, or even your local library if you so choose. Our book is particularly suited to libraries that are aiming to be a resource for marginalized groups.

ESOMAR has released new information for best practices regarding gender for multi-country work. (Image credit: ESOMAR)

What’s Going On in the World of Feminist Giving?

1. Our Partners at Alliance are Doing it Up for Women’s History Month

Now that I have had to step back a bit from my writing to pursue a top secret second career (it’s a don’t ask, don’t tell situation, so I appreciate your cooperation!) our partners at Alliance Magazine have taken on a much stronger agenda to serve the feminist giving community with news and views on this more essential form of philanthropy. There’s lots of great content there, including a piece from the Women’s Funding Network on the importance of Black giving. They are also dedicating a whole webinar to the topic of women’s funding which will take place on March 14. Register here to participate.

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We Are Changed By the People We Love, and Other Feminist News

Greetings, my dear friends in the feminist giving community and beyond. I’m here to talk to you today about a very serious problem: editors and publishers who will not allow women to have their own voice.

The Everyday Feminist, by Latanya Mapp Frett, will be released for publication on March 8,2023. (Image credit: Wiley Books)

I think part of the issue comes down to the fact that we are changed by the people we love. Along with being changed by the people we love, I also believe we are changed by writing that impacts us emotionally. In the editorial world, that translates into being changed by a piece of writing because it is written in a new way and does not adhere to outdated concepts. Margaret Atwood is famous for saying something to the effect of, “if your writing is not making anyone angry, you’re not really writing,” and I tend to agree. Real writing makes both friends and enemies because real writing can change the game. It can cause people to think differently, to make new connections in how their thoughts align with their behaviors day-to-day.

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