The year has just started out, but I can feel this is going to be a good one. Initiatives and video’s of women talking about the earnings gap are popping up like mushrooms from the ground. President Barack Obama addresses the problem in his State of the Union address, by saying:
“Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages. That’s why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. Really. It’s 2015. It’s time.”
After this fine piece of emphasis on the problem, they go on with showing an image that says:
“The average woman will have lost $420,000 over her working lifetime because of the
earnings gap”
#EqualPay (even the White House is loving their hashtags)
And just before they released Barack Obama’s statement, Refinery29 released this great video on ‘The State of Our Union: What Millennial Women Really Care About’.
Their opinions are combined with hard facts:
“We [Millennial women] are educated, we earn 59% of the advanced degrees in the country. Over half of us live paycheck to paycheck and 20% of us live below the poverty line.
For every year we delay motherhood, our career earnings increase by 9%.
63% of us believe that having children will make harder to advance in our careers.”
And because we are throwing around percentages anyway, here’s something for my fellow creative women reading this; did you know that despite the fact that women control 80% of consumer spending, only 3% of creative directors were female in 2013?
But this is changing. Rapidly. The JWT Intelligence report also sees this and talks in their Trend Report of 2015 about feminism.
“New Feminism: There’s a fundamental shift. Feminism today is less politicized and more about community, empowerment and confidence than antagonism. It’s also multigenerational and powered by social media.”
So, how about VBAT? Here are some numbers:
54 people, 32 men and 22 women
10 Design Directors, 6 men and 4 women
6 Senior Account roles, 3 men and 3 women
We thrive to judge people on their skill set and expertise and pay accordingly, no matter their gender. On top of that, we’ll keep on developing an ideal workplace where the employees feel like they are treated equally.
But enough with talking about facts and history. The reason why I believe 2015 will be ‘our’ year, is that we are starting to be there for each other. And that, for me, is the real solution to solve gender equality for once and for all. We have started communities, create events, speak out in viral videos and get male support. And that last one feels like the real solution.
So this is my opinion on why 2015 will be the year of gender equality. Tell me yours by sending me a message via Twitter.
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Annet is a Hyper Island alumni, currently living in Amsterdam and working as a Brand Strategist.
Also gives workshops in various creative methods, productivity & team development.
