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Thursday marked Black Women’s Equal Pay Day — meaning Black women worked all of 2019 and 225 days into 2020 to earn the equivalent of what white men earned in 2019. The day shines a light on the pay gap (nearly $1 million in lost income over the course of a Black woman's career) as well as the myriad of ways Black women are held back from reaching their full potential in the workforce. And this inequity is not limited to pay. One data point that always strikes us is that only 1% venture-backed firms have a Black founder with the average amount of VC investment for Black female founders being $42,000 compared to the overall average of $1.14 million invested. Not to mention the disparate economic repercussions of COVID-19 for Black women.
While this data is enough to make anyone want to throw their computer out the window, we do continue to see small signs of progress. This year’s Black women’s Equal Pay Day was juxtapositioned with the announcement of the first woman of color on a major political party ticket. And as coverage ramps up to next week’s centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification, we’ve also seen many Black suffragists get some of the recognition they undoubtedly deserve.
Here’s to the steps forward while always acknowledging how far we still have to go.
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| To mark the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment, the Smithsonian, Library of Congress, and National Archives are collaborating to uplift suffragists' stories on social media. From now through August 26, you can learn voting-rights history drawn from all three institutions' collections. And don’t miss their GIFs and Instagram stickers to share on your social media! |
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| ESG Assets Just Surpassed $1 Trillion for First Time |
| Assets under management in funds that abide by ESG principles have surpassed $1 trillion for the first time on record. This comes after net inflows of $71.1 billion between April and June this year, driven by growing interest in sustainable investment funds in the wake of the pandemic. |
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| Long-Term Investors Hold Sway Over ESG |
| The first ever virtual-only corporate annual meeting season showed that long-term investors were more willing than ever to highlight ESG issues. Investors had more success on climate change and increasingly pushed companies on human rights, diversity and pay equity. |
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| INCLUSIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP |
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| Surging Black-owned Businesses Hope Investors Are Next |
| As Black-owned food businesses see a surge in publicity and customers, they hope that investors will also take notice. Venture capital firms have historically overlooked startups with Black founders — just 1% are venture-backed. |
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| TheBoardlist Opens Platform to Men of Color |
| TheBoardlist, a platform that connects companies with qualified women to serve as directors, expanded their clientele to include men of color too. This work could not be more timely as companies reexamine their diversity initiatives and look to expand diversity on boards and in the C-suite. |
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| Companies Must Go Beyond Random Acts of Humanitarianism |
| Corporate crisis response becomes much more meaningful when stakeholders know that the organization has been incorporating their response as part of their primary business over time and will continue to do so into the future. |
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| No Women of Color on Global 500 |
| Fortune’s 2020 Global 500 list came out this week, and women run just 13 of the 500 companies spanning the globe that made the cut. This data is generally used as a temperature check on gender and racial diversity in leadership, so it’s alarming that the number of overall women dropped and no women of color made the list. |
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